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The following pages are based on the research of Philip Forness and will be maintained by him.
Homilies are one of the most abundant genres of Christian texts from Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages, but also one of the least explored. Syriac homilies are no exception. These pages aim to provide a comprehensive guide to homilies that survive or that once existed in Syriac in order to encourage further research on these texts.
The table below presents a condensation of my own research on homilies and information gleaned from several reference sources: the Bibliotheca hagiographica orientalis (BHO), the Corpus patrum graecorum (CPG), and the Gorgias Encyclopedic Dictionary of the Syriac Heritage (GEDSH). In the future, it will incorporate information from Anton Baumstark’s Geschichte der syrischen Literatur, from the Comprehensive Bibliography on Syriac Christianity, and from manuscript catalogues written after Baumstark’s Geschichte.
The table of homilies is sorted by author name and permits the user to conduct comprehensive searches. A link to a pdf of this information is also available below and organizes the information into two broad categories: (1) Syriac Homilies and (2) Syriac Translations of Greek Homilies. The entries within each category are organized chronologically, according to the end of the authors’ lives. Pseudonymous writings appear directly after the author to whom they were attributed. The table will be updated on a more regular basis.
This page is still a work-in-progress. Comments are especially welcome regarding works that should not be classified as homilies and regarding additional homilies that do not appear in this list. The scope of this page is limited to homilies written in Syriac, translated from Syriac, or translated into Syriac.
I am grateful to Scott Johnson and Jack Tannous for incorporating these pages into Syri.ac and to Morgan Reed for digitizing the information and identifying connections between the homilies and entries in the BHO.
