YOU certainly know, my brother, that the amputation of one limb causes pain to the other limbs; even though their painful suffering may not be manifest, this suffering, you realize, is expressed through the tongue, and the pain is indicated through tears in the eyes. Suffering finds expression out of its inner silence by means of the tongue, the key to the body’s store-house which opens and closes the door of words, and from within the heart—perception’s treasury—it provides for its beloved friends with an utterance from its treasures. For the tongue acts as the mouthpiece of the intellect, giving expression to the mind; it serves as an advocate on behalf of the mind’s hidden silence, it is the medium by which the mind’s instructions are carried out. Whatever the tongue is told by the heart—the sovereign of all knowledge—it passes on in words to its listeners. Thus by means of the tongue, the key of the intellect, the door to the heart is opened: without it, this door cannot be opened, nor can audible sound be emitted. Nevertheless the intellect does have the power to make known what is hidden within it without making use of any sound, employing instead silent words in the form of writing; in this way its silence finds expression in stillness. But however much the mind ministers to what lies hidden within it by means of silence, it still needs the tongue to expound its secrets to the faculty of hearing which is attentive to every sound.

2. By this analogy you can understand the pain caused by your separation from us. But since your life is lived in that equilibrium which our Lord manifested, there is consolation to be found in our sorrow, and you are no longer far away, since your way of life is infused with the love of Christ; for those who are in love are one in their closeness together. Just as his love is not divided up between them, so they are not separated from one another. For those who carry out the will of the Lord of all are bonded together in a single body, in that they have a single will.

3. Thus, my brother, from the moment I heard of your life in Christ, I have not ceased to remember you in my feeble prayers, as I beg of God’s mercy that he may grant that your way of life be established in whatever manner is pleasing to his majesty. Nor do I hesitate to seek from you admonition in the form of instructive discourse.

4. Be on the watch throughout the whole course of your life, my brother; fix in your mind the thought of your Lord’s Passion, for he is the spiritual fortress of our souls, the place of refuge for righteousness wherein the labour of good works is kept safe.

5. Beware, my brother, of cunning snares, of hidden traps and secret nets: do not grow weary of asking our Lord by night and by day to guard your steps, lest you be caught in Satan’s cunning traps. If you are persistent in making this request, God will not hesitate to listen to your wish.

6. Hold fast, brother, to that spiritual glory of which our Lord’s passion has made you worthy. Be vigilant so as to guard your thoughts from tempests; beware lest the glorious things you have in Christ undergo change due to some indication of pride. Now it is only when your mind is wrapped in meditation on the incarnation of Christ our Lord—at whose good will and pleasure you have been held worthy to perform good works—that pride will not be sown within you. For without his self-abasement, we should have been far too low down for those beautiful qualities of his, and not even a distant recollection of them would have entered our minds. For this reason his grace has granted to us that he should of his own will listen to us, and that he will bring us close to his Father. What is required of us is to give him thanks unceasingly—not indeed to the full extent that befits his gift, for no one is capable of giving him thanks as would be appropriate, for his grace is far greater than the thanksgiving of all peoples; it is enough for us to realize that we have not the ability either to repay him, or even to thank him sufficiently—and in the case of a person who has such an understanding of God’s grace, it could almost be said of him that by grace he has repaid it.

7. Be careful of this precious labour which you now undertake; for you will not have the same trouble losing it as you had in struggling to attain it. It is much easier to lose than to find. It is put together with great labour, but is lost in a single moment.

At the time when the master of the house does not expect it, the thief comes and breaks into his home. (Mt 24:43, Lk 12:39) For this reason it is essential that our mind should be awake at all times—like a wakeful pilot in charge of a ship. You know very well that it is through labour, vigilance, toil, and all sorts of vexations that a ship is constructed and completed, but it can be wrecked in only a short moment. Similarly the likeness of a human person can be well depicted in a portrait only by means of careful skill and the proper mixture of colours and paints, yet it can be destroyed in just a brief moment: it does not take to destroy it the labour that it took to make it. Destruction is much easier than construction, pulling down than building up.

8. Meditate on what Christ your teacher has caused to be written down for you: find strength in what he has transmitted to you in his Gospel.

9. Eschew idle conversation: words are not always profitable to you, for converse of words bring distraction to the mind.

10. Be tranquil and serene in your monastery [or abode]: do not answer back concerning anything you are instructed to do; rather, be gently obedient, so that many shall love you.

