Six Months in a Syrian Monastery

"The Syrian Patriarchate Educational Society was among several little missionary societies that sprang up in England at the end of the nineteenth century to help the Oriental churches with education and clergy training. It was never strong financially and its work was modest. If it is not quite forgotten, it is because of this book, written by the young priest who the Society sent out to eastern Turkey to inspect the work in 1895. Oswald Hutton Parry was then twenty-six years old, and had never written for publication, but his book is an expert description of the Syrian Orthodox Church, and all the more important for being practically the only book of its kind even now. Parry is also among the best writers in the genre of ecclesiastical tourism. (His only other book was The Pilgrim in Jerusalem, illustrated like this one with his own sketches.) Parry was later head of the Archbishop of Canterbury's Assyrian Mission (1897-1907) and Bishop of Guiana (1921-36)."--J. F. Coakley, Harvard University Author of The Church of the East and the Church of England (Oxford, 1992)