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Barsumas, bishop of Nisibis

ANTIOCHIA MYGDONIA (Ancient city) MESSOPOTAMIA
Barsumas or Barsaumas, bishop of Nisibis (435-485 A. D.), was one of the most eminent leaders of the Nestorians. His efforts gained for Nestorianism in Persia numerous adherents, and the patronage of the king, Pherozes, who, at the instigation of Barsumas, expelled from his kingdom the opponents of the Nestorians, and allowed the latter to erect Seleuceia and Ctesiphon into a patriarchal see. He was the author of some polemical works, which are lost. He must not be confounded with Barsumas, an abbot, who was condemned for Eutychianism by the council of Chalcedon, and afterwards spread the tenets of Eutyches through Syria and Armenia, about A. D. 460.

This text is from: A dictionary of Greek and Roman biography and mythology, 1873 (ed. William Smith). Cited Sep 2005 from The Perseus Project URL below, which contains interesting hyperlinks

Archelaus

CARRHAE (Ancient city) MESSOPOTAMIA
Archelaus, bishop of CARRHA in Mesopotamia, A. D. 278, lield a public dispute with the heretic Manes, an account of which he published in Syriac. The work was soon translated both into Greek and into Latin. (Socrates, II. E. i. 22; Hieron. de Vir. Illustr. 72.) A large fragment of the Latin version was published by Valesins. in his edition of Socrates and Sozomen. The same version, almost entire, was again printed, with the fragments of the Greek version, by Zaccaignius, in his Collcet. Monument. Vet., Rom. 1698, and by Fabricius in his edition of Hippolytus.

The Prophet Malachi

BABYLON (Ancient city) MESSOPOTAMIA

St. Ephrem the Syrian

ANTIOCHIA MYGDONIA (Ancient city) MESSOPOTAMIA
b: ? d: 373? feastday: June 9

Ephraem or Ephraim, a Syrian, born at Nisibis, flourished A. D. 370. He spent his youth in diligent study, and devoted himself at first to a monastic life, but afterwards went to Edessa, where he was ordained deacon. He refused to proceed to the higher orders of the ministry, and is even said to have played the part of Brutus, by feigning madness in order to avoid elevation to the bishopric. He formed a close friendship with Basil, bishop of Caesareia, and shared his acrimony against the Arians and other heretics, whom he attacks with the violence characteristic of his age. He appeared in a truly Christian light at the time of a famine at Edessa, when he not only assisted the suffering poor with the greatest energy and most zealous kindness, but also actively exerted himself in urging the rich to deny themselves for their brethren's good. Sozomen (iii. 15) speaks with admiration of the manner in which Christianity had subdued in him a naturally irascible temper, and illustrates it by a pleasing anecdote, amusing from its quaint simplicity. At the conclusion of a long fast, Ephraem's servant let fall the dish in which he was bringing him some food. His alarm at having thus spoiled his master's dinner was removed by hearing him say, " Never mind, since the food has not come to us, we will go to it." Whereupon Ephraem sat down on the floor and ate the scraps left in the fragments of the broken dish. He died about A. D. 378, and in his last illness forbad the recitation of any funeral oration over his remains, and desired that his obsequies should be conducted in the simplest manner. He knew no language but his native Syrian, though nearly all his works are translated into Greek, and were formerly held in such high esteem, that portions of them were sometimes read in churches after the gospel for the day. Most of his writings were collected by Gerard Voss, who turned them into Latin, and published them (1) at Rome A. D. 1589-93-97, (2) at Cologne in 1603, (3) at Antwerp in 1619. Voss's edition is in three volumes. The first consists of various treatises, partly on subjects solely theological, as the Priesthood, Prayer, Fasting, &c., with others partly theological and partly moral, as Truth, Anger, Obedience, Envy. The second contains many epistles and addresses to monks, and a collection of apophthegms. The third consists of several treatises or homilies on parts of Scripture and characters in the Old Testament, as Elijah, Daniel, the Three Children, Joseph, Noah. Photius gives a list of 49 homilies of Ephraem (Cod. 196), but which of these are included in Voss's edition it is impossible to ascertain, though it is certain that many are not. Another edition of Ephraem's works in Syriac, Greek, and Latin, was published also at Rome with notes, prefaces, and various readings, " studio Sim. Assemanni, P. Benedicti et Steph. Evodii Assemanni," 6 vols. fol. 1732-46. The Greek version of several of his writings, from eighteen MSS. in the Bodleian library, wass published by Edw. Thwaites at Oxford, 1709. There have been several editions of separate works.
  Ephraem is also said to be the author of an immense number of songs. He began to write them in opposition to Harmonius, the son and disciple ot Bardesanes the heretic, who composed poetry involving many serious errors of doctrine, some of which were not only of an heretical but even of an heathen character, denying the resurrection of the body, and containing views about the nature of the soul extracted from the writings of pagan philosophers. These songs had become great favourites among the common people, and Ephraem, to oppose their evil tendency, wrote other songs in similar metres and adapted to the same music of a pious and Christian character. (Sozomen, l. c. ; Theodoret, iv. 27; Cave, Script. Eccl. Hist. Liter. part 1. sec. 4; C. Lengerke, Commentalio Critica de Ephraemo Syrio SS interprete, qua simul Versionis Syriacae, quam Peschito vocant, Lectiones variae ex Ephraemo Commentariis collectae, exhibentur, Halle, 1828, and De Ephraemi Syri arle hermeneutica liber, 1831.)

