Missionary Stories and the Formation of the Syriac Churches 9780520960589

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The publisher gratefully acknowledges the generous support of the Classical Literature Endowment Fund of the University of California Press Foundation, which was established by a major gift from Joan Palevsky.

Missionary Stories and the Formation of the Syriac Churches

TRANSFORMATION OF THE CLASSICAL HERITAGE Peter Brown, General Editor I. Art and Ceremony in Late Antiquity, by Sabine G. MacCormack II. Synesius of Cyrene: Philosopher-Bishop, by Jay Alan Bregman III. Theodosian Empresses: Women and Imperial Dominion in Late Antiquity, by Kenneth G. Holum IV. John Chrysostom and the Jews: Rhetoric and Reality in the Late Fourth Century, by Robert L. Wilken V. Biography in Late Antiquity: The Quest for the Holy Man, by Patricia Cox VI. Pachomius: The Making of a Community in Fourth-Century Egypt, by Philip Rousseau VII. Change in Byzantine Culture in the Eleventh and Twelfth Centuries, by A. P. Kazhdan and Ann Wharton Epstein VIII. Leadership and Community in Late Antique Gaul, by Raymond Van Dam IX. Homer the Theologian: Neoplatonist Allegorical Reading and the Growth of the Epic Tradition, by Robert Lamberton X. Procopius and the Sixth Century, by Averil Cameron XI. Guardians of Language: The Grammarian and Society in Late Antiquity, by Robert A. Kaster XII. Civic Coins and Civic Politics in the Roman East, a.d. 180–275, by Kenneth Harl XIII. Holy Women of the Syrian Orient, introduced and translated by Sebastian P. Brock and Susan Ashbrook Harvey XIV. Gregory the Great: Perfection in Imperfection, by Carole Straw XV. “Apex Omnium”: Religion in the “Res gestae” of Ammianus, by R. L. Rike XVI. Dioscorus of Aphrodito: His Work and His World, by Leslie S. B. MacCoull XVII. On Roman Time: The Codex-Calendar of 354 and the Rhythms of Urban Life in Late Antiquity, by Michele Renee Salzman XVIII. Asceticism and Society in Crisis: John of Ephesus and “The Lives of the Eastern Saints,” by Susan Ashbrook Harvey XIX. Barbarians and Politics at the Court of Arcadius, by Alan Cameron and Jacqueline Long, with a contribution by Lee Sherry XX. Basil of Caesarea, by Philip Rousseau XXI. In Praise of Later Roman Emperors: The Panegyrici Latini, introduction, translation, and historical commentary by C. E. V. Nixon and Barbara Saylor Rodgers XXII. Ambrose of Milan: Church and Court in a Christian Capital, by Neil B. McLynn XXIII. Public Disputation, Power, and Social Order in Late Antiquity, by Richard Lim XXIV. The Making of a Heretic: Gender, Authority, and the Priscillianist Controversy, by Virginia Burrus XXV. Symeon the Holy Fool: Leontius’s “Life” and the Late Antique City, by Derek Krueger

XXVI. The Shadows of Poetry: Vergil in the Mind of Augustine, by Sabine MacCormack XXVII. Paulinus of Nola: Life, Letters, and Poems, by Dennis E. Trout XXVIII. The Barbarian Plain: Saint Sergius between Rome and Iran, by Elizabeth Key Fowden XXIX. The Private Orations of Themistius, translated, annotated, and introduced by Robert J. Penella XXX. The Memory of the Eyes: Pilgrims to Living Saints in Christian Late Antiquity, by Georgia Frank XXXI. Greek Biography and Panegyric in Late Antiquity, edited by Tomas Hägg and Philip Rousseau XXXII. Subtle Bodies: Representing Angels in Byzantium, by Glenn Peers XXXIII. Wandering, Begging Monks: Spiritual Authority and the Promotion of Monasticism in Late Antiquity, by Daniel Caner XXXIV. Failure of Empire: Valens and the Roman State in the Fourth Century a.d., by Noel Lenski XXXV. Merovingian Mortuary Archaeology and the Making of the Early Middle Ages, by Bonnie Effros XXXVI. Qus. ayr ‘Amra: Art and the Umayyad Elite in Late Antique Syria, by Garth Fowden XXXVII. Holy Bishops in Late Antiquity: The Nature of Christian Leadership in an Age of Transition, by Claudia Rapp XXXVIII. Encountering the Sacred: The Debate on Christian Pilgrimage in Late Antiquity, by Brouria Bitton-Ashkelony XXXIX. There Is No Crime for Those Who Have Christ: Religious Violence in the Christian Roman Empire, by Michael Gaddis XL. The Legend of Mar Qardagh: Narrative and Christian Heroism in Late Antique Iraq, by Joel Thomas Walker XLI. City and School in Late Antique Athens and Alexandria, by Edward J. Watts XLII. Scenting Salvation: Ancient Christianity and the Olfactory Imagination, by Susan Ashbrook Harvey XLIII. Man and the Word: The Orations of Himerius, edited by Robert J. Penella XLIV. The Matter of the Gods, by Clifford Ando XLV. The Two Eyes of the Earth: Art and Ritual of Kingship between Rome and Sasanian Iran, by Matthew P. Canepa XLVI. Riot in Alexandria: Tradition and Group Dynamics in Late Antique Pagan and Christian Communities, by Edward J. Watts XLVII. Peasant and Empire in Christian North Africa, by Leslie Dossey XLVIII. Theodoret’s People: Social Networks and Religious Conflict in Late Roman Syria, by Adam M. Schor XLIX. Sons of Hellenism, Fathers of the Church: Emperor Julian, Gregory of Nazianzus, and the Vision of Rome, by Susanna Elm

L. Shenoute of Atripe and the Uses of Poverty: Rural Patronage, Religious Conflict, and Monasticism in Late Antique Egypt, by Ariel G. López LI. Doctrine and Power: Theological Controversy and Christian Leadership in the Later Roman Empire, by Carlos R. Galvão-Sobrinho LII. Crisis of Empire: Doctrine and Dissent at the End of Late Antiquity, by Phil Booth LIII. The Final Pagan Generation, by Edward J. Watts LIV. The Mirage of the Saracen: Christians and Nomads in the Sinai Peninsula in Late Antiquity, by Walter D. Ward LV. Missionary Stories and the Formation of the Syriac Churches, by Jeanne-Nicole Mellon Saint-Laurent

Missionary Stories and the Formation of the Syriac Churches

Jeanne-Nicole Mellon Saint-Laurent

UNIVERSIT Y OF CALIFORNIA PRESS

University of California Press, one of the most distinguished university presses in the United States, enriches lives around the world by advancing scholarship in the humanities, social sciences, and natural sciences. Its activities are supported by the UC Press Foundation and by philanthropic contributions from individuals and institutions. For more information, visit www.ucpress.edu. University of California Press Oakland, California © 2015 by The Regents of the University of California

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Saint-Laurent, Jeanne-Nicole Mellon, author. Missionary stories and the formation of the Syriac churches / Jeanne-Nicole Mellon Saint-Laurent. p. cm. — (Transformation of the classical heritage ; 55) Includes bibliographical references and index. isbn 978-0-520-28496-8 (cloth, alk. paper) — isbn 978-0-520-96058-9 (electronic) 1. Syriac Christian saints—Biography—History and criticism. 2. Missionaries—Middle East—Biography—History and criticism. 3. Christian hagiography—History—To 1500. I. Title. II. Series: Transformation of the classical heritage ; 55 bx4714.122.s25 2015 2821′ .630922—dc23 2014040548

Manufactured in the United States of America 24 23 22 21 20 19 18 17 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

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In keeping with a commitment to support environmentally responsible and sustainable printing practices, UC Press has printed this book on Natures Natural, a fiber that contains 30% post-consumer waste and meets the minimum requirements of ansi/niso z39.48–1992 (r 1997) (Permanence of Paper).

To my dear parents, George and Michaeleen Saint-Laurent, alive in the risen light of Christ

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contents

Acknowledgments Introduction: Missionary Narratives in the Syriac Tradition

xi 1

1. Saint Thomas, Missionary Apostle to India

17

2. The Teaching of Addai: Founding a Christian City

36

3. Mari as Apostle to the Church of Persia

56

4. John of Ephesus as Hagiographer and Missionary

72

5. Legends of Simeon of Beth Arsham, Missionary to Persia

80

6. Hagiographical Portraits of Jacob Baradaeus

96

7. Ah ̣udemmeh among the Arabs

110

Conclusion Notes Abbreviations Bibliography Index

129 139 181 183 201

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acknowled gments

This book began as a dissertation project at Brown University, under the careful guidance of my mentor, Susan Ashbrook Harvey. I am grateful for the time and talent that she shared so generously with me. She remains a support and model. I am also grateful to the other members of my dissertation committee: Stanley Stowers and Ross Kraemer. I also wish to thank Chip Coakley, who let me join his Syriac reading group at Harvard, and my teachers from the University of Notre Dame: Joseph Amar, Fr. Brian Daley, SJ, and Blake Leyerle. Finally, I would like to express my gratitude to two mentors from my undergraduate training at Gonzaga University: Robert Kugler and Rev. Frederic Schlatter, SJ. I am grateful for a junior fellowship in Byzantine Studies for 2008–9 at Dumbarton Oaks Research Library, which enabled me to complete my dissertation. In particular, I am thankful for the friendships that I made at Dumbarton Oaks and for the mentorship that I received from Sidney Griffith, Margaret Mullet, AliceMary Talbot, and Jan Ziolkowski during my stay in Washington, DC. I began the revisions of this book while I was an assistant professor at St. Michael’s College in Vermont. I am grateful to my former colleagues and friends in the Department of Religious Studies there, particularly for the mentorship and friendship of Jim Byrne, John Kenney, Terryl Kinder, and Edward Mahoney. I finished this project while a member of the Department of Theology at Marquette University, and I am grateful also for the help and encouragement of my colleagues at Marquette, especially Sarah Bond, Deirdre Dempsey, and Fr. John Thiede, SJ. Many people from my academic journey have helped and encouraged me to complete this project and pursue my love of Syriac hagiography, including Andre Bingelli, Sebastian Brock, Jan Bremmer, Aaron Butts, Muriel Debié, Maria xi

xii

Acknowledgments

Doerfler, Kristian Heal, Robert Hoyland, George Kiraz, Kathi Ivanyi, Scott F. Johnson, David Michelson, Scott Moringiello, Candida Moss, Richard Payne, Christiana Z. Peppard, Michael Peppard, Daniel Schwartz, Stephen Shoemaker, Kyle Smith, Jack Tannous, David Taylor, Arthur Urbano, Ed Watts, Dietmar Winkler, Lucas Van Rompay, and Fr. Ugo Zanetti. I am also grateful to my student Adam Kane, who will make a great contribution to Syriac studies. Special regards also go to Philip Wood, whose work on Syriac hagiography and legend I admire very much. I discovered his scholarship too late in the writing of this book to be able to engage it properly with my own. I also owe thanks to a great circle of friends who have become like family to me and have supported me with love and encouragement: Ann Alokolaro, Mimi Beck, Kate Brayko, Donna Elliot, Cheska Fairbanks, Chris Fiori, Jill Frazee, Alison Gregoire, Emily Holt, Jaime Hawk, Shane Intihar (who proofread my entire dissertation), Jeff Jackson, Eileen Jacxsens, Rochelle Lynam, Kelsey O’Keefe, Erin O’Malley, Gina Pernini, Yasmin Potts, Amy Rainis, the Salvans, Erin Shields, Cindy Sikes, Katy and Beth Tyskiewicz, Elizabeth and Steve Watson, and the Weinmars. I thank Joel Walker, Susanna Elm, and an anonymous reviewer for their useful suggestions for the revision of the manuscript of this book. I would also like to thank Peter Brown for encouraging me at various stages of this project. I thank Eric Schmidt, Maeve Cornell-Taylor, and Cindy Fulton of UC Press and Marian Rogers for their expert editing and patience with me. I thank Eleanor Stoneham for the photograph of Deir al Zafaran used on the book’s cover. I thank my sister, Marie-Louise, and her husband, Ryan, as well as my nephews, Luke and Michael, and my in-laws, Leo and Dottie Mellon. I thank my wonderful husband, Matthew Mellon, for his support, encouragement, patience, and love. Our puppy Blaise helped me in the final editing stages of this book as a faithful companion. I dedicate this book to my late parents, George Saint-Laurent (1932–2008) and Michaeleen Nichols Saint-Laurent (1938–2011). How I miss them every day and hope that this book brings a smile to their faces. I thank them for raising me in the Catholic Church, for taking me to French cathedrals and the Holy Land as a young girl, for sending me to study languages, and for nurturing my spirit of curiosity. They helped me to persevere in my studies, and they taught me about the importance of using one’s education for the benefit of the world. Finally, they showed me that beauty and joy can thrive even in the midst of suffering when one’s faith and love are strong. Perhaps my passion for studying saints stems from having been raised by two of them. I am mindful, finally, of the Christians of the Syriac churches today whose texts I have analyzed in this book. May this little work be an acknowledgment of my deep love and appreciation of their important heritage. All the mistakes that remain in this book are my own.

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Introduction Missionary Narratives in the Syriac Tradition

This book analyzes seven missionary stories from the Syriac tradition: the Acts of Thomas, the Teaching of Addai, the Acts of Mari, the Life of Simeon of Beth Arsham, the Life of Jacob Baradaeus (two versions), and the Life of Ah ̣ udemmeh. These texts, written between 300 and 800 c.e., offer an idealized portrait of the origin and expansion of the Syriac churches. Syriac is a dialect of Aramaic that was spoken in areas of the Eastern Roman and Sasanian empires that are Turkey, Lebanon, Syria, Iran, and Iraq today. Syriac missionaries spread their heritage as far as India and China, and thus it is no wonder that the exploits of missionaries figure prominently in Syriac sacred stories. Syriac texts form a rich and important component of the corpus of early Christian and Byzantine literature, while the Syriac language, Syriac culture, and Syriac ecclesial communities have persisted to the present day. When he began the Life of missionary bishop Simeon of Beth Arsham, Syriac hagiographer John of Ephesus (507–89) lamented the difficulty of summarizing the holy man’s characteristics.1 Simeon had too many beautiful qualities to capture in one story, and John doubted that he would be able to portray Simeon’s virtues in a single image. Although John’s admission of his authorial inadequacy was a hagiographic convention,2 we should note that he compared his task as hagiographer to that of a painter. Hagiography, for John, meant the creation of portraiture through narrative.3 John of Ephesus found hagiographic composition difficult and frustrating; it was a labor he undertook out of devotion and love.4 While hagiography appears to have been a tedious, trying task for late antique writers, for modern scholars of late antiquity it presents a different set of frustrations. It is a problematic—though entertaining—genre to tackle and study. Hagiography is neither fiction nor history 1

2

Introduction

nor scripture, yet it contains characteristics of, allusions to, and motifs from all three of these genres. It is authoritative for religious communities, yet there is no canon of hagiography per se. Unlike the Bible, there are no set rules or theories for the interpretation of hagiographic texts. What method, then, is appropriate for reading and understanding these sacred stories? Retelling and reading hagiographic stories is enjoyable and edifying. But how can theologians and historians gain more robust insights from these texts? If we presume that sacred narratives shed light on the beliefs and cultural ideals of the people who wrote them, what information can we extract from such embellished narrative accounts? As we consider a method for interpreting late antique hagiography, perhaps we might take a cue from John himself. As already noted, he likened his authorial craft to that of a painter. The language of portraiture fills many of the missionary stories that we will encounter. Thus it is fitting to consider these stories as sacred objects or works of art. In late antiquity, both written and visual narrative gave Christians media to express and transmit stories in memorable and portable packages. Hagiographic texts, like sacred paintings and objects, contained many stories in a single, appealing bundle. By way of illustration, let us consider a late antique carved ivory diptych from northern Italy, held in the Bayerisches Nationalmuseum in Munich.5 The diptych presents two sacred scenes in one picture: the resurrection (Matt. 28) and the ascension of Christ (Acts 1:9–11). This sacred object, which dates to the fifth century c.e., depicts the highlights of both biblical stories and links them in a single frame. We see a tomb, mourners at a tomb, and an angel speaking to a group of women. Above them, Christ is lifted up on a cloud, while two apostles crouch at the foot of the rising cloud. The two stories in this portrayal are retold in a condensed visual narrative. Early Christian and Byzantine Christian diptychs and triptychs exemplify how much could be said in a small package through the careful arrangement of symbols and figures.6 In order to read them, we must consider each of the pictures separately. Then we can step back to gaze at the panels as a unified visual program. Their precious packaging and costly materials also reflect those who carved them, sponsored them, and used them for personal and public devotions. Hagiographic texts might be approached in the same way. As we orient ourselves to these stories and map out the relationships among them, I invite you to imagine each narrative as a diptych or triptych conveying a portable narrative through pictures on individual panels. If the highlights of each missionary story included in this book were captured in a sacred painting, we would notice their shared motifs immediately. We would see a missionary standing before a king and his people, with a city in the background. We would see a hagiographer with a Bible and some other texts, passing his book to a group of monks. We would see an image of the conversion of a city, with missionary and monarch. Such pictures

Introduction

3

would encapsulate the holiness of the saint, the piety of the monarch, the labor of the hagiographer, and the prayers and preservation of the community. In the same way that such a tableau can be understood by considering all the scenes together, so the fullness of a hagiographic story, its reception, and circulation can be grasped only when we consider all the works together, as part of a single program, with the same purpose. Each story discussed in this book comes from the same heritage—with shared symbols of holiness, power, and orthodoxy. All of these stories feature monarchs, missionaries, and an affiliation with a particular location or hagiographer. All share a concern to create a lineage of orthodoxy and distinction. When these stories are considered together, the symbolic power of the missionary story emerges. The figures of hagiographer, missionary, and monarch create a representation of missionary life in the Syriac-speaking milieu, and each is sketched into the texture of the narrative as a silhouette . Let us imagine an example drawn from the Life of Jacob Baradaeus.7 John of Ephesus, as hagiographer, created in Jacob Baradaeus a portrait of a model missionary bishop for a beleaguered Miaphysite community, and the story’s narrative was driven by the missionary’s relationship to the monarch, Empress Theodora. If the essence of the story were to be shown in a sacred image, three figures would stand out: John of Ephesus, Jacob Baradaeus, and the empress Theodora—a hagiographer, a missionary bishop, and a monarch. The hagiographer John of Ephesus would be writing about the activity of a missionary bishop, Jacob Baradaeus, who would be depicted in the tattered clothing of a monk on the run, leaving the court of the empress Theodora. Jacob would be pictured as ordaining new clergy for the Miaphysites, moving in haste from Constantinople to the frontier of the Persian Empire. The image would highlight the most memorable parts of the story, but as in a hagiographic episode, some events would be absent from the picture. This portrait would share features with other pictures of the missionary life, but its bold characteristics would distinguish it from others of its type. We could, however, understand the portrait by comparing it to others. That is what this book seeks to do with these hagiographic stories. John of Ephesus’s audience was a community of Miaphysites (also known as Monophysites or anti-Chalcedonians), a large group of Christians in late antiquity whose leaders had rejected the Christological formula of the Council of Chalcedon. Their bishops, who saw themselves in communion with Cyril of Alexandria, proclaimed that Jesus was one nature, uniting two natures—human and divine—at the time of the incarnation. Their opponents, the Chalcedonians, pronounced that Jesus Christ was one person in two distinct natures, human and divine. The Miaphysite Christians had lost political support for their group with the ascent of Justin I in 518, and the hagiographies of John of Ephesus were written to strengthen and encourage them. Thus each embellished missionary narrative that we examine in this book offers glimpses of significant events in church

4

Introduction

history. These stories reflect the ways in which new ecclesial bodies were created as the Miaphysites differentiated and positioned themselves in relation to both imperial figures and competing religious groups. The chapters of this book focus on two sets of questions in their analysis of the selected missionary stories. Literary Questions: What symbolic layers of hagiographic and biblical types are present in these Syriac missionary stories? How do common characteristics and literary motifs in these stories (e.g., apostles, missionaries, kings, cities, conversions, healings, demonstrations of divine power) prove the relevance of the missionary story in the self-presentation of Syriac sacred history? What ideals do these symbols promote? Historical Questions: Who are the hagiographers, and what historical communities are behind the composition and reception of these stories? What monastic or ecclesial communities benefited from the beliefs, practices, and heroes that the texts honored and remembered? How do the composition and reception of these missionary stories reflect moments of crisis or self-assertion in the development of the Syriac churches within the Roman and Sasanian empires?

