Page:Early Christianity in Arabia.djvu/140

128 he had to pass, whilst another bishop, probably created by Baradæus, hastened to Abyssinia, was received by the Auxumites, and the Melchite bishop, when he arrived, found his see already occupied, and the Christians of Ethiopia not inclined to change their opinions in his favour.

The bishops whom Baradæus had created were in the mean time carrying his doctrines towards the east and north. Achumedes, one of the most celebrated, converted many of the Persian Magi at Tacrit. Baradæus is recorded to have traversed in person the regions of Armenia and Mesopotamia, and in a general massacre of the Christians of Tacrit, by orders of Khosroës Parvis, he escaped only by assuming the costume of a Persian sage. His death in 578, after having been bishop of Edessa seven and thirty years, was no less a subject of exultation to his enemies than the miserable end of the empress Theodora. Whilst Baradæus was