11. Greet everyone, and you should be the first in greeting people, just as our Lord taught the apostles how, whenever they entered, they should be the first to make the greeting. (cf Mt 10:12) You only need a word, and you will thereby gladden someone’s mind.

12. Do not pay attention to all the other people who have not yet learnt why they became disciples, because they have not even bothered to ask what this way of life is, and why this exemplar ever appeared in the world; rather, they consider themselves wise, and imagine that their knowledge is sufficient to teach them.

13. From now on be despised by the world so that you may be chosen by God. Be despicable before men so that you may progress before your Lord. Be like a simple person, so that his wisdom may dwell in you. Be guileless towards your brethren,

but cunning towards the Enemy. (cf Mt 10:16)

14. Let everyone be important in your eyes, and do not despise those whose knowledge is less than yours.

15. Do not seek for honour in anything, but meet everyone on his own level. Do not be angry with a brother who exalts himself over you. Recognize that his knowledge is deficient; it is as a result of a lack of knowledge that a brother exalts himself above another.

16. Let your outward actions testify to your inward ones: not in a pretence before other people, but in truth before the Lord of all.

17. Imagine that there is nothing else in front of your eyes—as though you were not among mankind—because you are seeing nothing else but God, for God is the entire reason for your way of life.

18. Think about people in a way that will profit you, so that you sorrow for the lost, feel pain for those gone astray, suffer for those in pain, pray for sinners, and in the case of the good, entreat God to preserve them.

19. As long as you are in this world, let such be your thought. But a New World is coming when we will not have our present understanding, since then it will not call to mind or think of anything apart from awe at the majestic glory of the Lord of all.

20. Let those who are older than you in the monastery be held in special honour; consider them in your mind as fathers. Let your manner of life be that of a person who genuinely considers himself to be inferior to everyone else. Live in stillness among your brethren like a dead person who has no voice. For this constitutes the love of God; whoever has this in mind need not think of anything else; for thus you will not grow angry—and after anger, hatred get the better of you.

21. The evil man who is distant from you is still your brother, and he should be drawn by you: will you tear him to pieces with the words of your lips? Cast all this, therefore, from your thoughts, and let your mind be occupied with our Lord and not with man.

22. Do not impose upon yourself a labour that is beyond your strength, otherwise you will enslave yourself to the need to please others.

23. Live in concord with your brethren, for you are a source of tranquillity in the monastery. The interior labour is sufficient for you: choose vigilance, even in preference to fasting, for vigilance makes the understanding luminous, it keeps the intellect awake, it makes the body still, it is more beneficial than all other labours. Nevertheless those who labour in fasting are also in converse with the Lord, and fasting chases away cravings, ensuring that they do not become enslaved to sin.

24. Pay attention to the reading of the words of Scripture, in order to learn from them how to be with God. Do not choose for yourself just standing in prayer and neglect reading, for it is not required of you that just your body should be at labour, while your mind is idle. Intersperse your way of life with various kinds of occupations: a time for reading, a time for prayer. In this way you will be illumined in prayer as a result of your reading. For the Lord of all does not require of us an outward stance, but a mind that is wise in its hope for him, and which knows how to draw close to perfection.

25. Be both a servant, and free: a servant in that you are subject to God, but free in that you are not enslaved to anything—either to empty praise or to any of the passions.

26. Release your soul from the bonds of sin; abide in liberty, for Christ has liberated you; (cf Gal 5:1)acquire the freedom of the New World during this temporal life of yours. Do not be enslaved to love of money or to the praise resulting from pleasing people.

27. Do not lay down a law for yourself, otherwise you may become enslaved to these laws of yours. Be a free person, one who is in a position to do what he likes. Do not become like those who have their own law, and are unable to turn aside from it, either out of fear in their own minds, or because of the wish to please others; in this way they have enslaved themselves to the coercion of their law, with their necks yoked to their own law, seeing that they have decreed for themselves their own special law—just when Christ had released them from the yoke of the Law!

28. Do not make hard and fast decisions over anything in the future, for you are a created being and your will is subject to changes. Decide in whatever matters you have to reach a decision, but without fixing in your mind that you will not be moved to other things. For it is not by small changes in what you eat that your faithfulness is altered: your service to the Lord of all is performed in the mind, in your inner person; that is where the ministry to Christ takes place.

29. Do not be tied down to anything, or let anything enslave you. Release yourself from the yoke of the world by means of the freedom of the new life. There are ninety-nine commandments which have been dissolved and annulled by God, and do you want to establish your own law? There are many people who are more careful not to let their own law be broken, rather than all other laws.