This text is from: A dictionary of Greek and Roman biography and mythology, 1873 (ed. William Smith). Cited Oct 2005 from The Perseus Project URL below, which contains interesting hyperlinks

St. Jacob the Great, of Nisibis

St. Jacob, of Nisibis, commonly designated Magnus, the Great (ho megas, Theodoret.), was born at Nisibis, or, as it is sometimes called, Antiocheia ad Mygdonium or Mygdonica, an important town of the Eastern Empire in Mesopotamia on the frontier toward Persia. The time of his birth is not ascer tained; it was probably in the latter half of the third century. He embraced a life of solitude and asceticism, living on the mountains, sleeping in thickets and under the open sky in spring, summer, and autumn, and seeking the shelter of a cave during the rigour of the winter. Theodoret ascribes to him the gift of prophecy and other mis raculous powers. After a journey into Persia, apparently to promote the spread of Christianity there, and to encourage its professors, he returned to the neighbourhood of Nisibis, of which he was afterwards made bishop. On this appointment he left his solitude for the city, but continued his hard fare and coarse clothing. He was the friend and benefactor of the poor, the guardian of widows and orphans, and the protector of the injured. The famous Ephraem, when expelled from home by his father, an idolatrous priest, because he refused to participate in his idolatrous practices, found a refuge with Jacobus. The Menaea of the Greeks ascribe to him the conversion of many idolators. If this statement has any foundation in fact, it may possibly have reference to his journey into Persia already mentioned. According to Gennadius, he was one of the sufferers in the great persecution under the successors of Diocletian. Jacobus attended the council of Nice, A. D. 325, and distinguished him-self as one of the champions of the Consubstantial party. Some (e. g. Fabricius) have affirmed that he took part as an author in the Arian controversy, founding their assertion on a passage of Athanasius. But what Athanasius says is, that the writings of the heretics were apparently so orthodox, that if they had been written by such men as "Jacobus and the rest from Mesopotamia", there would be no ground for reading them with suspicion -a statement which by no means asserts that he wrote any thing on the question. The name of Jacobus appears among those subscribed to the decrees of the council of Antioch, A. D. 341 (Labbe, vol. ii.); but there are several difficulties connected with the history of this council.
  The most remarkable incident in the life of Jacobus was the siege of Nisibis by the Persians under their king, Sapor II. The siege was vigorously pressed, but the defence was equally well conducted, the brave citizens being animated by the exhortations of their bishop. At length the crisis of their fate seemed to be at hand, when Jacobus, at the entreaty of his disciple Ephraem and others, ascended the walls and prayed for the deliverance of the city. A swarm of gnats or mosquitoes and other insects, which just afterwards attacked the besiegers, made their horses restive, and otherwise produced such annoyance as, with other things, to compel them to raise the siege, was considered as an answer to this prayer. The citizens regarded Jacobus as their deliverer; and when he died, apparently soon after, he was buried in the city. The time of the siege is disputed: Nisibis was twice vainly attacked by Sapor, A. D. 338 and 350. The author of the Chronicon Edessenum given by Assemani (Biblioth. Orient. vol. i. p. 387, &c.), and Dionysius, patriarch of the Jacobites, in his Syriac Chronicle, quoted in the same work, place his death in A. D. 338, which would determine the first of the two sieges to be the one at which he signalised himself; but we have seen that he was probably at the council of Antioch in A. D. 341; and there is reason to believe, with Tillemont, that the second siege is the one referred to, and that the Syrians have antedated the death of Jacobus. The character of Jacobus, as drawn by Theodoret, is very amiable. The miracles ascribed to him, even when punitive, are described as dictated or tempered by mercy, except perhaps in the case of the celebrated Arius, whose opportune death is ascribed by the author of a spurious passage in Theodoret to the prayer of Jacobus that God would preserve the church from the calamity (so it was considered) of that reputed heretic's restoration.
