Slavonic Translations of Early Byzantine Ascetical Literature

‘D'une manière générate, on peut dire que les littératures chrétiennes de l'Orient sont largement tributaires de la littérature grecque.’ This statement of the late Paul Peeters concerning oriental hagiographical literature may equally well be applied to that of the Slavs. At the same time it does not in any way detract from the merits of original Slavonic hagiography to admit its debt to the Byzantine influences which it preserved and enriched. The principal channels by which these influences were transmitted were Slavonic translations of Greek works, mainly ecclesiastical, which were made from the late ninth century onwards. Among these translated works, which formed the nucleus of early Slavonic literature, were the most important Byzantine hagiographical compilations and ascetical treatises produced between the fifth and seventh centuries: the Apophthegmata Patrum; the Ἀνδρν γων ββλος (=The Book of Holy Men); the Lausiac History of Palladius; the Historia Monachorum; the Historia Religiosa of Theodoret of Cyrus; the Pratum Spirituale of John Moschus; and the Scala Paradisi of St. John Climacus. There is also evidence that the Paraenesis of Ephrem the Syrian was translated, and at least one treatise by, or attributed to, Evagrius, as well as the Latin Dialogues of Gregory the Great, this last from its Greek version

Ancient history · Art · Byzantine architecture · Byzantine studies · Literature · Ninth · Byzantine Studies and History · Classics · Historical and Religious Studies of Rome · History · Linguistics and language evolution

• Palladius und Rufinus

  Erwin Preuschen•Palladius und Rufinus•1897

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