christian middle east, patriarchate of alexandria, patriarchate of antioch, arab christians, catholic unia, anti-catholic polemics, eucharistic controversies, gerasimos palladas, arabic christian manuscripts, христианский восток, антиохийский патриархат, александрийский патриархат, арабы-христиане, католическая уния, антилатинская полемика, евхаристические споры, герасим паллада, арабо-христианские рукописи, Philology. Linguistics, P1-1091, Literature (General), PN1-6790

Several decades preceding the split of the Church of Antioch into Orthodox and Catholic branches in 1724 are the least studied period in the early Modern history of the Orthodox Middle East. The authors present preliminary results of their joint project aiming at the commented edition of the Arabic texts of the epistle sent in September 1702 by the Patriarch of Alexandria Gerasimos Palladas to the Eastern Orthodox community of Tripoli, and the responses from the Christians of Tripoli and Aleppo. The correspondence, only partially edited, reflects intellectual life and ideological confrontation in the Church of Antioch in the late 17th and early 18th centuries. The main topic of the correspondence is a dispute on the moment of consecration of the Holy Gifts in the Divine Liturgy, which was one of the traditional subjects of polemics between the Orthodox and Catholic theologians. The Orthodox Church view, expressed by Patriarch Gerasimos, met strong objections on the part of the Christians of Aleppo, probably influenced by the Latin Church missionaries. The authors analyze the historical background and the context of the correspondence, as well as peculiarities of the Arabic manuscript tradition of the Patriarch’s epistle. As a result of the collation of the manuscripts available, the authors identify two versions of the translation of Gerasimos’ epistle and determine the features of stylistic revision of the text in the second recension.