Theodore of Edessa: Introduction

This two-volume work offers a thorough re-evaluation of Theodore of Edessa, a groundbreaking yet little-known Byzantine Greek literary gem. The work, preserved in numerous manuscripts and translations into other medieval languages, is an extensive, two-part composition: the Life of Theodore and a hundred Chapters, supposedly composed by the protagonist saint of the hagiographical tale. Circulating under the pseudonyms of Basil of Emesa (the Life) and Theodore (the Chapters), the work is here firmly attributed to the renowned Georgian abbot Euthymios the Iberian (c. 955–1028), co-founder of the Iviron Monastery on Mt Athos and the author of the more widely diffused Barlaam and Ioasaph, chiefly acclaimed for his massive corpus of translations from Greek into Georgian.

Volume I: Introduction provides a comprehensive socio-historical and literary study of the text and its author. First, it reconstructs Euthymios’s career, mapping his networks across Constantinople and Syro-Palestine, while also establishing a new chronology of his entire literary production in both Greek and Georgian, including a re-dating of Barlaam and Ioasaph. Next, it dissects Euthymios’s compositional techniques—which included translation from Georgian, silent appropriation of earlier texts, and rewriting—placing them within their wider literary-historical context and analyzing them in relation to Barlaam and Ioasaph. Furthermore, it examines the literary world created by Theodore of Edessa and its potential audiences. Finally, the volume traces the reception of Theodore’s Life and Chapters across the Greek, Georgian, Arabic, and Slavic worlds.

Volume II: Theodore’s Life offers the first critical edition of the Life’s two Greek versions alongside a lightly annotated facing-page translation of version β. An introduction details their manuscript transmission, distinguishing between the widely diffused version α and the author's later, revised paraphrase, version β.