sect. He was also called James Baradaï because he went about in rags,[1] and from the name James (Ia'qob) the Syrian Monophysites are called Jacobites (Ia'qobaie). These Jacobites have ever since been out of communion with the rest of the Christian world, only keeping up irregularly friendly relations with the Copts. So between the Nestorians and the Jacobites the Orthodox pastor at Antioch lost nearly all his sheep. Then came Omar with his Moslems in 637, and swept over all Syria and Persia. The Melkite Patriarch fled to Constantinople, where he was content with a subordinate place under the "Œcumenical Bishop." The Orthodox See of Antioch had fallen as low as that of Alexandria, and here, too, there was no one left to dispute the ambition of Constantinople.
We must now go back to the 4th century to trace the rise of other sees. We saw that at Nicaea in 325 the dignity of the three great patriarchal thrones at Rome, Alexandria, and Antioch was accepted as an "ancient custom."
It seemed for a time as if two other sees would also develop into great patriarchates. These sees were Cæsarea in Cappadocia, and Ephesus. But their career was cut short, and their bishops never became more than Exarchs or, as we should now say, Primates, the Bishop of Ephesus over Asia (that is, the Roman province of Asia), the Bishop of Cæsarea over Pontus. Now here it is impossible not to recognize a conscious imitation of the Roman civil divisions. Diocletian (284-305) had divided the Empire very skilfully when he shared the government with Maximian and the two Cæsars, Constantius Chlorus and Galerius. There were four great Prefectures, Gaul (i.e., Spain, Gaul, Britain) under Constantius Chlorus, Italy (Italy and Africa) under Maximian, Illyricum (Dacia, Macedonia, Greece, Crete = nearly all the Balkan lands) under Galerius; lastly, the Prefecture of the East (Thrace, Asia Minor, Syria, Egypt) under Diocletian himself. Each of these prefectures was divided into civil "dioceses" under vicars (vicarii), the dioceses were divided into provinces under governors (præsides, Ἡγεμόνες). Undoubtedly this organization was a very convenient one for the Church to adopt; the dioceses formed compact and coherent divisions,
- ↑ Barda'ta is a rag in Syriac.
