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 MONOPHYSITES

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MONOPHYSITES

work was dedicated, was already dead. His recollec- tions of Peter the Iberian and of Theodore, Bishop of Antinoe, are lost, but his biography of Isaias, an Egyptian ascetic, is preserved in Syriac. A disputa- tion against the Manicha'ans, published by Cardinal Pitra in Greek, was probably written after the edict of Justinian against the Manichaeans in 527. He seems to have been still a layman. Up to the time he wrote the life of Severus he was a follower of the Henoticon; this was the easy course under Zeno and Anastasius. It would seem that he foimd it paid to revert to ortho- doxy imder .lustin and Justinian, for he was present as Bishop of Mitylene at the Council of Mennas at Con- stantinople in 536, where he was one of the three metropolitans who were sent to summon Anthimus to appear. His name does not appear in the incomplete printed list of subscriptions to that patriarch's deposi- tion, but Labbe testifies that it is found in some MSS. (Mansi, VIII, 975); it is ab.sent from the condemna- tion of Severus in a later session. Zacharias was dead before the oecumenical council of 553.

.\n important historical work in anecdotal form is the 'Plerophoria" of John of Maiuma, composed about 515; it contains stories of Monophysite worthies up to date, especially of Peter the Iberian, whose life was also written by Zacharias, but is now lost. A later life of Peter has been printed, which con- tains curious information about tlie Iberian princes from whom the Monophysite bishop descended. The life of the ascetic Isaias by Zacharias accompanies it.

The interesting "Historia Miscellanea", often re- ferred to as Pseudo-Zacharias, was composed in Syriac in twelve books by an unknown author who seems to have lived at Amida. Though the work was com- pleted in 589, he seems to have used part of the history of John of Ephcsus, which was finished only in 571. Certain parts were written earlier (or are borrowed from older writers), VII, xv before .523; X, xii in 545; XII, vii in 555; Xll, iv in 561. The first book con- tains a quantity of legendary matter from Greek sources which are still extant; a ievf words are added on the Syriac doctors Isaac and Dodo. Book II has the story of the Seven Sleepers. HLstory begins in II, ii, with an account of Eutyches, and the letter of Proclus to the Armenians follows. The next four books are an epitome of the lost work of Zacharias Rhetor. The seventh book continues the story from the accession of Anastasius (491), and together with general ecclesiastical history it combines some inter- esting details of wars with the Persians in Me,sopo- tamia. A curious chapter gives the Prologue of Moro, or Mara, Bishop of Amida (a Syriac writer whose works appear to be lost), to his edit ion of the four Gos- pels in Greek, to which the writer appends as a curios- ity the pericnpc of the woman taken in adult(!ry (John, viii) which Moro had inserted in the 89th canon; "it is not found in other MSS." Book VIII, iii, gives the letter of Simeon of Beit-.Vr.sham on the martyrs of Yemen, perhaps an apocryphal document. Book XI is lost, with most of X and XII. Some of X has been restored by Brooks from the "Chronicle" of Michael the Syrian (died 1 199). It is necessary to mention the "Chronicle of Edcssa", from 405 lo .''06, which is em- bedded in the "Chronicle" attribuled to .IuxIuki tin- Slylile (who seems to have been a Cat holic) ; this hitler is included in the second book of the "Chronicle'" at- tributed to the Patriarch of .\ntioch, DionyaiiiH of Tdl-Mahre, a compilation which has a fourth book (from the end of the sixth century to 775) which is an original work by the compiler, who was in reality a monk of Zoiikenin (north of Amida), po.s.sibly Joshua the Stylilc himself.

