East Syrian Monasteries in the Ninth Century in Asia: A Force for Mission and Renewal Steve Cochrane

onasteries of the (East Syrian) the integration of scholastic and monastic aspects in the transmis- Macross Asia were key centers for mission and renewal sion of learning going on in Nisibis.4 Becker questions whether a from the sixth to thirteenth centuries. This advance in mission formal curriculum can be defined, noting that the main certainty to the far corners of Asia was to a great degree fueled by the is “the movement of students between the different ranks of school system followed in these monasteries. In the early ninth instructors.” As he points out, “It could have been more of an century at places such as Beit Abhe in northern , informal process, similar to that of the transmission of knowledge this scholastic tradition continued, even as the Muslim Abbasid in classical antiquity, rather than a system of accreditation such Empire moved into a consolidation phase around them. I discuss as we find in modern learning.”5 here this monastic school system, emphasizing its importance As the importance of the gave way in the for mission and renewal, both in the ninth century and for today. next few centuries to a more broad-based and diverse East Syr- ian school movement, so the vocations of those being trained The Monastery and the School also diversified. This article focuses in particular on the early ninth-century context, when monasteries such as Beit Abhe were The title of an authoritative study by Jean LeClerq—The Love intentionally training East Syrian missionaries for various areas of of Learning and the Desire for God (1974)—aptly embraces two Asia, including India and China. The church’s patriarch, Timothy aims that are sometimes conflicting. While LeClerq was writing I (d. 823), wrote letters that provide important insights into his primarily about Western monastic culture, this passion both for environment. They echo the letters of another patriarch over one learning and for God also describes the East Syrian monasteries hundred years earlier, Isho-yahbh III. The men’s letters include and school movement in Asia. But while LeClerq draws a strong a common love for the Beit Abhe monastery, but they also both contrast in medieval Europe between the goals of monasticism and address continued problems of a rebellious province in Fars, as a scholastic education, further to the east these goals were viewed well as what to do with the province of India. as more compatible. He writes, “Everyone was acutely aware of a In Letter 47, written toward the end of his life, Timothy pro- profound difference between the scholastic and monastic milieu, vides evidence of the range of his interests and responsibilities. He and consequently between the kinds of religious knowledge to details some of the locations for which metropolitan appointments be acquired in each.”1 But the schools of the Church of the East were being made as well as discussing the matter of choosing were often based in monasteries, and Greek scholastic learning monks, including from Beit Abhe, for mission assignments. But was combined with a Semitic monastic devotion. According to at the beginning of this letter, the patriarch had taken up other Adam Becker, “The school movement was heavily integrated matters, including that he had received a Syriac translation of into the broader spectrum of East Syrian monasticism,” thereby Origen’s Greek Hexapla. Timothy describes the painstaking work largely erasing a boundary that sometimes existed in Europe.2 that copying of the manuscripts entailed: This cross-fertilization of influences from Greek, Semitic, Persian, and Indian sources were all present in the sixth-century The manuscripts have now been written out with much diligence school of Nisibis, and to some degree earlier in . The and care, at the expense of great trouble and much labour, over commitment to integrated learning and devotion in training is six months more or less; for no text is so difficult to copy out or reflected in the emergence of an East Syrian mission movement, read as this, seeing that there are so many things in the margin, I mean readings of Aquila, Theodotion, Symmachus and others, primarily monastic based, that continued in Asia until the four- taking up almost as much space as the text of the Septuagint in teenth century before greatly diminishing. After the eclipse of the body of the manuscript. . . . [T]he copies were gone over a Nisibis, an extensive network of schools developed and spread second time and read out. As a result of the excessive labour and at several levels, from village-based local schools to those within work of correction my eyes were harmed and I nearly lost my the walls of monasteries. From the seventh century the influence sight—you can get an idea of the weakness of our vision from of Arab Muslims began to grow and in turn was shaped by these shapeless letters that we are writing now.6 these Church of the East institutions.3 The amount or degree of cross-fertilization is difficult to calculate, but it is correct to say He goes on to list some of the works that he desires to have that these schools had a