SY R IAC ST O RY T E L L E R S A N D T H E I R M I S SIO NA R I E S

Hagiographers like John of Ephesus constituted an important body of text producers in the late antique world. They carved out a unique place for themselves among the Christian literate and were as much compilers as creators. Through their choice of religious heroes, they had the power to influence the formation of religious memory, including which heroes would be remembered and which forgotten. They could model their saints on biblical figures, or they could inscribe themselves, their community, or particular locations in the deeds and miracles of their patron hero. A saint’s hagiographic portrait reflected the ideals of the hagiographer. In writing about missionary saints, hagiographers drew on several sources: the Bible, apocryphal narratives, and other hagiographies. Models from the Bible and Apocryphal Narratives The apostles, the first Christian missionaries, were the most important models for portraying missionary saints. Writers of missionary stories situated their characters in an apostolic golden age to show how the missionaries they portrayed lived like the apostles, had been ordained by the apostles, or were in fact among the apostles themselves. Biblical prototypes for missionary saints abound in the New Testament, both in the Gospels and in the letters of Paul. The sanctification of travel had a lasting impact

Introduction

5

on the history of Christianity, a movement that had expanded through the exchange of letters and texts. Missionary travel brought opportunities for discipleship and a chance to obey Jesus’s instruction to go out into the world and baptize the nations in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit (Matt. 28:19). The letters of Paul demonstrated to Christians that the formation of new communities, and indeed churches, would happen through the traveling ministry of Christian missionaries.8 The authors of the seven stories featured in this book all used apostolic discourse—letters, preaching, and material practices similar to those of the original apostles—to create similitude between their patron missionary holy men and Jesus’s original disciples. In the Acts of the Apostles, the author of Luke-Acts embellished the missionary events of the first century to create a memorable and bold picture of the community of the first followers of Jesus.9 After the book of Acts, other apocryphal legends of the apostles’ journeys promoted a similar view that Christianity had spread through the feats of its divinely directed apostles. Christians in the cities of the Mediterranean and the Syrian Orient traced their roots to these apostles, and legends of the conversion of these places became a genre unto itself: the apocryphal Acts of the Apostles.10 The earliest texts in this genre, dating to the second and third centuries, include the Acts of John, the Acts of Paul and Thecla, the Acts of Andrew, and the Acts of Thomas (see chapter 1 for the latter). In these texts, Jesus commissions apostles to go forth and baptize the nations, and he allots to each apostle a different part of the world to convert. The apostles and their disciples perform miracles, preach, and baptize, and this results in the establishment of new Christian cities as well as ecclesiastical foundations. These adventure stories are similar in structure to the ancient novels that circulated in the first centuries c.e. István Czachesz has delineated the main literary features of commission narratives among the canonical and noncanonical apostolic Acts.11 He notes that among the early Acts, the Acts of Thomas and the Acts of John were the only stories to describe the commission of their apostles. Many of the popular narratives of the apocryphal Acts of the Apostles were attributed pseudepigraphically to an apostle to create an orthodox lineage for a burgeoning local church. Topographic references and symbols in the text can sometimes help scholars to locate the places with which the texts and their patron apostles were connected.12 Many of the sites linked to the early travels of the apostles became places of pilgrimage in the early church. The stories of the saints, the loca sancta linked to their memory, and devotion to their relics as objects of power worked together in the formation of cults to the saints in late antiquity,13 places where heaven and earth were joined.14 Hagiographic Typology, the Syriac Idiom, and Symbolic Layering Hagiographers had a treasury of narrative types for depicting holiness, drawn not only from the apocryphal Acts narratives but from the longer Lives of the saints.

6

Introduction

They used these types to tell their own stories, modeling their heroes on exempla from their past. Thus although the historical circumstances of saints’ lives might vary greatly, through shared narrative typologies the stories resembled one another, like different variants on a common theme in a single melody. Missionary saints were portrayed as types or symbols of the apostles. This apostolic typology gave the hagiographer a way of presenting the orthodoxy and power of his missionary saint. As Robert Murray and Sebastian Brock have shown,15 Syriac authors preferred symbolic language and poetry for theological expression. This tendency influenced Syriac sacred narrative as well. In an important article on the tradition of the Greek Acts of Thaddaeus, Andrew Palmer has illustrated the centrality of symbolism in stories from the Syriac cultural milieu. He notes that Syriac storytellers and poets, like Ephrem the Syrian, used symbolism to perfect the art of simultaneously “speaking on various levels.”16 We can read missionary hagiography therefore as a mode of theological expression, since it used types and symbols to depict the intersection of the human and the divine. The hagiographies considered in this book present missionary saints as the ones through whom the apostles live. The Syrian storytellers drenched their narratives in the language of the Bible and the liturgy. The hagiographer’s mastery of his craft was seen in his ability to weave allusions to biblical stories together with references to contemporary local churches, monastic sites, and historical personages. The symbol of the missionary in these narratives contained many layers that worked together to create a past for a community that was also interpreting its present, “combining a thorough knowledge of Scripture with a leap of the sympathetic imagination.”17 Constructions of Lineage and Strategies of Legitimatization Hagiographers used a typology of the missionary story—with missionaries, monarchs, healings, and conversion—to describe the emerging independence and expansion of their local communities and larger churches. Persecution, competition, doctrinal disputes, and ascetic zeal incited the production of sacred texts, whose stories depicted communal boundaries and alliances as well as intense rivalries. Hagiographers circulated stories in their communities to encourage community members to participate in the construction of their sacred history, which was both local and joined to the history of their respective traditions, whether Miaphysite Syrian Orthodox or Dyophysite Church of the East. Indeed, the composition of missionary stories reveals what Richard Payne has called “interventions in an ongoing debate about belonging.”18 These stories show how leaders of West and East Syriac traditions encountered one another and their rulers from rival Christian and Zoroastrian traditions. Hagiographers ordered the past through a careful presentation of orthodoxy that rested on the construction of a lineage that could be traced to the apostles. As

Introduction

7

we will see, these storytellers mythologized their local missionary saints by including their heroes in biblical events of days gone by; this strategy of legitimization generated a rich body of early Christian myth. I use the term myth not to distinguish a fictive tale from a historical account, but rather to describe what Bruce Lincoln calls an “ideology in narrative form.”19 Lincoln’s definition creates an interpretative lens that shows “the capacity of narrators to modify details of the stories that pass through them, introducing changes in the classificatory order as they do so, most often in ways that reflect their subject position and advance their interests.”20 M O NA R C H S , C OU N C I L S , C O N V E R SIO N : T H E I N T E R SE C T IO N O F SYM B O L S A N D H I ST O R IC EV E N T S

The figures of kings and queens are prominent throughout Syriac missionary literature. How does the image of the monarch vis-à-vis the missionary operate as a pattern in these narratives? The earliest missionary story examined in this book, the Acts of Thomas, describes the travels of Saint Thomas to the kingdoms of India. It established a narrative typology for Syriac missionary stories:21 Christianity would come to the East through the conversion of royal households. Because of the changeability of imperial loyalty to the Syriac-speaking church, kings represented powerful potential “converts” in the missionary stories. Syriac missionary legends displayed consistent anxiety over the loyalty, support, or conversion of figures of political power (kings, emperors, shahs, or their children). Political shifts in the Roman Empire influenced how missionary stories portrayed mythic rulers, presenting them as either rogue kings and queens or pious, believing servants of God. There was a long history in both the East and the West of emperors and shahs intervening, sponsoring, or persecuting the leaders of Syrian churches. Bishops in the Roman and Sasanian empires squabbled with each other over matters of governance or theological articulation, and the monarchs got involved. A brief review of the highlights of the age of councils in the late antique church (fourth century through sixth century), and of the suffering and confusion experienced by Syrians during this period, is in order. The Byzantine Context The emperor Constantine (ruled 306–37 c.e., sole emperor 324–37 c.e.) called the Council of Nicaea in 325. He established an important precedent for his successors: imperial heads would involve themselves in religious controversies among Christian leaders, and bishops would seek imperial endorsement.22 Harmony and communion of Christian bishops advanced Constantine’s political purpose. In his presence at the Council of Nicaea, his desire for a “single” Christianity, and the hagiographical account of his “conversion” as related by Eusebius, bishop of

8

Introduction

Caesarea (d. 339), Constantine set an example for future Roman emperors.23 Eusebius’s description of him in the Life of Constantine transformed the emperor into an image of God ruling on earth. After Constantine, other types emerged. The emperor was a malleable symbol. Constantine’s successors showed that the emperor himself was an unstable political support for “orthodox” Christianity. He could deviate from positions of orthodoxy, as had Constantius (d. 361), or, like Julian “the Apostate” (r. 361–63), he could repudiate Christianity altogether.24 The impact of Julian “the Apostate” on late antique Christian memory was profound.25 While Julian the emperor was still alive, Ephrem the Syrian lamented the paradise that the empire had enjoyed under the protection of Christian emperors.26 The need for precise Christological articulation and for clarity regarding the loyalty of bishops, patriarchs, and political rulers shaped the late antique church from the fourth century onward. The Council of Ephesus met in 431 and pronounced a formula expressing the relationship between Christ’s divinity and humanity: Christ was “a single nature out of two,” mia physis ex duo.27 This SarxLogos Christology was built on the Nicene theology of Athanasius of Alexandria.28 The champion of the Council of Ephesus was Cyril of Alexandria. Cyril came from the tradition of Alexandrian Christology that emphasized Christ’s divinity.29 Monarchs continued to sway conciliar directions. The empress Pulcheria and emperor Marcian called the Council of Chalcedon in 451 to resolve Christological disagreements in the aftermath of the Council of Ephesus. The decisions at Chalcedon articulated a formula that stated that Christ was one person in two natures. The Chalcedonian formula declared the unity of the Person (or Hypostasis) of Christ as existing in two unmixed distinct natures, fully God and fully man.30 This description seemed to some to be a return to the Dyophysite “Nestorian” formula. The emperor Marcian and empress Pulcheria backed the two-nature Christology of Chalcedon. Three parties emerged after the Council of Chalcedon: (1) the Chalcedonians; (2) the Miaphysite group of Severus of Antioch,31 and Philoxenus of Mabbug, who adopted a moderate single-nature Christology;32 and (3) the “Eutychians,” who espoused a radical single-nature Christology.33 The Miaphysite hagiographies examined in this book come from the party of moderate Miaphysites linked to Bishop Severus of Antioch.34 Severus based his theology on that of Cyril of Alexandria: Christ was “one person out of two natures after the Union.”35 Severus’s election to the patriarchate of Antioch was orchestrated by Philoxenus of Mabbug.36 Because of Severus’s importance to Syriac-speaking opponents of Chalcedon, his corpus of homilies, hymns, and letters was translated into and preserved in Syriac, although he had written them in Greek.37 Emperor Anastasius (r. 491– 518) promoted Severus of Antioch, and was therefore remembered in Miaphysite memory as the “believing Anastasius.”38

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Although there were attempts to reconcile the Chalcedonians and Miaphysites,39 the ascent of Emperor Justin I (r. 518–27) marked the end of an era of peace for the party of Severus of Antioch. Emperor Justin I had Miaphysite sympathies before he took the throne in 518, but he became a violent enforcer of the Chalcedonian position afterward. Justin I enforced policies articulated in a document known as the libellus of Pope Hormisdas, and this text demanded that all Christian groups be in union with the Chalcedonian Roman see.40 Justin and Justinian deposed bishops who resisted Chalcedonian communion, and replaced them with Chalcedonian supporters.41 Chalcedonian enforcers evicted Miaphysite monks from their cells and drove stylites off their pillars.42 Conflict exploded at the local level of Miaphysite and Chalcedonian bishoprics. John of Ephesus describes the violence and plundering the Chalcedonian Eutychius unleashed against the Miaphysites: “He let loose therefore upon them, on occasion of the celebration of their love feasts, the more violent members of his party, such as the officials of the ecclesiastical courts, and soldiers and civilians and clergymen and guardsmen, who attacking them, not like Christians but like murderers and barbarians, dragged them with open violence to prison, overturned their altars, threw down their oblations, and poured out the consecrated wine, while the sacred vessels, and every thing else of any worth, which they could find, with the service books, they plundered and stole.”43 These conflicts caused disorder that shook the churches of the East into a state of confusion and madness.44 As Heinrich Bacht has demonstrated, however, the Miaphysite groups survived where monasticism flourished: Alexandria, Scete, Arabia, the Arabian provinces of the Ghassanid kings, northern Syria, Osrhoene (a province around Edessa), and Mesopotamia.45 The emperor Justinian and his wife, Theodora, involved themselves closely in the Christological controversies of the sixth century. Justinian publicly espoused the Chalcedonian position, but Theodora championed the Miaphysites. Hagiographic composition helped Miaphysites like John of Ephesus to portray the position that estranged them from the emperor. Miaphysite Syriac literature, for example, immortalized Theodora for her support, yet portrayed Justinian as a persecutor.46 The painful events of the sixth century were remembered by both Chalcedonian and Miaphysite historiographers in late antiquity. The Greek Chalcedonian historiographers Procopius (d. 565), Agathias (536–82/594), Menander Protector (582–602), and Theophylact Simocatta (early seventh century) are among those who mention the conflicts between Chalcedonians and Miaphysites. John of Ephesus, who wrote in Syriac, is an important source for the events from the Miaphysite side.47 All church historians, both Greek and Syriac, had the model of Eusebius of Caesarea at their disposal. They presupposed God’s involvement in history.48

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Introduction

The Sasanian Milieu Monarchs also play key roles in the missionary stories of Syriac Christians in the Sasanian milieu. Their narratives show the same marked interest as the stories from the Byzantine world in the king as a potential convert. In the Sasanian context, however, monarchs and missionaries were linked to martyr traditions of the Persian Christians. When Constantine legalized the practice of Christianity for the Roman Empire in 313 with the Edict of Milan, Christianity became the religion “of the enemy” in the view of the Sasanian court. Under Shapur II (r. 309–79), Christians in the Sasanian Empire, especially clergy, were persecuted and in some cases martyred.49 Although their narrative setting was retrojected to the first century, the missionary stories that we will study were written in the fifth and sixth centuries, following much of the martyr literature from the so-called Great Slaughter (ca. 344–79). Nevertheless, these stories are connected with the same areas and Persian communities that generated many of the texts of the Persian martyrs: Adiabene (northern Iraq), Beth Aramaye (central Iraq), and Khuzistan (southwestern Iran).50 Sasanian Christians linked their missionaries to the memory of the martyr traditions. The fifth century was a definitive period for the formation of the Church of the East, the dominant Christian ecclesial body in the Persian Empire. Bishops John of Antioch, Nestorius of Constantinople, and their parties opposed the faction of Cyril of Alexandria and the single-nature Christological articulation that it promoted. They supported a two-nature, or “Dyophysite,” Christological formula, and this large group became known, lamentably, as “Nestorians.”51 Although the Church of the East in the Sasanian Empire acquired Nestorius’s name, the theological architects of this group were Diodore of Tarsus (d. 390), the founder of the school of Antioch, and Theodore of Mopsuestia (350–428).52 The Church of the East flourished in the Persian Empire, but it was not uniformly united. Scholars have shown that it would be misleading to present the theology of the Christians in Iran as a doctrinal unity.53 Today, however, the descendants of the congregation of the East Syrian Church call their church the Church of the East or the Assyrian Church. It was expedient for Sasanian Christians to promote their Christianity as a religion loyal to the shah so that the Zoroastrian Persian shahs did not mistake them for spies for the Roman Empire.54 They presented themselves as independent from Western political and ecclesiastical influences. This is a marked tension in their missionary hagiography. Missionary Stories and Imagined Conversion of Monarchs The narrative typology of the missionary and the pious king occurs in many traditions of late antique and medieval hagiography. Scholars have investigated the missionary theme in stories from various other heritages; this book aims to com-

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plement those studies. Robert Thomson has written on Armenian missionary stories of Saint Gregory the Illuminator and his conversion of King Trdat.55 The themes shared by Syriac and Armenian conversion stories show the close interaction of these Oriental Christian cultures. Ian Wood has produced an excellent comparative study of missionary hagiography in the Latin-speaking church.56 Isrun Engelkerdt’s analysis of the missions sponsored by Justinian and Theodora remains important.57 Muriel Debié has brought attention to the role of the missionary stories of the Syrians in the formation of the identity of Syrian Orthodox Church.58 A. M. Schilling has contributed a masterful and thorough study on an understudied theme in Eastern Christian literature: the imagined conversion of the Persian shahs to Christianity.59 His book draws on texts from different linguistic traditions of the late antique world, and he traces and analyzes this long-lasting trajectory in Christian literature. He shows how multiple Christian sources, by both Miaphysite and Dyophysite authors, related stories about shahs who showed great sympathy for Christians and their teachings. The most exaggerated tales from this narrative trajectory recount that some of the shahs even converted to Christianity; if they did not convert, then their actions suggested that they intended to do so on their deathbed. Many of the stories and authors that Schilling treats intersect with authors and stories discussed in this book. As I noted above, all missionary stories in the Syriac tradition portray kings, emperors, or their family members who interacted with the missionary apostles or bishops. Their reactions of hostility or sympathy shaped the outcome of the stories. Schilling’s work shows us that Sasanian Christians used narratives to present an encounter of Christianity with the rulers of Iran. This portrait contrasts with the hostile depiction of the shah that we read in the Persian martyr traditions. Schilling draws attention to John of Ephesus’s sympathetic presentation of the shah Kavad I (r. 488–531) and his successor Khusro I Anushirvan (r. 531–75). John crafted a favorable view of the shah, showing him to be an open-minded intellectual seeker, who, although a Zoroastrian, investigated many religious traditions and found wisdom and truth in Christianity.60 This trajectory, as Schilling shows, is also found in the stories of the Miaphysite missionary Simeon of Beth Arsham, which we will examine in chapter 5.61 Schilling’s work harmonizes what I suggested above: the shah, the Persian ruler, was a moldable figure or symbol for Christian storytellers. He symbolized the possibility of a convert for the Christian societies in dialogue with the Sasanian culture in which these Christians lived. The symbol retained its weight especially because, according to historical sources, the activities of the shahs in the sixth century suggest that they were, in fact, open to Christianity’s message, even if they never converted to its teachings.

