Erin Galgay Walsh 

University of Chicago

The Literary Portrait of the Holy Onesima: Textual Variants and the Shaping of the Saint’s Vita.

The Life of the Holy Onesima offers a fascinating portrait of holiness and ascetic practice. Based on the Greek story of an unnamed woman who feigns madness recounted in Palladius’ Lausiac History, this Syriac Vita expands and develops its source material. This paper examines the manuscript transmission of this Vita with special attention to the significance of textual variants for understanding the traditions around this remarkable example of a female holy fool. One recension of this text may be found in the Select Narratives of Holy Women, translated by Agnes Smith Lewis, and a slightly different version may be found in the collections of saints’ lives published by P. Bedjan. By assembling a critical edition of the roughly twenty manuscripts, this study aims at understanding the transmission of this text within Syriac. On this basis, the paper will reflect on how the translators and later scribes participated in the reception and transformation of Palladius’ Lausiac History within Syriac literature.