Page:The Greek and Eastern churches.djvu/534

508 Jacob holds much the same place as Jerome among the Latin Fathers. He was, for his time, a man of great culture and wide reading, being familiar with Greek and with older Syriac writers." His writings comprise commentaries, liturgical compositions, history, philosophy, grammar. Unfortunately Jacob's chronicle, which would have been of great value as a continuation of Eusebius down to his own time, has been lost. In his Syriac grammar he used a device he had invented, consisting of vowel signs to be written on a line with and between the consonants, after the European pattern of writing.

Thus far Syrian literature has chiefly flourished among the Jacobites, The seventh and eighth century saw more Nestorian writers—Babhai the elder, a prolific writer credited with the authorship of eighty-three or eighty-four works, including a commentary on the whole Bible; Isho-yabh of Gedhala, author of commentaries, histories, and homilies; Sahdona, who wrote two volumes on the monastic life; and many others, among the most famous of whom was Abraham the Lame, who wrote a book of exhortations, discourses on repentance, etc. In the ninth century the products of Syrian literature are more scarce, though some of them are historically important. One of the most valuable was Dionysius of Tell Mahre's great work, his Annals, while Thomas of Marga, whose acquaintance we have already made, belongs to this period. The eleventh century is meagrely represented by Syrian literature; but in the twelfth we reach the famous Jacobite writer, Dionysius Bar Salibi, created bishop of Mar'ash in 1145. He left commentaries on the Old and New Testaments, giving a material or literal, and a spiritual or mystical explanation of each book; a compendium of theology; and many other works. In the next century we come to the learned historian Bar Hebræus, who was born in the year 1226. During his youth he had studied Greek, Arabic, rhetoric, and medicine. In 1253 he became bishop of Aleppo; he died in the year 1286. His Ecclesiastical