12

Introduction HAG IO G R A P H Y A N D T H E F O R M AT IO N O F T H E SY R IAC C H U R C H E S

There is no hagiography or cult of a saint without the support of a community. Late antique hagiographers passed on their texts to particular audiences to encourage and inspire. Sacred stories circulated within believing communities that retold and copied them as an act of devotion. With the passing of time, the texts themselves disseminated into different communities and even opposing ecclesial bodies. Thus the Life of a single saint could enjoy circulation in different languages. Christians who did not share communion with each other might still honor the same saint, and compete with one another to claim his or her memory. Saint Thomas was claimed by the orthodox Christians of Edessa and India, as well as by the Manichaeans and so-called Gnostic groups. Addai, ordained by Thomas, became a symbol for the West Syrian Nicene Church of Edessa. Mari, a protomissionary saint for the Church of the East in Iraq, was legitimated by his relationship to Addai and Thomas, who had ordained him. His hagiography, however, portrayed him as more powerful than his predecessors (and, by extension, more powerful than the West Syrian Church of Edessa). Jacob Baradaeus and Simeon of Beth Arsham epitomized missionaries of a burgeoning Syrian Orthodox Church, and Ah ̣udemmeh encapsulated the interests of the Miaphysite church in the Sasanian milieu. When these missionaries were commissioned by other apostles or bishops and competed with religious rivals in their narratives, their activities symbolized a community’s assertion of apostolicity and orthodoxy. Embedded in the stories of missionaries and founders were the complex tensions among rival Christian groups. I argue in this book that the missionary texts from the sixth-century Miaphysites show evidence of their gradual separation from the Byzantine Chalcedonian church;62 their stories foretell the formation of the Syrian Orthodox Church. A single event did not cut the cord that joined the Chalcedonians and Miaphysites; rather, over a long period of time, hostile interactions and conflicts between the two groups frayed and tore the fabric that united them. Eventually the relationship unraveled. While theological debates and Christological controversies took place among the educated and elite, their statements of anathema and unity, and the alliances and violent vendettas among bishops and emperors, mattered to all levels of Christian society. Lay Christians felt the stresses of the episcopal conflicts in the same way that the bishops were pressed by political instability in the empire. Conflicts among the religious elites affected most notably the administration of the sacraments. If members of the faithful believed that they were not receiving valid baptism or Eucharist, religious anxiety and conflict erupted, as Volker Menze argues.63 Many scholars have attempted to interpret these tensions and their long and confusing resolution. It may be that we will never be able to determine definitively when the split between the Chalcedonians and the Syrian Miaphysites occurred. In his

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study on the Miaphysite bishops and bishoprics, Évêques et évêchés d’Asie antérieure au VIe siècle, Ernst Honigmann shows how the Miaphysites kept a strong foothold in the Syriac-speaking areas of northern Mesopotamia and Syria. Chalcedonian or Miaphysite affiliation of a bishop often boiled down to a question of which diocese the bishop came from, as W. C. Frend discusses in his foundational book on this topic, The Rise of the Monophysite Movement. Recent studies, like Volker Menze’s Justinian and the Making of the Syrian Orthodox Church, Philip Wood’s “We Have No King but Christ”: Christian Political Thought in Greater Syria on the Eve of the Arab Conquest (c. 400–585), and Lucas Van Rompay’s important article “Society and Community in the Christian East,” have led to a more nuanced portrayal of the gradual process by which the Miaphysite party became its own separate church. Historians have used sources from historiography, chronicles, ecclesiastical synodical reports, and letters to interpret the gradual crystallization of the Chalcedonians, the Church of the East, and the Miaphysites.64 Rather than retelling this narrative through an examination of doctrinal conflicts or the reification of theological categories that separated bishops and theologians of the Greek and Syriacspeaking worlds, this book considers hagiography’s role in the creation of religious memory. We will investigate how hagiographies help historians and theologians to interpret the events of the fifth through the seventh century that changed the course of Christian history in the Middle East. We will see how sacred fictions and legends recount conflicts over orthodoxy and imperial power. The contents of Syriac legends of missionaries invite us to analyze disputes within a framework that is sympathetic to the human need to make sense of the messy past. In the stories of their missionaries, Syriac-speaking Christians found a mode of expression for idealized presentations of an apostolic age. Missionary hagiography, with its combination of political and religious symbols, is an essential genre for understanding the complex and gradual process through which the Syriac-speaking communities became the Miaphysite Syrian Orthodox Church (West Syrian) and the Dyophysite Church of the East (East Syrian). The sixth century brought hard times for people in the Eastern Roman Empire. Christological controversies tore the fabric of the churches asunder, while wars, earthquakes, and famine added to the distress of daily life. Syriac missionary literature, a genre that mythologizes the growth, expansion, and creation of new Christian societies, came out of this time of distress and affliction. This book seeks to understand that paradox: how experiences of pain, marginalization, schism, and loss can generate stories about healing, unity, reconciliation, and triumph. HAG IO G R A P H Y A N D L AT E A N T IQU E ST U D I E S

My work in this book rests on the shoulders of many scholars of Greek, Latin, and Syriac hagiography. The Bollandist Hippolyte Delehaye, SJ (d. 1941) paved the way

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Introduction

for the scholarly investigation of hagiography.65 Paul Bedjan (d. 1920), a Chaldean priest and missionary from Iran, edited and published seven volumes of Syriac hagiographic texts in his Acta martyrum et sanctorum. François Nau (d. 1931), a French Orientalist and priest, published several florilegia of Syriac hagiographies, including an edition and French translation of the Life of Mar Ah ̣udemmeh, analyzed in this book.66 Another Bollandist, Paul Peeters, SJ brought scholarly attention to the vast corpus of Oriental hagiography with the publication of the Bibliotheca hagiographica orientalis. E. W. Brooks produced editions and English translations of John of Ephesus’s Lives of the Eastern Saints. Three of John’s hagiographies are analyzed in this book. In the past few decades, Syriacists Susan Ashbrook Harvey,67 Sebastian Brock,68 Joseph Amar,69 Amir Harrak,70 and Andrew Palmer71 (to name only a few) have produced translations and full-length monographs on Syriac hagiographic texts. Hagiography was most recently the subject of a full-length conference of the Société d’Études Syriaques, which produced L’hagiographie syriaque, a collection of articles on Syriac hagiography. André Bingelli’s introduction to that volume provides an excellent survey of Syriac hagiography and a summary of the history of scholarship on it.72 Many of the contributors to the volume have helped bring hagiography to the fore as a critical genre for understanding social history, liturgy, and culture in the Syriac-speaking milieu. Within the broader field of late antique studies, the work of Averil Cameron, and in particular her book Christianity and the Rhetoric of Empire, have been formative. Cameron stresses the importance of considering modes of religious expression to understand how Christianity spread through the exchange of stories.73 Her interest in the primacy of the “Word” in ancient Christianity, the rhetoric of paradox, and the impact of imperial sponsorship on Christian rhetoric helped me to situate Syriac missionary stories within the larger narrative settings and conventions of late antique religious literature. Finally, like many scholars who study late antiquity, in my interest in holy men and the development of the cult of the saints, I depend very much on the research of Peter Brown. His article “The Rise and Function of the Holy Man in Late Antiquity,” as well as his now classic text The Cult of the Saints, laid the groundwork for the study of saints and hagiographic texts and their effects on late antique society. • • •

In the first half of this book, I focus on three texts of the apostolic Acts genre: the Acts of Thomas, the Teaching of Addai, and the Acts of Mari. These stories share motifs from Greco-Roman novels, biblical stories of the prophets and patriarchs, Jewish and Christian pseudepigrapha, and the canonical book of Acts.74 In chapter 1, I examine the Acts of Thomas: a third-century account of the apostle Thomas’s missionary activities in India. While the Acts of Thomas has major

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features in common with other canonical and noncanonical apostolic Acts, this text is distinct in its influence on Syriac-speaking Christianity. In chapter 2, I discuss the Teaching of Addai—an early fifth-century text that creates apostolic foundations for Edessa’s Nicene population. In chapter 3, I analyze a text of the Syriacspeaking Christians in Persia: the Acts of Mari. This story presents apostolic foundations for Christians of Mesopotamia and Persia. This trilogy of Syriac missionary narratives imagines a landscape dotted with Christian cities joined together through their patron apostles Thomas, Addai, and Mari. Thus the first three chapters of this book show how apostolic foundation legends created a map of the Christian Syrian Orient. In the second half of this book I examine three hagiographies of historic personages: Simeon of Beth Arsham, Jacob Baradaeus, and Ah ̣udemmeh. John of Ephesus wrote the first two hagiographies, and so I begin in chapter 4 with an analysis of John of Ephesus’s own historical background and particular interest in missionary themes. In chapter 5, I examine the hagiographic tradition of Simeon of Beth Arsham, and I show that his story represented an icon of the ideals of the Miaphysites of the sixth century. In chapter 6, I study and compare the hagiographic traditions of Jacob Baradaeus, and I demonstrate that the shifts in narratives about Jacob reveal different stages in the development of the Syrian Orthodox Church. Finally, in chapter 7, I examine the story of Ah ̣udemmeh, whose hagiography depicts the particular interests of a burgeoning Miaphysite church in the Sasanian milieu. The lives of Simeon, Jacob, and Ah ̣udemmeh reflected the expansion of Syriac Christianity beyond the borders of the Roman Empire.75 The composition of these stories helped the Miaphysites to forge a new hierarchy of heroes. The lives of Simeon of Beth Arsham, Jacob Baradaeus, and Ah ̣udemmeh exemplify the Miaphysites’ efforts to reconstitute themselves in the wake of sixth-century turmoil. These three hagiographies of Miaphysite missionaries to the Christians living in the Persian Empire echoed the themes of earlier Syriac missionary narratives: the introduction of a new Christianity to compete with indigenous traditions, stories of healings, the catechizing of groups of people, and the ordination of new bishops and leaders to continue the tradition. The missionaries Simeon of Beth Arsham, Jacob Baradaeus, and Ah ̣udemmeh are depicted like Thomas and Addai, men who were ascetic, poor, homeless, and pursued by adversaries. By presenting their bishops as austere, itinerant preachers like the first followers of Jesus, Miaphysite hagiographers portrayed them as the true descendants of the first apostles. In the fifth through seventh century, theological disagreements and ambiguous political loyalties generated hagiographic literature that memorialized the missionaries of the emergent Syrian Orthodox Church and the Church of the East. By reading these stories together, as portraits of missionary life, we will see how these texts fit together as a system that their authors used to represent their past. We will

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also see how the claim to validity through apostolic succession became critical in the competition for orthodoxy among the Miaphysites, the Chalcedonians, and the Church of the East. The saints’ Lives themselves become symbols of the entire church’s story, as idealized retellings of a past in which there is both conflict and expansion, and both pain and healing.

1

Saint Thomas, Missionary Apostle to India

The Acts of Thomas is an early third-century attestation of a missionary narrative in the Syriac tradition that attributes the conversion of India to Saint Thomas, the apostle known as Jesus’s twin (John 20:24).1 In this extended apocryphal narrative, Christ commissions Judas Thomas to travel to India to convert its people.2 Thomas journeys there by way of the trade routes as a servant enslaved to merchants. The Acts of Thomas has received much scholarly attention and is the subject of several full-length studies, notably those of A. F. J. Klijn, J. Bremmer, and H. J. W. Drijvers.3 The text appears to have been written in Syriac, but was almost immediately translated into Greek, and then was translated into Syriac again.4 Scholars examine this text from a variety of angles, ranging from the history of early Syrian asceticism to the text’s influence in Manichaean circles. Scholars have described the text as Gnostic, Encratite, Manichaean, or anti-Manichaean. J. W. Childers notes that different recensions do reflect particular theological tendencies.5 The earlier scholarly tendency, however, to characterize the Acts as “Gnostic” may derive from Western scholars’ lack of acquaintance with the unique traits of early Syriac Christianity.6 Many stories about Saint Thomas from late antiquity have survived, but the Acts of Thomas is unique in its influence on subsequent sacred fictions. It presents the Christian missionary life as one of sacrifice, itinerancy, asceticism, and imitation of Christ. The Acts of Thomas enshrines the symbol of the missionary apostle in Syriac religious memory. In the late antique world this narrative spread an account of imaginary conversions of mythic places on the road to India. And the symbol of the missionary struck a chord in the cultures of the Christian East, within both the Roman Empire and the Sasanian milieu. The text’s widespread 17

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Saint Thomas, Missionary Apostle to India

dissemination and translation attest to its popularity in late antiquity. While the authors of subsequent missionary stories studied in this book may not intentionally imitate the Acts of Thomas in their hagiographies, it is clear that the Acts of Thomas gave power to the symbol of the missionary saint. PRÉCIS

The Acts of Thomas contains thirteen chapters that depict India’s conversion to Christianity through the apostle Thomas. As it is longer than any other text included in this book, I summarize the narrative here. Readers familiar with the story may wish to pass over this section. The section divisions in parentheses correspond to Klijn’s commentary and translation of the Syriac text. The [First] Act of Judas Thomas, the Apostle: Jesus assigns each apostle an area of the world to convert. The lot of India falls to Thomas, his slave (1.1).7 Jesus sells Thomas to the merchant Habban to be a carpenter for King Gundaphorus (1.2).8 Thomas and Habban set out for India, and they reach Sandaruk (1.3).9 Thomas attends a banquet of the king in honor of the princess’s wedding, but he abstains from eating, anointing himself, and praying. A Hebrew flute girl notices him (1.4). A cupbearer slaps Thomas [now called “Judas”] for not celebrating. Thomas sings a song in Hebrew that describes the church as a bride of light, with the apostles as groomsmen (1.6–7). The Hebrew flute girl recognizes the words he sings, and the cupbearer is torn apart by a lion (1.8). The flute girl proclaims that Thomas is either God or his apostle (1.9). Thomas prays over the princess bride and the bridegroom, and the prayer contains a Christological proclamation (1.10). When the bride and bridegroom are about to consummate their marriage, Jesus appears to the bride in the form of Thomas (1.11). Jesus persuades the couple to abstain from the sickness, death, and torment that he associates with sex and childrearing, and they agree (1.12). This scandalizes the king and queen (1.13). The girl explains to her parents that she is wed to a heavenly bridegroom, Christ (1.14). The groom praises Christ, who has shown him his true self (1.15). The king is furious, and he chases the apostle out of his kingdom, but the apostle continues his journey in India (1.16). The Second Act: Thomas and Habban the merchant reach India and King Gundaphorus. Thomas identifies himself as a carpenter, and he agrees to build a palace for the king (2.17–18). But Thomas instead gives the money for the palace to the poor (2.19). People report back to the king that Thomas is giving the money to the indigent, teaching them about Christianity, and practicing acts of ascetic piety: fasting, prayer, and

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almsgiving (2.20). Thomas tells the king that he has built him a palace in heaven, and the king arrests Thomas and the merchant (2.21). The brother of the king, Gad, dies. His soul is taken to heaven, and he sees the palace that Thomas’s acts of charity have built (2.22). Gad returns from heaven in order to tell his brother about the heavenly palace (2.23). The king realizes his mistake, frees Thomas and the merchant, and asks for Thomas’s forgiveness (2.24). Thomas offers a prayer of thanksgiving (2.25). The entire community rejoices and prays together and prepares for baptism (2.26). Thomas pours oil over their heads, prays to the Holy Spirit, baptizes them, and then at dawn they share in the Eucharist (2.27). Thomas preaches to the newly baptized (2.28). Thomas shares a meal with his disciples, and they head off on the road together, according to Christ’s instruction (2.29). The Third Act: On the road, Thomas sees a dead boy (3.30). A snake appears and tells Thomas that he (the snake) lusted after a girl whom the [dead] boy had loved. The snake watched the two youths have sex, and then killed the boy (3.31). The snake identifies himself as the son of Satan (3.32). Thomas commands the snake to suck the poison from the dead youth, and the snake obeys. The boy comes back to life, and the snake bursts (3.33). The youth praises Christ, and Thomas encourages him (3.34–36). The entire community converts to Christianity and praises Thomas as the apostle of the living God (3.37). The Fourth Act: A colt, speaking as a man, instructs the apostle to sit upon him, so that the he can carry the apostle the way his ancestor carried Christ. He identifies himself a descendant of Balaam’s ass (4.39–40). The ass carries Thomas into the city (4.41). The Fifth Act: Thomas exorcises a woman whom demons had raped (5.41–46). Thomas praises Jesus, he baptizes the woman, and then they share in the Eucharist (5.47–49). The Sixth Act: A young man who fornicates with his girlfriend is unable to receive the Eucharist because he killed his girlfriend when she would not convert to Christianity with him (6.50). The young man repents and is purified by Thomas’s prayer and ritual (6.51). Thomas and the crowd of people then go in search of the young woman, and they pray over her (6.52). Thomas raises her from the dead by invoking Jesus’s name (6.53). The resurrected girl gives a description of the underworld, a smelly place, where the chaste are separated from fornicators (6.54). Thomas uses her warning as an admonition for all the newly baptized (6.55–58). All the people surrender themselves to the living God and commit themselves to care of the poor and widows (6.59–60). Thomas’s prayer equates discipleship with “becoming a stranger” for the sake of Christ (6.61).

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Saint Thomas, Missionary Apostle to India

The Seventh Act: The general of India approaches Thomas that he might help his wife and daughter whom a violent man attacked (6.64). Thomas entrusts a deacon, Xanthippus, to care for the community, and the apostle continues on the road with the general. The Eighth Act: The general and Thomas are aided by wild asses who bow down to them and are willingly yoked to help the apostle and the general (8.69–70). They find the general’s wife and daughter, and Thomas orders the ass to instruct the demon to leave the wife and daughter of the general (8.73–74). Thomas drives the demon out of the women (8.75–77). All are amazed to hear the preaching of the wild ass and the apostle’s healings (8.78–81). The Ninth Act: Thomas and the general reach the home of Mygdonia, a kinsperson of the king, and Thomas comforts the servants of those who work for Mygdonia and her husband (9.82–84). Thomas presents an extended homily on holiness (9.85–86) and humility (9.86). Mygdonia falls at Thomas’s feet and begs to become a Christian and transform her body into a holy temple of the Spirit (9.87). Thomas tells Mygdonia to rise, turn away from bodily adornments, turn away from earthly marriage, and worship Christ alone (9.88). Mygdonia pulls away from her husband Karish, resisting his company and refusing to eat with him (9.89–92). Mygdonia continues to receive instruction from Thomas (9.93–94). Her husband is angry that she spends so much time with Thomas, whom she calls a “physician of the soul” and whom he calls a “sorcerer” and a “stranger” (9.95). Karish’s resentment builds as his wife refuses to eat and have sex with him (9.96). Mygdonia prays for support, and she refuses her husband’s sexual advances (9.97–98). Her husband Karish weeps and seeks that the king, Mazdai, avenge the apostle (9.99–102). Mygdonia bemoans her situation to the apostle (9.103). The king has his men hunt after Thomas, they apprehend Thomas, and they put him in jail for sorcery and reviling the king (9.105–6). While in prison, Thomas prays and poetically recounts the Hymn of the Pearl (9.106–13). Mygdonia is tortured and inconsolable, and she is unmoved by her husband’s pleas for her love. She confesses to her husband her commitment to Jesus and continence (9.114–17). The Tenth Act: Mygdonia prepares for baptism and the Eucharist (10.119–20). Thomas anoints her and baptizes her, Karish makes her choose between him and Jesus, and she professes her fidelity to Christ (10.121–24). The king and Mazdai reproach Thomas again (10.125–30). Thomas preaches about the glory of baptism (10.131–32). Thomas shares in the Eucharist with the general and his daughters (10.133).