strong Semitic nature, with Hellenistic sent to him: influence as well. The seventh-century Statutes of the School of Nisibis brings out Send me the Apologia for Origen by Eusebius of Caesarea, so the semimonastic nature of the institution, and to some degree that I may read it and then send it back. Make a search for the Discourses on the soul by the great Patriarch Mar Aba: there are three of them, but only one is available here. And copy out and Steve Cochrane has served with YWAM for the past send the Homilies of Mar , since we have not got them, for thirty-four years, primarily in India. He is presently Mar Ephrem, of holy memory, wrote to us to say that there is a finishing a Ph.D. in Christian-Muslim relations great deal there with you which is not available here.7 through the Oxford Centre for Mission Studies. — [email protected] These comments bear witness to Timothy’s commitment to learning, which reflected a larger commitment on the part of the Church of the East to scholarship as manifested in the monastic

80 International Bulletin of Missionary Research, Vol. 38, No. 2 collections that the patriarch could draw on. By having well- As well as preparing monks for assignments to the East, stocked libraries, the monasteries provided a foundation for a these monastic schools provided an intellectual backdrop culture of school teaching and doctrine, both within their walls for the training of those involved in the translation move- and in the villages around them. Beit Abhe monastery’s “large ment. According to Franz Rosenthal, “The translation activity collection of books, many of which had been bequeathed by depended basically on the syllabus current in the old schools pious benefactors,” numbered as many as 700–1,000 volumes in which had somehow managed to survive the victory of Islam.” the early ninth century. Monks continued to copy manuscripts Further, he states, “the Arabs were also not unaware that what at Beit Abhe, evidently up to the thirteenth century.8 was translated was primarily works used in the curriculum of Mount Izla, the monastery that started Beit Abhe and one the schools established before the coming of Islam.”12 Another of the most famous of the East Syrian monasteries, also had a writer emphasizes “the importance of the East-Syrian school library, as Thomas of Marga records in 840 in his Historia Monas- movement as the background to the intellectual culture to come, tica: “They [Anan-Isho and Isho-yahbh] became disciples in the a point that has not been fully appreciated.”13 Certainly the deep Great Monastery [of Izla], as the books which belong to them in creativity and strength of the ilm al-Kalam (Arabic: the study the library of this monastery testify.”9 of knowledge or the word, usually referring to the complex combination of and ), the numerous Greek- Syriac-Arabic translations, and the Majalis (Arabic: gathering, in this context, for purposes of religious discussions) between Muslims, Christians, and Jews primarily at the Abbasid royal court in Baghdad did not happen in an intellectual and social vacuum. Rather, there were highly developed resources in the East and West Syrian monaster- ies of Mesopotamia that added to a rich intellectual culture, to which Muslims and Jews also contributed. A very interesting example in his own personage of this integrated yet at times awkward scholastic/ monastic mix was Patriarch Timothy The integration of monastic learning that the patriarch was I. He studied at the village school of Basos in northern Meso- involved in, along with a school culture, led to the starting of potamia and later “was introduced to Greek philosophy, more more monasteries and schools. When the monks went out from hermeneutics as well as theology, and probably some medicine monasteries like Beit Abhe, whether to the surrounding areas or at the ‘mother of patriarchs and ,’ the famous Adiabene farther to the east, one of their activities was to build other mon- monastery Bet Abe.” Timothy’s studies were not only in his native asteries. The Historia Monastica, shortly after listing the monks Syriac but also in Greek learning, as shown in his support of the dispersed by “the dispensation of His will,” reports that they translation movement growing during his patriarchate. Yet he “built holy monasteries in various places, and thus by the Divine was a strongly mission-minded leader. “More than any catholi- Power which aided them . . . at the last became a peace-making cos before or after him, he persuaded the East Syrian monastic and friendly gathering together. And they filled the country of the schools . . . to train missionary monks.”14 East with monasteries, and convents, and habitations of monks.”10 Timothy himself, in Letter 47 already referred to, comments Renewal Fueled by Transmission of Learning directly on this monastic mission to the East. The letter was addressed to his friend Sergius, who was the metropolitan of The statutes of the school of Nisibis, along with the writings of Elam, a province of Persia. The letter closes with sections on some of its leaders such as the great Narsai (d. 503), make it pos- ecclesiastical appointments that show the extent of the mission