Florilegia Syriaca : mapping a knowledge-organizing practice in the Syriac world

Emiliano Fiori, PhD (2010), University of Bologna - École Pratique des Hautes Études, Paris, is Associate Professor at Ca' Foscari University of Venice and the Principal Investigator of the ERC Project "FLOS. Florilegia Syriaca".

From the 6th century onwards, Syriac patristic florilegia - collections of Greek patristic excerpts in Syriac translation - progressively became a prominent form through which Syriac and Arab Christians shaped their knowledge of theology. In these collections, early Greek Christian literature underwent a substantial process of selection and re-organization. The papers collected in this volume study Syriac florilegia in their own right, as cultural products possessing their own specific textuality, and outline a phenomenology of Syriac patristic florilegia by mapping their diffusion and relevance in time and space, from the 6th to the 17th century, from the Roman Empire to China.