In 2013 a conference was held to discuss a newly-discovered Syriac Vita of Barsauma, using a translation by the renowned Syriac scholar, Andrew Palmer, which is printed as an appendix to this book, based on the proceedings of the conference. It is something of a mystery that there is an accompanying volume (the next, number 61, in this distinguished series), which contains the vita as printed in the appendix, whereas at various points in the book under review there seems to be promised an edition of the Syriac text and a more considered translation by Palmer, which is not what is contained in the said accompanying volume. The complete vita was discovered recently in a twelfth-century manuscript, now in the Patriarchal Library of the Syrian Orthodox Church in Damascus. The existence of the vita had long been known, from another, incomplete, twelfth-century manuscript, now in the British Library, that at one stage would have contained the vitae of an estimated fifty holy men, amongst whom the vita of Barsauma was given pride of place, but of that vita there was nothing, though something of the vita could be pieced together from two other incomplete manuscripts; this had been done in the eighteenth century by Joseph Simonius Assemanus, and at the beginning of the twentieth by François Nau. Now we have the whole vita in an excellent and readable translation by Andrew Palmer – which was made available, together with the Syriac text, at the conference in 2013. Hitherto, Barsauma was a shadowy, but clearly important, figure, connected with the so-called Second Council of Ephesos, held in ad 449, and repudiated by the Council of Chalcedon two years later; at the earlier council, Flavian, Patriarch of Constantinople, had been so maltreated as to die shortly afterwards, for which Barsauma was blamed; at the latter, he had been roundly condemned by the Fathers – ‘Drive out the murderer Barsaumas. The murderer to the stadium! Anathema to Barsaumas! Barsaumas into exile!’ His vita is interesting in itself: it is long (longer than all three vitae of his contemporary St Symeon the Stylite put together); it also gives a detailed account of Barsauma's extreme asceticism, making much of the miraculous powers they lent him; it places him at the centre of the events leading up to the Second Council of Ephesos, associating him with imperial circles, notably, in different ways, the empress Eudocia, and the emperor Theodosios ii, and presenting him as a staunch defender of the doctrine that in Christ there was but a single nature – the doctrine condemned at Chalcedon. Many of the chapters are called ‘signs’ and ‘distinctions’ – the signs, as in the Fourth Gospel, indicating miracles; the distinctions – his pilgrimages, his acts of asceticism, his long hours of prayer, his destruction of pagan temples and the synagogues of both Jews and Samaritans, his refusal of gifts, even from the emperor and empress. There are 199 signs and 30 distinctions (which dry up about half-way through). His asceticism is extreme: at one point he refuses to lie or sit down – out of respect for God – and continues standing for fifty-four years until his death; he wears rough clothing over an ‘iron’ tunic of chains; he seeks out inhospitable mountain sites to pursue his ascetic life; he abstains from nearly all food, even bread, wine, oil and water, contenting himself with herbs growing on the mountain side and, in season, fruit. His long hours of prayer are accompanied by the shedding of tears; he is ranked among those monks called in Syriac, ‘mourners’: early on in the vita, he is called the ‘most excellent of mourners’. There is a charming story that, during prayer, he found himself facing a ‘seraph from heaven’, who extended his wings towards him, with one collecting ‘his tears as they fell from his eyes, with the other [wiping] away their traces’. Barsauma is a terror to those who disagree with what he regards as Christian orthodoxy – first of all, to pagans, Jews and Samaritans, destroying their places of worship, and on one occasion driving away from the mourning-wall Jews lamenting the fall of their Temple. And he is a miracle-worker: the 199 ‘signs’ are only part of it; there are several chapters just labelled ‘many signs’. And then, about two-thirds the way through, there is a change of subject: to his role in promoting what he regarded as orthodoxy in the period from Ephesos to Chalcedon. At the former he is Theodosios's personal representative, standing side-by-side with Dioscoros in championing the now-departed Cyril whom Dioscoros had succeeded in the see of Alexandria. After Chalcedon, Barsauma becomes an outlaw, whom the emperor Marcian seeks to arrest with a ‘great force of soldiers’. Barsauma utters curses on the emperor and prophesies that they would never see each other's faces: he himself being taken up to heaven in a column of fire, while Marcian soon succumbs to death. The essays in this volume explore with learning and insight the diverse themes of the vita: its historicity (embellished: Johannes Hahn and passim), its place in the history of asceticism among the ‘wandering monks’ (compared with Syrian monasticism in general: Cornelia Horn and, through a comparison with the vita of Alexander the Sleepless, with Greek monasticism, Daniel Caner) and, closely associated, his role as a kind of travelling ambassador for his cause (Simon Corcoran, Günter Stemberger), different aspects of his antagonism to pagans, Jews and Samaritans (Jan Willem Drijvers, Reuven Kiperwasser and Serge Ruzer, Hahn) – and fellow Christians (Volker Menze, but passim). This is a wonderful symposium that sheds light from many directions on a powerful wonderworker and rather terrifying human being.