Page:Early Christianity in Arabia.djvu/140

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
128
EARLY CHRISTIANITY

he had to pass, whilst another bishop, probably created by Baradæus, hastened to Abyssinia, was received by the Auxumites, and the Melchite bishop, when he arrived, found his see already occupied, and the Christians of Ethiopia not inclined to change their opinions in his favour.[1]

The bishops whom Baradæus had created were in the mean time carrying his doctrines towards the east and north. Achumedes, one of the most celebrated, converted many of the Persian Magi at Tacrit.[2] Baradæus is recorded to have traversed in person the regions of Armenia and Mesopotamia, and in a general massacre of the Christians of Tacrit, by orders of Khosroës Parvis, he escaped only by assuming the costume of a Persian sage.[3] His death in 578, after having been bishop of Edessa seven and thirty years,[4] was no less a subject of exultation to his enemies than the miserable end of the empress Theodora.[5] Whilst Baradæus was

  1. MS. de Fide Jac. Syr. ap. Asseman. p. 384. tom. i. — Barhebræus, ap. eundem, tom. ii. p. 330.
  2. Barhebræus, ap. Assem. tom. ii. p. 414. Ibn Batric, ap. Hotting. Topog. Eccles. p. 20.
  3. MS. Arab. ap. Assem. tom. ii. p. 63. Amrus, ap. eund. tom. iii. p. 384. The history is adopted by Renaudot, but discarded by Asseman.
  4. Asseman. tom. ii. p. 65. The name of Jacobus occurs in a Greek writer among the Eutychian heretics, in Cotelier, tom. ii. p. 396.
  5. The Melchites boasted that — Theodora Augusta, Chalcedonensis synodi inimica, canceris plaga corpore toto perfusa, vitam prodigiose finivit. Victor, Chron. p. 332. ed. Canisii.