Syriac Prayers without Confessional Borders

The rigid theological divides that characterized the Byzantine and early Islamic eras often obscure a fluid, shared spiritual reality among Syriac-speaking Christians. This paper investigates the transmission and content of prayer traditions across the major Syriac confessions—including the Church of the East, the Syriac Orthodox Church, and the Melkite and Maronite communities—from the ninth to the thirteenth centuries. Focusing on under-researched manuscript material, such as the healing rites and private devotional texts, the contribution will suggest a common corpus of supplicatory and penitential prayers. This common corpus was actively copied, borrowed, and shared by scribes and users across different denominational lines, and adopted by different groups. Specifically, my analysis will trace the movement of prayers addressing daily life concerns—such as illness, safe travel, and protection from evil—demonstrating their identical or near-identical textual forms and liturgical rubrics despite varying confessional colophons (which often categorize the specific confessional identity of the scribes and patrons.). The manuscript-based evidence suggests that at the level of popular piety and lived spiritual practice, a robust, shared prayer tradition consistently transcended the strict borders imposed by official theological doctrines, particularly the Christological positions (Dyophysite vs. Miaphysite) that defined these traditions’ administrative and liturgical autonomy.