ABSTRACT
One of the most remarkable features that distinguishes the spiritual literature of Byzantium is that at regular intervals the need was felt to gather extracts or even whole texts together into anthologies. From the collection of “sayings” of the Desert Fathers in the sixth century, one passes to the vast collection, the Sacra parallela of John of Damascus in the eighth century (or to the even earlier Pandektes of Antiochos of St Sabas in the seventh century), then on to various other anthologies, like the great Synagoge of Paul of Evergetis in the eleventh century, the collections put together by John of Oxeia in the twelfth and, eventually, as late as the eighteenth century, to the influential Philokalia, an attempt to bring together the key spiritual texts of the Byzantine world.
