An English translation of the second edition of Peter Kawerau's Die Jakobitische Kirche im Zeitalter der syrischen Renaissance (1960).
SKU (ISBN): 978-1-4632-4467-5
Publication Status: In Print
Publication Date: Nov 30,2022
Interior Color: Black
Trim Size: 6 x 9
Page Count: 246
Languages: English
ISBN: 978-1-4632-4467-5
$65.00 (USD)
Your price: $39.00 (USD)
The Syriac Orthodox Church experienced a revival of writing and theological insight during the 11th – 13th centuries known as the Syriac Renaissance. Authors like Bar ʿEbroyo, Michael I Rabo (Michael the Great) and Dionysios Bar Salibi authored their own original works and translated Greek and Arabic writings into Syriac. However, then as now, grand ecclesiastical plans sometimes fell short of real life application. This time period was also a significant one in secular history, with Crusaders, Muslims, and Mongol khans battling for control of the Middle East. After scouring the available Syriac chronicles from the Syriac Renaissance, Peter Kawerau has summarized both the stated ideals and lived realities of ecclesiastic structures and interactions between Syriac-speaking Christians and their neighbors of other traditions and faiths. Most of the information here comes from Bar ʿEbroyo's and Michael I Rabo's chronicles, although other sources are referenced as well.
Peter Kawerau (1915–1988) was a German scholar of church history, focusing on the eastern churches. He studied theology at the Universities of Wroclaw and Berlin. In 1949, after World War II, he earned his doctorate at the University of Göttingen, with this book being a version of his dissertation. He did his Habilitationsschrift in 1956 at Münster. He would go on to teach at the University of Marburg where he founded the Ostkirchen Institut. His corpus includes works on Protestant, Syriac, African, and Byzantine church history. This work was part of his Habilitationsschrift and originally published in 1955 with an updated edition in 1960. This translation, based on the 1960 edition, updates some of the language used and makes this work available to English speaking students, scholars, and interested laity.
REVIEWS
"Peter Kawerau’s work is a foundational contribution to the study of Syriac Orthodox Christianity between the eleventh and the early fourteenth centuries. The work remains surprisingly relevant despite its publication almost 70 years ago and the increasing scholarly strides in the field for the past couple of decades. Scholars and interested students of the medieval Middle East, eastern Christian traditions, and the medieval period more broadly would therefore benefit from the publication of Kawerau’s work in English translation offered in this volume."
"Patrick Conlin’s precise translation...reduces the possibility of imposing interpretations of Kawerau’s words by offering a literal, yet highly intelligible rendering of the original German."
-- Excerpts from Omri Matarasso, Princeton University, in Church History 2024, pp. 156-7
