ence. The sentence was that he should be deposed from the episcopate and priesthood, deprived even of lay communion, and compelled to restore the money of which it was pretended he had robbed the poor. Ibas, twice acquitted, was condemned without being heard or even summoned; and no protest was raised in his favour, even by those who, a few months before, had given him their suffrage (Martin, u.s. t. iii. c. ii. p. 181; Labbe, iv. 674; Chron. Edess. anno 756; Assemani, Bibl. Or. i. 202). We have no certain knowledge of what befell Ibas on his deposition. At the beginning of 451 the deposed and banished bishops were allowed to return from exile, but the question of their restoration was reserved for the fourth general council which met at Chalcedon a.d. 451. In the 9th session, Oct. 26, the case of Ibas came before the assembled bishops. On his demand to be restored in accordance with the verdict of Photius and Eustathius at Berytus and Tyre, the Acts of that synod were read, and the next day the pope's legates gave their opinion that Ibas, being unlawfully deposed, should be at once restored. After much discussion this was carried unanimously. The legates led the way, declaring his letter to Maris orthodox, and commanding his restitution. All the prelates agreed in this verdict, the condition being that he should anathematize Nestorius and Eutyches and accept the tome of Leo. Ibas consented without any difficulty. "He had anathematized Nestorius already in his writings, and would do so again ten thousand times, together with Eutyches and all who teach the One Nature, and would accept all that the council holds as truth." On this he was unanimously absolved, restored to his episcopal dignity, and voted as bp. of Edessa at the subsequent sessions (Labbe, iv. 793, 799; Facund. lib. v. c. 3). Nonnus, who had been chosen bishop on his deposition, being legitimately ordained, was allowed to retain his episcopal rank, and on Ibas's death, Oct. 28, 457, quietly succeeded him as metropolitan (Labbe, iv. 891, 917). The fiction that Ibas had disowned the letter to Maris at Chalcedon (Greg. Magn. lib. viii. Ep. 14), as he was asserted by Justinian to have done before at Berytus, as having been forged in his name; is thoroughly disproved by Facundus (lib. v. c. 2, lib. vii. c. 5). A controversy concerning his letter to Maris arose in the next century, in the notorious dispute about the "Three Articles," when the letter was branded as heterodox (together with the works of Theodore of Mopsuestia and Theodoret's writings in favour of Nestorius) in the edict of Justinian, and was formally condemned in 553 by the fifth general council, which pronounced an anathema, in bold defiance of historical fact, against all who should pretend that it and the other documents impugned had been recognized as orthodox by the council of Chalcedon (Evagr. H. E. iv. 38; Labbe, v. 562–567). Ibas is anathematized by the Jacobites as a Nestorian (Assemani, t. i. p. 202). According to the Chronicle of Edessa, Ibas, during his episcopate, erected the new church of the Apostles at Edessa, to which a senator gave a silver table of 720 lb. weight, and Anatolius, praefectus militum, a silver coffer to receive the relics of St. Thomas the Apostle, who was said, after preaching in Parthia, to have been buried there (Socr. H. E. iv. 18).
Ibas was a translator and disseminator of the writings of others rather than an original author. His translations of the theological works of Theodore of Mopsuestia, Diodorus of Tarsus, Theodoret, and Nestorius, were actively spread through Syria, Persia, and the East, and were very influential in fostering the Nestorian tenets which have, even to the present day, characterized the Christians of those regions. His influence was permanent in the celebrated theological school of Edessa, in spite of the efforts of Nonnus to eradicate it, until its final overthrow and the banishment of its teachers to Persia. Tillem. Mém. eccl. t. xv.; Assemani, Bibl. Orient. t. i. pp. 199 seq., t. iii. pp. 70–74; Cave, Hist. Lit. t. i. p. 426; Facund. Defens. Trium. Capitul.; Schröckh, xv. 438, xviii. 307–311; Perry, Acts of the Second Council of Ephesus; Abbé Martin, Actes du Brigandage d’Ephèse; Le Pseudo-synode d’Ephèse.
[E.V.]
Idatius (3), (Idacius; surnamed Lemicensis), bp. of Aquae Flaviae (Chaves or Chiaves) in Gallicia, from c. 427 to 470, and author of a well-known Chronicle which was one of the various continuations of Jerome. Our only sources for his life are notices in his own work, for the meagre Life by Isidore in de Vir. Ill. c. ix. is merely a summary of Idatius's own prologue. The existing material was elaborately sifted and put together by Florez (Esp. Sagr. iv., Madrid, 1749), and less completely by Garzon, whose ed. of Idatius was pub. at Brussels in 1845 by P. F. X. de Ram.
Birthplace and Bishopric.—Idatius tells us in the prologue to his Chronicle that he was born "in Lemica civitate," "Lemica" being a copyist's error for Limica in Portugal. He was born c. 388, shortly after the execution of Priscillian and his companions at Trèves, and about the time when, as he tells us in his Chronicle (ad. ann. 386), the Priscillianists, falling back on Spain after the death of their chief, took a special hold on the province of Gallicia. About a.d. 400 he was in Egypt and Palestine, where, as he says (Prolog. and Chron. ad ann. 435), he, "et infantulus et pupillus," saw St. Jerome at Bethlehem, John bp. of Jerusalem, Eulogius of Caesarea, and Theophilus of Alexandria. His return to Gallicia may be dated c. 402 (Florez, Esp. Sagr. iv. 301). In 416, seven years after the irruption of the Suevi, Alani, and Vandals into the peninsula, Idatius entered the ministry, for so we must understand the entry in the Chron. Parvum (see below) under that year, "Idatii conversio ad Dominum peccatoris" (cf. Florez, l.c. p. 302), and in 427 he was made bishop (see Prol. Esp. Sags. iv. 348). In 431 the rule of the Suevi had become so intolerable that Idatius was sent by the Gallician provincials to Aetius in Gaul to ask for help. He returned in 432, accompanied by the legate Censorius, after whose departure from Gallicia the bishops persuaded Hermeric, the Suevian king, to make peace with the provincials. For about 24 years GaIlicia enjoyed tranquillity compared with the rest of Spain, and the Gallician bishops found themselves to some extent free to deal with the prevalent Priscillianist
