Évagre, Marc le Moine, Ps.-Macaire, Sergius de Rešʿayna, Ps.-Denys l'Aréopagite : le manuscrit ascétique retrouvé Mossoul 708 (olim Mossoul Scher 92)

Abstract

The manuscript Mosul Scher 92 has attracted repeatedly the attention of scholars working on Syriac manuscripts. The brief description given by Scher is puzzling and allows only to iden-tify the manuscript as an ascetical-monastic collection based on three renowned corpora: the Book of Evagrius, the Book of Mark the Monk, and the Corpus Dionysiacum. The physical manuscript got lost after 1907, and was found only in August 2023, when I identified one microfilm inside the archives of the late René Draguet, hosted by Université Catholique de Louvain (Louvain-la-Neuve). The microfilm, of high quality and in a perfect state of preser-vation, permitted the description and analysis presented here. It will shed new light on the circulation of the texts of Evagrius, Mark, Ps.-Macarius, Sergius and Ps.-Dyonisius inside the East-Syrian monastic milieu. All the three corpora present several peculiarities and features permitting us to trace a line between the texts we find in 6-7-8th c. manuscripts and this late 18th witness, looking at how, why and when a “monastic handbook” can be organized, even if survived only in a private microfilm, forgotten in one of Draguet’s cigar boxes.