A Light From “the Dark Centuries”: Isḥaq Shbadnaya's Life and Works (original) (raw)

Abstract

Isḥaq Shbadnaya is an important if almost entirely unknown author of the Church of the East in the fifteenth century. This article brings together the few and contradictory references to him in the secondary literature and uses manuscript evidence to adjudicate the different dates and names assigned to him. It also gathers what biographical information we can glean about him and describes his works: one major exegetical work, three liturgical ‘onyatha, and a previously unknown short poem. The article concludes by demonstrating Isḥaq Shbadnaya’s continued importance in the East Syrian community from the fifteenth into the twentieth century.

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References (42)

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