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DHAFAR (Town) YEMEN
Gregentius (Gregentios), archbishop of Tephar (Tephar, the Sapphar, Sapphar, of Ptolemy,
and the Saphar, Saphar, of Arrian), capital of the Homeritae, a nation of Arabia
Felix, the site of which is a little above 100 miles N.N.W. of Aden. The place
of his birth is not ascertained. In the Greek Menaea, in which he is called Grigentinos,
he is described as a native of Milan, and the son of Agapius and Theodota, inhabitants
of that city ; but in a Slavonic MS. of the Disputatio, mentioned below, he is
described as the son of Agapius and Theotecna, a married pair living in the little
town of " Lopliane, on the frontier of Avaria and Asia." He went to Alexandria,
where he embraced the life of an anchorite, and from whence he was sent by Asterius,
patriarch of Alexandria, to take charge of the church of the Homeritae, which
had been relieved by the Aethiopian Elesbaan, king of the Axumitae, from the depressed
condition to which it had been reduced by the persecution of Dunaan, king of the
Homeritae, a Jew. The reigning prince at the time of the mission of Gregentius,
was Abramius, whom Elesbaan had raised to the throne, and with whom, as well as
with his son and successor, Serdidus, Gregentius had great influence. Abramius
died A. D. 552, after a reign of thirty years, and Gregentius died year, and was
buried in the great church at Tephar.
A work is extant, entitled Tou en hagiois Patros nmon Gregentiou Archiepiskopou
genomenou Tephron dialechis meta Ioudaiou, Herban tounoma, S. Patris nostri Gregentii
Tephrensis Archiepiscopi Disputatio cum Herbano Judaeo. It was published with
a Latin version by Nie. Gulonius, 8vo. Paris, 1586, and again in 1603. It is given
in the first vol. of the Auctarium of Ducaeus, in the Bibliotheca Patrum, vol.
xi. ed. Paris. 1654; and in the Bibliotheca Patrum of Gallandius, vol. xi. fol.
Venice, 1765, &c. The Latin version alone appears in some other editions of the
Bibliotheca Patrum. The Disputatio, as it appears in these works, is considered
by Fabricius to be mutilated at the commencement ; and his opinion, which is disputed
by Gallandius, is corroborated by the greater completeness of a Slavonic MS. of
the work in the Royal Library at Berlin, of which one or two passages are given
in a Latin version in the last edition of Fabricius. In this Slavonic MS. the
archbishop is always called Gregory.
The work is by Pagi regarded as a fiction, and Gallandius significantly
leaves it to others to determine mine this point. Cave considers that "some parts
of it smack of the credulity of a later age ;" and, indeed, the contents of the
work render it likely that it is much interpolated, to say the least; nor is the
authorship determined of that portion (if any) which is genuine. Substantially
it may be regarded as the production of Gregentius himself, whose arguments, as
Barthius thinks, and as the work itself indicates, were taken down at the time
by Palladius of Alexandria, whom the archbishop, on his departure for Tephar,
had taken with him as his scholasticus. Lambecius ascribes the work to Nonnosus,
ambassador of the emperor Justinian to the Homeritae. According to this work,
the disputation of Gregentius with Herban took place at Tephar, in the presence
of the king, Abramis, many bishops, a number of Jews, and the whole population
of the city : it was terminated by the miraculous appearance of the Lord Jesus
Christ, and the infliction of miraculous blindness upon the Jews, who were, however,
restored to sight on their believing and being baptized. The king him self was
sponsor for Herban, to whom he gave the name of Leo, and whom he enrolled among
his councillors. The number of Jews converted and baptized in consequence of these
events is stated at 5,500,000 ! Gregentius persuaded Abramius to break up the
division of the Jewish converts into tribes, and to mingle them with other Christians,
and to order their children, under pain of death, not to marry with any of their
own nation, but with Gentile Christians only. By these means, "in course of time"
(toi chronoi, an expression showing that the passage is not by a contemporary),
the Jews were merged in the general of the country.
The code promulgated by Gregentius in the name of king Abramius, entitled
Nomothesia hos ek prosopon tou eusebestatou Basileos Abramiou, is extant in the
Imperial Library of Vienna. A copy of it is also mentioned as among the MSS. formerly
belonging to Abraham Seller in England. The offences denounced in this code are
arranged under twenty-three tituli or heads.
This text is from: A Dictionary of Greek and Roman Antiquities (1890) (eds. William Smith, LLD, William Wayte, G. E. Marindin). Cited Dec 2005 from The Perseus Project URL below, which contains interesting hyperlinks
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