The monasteries and their connection with Syriac writers

Michael Abdalla

Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań

Mirosław Rucki

Uniwersytet Technologiczno-Humanistyczny im. Kazimierza Pułaskiego w Radomiu

Abstract

The article sheds some light on the issue of the monasteries as a millenia-long centers of education in the Eastern Churches. Part of the worldwide known schools like Nisibis, Edessa or Antiochia, Syriac writers are known to work in at least 125 monasteries, most of which cease to exist. Some historical and archaeological sources provide evidence of many more monasteries at work in the region of today’s Turkey, Iraq and Syria. However, the Islamic invasion substantially limited the development of science and education in monasteries posing heavy taxes on them. New monasteries were forbidden to be built, and the old one were difficult to widen or even to repair. Massacres performed by Tamerlane were a deadly blow from which the Eastern Churches were unable to recover despite increasing the number of monasteries in the fifteenth century. Few of those monasteries survive until today, but they are under increasing threat. Two of them were recently blown up, destroyed and erased from the Earth.

Keywords:

Christianity, monastery, education, Syriac writers, Near East