30. Be free, therefore, and free yourself from every kind of destructive slavery. For unless you become free, you cannot be a worker for Christ; for that kingdom in the heavenly Jerusalem which is free does not accept children of slavery. The children of a free mother are themselves free, (cf Rom 8:15) and are not enslaved to the world in anything. (cf Gal 4:23)

31. Be fully aware in all your activities. As you walk, do not let your eyes wander this way and that; rather, your eyes should look modestly straight ahead.

32. Be modest and chaste in your clothing; let your gaze be downwards, but your mind directed upwards towards your Lord.3 As far as possible you should not sate your eyes on the faces of other people; rather, let your gaze be modest, and do not stare at anything in a domineering way, but, like a pure virgin, guard yourself for Christ.

33. Be friendly to everyone, but do not seek for attachment to your loved ones [i.e. family], for your way of life does not require that. You are a solitary, and you should not be tied down by anything. In your mind you should hold in special love those who give you helpful advice, or the person who rebukes you for a good purpose. Do not be annoyed in such cases, otherwise you may become a hater of the word of God.

34. Let your soul be vigilant in divine worship. If possible, do not be aware of who is standing next to you, so that your mind may be fully concentrated on your Lord. It is not up to you to make investigations; you have not been put in a position of authority or leadership. You are someone who is given orders, and you do not even have authority over yourself.

35. Do not look at those whose attention wanders to their companions, otherwise your mind will be disturbed by anger, and so your own part in the service will be without profit.

36. Do not press for your own needs in anything, for your discipleship was not of the kind that your needs should richly be met in everything. No, your discipleship was to a state of need, to poverty in Christ. If your needs are made good, then consider this as something extra. If you consider the meeting of your needs in this light, then you will give thanks, and you will not complain about your state of need.

37. Be constant in the reading of the prophets. From them you will learn about God’s greatness, about his kindness, about justice and grace.

38. Ponder on the sufferings of the martyrs so that you may become aware of how great is the love for God.

39. Concern yourself with the teachings of the wise; whatever teaching you find helpful to yourself, persevere in reading this. Do not take delight in the outward sounds, as children do, but like a wise person discern those words in which power is hidden—for it is by means of words of power (cf 1Th 1:5) that our Saviour’s Gospel has been  proclaimed to us.

40. Do not be like those who love to hear descriptions of various things; rather be eager for the words spoken by the perfect, which will show what is the way of life of the perfect.

41. Be attentive to the thoughts of the mind. If some evil thought passes through you, do not get upset, for it is not the transient thoughts of your mind that the knowledge of the Lord of all observes, rather, he looks at the depths of mind to see if you take pleasure in that evil thought which resides there; for hateful thoughts float over the surface of the mind, but it is the senses that are lower down which can chase away hateful thoughts, which the Lord of all examines. He does not judge what just passes over the mind, but rather the thoughts that are lower down than those hateful ones, namely those which appear in the depths of the mind, which can drive them away with its hidden hand. For he does not pardon the thoughts which spring up from the depth of the mind, for it is they which should be chasing away those which pass over the surface of the mind; he judges those thoughts which have a passage into the heart.

42. Even if some hateful thought finds a nest in you and remains in your mind for some time, as long as there is deeper down some other thought which finds abhorrent, and is at loggerheads with, the thought temporarily abiding in you, then you need not be alarmed, for the evil thought can be rooted out, and you will not suffer judgement for it. Rather, great is your reward in the case of the good thought which springs up in the depths of your mind, seeing that it is the foundation which prevents any evil thought being built upon it.

43. Beware of those evil thoughts to which your mind takes a liking, for which a foundation is already laid there. They are the ones which are placed under God’s judgement; punishment is decreed for them all.

44. Toil at reading the Scriptures more than at anything else: for in prayer the mind frequently wanders, but in reading even a wandering mind is recollected.

Let the love of God be stronger than death(cf Cant 8:6)

45.  in you: if death releases you from the desire for everything, how much more appropriate is it that the love of God should release you from desire for everything.

46. Do not be proud in anything, except in the fact that you are not proud. Do not boast in anything, except in the fact that you do not boast. He who is proud in this way is right to be proud, provided that he is not really proud; he who can boast in this way is right to be boastful, provided that he does not really boast. He who rejoices in this is right to rejoice, provided he rejoices in God. He who exults in this is right to exult, provided he does not exult in the things of the world.

