The East-Syrian Patriarch: Constructing Identity through a Community Leader

Résumé En

The emergence of strong identities within the different Christian currents in the Near and Middle East was a long process that stretched from the 5th century until the 7th or the 8th century, shaping specificities in the Syriac churches. As Michael G. Morony argues, memory was in this process a powerful factor of preservation. Christian religious minorities contributed to the blossoming of their christological position, and consequently forged their autonomy and its characteristics based on their own experience, perception of events and relationships with one another. Each of the competing Churches sought to construct an image of the primate, in a sort of “paternity proceedings”, and this process was one of the main elements which illustrates how these identity and memory have been preserved. The patriarch, in fact, alone represents his community of faith, whose cause and destiny he embodies in a way. Indeed, the great significance of his function, his crucial position within his Church, as well as his public role, explain that he has been at the core of a symbolic imagery, not only his person, but also his attributes and the places where he asserted his authority.