Damyanos of Alqosh
author: Alessandro Mengozzi
source date: 2011
edition published: 2016-09-22-16:00
availability: Copyright ©2011 by Beth Mardutho: The Syriac Institute Distributed under an Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0) License. (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/)

Damyanos of Alqosh

https://gedsh.bethmardutho.org/Damyanos-of-Alqosh http://syriaca.org/bibl/158 149 http://syriaca.org/person/436 [person] [Monk, assistant of the general superior of the monastic congregation of Rabban Hormizd, E.-Syr. writer and poet.]

(d. 1858) [Chald.]

Monk, assistant of the general superior of the monastic congregation of Rabban Hormizd, E.-Syr. writer and poet. When the Chald. Patr. Nicholas I Zayʿa resigned in 1846, Damyanos took the lead of the party who resented the new Patr. Yawsep Audo. With Turkish support, he was chosen as regent of the Patriarchate, but a French diplomatic intervention led the Sublime Porte to confirm Yawsep Audo as Chald. Patr. Damyanos decided to leave the Monastery of Rabban Hormizd and retired to his native Alqosh as a simple priest.

Damyanos wrote in Classical Syriac two hymns On the Immaculate Conception and a poem On a Kurdish Attack against Alqosh in 1832. In 1857 he translated the famous Latin hymn Stabat mater from Arabic to Sureth. He is also the author of a Classical Syriac translation of the Muršid al-Kahana, an Arabic adaptation of a baroque handbook for preachers by Paolo Segneri, SJ (1624–1694). Among his poems belonging to the dorekthā -genre, the poetic diptych On the Torments of Hell and On the Delights of the Kingdom shows to what extent he assimilated doctrine, spirituality, and rhetorical schemes of Italian baroque sermons by Segneri and Giovan Pietro Pinamonti, SJ (1632–1703).

Sources

S. Destefanis, ‘ “On the Torments of Hell” and “On the Delights of the Kingdom” by Damyanos of Alqosh (19th century)’, in Studi afroasiatici, ed. A. Mengozzi (2005), 403–406.
A. Mengozzi (ed.), Religious Poetry in Vernacular Syriac from Northern Iraq (17th–20th centuries). An Anthology (CSCO 627–628; 2011). (incl. further references)

Alessandro Mengozzi