Jerābīs on the Euphrates, and wrote a commentary on the Song of Songs, a number of hymns and a biography of Severus, the Monophysite patriarch of Antioch (512-519).
The life of the great missionary bishop Jacob Burdĕ‘ānā[1] or Baradaeus, from whom the Monophysite Church took its name of Jacobite, belongs rather to ecclesiastical than to literary history. A native of Tellā in Mesopotamia, he obtained the favour of the empress Theodora while on a mission to Constantinople, and resided in that city for fifteen years (528-543). At the request of the Arab king of Ghassān he was sent on a mission to the East after being consecrated bishop of Edessa; and the rest of his life was spent in organizing the Monophysite Church of eastern Syria. We possess two lives of him—one by John of Asia in his collection of biographies, and another which may have been written by a priest of Jacob's original monastery of Pĕsīltā. Both are to be found in the 2nd volume of Laud's Anecdota syriaca. An excellent modern biography and estimate of Jacob has been written by Kleyn.[2] A Syriac account of the removal of his remains from Alexandria, where he died in 578, to his old monastery of Pĕsīltā has been edited by Kugener in the Bibliothèque hagiographique orientale, pp. 1-26 (Paris, 1902). The activity of his life left him little time for writing, but he was the author of “an anaphora, sundry letters, a creed or confession of faith, preserved in Arabic and a secondary Ethiopic translation, and a homily for the Feast of the Annunciation, also extant only in an Arabic translation” (Wright).
A very different character from Jacob's was that of Sergius of Rās’ain, one of the best Greek scholars and ablest translators whom Syria has produced. Of his life little is known, and that little not wholly creditable. He wavered curiously in his ecclesiastical views, and ended by helping the persecutors of the Monophysite Church, to which he himself had belonged. He seems to have lived as a priest and physician at Rās’ain in Mesopotamia most of his life. About 535 he travelled on various ecclesiastical missions, and finally made a journey to Rome and thence to Constantinople (in this latter accompanied by the pope Agapetus). The result was to bring about the deposition and banishment of the Monophysites from the latter city. Sergius died almost immediately afterwards, in 536. Among the works which he translated into Syriac and of which his versions survive are treatises of Aristotle, Porphyry and Galen,[3] the Ars grammatica of Dionysius Thrax, the works of Dionysius the Areopagite; and possibly two or three treatises of Plutarch.[4] His own original works are less important, but include a “treatise on logic, addressed to Theodore (of Merv), which is unfortunately imperfect, a tract on negation and affirmation; a treatise, likewise addressed to Theodore, On the Causes of the Universe, according to the Views of Aristotle, showing how it is a Circle; a tract On Genus, Species and Individuality; and a third tract addressed to Theodore, On the Action and Influence of the Moon, explanatory and illustrative of Galen's Περὶ κρισίμων ἡεμρῶν, bk. iii., with a short appendix ‘On the Motion of the Sun’ ” (Wright). According to the historical compilation which passes under the name of Zacharias Rhetor, he also wrote a treatise on the faith.[5] Some of his translations were revised at a later time by Ḥonain ibn Iṣḥāḳ (†873).
Another translator from Greek was Paul, Monophysite bishop of Callinīcus or ar-Raḳḳah, who, being expelled from his diocese in 519, retired to Edessa and there occupied himself in translating into Syriac the works of Severus, the Monophysite champion who was patriarch of Antioch from 512 to 519. This version appears to be quite distinct from that used by the compiler of the chronicle of Zacharias,[6] and also from the version of “the 6th book of the select letters of Severus” which was made by Athanasius “presbyter of Nisībis” in 669 and has been edited by E. W. Brooks (London, 1902-1904).
That important legal work, The Laws of the Emperors Constantine, Theodosius and Leo, which was composed in Greek about 475, and “which lies at the root of all subsequent Christian Oriental legislation in ecclesiastical, judicial and private matters” (Wright), must have been repeatedly translated into Syriac. The oldest form is contained in a British Museum MS. which dates from the earlier part of the 6th century, and this was edited by Land (Anecd. syr. i. 30-64). A latter (probably Nestorian) recension is contained in a Paris MS., which was used along with the other by Bruns and Sachau in their exhaustive edition (Syrisch-römisches, Rechtsbuch, Leipzig, 1880). In Notulae syriacae (privately printed 1887) Wright edited the surviving fragment of a 3rd recension which is preserved in a 13th-century MS. at Cambridge. Finally Sachau has published three new redactions of the treatise from a MS. found at Rome in 1894 (Syrische Rechtsbücher, vol. i., Leipzig, 1907).