sible to understand this institution, though we cannot reconstruct spread and the ecclesial structure Timothy was overseeing in the its curriculum in any detail, nor can we trace all the resources second decade of the ninth century. These appointments covered used in training the monks in later monasteries and schools. Our places in Turkestan, Tibet, Persia, and closer to home, as well as understanding, so much as we have, is valuable in further identi- even at Beit Abhe. fying the importance of the intellectual and spiritual background to the missionary expansion from the monasteries, including The Holy Spirit recently appointed a metropolitan for Turkes- under Abbasid rule, as well as the growing translation move- tan, and we are making preparations to anoint another for Beth ment. Traditionally, the Church of the East’s missional outreach Tuptaye [Tibet]. We have sent another to Shiarzur and another and the translation movement have been seen as isolated from for Radan, since the metropolitan of Radan has died. each other, but actually they should be viewed more as a single We are also making preparations for another at Ray [Tehran effort. They were sources of renewal, not only for the Church of region], since Theodorus has died; another for Gurgan, another for Balad-Cyriacus of Beth ‘Abe; another for Dasen, since Jacob the East of the period, but also for Islam. has sunk into the pit from which there is no resurrection; another We must be careful to avoid anachronism in terminology for Beth Nuhadra, which has no .11 when speaking of “curriculum” and “education.” A better term than “education” is “transmission of learning,” which encom-

April 2014 81 passes process—including formal, informal, and nonformal curriculum, the importance of the interaction between students aspects—as well as the specific content imparted from teacher to and teachers as they studied texts together should be recog- student. Scholars such as Jonathan Berkey and Michael Cham- nized. For education in the ancient world generally, a “complex berlain have used the same term in discussing twelfth-century symbiosis [obtained] between texts and teachers.”19 In the East models of Islamic education.15 Thus both the monasteries and Syrian school tradition dating back to Edessa and Nisibis, this the school movement fostered twinned pursuit of the “love of symbiosis included the texts of and learning” (scholastic) and of the “desire for God” (monastic). then Narsai. According to Becker, the “schools of Edessa and Another word we should use with care is “curriculum,” for Nisibis were natural outgrowths of this Christian dependence every school has both a planned, formal, acknowledged curricu- upon Greek education standards”; they depended on “the lum and a hidden curriculum that refers to “the attitudes and ancient Greek school curriculum conjoined with the Christian values embedded in school experiences and relationships.”16 An scholarship emerging from Antioch.” What emerged and char- important question is whether the East Syrian monastic schools acterized later monastic and village-based schools, including in ever had formal written curricula as we would understand the early ninth century, was a “unique Greek-Syriac Christian them today, or rather merely a “hidden curriculum” centered on teachers (primarily monks) and students studying specific texts, combined with the ongoing monastic disciplines, the foremost of which was a liturgy that involved periods of prayer The formal statutes and seven times a day. The liturgy and learning together generated ascetic rules known to have an atmosphere that resulted in continued renewal of life and witness over several centuries. been present at Nisibis and Writers on the history of Muslim education have used “cur- Mosul formed what we riculum” in relation to the Madrasa model, though with little could call the backbone of definition. The monastic-based school complex of Jundishapur in southeastern Persia developed “a curriculum of studies pat- monastery and school life. terned after the University of Alexandria,” which, during the sixth century, “synchronized Indian, Grecian, Syriac, Hellenistic, Hebrew and Zoroastrian learning.”17 This is a large and fascinat- confection [synthesis] in which the ultimate education goal ing claim, but unfortunately, with no curriculum extant, it is was the glorification of God’s word through His beloved son, difficult to verify. Whatever the knowledge transmitted through Jesus Christ.”20 This educational “system” brought together the the teacher-student relationship, it occurred primarily through sometimes polarizing aims referred to earlier, namely, the love studying texts while also engaged in disciplines of prayer and of learning and the desire for God. liturgy, with strong emphasis on the oral dynamic of question, In reconstructing the curriculum at monasteries such as Beit answer, and discussion. Abhe, we note that the texts studied with the monk teachers We must also note the context of Beit Abhe and other early ranged from the works of Theodore and Narsai to the writings ninth-century monasteries. It was a time of consolidation in the of Aristotle and Plato. The more formal