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The Eleventh Act: The queen Tertia goes to comfort Mygdonia, and Mygodonia tells Tertia about the wonders of Christianity (11.136). Tertia is then equally elated about Christianity, and Mazdai is infuriated at the apostle. Both Mazdai and Karish go to the house of the general and physically assault Thomas (11.137). The Twelfth Act: Vizan, the prince, speaks with Thomas sympathetically, and the king subjects the apostle to ordeals. God brings a flood upon the king (12.141). Judas and the community of new Christians pray together in prison (12.142–49). The Thirteenth Act: Vizan, the prince, is baptized (13.150). Mygodonia and Tertia visit the apostle in prison, and the apostle prepares the group for baptism. They all share another Eucharist (13.157–58). The Martyrdom of the Apostle Thomas: Thomas is imprisoned, and gives a special commissioning to Tertia and Mygdonia. He is tried, stripped, and martyred. After Thomas’s death, King Mazdai is ultimately converted because of sickness from which his son is healed. (159–70). The colorful coming of Christianity to India brings violence, chaos, abrupt interventions, scandals, and social revolt. Thomas’s apostolic legitimacy comes from his kinship with Christ, and he demonstrates this through miracles and godly insight. Thomas converts people from every social stratum through miracles, exorcisms, poetic discourse, and ritual. T H E AC T S OF T H OM AS A S A NA R R AT I V E T Y P O L O G Y O F T H E SY R IAC M I S SIO NA RY S T O RY

Just as missionaries traveled throughout the Syriac-speaking world, so did stories about them. In the third century c.e., stories about the apostle Thomas that were circulating among Syriac speakers were compiled into a composite text, the Acts of Thomas.10 The popularity of the Acts of Thomas among late antique audiences demonstrates that Syriac- and Greek-speaking Christians gravitated to the symbol of a reluctant missionary apostle. Circulation of the Acts of Thomas among Christian groups was broad, and subsequent Syriac hagiographers followed in its literary footsteps. As we will see, some of the main motifs in the Acts of Thomas work together to form a narrative typology that is found in other missionary stories. Genre: The Bible and Ancient Novels The Acts of Thomas belongs to the genre of apocryphal narrative. The New Testament book of the Acts of the Apostles presents a picture of Jesus’s disciples establishing new societies of believers in the regions around the Mediterranean. Before his ascension to heaven, Jesus instructs his followers to be his witnesses, going out

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from Judea to Samaria and to the ends of the earth (Acts 1:8), and as they move from place to place, he urges them to heal and speak with boldness (Acts 4:13). Some awestruck people accept Jesus’s followers, but others ridicule them and accuse them of madness, saying they are “filled with new wine” (Acts 2:13). The book of Acts exhibits literary patterns and sets precedents that subsequent stories about the apostles will use to describe individual and communal conversions. We find these stories within the Acts of Thomas. The creation of a new Christian society is accompanied by chaos and miracles, turmoil and rebirth. The integration of biblical typologies in the Acts of Thomas is obvious. Thomas, mirroring the activities of his twin, Christ, converts through healing. The saint’s wonderworking ability shows his access to the divine. Thomas resurrects dead children, who come back to life and confess Christ.11 The apostle uses sacraments to heal those whom demons torment.12 We read, for example, a variant on the story of the resurrection narratives of Mary Magdalene and Jesus.13 When the matron Mygdonia visits Thomas in prison, she does not recognize him: “[Mygdonia] was afraid and fell down. And he stood up [qām] before her and said, ‘Don’t be afraid Mydgonia!’ Do not desert Jesus Christ. Do not desert your Lord to whom you have entrusted your soul.”14 Novelistic elements are used in a paradoxical way as the text promotes asceticism and romanticized chaste relationships between men and women: Mygdonia flees her husband’s bed to visit the apostle.15 Like the Acts of the Apostles, this text features a miraculous escape from prison,16 and like some of the noncanonical narratives about Jesus, including the Gospel of Nicodemus and the Acts of Pilate, the Acts of Thomas features a tour of the underworld. H. J. W. Drijvers notes that parallels and shared motifs of the apocryphal Acts of the Apostles “can be better explained from the common background of tradition and milieu shared by the two Acts.”17 The Syriac version of the Acts of Thomas enumerates the names of the apostles along with their missionary assignments. This specificity is absent from the Greek text. The narrative also expands on the Pauline image of Christ’s kenosis.18 The allpowerful Lord becomes a slave to redeem humanity, and he then sells his freeborn twin into slavery to further his mission. The holy man qua slave motif, moreover, can be an allusion to the biblical patriarch Joseph, whose brothers sold him into slavery.19 Thomas distinguishes his mission: “I am imitating you my Lord Jesus Christ. It is not just that I believe, but that I endure many things! You made me worthy to be in the Lord’s image.”20 The Acts of Thomas features the leitmotifs of exotic travel, royal characters, and mistaken identity that we find in the late antique Greek novels and in other apocryphal Acts.21 Greek novels also feature the motif of a hero sold to an Indian merchant. Xenophon of Ephesus, for instance,  writes of the Greek heroine Anthea, who was sold as a slave to a rich Indian merchant.22 Like the stories of the Greek novels, the Acts of Thomas features adventures and themes of romance. It also shares motifs with the Acts of Paul and Thecla, the Acts

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of John, the Acts of Andrew, and the Acts of Philip. Their similarities with the GrecoRoman novel have been demonstrated elsewhere: “There is a motley mixture of miracle stories, fantastic deeds of the apostle, conversions, nature miracles and stories of demons, which are akin to the novelistic narrative art of the ancient world.”23 The Christianity that Thomas brings turns society upside down and undoes the laws of nature. The story reorders a pagan landscape into a Christian one with scenes of weddings overturned, Christian queens fleeing from their pagan husbands, dead women returning from the underworld, and donkeys revealing hidden knowledge.24 The compiler of the Acts of Thomas, however, uses the structure of the novel and the Acts of the Apostles to promote the theological ideals and practices of the emergent communities of the Christian East.25 Christian mission brings chaos and upheaval to pagan society, but it transforms states of social disorder into wellarranged Christian kingdoms. Divine Kinship and Twin Discourse The Acts of Thomas blends discourse on twins and family with the Christian rhetoric of paradox to construct an apostolic history for the Orient. The Acts pairs images of twins and slaves, masters and apostles, to elevate its patron’s lineage. Twin discourse elevates Thomas’s status by blurring distinctions between the actions of Christ and those of the apostle. Thomas heals and exorcises as Christ does,26 and the characters mistake Thomas and Christ for each other.27 The story includes themes with biblical precedents: Thomas is a carpenter like Christ, who preaches and shares meals with his disciples after he has healed them. Thomas, like Jesus, dies at the hands of a political ruler. Yet a closer look reveals the stark differences between Thomas’s deeds and those of the canonical Jesus: Thomas occupies himself with kings, queens, and princesses, and the affairs of the royal bedroom.28 Jesus works with fishermen, sinful women, lepers, and occupies himself with the affairs of Galilean peasants.29 Thomas travels as a slave with merchants.30 The twin language and Thomas’s weaving of biblical verses into the text, however, naturalize these divergences between Thomas and Christ, giving the story a biblical gloss and “India” an apostolic past. The twinning of Christ and Thomas corresponds to the construction of the text’s dualistic symbolic universe. The story sets up contrasts between the corruptible and the incorruptible, kings and servants, the demonic and this earth versus the divine and heaven, men and women, conversion of the heart and healing of the body, and so on. Even earthly “goods” are poor imitations of their heavenly counterparts.31 This hermeneutic emerges also in the narrative pattern of the hidden and the revealed the eye of the body versus the eye of the heart the temporal world versus eternal life.32 The text is promoting the divine insight that Thomas has. Thomas uncovers the dual dimensions of the world hidden to most. Satan,

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as prince of the material world, beguiles human beings into a state of forgetfulness about their true origin; the earth is a neutral arena in which good and evil intermingle. The missionary wins the world for his God and the Christians, and he replaces demons with servants of Christ to unify fragmented persons and communities. The Acts of Thomas creates two contrasting lines of descent in two nonhuman biblical characters: a talking donkey that descends from Balaam’s ass and the serpent sprung from the snake of Genesis.33 The snake calls himself a creeper and the son of a creeper,34 and he portrays his participation in evil events in biblical history. The donkey, which carries Thomas on his back, claims to be an heir of noble asses memorialized in scripture.35 The text uses biblical animals to construct twinned lines of descent in the created world. The donkey/serpent motif shows inversions of power: the snake tempts and poisons; his authority comes from his kinship to Satan. The beast’s prophetic speech reveals the nearness of the donkey to the divine, and his humble service to Thomas. Theology of Sacred Travel: Real and Spiritual Journeys to Christ The Acts of Thomas, like all missionary stories, focuses on journeys, both physical and spiritual. Thomas is a foreigner, aksenāyā, who enters the social fabric of the kingdoms of India from below, as a craftsman or carpenter.36 The wandering apostle, homeless and uninterested in concerns of the world, directs people to their true heavenly home by assigning to them positions in the Christian earthly hierarchy that anticipate their lives in heaven. Thomas is on a journey to India, but as he converts people, he leads them on an interior journey to Christ. The theological underpinnings of the story distinguish it from the Greek novels of late antiquity. Jesus sends Thomas away from Jerusalem to convert the East, and the apostle’s sacred travels begin. The narrative also describes unseen journeys of the spirit to which Thomas calls his disciples, as he awakens their souls to recall their true selves. A newly converted prince of India explains to his father that he has discovered his divine origin: “He [Thomas] showed me how to find my own self.”37 The Acts portray Christianity as religion that heals the body and spirit and brings freedom. Faith in Thomas’s God transforms new converts. The Acts of Thomas stands out from later texts, however, in its focus on the divine origins of the individual believer. The hymns of the Acts of Thomas contain theological metaphors describing the church as a bride of light. The Acts of Thomas also connects the wandering apostle motif with another bridal symbol in the Syriac language, the verb mkar. The root meaning of the word is “to barter,” while its extended meaning is “to betrothe.” The apostle, a slave to the merchant, thus facilitates the marriage between the bridegroom Christ and his betrothed, the church: a heavenly eschatological wedding feast arranged by the apostle, as the bartering or betrothing merchant.38

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The theology of sacred wandering and returning to Christ is best exemplified in the hymn that Thomas sings while he is imprisoned: the “Hymn on the Pearl.”39 Thomas chants about a king and queen who send their son on an expedition to find a hidden pearl, giving him a royal tunic. The prince sets out, but he loses his way in Egypt and forgets his royal heritage. His parents send him a letter to help him recall his mission and royal lineage. The youth then regains his robe, retrieves the pearl from the serpent, and comes home to rule his land with his brother: “The Hymn is a symbolic portrayal of the life of Adam, the man who of his own free will left his Father’s house, Paradise, with a part of his inheritance. . . . Then the whole process is put into reverse: he recovers his splendid robe, the image of God, and will rule with his brother, his heavenly second self, Jesus (cf. Thomas and Jesus as twins) in the (heavenly) kingdom.”40 This story inverts a version of the missionary story itself, warning of the dangers that befall a traveler who forgets the intent of his mission. The type/antitype patterning of the hymn’s images relates to themes from the dominant narrative. The values of the hymn compare to the ideals of the Acts of Thomas. Unlike Thomas, who maintains his course to Christ through prayer,41 even in imprisonment, the prince of the hymn begins with purpose but loses his way. The hymn reunites a family broken apart; the Acts of Thomas breaks up earthly families and discourages marriage. The hymn celebrates royalty; the Acts of Thomas promotes simplicity and anonymity. The prince of the “Hymn on the Pearl” must hold fast to his material possessions,42 whereas the Acts of Thomas promises freedom through poverty. Thomas, though a pauper and magician in the temporal world, emerges as a superior double of the royal son.43 Both the prince and Thomas move from freeborn social statuses into slavery. Both complete missions in service to a lord. Both fall into a decadent society, but Thomas resists its temptations.44 He, unlike the prince, never forgets his royal lineage. The interpolation of this hymn into the Acts of Thomas preserves a beautiful piece of literature and combines the image of the itinerant missionary apostle with that of an imprisoned bard, painting an icon of the missionary poet. In subsequent missionary texts, intellectual practices involving speech, debaters, letter writers, preachers, or hagiographers continue the tradition of speaking charismata of the missionary holy man, but the specific image of the poet apostle is unique to the Acts of Thomas. The sanctification of itinerancy and journeys, as presented in the Acts of Thomas, has a long trajectory in the stories of the Syrians. The notion of holy itinerancy and homelessness in the Acts of Thomas might in fact reflect an early period in Syrian Christianity of wandering ascetics, as Daniel Caner has suggested.45 By the fifth century, however, monastic detachment brings conflict with the church leaders in the cities.46 As we discuss in subsequent chapters of this book, the theological themes of detachment, homelessness, poverty, and itinerant healing in the Acts of Thomas

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reemerge in Syriac texts of the fifth and sixth centuries as symbols of legitimacy for monks and Miaphysite bishops exiled from their sees.47 Miaphysite bishops like Simeon of Beth Arsham and Jacob Baradaeus (described in chapters 5 and 6 of this book) lose the support of the imperial church. Their hagiographer John of Ephesus gravitates to the narrative typology of the itinerant missionary saint that is canonized in the Acts of Thomas. John of Ephesus will cast the bishops according to this ideal. Persecution drives Syriac monks from the safety of their monasteries. John will use the model of itinerancy, as glorified in the Acts of Thomas, to redefine their lack of stability as holy itinerancy, once consecrated in Syriac memory as “apostolicity.” Model Societies: Converting the King, Creating Christian Families The Acts of Thomas established a paradigm that future Syriac missionary stories adopted: Christianity arrives in the Syrian Orient through the conversion of the royal household. Thomas proclaims the message of Christianity to the kingdoms of India, and riots follow. Thomas challenges social orders that madden local rulers. Kings pursue the apostle throughout the narrative, and they even incarcerate him. The building of a new Christian society, as the legend portrays it, requires that Thomas disrupt the regnant power structures. His challenges are largely economic, disrupting the kingdom’s financial administration and threatening the familial structures that ensure the continuity of the household economy. In one instance, Thomas fails to fulfill his obligations of labor to the king. Rather than building a palace for the king as commissioned, Thomas gives the money to the poor to build a palace in heaven, and Gundaphorus imprisons him.48 In the Acts of Thomas, programs of asceticism and social reform sustain community welfare.49 Christianity creates communities structured on asceticism and care of the poor. The missionary teaches Christian labor to the city. Thomas, whom King Gundaphorus hires to construct a palace, gives the money meant for the edifice to the poor instead. When the king asks about the progress of Thomas’s palace building, the royal messengers respond: He is not doing anything [with respect to the construction], but rather he goes around in cities and towns giving to the poor and teaching them a new God. Also he heals the sick, and he drives out demons. . . . We thought that he was a sorcerer. It is thought from his asceticism and his religion that he is a magician or an apostle of the new God. He fasts and prays a great deal. He eats bread and salt and drinks water. He wears a linen garment and takes nothing from anyone. Anything that he has, he gives to others.50

Thomas’s other economic challenges entail the “corruption” of the pagan household. Thomas intervenes on the night of the princess bride’s marriage to stop the young couple from having intercourse.51 King Gundaphorus runs Thomas out of

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his city because the apostle has thwarted the consummation of the marriage of his daughter and son-in-law: “When the king heard these things from the bridegroom and bride, he tore his garments asunder. He said to those around him, ‘Go out immediately in the whole city and surround it. Bring the man to me, that sorcerer, and bring him up to my house. I asked him to pray for the fortune of my wicked daughter. The man who finds him and brings him to me will be given anything he wishes.’ ”52 Elsewhere Thomas seduces wives away from their husbands’ beds by wedding them to a new heavenly bridegroom, Christ. King Mazdai throws the apostle in jail because his kinsman, Karish, is sexually frustrated.53 Karish’s wife Mygdonia will no longer sleep with him on account of her conversion to Christianity.54 The Acts of Thomas situates the apostle’s preaching within the setting of a royal court.55 The story mentions three different kings with whom the apostle interacts.56 In a cultural model that has both biblical and nonbiblical precedents,57 Thomas plays the part of the holy man, detached from cares, who speaks with parrhesia, or frank speech, warning kings and their families about the fleeting nature of their power.58 Despite Thomas’s criticism of the transitory structures of the kingdom, his program takes root through the royal court, set over and against its institutions and accoutrements. Thomas contrasts his values with those of the king: “You are glorified with servants, possessions, garments, concubines and transient foods and abominations of every sort. I am glorified with poverty, asceticism, humility, fasting, prayer, great thanksgiving, fraternal fellowship, the spirit of holiness and brotherly asceticism.”59 The king is as a metaphor for temporal authority or empire in contrast to the heavenly ruler, Christ. Unity is imagined through the conversion of the king to Christianity. The narrative refashions the roots of Christianity through Thomas to elevate the enslaved apostle poet above the kings Gundaphorus and Mazdai (whose name symbolizes the “Mazdaean” or the “Zoroastrian”).60 The Acts of Thomas replaces the authority of the king and his gods with that of the apostle and the Christian God. The conversion of the king is necessary to legitimate the power of the apostle and to differentiate Thomas’s authority from the prince’s. Thomas’s rhetorical aggrandizement of poverty gains force as it contrasted to the earthly power and richness of his audience.61 His program of simplicity and asceticism stands in contrast to the social complexity and decadence of the king and his family. The narrative classifies two opposing groups of social relationships: the king and his court, and the apostle and his Christian community. This stance of Thomas vis-à-vis the king endows Thomas’s speech with the same authority as the monarch’s. As Thomas gathers his group around him, he and his followers resemble a new Christian kingdom, and the words of the missionary apostle are endowed with the authority of a king. Thomas converts the king through persuasion. No human

