Evagrius Ponticus, Letters. Armenian Translation

This book is a critical edition of a medieval reworking of the fourth-century Letters and additional works of Evagrius of Pontus. The Medieval Armenian collection presents the letters not as letters by Evagrius alone but as a correspondence of Evagrius with his advisor Melania the Elder. Continually interwoven with Biblical texts, they show the monastic teacher as gnostikos guiding his female ascetic pupil.


As a fourth-century philosopher and monastic, Evagrius wrote treatises, kephalaia and scholia discussing knowledge, biblical interpretation and ethics. A follower of the teachings of Clement and Origen, he strongly influenced the intellectual development of monastic life in the East and in the Latin-speaking West. Although some of his writings were destroyed in their original Greek following the condemnations of 543/553, many survived in Syriac and Armenian; in the medieval Armenian monastic setting, they influenced later monastic teachers including Gregory Narekats'i.