Copyright ©2011 by Beth Mardutho: The Syriac Institute
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Melkites ceased writing in Syriac around the 9th
cent., turning to Arabic instead, though translations into Syriac of Greek
monastic literature, and especially of liturgical texts continued to be made
for rather longer, and Syriac remained a liturgical language in certain
areas of Syria until the 17th cent. when there was a sharp decline in its
use, though in a few places it continued into the early 18th cent. Thus only
a small amount of Melkite writing in Syriac survives, and most of this has
been preserved in mss. of the
1. Theological and polemical literature from the 7th cent., both dyothelete
(ed. P. Bettiolo, CSCO 403–4, 1979) and monothelete (such as the Life of
Theodore Abu Qurrah [2005], 119).
2. Translations of theological literature, including a letter of
3. Translations of Chalcedonian hagiography and monastic literature, notably
4. A single short 7th-cent. Melkite Chronicle survives (ed. A. de Halleux, in
5. A small number of monastic texts of Syr. Orth. or Ch. of E. provenance are
transmitted in Melkite mss.; the unique ms. of
6. Liturgical texts; this constitutes by far the largest category. The oldest
mss. sometimes still retain the original Antiochene rite, before it was
altered to that of Constantinople, a process which probably took place over
the 10th–11th cent. and during the period of the Byzantine reconquest of
northwest Syria (968–1089). This change of rite involved the major
undertaking of translating into Syriac (and Arabic) all the various Greek
liturgical books that had developed by the end of the first millennium; the
course of this massive enterprise still remains to be properly charted.
Earlier, and perhaps already in the 8th cent. a considerable amount of
Palestinian hymnography was translated, including canons by
7. For the small amount that survives of Christian Palestinian Aramaic literature, all Melkite, see that entry.
Almost all Melkite literature in Syriac was produced in western Syria, and
important centers for its transmission were monasteries on the Black
Mountain, northwest of Antioch, the region of the Kalamun, in particular