Page:Lesser Eastern Churches.djvu/346

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324
THE LESSER EASTERN CHURCHES

and Syria (p. 183). These are the beginning of the present Jacobite Church. At first, as in Egypt, the Monophysites were rather a party within the Church than a separate sect (see p. 216). They did not set up rival sees, but tried, with varying success, to capture the existing ones. In Jerusalem they drove out Juvenal, set up a Monophysite, Theodosius, in 452, and supported him by Monophysite suffragans. But the Government soon drove these people out. At Antioch for a long time there were alternate vicissitudes of Monophysite and Chalcedonian Patriarchs. The great leaders of the heresy in Syria got temporary possession of the see—Peter the Fuller (471, 475), Severus (512–after 536).[1] At last Justinian I (527–565) made a firm stand for Chalcedon, expelled all Monophysite bishops, and demanded acceptance of the council from everyone. The Monophysites lost ground throughout Syria. It seemed as if the sect were about to die out. But the Emperor's wife, Theodora, was their friend; she succeeded in restoring their hopes and giving them a hierarchy. The man who did this under her protection, the restorer of the sect in Syria, in some sort the founder of the present Jacobite Church, is James Baradai.[2] He was born at Telia early in the 6th century, and became a monk at Constantinople. He owes his nickname Baradai to the fact that later, as the organizer of Syrian Monophysism, he went about in a ragged cloak.[3] When he was at Constantinople his heresy (he was always a Monophysite) was at a very low ebb. John of Ephesus[4] says that only two or three of their bishops remained out of prison.[5] Theodosius, Monophysite Patriarch of Alexandria (p. 220), was in prison in the capital. Under the Empress's protection he, to save the situation, ordained two bishops—Theodore for Bosra and the South, James Baradai for Edessa and the East (probably in 543). As

  1. For these earlier Monophysite disturbances see pp. 190, 192, 196.
  2. In Syriac Ya‘ḳub burd‘âyâ (or burd‘ânâ; see Barhebræus: ed. cit. ii. 97).
  3. Barda‘thâ, a coarse horse-cloth (from bardūnâ, a mule). The Greeks call him Ἰάκωβος Τζάντζαλος.
  4. John of Ephesus († after 585; see p. 305, n. 3) is the chief authority for this story.
  5. J. M. Schönfelder: Die Kirchengesch. des Johannes v. Ephesus (Munich, 1862), i. chap. xxxiv. (pp. 33–34).