A Syriac Perspective: Medieval communities and the Empire

The history of Syriac traditions is often told as a history of opposition to the Roman Empire. There are good reasons for this, mainly relating to the Christological controversies of the 4th and 5th centuries, and the establishment of independent church hierarchies. Much has been said about an enmity between the Syrians and the Greeks, and vice versa, due to the polemics and conflicts between the two churches. However, as Arnold Jones, Bas ter Haar Romeny and his group have demonstrated, the Christological controversies and the resulting division of the churches were not caused by ethnic confrontations. This paper examines some aspects of the Syriac perspective on the Greeks and the Empire, as well as institutional and intellectual traditions, to show that enmity is only part of the picture.