Some small <-lironicles of the sixth, seventh, eighth, and niulh (M-nturies have been published as "Chronica minora" in th(' "Corpus Script. Or." Of later histo- ries, those of liar Hehrosus (died 1286) must be noted. His "Chronicon Syriacum" is an abridgment of Mi-

chael with a continuation; the "Chronicon ecclesiasti- cum" contains the ecclesiastical history first of West- ern Syria and then of Eastern Syria, with lives of the patriarchs of Antioch, of the Jacobite missionary bishops (called maphrians) and of the Nestorian jjatri- archs. The "Chronicle" of Elias of Nisibis to 1008 is important because it mentions its sources, but it is very defective in the early period through the loss of some pages of the MS. Basil the Cilician and John of Jigca are counted as Monophysite writers by Ehrhard (in Krumbacher, p. 53), but Photius clearly makes them out Nestorians (cod. 41, 55, 107), and it is by a slip that he conjectures Basil to be the author of a work against Nestorius.

Syriac Wriiers. — Of the Syriac Monophysite writ- ers none is more important than Philoxenus, other- wise Xenaias, who was Bishop of Mabug (Hierapolis) from 485. For his life and the version of Scripture which was made by his order, see Philoxenus. His dogmatic writings alone concern us here. His letter to the Emperor Zeno, published by Vaschalde (1902) is of 485, the date of his episcopal consecration and of his acceptance of the Henoticon. His treatises on the Incarnation date perhaps before 500; to the same pc- riod belong two short works, "A Confession of Faith" and "Against every Nestorian". He wrote also on the Trinity. A letter to Marco, lector of Anazarbus, is attributed to 515-518. After he had been exiled by Justin to Philippolis in Thrace in 518, he attacked the orthodox patriarch, Paul of Antioch, in a letter to the monks of Teleda, and wrote another letter of which fragments are found in MS. Addit. 14533, in which he argues that it is sometimes wise to admit baptisms and ordinations by heretics for the sake of peace; the ques- tion of sacramental validity does not occur to him. Fragments of his commentaries on the Gospel are found in MSS. Thirteen homilies on religious life have been published by Budge. They scarcely touch upon dogma. Of his three liturgies two are given by Renaudot. Out of the great mass of his works in MS. at Rome, Paris, Oxford, Cambridge, London, only a fraction has been published. He was an eager con- troversialist, a scholar, and an accomplished writer. His Syriac style is much admired. His .sect had no more energetic leader until Jacob Barada>us himself. He was president of the synod which elevated Severus to the See of Antioch, and he had been the chief agent in the extrusion of Flavian. He was an energetic foe of Catholicism, and his works stand next in impor- tance to those of Severus as witnesses to the tenets of their party. He was exiled by Justin in 519 to Philip- poHs and then to Gangra, where he died of suffocation by smoke in the room in which he was confined.

James ofSarugh, 451-.521 (q. v.), became perioileutcs, or visitor, of Haura in that district about 505, and bishop of its capital, Batnan, in 519. Nearly all his numerous writings are metrical. We are (old that seventy amanuen.ses were employed to copy his 760 metrical homilies, which are in Wright's o])inion more readable than those of Ephraem or Isaac of Antioch. A good many have been publislied at various times. In the Vatican are 233 in M.'^S., in London 140, in Paris, KM). They arc much cited in (he Syriac Lit- urgy, and a liturgy and a baptisnial rite are ascribed to him. Niunercms letters of his are extant in Brit. Mus., MSS. Addit,. 14.587 and 17163. Though his feast is kept by Maronites and even by some Nesto- rians, there is no doubt that he accei)ted the Henoti- con, and wa.s afterw.ards in relation with the leading Mnnoi)hvsil<'S, rejecting (lie Cciuiiril of ( 'hiilredon to the end c')f his life. Sl,-pli,Ti liar .Soudaili was an Ede.s- sene Monophysite who fell iiilii Pantheism and Origen- ism. He was attacked by Philoxenus and James of Sarugh, and retired to Jerusalem. The confcs.sion of faith of John of Telia (4S3-.>{8; bishop, 519-521) is ex- tant, and so is his commentary on (he Trisagion, and his canons for the clergy and replies to the questions of