Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 22.djvu/871

 GTH CENT.] SYRIA LITERATURE 835 historian at-Tabarl, who treats it as a genuine historical document. 1 From him it has passed to the Kamil of Ibn al-Athir, i. 283 sq. , and the Akhbar al-Bashar of Abu '1-Fida (Hint. Anteislamica, ed. Fleischer, p. 84). Ibn ulih al-Ya'kiibi seems in his Annals 2 to have drawn from the same source, though independently of at- Tabari, and so also al-Mas'iidl, Mwruj adh-Dhahab, ii. 323. Bar- llebrams lias also made some use of it in his Chronicon, ed. Brims and Kirsch, pp. 68-69. No doubt, too, it is the work attributed by 'Abhd-ishS' to the grave ecclesiastical historian Socrates, who, as he says, 3 wrote "a history of the emperors Constantino and Jovinian." Another, but much inferior, romance, of which Julian is the hero, is contained in Brit. Mus. Add. 7192, a manuscript of the 7th cen- tury. It has been edited by Hoffmann, op. cit., pp. 242-259, and translated by Noldeke, Z.D.M.G., xxviii. 660-674. We shall not be far wrong in assigning it likewise to the 6th century, though it is probably rather later than that just noticed. Of real historical value, on the contrary, is the anonymous - Chronicon Edcsscnum, fortunately preserved to us in the Vatican MS. clxiii., 4 and edited by Assemani in B.O., i. 388-417. There is an English translation of it in the Journ. of Sacred Lit., 1864, vol. v. (new ser. ), p. 28 sq. It begins with A.Gr. 180, but the entries are very sparse till we reach A.Gr. 513 (202 A.D.). The last of them refers to the year 540, about which time the little book must have been compiled. The author made use of the archives of Edessa and other documents now lost to us, as well as of the Chronicle of Joshua the Stylite (see above, p. 832). In religious matters he is not a violent partisan, nor given to the use of harsh words, a thing to be noted in the age in which he lived. John of Another writer of first-rate importance as a historian is John, Asia or bishop of Asia or Ephesus, "the teacher of the heathen," "the Ephesus. overseer of the heathen," and "the idol-breaker," as he loves to style himself. 5 He was a native of Amid, 6 and must have been born early in the 6th century, according to Land about 505. He was ordained deacon in the convent of St John in 529, when he must have been at least twenty years of age. 7 In 534 the terrible pestilence of the reign of Justinian broke out, and_at that time John was in Palestine, 8 having, doubtless, fled from Amid to avoid the persecution of_the Monophysites by Abraham bar Kill (?) of Telia, bishop of Amid (from about 520 to 546), and Ephraim bar Appian of Amid, patriarch of Antioch (529-544), "a much worse persecutor than Paul or Euphrasius." 9 In 535 we find him at Constantinople, where in the following year, according to Bar- Hebraeus, 10 he became bishop of the Monophysites in succession to the deposed Anthimus. Be this as it may, he was certainly re- ceived with great favour by Justinian, whose friendship and con- fidence he enjoyed for thirty years, and "had the administration of the entire revenues of all the congregations of the believers (i.e., the Monophysites) in Constantinople and everywhere else." 11 Wishing to root out heathenism in Asia Minor, obviously for political as well as religious reasons, the emperor appointed John to be his missionary bishop. 12 In this task he had great success, to which his faithful friend and fellow-labourer for thirty-five years, Deuterius, largely contributed. 13 He interested himself, too, in the missionary efforts of Julian, Theodore, and Longinus among the Nubians and Alodaii. 14 In 546 the emperor employed him in search- ing out and putting down the secret practice of idolatry in Constan- tinople and its neighbourhood. 15 After the death of his patron the fortunes of John soon underwent a change. Bk. i. of the third part of his History commences with the persecution under Justin in 571, in which he suffered imprisonment. 