of Nestorius: an edict of the Emperor Theodosius II, dating from the 30th of July 435 ordered them to be burnt[1]. Even the Persian church, about the same time won over to Nestorianism, had to suffer under this edict: only a few works of Nestorius came into its possession for translation into Syriac.
This we learn through Ebed-Jesu, metropolitan of Nisibis (†1318), the most famous theologian of the Nestorians in the middle ages and who has given us the most complete account of the writings of Nestorius. He introduces in his catalogue of Syrian authors[2] the notice about Nestorius with the following words: Nestorius the patriarch wrote many excellent books which the blasphemers (viz. the Antinestorians) have destroyed. As those which evaded destruction he mentions, besides the liturgy of Nestorius, i.e. one of the liturgies used by the Nestorians, which without doubt is wrongly ascribed to Nestorius, five works of the patriarch. The first of these is the book called Tragedy, the second the Book of Heraclides, the third the Letter addressed to Cosmas, the fourth a Book of letters and the fifth a Book of homilies and sermons.
For us the edict of Theodosius against the writings of Nestorius has had a still more important result. Until 1897 nothing was known about the second book
- ↑ Cod. Theodos. 16, 5, 66; Mansi, v, 413 f.
- ↑ J. S. Assemani, Bibliotheca orientalis, iii, 1, p. 35 f.
