Book Review: Saint Daniel of Sketis

Bryn Mawr Classical Review

Britt Dahlman, Saint Daniel of Sketis: A Group of Hagiographic Texts Edited with Introduction, Translation, and Commentary. Studia Byzantina Upsaliensis 10. Uppsala: Acta Universitatis Upsaliensis, 2007. Pp. 260. ISBN 978-91-554-6893-4.

Reviewed by Shawn W. J. Keough, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven (shawn.keough@theo.kuleuven.be)
Word count: 1028 words

This volume was the author's 2007 doctoral dissertation at the Centre for Language and Literature (Greek) of Lund University, and presents a new edition of eight stories associated with Daniel of Sketis. The edition of the Greek texts is presented with a facing English translation, and it is preceded by a helpful introduction and followed by commentary and indices. The result is a valuable book that makes a useful contribution to the study of the desert monastic paterika, especially to the study of Daniel of Sketis.

Sketis was the most famous of the early monastic centres in Lower Egypt and was located about 100 km south of Alexandria (modern Wadi Natrun). It is traditionally reckoned to have been founded by Makarios the Great ca. 330. By the sixth century, the period in which this Daniel figures, Sketis was a stronghold of Egyptian anti-Chalcedoniasm. Like other monastic centres, the traditions of Sketis were circulated orally before being set down in writing. The stories associated with Daniel of Sketis form one of the major Greek collections of monastic stories available from the fifth through seventh centuries. Other examples include the Historia Monachorum in Aegypto, the Historia Lausiaca of Palladios, the alphabetical and topical collections of Apophthegmata Patrum, the Pratum Spirituale of John Moschos and the stories traditionally ascribed to Anastios the Sinaite. The stories associated with Daniel of Sketis (and Anastasios the Sinaite) are longer and more substantial than most of the other collections, and they give more evidence of having been composed within a literary tradition.