The last 5th-century author to be mentioned here is Aḥūdhemmēh, who was Jacobite metropolitan of Taghrīth from 559 till he was martyred by Khosrau Anōsharwān in 575. He wrote various philosophical works, also a treatise on grammar which is quoted by the later grammarian, John bar Zō‘bi. A Syriac life of him has been published by F. Nau, who appends to it the surviving fragment of his treatise on the composition of man as consisting of soul and body.[7]
We may here take note of three important anonymous works, of which the first probably and the other two certainly belong to the 6th century.
The Mĕ‘arrath gazzē or Cave of Treasures, translated and edited by C. Bezold (Leipzig, 1883-1888), is akin (as Duval remarks) to the Book of Jubilees. It is an imaginary history of the patriarchs and their descendants. The work derives its name from the picturesque story of the cave where Adam deposited the treasure of gold, myrrh and incense which he had brought away from paradise: the cave was used as a burying-place by him and his descendants until the deluge. After the precious relics together with the bones of Adam had been saved in the ark, they were transported by Shem and Melchizedek to Golgotha under the guidance of an angel.[8]
The tripartite narrative which is known as the Romance of Julian (the Apostate) has no claim to be regarded as an historical document. Its hero is Jovian, one of the feeblest of Roman emperors, and Julian is everywhere exhibited in flaming colours as the villain of the story. But as an example of Syriac prose style it is of the best, and the author at times shows considerable dramatic power.
A valuable historical source, though of small dimensions, is the Chronicle of Edessa, which gives a record, of events from 132-131 B.C. to A.D. 540—at first exceedingly brief, but becoming somewhat fuller for the later years. It appears to be thoroughly reliable wherever it can be tested. It has been three times edited—first by Assemani in the Bibliotheca orientalis (i. 388-417), secondly by L. Hallier (Leipzig, 1892) with a translation, introduction and abundant notes, and thirdly by Guidi with a Latin version (in Chronica minora, Paris, 1903).
On John of Asia or Ephesus, the eminent Monophysite bishop and earliest Syriac church historian, see the separate article. An historical work of somewhat similar character to John's is the compilation in 12 books which is generally known by the name of Zacharias Rhetor,[9] because the anonymous Syriac compiler has incorporated the Syriac version or epitome of a lost
- ↑ So called “because his dress consisted of a barda‘thā, or coarse horse-cloth, which he never changed till it became quite ragged” (Wright).
- ↑ Jacobus Baradaeus, der Stichter der syrische monophysietische Kerk (Leiden, 1882).
- ↑ See the details in Wright, pp. 90 sqq.; and cf. especially A. Baumstark, Aristoteles bei den Syrern vom V.-VIII. Jahrhundert (Leipzig, 1900); and V. Ryssel, Über den textkritischen Werth der syrischen Uebersetzungen griechischer Klassiker (Leipzig, 1880-1881). The latter singles out the version of the pseudo-Aristotelian Περὶ κόσμου as a model of excellence in translation.
- ↑ On these last see Baumstark, Lucubrationes syro-graecae pp. 405 sqq. (Leipzig, 1894); and Duval, Litt. syr.3 pp. 266 seq.
- ↑ Land, Anecd. syr. iii. 289.
- ↑ See Brooks and Hamilton's translation of the latter, p. 234.
- ↑ Patrologia orientalis, iii. 1 (Paris, 1906).
- ↑ Bezold's edition contains also an Arabic version.
- ↑ This author has hitherto been identified with Zacharias Scholasticus, who afterwards became bishop of Mitylene, but according to M. A. Kugener, La Compilation historique de pseudo-Zacharie le Rhéteur (Paris, 1900), this identification is a mistake.
