You're listening to a podcast on Catholic Saints. This podcast is produced by the Augustine Institute,

an Apostolate helping Catholics understand, live, and share their faith.

Hello, everyone, and welcome to Catholic Saints. My name is Taylor Kemp. I'm the director

of Formed, and with me today is Dr. Carl Venestrum. Welcome. Thank you. Glad to be here.

It is good to have you. Today we are talking about St. Ephraim the Syrian. I know very little

about St. Ephraim, so this will be wonderful. That's good. So where should we begin with St. Ephraim the Syrian?

Yeah, so St. Ephraim the Syrian belongs to the fourth century.

So this is the same century where we get St. Athanasius, the Cappadocian, St.

Gregor of Nazianz, Gregor of Nissa, Basil the Great, as well as Augustine,

Ambrose. These are great saints that are familiar to many of us, I think. But differently from them,

St. Ephraim didn't write in Greek or Latin.

Okay.

So he wrote in Syriac, which is hinted by his name, St. Ephraim, the Syrian.

Yeah, that's right.

So he was born east of all those other figures.

So born in Nisibis, a town called Nisibis, which if you looked at a modern day map

would be like southeast Turkey or very north, the very northern part of Syria.

Okay.

And he ended up in Indusse, another town about 100 of Syria. Okay. And he ended up in Indassa, another town about 100 miles west.

So, yeah, he's perhaps the most important saint and theological writer for the Syriac-speaking churches.

Okay.

Is that a big span of space? Is it small? How big is the Syriac-speaking churches. Okay, is that a big span of space?

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