1S His friend Deuterius, whom he had made bishop of Caria, was also persecuted, and died at Constantinople. 17 From this time forward John's story is that of his party, and the evidently confused and disordered state of his History is fully explained and excused by his own words in bk. ii. 50, where he tells us 18 "that most of these histories were written at the very time when the persecution was going on, and under the difficulties caused by its pressure ; and it was even necessary that friends should remove the leaves on which these chapters were in- scribed, and every other particle of writing, and conceal them in various places, where they sometimes remained for two or three 1 At-Tabari, Annales, i. 840 sq.; see Noldeke, in Z.D.M.G., xxviii. 291-292, and Geschichte der Perser und Araber zur Zeit der Sasaniden, p. 59 sq. 2 Ed. Iloutsma, i. 182-183. 3 B.O., iii. 1, 41. 4 See Catal, iii. 329. 5 See Ecdcs. Hist., ed. Cureton, bk. ii. ch. 4 and bk. iii. oh. 36 ; Land, Anted, Syr., ii. 256, 1. 25. 6 B.O., ii. 83 ; Bar-Hebraeus, Chron. Ecdes., i. 195. 7 B.O., ii., Dissert, de Monophysitis, p. cxxv.; Land, Anecd. Syr., 174, 11. 8, 9. 8 B.O., ii. 85-Sn. 9 E.H., ed. Cureton, bk. i. ch. xli.; comp. K.O., ii. 51. M Chron. Ecdes., i. 195. n E.H., ed. Cureton, bk. v. ch. 1. 12 Ibid., bk. ii. ch. 44 ; bk. iii. ch. 36, 37 ; comp. B.O., ii. 85. 13 E.H., ed. Cureton, bk. ii. ch. 44. 1-1 Ibid., bk. iv. ch. 6-8, 49-53 ; comp. Bar-Hebrseus, Chron. Ecdes., i. 229. How just his views were as a missionary may be seen from bk. iv. ch. 50, where he says " that it was not right that to an erring and heathen people, who asked to be converted to Christianity and to learn the fear of God, there should be sent by letter, before everything that was necessary for their edification, con- fusion and offence and the revilings of Christians against Christians." 15 B.O., ii. 85. 16 E.H., ed. Cureton, bk. i. ch. 17; bk. ii. ch. 4-7. Of unjust legal proceed, ings he complains in bk. ii. ch. 41, where he loses his TrpodffTfiov, &c. 17 E.H., ed. Cureton, bk. ii. ch. 44. is Payne Smith's translation, p. 163. years. "When therefore matters occurred which the writer wished to record, it was possible that he might have partly spoken of them before, but he had no papers or notes by which to read and know whether they had been described or not. If therefore he did not remember that he had recorded them, at some subsequent time he probably again proceeded to their detail ; and therefore occasionally the same subject is recorded in more chapters than one ; nor after- wards did he ever find a fitting time for plainly and clearly arrang- ing them in an orderly narrative." Some of the chapters are actu- ally dated at various times from A.Gr. 886 (575 A.D.) to 896 (585). The time and place of his death are unknown, but he cannot have lived long after 585, being then about eighty years of age. 19 His greatest literary work is his Ecclesiastical History in three parts, the first two of which, as he himself tells us, 20 embraced, in six books each, the period from Julius Csesar to the seventh year of Justin II., whilst the third, also in six books, carried on the tale to the end of the author's life. The first part is entirely lost. Of the second we have copious excerpts in the Chronicle of Dionysius of Tell-Mahre 21 and in twoMSS.in the British Museum.- The third has fortunately come down to us, though with considerable lacuna?, in Brit. Mus. Add. 14640 (of the 7th century). 23 This book is worthy of all praise for the fulness and accuracy of its information and the evident striving of the author after impartiality. The Syriac style, however, is very awkward and involved, and abounds in Greek words and phrases. Of scarcely less value for the history of his own time is another work entitled Biographies of Eastern Saints, men and women, contained in Brit. Mus. Add. 14647, If. 1-135. 