International congress of byzantine studies belgrade, 22 27 august 2016

Guido Venturini
Sapienza University of Rome, Rome, Italy; 
[e-mail]
The Syriac 
Life of John the Merciful
and Its Possible Contribution 
to the Edition of the Greek Text
The topic I am going to present is part of a larger research that I am developing within the 
frames of a PhD programme at the University of Roma La Sapienza, and is about the Syriac version of 
the Life of John the Merciful, originally written in Greek in the VII century by Leontios of Neapolis, 
and about the evaluation of its contribution to the reconstruction of the original Greek text. 
The Syriac Life of John the Merciful consists of a rather free translation, which sometimes 
becomes remarkably distant from the text preserved in the Greek codices, but which can be 
potentially very useful for the improvement of the Greek edition of the Life of John, published for 
the first time by Gelzer in 1893 and later by Festugière (1974) and Cavallero (2011).
Until today, the only study highlighting the importance of the Syriac Life is that of V. Déroche 
about Leontios of Neapolis (1995), in which is reproduced the opinion of B. Flusin, based on two 
passages of the Syriac text. The scholar supposes that the Syriac version was translated from a very 
ancient and reliable form of the Greek text. Therefore a complete study of this version – missing 
until today –results to be inevitable, given its possible contribution to the improvement of the 
critical edition of the Greek text. 
The only edition available until today of the Syriac Life of John is that of P. Bedjan (1894). 
This edition, based on the codices BN 235 and BL Add. 14645, was composed without a proper 
philological method. The editor, who demonstrates not knowing the Greek text, does not specify 

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from which codex the readings were taken and does not provide any translation of the Syriac text. 
Therefore, this edition needs to be urgently revised, which I am aiming to conclude during my 
research. Furthermore, the research takes also into consideration the inedited Syriac redaction 
present in the codex BN 234. This recensio brevior contains some significant passages, which might 
bring into question and increase the few data that we have until now about the Syriac translation of 
the Life of a text of such a great importance in the Byzantine hagiographic literature.
Finally, the Syriac Life of John the Merciful reveals to be particularly interesting for the 
comprehension of the dynamics of a Byzantine hagiographical work’s reception in the environment 
of Eastern Christianity. The Syriac Life of John in fact presents considerable modifications in several 
parts, which suggests an editing in an atmosphere connected to the Syriac Monophysitism.