08 — East and West
How St. Sisoes the Great is remembered across the Christian world: his place in the monastic memory of both the Christian East and the Latin West, carried by the wide diffusion of the Apophthegmata Patrum; and the forms his veneration has taken across the Orthodox traditions and beyond. These two files trace the reach of a desert father whose sayings travelled far beyond the desert that produced them.
Tradition: Pan-Orthodox (Desert Father; model of repentance)
The Sayings of the Desert Fathers were among the most widely diffused texts of the early Church, translated into Latin (the Verba Seniorum), Syriac, Coptic, Armenian, and other languages, and read across the whole Christian world for fifteen centuries. Through them Sisoes’ memory passed into the monastic tradition of both East and West. The first file traces his place in that shared monastic memory; the second treats his veneration — the feast, the liturgical commemoration, and the cult — across the Orthodox traditions and in the broader Christian remembrance of the desert fathers.
Files in This Section
| File | Description |
|---|---|
| Sisoes in Monastic Memory | The diffusion of the Apophthegmata into the monastic traditions of East and West; Sisoes’ place in the shared memory of the desert fathers; the Latin Verba Seniorum and the reading of the desert in Western monasticism. |
| Veneration | The forms of Sisoes’ veneration across the Orthodox traditions — Greek, Slavic, and others — and his commemoration in the broader Christian remembrance of the desert fathers. |
See Also
- The Apophthegmata and the Tradition — the diffusion and transmission of the Sayings
- Feast and Cult — the feast of 6 July and the cult
- Monasticism — the wider monastic tradition East and West
- The Pre-Schism Church — the undivided Church that received the desert fathers
References
- The Sayings of the Desert Fathers: The Alphabetical Collection. Trans. Benedicta Ward. Rev. ed. Cistercian Studies 59. Kalamazoo: Cistercian Publications, 1984.
- Chitty, Derwas J. The Desert a City. Oxford: Blackwell, 1966.
- Harmless, William. Desert Christians. New York: Oxford University Press, 2004.