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Dietmar Werner Winkler (born April 15, 1963, in Wolfsberg in Carinthia) is an Austrian scholar of patristics and ecclesiastical history. He is a professor and the founding director of the Center for the Study of the Christian East at the University of Salzburg. [1]
Winkler studied Catholic theology, religious education, Philology and Ancient History at the Universities of Graz and Innsbruck and completed postgraduate training in ecumenical theology at the Ecumenical Institute Château de Bossey of the World Council of Churches (University of Geneva). He obtained the degrees Mag.phil., Mag.theol. and a Certificate in Ecumenical Studies. He received his doctorate in theology from the University of Innsbruck with a thesis on Coptic Christianity. With a scholarship from the Austrian Academy of Sciences, he completed his habilitation in patrology, dogma history and ecumenical theology at the University of Graz in 2000 with a thesis on East Syriac Christianity. In 1998 he was a visiting scholar at the "St. Ephrem Ecumenical Research Institute" of Mahatma Gandhi University in Kottayam (Kerala, India) and a Fulbright Scholar at the Collegeville Institute of St. John's University (MN, USA) in 2001. At Boston University (MA, USA), Winkler was Professor and associate director of the Division of Religious and Theological Studies from 2003 to 2005. [2]
In 2005, Dietmar W. Winkler was appointed Professor of Patristic Studies and History of Christianity at the University of Salzburg. He was severeal times head of the Department of Biblical Studies and Ecclesiastical History (2006-2009, 2013-2015, 2019-2023) as well as Dean of the Faculty of Catholic Theology (2015-2017, since 2023) and has been director of the Centre for the Study of the Christian East (ZECO) at the University of Salzburg since 2006. In 2012, he conducted research as visiting scholar at the Center for the Study of World Religions at Harvard University (Cambridge, MA, USA) and in 2018 at the "Centre Paul-Albert-Février - Textes et Documents de la Méditerranée antique et médiévale" at the Université Aix-Marseille.
Dietmar W. Winkler is an expert on Oriental Christianity and its ecumenical relations. His work focuses on the cultural history and present of the Eastern Churches, Oriental Christian literature and historical theology in their political contexts. At the University of Salzburg he established a research focus on the spread of Christianity along the Silk Road to Central Asia and China (Salzburg International Conferences on Syriac Christianity in China and Central Asia). [3]
Winkler is a consultant to the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity (Vatican), a member of the Theological Commission of the Austrian Bishops' Conference and a board member of the Pro Oriente Foundation. [4] In 2010 he became a member of the European Academy of Sciences and Arts. Among others, he is a member of the Society for the Study of the Christian East (GSCO), the North American Patristics Society (NAPS) and was chairman of the Association of Catholic Church Historians of Austria (AKKÖ) in 2016–2021. [5]
Winkler is editor of the scholarly series orientalia – patristica – oecumenica (LIT-Verlag, Münster/Germany et al.), [6] Pro Oriente Studies in Syriac Tradition (Gorgias Press, Piscataway, NJ/USA) [7] and, together with Alfred Rinnerthaler , of Wissenschaft und Religion (Peter Lang, Berlin et al.), [8] as well as on the editorial board of Texts and Studies in Eastern Christianity (Brill, Leiden/NL et al.), [9] Handes Amsorya: Journal of Armenian Studies (Mechitaristenverlag, Vienna) and The Harp: A Review of Syriac and Oriental Studies (Kottayam/India).
The Malankara Orthodox Syrian Church (MOSC) also known as the Indian Orthodox Church (IOC) or simply as the Malankara Church, is an autocephalous Oriental Orthodox church headquartered in Devalokam, near Kottayam, India. The church serves India's Saint Thomas Christian population. According to tradition, these communities originated in the missions of Thomas the Apostle in the 1st century. It employs the Malankara Rite, an Indian form of the West Syriac liturgical rite.
Assyrians are an indigenous ethnic group native to Mesopotamia, a geographical region in West Asia. Modern Assyrians descend from Ancient Mesopotamians such as ancient Assyrians and Babylonians, originating from the ancient indigenous Mesopotamians of Akkad and Sumer, who first developed the civilisation in northern Mesopotamia that would become Assyria in 2600 BCE. Modern Assyrians may culturally self-identify as Syriacs, Chaldeans, or Arameans for religious, geographic, and tribal identification.
The Xi'an Stele or the Jingjiao Stele, sometimes translated as the "Nestorian Stele," is a Tang Chinese stele erected in 781 that documents 150 years of early Christianity in China. It is a limestone block 279 centimetres high with text in both Chinese and Syriac describing the existence of Christian communities in several cities in northern China. It reveals that the initial Church of the East had met recognition by the Tang Emperor Taizong, due to efforts of the Christian missionary Alopen in 635. According to the stele, Alopen and his fellow Syriac missionaries came to China from Daqin in the ninth year of Emperor Taizong (635), bringing sacred books and images. The Church of the East monk Adam composed the text on the stele. Buried in 845, probably during religious suppression, the stele was not rediscovered until 1625. It is now in the Stele Forest in Xi'an.
