Bo Holmberg: The Early Syriac Reception of the Sayings tradition

The printed texts of the Syriac versions of the Apophthegmata Patrum (AP) made by Paul Bedjan (1897) and by A. W. Budge (1904) reflect later compilations of monastic texts collected by the monk Enanisho in the 8th century. Several Syriac manuscripts containing collections of AP and dated to the 6th century have come down to us. By studying these older manuscripts knew insights may be gained with regard to the early Syriac reception of the Sayings tradition. They are among the earliest preserved testimonies of the AP found in any language. At least two different recensions may be discerned and neither of them is strictly alphabetic or thematic. Like the later compilations of monastic texts, these manuscripts also juxtapose apophthegmatic and non-apophthegmatic materials. The order of sayings and the identity of the non-apophthegmatic texts may throw new light on one of the earliest attested receptions of the Sayings tradition.

Scott Johnson: Historiography in Verse Exegesis: The Syriac Tradition and Romanos the Melode on 1–2 Kings

Several Syriac poems dealing with episodes in 1–2 Kings survive from Late Antiquity. These poems cover various stories, but scenes from the life of Elijah are most prominent. In this paper I will consider poems by Ephrem, Narsai, Jacob of Serugh, and Romanos the Melode (in Greek) in an effort to investigate how Kings was treated as a historiographical model by late antique poets in the East. This investigation focuses on how authoritative biblical texts shaped the habits of talking about the past in the Syriac tradition. These poets shared a collective memory, not least through liturgical celebration, which served their poetry both by providing content but also by framing their discourse about past events. This paper is not intended as a survey of the exegetical tradition on Kings but, instead, explores how exegetical poetry set cultural habits for claiming the biblical past in the Syriac tradition. The regular recitation of liturgical hymns meant that patterns of thinking about the past permeated into other genres of Syriac literature, such as prose exegesis and commentary, prose homiletics, epistlography, and historiography. With regard to historiography, this paper will close with a meditation on how the emergent chronicle tradition in Syriac took inspiration from both Greek ecclesiastical historical writing, represented by very early translations of Eusebius, as well as from the indigenous Syriac poetical tradition. In this fusing of horizons between poetry and historiography, specific perspectives on history and the past will be put forward as characteristic of Syriac writing in Late Antiquity.

Matthieu Pignot: The catechumenate in pseudo-epigraphic sermons from late antique Africa

In late Antiquity, individuals wanting to become Christian went through a progressive integration called the catechumenate by modern scholars. In ancient sources from the Latin West, this involved a two-stage membership: converts would first become members of the community as catechumeni (hearers), while full belonging was acquired by petitioning for the status of fidelis (faithful) and receiving baptism after intense preparation. This organisation still remains widely unknown because of the lack of sources providing clear accounts of how it was organised and lived. In Africa, Augustine of Hippo and Quodvultdeus of Carthage, and particularly their sermons, provide the most visible and studied evidence, in the form of occasional and dispersed references. After the 450s, sources become scarce with very few sermons preserved with an authorship.
The objective of this paper is to extend the study of the catechumenate in Africa in the fourth, fifth and sixth centuries by exploring the less-known and little studied pseudo-epigraphic sermons preserved from the period. The pseudo-Augustinus, pseudo-Chrysostomus, pseudo-Maximus and pseudo-Fulgentius collections have much to offer on rites of initiation and catechesis implemented during the catechumenate. While many of the texts found amongst these collections have been ascribed to new authors, a large amount still remains anonymous. Isolating, in this corpus, the texts ascribed to late antique Africa, I shall provide a brief account of their potential contribution to our understanding of the catechumenate in late Antiquity, and reflect on their impact on the broader history of initiation as told by better-known patristic sources.

Anna Zhyrkova: From Christ to Human Individual—Shaping the Conception of Individual Existence in Neochalcedonian theology

In debates over the orthodox and adequate expression of the union of Divine and human natures, many theologians deemed it necessary to assimilate a great quantity of both philosophical conceptions and vocabulary. As a consequence, ontological discussions became an inherent part of theological discourse. Once Philoponus had put forward his Miaphysite stance as a logically correct conclusion from Cyril’s Christological statements, it became impossible for theologians to avoid strictly ontological considerations. The peculiarity of those discussions was that their main purpose was to explain just one single metaphysical case: that of Christ.
A “sui generis” case was not of much interest to pagan philosophy. Unique cases were eliminated by subjecting them to general rules. Christ’s uniqueness, however, not only had to be stressed, but also construed in humanly graspable, if imperfect, terms. This turned Christ into a paradigm for ontology, especially in the considerations of late Ancient and early Byzantine theologians. This paper examines the works of Neochalcedonian theologians, from John the Grammarian to Leontius of Byzantium, showing how their focus on Christ made ontology more concerned with particulars than with universals and turned attention from what things are like to the fact that they are. In their writings, the identity of particular beings was recognized and became a problem to explain, alongside the issues of what makes a single entity a unity—in spite of the multiplicity of its constitutive parts—and of what makes a human to be an individual unique being.

