CEU Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2000
| Author | Natalia Kotsiouba |
|---|---|
| Title | The Collection of Paul Evergetinos: Description and Sources |
| Summary | The present thesis is an attempt to prove that this collection, compiled of the excerpts from different earlier works, can be regarded as a unified and independent text, and to reconstruct the world and the world views of Paul Evergetinos, as they are expressed in his collection. For this purpose, I analysed the use of several sources by Paul Evergetinos. I limited my search to three of the most frequently cited ones which seem representative to me: the collection of the Apophthegmata Patrum, the Lausiac History of Palladius, and the works of Ephrem the Syrian. While carrying out this analysis, I arrived at the following results. In every case Evergetinos changes his sources on the lexical and grammatical level; he can also easily change the structure of his sources in order to make them better fit the requirements of his work. These changes depend on the nature of the source used: dealing with the Apophthegmata Patrum, Evergetinos does not introduce any change in the sayings; he is content only to distribute them according to the theme of his chapters, sometimes considering it necessary to state the idea expressed by a saying more explicitly and thus adding his own commentary to it. In the Lausiac History of Palladius, Evergetinos found a good source of stories about distinguished persons, but these stories, being compiled of many different anecdotes and sayings of the persons in question, did not illustrate any precise idea, and thus he takes only the elements which support the theme of the chapter. Dealing with Ephrem the Syrian, Evergetinos often abbreviates his sermons or creates one piece of text out of several in Ephrem’s works. As a result of this compilation, the initial story can be slightly changed or even completely reinterpreted. Although Evergetinos feels free to change the structure, form and even content of his source, he does not use this freedom to create a textually unified work out of many excerpts different in genre and in style. It seems that Evergetinos changes the material only in order to make it fit the purpose of his work better; in every single case his main concern is to provide a better illustration to the theme declared in the title of the chapter. These changes are usually supposed to make the didactic side of the material clearer and more explicit. Accordingly it seems that from this point of view, the collection of Paul Evergetinos represents quite a unified and coherent text, but its coherence is engendered not by the links internal to the text itself, but by the unity of purpose and consequent use of every element of the collection in order to fulfil its goal as well as it can. So the analysis supports my preliminary assumption that the collection of Paul Evergetinos represents a possible source for the reconstruction of his views and ideas. The draft of this reconstruction is provided in the thesis. |
| Supervisor | Perczel, I. & Geréby, Gy. |
| Department | Medieval Studies MA |
| Full text | https://www.etd.ceu.edu/2000/kotsiouba_natalia.pdf |
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