Page:Dictionary of Christian Biography and Literature (1911).djvu/557

 account of this Isaacus is also in Palladius (Dialog. Migne, xlvii. coll. 59, 60). He was head of 210 recluses. His charity and humility were famous. He built a hospital for the sick and for the numerous visitors to his community. Like Isaacus of Scetis, he was an adept in the Scriptures. Like him, too, after 30 years in the desert, he was driven forth c. 400 by the patriarch Theophilus, who had chosen a number of his disciples to be bishops. The Apophthegmata Patrum gives some stories about Isaac of the Cells. "The abbat Isaac said, In my youth I lived with abbat Cronius. Old and trembling as he was, he would never bid me do anything; he would rise by himself, and hand the water-cruse (τὸ βαυκάλιον) to me and the rest. And abbat Theodore of Phermè, with whom also I lived, would set out the table by himself and say, 'Brother, if thou wilt, come and eat.' I said, 'Father, I came to thee to profit: why dost not bid me do somewhat?' He answered never a word; but when the old men asked him the same thing, he broke out with, 'Am I Coenobiarch, that I should command him? If he like, what he sees me doing, he will himself do.' Thenceforward I forestalled the old man's purposes. And I had learned the lesson of doing in silence."

It appears that, after the persecution of Theophilus, Isaacus had returned to his desert. In the ''Apoph. Patr.'', Migne, t. lxv. 223, 239, there are other anecdotes concerning him (cf. Tillem. Mém. viii. 623–625).

(iii) Isaacus, called Thebaeus, an anchorite of the Thebaid, probably not identical with (ii), although Cronius, the master of the Cellia, at one time lived in the Thebaid (Vit. Patr. lib. vii. col. 1044, Migne, t. lxxiii.). Alardus Gazaeus, the Benedictine annotator of Cassianus, writes (Collat. 9 ad init.) that there were two chief anchorites named Isaac; one who lived in the Scetic desert, and another called Thebaeus, often mentioned in the Vitae Patrum and in Pratum Spirituale, c. 161.

Once Isaac ("de Thebaida," Vit. Patr. v.) had banished an offending brother from the congregation. When he would have entered his cell, an angel stood in the way. "God sends me to learn where you wish Him to bestow the solitary whom you have condemned." The abbat owned his fault and was forgiven, but was warned not to rob God of His prerogative by anticipating His judgments. Isaac Thebaeus used to say to the brethren, "Bring no children hither. Four churches in Scetis have been desolated, owing to children."

''Sources.—Apoph. Patr. col. 240, in Migne, lxv.; de Vit. Patr.'' lib. v. in Migne, lxxiii. (version of an unknown Greek author by Pelagius, c. 550), coll. 909, 918; ''de Vit. Patr.'' iii. col. 786 (prob. by Rufinus).

(iv) Isaacus, disciple of St. Apollos, probably lived at Cellia. He was accomplished in every good work. On his way to the church he would hold no converse with any, and after communion he would hurry back to his cell, without waiting for the cup of wine and the food (παξαμάτης) usually handed round among the brethren after service. "A lamp goes out, if one hold it long in the open air; and if I, kindled by the holy oblation, linger outside my cell, my mind grows dark" (Apoph. Patr. col. 241).

[C.J.B.]

Isaacus (29) Senior, mentioned in an anonymous Life of Ephraim the Syrian among the more distinguished disciples of Ephraim who were also Syriac writers. He is cited by Joannes Maro (Tract. ad Nest. et Eutych.), by Bar-hebraeus (Hist. Dynast. 91), and by many other Syriac and Arabic authors, most of whom, however, confuse him with Isaac presbyter of Antioch (Assemani, B. O. i. 165). Gennadius in his ''de Scriptor. Eccl. c. 26, says: "Isaac wrote, concerning the Three Persons of the Holy Trinity and the Incarnation of the Lord, a book of very dark disputation and involved discourse; proving that there are three Persons in the one Godhead, each possessing a proprium peculiar to himself. The proprium'' of the Father is that He is the origin of the others, yet Himself without origin; that of the Son is that, though begotten, He is not later than His begetter; that of the Holy Ghost is that It is neither made nor begotten, and yet is from another. Of the Incarnation he writes that two Natures abide in the one Person of the Son of God." This chapter precedes those about Marcarius and Evagrius Pontinus, who lived ante 400. It is hence inferred that Isaac flourished about the end of the 4th cent. (Cave, i. 415, places him c. 430 (?), but some put him a century earlier.)

The work of Isaac, not unfairly described by Gennadius, is entitled Libellus Fidei SS. Trinitatis et Incarnationis Domini. It is a brief treatise, and is printed in Migne, ''Patr. Gk.'' xxxiii. In a codex Pithoeanus, teste Sirmond, the title is Fides Isaacis (or Isacis) ex Judaeo. Hence Isaac Senior has been identified by Tillemont (viii. 409) with Isaac the converted Jew who calumniated pope Damasus. Assemani thinks that the silence of Gennadius and his epitomizer Honorius renders it doubtful that Isaac Senior, the author of the Libellus Fidei, was a Jew. Cf. also Galland. vii. Prol. p. xxv.; Ceillier, vi. 290; Mansi, iii. 504 ; Pagi, Crit. ad ann. 378, xx.

[C.J.B.]

Isaacus (31) Antiochenus, born at Amid (Diarbekir) in Mesopotamia, called "the Great" and "the Elder," a priest of Antioch in Syria, said to have visited Rome. His teacher was Zenobius the disciple of St. Ephraim, not (as Cave) Ephraim himself. The Chronicle of Edessa speaks of him as an archimandrite, without specifying his monastery, which was at Gabala in Phoenicia. He died c. 460. He is sometimes confused with Isaacus of Nineveh. Bar-hebraeus (Hist. Dynast. p. 91) unjustly brands him as a heretic and a renegade. He was author of numerous works in Syriac, of which the chief were polemics against the Nestorians and Eutychians, and of a long elegy on the overthrow of Antioch by the earthquake of 459. He also wrote a poem on the Ludi Seculares, held by Honorius in his sixth consulship ( 404), and another on the sack of Rome by Alaric ( 410). Jacobus of Edessa reckons him among the best writers of Syriac. His poems are extant in MSS. in the Vatican and other European libraries. Many of them are wrongly ascribed to St. Ephraim, and included amongst his works in the Roman edition. In