Tuesday, February 15, 2022

Those left out at Aleppo

The office set 4 PM for the time of a laptop-wipe, so I have kept on with my hunt for more references to the Aleppo Summit. Ol' Siʿrt is valuable here, in that it did not digest its sources. We may even have some reason for Thomas of Marga's embarrassment, such that he cast this summit not in Ishoʿyahb II's biography but, thinly-adapted, in III's.

By tradition Ishoʿyahb II wrote firmly against the Had-Qnoma. Thus Louis-Raphaël M. Sako, Lettre christologique du patriarche syro-oriental Īšō'yahb II de Gdālā (Rome: 1983), 42; to which Sebastian Brock has granted to us Anglos a translation (pdf, p. 24, bottom). At Aleppo itself we have Siʿrt #93.

If you read the Catholical records, like the Majdal, Ishoʿyahb II came out the victor such that King Heraclius took the Host by his hand. Siʿrt does relay that "take" on the summit... but also, I just found out, has a minority report. This is the letter of Bar-Sauma of Susa, which presence in Siʿrt #94 Philip Wood in 2013 endorsed as a direct and honest translation. I also wonder about what Siʿrt says on Nisibis' reaction.

I should expect that Ishoʿyahb bishop of Nineveh should have some opinion of his Pope's actions. We are, yes, warned that (in 1904) we only had that one defective codex. But if the bishop did not write a letter directly, or (most likely) chose not to preserve it... where in his other letters does he make reference to Ḥalaba?

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