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rivals exceed Thomas’s eloquence. A talking donkey identifies Thomas’s apostolate for India: Twin of Christ and apostle of the most high God, son of the hidden life-giving Word, bearer of the hidden mysteries of the Son of God, son of free men who became a slave, who bought his freedom in obedience to many, who went from having much to poverty, through whom the Lord stole many away, that there might be a cause for life for this region of India, he who came not in his own desire toward the people of India, who turned many through his appearance and through his divine words, get up and ride upon me and have a rest until you enter the city.62

This asinine insight contrasts with the unbaptized people who “lived in a desolate region and are led like animals who cannot speak.”63 The text subverts the hierarchy of rulers of the land who deny Christ by contrasting their blindness to the insight of beasts of burden who recognize Christ’s lordship. Model Apostle: Asceticism, Healing The story cloaks the apostle in the ascetic virtues of celibacy, poverty, and social welfare, values that are particularly, but not exclusively, characteristic of Syriacspeaking Christianity.64 In the Acts of Thomas, an itinerant carpenter attracts men, women, princes, slaves, and even donkeys to his movement; he forges a new hierarchy to resolve the chaos that his initial message creates. The Acts of Thomas crafts a “Christian India” as the story’s hero resolves social revolts by converting kingdoms to his new God. The conversion of Gundaphorus and his brother helps create a unified Christian community, from king down to child. There is no conflict. The king and his brother are unified in their obedience to the Christian God. Thomas’s authority is realized through God’s attestation of the treasures in heaven.65 The Acts of Thomas establishes models that later traditions identify and use as literary symbols of apostolicity. Kings,66 apostles,67 merchants, and their slaves are linked together.68 The apostle is a stranger,69 a healer,70 who announces71 and imitates Jesus and speaks about the freedom that Christianity brings.72 The apostle converts all levels of society through his instruction,73 teaching them how Christianity redeems74 people to stand up75 and glorify76 the God who prepares heavenly dwelling places for those who wed their souls to Christ. In the Acts, Thomas prays, with his disciples, to Jesus, using healing rhetoric: “You became for us a medicine of life [samm h ̣aye] through your life-giving body and by the sprinkling of your blood.”77 The Acts of Thomas depicts Thomas as an itinerant healer, creating a literary type for the missionary saint in Syriac literature.78 Whereas other traditions present Christianity as a “perfect philosophy” and craft descent through its teachers, the Syrians portray themselves as the children of healers; the Syriac version of the Acts contains more healing rhetoric than the

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Greek translation.79 Teaching and divine insight are never disembodied; conversion of the heart begins with a strengthened body.80 Healing miracles precede conversion in the Acts of Thomas, and this literary pattern is a standard feature of missionary hagiography.81 The saint’s charisma is not his ability to debate or persuade with homiletic discourse.82 Rather, Thomas forges new communities of unified bodies of Christians,83 and he uses miracles of exorcisms or resurrections to build Christian kingdoms in India, teaching his followers that Christ is the divine healer.84 The Acts of Thomas idealizes early Syrian views of the body, sex, wealth, and manual labor. Sex corrupts,85 and it belongs to the underworld.86 Espousal to Christ as the heavenly bridegroom heals both men and women from the decay and mortality that the text associates with marriage. The story links sex with murder and deceit.87 The missionary thus frees the couple from the ills attached to family roles and sexuality. Thomas cures couples and seals their bodies for Christ,88 as he preaches about continence.89 Thomas then cures cities of physical and social malaise. Liturgical Order Thomas’s conversion of the people he meets brings social upheaval. Yet out of this disruption comes the creation of new churches, whose members pray for revelation of hidden divine mysteries. Together they sing poetic songs to recall their true selves, and they share sacred ascetic meals to anticipate heavenly banquets. Thomas does not let persecution or imprisonment depress him. Instead, he calls on God for divine assistance, and the prisons and other locations of hardship become stages for liturgical drama. The story emphasizes the role of liturgical practices in sealing Christian societies, and this theme will recur in subsequent Syriac missionary stories. Spoken and sung prayers to the new God set Christian practices in stone. Some scenes describe rituals from the later Syriac versions of the text, and these feature more developed liturgies and creedal statements from the third century, suggesting that these versions are post-Constantinian interpolations. The authors of the Acts of Thomas legitimate their liturgical practices and beliefs by attributing their origins to Thomas.90 The liturgical formulas exhibit unique features of Syriac Christian idioms, such as the invocation of the Holy Spirit as Mother: Come, holy name of Christ. Come, life-giving power on high. Come, fulfillment of mercies. Come, exulted gift. Come, participation of the blessing. Come, revealer of the hidden mysteries.

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Saint Thomas, Missionary Apostle to India Come, mother of the seven dwellers, for in the eighth house is your rest. Come, messenger of reconciliation. Have communion with the hearts of these young people. Come, Holy Spirit. Purify their entire hearts. I will baptize them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit.91

Baptism creates a new Christian community centered on their missionary apostle, who links them to Christ. Thomas defines baptism as the birth of not just a new person, but an entire people. He began to speak about baptism and said: “Baptism is remission from sins. This is the birth of new people. This is the renewal of minds. This is the mingling of body and soul. This is the resurrection of the new man and childhood. This is participation in the remission of sins. Praise to you, power hidden in baptism, sharing with us. Praise to you, power made visible in baptism. Praise to you, joys renewed in baptism, approaching with love.”92 In the story, Christian liturgical practices replace pagan feasts. The pre-Christian societies celebrate with opulent feasts in which the guests anoint themselves with fragrant oils; the new Christian society transforms these banquets into ascetic Eucharists. While the apostle is a guest at the banquet of the king, he does not use oil to lather up, but rather seals himself to shut off his senses from bodily temptations: “Judas gave thanks to God, and in the middle of his head he sealed himself, and he moistened his nostrils, and set oil on his ears, and he seals his heart. Then he placed a crown of myrtle on his head.”93 Thomas seals these societies of Christian neophytes through anointing, or roushmā. Along with the anointing, Thomas teaches them the Eucharist.94 In this section we have analyzed how the symbols in the Acts of Thomas work together to create a narrative about the missionary life and the creation of Christian societies. Christianity is presented as liberation and freedom, and the biblical ideals are set into narrative form. The mobility of Thomas’s simple practices frees people from the entanglements of their household and court religions. The text distances Thomas from the social prestige of the royal family. Thomas passes on the lineage of Christianity not through animal sacrifice or kinship ties, but rather through rituals, such as the Eucharist and baptism,95 that the faithful can perform in prison, at home, or on the road.96 Thomas moves from the heart of the city of the king (building palaces and participating in weddings, king’s courts, and prison) to the limits of civilization (with trips to the underground and talking donkeys) where he encounters Satan governing the periphery. The Acts offers a map or paradigm for future missionary stories: the itinerant holy man brings his portable practices to convert rulers and sanctifies the wilderness for the worship of his Christianity, uprooting, when necessary, the remnants of the religious “other,” whether “pagan” or Christian “heretic.” We turn now to examine the specific landscape of the Acts of Thomas.

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M A P P I N G T H E T R AV E L S O F S A I N T T HOM A S

The canon of early Christian literature contains various stories about Saint Thomas; of these, however, only the Acts of Thomas focuses on his mission.97 Scholars cannot pinpoint a specific social situation that explains the circulation of these stories.98 We will show, however, that the composite of stories in the Acts of Thomas advances the interests of early Syrian Christians by portraying a Christian landscape grafted onto the trade routes between Edessa and India. Exoticized India In the Acts of Thomas, the apostolic succession begins with the merchant Habban, to whom Jesus sells Thomas.99 The Acts of Thomas traces the spread of the gospel through commercial activities and trade routes. An idealized form of Christian life that promotes homelessness and mobility is realized on the road between Jerusalem and India. Christianity spread to the Syrian East by means of the trade routes to India, and the Acts of Thomas is a literary celebration of that tradition.100 The Acts of Thomas portrays a Christian journey to the exotic, and the text elevates the role of the merchant culture in spreading Christianity to the East. The Indian setting places Thomas’s actions in regions at the crossroads of trade routes for spices and other commodities. In Edessa and other places along these routes stories about Thomas circulate, and devotion to his cult grows.101 The Acts of Thomas is one of many texts from late antiquity to construct India as an idealized region of the exotic. India represents a place of learning and teaching,102 a place to perfect the apostolic craft. As Grant Parker has shown, texts like the Acts of Thomas portray India as a “place of special knowledge, its religious specialists themselves the objects of pilgrimage.”103 Parker also notes that Thomas traveled to India via routes that were part of a vast network for the exchange of commodities. Exactly where in India did Thomas travel? The Christians of southern India today believe that he came to their province. But early evidence links Thomas to Parthia, a region that corresponds roughly to present-day northeastern Iran.There are many Persian loanwords in the Acts of Thomas, as well as allusions to the Parthian kingdom and caravan routes in Syria and Mesopotamia.104 The church historian Eusebius explains how Jesus divvied up the regions of the world: “When the holy apostles and disciples of our Saviour were scattered over the world, Thomas, so the tradition has it, obtained as his portion Parthia.”105 Eusebius further explains that Origen knows the Acts of John, Peter, Paul, Andrew, and Thomas,106 and Origen connects a mission of Thomas with Parthia. The author of the Acts of Thomas embellished the text with historical details, notably about the Indian king Gundaphorus, who is known from other ancient historical sources. Gundaphorus, whose name means “May he find glory,” was an

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Indo-Parthian king who ruled 20–46 c.e. in Drangiana, Arachosia (southeastern Afghanistan, northern Pakistan), and Punjab. He is known from the Takht-I Bahi inscription and coin issues in silver and copper in his name.107 The Parthian details in the story may be based on the embassies between Rome and North India that passed through third-century Edessa. Trade Route Culture The trade routes to India played a vital role in the encounters between East and West, and the Acts of Thomas develops the rich memory of these encounters to promote an idealized view of the expansion of Christianity. The text draws from the example of the working, wandering apostle as modeled in Paul. It couples that image with the history of Rome’s trade with the East, creating powerful symbolic associations. The trade routes are a place for conversion and new encounters and are traversed not only by merchants, who have economic interests, but also by detached wanderers, with spiritual motivations. Roman trade with the East arose in the first centuries c.e. in response to a demand for luxury goods, such as silk and spices.108 In his book, Rome’s Eastern Trade, Gary K. Young explains that in the classical period of Roman trade (ending with the fall of Palmyra in 272 c.e.) goods such as silk, cotton, pearls, gemstones, nard, pepper, and cinnamon were exchanged.109 The Romans obtained incense, for example, from southern Arabia for both its religious and medicinal properties,110 and silk and spices from India for the production of clothing and for culinary uses. Young draws much of his evidence from the Periplus Erythraei, a “workmanlike, practical manual for the merchant of the Red Sea trade,”111 which attests to “a rich and complex trade in goods from India, Arabia, and Africa arriving at the Red Sea ports, and a significant quantity of goods as well as gold and silver bullion being exported from the Roman Empire in exchange.”112 Thus the trade routes on which Thomas traveled to India were part of a robust network that brought the Eastern Roman Empire into contact with cultures beyond its borders. Young also notes that in late antiquity Greek, Syrian, and Jewish merchants used trade routes in Syria and northern Mesopotamia.113 The city of Palmyra, in central Syria, became an important stopping place for caravans and a meeting point for merchants as well as a center for long-distance trade with India and the Persian Gulf.114 In northern Mesopotamia, we have evidence of the wealth of cities like Batnae/Serugh, in a Syriac-speaking area near the Euphrates, that was renowned for its annual festival. The late antique historian Ammianus Marcellinus describes the vibrant trade fair there: Batnae is a town in Anthemusia founded by the ancient Macedonians, separated by a short distance from the Euphrates, which is filled with rich merchants when, during the annual festival held near the beginning of September, a great crowd of mixed fortune comes together for the fair, to buy and sell the things which the Indians and

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Chinese send, and many other things which are accustomed to be bought there by land and sea.115

Two hundred years later, the sixth-century Syriac hymnist Jacob of Serugh, wrote a homily on the heavenly palace that Thomas, the slave of the merchant Habban, built.116 With this detail connecting Thomas to a merchant, Jacob draws on his audience’s familiarity with the trade route culture. In Jacob’s homily, as in the Acts of Thomas, Thomas is presented as a reluctant apostle to India. The presence of merchants is also well documented in the cities of Nisibis and Seleucia-Ctesiphon, both centers for Syriac Christianity.117 These cities were also centers of long-distance trade. Nisibis, a border city between the Roman and Sasanian empires, is particularly important as a meeting point between East and West, and merchants and the trade route culture contributed to its civic identity. People in Syriac-speaking regions could readily identify with merchant figures and the trade networks in which they operated. The merchants and traders who passed through and settled in these cities connected the Roman world to the East and bring Christianity to the Orient. Edessa’s Cult of Thomas The narrative of the Acts of Thomas takes Thomas from Jerusalem, the city of Jesus’s death and resurrection, to India, the place of Thomas’s martyrdom. Between these sacred locations are places like Edessa that honor Thomas’s memory through cult. The symbol of the apostle who travels with merchants may be rooted in the cultural and commercial exchange of Edessa with North India. I have suggested that this symbol points to an audience or authors familiar with or invested in the trade route culture. Located at the junction of roads leading to India and China, Edessa was a crucial stop. Drijvers notes that numerous merchants would have passed through the city, which explains the cogency of the merchant-apostle symbol for the Edessa’s inhabitants. According to Drijvers, Edessa was “an important station on the ancient silk-road and many travellers and merchants passed by Edessa on their way to or from the Far East and often sojourned there for some days.”118 This late antique city embodied the rich diversity created by trade routes and merchants. Embassies from India taught Edessans about the religious practices of the Indians. One of Edessa’s most famous philosophers, the syncretistic thinker and ethnographer Bardais ̣an (154–222), wrote a book about India and its traditions, and attributed his knowledge of India to his acquaintance with an embassy to the Roman emperor Elagabulus (r. 218–22).119 The placement of Thomas in India correlates with the cultural exchange between Edessa and India/Parthia in the third century. As noted above, Greek-speaking Christians or bilingual Greek-Syriac Christians translated the Acts of Thomas almost immediately.120 Could these translations have been carried out in Edessa? Edessa was a bilingual city. Although we cannot

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Saint Thomas, Missionary Apostle to India

prove where the text was originally compiled, it seems plausible that some editing of the Acts and promotion of the story took place in Edessa. The Acts of Thomas claims the apostle Thomas for the Christian Orient and creates a sacred memory that reserves him for locations east of Antioch.121 The Acts of Thomas secures Thomas for the eastern areas of the trade routes to India, and South Indian Thomas Christians in Madras claimed to have Thomas’s body in their cathedral.122 Yet his martyrdom narrative (which also circulated independently from the rest of the Acts) claims that Thomas’s relics went westward.123 According to Edessan traditions, Thomas’s precious bones came to their city. Thomas’s relics were enshrined there and became a pilgrimage destination. The Syriac deacon, poet, and theologian Ephrem the Syrian (d. 373) moved to Edessa from Nisibis in 363. He mentions that Christians come to Edessa to venerate Thomas’s relics.124 In the late fourth century, the Spanish pilgrim Egeria describes her visit to Thomas’s shrine. She hears “the writings of holy Thomas himself,”125 and we can presume that these texts are some version of the Acts of Thomas. The reference in the Acts of Thomas to the dislocation of his bones from India, together with the fourth-century testimony of Egeria, suggests an alignment of relic and narrative traditions that advances Edessa’s claims to antiquity and apostolicity.126 The trade routes connecting Edessa to India thus also provide a route for the exchange of Thomas’s traditions between India and Edessa.127 The eastward gaze toward India serves the interests of a community considering its location between Rome and Parthia. Through their attribution of the conversion of India to Thomas, the authors of the Acts gain an apostle whose prestige reaches beyond Osrhoene. Yet, just as the prince in the “Hymn on the Pearl” ultimately returns to his family, so Thomas’s bones, Edessa’s pearls of great price, come to rest in a place west of India. This demonstrates the complex formation of Syriac religious traditions: relics are added to an earlier story tradition to invent an apostolic past to authenticate late antique civic piety in Edessa. As we have seen, the Acts of Thomas creates themes for future Syriac missionary stories, and an essential narrative typology for subsequent Syriac hagiographers. While these writers may not copy the themes of the idealized missionary, they propose particular associations of the attributes of the missionary saint. In the Acts of Thomas, liturgical and ascetic practices create Christian societies in India. Poverty, celibacy or marital continence, and faith in Christ bring sweetness, rest, and eternal life and transform bodies into temples of God: “Blessed are the bodies made worthy to become purified temples in which Christ might dwell.”128 Thomas replaces sacrifices to the gods with prayers of thanksgiving, feasting with ascetic Eucharists, and families with communities of disciplined people united in his teaching. The Acts clothes ideals of material detachment in the garb of a wandering apostle and creates a narrative icon of early Syriac Christianity.

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Although the text of the Acts of Thomas, and parts of it, circulated in Greek-, Coptic-, and Latin-speaking circles, it was primarily Syriac-speaking Christians who preserved Thomas’s memory. The Acts of Thomas became a Christian novel for the Syriac-speaking world. Thomas made a lasting impact on the presentation of apostolic lineage as the missionary apostle to the Syriac-speaking world. To this day, the Christians of South India identify themselves as “Thomas Christians.” Although it may be impossible to connect the Acts of Thomas with a specific location, church, or community, the story projects an image of Saint Thomas that associates the apostle with India, and constructs a biblical past through the man who was called the “twin” of Jesus. The Acts of Thomas crafts a representation of Christianity that ties it to the settlements and people on the trade routes east. And with the symbol of the itinerant missionary, the Acts lays the groundwork for how future generations will remember their past and their apostle and his mission to the people of the East.

