Andrew Palmer, transl., The Life of the
Syrian Saint Barsauma: Eulogy of a Hero of the Resistance to the Council of
Chalcedon, Transformation of the Classical Heritage 61 (Oakland: University
of California Press, 2020)
Catalin-Stefan
Popa
Institute for the History of Religions,
Romanian Academy / The Institute for Advanced Studies in Levant Culture and
Civilization
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Beth Mardutho: The Syriac Institute
2023
Volume 26.1
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https://hugoye.bethmardutho.org/article/hv26n1prpopa
Catalin-Stefan Popa
Andrew Palmer, transl., The Life of the
Syrian Saint Barsauma: Eulogy of a Hero of the Resistance to the Council of
Chalcedon, Transformation of the Classical Heritage 61 (Oakland: University
of California Press, 2020)
https://hugoye.bethmardutho.org/pdf/vol26/HV26N1PRPopa.pdf
Hugoye: Journal of Syriac Studies
Beth Mardutho: The Syriac Institute, 2023
vol 26
issue 1
pp 306-310
Hugoye: Journal of Syriac Studies is an electronic journal dedicated to the study
of the Syriac tradition, published semi-annually (in January and July) by Beth
Mardutho: The Syriac Institute. Published since 1998, Hugoye seeks to offer the
best scholarship available in the field of Syriac studies.
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Andrew Palmer, transl., The Life of the
Syrian Saint Barsauma: Eulogy of a Hero of the Resistance to the Council of
Chalcedon, Transformation of the Classical Heritage 61 (Oakland: University
of California Press, 2020). Pp. 140; $85.00, paperback $24.95.
Barsauma was a controversial character who became pertinent to
Syriac literature for his trenchant stance against Chalcedon. Barsauma is one of the
few personalities whose life has permeated and affected many other Christian
denominations and Eastern traditions such as Syriac, Arabic, Geʽez, and, likely,
Armenian.
Historians focusing on the historiography of Eastern Christianity –
and Syriac scholars in particular – have long awaited a complete translation of the
Life of the Syriac Saint Barsauma, after several small
sections of the work were translated by François Nau more than a hundred years ago.
This wish has finally been fulfilled by Andrew Palmer who with this publication has
done Syriac historiography a great service by offering an introduction to and
translation of the Life, thereby bringing to broader
scholarly attention a figure who can now perhaps be more accurately assessed than
has previously been possible.
A translation of the Life of Barsauma has
long been awaited by Syriac scholars, especially given that Barsauma himself, that
entirely atypical monk, was so peculiarly depicted that his Life could never have passed unnoticed; rather, it arouses broad interest
and appeal through its antagonistic juxtapositions of a portrait of a saint but also
of a sinner, featuring not only miraculous situations but also ambitions and
resistance to all kinds of dangers or contexts, dominated by spiritual tension and a
strong character.
Palmer’s translation published in this volume has also been included
in a collection of essays published in the same series, edited by Johannes Hahn and
Volker Menze,
The Wandering Holy Man: The Life of Barsauma, Christian
Asceticism, and Religious Conflict in Late Antique Palestine,
Transformations of the Classical Heritage 60 (Oakland: University of
California Press, 2020). which contains studies on the contextual
and personal background of Barsauma and which represents a useful introductory tool
for those who wish to study the life of this Syriac Orthodox figure.
Regarding the book under review, we can note that the format is
quite appealing, beginning with the cover itself that from the very first glance
seems to impart its mystery onto the reader, a mystery not unlike that of Barsauma’s
life. The volume opens with an Introduction (pp. 1–8) in which the translator
situates the character of Barsauma in the broader Syriac hagiographic context. The
first issue Palmer mentions is Barsauma’s terrible image as it appears in Western
sources, beginning with his mention in the Bibliotheca
Orientalis. Palmer then introduces the reader to the manuscript tradition
of Barsauma’s life (pp. 1–2), with reference not only to the British Library
manuscript, Add MS 12,174, but also to the most complete manuscript and the basis
for his translation: Damascus MS 12/17 of the Syriac Orthodox Patriarchal
Library.
