Dissemination of the Theotokis Text through French Translation

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Father Joachim Spetsieris’s 1895 reprint of Theotokis’s 1770 Greek printed text of The Ascetical Homilies of Saint Isaac the Syrian bore further fruit through two translations into French.

The book at far left was printed in 1981; the other was printed in 2006, and besides being based on the 1895 Spetsieris reprint, it consulted Fr. Kallinikos’s 1961 translation into modern Greek, and in places also clarified or corrected the text according to the Syriac by consulting Wensinck’s English translation of Bedjan’s text and the first edition of our own translation.

Fr. Deseille explained his choice of the Greek text for his translation “because it represents the text of Saint Isaac’s works as it was received for generations in the Greek and Slavic Orthodox Churches, and because it was in this form that it exercised in them the inestimable influence that we have spoken of; it is the basis of practically all the translations that have been made in any languages except Syriac and Arabic” (p. 11).

Saint Isaac le Syrien, Discours Ascétiques

Translated by Fr. Placide Deseille

Monastère Saint-Antione-Le-Grand & Monastère de Solan SARL, 2006

ISBN: 978–2–9527598–0–9

Isaac le Syrien, Oeuvres Spirituelles

Translated by Jacques Touraille

Desclée de Brouwer, 1981

ISBN: 2–220–02538–3

Holy Transfiguration Monastery Publications, Inside our Books and the Sources behind them, is a companion site to www.thehtm.org.