2

The Teaching of Addai Founding a Christian City

In the Gospel of Luke, we read that Jesus ordained seventy-two apostles and sent them out two by two to every town, like lambs among the wolves (Luke 10:1–3). Many communities of the late antique Christian world claimed their lineage from Christ through one of the seventy-two, and the stories about these apostles generated a body of entertaining early Christian narratives, the apocryphal Acts. In chapter 1, we learned that the apostle Thomas went to India, and we examined Edessa’s connection with the cult of Saint Thomas. Yet the definitive missionary patron for Edessa is another apostle: Addai, known as Thaddeus in Greek. Addai came to Edessa, a city east of the Euphrates, to heal and convert the king, Abgar. This story was codified in the first half of the fifth century into a longer narrative known as the Teaching of Addai.1 Edessa was an important city in the Syriac Christian world, and it was the Edessan dialect of Aramaic that became the literary language of Syriac. The missionary story known as the Teaching of Addai was a product of Edessa’s fifth-century church. Other stories and objects linked to Addai and Abgar exist in Greek, Armenian, and Latin. We find references to the Addai/Abgar tradition in texts from the Sasanian Empire in the East to Rome in the West. The Teaching of Addai, however, is the most important Syriac text linked to this tradition. It contains the narrative typology of the missionary saint that we studied in chapter 1: conversion comes to Edessa through an apostolic missionary who heals the local ruler.2 PRÉCIS

The Teaching of Addai, a narrative composed in the third decade of the fifth century,3 describes the origins of Christianity in Edessa. Edessa’s conversion begins 36

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because the king, Abgar, needs a doctor to heal him of pain in his foot.4 Abgar hears of Jesus, a great physician who cures the sick and raises people from the dead.5 He decides that this Jesus physician is either “God” or the “Son of God,” and he asks Jesus to come to his city to cure him. Abgar invites Jesus to live in Edessa, offering him political protection from the leaders of the Jews in exchange for healing. Abgar sends his letter with his emissaries to Jerusalem so that they can deliver it to Jesus. Among these messengers is a painter/archivist by the name of Hannan, who meets Jesus and delivers Abgar’s message to him. Jesus gives Hannan an oral reply to Abgar’s letter. Jesus praises Abgar for believing in him. Jesus promises Abgar that he will send him the apostle Addai to heal his pain, and he promises Addai that the city of Edessa will be blessed. Hannan also makes a portrait of Jesus “with choice paints,” which he delivers to Abgar, much to the king’s delight.6 Abgar hangs this portrait of Jesus in his palace, and stories about the picture spread throughout the late antique Eastern Roman Empire. Abgar’s portrait of Jesus is connected to the tradition of the sacred Icon of Jesus in Edessa, the Mandylion, which, after the ninth century, reaches Constantinople.7 (We will revisit the complex web of stories concerning the image of Edessa at the end of this chapter.) Jesus sends the apostle Thomas to ordain Addai to go to Edessa to meet King Abgar. Addai journeys to Edessa and convinces Abgar and his family to convert to Christianity. Addai heals Abgar and baptizes the royal family.8 While in Edessa, Addai also preaches the story of Protonike, a fictive wife of Claudius who renounces her paganism and journeys to Jerusalem. (The Protonike narrative is a missionary story within a longer missionary story.) We learn that Protonike finds the “True Cross” of Jesus. Addai then preaches his message of Christianity and Christ’s divinity to the people of Edessa. (This section on Christian doctrine, comprising half of the entire text, is strikingly different from the rest of the text, as Sidney Griffith has shown.9 The text also contains an imaginary correspondence between Abgar and the emperor Tiberius.) Just as the water and oil of Christian baptism cleanse, seal, and heal the bodies of the new Christians, so the values of moderate asceticism, care of the poor, and liturgical worship renew the social body of the Christian city. Addai teaches the people of Edessa acts of piety and Christian virtue that mirror those of the Sons and Daughters of the Covenant, the Bnay/Bnāt Qyāmā. This protomonastic order serves the Edessan church through moderate asceticism and care of the poor. When Addai dies, he leaves a Christian Edessa under the protection of a believing monarch. Addai ordains a successor, Aggai. Edessa mourns his loss and establishes a feast day and cult by which to remember him. The son of Abgar, who deviates from his father’s righteousness, has Aggai put to death; thus Edessa gains a martyr with its missionary.

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The Teaching of Addai E D E S S A’ S R E L IG IOU S G E O G R A P H Y, T O P O G R A P H Y, A N D P O L I T IC A L O R I E N TAT IO N

In order to understand the Teaching of Addai, some background on the religious topography of Edessa is appropriate. Although Nicene Christians produced the Teaching of Addai, many varieties of Christianity can be found in late antique Edessa, as Walter Bauer noted.10 These Christian groups profess divergent teachings regarding the nature and person of Jesus, creation, the body, and the canon of Scripture. Edessa is also home to other religious groups, including Jews, followers of traditional forms of Greco-Roman and Aramaic polytheism, and Manichaeans.11 But it is the Nicene Christians of this religiously diverse city who produce the Teaching of Addai. Their agenda, as we shall see, is to use narrative to present a prestigious Christian past for their city. Edessa’s religious diversity can be attributed to its geography, as it lies at a crossroads of the Roman and Sasanian empires, on a trade route connecting the Syrian desert to the south and the mountains of Armenia to the north.12 It is positioned at the nexus of the trade routes.13 Moreover, Edessa lies on the Dais ̣an River, a tributary of the Euphrates. For the Romans, the Euphrates, which flows from what is eastern Turkey today to the Persian Gulf, represented the frontier or gateway to Parthian (and later Sasanian) territory.14 The Euphrates has a long history of being both a real political boundary and a symbolic border between East and West, cutting through the region over which the Romans and the Parthians or Sasanians struggled in their attempts to “create a world-empire which incorporated the whole of the Fertile Crescent.”15 Walter Bauer characterized the early Christianity of Edessa as “heretical,” noting that the Christian population never represents a Reinkultur.16 The two centuries after Nicaea, however, saw a gradual polarization between “orthodox” Christianity and “heretical.”17 Although Christianity spread in a more complicated way, with conflicts pestering church leaders from the beginning, Christian leaders throughout the late antique world depended on a cleaner narrative of their origins to forget the dissonance of the past. Elizabeth Castelli defines myth as “a unified account of the past and a unifying account for the present and an imagined future . . . a dream about a complete and seamless story that has the capacity to structure the present (and the future) to the past.”18 The Teaching of Addai, as myth, presents an idealized version of Edessan sacred history, as a representation of how Christianity spread to the cities east and west of Jerusalem. The idealized Edessa of the Teaching of Addai is a unified Christian orthodox city under the protection of an apostle and a believing king, with sacred objects from Jesus himself to ensure the longevity and efficacy of the blessing he gives to Edessa through his apostle, Addai.

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Literary Concerns: Portraying a Christian Edessa The Teaching of Addai presents models of piety to demonstrate the purity of the city’s apostolic origins. The story is a narrative icon of the idealized Christian city with three main components: an apostle (Addai), a king (Abgar), and a city (Edessa). The Teaching of Addai locates characters associated with political celebrity (king) and biblical and theological legitimacy (apostles) in their own Edessan Syriac idiom. As holy images highlight features of a saint to guide the memory of the viewer, so the Teaching of Addai selects vivid scenes to craft a specific ideology of the city. The Teaching of Addai uses theological and biblical symbols to present Edessa as an earthly embodiment of the heavenly city, and its apostle as a type of Jesus. Lineage and Christ: Letters, Objects, and Edessan Civic Piety Christians in Edessa used the narrative typology of the missionary story to rewrite their past and emphasize an unbroken lineage from the present back to Christ and the apostles. The author of the Teaching of Addai presents an idealized legend of Christianity in Edessa that crafts an account of a seamless conversion of the city to orthodox Christianity. In forging a memory of Christian homogeneity in Edessa’s history, the author cultivates the divergences between Edessa’s lineage and that of other Christian centers as a defense of the legitimacy of the see. The authors or redactors of the text present themselves as the descendants of an idealized apostle and king who established a sacred imperial city. The Teaching of Addai combines the history of Edessa with biblical narrative traditions in several instances: Addai’s ordination by Thomas, one of the original apostles of Jesus; Abgar’s correspondence with Jesus; and Addai’s frequent paraphrasing of biblical quotations from the Old and New Testaments.19 The result is a text directly stitched to figures of the Bible, untouched by intermediaries. Addai’s modeling of Jesus through his poverty and healing reflects Edessa’s pure descent from the apostles. Material objects, both pictures and letters, affirm Edessa’s genealogical connection to Christ. The text uses them to portray its idealized representations of city, king, and apostle, and the authors in the fifth century paint themselves into that lineage. The elevation of Addai promotes his “descendants”: the bishops of Edessa. Hannan’s portrait of Christ protects the picture of Edessa that the text portrays, as Jesus had promised in his oral reply to Abgar: “Your city will be blessed. The enemy will not be able to rule over it.”20 The Teaching of Addai shifts the imagined hierarchy of the story’s political and religious characters through the exchange of letters and pictures. Abgar writes to Jesus and sends ambassadors to him. Jesus writes to Abgar and gives him a portrait through Abgar’s scribe as well as the apostle Addai. These epistolary representations unify the otherwise unrelated fictional characters in the Teaching of Addai. In

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the Teaching of Addai, the repeated narrative sequence of epistolary exchange foreshadows changes in the status of writer and recipient. Through Abgar’s faith— which he expresses in his letter to Christ, whom he has never seen—the text contrasts him with rulers in Jerusalem, raising Edessa up to a city with which Christ prefers to associate. Abgar’s letter to Tiberius likewise forges an imaginary alliance between Edessa and Rome, elevating Edessa above Jerusalem. This picture and these letters become sacred relics to add prestige to the city. They link Addai to other saints of Edessa, like Thomas and the Edessan martyrs. In chapter 1, we discussed the popularity and possible Edessan origin of the Acts of Thomas. With the Teaching of Addai, we see the efforts of the Christian leaders of the city to unify a dual apostolic lineage: Thomas and Addai, whom Thomas ordains and sends to Edessa. Both travel to Edessa: Thomas through the translation of his relics, Addai through his missionary efforts. The text cleans up these traditions to construct a purer line of descent. By the fourth century the city of Edessa claimed to have the relics of Saint Thomas, as well as the letters that Abgar and Addai had exchanged. Edessa also housed the relics of the martyrs Shmona, H ̣ abib, and Guria. In another important early Syriac story, the Tale of Euphemia and the Goth, we read of the saving powers attributed to these martyrs. That story elevates the cult of Edessan martyrs. The heroines of the text, mother (Sophia) and daughter (Euphemia), invoke the authority of these martyrs throughout.21 The Teaching of Addai and the traditions of the Edessan martyrs work together as texts from the fifth century that add prestige to the city’s religious past. Missionary memories and the architecture of a Christian city promote a triumphal view of the expansion of Christianity that post-Constantinian Christians use to advance their theological and political agenda. The Teaching of Addai, by moving the oversight of the city, social welfare institutions, and religious labor under the banner of Christianity, imagines a transfer of the authority of the king, his court, his pagan priests, and his city’s populace to the Nicene Christians of Edessa. Yet the authors of the Teaching of Addai strengthen the prestige of their past by attaching a memory of pain and sacrifice to this triumphal portrait. They create a martyr in Aggai, the successor to Addai. The corrupt son of Abgar deviates from his father’s piety: [The people of Edessa] confessed Christ as king while glorifying God who had converted them. A few years after the death of Abgar the king, one of his rebellious sons arose who had no respect for truth. And he sent word to Aggai, who was sitting in the church: “Make me tiaras of gold just as you did for my fathers before.” Aggai answered him: “I do not desert the ministry of Christ to which I have committed myself. I am a disciple of Christ, and I do not make evil tiaras.” When he saw that Aggai was disobedient to him, he had his legs broken while Aggai was sitting in the church interpreting. While dying, Aggai made an oath to Palut ̣ and Ἁbedashlam: “In this place, see, I die on account of his name. Place me in it and bury me, on your oath.” And thus they

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placed him within the gate of the inner church between men and women. There was great and bitter wailing in the whole church and city, with suffering and wailing in the city, just as bitter as it had been when Addai died.22

Thus the text joins the martyr and missionary traditions to the lineage of the Edessan saints.

I M AG E O F T H E P IOU S K I N G

The city of Edessa was incorporated into the small province of Osrhoene, which was formed when the Parthians defeated Antiochus Sidetes in 130–129 b.c.e. For about the next two hundred years, until Rome annexed it in 213 c.e., semiautonomous kings (many named Abgar or Ma‘nu) governed the city.23 The Abgar to whom the text refers is Abgar V Ukkāmā (“The Black”; r. 4 b.c.e.–7 c.e. and 13–50 c.e.). There is no evidence that any of the Abgarid kings converted to Christianity. However, Christianity reached Edessa by the third century, and thus if any Edessan king was familiar with its teachings, it would have been Abgar VIII (fl. 200 c.e.).24 The Teaching of Addai, although compiled in the fifth century, purports to narrate an account from the early first century c.e., the time of Jesus’s life and the commissioning of the apostles and the time of the Abgarid kings. The text underscores the independent spirit of Edessa and its rulers, and this suggests that later Edessans, even after Roman colonization, maintained a strong civic Selbstbewusstsein. Christian compilers of the text placed Addai in the time of the Abgarids, which they considered a golden age for the city. When narratives about the divine introduce human rulers into the story and place words in their mouths, the text legitimizes the authority of the ruler.25 In the Teaching of Addai, the icon of the perfect king that the narrative crafts in Abgar elevates a model of sovereignty in which the earthly ruler uses his authority to advance and protect the labor, constructions, and institutions of the civic church.26 The Teaching of Addai creates, as Andrew Palmer and others have argued, a “Syriac Constantine,” a pious king, to unify the city in one faith, under the patronage of one apostle, blending the rhetoric of the Acts of the Apostles with what Averil Cameron calls “the rhetoric of empire.”27 Other traditions of later Syriac historiographers, as Muriel Debié has shown, connect Abgar to the prestige of the Syro-Macedonian lineage of kings.28 Whether Abgar is imagined as a Syriac Constantine or a descendant of Alexander the Great, his political prestige evokes symbolic and religious power. The story reconfigures its civic structures to model divine cities in which Christ sits as king and his apostles and bishops govern the people of God. The text, however, also includes an antitype to Abgar—Abgar’s son, to whom we refer above. The son of Abgar puts Addai’s successor, Aggai, to death. Abgar’s son did not follow in his father’s footsteps; rather, he was a degenerate rogue king.

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Just as the portrait of Addai may represent a Syriac “Constantine,” so the portrait of Abgar’s son might be an allusion to Julian (r. 361–63 c.e.), an emperor whom Christians remember as a corrupt ruler for leaving the Christian religion in order to return to paganism. Julian forbade Christian intellectuals like Gregory of Nazianzus and Basil the Great to teach the classics of Greek paideia. This caused a terrifying stir in the consciousness of Christian leaders in the late fourth and fifth centuries.29 While we cannot argue that the scribe behind the Teaching of Addai had Julian’s fall from the Constantinian “Christian golden age” in mind when he wrote Aggai’s story, the myth resonated in the memory of late ancient Christians: a Christian city under the sponsorship of a Roman emperor was a fragile ideal. In short, the Teaching of Addai depicts Abgar as a client king serving under the Roman emperors Tiberius and Claudius. The text attributes the honor of being the first monarch to accept Christianity to Abgar, not Constantine. We turn now to the substory within the Teaching of Addai—the Protonike legend. Protonike After Addai heals Abgar, he preaches a story to Abgar about Protonike, supposedly the wife of the emperor Claudius. This story is a rendering of the legend of Helen, mother of Constantine, who went to Jerusalem in order to find the true cross of Jesus.30 Protonike meets Simon Peter in Rome, and then she travels to Jerusalem, where she meets James, the brother of Jesus. He shows her around Jerusalem, and she discovers the true cross through the healing of her daughter. She renounces her paganism, and she has a church built on Golgotha.31 The story is retrojected to the first century, anticipating Helen’s discovery of the cross two hundred years later. Constantine has the Church of the Holy Sepulcher built in the second half of the 320s, under the leadership of Bishop Macarius of Jerusalem and Helen, his mother.32 Helen visits the Holy Land in 327 (according to Eusebius in his Life of Constantine),33 and legends about the finding of the cross date from the middle or second half of the fourth century.34 Syriac-speaking Christians revise it to inscribe themselves into Jerusalem’s lineage and the Christian imperial house.35 Characteristics of the Missionary Saint The issue of church leaders and their acquisition of wealth preoccupied the authors who compiled the Teaching of Addai. The text represents Addai as a religious laborer who has no interest in personal gain. Like the apostle Paul, Addai receives no pay for his work.36 The narrative exemplifies how payment for religious labor detracts from the legitimacy of a religious tradition. The poverty and sacrifices of a founder add prestige to a new movement. Thus, within the text there is a tension between the prestige of the king and that of Addai, since the latter displays his disinterest in personal gain. The narrative, however, resolves this by emphasizing Addai’s role as a healer. This shifts the focus

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to the effect that Addai had upon the king, and suggests that Addai’s ability to heal is itself a sign of the purity of his intentions and his similarity to Jesus. It resonates with the idiom of the Syrians that Christ is the divine physician. The text idealizes Addai as an apostle who selflessly converts Abgar and his city to Christianity, following the model of his master, Jesus, who heals the blind and deaf and resurrects the dead. Addai’s access to divine power is granted through his relationship to Christ and his apostles in whose name he heals and then teaches. Like the memory of Thomas in the Acts of Thomas, Addai’s memory becomes blended through his attributed association with Jesus, the apostles, the Torah, Psalms, and Prophets, and this is reinforced by Addai’s frequent citation and paraphrasing of these texts. He communicates the healing that he represents for the people of Edessa, like the Eucharist or Medicine of Life itself. The sacramental role that the text attributes to Addai detaches him from the political arenas in which he made his entrée, and crafts a sacramental and liturgical memory for him instead. Portrait of an Idealized Christian Community In the Teaching of Addai, Jesus promises Abgar that God will bless Edessa and that political enemies will not have any power over the city.37 The benediction promises political safety and economic stability in exchange for Edessa’s collective identification with the Christian God. As Abgar hangs the icon of Jesus in his palace, it symbolizes the conversion about to happen to the whole city. Unlike Thomas, Mari, and Jacob Baradaeus, missionary saints who wandered from village to village, Abgar remains in his city even though most of its inhabitants reject his message. “To those who do not heed me, I shake the dust from my feet against them as our Lord told me.”38 The text’s emphasis on the promotion of civic unity contrasts with the reality of the diverse cultic fabric of Christianity in Edessa in the late antique period. This text is unique among missionary stories in its presentation of the diffusion of Christianity and dissemination of its teachings and practices throughout an entire city. The story portrays a double reception of Addai’s mission to Edessa, offering a nuanced picture of civic conversion. First, Addai persuades the city to accept his teachings, and then he orchestrates the building of structures to transmit, reproduce, and continue the practices that he has established. After preaching the message of Christianity, Addai invited the Edessans either to follow him or to go home.39 The text presents a collective embrace of Christianity that offers an idealized portrait of the “Christian city”: men and women, lay and consecrated, uniting the practices of the king with the local household.40 Individual bodies are recreated as Christian bodies, and pagan space rebuilt into Christian space. This church of a healed community passes on Addai’s apostolicity after he has died. Thus the text narrates the transformation of Edessa’s material culture and social structure to align them with the story’s vision of an idealized Christian society.