Kristian Heal: Construal and Construction of Genesis in early Syriac Sermons

The literary critic Stanley Fish argued that, ‘Interpretation is not the art of construing but the art of constructing'. Thus meanings are to be found in (re)constructing texts and not simply in explaining them. We could argue whether Fish's observation is in fact correct, but I prefer to take it a prompt to reassess the interpretative value of the reconstructed narratives which we find in numerous late antique Syriac sermons on Genesis. We are entirely comfortable in attributing interpretative value to the commentary, which in essence is construing a text. My concern in this paper, however, is with the interpretative process and impact of the construction of a new scriptural story in Syriac sermons, or what we may call the hermeneutics of invention.

Ute Possekel: A Newly-Found Syriac Letter by Miaphysite Bishops Against the Julianists

This paper will present and interpret a previously unknown letter, written ca. 530 by several miaphysite bishops from northern Mesopotamia in opposition to the teachings of Julian of Halicarnassus. It is a pastoral letter, composed in response to a request by Severus of Antioch (ep. V.14), and addressed to the abbots and monks in the diocese of Amida. Previously only a fragment of the letter was known, but the full version is preserved in a manuscript owned by Harvard University (Harvard Syriac 91), somewhat surprisingly tucked in among the polemical treatises of Dionysius bar Ṣalibi, the twelfth-century bishop of Amida. The letter is also found in other manuscripts of Dionysius' polemical treatises.
The authors of the letter were John of Tella, Sergius of Cyrus, Marion of Sura, Nonnos of Circesium, and Thomas of Dara. The letter was signed by three additional hierarchs, who presumably were not present at the time of composition but wished to endorse the letter's message. All of the signatories were part of the epistolary network of Severus of Antioch. In the letter, the miaphysite bishops lay out scriptural and theological arguments against Julian's influential doctrine of the incorruptibility of Christ's body.
The paper will present the manuscript evidence, discuss the place of the letter in the correspondence of Severus with the eastern bishops, and interpret the letter's theological arguments.

Laura Soureli: The ‘Prayer of the Heart’ in the Philokalia: Questions and Caveats

This paper addresses the subject of the ‘prayer of the heart’ in Orthodox Christian asceticism, as displayed in the Philokalia, the eighteenth-century collection of patristic texts on the practice of contemplative prayer and deification, compiled by  Sts. Macarius of Corinth and Nicodemus of the Holy Mountain. The ‘prayer of the heart’ is a composite practice, comprised of physical techniques combined with meditative methods, aiming to produce an emptying of the mind and the advent of the experience of deification through what is traditionally called ‘purification and guarding of the heart’. This paper contributes an analysis of the mystical anthropology employed by the Church Fathers focused on the human heart. The connection and interdependence between the physical and contemplative techniques is analysed and justified in a novel approach, before concluding with the way that the ‘prayer of the heart’ functions in one’s path towards deification.

Joshua Falconer: The Role of the Divine Names in the Liturgical Tradition of the Church of the East

While the divine names are well-known in the Christian tradition from the Dionysian corpus and in the Islamic tradition from the ninety-nine beautiful names of God, what has been virtually passed over is a third tradition that may be seen as a kind of bridge between these two traditions in several notable respects. In order to bring this neglected area to light, this paper will present a short summary of some of the most prominent patterns in the role and transmission of the divine names in the liturgical tradition of the Church of the East. From a first glance at the ferial and festal service books, such as the Ḥudrā and the Gazzā, it becomes clear that the divine names play no small part in the liturgical cycle. A great variety of names are invoked, as each name performs a particular mystogogical function. To illustrate this, we will review the following key patterns and their place in the rāzē or mysteries of the Church of the East: Trinity, Power, Light, Life, Creativity, Beauty, Love, Good, and Wisdom. Each of these patterns culminates in a paradoxical pair brought together in the Incarnation: the hidden reality, as in the Power of God, and the kenotic manifestation, as in the Weakness of Man. By participating in the kenotic manifestations of these patterns throughout the feasts and fasts of the liturgical year, the faithful are to be drawn into the hidden realities of the divine life.

