Page:EB1911 - Volume 26.djvu/334

Rh and the Testament of Adam by M. Kmosko (Graffin's Patrologia Syriaca, vol. ii.).

Lives of saints and martyrs form a large group among Syriac books. Among such documents connected with the early history of Edessa we have, besides the Doctrine of Addai, certain martyrdoms, those of Sharbēl and Barsamyā assigned to the reign of Trajan, and those of Guryā and Shāmōnā and of the Deacon Habbibh under Diocletian and Licinius. All these documents, like Addai, belong probably to the 2nd half of the 4th century, and are quite unreliable in detail for the historian, though they may throw some light on the conditions of life at Edessa under Roman government. There are also accounts of martyrdoms at Samosāta (Assemani, Acta Mart. ii. 123-147), including that of St Azazail recently published by Macler (Paris, 1902). But the great bulk of the Syriac martyrdoms have their scene farther east, within the Persian dominions.

The life and writings of Bardaīṣan, “the last of the gnostics,” and in some sense the father of Syriac literature and especially of Syriac poetry, have been treated in a separate article. The Book of the Laws of the Countries, which embodies his teaching, was re-edited in 1907 by F. Nau (this also in the 2nd volume of Graffin's Patrologia).

An early Syriac document, probably of the 2nd or 3rd century, is the Letter of Mārā son of Serapion, which was edited by Cureton in his Spicilegium Syriacum. It is almost the only exception to the rule that all surviving Syriac literature is Christian. The author is in sympathy with Christianity, but is himself an adherent of the stoic philosophy. His home appears to have been at Samosāta.

By the beginning of the 4th century much progress had been made with the organization of the Christian church not only within the Roman district of Mesopotamia, but also to the east and south-east within the Sasanian Empire, round such centres as Seleucia-Ctesiphon on the Tigris (near Baghdad), Karkā dĕ-Bēth Sĕlōkh (modern Kerkuk) and Bēth Lāpāt or Gundēshābhōr (in the modern province of Luristan). The adoption of Christianity by Constantine as the official religion of the Roman Empire had an unfortunate effect on the position of the Christians in Persia. They were naturally suspected of sympathizing with the Roman enemies rather than with their own Persian rulers. Accordingly when Sapor II. (310-379) declared war on Rome about 337, there ensued almost immediately a somewhat violent persecution of the Persian Christians, which continued in varying degrees for about 40 years. One result of this and later persecutions of the same kind has been to enrich Syriac literature with a long series of Acts of Persian Martyrs, which, although in their existing form intermixed with much legendary matter, nevertheless throw valuable light on the history and geography of western Persia under Sasanian rule. One of the earlier martyrs was Simeon bar Sabbā’ē, bishop (? catholicus) of Seleucia from about 326 to 341 in succession to Papa, who in the face of opposition from other bishops had organized the church of Persia under the primacy of Seleucia. The Martyrdom of Simeon exists in two recension's which have been separately edited by M. Kmosko. Another early martyr was Millēs, bishop of Susa, who had distinguished himself in the opposition to Papa.

The two most important 4th-century writers— and —are dealt with in separate articles. The importance of the former lies in the simple cast of his religious thought, his independence of theological formulas, his constant adherence to the letter of Scripture, his quaint exegesis, and the light he throws on the circumstances of his time, especially (1) the feeling between Jews and Christians, and (2) the position and sympathies of the Christian subjects of Sapor II. The position and character of Ephraim are very different. He is the typical exponent in Syriac of unbending Catholic orthodoxy. He impressed his countrymen more than any other single writer, partly no doubt by his enormous fecundity in writing, but more by the stern piety and uncompromising dogmatism which pervade his works.

In the 2nd half of the 4th century lived the monk Gregory, who wrote a treatise on the monastic life. He spent part of his life in Cyprus, and was a friend of Epiphanius, bishop of Salamis. To the information given by Assemani (B.O. i. 170 seq.) we can now add the statements of Īshō-dĕnaḥ that he was a Persian by birth, and after being a merchant was led by a series of visions to take monastic vows. After a training at Edessa, he lived for a long time at Mt Īzlā in Mesopotamia, whence he proceeded to Cyprus, but returned to Mt Īzlā shortly before his death. His book on the monastic life mentioned by ‘Abhdīshō’ is not known to survive; but some discourses and a letter of his are still extant.

Before leaving the 4th century we may mention two other writers who probably both lived on into the 5th—Balai and Cyrillōnā. The former was the author of a good many poems; the longest—which is however by some attributed to Ephraim —is the work in 12 books on the history of Joseph, of which a complete edition was published by Bedjan in 1901. Other poems of his were edited by Overbeck in S. Ephraemi Syri, &c., opera selecta, pp. 251-336; and these have since been supplemented by Zetterstéen's edition of a large number of his religious poems or metrical prayers (Beiträge zur Kenntniss der religiösen Dichtung Balais, Leipzig, 1902). His favourite metre was the pentasyllabic. Cyrillōnā composed a poem on the invasion of the Huns in 395, and is by some regarded as identical with Ephraim's nephew Abhsamyā, who in 403-404 “composed hymns and discourses on the invasion of the Roman empire by the Huns.”

The 5th century was a time of storm and conflict in the churches of Mesopotamia and Persia, as in other parts of the Christian world. The teaching of Apollinarius that in Christ the Divine Word took the place of the human rational soul, thus seeming to do away with his possession of a true humanity, had led to a reaction by Paul of Samosāta, Diodore of Tarsus, Theodore of Mopsuestia, and Nestorius of Constantinople. Though with some points of difference, they agreed in emphasizing the permanence of the two separate natures in Christ, united but not mingled or confused, and laid stress on the reality of our Lord's human experience. One question on which great contention arose was as to the propriety of applying to the Divine nature attributes which belonged to the human nature—e.g. birth from a human mother—and vice versa. Hence the great dispute about the application to the Virgin Mary of the epithet. It seems to have been the objection of Nestorius to the use of this expression which mainly led to his condemnation and deposition at the Council of Ephesus (431) under the influence of Cyril, when as patriarch of Constantinople (428-431) he had distinguished himself by his zeal for Nicene orthodoxy.

At Edessa the result of the conflict between the Nestorians and their opponents was long doubtful. When Rabbūlā, the fierce anti-Nestorian and friend of Cyril, died in 435, he was succeeded in the bishopric by Ibas, who as head of the famous “Persian