which help us to understand Isaac’s writings in all their complexity. The influence of Evagrius (+399) is very strong in Syriac spirituality. Though his writings were condemned by the Greeks in 553 because of his Origenistic tendency, most of them were retained in Syriac. Paradoxically, Monophysites and Nestorians agreed in their anti-Origenism, while Nestorians embraced the Origenistic Evagrius. Isaac quotes him many times by name and at other times anonymously. Evagrius shaped the basic concepts