Maria Giulia Genghini: “Go, sit in your cell, and your cell will teach you everything” (AP Moses 6): how the physical environment shaped the spirituality of early Egyptian monasticism

The following study proposes a re-evaluation of literary sources about Early Egyptian Monasticism, in particular The Life of Anthony by Athanasius and Palladius’ Lausiac History, in light of the archaeological and documentary evidences discovered about Egypt during the 1980s but only recently taken into account in the scholarly debate. The paper focuses specifically on the geography of the cell in which the first Egyptian monks trained themselves into ascetic practice. The leading question is whether or not the spatiality of the cell should be considered to have a transformative effect on the spirituality of the different ascetic movements. First, I am going to explore the notion of “desert” in the making of early Egyptian ascetic saints as revealed by The Life of Anthony. Secondly, I will argue that a more attentive use of literary sources can shed new light upon the use of space in Early Egyptian monasticism as long as we commit ourselves to read these sources with the help of documentary and archaeological evidences. This section will focus primarily on the Lausiac History as an example of such re-reading. Lastly, I will examine the new portrait of early monasticism and try to point out some of the peculiar aspects of ancient asceticism as they appear from the spatial analysis of the monk in his cell. In particular, I will argue that the supposedly intimate space of the cell has, in fact, been fundamental in shaping the relations between the first monks and the surrounding ecclesiastical and imperial environment.

Gáspár Parlagi: Questions raised by the letter 'Ad filios Dei' of Saint Macarius the Egyptian

Although the debate of the authenticity of the letters attributed to the desert fathers is one of the most important issues related to the recent research on early monasticism, an important part of these texts, the so-called ‘Macarian letters' have only occasionally caught some scholarly attention. This paper examines the most important piece of the corpus, the first letter usually cited as ‘Ad filios Dei'. In the first part of my paper I present a philologico-critical analysis of the different recensions of the letter with particular emphasis on the Greek, Coptic and Syriac versions, and then I turn to survey the central theological and ascetical motifs of the text (the role of the Holy Spirit in ascetic life, self-knowledge, and the ‘play of the divine grace') and examine their possible relationship with monastic literature in the context of the letters of Antony and Ammonas. With the help of this duplex investigation I try to make a decision about the question of authenticity in stricter and in a more general sense as well: ‘Is it possible that Macarius the Great himself was the author of the letter or not?' or ‘whether the Ad filios Dei be a credible witness of 4th century monasticism, or it is just a later pseudonym compilation?'

Johannes Knecht: The Monastic Christology of the Coptic Abbot St Shenoute of Atripe

Ever since Grillmeier's volume II/4 of Jesus der Christus, the Christology of Shenoute of Atripe has been interpreted in Monophysite terms, or is at least associated with Monophysite Christologies. Especially in the latest work on his Christology, written by Stephen Davis, this Monophysite reading of Shenoute is most obvious and explicit. This paper will argue, based mainly on Contra Origenistas  and The Lord Thundered, that Shenoute is not the Monophysite theologian some make him out to be, and that, because of his monastic and practical context and content of his writings, relating Shenoute to these larger Christological debates in this manner is at odds with his work. Shenoute does not speak to, nor is he concerned with, Christology in the way needed to able to label someone a ‘Monophysite.' Trying to label him in this way makes one ask questions of him which he simply does not answer. First, I will briefly present the main arguments for interpreting Shenoute in Monophysite terms and why I think they do not hold. These arguments concern the bond of trust between Shenoute and the Alexandrian Patriarchs (mainly Cyril and Dioscorus), the sporadic use of the Christological termini technici, the use of the Theotokos, and the utilisation of some metaphors. Second, the paper will indicate some of the ways in which Shenoute himself speaks about Christology.

Melko Rasica: Theurgy and Liturgy: the transmission of the theory and practice of Neoplatonic theurgy into Christian liturgical practice and its Patristic theological foundation in Northern Syria between the 5th and 7th century A.D.