24 These lives were gathered into one corpus about 569, as appears from the account of the combination of the monasteries of Amid during the persecution of 521, which was put on paper ill 567, 25 and from the history of the convent of St John, extending from its foundation in 389 to 568. " To these lives Land has added three more, which are ascribed in MSS. to John, but do not seem to have been included in this collection. 27 The name of Zacharias Rhetor or Scholasticus, bishop of Mitylene Zachar- in Lesbos, 28 must next be mentioned, for, though a Greek author, ias his work has entered into the Syriac literature as part of a compila- Rhetor, tion by a Syrian monk. The Ecclesiastical History of Zacharias seems to have terminated about the year 518, whereas his Syriac translator was writing as late as 569, - 9 and even later. The MS. in the British Museum, Add. 17202, 30 cannot be younger than the beginning of the 7th century, and is clearly the compilation of a Monophysite, who used Zacharias as his chief authority in books iii. -vi. ; whereas books i., ii., and vii. -xii. were gathered from differ- ent sources, such as Moses of Aggel (about 550-570), Simeon of Beth Arsham (see above, p. 832), Mara of Amid (see above, p. 833), the correspondence of Julian of Halicarnassus and Severus of Antioch (see above, p. 834), the history of John of Ephesus, 31 &c. In a Syriac MS. in the Vatican (Xo. cxlv.) 32 we find a series of extracts from this Syriac work (f. 78 sq.) as a continuation of copious ex- cerpts from the Greek histories of Socrates and Theodoret. The last of these, on the public buildings, statues, and other decorations of the city of Rome, has been carefully re-edited and annotated by Guidi. 33 We turn from the historians to the ascetic writers of this century, who seem to have been more prized by their countrymen, though far less valuable to us. And first we mention the author who is commonly called John Sabha 34 or "the Aged," placing him here on John the authority of Assemani (. 0., i. 433), for 'Abhd-isho' claims him Sabha. as a Nestorian (B.O., iii. 1, 103). His floruit is given as about 19 See Land, Joannes Bischof von Ephesos, der erste Syrische Kirchenhistoriker, 1856. A very useful book. 20 E.H., ed. Cureton, bk. i. ch. 3. 21 B.O., ii. 100 ; comp. pp. 85-90. 22 Add. 14647 (dated 688), ff. 136-139 ; Add. 14650 (dated 875), ff. 189-206. Edited by Land, Anecd. Syr., ii. 289-329 and 385-391. See also a small frag- ment, ibid., 363, from Add. 12154, f. 201b. 23 Edited by Cureton, 1853. There is an English translation by B. Payne Smith, 1SOO, and a German one by Schonfelder, 18C2. 24 Edited by Land, Anecd. Syr., ii. 1-288. 2* Anecd. Syr., ii. 212, 1. 17 ; see also p. 191, last two lines. 26 lUd., ii. 288, 11. 2, 3. 27 Ibid., ii. 343-36-2. That of Jacob Burde'ana (ibid., p. 364) is not his, at least in its present shape (see above, p. 833). There is a slightly different redaction of it in the Bibl. Nation, at Paris, Anc. fonds 144 (Zotenberg, Catal., p. 187). 28 See Land, Joannes Bischof von Ephesos, p. 35 sq., and Anecd. Syr., iii., Preface. 29 Land, Anecd. Syr., iii. pp. xi., xii., and p. 5, 1. 21 sq. 30 See Wright, Catal., p. 1046 sq. 31 Not a few chapters in books vii.-x. seem to be derived, in part at any rate, from the second part of the Ecclesiastical History. 32 Catal., iii. 253 ; B.O., ii. 54 sq.; Mai, Scriptorum Veterum Nova Collectio, r. pp xi.-xiv. 332-388. The MS., which Assemani calls " pervetustus, Syriacis literis stronghylis exaratus" (p. 253), is not likely to be earlier than the middle of the 8th century, as it contains a work of the patriarch Elias, who sat from 708 to 728. 33 Jl Testo Siriacn della Descrizione di Roma, &c., from the Bullettino aella Commissione Archeologica di. Roma, fasc. iv. anno 1884 (Rome, 1885). It is also extant in a shorter form in Brit. Mus. Add. 12154, f. 158a (see Wright, Catal., p. 984 ; Guidi, p. 235 tq.). 34 There is some uncertainty about his name. In B.O., i. 434, Assemani gives >9 OCTl r la*O, John of Dilaita, which, he says (p. 433), is a convent a't*Nineveh, on the opposite bank of the Tigris from Mosul. In vol. iii. 1, 103 he prints (Tll^-^'fy Otfl ^1**Q., which he renders Joannes