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DISORDER AND REFORM 185 friend drew him towards Christianity; and he was accused of being an apostate by his fellow secretary, who discovered that he frequented the Christian services. On this he gave up his official career and sought baptism, intending to embrace the solitary life; but before doing so he went to the college at Nisibis, to spend some time in preliminary study. Here he distinguished himself, "learning 'David' in a few days"; but was not permitted to hide his talents as he had intended.

M'ana, Bishop of Arzun, realized the ability of the new proselyte, and insisted that it was his duty to teach others, thus persuading him to take for a while the post of teacher in the school which he had established in his own diocese. Thence Aba went on pilgrimage to Jerusalem, visiting Egypt, Greece and Constantinople, where he stayed for a year with a companion whom he had picked up at Edessa. Both employed themselves in teaching, and were apparently received to communion as a matter of course by the authorities of the Church at the capital, where Justinian had brought back Dyophysitism and the acceptance of the Council of Chalcedon. After his residence there he returned to the East, which he reached somewhere about the year 536, or perhaps rather before that date. Here the state of the Church after the years of duality shocked and horrified him, and he thought once more of fleeing from the world into a rabban's cell; but again he responded to the call of duty

1 Labourt suggests (p. 167) that the accession to power of the Monophysite Patriarch Anthimus (535) was the reason for Aba's departure. This is probable enough, though there is no evidence for it in the Biography, and I cannot identify the statement, attributed to Mari, that he was expelled for refusing to anathematize Theodore of Mopsuestia. In the see-saw of ecclesiastical politics at Constantinople a man might readily find himself orthodox one week and heretical the next.