Isaac the Syrian (A)

Isaac the Syrian (A), with the surname of Doctor or Magnus, because of his ability as an ecclesiastical writer, who flourished in the first half of the 5th century, was, in all probability, a native of Syria. He was at first a monk in a convent not far from Gabala, in Phoenicia, and afterwards became a priest at Antioch. He died about 456. He wrote several theological pamphlets in Syriac (and perhaps also in Greek), directed chiefly against the Nestorians and Eutychians. A work on the Contempt of the World would be considered as his chief claim to reputation, but the authorship of this book is not at all well established. It is by some supposed to have been written by the other Isaac the Syrian (see next art.). There seem to be better grounds for considering him as the author of the treatise De Cogitationibus, the Greek text of which, together with a Latin translation, can be found in the Ascetica of Petrus Possinus. The library of the Vatican contains some other MS. works of Isaac. He is honored as a saint both by the Maronites and Jacobites of Syria. See Gennadius, De Script. Eccles.; Cave. Hist. Litteraria; Fabricius, Biblioth. Graeca, 11:214; Hoefer, Nouv. Biog. Géneralé, 26:3; Jocher. Gelehrt. Lex. 2, 1991.