Christianity was profoundly influenced by the Neoplatonic tradition, not only on the level of theory, that is philosophy and theology, but also on the level of practice, specifically ritual practices called theurgy and liturgy respectively. Patristic theology to a large degree took over the metaphysical structure of Neoplatonism, including cosmology, anthropology, and the threefold structure of the spiritual path, but reinterpreted key concepts in a synthesis with the Judeo-Christian scriptural tradition. Neoplatonism and Patristic sacramental theology both understand the human being as reflecting the structure of the cosmos, and analyze the fundamental problem of human existence as the distortion of this cosmic order within, in what is called the soul, which leads to alienation from the Divine source of being. The goal of spiritual practice, and therefore also of ritual practice, is firstly the restoration of the natural inner order and secondly union with the Divine. Differences between the traditions exist in the precise understanding of union (theosis and apotheosis/henosis respectively) and the exact relation between the cosmos and the transcendent. As the Abrahamic traditions maintain a strict separation between the transcendent and the immanent, union with the Divine in Christianity means not becoming divine, but like God, and ritual practice is not formally a cosmogony as in Neoplatonism. Nevertheless, Christian liturgical sacramental practice and theology to a large degree do follow the anthropological and cosmological structure of Neoplatonism and even imply the wider Hellenistic cosmology of which it was a part. Key figures for the comparison are Iamblichus, Dionysios and Maximos.

Theresia Hainthaler: Colossians 1:15 in the Christological reflection of East Syrian authors

As R. Cantalamessa has shown in his research on the Patristic tradition on Col. 1:15 (Cristo “immagine di Dio”, in: Rivista di Storia e Letteratura Religiosa 16 (1980) 181-212. 345-380), there are two lines of interpretation, one from Irenaeus, Tertullian, Marcel of Ancyra, Theodore of Mopsuestia, and the other from Origen, Athanasius, Cappadocian fathers, Hilary and John Chrysostom. Especially with Babai the Great in the 7th century, but also already in Ishoyahb I and Henana, or later in Timothy I, this Biblical passage has a specific significance in the Christology of East Syrian authors. The paper analyzes how Col 1:15, crucial for Christology, is interpreted in the East Syrian tradition and in the symbol (Antiochenum) and whether it follows the line of Theodore of Mopsuestia.

Jeanne-Nicole Mellon Saint-Laurent: Digital Humanities and the Study of Patristics Bibliotheca Hagiographica Syriaca Electronica- Syriac Saints Lives

Syriac literature contains a large corpus of saints' lives, both from the Syriac milieu and the Greek-speaking world.  Syriac hagiography is an important and underused resource for the study of Early Christianity, bridging the Latin, Greek, Syriac, Arabic, and Sasanian cultures of late antiquity.  This presentation will show how linked data and TEI have enabled the creation of a database of Syriac saints' lives: Bibliotheca Hagiographica Syriaca Electronica.  Scholars and students can now have access to over a thousand Syriac saints' lives in this database, along with their prologues, incipits, and decipits.  This presentation will show the projects of Syriaca.org which are making hagiographic texts and manuscripts accessible to a wide audience of specialists and non-specialists.

Elif Tokay: The Holy Spirit in the Syriac and Arabic Translations of Gregory Nazianzen's Orations

This paper explores Gregory Nazianzen’s pneumatology as it is expressed in the Syriac and Arabic translations of his orations. It particularly focuses on the way that these oriental versions of Gregory’s orations transmitted his pneumatology, which was shaped with the help of Greek philosophy and some oriental traits. In other words, it asks whether and in what ways this theology underwent change and transformation in its new garbs. Therefore, this paper includes an evaluation of the pneumatology of the period in which the Arabic translations of Gregory’s orations were made. In addition to the fact that the Arabic translator consulted the Syriac versions of these orations, the Syriac translations help us build our understanding of the pneumatology of Christian Arabic theology in the medieval period. This research aims to make a contribution to this particular field in which there is a lack of study on either the doctrine of the Holy Spirit or related subjects such as ethics and mystical theology. It provides an interesting example of the transmission of a fourth-century patristic text in a totally different intellectual environment which Arabic set its seal upon it.

Flavia Ruani: A Literary Approach to Edifying Stories in Syriac Hagiographical Collections

This paper deals with the hagiographical writings commonly known as "edifying stories", i.e. short narratives, mostly by anonymous authors, portraying Christian characters, generally meant to convey moral Christian values. In particular, it will focus on those stories which appear in Syriac hagiographical collections. The Story of a merchant at Constantinople, the Story of a widow of Jerusalem and her five children, the Story of a man in prison are just few examples of these widespread narratives which were copied among Saints' Lives and Acts of Martyrs in Syriac hagiographical manuscripts dating from the ninth century onwards (BL Add. 14649, BL Add. 12174, and Paris BnF syr. 234, for instance). These ancient "short stories", mostly unedited and untranslated, can interest scholars concerned with the literary production of Late Antiquity and the early Middle-Ages. Edification is in fact a common purpose of all hagiographical writings: stories about saints' lives, miracles and deaths are intended as examples of right behaviors for their Christian audience and readership. What, then, distinguishes these brief narrations from other hagiographical texts? This paper aims at giving a first general approach to this kind of texts, by 1) inventorying their presence and diffusion in the Syriac tradition (which are they? Where and when do they appear? Are they Syriac original narratives?); 2) studying their role in the main hagiographical collections they are inserted in; 3) mapping the literary features which characterize them, and exploring the literary influence, if any, of Greek and Latin novels on their composition.

