<p>On Ascetical Life Isaac of Nineveh was a native of Bet Qatraye near present-day Bahrain on the Persian Gulf. A teacher and monk, he was consecrated bishop (ca. 660-680), but preferred to live out his live as an anchorite. A Scriptural scholar, he studies Scripture so much that he became blind and had to dictate his writings. He died at an advance age and was buried in Rabban Shabur, where he spent most of his monastic life. St Isaac's monastic anthropology has a major influence on all of Byzantine spiritual literature. The way toward God, in his writing, was threefold: the way of the body, the way of the soul, and the way of the spirit. In the first stage, the person begins with a total preoccupation with the passions and moves toward God by means of bodily works: fasting, vigils, and psalmody. The next stage involves a struggle against thoughts foreign to the nature of the soul, turning from created objects to the contemplation of God's wisdom and a transformation within. As the person arrives at a total openness of the soul to the future hope, he proceeds to the final stage of unified knowledge, which is an attitude of wonder and praise in continual prayer to God, leading to the freedom of immortal life that is given after the resurrection.This translation, by Mary Hansbury, of St Isaac of Nineveh's work On the Ascetical Life is based on the Syriac text edited by P. Bedjan in Mar Isaacus Ninivita, De Perfectione Religiosa. On Ascetical Life is part of the POPULAR PATRISTIC SERIES.</p>

On Ascetical Life (English and Syriac Edition)

St Isaac of Nineveh

Religion & Spirituality

St. Vladimir's Seminary Press

<p>St Isaac of Nineveh (7th c.), or Isaac the Syrian, is renowned for his spiritual writings. After only five months as bishop of Nineveh, he returned to a life of solitary stillness in the desert of modern-day Iran. His Spiritual Homilies (homilies 1-6 in PPS 11) quickly became treasured throughout the Christian world, not only inspiring monastic and spiritual life through the ages, but influencing culture more broadly, as in the works of Dostoevsky.\nYet many of Isaac's works were lost for centuries. Scholars recently rediscovered the "Second Part" of his corpus in 1983. This volume translates the first three chapters of the Second Part, whose third chapter contains the Kephalaia Gnostika (or Headings on Spiritual Knowledge). They appear here for the first time in a complete English translation. Inspired by Evagrius' work by the same name, Isaac composed the Headings as four centuries-that is, four sets of one hundred sayings or headings-on the spiritual life. These were "written above the lines in various places," seemingly as a commentary or expansion upon the Spiritual Homilies (the "First Part"). Isaac discloses the realities of prayer and spiritual experience from their beginning to their most sublime heights and profound depths.</p>

Headings on Spiritual Knowledge: The Second Part, Chapters 1-3 (Popular Patristics)

The Virtuous Life

Currtin, D P

Dalcassian Publishing Company

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