statutes and ascetic rules Abbasid Empire, with a period under several caliphs during which known to have been present at Nisibis and Mosul formed what Christians occupied certain places of influence and favor, and in we could call the backbone of monastery and school life. In ana- which Timothy and others had an active concern and respect for lyzing the training of Patriarch Timothy himself, we note that their Muslim neighbors. he first studied in the East Syrian village-based school of Basos before advancing to the Beit Abhe monastery. At Basos Timothy The Monastic Curriculum studied the general areas of spiritual formation (i.e., the teach- ing of the fear of God and virtue), knowledge of Scripture, and Having taken into consideration that there is not an extant monas- training in elocution. These categories brought Greek learning tic curriculum for Beit Abhe in the ninth century, I suggest here together with biblical exegesis in the Antiochene tradition of some elements that were part of the training imparted. Much Theodore of Mopsuestia.21 of the “hidden” curriculum was informal, based in personal For Timothy’s later training at the Beit Abhe monastery, the relationships between teachers and students within a monastic curriculum, however informal, likely included the following: environment. Berkey refers to Mamluke-era Islamic education Greek philosophy, classics and logic, hermeneutics and biblical and recognizes the close parallels with Jewish higher education. exegesis (probably studying Theodore’s texts), some exposure He fails to acknowledge that Eastern had some of to medicine, and Persian and Arabic language studies.22 With these same dynamics in its own transmission of learning, and at Timothy’s theological studies likely having a strong focus on the an earlier time period than its Islamic equivalent. He notes that works of Narsai, Scott Sunquist suggests that Narsai’s theology Islamic education took place “in a vibrant world of fluid catego- of mission had a strong impact on future generations in the East ries in which social, cultural and institutional barriers dissolved Syrian church and their missionary training.23 or at least became indistinct. What will emerge is less a formal Though we are not completely certain when they began to system than a dynamic network, loose but comprehensive in its be circulated, the texts taught and studied in monasteries such inclusion of various disparate social groups, and extraordinarily as Beit Abhe in the ninth century included the likes of Theodore effective, not just in transmitting knowledge, but also in forging bar Koni’s Scholion, Ammar al-Basri’s Book of Questions and a common Muslim cultural identity.”18 A similar comment could Answers, and the letters of Timothy.24 Al-Basri wrote out of a be made regarding the network of monastic schools that existed “long intellectual tradition, transmitted to Ammar through the across Asia up to the fourteenth century, including the East Syr- well-developed Nestorian school system, as well as in the context ian monastic institutions. of the intellectual concerns of the Islamic Arabic ilm al-kalam.” Even while emphasizing the more informal nature of the Both the Scholion and al-Basri’s work were composed in the

82 International Bulletin of Missionary Research, Vol. 38, No. 2 familiar question-and-answer style, a “conventional manner of While the curricula of the monastic schools of the ninth cen- scholarly composition in Nestorian academic circles.”25 These tury are not themselves extant, we can recognize an intellectual works functioned as training manuals for use in the monasteries, tradition of transmission of learning that formed a backdrop giving instruction on matters of faith in relation to their Muslim both for the translation movement and for the sending out of neighbors. Theodore bar Koni, an East Syrian monk himself, monk missionaries and merchants to the far reaches of Asia. apparently composed the Scholion for training purposes, though We do know that the teaching was text-based with a question- it later may have been supplemented by anonymous sources and and-answer format and with strong teacher-student interaction. used in a popular format. The East Syrian monastic school movement needs to be studied further, for it was an important intellectual tradition that Conclusion provided the context for major trends in interfaith relations in the ninth century, a period extremely rich in cultural interaction. It The East Syrian school movement, set within an overall also deserves more attention for its ability to provide encourage- monastic environment, for several centuries represented a rich ment to the church today, particularly in Asia. Very interesting cross-fertilization of ideas and influences in the transmission of developments are occurring with the starting of new monastic learning across Asia. The variety of schools—the village-based models in places such as Kottayam, Kerala, in India, that are ones described by Thomas of Marga in the Historia Monastica, consciously linked to these earlier East Syrian models, as well the semi-monastic ones similar to Nisibis and Jundishapur, and as the stirrings of renewal in