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In the text’s presentation of Addai, Addai’s attempts to humble himself result in the people’s elevation of him. This inverse relationship mirrors the rhetoric of paradox that characterizes Christian literature of late antiquity.41 The text itself repeats a favored Christological motif of late antiquity: the eternal word of God has humbled itself and taken on a body. Addai preaches: “And I will sow the word of life through the proclamation that I proclaim before all of you about the coming of the Christ as it happened, and about his glorious power, and about the one who sent him, and why and how he sent him, and about his power and wondrous deeds, and about the glorious mysteries [rāze] of his coming, the things that he said in the world and about the exactitude of his proclamation, and how he made himself small and humbled his glorious divinity into a body that he took upon himself.”42 Addai, unlike Thomas, is not martyred, although his successor Aggai is. He, as other founding saints, predicts the moment when he will die.43 Before his death he gives a final sermon to his followers enjoining King Abgar not to wrap his corpse in fine linens.44 The story reinforces Addai’s patronage of the city of Edessa through the introduction of a religious festival at which his memory is celebrated. It is on the feast day that the three icons of Christian city, Christian king, and Christian apostle come together in civic ritual. The holy man, who mediates Christ for the people of Edessa, ensures that they do not stray from the habits he enjoins upon them: “[Addai] built churches and crowned and adorned them, and he ordained deacons and priests for them. He taught them to read the Scriptures and the order of the liturgy.”45 The feast day, as shown in the text, is the strongest evidence that a particular version of the Addai/Abgar narrative has become a social actor in civic religious practice. Through the feast day, Addai can return to Edessa frequently, and this offers occasions for the retelling of the foundation legend.46 Images of Other Edessan Religions: Jews and Pagans The authors of the text create enmity with their imagined Christian ancestors in the past. To portray how Addai had constructed a unified Christian society, the text presents religious “others”—Jews and pagans—and depicts them with discrete interests as a coherent group. The anti-Jewish polemic in the Teaching of Addai is pronounced. The text imagines that the Jews seek to kill Jesus, as Abgar portends: “Also this I have heard: the Jews have been mumbling about you and persecuting you. They also look to crucify you.”47 The Jews, murmuring in groups, fear people will recognize Jesus’s messianic status.48 The text contrasts Abgar’s belief with the Jews’ disbelief.49 In the text’s anti-Jewish rhetoric, the Jews are in possession of sacred things that ought to belong to the Christians: the narrative reclaims the cross for the Christians through the Protonike narrative,50 and the text imagines a purgation of Jews as Caesar commands that the Jews leave Rome.51

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The text also contains many references to the traditional forms of the GrecoRoman and Aramaic pagan religions of Edessa, as a contrast to the new Christian Edessa. The Teaching of Addai mentions principal cults of the city of Edessa as Addai cries out in horror: Who is this [man]made Nebo idol that you worship? And Bel52 whom you honor? For, see, there are those among you who worship Bath Nakeel53 as do those in Harran, your neighbors. As for Taratha, whom those in Mabbug worship,54 and the Eagle55 as the Arabs, and the sun and the moon as the rest in Harran, do not be enslaved by their rays that shine out or by the stars that glow.56 (Trans. Howard, modified)

The text portrays the native cults as a chaotic multiplicity of idolatry—a degeneration of human beings reinforcing their distance from the divine through worship of creation. The narrative resolves the multiplicity of pagan cults, symbolizing human sinfulness, through an apostle who turns Edessa toward a single Christian God. Anti-pagan and anti-Jewish polemics are also present in the Protonike narrative.57 Protonike receives a gift of divine revelation. She prays at Christ’s tomb after the death of her daughter for a miracle, so that the miracle will shame the pagans: “God who gave himself to death on behalf of all people, and who was crucified in this place and laid in this tomb, and as God who gives life to all rose and raised up with him many people, whom the Jewish crucifiers do not hear nor the erring pagans, those who blaspheme through their images and graven images and by their pagan religion.”58 Protonike fits a hagiographic type of the pagan woman turned Christian believer. The text presents Protonike’s traditional form of Greco-Roman religion as a religion of the dead.59 It cleanses Edessa’s pagan lineage by making the Edessans the beneficiaries of the blessings that Jesus promises to the city.60 Finally, the text uses the notion that pagans worship creatures instead of the creator to insert antiidolatry rhetoric.61 Midway through the narrative, the text’s representation of Jews and pagans shifts. Once Addai preaches in Edessa, backed by Abgar’s sponsorship, the Jews, like the “pagans,” are construed as an indeterminate, faceless crowd. They join a multitude of listeners, a part of the whole city or a category alongside soldiers, carpenters, and handworkers.62 The text tames the antagonist of the “other,” or the former self, and leaves the possibility that Addai will convert them too, in order to create a single religion for the city.63 The Teaching of Addai enhances the status of the Christians in Edessa, creates orthodox roots for them, and constructs a portrait of the “conversion of the city” to smooth over the eclectic origins of Christianity in Edessa. The diversity of Edessa’s Christian landscape is notably absent from the text. Unlike other missionary texts in the Syriac tradition, the Teaching of Addai contains no explicit polemic

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against rival Christian groups. This is especially noteworthy, given the multiplicity of Christian communities (including Manichaeanism) that coexist in Edessa at the time that the authors of the Teaching of Addai produced their text.64 Competition with Other Cities of the Christian East The Teaching of Addai epitomizes a textual icon of a converted Christian city united under the banner of a single faith, a single-nature Christ, a single king, and a single apostle. This packaging of a single religious memory for Edessa is achieved, however, through the establishment of a system of relationships (familial, political, and theological) that divide up the work of creating a Christian city. Like other missionary narratives that I analyze in this book, the Teaching of Addai uses the apostolic figure to create relationships between cities. The text uses the narrative not only to advance the orthodox pedigree of Edessa’s Christians, but also to position Edessa as superior to other Christian cities. The Addai story uses the symbolic power of Jerusalem and Rome to create a Christian Rome of the East in Edessa, blending aspects of Jerusalem and Rome through the repetition of the Protonike narrative. As described above, Protonike purported to be the wife of the emperor Claudius, and she traveled to Jerusalem in search of the true cross. Both cities had statuses of lineage, one of religious import and the other of political, in which Edessa hopes to share.65 Abgar of Edessa sends his emissaries to Jerusalem, and he gains a Jerusalem apostle, who preaches about Protonike: a Roman monarchical pilgrim to Jerusalem. This built a triad of the cities, as Edessans used mythic and historically fictive rulers and saints of Rome and Jerusalem to inscribe themselves into their story and elevate their religious and political prestige. H I ST O RY, R E C E P T IO N , A N D D I F F U SIO N

The Teaching of Addai is one of several fifth-century texts, including the Passion of Sharbēl, his sister Babai, and the bishop Barsamyā, who were early martyrs of Edessa, that add prestige to Edessa’s Christian lineage.66 H. J. W. Drijvers argues that parts of the Teaching of Addai may date to as early as the end of the third century, and were written perhaps in response to the Manichaeans.67 Sidney Griffith has argued persuasively that the author of the text intended to establish a paradigm of normative Christianity for fifth-century Edessa: They are the themes discussed above: the Roman and Jerusalem connections; the apostolic tradition; the adversaries of record; the Christological profile; the moral imperative, especially the concern for evangelical poverty. As we have seen, these themes are clearly put forward anachronistically from the perspective of what could have been the case at the time of the evangelization of Edessa. The period that in the ensemble they most immediately suggest is the first third of the fifth century, and perhaps, more specifically, the time of Bishop Rabbula (d. 436).68

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A fifth-century author thus reused earlier material on Addai and Abgar and reshaped it into a longer narrative that shows Edessa’s orthodoxy. Philip Wood has also shown the role of the Teaching of Addai in the formation of a portrait of Edessa’s religious lineage. Rabbula and the Promotion of Cyril of Alexandria: The Delineation of a Clear Memory The Teaching of Addai advanced the interests of the episcopal leaders of mid-fifthcentury Edessa. Edessa’s bishops followed the patriarchal see of Antioch. In the wake of the Council of Ephesus and the Formula of Reunion in 433 (which resolved the dispute between Bishops John of Antioch and Cyril of Alexandria), Edessa needed to assert its orthodoxy. The Antiochene Christology of Theodore of Mopsuestia had found a home in Edessa at the school of the Persians, or school of Edessa. The absence of twonature Christology and the predominance of one-nature prayers in the Teaching of Addai suggest that the compilers of the text wanted to purge the Edessan past of the memory of Antiochene exegetical traditions. In the era of Bishop Rabbula of Edessa (412–36) a concerted attempt was made to align Edessa canonically and liturgically with the imperial churches in other Christian centers, and the Teaching of Addai is a product of this project.69 The emperor Theodosius II (r. 408–50) backed the Christology of Cyril and the bishops who supported him, and thus it was in Rabbula’s interest to side with Cyril. As bishop of Edessa, Rabbula translated the works of Cyril,70 and championed the use of the Peshitta gospels in place of Tatian’s Diatessaron.71 Marian language and the title Theotokos, “God-Bearer,” the point of contention between John of Antioch and Cyril, were absent from the Teaching of Addai. Under Rabbula, Edessa became a center for one-nature Christology. The Teaching of Addai reflects the distancing of Dyophysites and Miaphysites in the city in the fifth century. Rabbula came into conflict with the Dyophysite Hiba of Edessa, who supported Theodore of Mopsuestia and the dissidents of the Council of Ephesus. Hiba was sent into exile in 433, and called Rabbula a tyrant. Thus a conflict erupted between Rabbula’s followers (Miaphysites) and Hiba’s followers, or the school of Edessa (Dyophysites).72 Drijvers has argued that the insertion of the Protonike narrative in the Teaching of Addai corresponds to the agenda of the episcopate of Rabbula. Rabbula inserted this story in the Teaching of Addai to propagate the Christology of Cyril of Alexandria against that of the Dyophysite Hiba of Edessa.73 Thus this missionary narrative about expansion and conversion has an antinarrative subtext that tells us about the conflicts and crises among leaders of the Edessan church in the fifth century. The Teaching of Addai corresponds to a time in Edessa in which the Dyophysite followers of Hiba of Edessa were expunged from the city’s Christian memory.

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Models in Preaching and the Theological Agenda of the Teaching of Addai A large section of the Teaching of Addai is dedicated to theological exposition rather than hagiographic narrative. The compilers of the Teaching of Addai created homilies and theological debates for Addai to articulate their creeds, their city’s connection to Jesus, and conciliar decrees. Such discourses are absent from the Acts of Thomas, the Acts of Mari, the Life of Ah ̣udemmeh, and the missionary stories of John of Ephesus, which contain only short statements of beliefs and ritual formulas. The Teaching of Addai’s presentation of Christological discourse in homiletic form suggests that the final redactor of the Teaching of Addai was a bishop, monk, or theologian, probably linked to Bishop Rabbula. Addai, apostle to Edessa, was an icon of orthodoxy for fifth-century Edessan bishops. The Addai with whom they identified was an itinerant missionary, yet an icon of theological stability, orthodoxy, and the biblical ideals of detachment from money, and care for the poor and sick. The Teaching of Addai portrays Addai as a homilist. Addai himself preaches, and he preaches about preaching: “I was chosen with my friends to be an announcer for the good news . . . so that [the whole region] might resonate with the glorious name of Christ who is worshipped.”74 As a text about texts with words about words, the Teaching of Addai grants narrative, both oral and written, a privileged place in the struggle or contention for orthodoxy. Addai stresses in his preaching to the Edessans that God has created them in God’s image and that their bodies will accompany them in the resurrection. After the Councils of Nicaea and Constantinople, which affirmed the entry of the divine word into creation through the incarnation, Christians will look to the material world for representations of images or types of the divine. This theological current bolsters the Edessans’ tradition that claimed to have a portrait of Jesus, a material object with a painting of divinity. The text weaves anti-idolatry threads into this rhetoric, as if expressing and resolving the tension between veneration of images and idol worship. Addai instructs the Edessans against the dangers of their past: “Do not delight in the evil habits of the pagans, your fathers. Do not distance yourself from the life of holiness and truth in Christ. Those who believe in it are those who have been faithful before him, who descended to us in his mercy that he might take from the land sacrifices of paganism and libations of idolatry, that creation might not be worshipped, and rather that we might worship him and his Father and Holy Spirit.”75 The Teaching of Addai, like the monastic canons of Rabbula,76 is a text in which Edessa’s “Orthodox” Christians straighten, clean, and revise their representations of their Christian history in order to harmonize their foundation narrative with the orthodoxy that their bishops, like Rabbula, claim before other bishops in the Roman Empire. In the sixth century, as we will discuss in more detail in subsequent chapters of this book, disagreements among Christian leaders over the

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Council of Chalcedon sharpened and came to a head. Violence against dissidents of Chalcedon erupted, and the areas around Edessa, the Blessed City, were among the hardest hit. The imagined Christian unity that the Teaching of Addai depicted in the fifth century ruptured as bishops and monks coped with the painful outcomes of the Christological disputes after Chalcedon. Diffusion of the Addai and Abgar Tradition in Late Antique Christianity The Teaching of Addai contains a narrative typology of king, apostle, sacred objects, and civic blessings that diffused into religious texts and communities of different linguistic heritages, geographical settings, and ecclesiastical affiliations. Alain Desreumaux’s excellent analysis of the manuscript tradition helps us see how later traditions used and reinterpreted the Teaching of Addai.77 Stories about the family of King Abgar the Black of Edessa and the conversion of his city spread in several languages of the ancient Christian world—Syriac, Greek, Latin, and Armenian— and were translated into other languages, including Arabic.78 The Teaching of Addai is one narrative in a greater repository of texts, objects, people, and sites that are linked to the Addai/Abgar story. The tradition that there is a correspondence between Abgar and Jesus exists in sources that precede the Teaching of Addai. Most scholars agree that the earliest account of Jesus’s correspondence with Abgar dates from 300 c.e. and is preserved and related in Eusebius’s Ecclesiastical History (discussed below).79 The story of the exchange of letters between King Abgar and Jesus, in the Eusebian rendition, claims that Jesus had Thomas ordain one of the seventy disciples, Thaddeus, whom Jesus sent to Edessa to cure Abgar’s disease.80 Debié notes that, beginning with Eusebius, the correspondence between Abgar and Jesus became the accepted tradition of Edessa’s conversion.81 Below is a list of Greek and Syriac sources that convey the Addai/Abgar story, or connect that narrative to the missionary tradition of sacred texts and objects preserved in the Edessan church. This compilation is greatly dependent on the research of Sebastian Brock and Andrew Palmer.82 It is beyond the scope of this book to investigate all of the sources listed below in detail. I list them here with brief summaries so that readers can understand how the characters and themes of the story radiated from Edessa into one of the most important hagiographic traditions in the late antique Greek and Syriac world. Eusebius of Caesarea, Ecclesiastical History 1.13 Genre: historiography Date: early fourth century Language: Greek, with references to Syriac sources Summary: account of Abgar’s correspondence with Jesus and Jesus’s written response to Abgar

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The text calls Addai “Thaddeus” and Hannan the scribe “Ananias.” Jesus gives a blessing for Edessa, but there is no promise of immunity from harm. Egeria’s Travels83 Genre: pilgrim’s diary Date: late fourth century Language: Latin Summary: a pilgrim’s account of her visits to holy places in the Middle East The nun Egeria visits Edessa and sees Abgar’s letter to Jesus, Jesus’s written response to Agbar, and copies of the letters. The bishop of Edessa tells Egeria that the Persians are diverted by the power of the letters. Thus the letters are believed to have apotropaic potency for the people of Edessa. Teaching of Addai Genre: missionary narrative Date: first half of the fifth century, with sections from earlier times Language: Syriac Summary: description of Abgar’s letter to Jesus Jesus gives Abgar an oral reply and a picture that Hannan has drawn of Jesus for Abgar’s palace in Edessa. Jesus gives Edessa a blessing and a promise that the city’s enemies will never prevail over it. Life of Jacob of Galash, Paris, Syr. 325, f. 166r84 Genre: hagiography by Jacob of Serug Date: first quarter of the sixth century (time of turbulence in the Syriacspeaking world; conflict between Chalcedonians and Miaphysites) Language: Syriac, first quarter of the sixth century Summary: description of how monks go to Edessa and are blessed by a portrait of Christ Evagrius Scholasticus, Ecclesiastical History 4.2785 Genre: historiography Date: end of the sixth century, ca. 593 Language: Greek Summary: account of the tradition that Christ sent Abgar an image

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This image was not made by Hannan the scribe, but was “made without hands”.86 The image protects Edessa by helping the people of the city to set fire to a Persian siege mound. The power of protection that Jesus gave Edessa in his letter has now been transferred to the image. Acts of Thaddaeus87 Genre: hagiographic apocryphal narrative Language: Greek, based on a Syriac original Date: first half of the seventh century Summary: the only Greek text in this group that says that Jesus gave Abgar an oral reply (thus this tradition follows the tradition of the Teaching of Addai and not Eusebius) Abgar tells Ananias (Hannan) to describe Christ’s appearance, age, and hair, and Ananias is unable to do so. Jesus wipes his face with a cloth and gives it to Ananias. Ananias takes the cloth along with Jesus’s oral reply.88 Acts of Mari, section 4 (analyzed in chapter 3 of this book)89 Genre: hagiographic apocryphal narrative Language: Syriac Date: late sixth–early seventh century Summary: a narrative from the East Syriac/Iranian tradition that relates a version of the Addai/Abgar story that, like Eusebius and unlike the Teaching of Addai, mentions that Jesus gave Hannan a written reply to Abgar No portrait is painted; instead, Jesus washes his face and wipes it on a towel. This leaves an impression of his face on the towel, which is placed in the church of Edessa. Colophon of a Melkite manuscript, British Library Oriental MS 860690 Genre: colophon Date: 723 c.e. Language: Syriac Summary: a reference to a place in Edessa called the “House of the Image of the Lord” This seems to be a reference to a shrine for an image of Christ, but it is not clear whether this is a painted image or an image made on linen.

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By the eighth century, there were multiple images of Christ in Edessa, and both the Syrian Orthodox and the Chalcedonian Melkites seem to have had one. John of Damascus, On the Orthodox Faith91 Genre: theological exposition Date: middle of the eighth century Language: Greek Summary: a text containing a version of the story that is similar to the version in the Acts of Thaddeus John writes that the radiance of Jesus’s face is so strong that Ananias cannot paint him. Theodore Abū Qurrah, Melkite bishop of H. arrān92 Genre: apologetic pamphlet Date: 800 Language: Arabic Summary: quotation from Abū Qurrah cited by Palmer93 Abū Qurrah writes that “the image of Christ . . . is honoured by veneration especially in our city, Edessa, the blessed, at definite times, with its own feasts and pilgrimages.” Abū Qurrah does not tell us much more about the image, and he seems to imply that there are other images of Jesus elsewhere. What makes Edessa distinct is that the cult of images was especially developed there.94 Narration of the arrival of the image in Constantinople95 Genre: narrative Date: shortly after 944 Language: Greek Summary: commemoration of the coming of the Mandylion or image of Jesus to Constantinople from Edessa This version conveys the tradition preserved in the Teaching of Addai that Abgar’s messenger had a picture of Jesus painted for Abgar. Images in a Manuscript: Paris, Lat. 268896 Date: second half of the thirteenth century Language: Latin Summary: illustrations of the Abgar story

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In this version, the image of Jesus is taken from Edessa to Jerusalem by Abgar’s widow. There is no mention of Constantinople. Mandylion icon of the Monastery of Sinai97 Summary: image of Jesus on a triptych that also includes images of King Abgar, Saints Ephrem and Basil, Saints Paul and Antony, and Addai, who is painted with the features of Emperor Constantine VII Porphyrogennetos In comparing sources connected to the Addai/Abgar tradition, we note how the story’s narrative elements shift and vary in significant ways. One of the obvious mythic variants in the story is the name of the apostle himself. Addai is known as Thaddeus or Thaddaios in the Greek tradition.98 The name Addai, however, may have a deeper resonance with Manichaean traditions; as Alain Desreumaux, Florence Jullien, and Christelle Jullien have indicated, one of the disciples of Mani is named Adda.99 Armenian tradition, furthermore, relates that the apostles Thaddeus and Bartholomew go to convert Armenia, and this legend was used to legitimate the origins of the Armenian Church.100 There are disagreements in the sources about the nature of Jesus’s reply to Abgar. Some sources say that Jesus wrote Abgar a letter; others say that Jesus gave Hannan an oral reply that the latter was to deliver to Abgar. Some sources say that Hannan painted a picture of Jesus; others say that Jesus impressed his face into a linen cloth that he gave to Hannan to take back to Edessa. Some sources say that Jesus blessed Edessa; others say that Jesus blessed Edessa with a promise of immunity from harm. Finally, some sources contain no mention of an epistolary exchange; all that Edessa obtains is a portrait of Jesus. Mandylion Tradition As I discuss further in chapter 6 on Jacob Baradaeus, hagiography helps the historian to discern shifts in communal self-understanding. Edessan Christians, both Miaphysite and Chalcedonian, claimed lineage from the Addai tradition. Consequently, there are many stories connected to Addai, Abgar, the letters of Jesus, and his image in Edessa from different, rival communities of Christians, all wishing to inscribe themselves into this venerable tradition. Palmer suggests that the stories connected to the Mandylion—the image “not made with hands” that is transferred from Edessa to Constantinople in 944—are sacred narratives “with a theological layer, designed to be discovered by combining a thorough knowledge of Scripture with a leap of the sympathetic imagination.”101 He shows that the Acts of Thaddeus demonstrates internal polemics between Syriac-speaking Chalcedonians and Miaphysites in the city of Edessa, as both groups wanted to share in the Addai/Abgar heritage.