47. You should not be contentious in anything, except against sin.

48. Do not hate evils in others when they exist in yourself; rather, show hatred for the evils in your own person.

49. Sing the praise of good deeds by your actions rather than by words.

50. Rebuke hatred by your deeds rather than by your words. When you see anyone rebuked for some wrongdoing, do not pay attention to his wrong, but consider whether you yourself have done anything worthy of rebuke.

51. Honour peace more than anything else. But strive first of all to be at peace in yourself: in this way you will find it easy to be at peace with others. How can someone whose eyes are blind heal others?

52. You should not imagine that any cause is good which hinders peacefulness; for one good does not annul another. Get rid of any causes that undo your sense of peace, for the sake of the establishment of peacefulness.

53. Let respect be infused on your face—not as something purely exterior, but as stemming from your interior self.

54. Consider that your true wealth lies in truth; for truth consists in the love of God, the awareness of his wisdom, and the fulfilling of his will. These things should be established inside you, and not in an exterior way.

55. Everything that lies outside your good volition, hold in contempt.

56. Be a proclaimer of the Gospel at all times. You will become a proclaimer of the Gospel when you lay upon yourself the Gospel’s way of life.

57. Show to the world that the other world exists. You will show that the other world exists when you despise this world.

58. My brother Hesychius, we should realize that we live in a world of deception. If we recognize that we are going astray, error will not surreptitiously get the better of us. It is like the case of those who see a dream: if they realize in their dream that they are just seeing a dream and not reality, then they will not be led astray by what they see. The same applies to the person who is held worthy to be aware that he lives in this world in a state of deception. Such a person is not perturbed by love of material objects.

59. So, my beloved, let us perfect ourselves before we depart from the body. Each day of our lives we should imagine to be our last day. Like someone who is seeking for the merchandise of salvation you should daily take stock of your own merchandise, to see wherein there lies loss for you, and wherein profit.

60. When evening comes, collect your thoughts and ponder over the entire course of the day: observe God’s providential care for you; consider the grace he has wrought in you throughout the whole span of the day; consider the rising of the moon, the joy of daylight, all the hours and moments, the divisions of time, the sight of different colours, the beautiful adornment of creation, the course of the sun, the growth of your own stature, how your own person has been protected; consider the blowing of the winds, the ripe and varied fruits, how the elements minister to your comfort, how you have been preserved from accidents, and all the other activities of grace. When you have pondered on all this, wonder of God’s love towards you will well up within you, and gratitude for his acts of grace will bubble up inside you.

61. Take thought too, in case you have done something that is contrary to these acts of grace: say to yourself ‘Have I done anything to anger God today? Have I said or thought anything that does not befit that will which created me?’ And if you become aware that you have done something to displease him, stand up for a short while in prayer and give thanks for the graces you have received throughout the entire day’s ministry, and make supplication for what you have done wrong. In this way you will sleep peacefully and without sin.

62. If, in the case of one human being who has done wrong to another, God in his grace has commanded that we should be forgiving to the offender seventy times seven,  (Mt 18:22)how much more will God forgive the person who offers up supplication for

his sins?

63. It is folly that, when someone who is more important than us is angry with us, we sleep in fear and sorrow, whereas we go to sleep untroubled by any thought of regret for the fact that we have provoked God all day long in our ingratitude for all his goodness.

64. Such, then, should be your daily aim throughout life: each morning you should look back on your service during the night, each evening look back on your service during the day. Complete your ways thus in purity, in accordance with the will of God.

65. When you stand in prayer before God, take care that your mind is recollected. Push aside any distracting thoughts. Feel in your soul the true weightiness of God. Purify the movements of your thoughts; if you have to struggle with them, be persistent in your struggle and do not give up. When God sees your persistence, then all of a sudden grace will dawn in you, and your mind will find strength as your heart burns with fervour and your soul’s thoughts shine out. It may even be that wonderful intuitions of God’s majesty will burst forth in you: this comes as a result of such supplication and luminous understanding; for just as we do not put choice perfumes in a foul-smelling container, neither does God stir up intuitions of his true majesty in minds that are still ugly.

66. At the beginning of your prayer have it in mind to say in God’s presence, ‘Holy, holy, holy, Lord almighty, with whose glory both heaven and earth are filled.’ (cf Is 6:3) 4 Then be mindful of whatever is appropriate in your prayer, which should always include remembering God’s Church, petitions for the weak and afflicted, entreaty for those who have gone astray, compassion for sinners, forgiveness of those who have done wrong.