monastic life and witness in tradi- the schools within monasteries such as Beit Abhe and Mount tions globally (whether Catholic, Protestant, or Orthodox) or in Izla—integrated a passion for learning along with a passion for the ancient church traditions of the East.26 These ninth-century God and making him known. These passions were a key source institutions, seen in their larger intellectual culture, provide an for the continued renewal of the church across hundreds of years, interesting example of interfaith relations, one that could help even in environments often hostile to Christian faith. energize renewal in mission today. Notes 1. Jean LeClerq, The Love of Learning and the Desire for God: A Study of Press, 1992); Michael Chamberlain, Knowledge and Social Practice Monastic Culture (New York: Fordham Univ. Press, 1974), 197. in Medieval Damascus, 1190–1350 (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. 2. Adam H. Becker, Fear of God and the Beginning of Wisdom: The School Press, 1994). of Nisibis and Christian Scholastic Culture in Late Antique Mesopotamia 16. James R. Gress, ed., Curriculum: An Introduction to the Field, 2nd ed. (Philadelphia: Univ. of Pennsylvania Press, 2006), 155. (Berkeley, Calif.: McCutchan, 1988), 323. 3. “The Syriac schools were less like the Hellenistic than the Muham- 17. Mehdi Nakosteen, History of Islamic Origins of Western Education, madan schools, which incidentally they probably helped to shape” a.d. 800–1350 (Boulder: Univ. of Colorado Press, 1964), 15. See also (Henri Irénée Marrou, A History of Education in Antiquity [London: George Makdisi, The Rise of Colleges: Institutions of Learning in Islam Sheed & Ward, 1956], 318). and the West (Edinburgh: Edinburgh Univ. Press, 1981). 4. Arthur Vööbüs, trans., The Statutes of the School of Nisibis (Stockholm: 18. Berkey, The Transmission of Knowledge in Medieval Cairo, 20. ETSE, 1961). 19. H. Gregory Snyder, Teachers and Texts in the Ancient World: Philoso- 5. Becker, Fear of God and the Beginning of Wisdom, 87. phers, Jews, and Christians (London: Routledge, 2000), 227. 6. Timothy I, Letter 47, translation by Sebastian P. Brock, in A Brief 20. Becker, Fear of God and the Beginning of Wisdom, 1. Outline of , Mōrān ’Ethō 9 (Kottayam: St. Ephrem 21. Harold Suermann, “Timothy and His Concern for the School of Ecumenical Research Institute, 1997), 246. Bašōš,” Harp (Kottayam: St. Ephrem Ecumenical Research Institute) 7. Ibid., 250. 10 (1997): 51–58. 8. For comments on Beit Abhe’s library, see E. A. W. Budge, The Book 22. Direct testimony regarding the content of Timothy’s studies at Beit of Governors: The Historia Monastica of Thomas of Marga ad 840 (Pis- Abhe or earlier at Basos is not available, but inferences can be made cataway, N.J.: Gorgias Press, 2003; orig. pub. 1893), xxxi. based on brief references in his letters to Sergius at Basos as well as 9. Ibid., 2.11.174 brief references by Thomas of Marga to subjects the monks studied 10. Ibid., 1.14.66, 68. at Beit Abhe and the village schools around. 11. Timothy I, Letter 47, in Brock, Brief Outline, 249–50. For Timothy’s let- 23. Scott Sunquist, “Narsai and the Persians: A Study in Cultural ters, see Raphaël J. Bidawid, Les lettres du patriarche nestorien Timothee Contact and Conflict” (Ph.D. diss., PrincetonTheological Semin- I: Étude critique (Vatican City: Biblioteca apostolica vaticana, 1956), ary, 1990), 127; available from University Microfilms International, with commentary in French and the letters in Latin and Syriac; see Ann Arbor, Mich.). also Oscar Braun, ed., Timothei Patriarchae I: Epistulae, 2 vols., Cor- 24. Though we do not have definitive evidence that these specific pus scriptorum Christianorum Orientalium, Scriptores syri, Series documents were studied in the monasteries, the argument can be secund 67 (Paris: J. Gabalda, 1914–15). We still lack a full critical made, even if tentative, based on the fact that the material in them edition of all of Timothy’s extensive correspondence. is addressed to monks and priests of the church. 12. Franz Rosenthal, The Classical Heritage in Islam (London: Routledge 25. Sidney H. Griffith, The Beginnings of Christian Theology in Arabic: & Kegan Paul, 1965), 10, 27. Muslim-Christian Encounters in the Early Islamic Period (Aldershot, 13. Ilaria Ramelli, review of Fear of God and the Beginning of Wisdom, by U.K.: Ashgate/Variorum, 2002), 154, 152. Adam H. Becker, Hugoye: Journal of Syriac Studies 10, no. 2 (2007): 153. 26. See Steve Cochrane, “Historical Overview of Inter-Faith Relations 14. Frederick W. Norris, “Timothy I of Baghdad, Catholicos of the East in the Islamic Countries: The Presence of Christian Monks and Syrian Church, 780–823: Still a Valuable Model,” International Bulletin Monasteries as Signposts of Faith,” in Interfaith Relations after One of Missionary Research 30, no. 3 (July 2006): 133, 134. Hundred Years: Christian Mission among Other Faiths, ed. Marina 15. Jonathan P. Berkey, The Transmission of Knowledge in Medieval Cairo: Ngursangzeli Behera (Oxford: Regnum Books International, A Social History of Islamic Education (Princeton: Princeton Univ. 2011), 68–76.

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