Agenda

Freedom of the Will or Freedom of Nature? A Conceptual Conundrum in Syriac and Christian Arabic Sources

Lecturer: Peter Tarras, Julius-Maximilians-Universität Würzburg

Discussant: Emanuele Zimbardi, Ca' Foscari University 

The FLOS project (“Florilegia Syriaca: The intercultural dissemination of Greek Christian thought in Syriac and Arabic in the first millennium CE”) intends to examines the ways in which Syriac patristic florilegia of the 8th-10th centuries CE functioned as organizers of knowledge and identity for Syriac- and Arabic-speaking Christians within the complex cultural landscape of the late Umayyad early ‘Abbasid era. The selection and rearrangement of Greek patristic writings in florilegia during this period significantly impacted the development of Syriac and Christian Arabic literature and thought in Syria and Mesopotamia; intragroup relations within Syriac Christianity; and the confrontations between Christian and Islamic intellectual cultures. 

The FLOS Lectures series includes papers devoted to topics at the centre of the FLOS project: composition and excerpting practices among both writers and readers in diverse late antique and early medieval Christian contexts; the entangled intellectual histories of Greek, Syriac, and Arabic Christianities; and the development of speculative theology in Eastern Christianity  from the 6th to the 11th century.

This project has received funding from the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme (grant agreement No 758732)

Image credis: MS Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Syr. 112, f. 67r (detail)