67. Make supplication before God that in the thoughts of your soul you may continuously say the following: ‘O God, make me worthy in your grace of that greatness which you will give in the world to come in return for labours, and may your justice not judge me on the great day of your coming. O God, in your compassion make me worthy of true knowledge of you, and of participation in your perfect love.’ And when you have come to the end of your supplication, seal your prayer with that prayer which Christ our Lord gave to his disciples. Be assiduous in all this, meditate on it, and thereby you will be able to make prayers before God and men.

68. My brother, you should not be confident that the end of your life will be adorned with the divine beauty that is now depicted in you; such an idea will give rise to relaxing your concentration, resulting in negligence before you have succeeded in bringing this to effect. Just as there is no assurance that a ship’s voyage will end up safely in harbour, so with each of us, there is no assurance that our life’s journey will end up without stumbling.

69. This is how your life will be preserved in good works: by constantly having before your eyes the picture of your death; for when someone does not live in expectation of the next day, then fear induced by having just the present day acts as his guide. For what sins or laxity will a person let himself get involved in, when he considers that his life will last but a single day, and he does not rely on the morrow.

70. Insofar as you are able to understand, and insofar as it is appropriate to your way of life, I have written down these few things, urged on by your love, for your wisdom in Christ, thanks to the peace we have between us. And may our Lord who has made you worthy of such an exalted state of glory grant that you may indeed obtain this and be possessed by him, through that mercy which guards your life. And may you be firm in the faith of Life right to the day when our Saviour is revealed. And I beg and beseech you to beg Christ’s mercy for me, that he may have compassion on me too at the judgement.

On Prayer and Silence

1. Do not imagine, my beloved, that prayer consists solely of words, or that it can be learnt by means of words. No, listen to the truth of the matter from our Lord: spiritual prayer is not learnt and does not reach fullness as a result of either learning or the repetition of words; for it is not to a man that you are praying, before whom you can repeat a well-composed speech: it is to him who is Spirit that you are directing the movements of prayer. You should pray, therefore, in spirit, seeing that he is spirit.

2. To show that no special place or vocal utterance is required for someone who prays in fulness to God, our Lord said, The hour is coming when you will not be worshipping the Father in this mountain or in Jerusalem; (Jn 4:21) and again, to show that a special place was not required, he also taught that Those who worship God should worship him in spirit and in truth. (Jn 4:23)  And in the course of His instructing us why we should pray thus, He said ‘For God is spirit,’ (Jn 4:24) and he should be praised spiritually, in the spirit. Paul too tells us about this spiritual prayer and psalmody which we should employ: ‘What then shall I do?’, he says, ‘I will pray in spirit and in my mind’. (1 Cor 14:15) It is in spirit and in mind, then, that he says that one should pray and sing to God; he does not say anything at all about the tongue. The reason is that this spiritual prayer is not offered up by the tongue or prayed by the tongue, for it is more interior than the lips and the tongue, more interiorized than any composite sounds, lying beyond psalmody and wisdom. When someone prays this kind of prayer his worship is more perfect than that of the company of Gabriel and Michael; like them, he utters ‘holy’ without any words. (cf Is 6:3) But if he cease from this kind of prayer and recommence the prayer of vocal song, then he is distanced from the region of the angels, and he becomes an ordinary man again.

3. Whoever sings, using his tongue and body, and perseveres in this worship both night and day, such a person is one of the ‘just’. But the person who has been held worthy to enter deeper than this, singing in mind and in spirit, such a person is a ‘spiritual being’. A ‘spiritual being’ is more exalted than the ‘just’, but one becomes a ‘spiritual being’ after being ‘just’. For until someone has worshipped for a considerable time in this exterior manner—employing continual fasting, using the voice for psalmody, with repeated periods on his knees, with petitions, constant vigils, recitation of the psalms, arduous labour, supplication, abstinence, paucity of food, and other such things appropriate for his way of life, along with a careful watch over the senses, being filled with the remembrance of God, full of due fear and trembling at his name, seeing that he has a firm belief that the rustling movements of his thoughts are not hidden from God’s knowledge, humbling himself before everyone, considering everyone better than himself—even when he sees a debauched person, or an adulterer, or a drunkard, or a murderer, or someone full of effrontery or abuse, or a blasphemer, or indeed a person with even worse sins than these: on seeing such a man he still acts humbly before them and thinks ‘He is better than me, and closer to God’; for the vision of the thought of his heart is fixed with all the concentration of his thought on his own transgressions, and he does not approach such a man hypocritically, but with his whole self he acts humbly before him and asks him with groaning to pray for him and to supplicate God on his behalf, ‘For I have done great wrong before God’. Only when someone achieves all this—and greater things than these things which, if they truly seem to him to be so, he should suffer, seeing that he is far removed from what is proper—when someone can do all this, and achieve it in himself, he will arrive at singing to God in the psalmody that spiritual beings use to praise him.