  Whether Jacobus wrote any thing is much disputed. Jerome, who mentions him in his Chronicon, does not notice him in his book De Viris Illustribus; and Theodoret, from whom we obtain the amplest detail of his life, does not speak of his writings. Ebed-Jesu, in his account of the Syriac ecclesiastical writers, is also silent respecting him. On the other hand, Gennadius (De Viris Illustribus) ascribes to him a work in twenty-six parts, or perhaps twenty-six distinct works, of most of which he gives the titles. They were in Syriac, according to him. Among them was a Chronicon, which Gennadius describes as less curiously minute than those of the Greeks, but more accurate and trustworthy, as resting on the Scriptures. Gennadius accounts for Jerome's silence respecting Jacobus by supposing that Jerome, when he wrote his De Viris Illustribus, was ignorant of Syriac, and that the works of Jacobus had "not yet" (necdum) been translated; an expression which seems to imply that when Gennadius wrote they had been translated. Assemani supposes that Gennadius has ascribed to Jacobus of Nisibis the works of another Syrian of the same name, and perhaps of some others. Several Syriac and one Arabic manuscript, chiefly of homilies, by a writer or writers vaguely described as "Mar. Jacobus", "Sanctus Jacobus", "Jacobus Syrus", are enumerated in the Catalogus MStorum Angliae et Hiberniae. In some of these MSS. the writings are mingled with those of Ephraem, who was, as we have seen, the protege and pupil of Jacobus of Nisibis; but whether the writer may be correctly identified with James of Nisibis is not clear. A volume published at Rome 1756, is mentioned by Harles under the title of S. Jacobi Episcopi Nisibeni Sermones, Armenice et Latine cum Praefatione, Notis, et Dissertatione de Ascetis. Omnia nunc primum in lucem prodierunt. The works comprehend a series of discourses addressed by Jacobus to Gregorius Illuminator, or Gregory the Apostle of Armenia, and a Synodical Letter. The genuineness of the Discourses is strenuously contended for by Antonelli, their editor, and by Galland, who has inserted them and the Letter, both the Armenian text and the Latin version, in the fifth volume of his Bibliotheca Patrum; and it is remarkable that Assemani, who had been informed that the works were extant in MS. in the library of the Armenian convent of St. Antony at Venice, retracts, in the Addenda et Corrigenda to the first volume of his Bibliotheca Orientalis, the opinion he had expressed in the body of his work, that James was not an author at all, and that Gennadius had confounded Jacobus of Nisibis with Jacobus of Sarug; and admits the genuineness both of the Discourses and the Synodical Letter; going in this beyond Antonelli and Galland, who doubt the genuineness of the Letter. The subjects of the Discourses agree to a considerable extent, but not wholly, with the list given by Gennadius. The difficulty arising from their being extant in the Armenian and not in the Syriac language, which was the vernacular tongue of the writer, and in which Gennadius says they were written, is met by the supposition that, as being addressed to an Armenian prelate, they were written in the Armenian tongue; or that being written in Syriac, but sent immediately into Armenia, they were at once translated, and the original neglected and lost. Their not being extant in any other language is thought to account for their being unknown to, and unnoticed by, Jerome, Theodoret, and Photius.
  Jacobus is commemorated in the Martyrologium of the Romish Church on the 15th July; in the Menologium of the Greeks on the 31st Oct.; in the Synaxarium of the Maronites on the 13th January, and in that of the Coptic Church on the 18th of the month Tybi. The Syrians still profess to point out at Nisibis the original burial-place where he was laid.
(Hieronym. Chron.; Athanas. l. c.; Gennad. l. c.; Philostorg. H. E. iii. 23; Theodoret. H. E. i. 7; ii. 26.; Philotheus. Historia Religiosa, c. 1; Theodorus Lector, H. E. i. 10; Theophanes, Chrong.; Niceph. Callisti, HE. ix. 28, xv. 22; Labbe, Concilia, II. cc.; Cave, Hist. Litt. vol. i.; Oudin, De Scriptor. Eccles. vol. i. col. 321, 322; Tillemont, Memoires, vol. vii.; Fabric. Bibl. Graec vol. ix.; Bollandus, Acla Sanctorm Julii, vol. iv; Assemani, Biblioth. Oriental. vol. i.)

This text is from: A dictionary of Greek and Roman biography and mythology, 1873 (ed. William Smith). Cited Jan 2006 from The Perseus Project URL below, which contains interesting hyperlinks

St. Ananias

ASSYRIA (Ancient country) PERSIAN GULF
d. date unknown, feastday: December 1

St. Polychronius, bishop of Babylon

BABYLON (Ancient city) MESSOPOTAMIA
d. unknown, feastday: February 17

St. Athenodorus

MESSOPOTAMIA (Ancient area) PERSIAN GULF
d.c. 304, feastday: November 11

Martyrs of Mesopotamia

d.c. 307, feastday: May 23