| Focusing primarily on the late sixth-century Cause of the Foundation of the Schools, this dissertation provides an intellectual and institutional history of the School of Nisibis, the major intellectual center of the Church of the East in the sixth and early seventh centuries and an institution of learning unprecedented in antiquity. After locating this project within its respective fields, such as Late Antique Historiography, Rabbinics, the History of the Church of the East (Introduction), I analyze the Cause's authorship, its manuscript tradition, its relation to another text, perhaps by the same author (i.e. Ecclesiastical History), and its genre (Chapter One). The Cause and the East-Syrian “school” movement as a whole engage in an ongoing Christian tendency, particularly in the Syriac milieu, to “scholasticize” Christianity, that is, to understand Christian belief and practice in pedagogical terms (Chapter Two). Furthermore, the Cause clearly demonstrates the influence of Theodore of Mopsuestia and later Neoplatonic literature on the School of Nisibis in the sixth century (Chapters Three and Four). Scholars have traditionally taken the School of Nisibis to be an immediate and direct descendent of the School of the Persians in Edessa. However, a critical reading of the sources for the School of the Persians suggests that we know far less about this school than previously thought (Chapter Five). Moreover, the evidence that we do have must be reset into a better framework, one appropriate to and plausible within fifth-century Edessene life (Chapter Six). The School of Nisibis itself also needs to be contextualized, and it and the East-Syrian “school” movement is better understood when placed within the broader spectrum of East-Syrian monasticism (Chapters Seven and Eight). Finally, the intellectual and social life reflected in the sources entails an embodied practice not only reflected in the Cause but also created and maintained by such texts. This way of life entails a notion of study as a religious practice and not merely as an intellectual endeavor (Conclusion). An annotated translation of the Cause of the Foundation of the Schools is provided in the appendix. |
