Marutha’s corpus and the Western canonical tradition: synods and canons in Late Antique Iran
Funded by Sapienza through the “Call for additional funding for research activities carried out by ERC and MSCA-PF Principal Investigators – 2023”, MARUThA-project will analyse a series of canonical texts preserved in Syriac, in manuscripts of Persian origin, originally excluded from the scope of ForM. It is developed complementarily to ForM-project. Starting from the figure of Marutha of Maipherqat, MARUThA-project aims to propose a more in-depth analysis of the corpus of writings attributed to the author (the so-called ‘canons of Marutha’ and related documents) and of its relationship with the Greek collections of canons of the 4th-century synods.
Among the texts analysed in the context of ForM, the Acts of the first synods of the Church of the East, preserved in the so-called Synodicon Orientale, play a central role. They shed light on real or presumed interventions of the West in matters internal to the Church of the East.
In the Acts of the Council of 410, Marutha plays a fundamental role. Sent by the Roman Emperor to the Sasanian court, he is considered the architect of the introduction of the canons of the Council of Nicaea into the Eastern-Syriac Church. But his name is also linked to a group of further 73 canons, preserved in Syriac and, in different forms, also in other Eastern languages, presented as Nicene but spurious, and other related documents.
The analysis of the pseudo-Nicene canons represents a further step in the complex analysis of the ideological reinterpretation of the relation of the Church of the East with the West, broadening the perspective to canonical literature and the problems of the translation and dissemination of Greek canons in the East.