Syriac Christianity is a branch of Eastern Christianity of which formative theological writings and traditional liturgies are expressed in the Classical Syriac language, a variation of the old Aramaic language. In a wider sense, the term can also refer to Aramaic Christianity in general, thus encompassing all Christian traditions that are based on liturgical uses of Aramaic language and its variations, both historical and modern.
The Church of the East historically had a presence in China during two periods: first from the 7th through the 10th century in the Tang dynasty, when it was known as Jingjiao, and later during the Yuan dynasty in the 13th and 14th centuries, when it was described alongside other foreign religions like Catholicism and possibly Manichaeism as Yelikewen jiao.
Patristics or patrology is the study of the early Christian writers who are designated Church Fathers. The names derive from the combined forms of Latin pater and Greek πᾰτήρ (father). The period of the Church Fathers, commonly called the Patristic era, is generally considered to run from the end of New Testament times or end of the Apostolic Age to either AD 451 or to the Second Council of Nicaea in 787.
Syriac literature is literature in the Syriac language. It is a tradition going back to the Late Antiquity. It is strongly associated with Syriac Christianity.
The Malabar Independent Syrian Church (MISC) also known as the Thozhiyur Church, is a Christian church centred in Kerala, India. It is one of the churches of the Saint Thomas Christian community, which traces its origins to the evangelical activity of Thomas the Apostle in the 1st century.
The Council of Seleucia-Ctesiphon, also called the Council of Mar Isaac, met in AD 410 in Seleucia-Ctesiphon, the capital of the Persian Sassanid Empire. Convoked by King Yazdegerd I (399–421), it organized the Christians of his empire into a single structured Church, which became known as the Church of the East. It is often compared to Constantine's Edict of Milan, approximately a century earlier.
Adam, also known by his Chinese name Jingjing, was an 8th-century Syriac Christian monk and scholar in China. He composed the text on the Nestorian Stele, which described the history of the Church of the East in China from 635 to 781. Many scholars believe he is also the author of the later Jingjiao Documents.
The Church of the East or the East Syriac Church, also called the Church of Seleucia-Ctesiphon, the Persian Church, the Assyrian Church, the Babylonian Church or the Nestorian Church, is one of three major branches of Nicene Eastern Christianity that arose from the Christological controversies of the 5th and 6th centuries, alongside the Miaphisite churches and the Chalcedonian Church. Having its origins in the pre-Sassanian Mesopotamia, it developed its own unique form of Christian theology and liturgy. During the early modern period, a series of schisms gave rise to rival patriarchates, sometimes two, sometimes three. In the latter half of the 20th century the traditionalist patriarchate of the church underwent a split into two rival patriarchates, namely the Assyrian Church of the East and the Ancient Church of the East, which continue to follow the traditional theology and liturgy of the mother church. The Chaldean Catholic Church based in Iraq and the Syro-Malabar Church in India are two Eastern Catholic churches which also claim the heritage of the Church of the East.
Mar Shimun XVI Yohannan was Patriarch of the Shem'on line (Qodshanis) of the Church of the East, from 1780. In 1804, he became the sole Patriarch among traditionalist Christians of the East Syriac Rite, because the rival Patriarch Eliya XII (1778-1804) of the Eliya line died without successor. Shimun XVI remained patriarch until his death in 1820.
Eastern Orthodoxy in Syria represents Christians in Syria who are adherents of the Eastern Orthodox Church. The Eastern Orthodox tradition is represented in Syria by the Greek Orthodox Church of Antioch, the largest and oldest Christian community in the country.
Mathews Mor Anthimos is a Syriac Orthodox bishop, currently Metropolitan of Muvattupuzha Region and Patriarchal Vicar of U.K. & Ireland Dioceses.
Eliya XI was Patriarch of the Church of the East from 1722 to 1778, with his residence in Rabban Hormizd Monastery, near Alqosh, in modern Iraq. His father, the priest Hoshaba, was the brother of the previous patriarch Eliya X. Upon that patriarch's death, Eliya XI was elected to the patriarchal see, and enthroned on 25 December 1722.
David was a monk, bishop and historian of the Church of the East in the 7th or 8th century.
The Nestorian pillar of Luoyang is a Tang Chinese pillar erected in 814–815 CE, which contains inscriptions related to early Christianity in China, particularly the Church of the East. It is a Nestorian pillar, discovered in 2006 in Luoyang, which is related to the Xi'an Stele.
George was the king of the Ongud and an official of the Yuan dynasty in the late 13th century.