4. For God is silence, and in silence is he sung and glorified by means of that psalmody and praise of which he is worthy. I am not speaking of the silence of the tongue, for if someone merely keeps his tongue silent, without knowing how to sing and give praise in mind and spirit, then he is simply idle in his silence and evil wandering thoughts, since hateful ideas surge up and corrupt him. He is just keeping an exterior silence, and he does not know how to sing or give praise in an interior way, seeing that the tongue of his ‘hidden person’ has not yet learnt to stretch itself out even to babble. You should look on the spiritual infant that is within you in the same way as you do on an ordinary child or infant: just as the tongue placed in an infant’s mouth is still because it does not yet know speech or possess the correct movements for speaking, so it is with that interior tongue of the mind; it will be still from all speech and from all thought, it will simply be placed there, ready to learn the first babblings of spiritual utterance.

5. Thus there is a silence of the tongue, there is a silence of the whole body, there is the silence of the soul, there is the silence of the mind, and there is the silence of the spirit. The silence of the tongue is merely when it is not incited to evil and cruel speech, or to utter something full of anger, or liable to stir up trouble, or some calumny or accusation. The silence of the entire body is when all its senses are not occupied by a propensity to evil deeds or improper actions; or when the body is in a sort of death, unoccupied by anything. The silence of the soul is when there are no ugly thoughts bursting forth within it, hindering anything good. The silence of the mind is when it is purified from any harmful knowledge or wisdom—otherwise called cunning and inventive craftiness, such as operates in those inclined to wicked actions upon which they continuously ponder, to the harm of their fellow human beings. The silence of the spirit is when the mind ceases even from stirrings caused by spiritual beings, and when all its movements are stirred solely by Being; in this state it is truly silent, aware that the silence which is upon it is itself silent.

6. These are the degrees and measures to be found in silence and utterance. But if you have not reached these higher states and you find yourself still far away from them, remain where you are lower down, for this is the psalmody and praise of the tongue. Use these to sing and praise God; do this with the application and reverence that befits God, singing and praising him with the voice and the tongue. Toil in your service until you arrive at love. Stand in awe of God, as is only right, and thus you will be held worthy to love, with that natural love, him who was given to us at our renewal.

7. And when you recite the words of the prayer which you know to be appropriate for requests before God, be careful not to repeat them merely out of obligation, but let your very self become these words, as they manifest themselves in you as actual deeds. For there is no advantage in the reciting unless the words you are reciting become embodied in you in the form of action, and you become as though they were mingled into your very being, so that even in this world you will be seen to be a man of God, and many will imitate you and benefit from their imitation of you.

JOHN THE SOLITARY BIBLIOGRAPHY AND NOTES
Sebastian Brock, The Syriac Fathers

A. The letter to Hesychius is translated from my forthcoming edition (whose section numbers are used here). At least nineteen manuscripts are known, of which the oldest is dated AD 587.

B. A general introduction to John of Apamea’s writings is given by B. Bradley in DSpir 8 (1974) cols. 764-74. An English translation of John’s short treatise on Prayer was published in my ‘John the Solitary, On Prayer’, Journal of Theological Studies ns 30 (1979) 84-101, and is reprinted in The Ascetical Homilies of St Isaac the Syrian (Boston, 1984) 466-8 (the slightly expanded form of this work, recycled by Abraham of Nathpar, is translated in Chapter X). An English translation of John’s first ‘Tractate’, on stillness, is given by D. Miller in The Ascetical Homilies of St Isaac the Syrian, 461-6. French translations of several other works are available: I. Hausherr, Jean la Solitaire. Dialogue sur l’âme et les passions de l’homme, OCA 120; (1939); R. Lavenant, Jean d’Apamée. Dialogues et traités, Sources chrétiennes 311; (1984), which translates the texts published, with German translation, by W. Strothmann in 1972. German translations of some further texts will be found in L. G. Rignell, Briefe von Johannes dem Einsiedler (Lund, 1941), and Drei Traktate von Johannes dem Einsiedler, Lunds Universitets Arsskrift 54/4; (1960). Important general studies include: A. de Halleux, ‘La christologie de Jean le Solitaire’, Le Muséon 94 (1981) 5-36, and ‘Le milieu historique de Jean le Solitaire’, OCA

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