Author: Prof. Lorenzo Perrone (Bologna University)
Keywords: apophthegmata, correspondence, Dorotheus, spiritual guidance, Scripture
Abstract:
The Correspondence of Barsanuphius and John (= C), the two recluses in the coenobium of Seridus near Gaza during the first decades of the 6th century, is among the most important witnesses for the spread of the Apophthegmata Patrum (= AP) in the early monastic literature of Palestine. From a statistical point of view, as we shall see, only the writings of Dorotheus, a disciple of the two elders, offer a similar quantity of citations. Yet the presence of the A P is more pervasive than the explicit references or the allusions suggest, and the width and depth of their reception have yet to be fully investigated. This depends first of all on the process of transmission of the sayings of the Desert Fathers and the manifold ways through which they were collected in written form. No other word is more frequently attested than precisely the terms “father” or “fathers,” whereas the plural “elders,” used with an equivalent meaning, is far less common. Thus it is not misguided to consider the reception of the AP, in the first place, against the background represented by the idea of a spiritual paternity uniting in a continuous chain the actual “spiritual Fathers” (Πνευματικοί πατέρες) to their “predecessors”: the prophets, the apostles, the martyrs, the saint bishops and theologians of the Church, and the first monastic generations (notably the monks of Scetis, but also some monks of Palestine) as reflected in the Lives and Sayings of the Desert Fathers.
(English translation by Voronca Ștefan)
Pages: 179-196