The Tritheist Controversy of the Sixth Century with English Translations of Neglected Syriac Quotations from Works of Earlier Church Fathers, Used by Peter of Callinicus in His Polemic Against Damian of Alexandria (Contra Damianum)

An arrangement of Patristic quoted sources translated from Greek into Syriac were used by Peter of Callinicus in his works against Damian of Alexandria within the sixth-century Tritheist Controversy. Exemplifying one useful role for a translator, the quotations have been extracted and saved from inaccessibility in Peter’s very hefty volumes and presented side-by-side, author-by-author in checked and (where necessary) revised English. This not only better clarifies the argumentative thrust of Peter’s diatribes and how he himself translates Greek into a Semitic tongue, but it will serve Patristic scholarship in showing how the thoughts of well-known Greek Fathers are conveyed in Syriac in the contexts of earlier theological debates. A key theme of this presentation is the Tritheist Controversy which broke out more than a hundred years after the acrimonious controversy over the Council of Chalcedon had cooled down. The focus is mainly on the dispute over the doctrine of the Trinity between the so-named miaphysites, the Syrian Patriarch Peter of Callinicus/um (d. 591) and Coptic Pope Damian of Alexandria (d. 605), which, in turn, led to the schism between Alexandria and Antioch lasting about 30 years. It comprises two parts: (i) A brief outline of the origins, narrative, and postlude of the Tritheist controversy of Peter with Damian and its doctrinal issues; (ii) identifying, enlisting and reproducing numerous seminal quotations in English from the works of earlier Church Fathers contained in Peter’s magnum opus in support and in refutation of (or ‘against’) Damian of Alexandria; and (iii) reflection on issues of translating Patristic texts.