The Life of Saint Symeon the New Theologian

Written by: Niketas Stetatos

Dumbarton Oaks Medieval Library

Harvard University Press

Cambridge, Massachusetts

Book available for purchase:

https://www.hup.harvard.edu/books/9780674057982

Telegram episode:

https://t.me/athoniteaudio/7644

The Life was written more than thirty years after Symeon’s death by his disciple and apologist the theologian Niketas Stethatos, who also edited all of Symeon’s spiritual writings. An unusually valuable piece of Byzantine hagiography, it not only presents compelling descriptions of Symeon’s visions, mystical inspiration, and role as a monastic founder, but also provides vivid glimpses into the often bitter and unpleasantly conflicted politics of monasticism and the construction of sanctity and orthodoxy at the zenith of the medieval Byzantine Empire. Although the many volumes of Symeon’s spiritual writings are now readily available in English, the present translation makes the Life accessible to English readers for the first time. It is based on an authoritative edition of the Greek.