Before giving a brief overview of the major events in Barsauma’s
life, the translator does not shy away from offering several hypotheses as to why
Western Catholic scholars characterized Barsauma so negatively (in particular,
Assemanus and Nau) (pp. 3–4). Palmer then switches registers and offers a summary of
the important moments of Barsauma’s life (pp. 6–8) followed, for the reader’s
orientation, by two maps of the geography of the 5th century, the character’s
lifetime, and then by a tabular outline (pp. 11–18) of Barsauma’s biographical
stages (two parts, containing in total 10 chapters). Here, Palmer provides several
important pieces of information, most importantly that the original author of the
biography did not provide section (chapter) titles. In this regard, Palmer goes on
to highlight that various readers through the ages contributed to the structure of
the volume we see today, because they were the ones “who numbered the pilgrimages,
the distinctions, and the miracles in the margins, adding headings” which later
scribes incorporated into the body of the text (p. 11).
Palmer’s translation is both dynamic and precise; the footnotes, 202
in all, are fairly concise – as all translations should strive for – yet clear and
well organized, so that the reader does not move from one page or section to the
next with any remaining ambiguity or gaps about what is being described. The notes
usually offer brief explanations of Syriac words, frequently presenting the literary
meaning of certain expressions, pointing out biblical references, or clarifying
certain place and personal names in the context of the character’s life. They also
occasionally provide additional information, such as theological or contextual
definitions and explanations, define technical ecclesiastical terms, or explain
distances, directions, times or units of measurement, etc. In some notes the
translator offers details or additional information about formal aspects of the
manuscript, the omission of words or phrases, etc. The translator makes limited
literature recommendations for certain themes or concepts within the Life, most likely both from the practical concern of not
egregiously expanding the notes but attempting but also in light of the fact that
the volume edited by Hahn and Menze already offers several studies on Barsauma that
abound in references to specialist literature.
With what historical or hagiographical information will the reader
be left after reading this translation? At the very least, with a knowledge of some
aspects of the hagiographic colouring of Barsauma’s life, especially as related to
his pilgrimages to the holy places in which he is portrayed as an ardent believer,
manifesting a number of other extraordinary actions in an almost hyperbolic
framework; indeed, some scholars have almost cast into doubt a number of the acts
depicted as having transpired throughout these journeys. Barsauma’s first pilgrimage
to the holy places would appear to have taken place around the year 400, when he was
still a teenager. Roughly twenty years later, Barsauma travelled to Jerusalem for a
second time; here, he is already presented as a leader, travelling “with 40 of his
disciples” – most likely a symbolic number, as in the third pilgrimage we see him
having embarked on the journey with one hundred companions in total. The hero’s
journeys are dominated by his strong personality and accentuated by the dynamics of
his actions, the hero travelling through countless regions and localities and
leaving his polemical spiritual mark everywhere he went. Indeed, all actions
depicted highlight the profile of the saint, who performs miracles, is involved in
the manifestation of faith, and in the defence of his confession at any risk or
cost. In his third and fourth pilgrimages we see the introduction of the character
of Empress Eudocia, a Roman powermonger that offers him precious gifts which he,
initially, rejects. Barsauma’s fourth pilgrimage seems to be dominated by the idea
of transforming his character from a conventional Christian (if Barsauma could ever
fall into such a category) into an ardent fighter for the identity of his Church
tradition in Jerusalem against the imperial Byzantine edict authorizing the Jews to
gather atop the Temple Mount in the Holy City.
Whosoever wants to learn more about this complex Syriac personality
that transformed and dynamized everything around him, who monopolized space and time
and reversed the normal course of religious reality, namely that atypical monk
Barsauma – whose profile resembles a jigsaw puzzle that can be built from varied
elements dominated by power structures, violence, monastic vocation, miracles,
overzealousness for the faith and a spirit of devotion to his tradition – could
hardly do better than read Palmer’s translation in its entirety, as it opens up a
horizon of Christian hagiographic tension that is almost unique, and with which few
texts of Late Antiquity can truthfully compete.