Page:The Greek and Eastern churches.djvu/527

Rh moved from their posts and punished with exile and imprisonment. The consequence was that over a very wide area where the Monophysite doctrine prevailed, the people were deprived of any ministry according to their own views, and therefore left, as Gibbon sneeringly remarks, to the choice of being "famished or poisoned." Then Harith the Magnificent, a sheikh of the Christian Arabs, brought the case of these unhappy people before their patroness Theodora, and so induced her to drag Jacob out of his cell and persuade him to return to Eastern Syria for the help of his fellow-religionists.

Jacob was now launched on a perilous and exacting undertaking; for his mission was to be followed out in defiance of the emperor's orders, and it demanded immense energy as well as heroic courage. The brave man rose to the occasion. He changed his manner of life. From being a shrinking recluse and letting the years glide by unmarked in the even course of the monastic life, he suddenly plunged into a sea of affairs, and undertook long journeys sometimes on foot, at other times on a fleet dromedary lent him by the sheikh. He traversed Asia Minor, Syria, and Mesopotamia, as far as Persia. Wherever he went he ordained bishops and priests, exhorted the people to fidelity to their creed, and encouraged them amid persecutions and disappointments. His enthusiasm was infectious, and his indefatigable labours were rewarded with brilliant success. Jacob was credited with having ordained a fabulous number of clergy. Thus the fire which Justinian thought he had stamped out had burst into flame again. The orthodox bishops were enraged. The emperor was indignant. He would have seized the obnoxious disturber of his happy settlement if only he could have done so. Orders were issued for the arrest of Jacob; rewards were offered to any who could catch him. It was all in vain. Jacob seemed to be ubiquitous. He had friends among the Arabs who hid him whenever danger