Narsai


Narsai was one of the foremost of the poet-theologians of the early Church of the East, perhaps equal in stature to Jacob of Serugh, both second only to Ephrem the Syrian. He is venerated as a saint in all the modern descendants of the Church of the East; the Chaldean Catholic Church, Assyrian Church of the East, Ancient Church of the East, and Syro-Malabar Catholic Church. Saint Narsai is known as the 'Flute of the Holy Spirit.'
Although many of his works seem to have been lost, around eighty of his mēmrē, or verse homilies are extant.

Life

Narsai was born at ‘Ain Dulba in the district of Ma‘alləta in the Sasanian Empire. Being orphaned at an early age, he was raised by his uncle, who was head of the monastery of Kfar Mari near Beth Zabdai. Narsai spent ten years as a student at the School of Edessa and later returned there to teach, eventually becoming head of the school. Perhaps in 471, Narsai left Edessa after disagreeing with the city's bishop Cyrus. With the help of his friend Barsauma, who was bishop of Nisibis, Narsai re-established the School of Nisibis. When his former school was ordered closed by Byzantine emperor Zeno in 489, it seems that many of his faithful staff and students came to join Narsai in Nisibis. Evidence from the first Statutes of the School of Nisibis, drafted in 496, shows that Narsai was still alive, and he must have been a venerable old teacher in his nineties. Narsai died sometime early in the sixth century and was buried in Nisibis in a church that was later named after him. Joseph Huzaya was one of his pupils.
Narsai's extant works belong to the distinctive Syriac literary genre of the mēmrā, or homily in verse. He employs two different metres — one with couplets of seven syllables per line, the other with twelve. The mêmrê were designed to be recited in church or religious school, each an exposition of a particular theme. The later Syriac writer Abdisho bar Berika of Nisibis suggests that Narsai wrote 360 mēmrē in twelve volumes along with prose commentaries on large sections of the Old Testament and a book entitled On the Corruption of Morals. However, only eighty mēmrē remain, and none of his prose works.

Homilies

Hundreds of works have been attributed to Narsai, but only just over 80 of his homilies have survived. Some surviving sogitha are also attributed to Narsai, but they are considered spurious. The homilies are all poetry, and most use 12-syllable metre, with a minority using 7-syllable meter. Most, if not all, of Narsai's homilies involve biblical exegesis across liturgical, moral, and theological subjects.
In 1905, Alphonse Mingana published a two-volume work with the Syriac text of 47 of these homilies. In 1970, a photographic reproduction of a manuscript with 72 of Narsai's homilies was published by Patriarchal Press. Two numbering systems are used for Narsai's homilies: one by Mingana, and a second by Macomber, in his 1970 inventory of Narsai's manuscripts.

List of Narsai's homilies

Syriac editions

  • Major collection of Narsai's works, containing the full text of 47 memre and the incipits of 34 more —

    Published translations

English

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