Page:Catholic Encyclopedia, volume 8.djvu/539

 JOHN

471

JOHN

ings. Hence his beloved titles of "Teacher of the Heathens", and "Idol-breaker". Soon after Jus- tinian's death (565), John's fortunes began to de- cline. When the persecution broke out in 571 he was one of its very first victims, and had to suffer im- prisonment, banishment, and all sorts of vexations at the hands of the orthodo.x patriarchs. He soon resigned, in favour of Deuterius, his position as head of the communities he had converted from heathen- ism, and consecrated Deuterius Bishop of Caria. We do not know where nor exactly when he died; it must have been shortly after 585, for his history comes to an end with that year, and he was then about eighty years of age.

His principal work was an "Ecclesiastical His- tory ", from Juhus Ca>sar to a.d. 5S5. It was divided into three parts of six books each. The first part has entirely perished; of the second part we have copious excerpts in two manuscripts in the British Museum, and possibly the whole of it in the third part of the " Chronicle " of Denys of Tell-Mahre. These excerpts have been edited bv Land (Anecdota Syriaca; Leyden, 1S6S, II, 2S9-329, 385-390), and translated into Latin by von Douwen and Land ' (Joannis Episcopi Ephesi, SjtI Monophysita; Com- mentarii de Beatis Orientahbus et Historise Eccle- siasticte fragmenta, Amsterdam, 1SS9). The third part, which opens with the beginning of the perse- cution under Justin II (571), has come down to us, though not without some important gaps. There is an edition of it by Cureton (The Third Part of the Ecclesiastical History of John, Bishop of Ephesus, O.xford, 1853), also two translations, one English by Payne Smith (1860), and another in German by Schonfelder (1862). John of Ephesus is also the author of the " Biograplnes of the Eastern Saints ", written at different times and gathered into a "cor- pus" about 569. They were published by Land (op. et loc. cit., pp. 2-2SS), and done into Latin by von Douwen and Land (ibid.). Both works are of the greatest importance for the history of the writer's times. He evidently strove to be impartial, for which he is very much to be commended, considering the part he played in the events he related; he is also accurate and full of details. The troubled times in which he wrote the third part of the " History " and his unsettled condition during that period of his life easily explain the disorder and repetitions to be found in the last six books. They account also for the style, which is rude, entangled, and abounds with Greek words and phrases; besides, we must not overlook the fact that the WTiter spent most of his hfe outside the zone of spoken S-yTiac.

AasEMANl. Bibl. orient. Vatic. (Rome, 1721), II, 83-90; Duchesne, Mernoire lu h V Academic des Inscriptions et Belles- Lettres (Paris. 25 Oct., 1892); Nau, Analyse des Parties inc- dites de la chronique attribute a Denys de Tell-Mahre (Paris, 1898), reprint from Supplement trimestriel de VOrient Chretien (Paris. .\r)ril, 1897); Idem, Antilysede la Seconde partie inedite de I'histoire errUsiastique de Jean d'Asie in Revue de VOrient Chretien, II (Paris, 1897), 455-493; Land, Johannes Bischof von Ephf^'is (Leyden, 1856); Duval, Litterature Syriaquc (Paris, 19(17). 1S1-1S4, 362-363; Wright. A Short History of Syriuc Lilmiture (London, 1894), 102-107; Schonfelder in Kirchenlex.t s. v. Jofiannes von Ephesus.

H. HWERNAT.

John of Falkenberg, author, b. at Falkenberg, Pomerania, Prussia, date imknown; d. about 1418 in Italy — or, according to other accounts, in his native town. Of his early life little is known, save that he entered the Order of St. Dominic and spent his no- vitiate in the convent at Kammin, a town of the above- named province. The fact that he was a master in Sacred Theology indicates that for a number of years he tavight philosophy and theology in his order. His prominence in medieval history is due partly to the share he took in the great papal schism which wrought such confusion in the Church during the first part of the fifteenth century, but chiefly to his involving him-

self in the long-standing troubles between the Teu- tonic Order of Knights of Livonia and the King of Poland. In opposition to the general of his order, Bernard de Datis, and to many of the brethren of his province who were firm adherents of the anti-popes Alexander V and John XXIII, he was a strong and ardent adherent of Gregory XII, the legitimate pope; and, being of a quick and passionate temperament, he carried his opposition so far as to refuse publicly in the Council of Constance to acknowledge Bernard as his superior. In the protracted and disastrous conflict between the Teutonic Order of Knights and Prussia on the one side and King Wladislaw of Poland and Duke Withold of Lithuania on the other, his .sympa- thies for the former found expression in a book in which he undertook to show that the King of Poland and his adherents were idolators and unbelievers and that the opposition against them was noble and praise- worthy. In this violent work he maintained the prin- ciples of the licitness of tyrannicide, advocated by the Franciscan, Jean Petit: that it was lawful to kill the King of Poland and his associates (Mansi, "Cone", XXXTL 765). A little later he wrote "TrestractatuH" (given as appendix to the works of Cierson in the edition of Dupin, V, 1013-32) in justification of liis position and against Gerson, d'Ailly, and other doctors of the University of Paris, who had condemned the works of Jean Petit. In this work, moreover, he denied the bishops the right to declare his book or any part of it heretical, claiming that in matters of faith the pope and general councils alone are infallible. By order of Nicolaus, Archbishop of Gnesen, Falkenberg was thrown into prison. The committee appointed to ex- amine the work recommended that it be burned. A similar verdict was given by a chapter of his order assembled at Strasburg from 30 May to 6 June, 1417, which besides condemned the author to life imprison- ment. The Poles earnestly demanded the condemna- tion of Falkenberg by the council, but in vain. When finally in the forty-fifth (last) session they attempted to force Martin V to give a definitive sentence, he im- posed silence on their representatives and declared tliat in matters of faith and in this particular matter he would approve only what had been decided by the general council coticiliariter. On his return to Rome, Martin V took Falkenberg with him and kept him for several years in close confinement. Whether he event- ually regained his liberty or died there is uncertain.

QuETiF AND EcHARD,Srrip(. Ord . Freed.. I, 760; Allgem. Deut. Biogr., VI, 5o4-o; Schulte, Gesch. Canon. Rechts, II (1877), 3S1-2; Hurler. Die Konstamer Reformation (Leipzig, 1867), 263; Dlugoss, Hisi. Polonia. I (Leipzig, 1711). 2, 376.

Joseph Schroedeh.

John of Fecamp (also known as Jeannelin on account of his diminutive stature), ascetic w'riter, b. near Ravenna about the beginning of the eleventh century; d. at Fecamp, Normandy, 22 February, 1079. He studied at Dijon under his compatriot William, Abbot of St. Benignus, whom he had ac- companied to France. Lender this skilled master John acquired an extensive acquaintance with all the sciences, making a special study of medicine, of which he is reckoned by Bernier among the cleverest exponents trained in the monastic schools of the Middle Ages. When William was commissioned to reform the Abbey of Fecamp and to establish there a colony of Benedictine monks, John again accom- panied him, and discharged under him the office of prior until 1028. In this year, worn out by his labours in the ser\-ice of the Church, and seeking a more tranquil refuge for his old age, William ap- pointed John his successor as abbot and retired to Italy. Taking his master for his model, John suc- ceeded in winning an almost equal renown, and, if his authority was occasionally exercised with an approach to despotism, he succeeded at least in defentling the privileges of his house against every