An Education through Gnomic Wisdom

Almost everything we know about Antiochus, characterised as ‘a ghostly character whom Migne’s PG has patched together from various texts’, ¹ is based on the information that he provides us with, as well as/on top of a short biographical note that prefaces many manuscripts preserving the text of the Pandect. ² To Gibbon’s readers (and subsequent generations) Antiochus may be remembered, if at all, by Gibbon’s famous sneer. ³ The truth of the matter, however, is that the Pandect became a classic of Eastern Christian spirituality, which is still read to this day. In the preface to his Pandect, we are told that Antiochus was abbot of the Great Laura of St Sabas in Palestine. Around 620, at the request of his compatriot Eustathius, an abbot of a monastery in Ancyra, he composed the famous Pandect of the Holy Scriptures, consisting of 130 homilies which form a compendium on the monastic life. Antiochus prefaces this work with an account of the martyrdom of 40 monks of the Great Laura, tortured and put to death by the Saracens at Kedron just before the fall of Jerusalem to the Persians. ⁴