Marios Benisis: Being as an atom against Communing as a person: an Orthodox patristic quest of Theology of Person

The well known in the Orthodox world as Theology of Person derives from the communion that exists between the three persons of the Holy Trinity. If someone considers as a purpose the quote “you shall be holy, for I am holy” (1 Peter 1: 16), should try to implicate in his life the communion of the person, best known as community with the other. That is the aspect we will try to illuminate in this short communication, trying to base our thoughts in the works of the Fathers. We will also refer and comment the writings by John Zizioulas, Kallistos Ware, Christos Yannaras and other authors and last but not least, we will explore the meaning of the Greek words κοινωνια, ατομο, και προσωπο (Communion, atom and person) found in the patristic citations, in order to examine the Consensus Patrum in this aspect.

Ilias Nesseris: Unkown Prayers on Education in Twelfth-Century Byzantium

Among the various prayers for all kind of daily life activities that can be found in Goar’s edition of the Euchologion are included three which concern children’s education. The first two involve the young child’s sending off to the school of primary education to learn the so-called hiera grammata, while the third is an interesting service regarding mischievous students.
In addition to these prayers, there exist many others that remain unknown because they are not preserved in Byzantine and post-Byzantine prayer books, but in manuscripts containing school material, namely schedographies, i.e. collections consisting of numerous short pieces called schedē composed for the teaching of grammar. These unknown prayers are exceptional both in form/type and content for a variety of reasons: their precise classification would be prayers in the form of schedē; they were composed ad hoc for various specific aspects of school life, such as the annual examinations at the end of the school year; their composers were, in some cases, well-known teachers, such as Constantine Manasses, or others that have remained anonymous; finally, they were composed for individual students rather than the entire student body in general.
The aim of the present paper is to analyze and present all these unknown prayers for the first time, to expand on their significance for the educational affairs of the late Byzantine and post-Byzantine period and place them in their social context, and to explore the methodological challenges they pose in regard to the more conventional prayers found in the Euchologion.

Eirini Afentoulidou: Gendering the Baby in Byzantine Prayers on Child-Bed

The hitherto most authoritative edition of the Byzantine Euchologion made by Jacques Goar includes prayers on child-bed, ranging from prayers for the mother to prayers for the naming and the churching of the child. In these the child is sometimes referred to in the neuter "παιδίον" (little child) or "νήπιον" (infant), and sometimes in the gendered "δοῦλος τοῦ Θεοῦ" (God's male servant) - the universal masculine is used, although the instructions in the rubrics refer to male and female infants. This paper aims to explore the gendering as part of the integration of the child into the Byzantine Christian community.

Alexandros Andreou: The 'Prayer of the Heart' in St Mark the Monk

The 'prayer of the heart' is a significant element of the Eastern Christian monastic practices that aim at deification, and particulary those belonging to that ascetic current championed by St Gregory Palamas and the Philokalia in the fourteenth and eighteenth centuries respectively. It is regarded as one of the fundamental practices that may accompany the practice of repentance, reveal the latent grace of baptism, and bring the ascetic into a direct and personal communion with Christ. In this paper, I examine the references to the 'prayer of the heart' that appear in the writings of St Mark the Monk, a seminal fifth-century ascetic writer of some repute, student of St John Chrysostom, and the 'theologian of baptism par excellence.'
I argue that Mark was aware of at least an early form of the prayer, which he valued enough to recommend to those under his pastoral care. The specific prayer technique was sufficiently well known so as not to warrant explicit analysis. Instead, Mark suffices to refer to it by employing certain key phrases (e.g. 'single-worded hope', 'descent into the heart') that evoke it in his immediate readers' minds. To this end, following an examination of the extant textual evidence, I identify the place and function of the 'prayer of the heart' within Mark's fundamentally baptismal theology and in connrection to his approach to monastic education, and discuss its relation with its immediate Evagrian precedents and later Symeonic and Palamite antecedents.