The Pandektes of Antiochos of Mar Saba is one of a large dossier of writings that were provoked by the Persian conquest of Jerusalem and surrounding events in the first third of the seventh century. It is often cited by historians for its...
moreThe Pandektes of Antiochos of Mar Saba is one of a large dossier of writings that were provoked by the Persian conquest of Jerusalem and surrounding events in the first third of the seventh century. It is often cited by historians for its few but valuable details about contemporary historical events, and occasionally used by patrologists to unearth new patristic citations. But the work’s purpose and its Sitz-im-Leben in a monastic culture of intensive reading and conversation has been largely neglected.
The work consists of a series of ethical discourses, prefaced by a letter to an abbot Eustathios and concluded by a lengthy penitential prayer. Eustathios directed a monastery named Attalinê, in Ankyra of Galatia, where Antiochos had begun his monastic life before moving to Mar Saba. Due to the Persian invasion, the monks of Attalinê had been forced to leave behind their monastery, library included. Eustathios requested of Antiochos a digest of the Scriptures, as an edifying vade mecum for the homeless monks.
Each of the 130 chapters deals with a particular virtue or vice, addressing it primarily through patristic quotations, followed by a collection of supporting scriptural texts. It is not exactly a florilegium, given Antiochos’ active role in paraphrasing and adapting his texts. The patristic sources include both pre-Nicene Fathers—Ignatios of Antioch, Polycarp of Smyrna, Hermas of Rome, Irenaios of Lyons, the pseudo-Clementine Epistles to Virgins—and post-Nicene ascetical authors, including Evagrios of Pontos, Diadochos of Photikê and John of Karpathos. The selection must reflect to some degree the availability of books in the monasteries in the environs of Jerusalem. It thus provides us with evidence for how authors at the end of late antiquity drew on the developing patristic canon and interpreted it for their own didactic purposes.
Antiochos primarily speaks to the monastic readership for which the work was requested, but he also sought to make it useful to a wider audience. At certain points he hints at oral delivery; perhaps Antiochos tried the discourses out on locals before sending off the polished form to the distant Galatians. Furthermore, in the course of the work, Antiochos provides evidence for the ubiquity of interactions between monks and laypeople, including frequent conversations on spiritual topics, and seeks to advise monks on how such visits should be conducted in order to edify laypeople while preserving monastic detachment.
With its traces of both written citations and spoken teachings, the Pandektes offers an important window into both the literate and oral culture of Palestinian monasticism in the early seventh century. It also shows how the two were organically interwoven and mutually influential, and how the fruits of such interaction might be collected in a book that was sent far away, in a monastic and literary network extending to Galatia. As such, it is an important test case for reading circles and cultures in the early Byzantine period.