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Palmer argues that the idea of an image made without human hands, acheiropoietos, a picture or impression left on a cloth or material object by being pressed against the face or body of Christ, “has a strong connection with Christian theology” that could have originated in a Syriac milieu.102 Palmer refers to the theology behind the idea of Christ indwelling in the material world. He begins with the Gospel of John—“And the Word was made flesh and dwelt among us” (John 1:14)— and underscores that the word translated from the Greek as “dwell” actually means “pitches a tent,” shqen. This verb is used of tent dwellers and wandering nomads: “Implicit in this choice of words is the idea that the flesh of Jesus was like a nomad’s tent with the eternal, divine Word dwelling inside it, just as ‘the glory of the LORD’ had ‘filled the tabernacle’ (Ex 40:34) in the days of Moses.”103 Palmer draws examples from Syriac authors to illustrate the continuity of this idea among theologians like Ephrem and even in the theology embedded in the Teaching of Addai. The body of Jesus is a visible garment of Christ’s divinity through which one can see his invisible or hidden Lordship.104 Syrians theologized about how the hiddenness of Christ’s lordship could be manifested in his body, and Palmer shows how the idea of an “image made without human hands” harmonizes as a metaphorical expansion of this idea. Christ’s hidden divinity could also remain manifest on earth after the ascension, in the form of a cloth pressed against his face. A veil that was pressed against Jesus’s garment of flesh could reveal the hidden divinity contained within that garment, if it had been pressed hard against the features of Christ’s sacred face.105 Perhaps the acheiropoietos idea originated in a Syriac-speaking milieu as an expression of these theological concepts, and became intertwined with the prestige of the legend of Addai and Abgar. In the middle of the sixth century, a time of great rancor between the Chalcedonians and the Miaphysites, Christians in Edessa hung an image of Jesus “not made with hands” in the interior of the cathedral of Holy Wisdom. Yet, both the Chalcedonians and the Miaphysites of Edessa claimed to have links with the image of Jesus, and the various stemmata that come out of the narrative traditions of Addai and Abgar can in part be traced according to ecclesiastical boundaries. The text Teaching of Addai predated the Chalcedonian disputes of the sixth century. But, as Palmer and Brock show,106 other narrative variants that spring from this tradition display the differentiation of the Chalcedonians and Miaphysites. The mythic repertoire of stories connected to Abgar, Addai, Jesus, and their objects was extensive in late antiquity, and thus these characters found their way into many linguistic traditions, even among Christians opposed to each other. As Palmer shows, the Greek Acts of Thaddeus seems to be an early seventh-century Greek translation of a Syriac text from the Syriac-speaking Chalcedonians of Edessa: “The Syriac AcThad may have been done into Greek locally for the benefit of the Greek-speaking members of the Chalcedonian congregation of Edessa,

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whose existence is indicated by the existence of Greek and Syriac choirs at the Cathedral there.”107 The Mandylion remained in Constantinople until 1204, when the Crusaders sacked the city. The Mandylion disappeared from Constantinople at that time, and scholars disagree about what happened to it afterward; some scholars have conflated this tradition with that of the cloth of Veronica, but that was attested in Rome by 1106.108 Brock notes that Abgar’s connection to the relic of the cloth was largely forgotten in Rome, but in the sixteenth century a Syrian Orthodox priest, Moses of Mardin, “records that when he was in Rome he saw with his own eyes ‘the mandila which was sent by our Lord to Abgar’, specifying that this was in the church of the Apostles Peter and Paul.”109 I have argued that the Teaching of Addai can be situated in early fifth-century Edessa, and demonstrates how storytellers used the narrative typology of the missionary apostle to advance the orthodoxy and prestige of their local population. This mythic history of the coming of Christianity to Edessa allowed the compilers to direct the gaze of their readers to the icons of Christian king, city, and apostle. The Teaching of Addai blends history, the Bible, and theological concerns into an attractive narrative that presents Edessan Christian history as a miniature, idealized narrative of the expansion of Christianity as a whole. The composite text is a product of a moment in history in which fifth-century bishops and intellectuals of the orthodox Edessan church envisioned the apostolic past as a golden age and used that image to add prestige to their church. The Teaching of Addai shows how Christian storytellers used the symbol of the missionary saint to write a legend of a city whose narrative portrayed a perfect Christian society, with king, apostle, and laity in unified harmony, an order that reflected that of the divine hierarchy. In the same way that Constantine sponsored the creation of his new capital, Constantinople, so the authors of the Teaching of Addai constructed Edessa as a city of God. This narrative bolsters Edessa’s status vis-à-vis other Syriac-speaking Christianities. The Teaching of Addai repackages the Addai/Abgar story with doctrinal sermons on Christ’s divinity, the resurrection of the body, and an ancient sanctioning of the offices and monastic structures of the church. The text claims orthodoxy by bundling its distinct theological and political agenda with Abgar and Addai. Addai represents the ideals with which the Christians in Edessa wished to be associated: he is apostolic, an orthodox Christian leader whom political rulers have endorsed, yet he is uniquely Edessan. Stories about Addai, Abgar, and blessings of Edessa migrated into different traditions of the late antique Christian world.

3

Mari as Apostle to the Church of Persia

As we follow the paths of the Syriac missionaries who traveled throughout the Eastern Roman Empire, we turn south from Edessa to the heart of Mesopotamia to learn of another tradition, one that springs from the story of Addai: the Acts of Mari.1 We cross over the border into the Sasanian Empire to study the establishment of a separate and distinct Syriac-speaking community: the Church of the East. This church grew within the boundaries of Sasanian Iran and developed unique idioms expressed in the articulation of its theology, liturgical practice, monastic rules, education, canon law, and hagiography.2 Some of the distinctive characteristics of Sasanian Christian texts come from the church’s interaction and response to the Zoroastrian culture of Persia; others come from the church’s dialogue and debate with Christians in the Roman Empire. The stories of the Church of the East offer a contrast to those of Syriac Christians from other areas in late antiquity, as the leaders of the Church of the East portrayed their saints and built their communities against a landscape particular to the Sasanian Empire and its Zoroastrian heritage. The Church of the East, or East Syriac Church, represents a unique Christian heritage of late antiquity. Syriacists Sebastian Brock and J. P. Coakley note the twofold influence of geography and theology in shaping this church’s early history: The Church of the East traces its history to the earliest planting of Christianity in the Persian Empire. The fact that the church developed outside the Roman Empire and its conciliar process partly explains its particular doctrinal tradition. It represents a third position in the three way split in Eastern Christianity that resulted from the Christological controversies of the 5th/6th cent. . . . The Church of the East follows the strictly dyophysite (‘two-nature’) christology of Theodore of Mopsuestia, as a result of which it was misleadingly labeled as ‘Nestorian’ by its theological opponents.3 56

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The gradual formation of a distinct East Syriac Christian church with its own hierarchy, cultural idioms, and distinctive theological tradition began probably in the second or third century c.e. and continued until the sixth century. The lives of saints of the Church of the East show engagement with the Sasanian Zoroastrian symbols, and hagiography provides one means for the church to make sense of its world, explain its position, and present itself as the sole form of Christianity in the Sasanian Empire. The story that describes the establishment of Christianity in the Persian Empire, the Acts of Mari, is a sixth- or early seventh-century hagiography that recounts the conversion of areas of present-day Iraq to Christianity through the adventures of Mar Mari, apostle to Mesopotamia.4 The authors stitch this text together from earlier stories about Mari and other missionaries to create a narrative that promotes the legitimacy of the Church of the East and the see of its catholicos in Kokhe, south of present-day Baghdad.5 In the tradition of Syriac apostolic narrative,6 the Acts of Mari creates a patron to symbolize the monastic and intellectual history of East Syrian Christianity.7 In his important article on the conversion of Armenia, Robert Thomson argues that Christianization is the point at which Christianity becomes a “force” in society.8 The story of the Acts of Mari epitomizes Thomson’s definition of Christianization. This legend, more than any other in this book, presents the coming of Christianity as a hostile conquest and stresses Mari’s destruction of local cults. As Florence and Christelle Jullien argue, the Acts of Mari creates a foundation story to rival those of other religious competitors in Mesopotamia.9 The text enacts an imaginary Christian conquest of Persia, purifying the lineage of Christianity by imagining a total conversion to Christianity. The text infuses liturgical imagery to make a new world of Christian bodies and buildings, with new Christian hierarchies in in the place of the old structures. As I will discuss later in this chapter, Mari’s Christian landscape is constructed through destruction, exorcism, building, and healing.10 L O C AT I N G T H E C H U R C H O F T H E E A S T

The city of Seleucia was located on the right bank of the Tigris. It was founded in 301–280 b.c.e. by Seleucus Nicator near a canal. Ctesiphon was on the left bank of the Tigris, and Kokhe lay south of Ctesiphon. Between 79 and 116 c.e., the Tigris switched course, and a necropolis south of Ctesiphon was submerged. The Tigris then turns to the east, following a depression between Kokhe and Ctesiphon, and thus becomes the western and southern boundaries of the city of Seleucia. Kokhe was also known as Mah ̣uzo, and was the center of the Church of the East.11 East Syrian synodical records name Kokhe the seat of the Church of the East’s patriarchate of Seleucia-Ctesiphon by 410,12 yet a story linking this region to Jesus and his

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apostles is absent from this tradition, at least in written form. The Acts of Thomas, the Teaching of Addai, and the Acts of Mari form a trilogy of loosely related Syriac missionary legends, with the Acts of Thomas tied to India, and the Teaching of Addai to Edessa. Mesopotamian Christians of the Sasanian Empire who were centered near Seleucia-Ctesiphon had no legend. The Acts of Mari was a local legend, with a particular interest in promoting a prestigious genealogy for Dayr Qunni,13 a monastic settlement adjacent to Kokhe where a tomb for a certain Mari lies. The monastery of Dayr Qunni, ninety kilometers south of Baghdad on the hillock of Kokhe south of Ctesiphon, claimed to have the bones of Mar Mari. Amir Harrak attributes the authorship of the Acts of Mari to a monk of this monastery.14 The text’s appeal to an apostolic past, however, memorializes Mari for the entire East Syrian Church.15 The monastic and male social dimension of the text’s production shapes the ideology of the text and provides in Mari a saint to compete with other religious rivals of the region. This missionary text raises the status of the see of Seleucia-Ctesiphon and its surrounding monastic communities,16 as it offers an idealized self-presentation of the origins of Christianity in Persia. It is the East Syrian counterpart, complement, and revision of the West Syrian Teaching of Addai. Our study of the text is not concerned with the historicity of Mari nor with the evangelization of Mesopotamia per se.17 While we cannot know whether Mari was a historical person, in this story we can detect the narrative typology of the missionary saint, representing the missionary prototype for the Tigris valley.18 In recent years, this text has received more attention from scholars on account of the philological and historical work of Florence and Christelle Jullien and Amir Harrak.19 My analysis will examine how the framing dynamic of the missionary narrative gives the authors of the text a means of depicting a mythic conversion of Mesopotamia in the cultural idiom of East Syrian Christians.20 The Acts of Mari, I will argue, narrates the replacement of a variegated Mesopotamian pagan landscape of the imagined past with a unified Christian Mesopotamia cleansed of religious rivals.21 The Acts of Mari tells the story of how Christianity gained both domestic and civic space, distinct spheres of competing forms of religious practice. PRÉCIS

The Acts of Mari recounts in thirty-four episodes the journey of Mari, who comes to convert southern Mesopotamia, Susa, and Persia to Christianity.22 Some traditions include Mari among the seventy-two disciples whom Christ in the Gospel of Luke commissions to baptize the nations.23 The Acts of Mari, however, claims that Addai, Edessa’s apostle,24 sends Mari to convert the areas east and south of Edessa.25 Mari travels thence to Nisibis, to Arzon, and throughout Mesopotamia,26 and as he turns native peoples away from their pagan ways, he acquires a group of disci-

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ples.27 In a patterned order, Mari builds churches, monasteries, and schools, ordaining priests, deacons, and teachers.28 The Acts of Mari includes a summarized retelling of Addai’s conversion of Abgar and Edessa, purporting to continue where the Teaching of Addai ended.29 Although some historical sources credited the conversion of this region to Addai or Aggai,30 East Syrian sources attributed the honor to Mari.31 L I T E R A RY T H E M E S

Transtextuality, “all that sets the text in a relationship, whether obvious or concealed, with other texts,” is an outstanding feature of the Acts of Mari.32 The Acts of Mari validates itself through biblical allusions.33 It incorporates shared literary motifs of the “itinerant missionary healer” found in the Acts of Thomas and the Teaching of Addai. It demonstrates knowledge of Manichaean stories, and it includes a version of Addai’s legend that fits the agenda of the East Syrians.34 By the sixth century, however, the narrative typology of the missionary holy man had shifted to the level of institutionalization or canonization in the Syriac hagiographic imagination. I will demonstrate the intertextuality of the Acts of Mari with the Teaching of Addai and the Acts of Thomas below. Many literary features of Mari, however, distinguish it from other stories studied in this book, revealing different authorial concerns and ideals. The Acts of Mari does not focus on the poverty and chastity of the hero, but rather on his apostolicity, orthodoxy, and success with the political rulers of the land. As Harrak remarks, in its lack of encratism this text stands in stark contrast to the Acts of Thomas.35 Unlike hagiographies about holy men, the Acts of Mari tells us nothing about Mari’s childhood, personality, or practices (diet, sleep, or sexual renunciation), sacrifices for the Christian faith (Mari endured neither martyrdom nor persecution), or piety. Rather, the text explains, in the hagiographer’s own words, how Christianity came to the land of Babel: “Thus these are the things of the conversion of Mesopotamia. Now let us turn and present how the faith of God flowed from there into our regions. Since this story is not told clearly, I am setting down an ancient version [or tradition, mashlmānutā] that is related in the books.”36 Mari’s name is absent from this summary of the hagiographer’s authorial project. This strategy ensured that the actions and foundations of the hero would become the symbolic patrimony inherited by the authors of the text. Recent work, moreover, shows the relationship of the Acts of Mari to another important literary tradition: East Syriac hagiography. The Christians who wrote the Acts of Mari demonstrated knowledge of Sasanian literary motifs and Zoroastrian religious traditions. In his dissertation (and forthcoming book), Richard Payne draws attention to how in their hagiographic compositions, Christians in the Sasanian Empire, especially in the sixth and early seventh centuries c.e., betrayed their acquaintance with Zoroastrian power structures, beliefs, and

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practices. Payne’s work also indicates how the Acts of Mari, in addition to fitting into the larger body of Syrian missionary texts, must be situated within the larger corpus of texts that Christians wrote to assert themselves in the Sasanian milieu. R E C O N F IG U R I N G SYM B O L S O F P OW E R A N D AU T HO R I T Y

The Acts of Mari came from a community resistant to Zoroastrianism, which dominated the Sasanian Empire, and to the Chalcedonian and Miaphysite Christianities that reigned in the West, and gave the Church of the East an opportunity to strengthen its group cohesion by conceptualizing its origins as a total conquest of Christianity in the Sasanian milieu. When authors of a minority group take an institutionalized form of authority, like that of king or emperor, and rework that symbol for their own advancement, they resist their subordinate status through the establishment of imaginary social relationships in narrative. The authors of the Acts of Mari cast the contests of Mari in a framework of the saint’s gradual elevation into the ruling classes of Persia through his conversion of the region’s royal households.37 Unlike other Syriac apostolic texts, which valorized indigence and care of the poor, the Acts of Mari presented Christianity as a religion for princes, despite the simple garb of its messengers.38 The text revised a statement in the Teaching of Addai concerning the diffusion of the gospel: “The good news [qut ̣nā] of the kingdom of heaven flew down not just to the common people [qut ̣nā] but also to the king.”39 Unlike Addai, Mari was not afraid that his association with the rich would detract from the validity of his preaching.40 The narrative then moved kings into the position of Mari’s servants. Mari persuaded the converted king Aphrahat of Seleucia to put pressure on Art ̣aban, ruler of Ctesiphon, likewise to convert. The missionary rhetoric of the story was aimed at conversion of the ruler. For the authors of the text, Mari’s story provided a symbolic framework for resisting the rival claims to orthodoxy from the West and assertions of imperial power under the Persians. Unlike holy men in West Syrian and Greek hagiography, who mediated and arbitrated between the ruler and the villager, between merchants, or between heaven and earth,41 Mari directed his labor solely toward the center of protection and the compass that directed the religious practices of the people: the king. The Acts of Mari thus resolves two anxieties through the myth of Mari: (1) Christianity’s position in Persia vis-à-vis the political rulers in the text, and (2) the legitimacy of East Syrian bishops and monks in relation to the Sasanian emperor and to their counterparts in the Roman world who enjoyed political protection. The kings and their families in the Acts of Mari may have symbolized types of the Persian rulers, and thus the text enacted an imaginary conversion of the royal households of the Persian Empire to Christianity.42 Christians in the Persian

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Empire sought the graces of the ruler. Although the Christians in the Sasanian Empire never gained a majority, their relationship with the Persian emperors fluctuated throughout the sixth century. No Persian emperor converted to Christianity, but, as Schilling’s work has shown, some expressed interest in Christianity and its leaders.43 Imperial rhetoric and imagery afforded the authors of the text a means of bettering the Addai/Abgar tradition of Edessa: Mari converted not one but several kings, and his healing demonstrations surpassed those of Addai. They included podiatric diseases as well as leprosy: the king of Arzon had a sore foot; the king of Athor had leprosy.44 Mari, like Addai, paired his healing with doctrinal instruction. Symbols from the Sasanian and Zoroastrian Milieu The Acts of Mari, however, embellished the risks and sacrifices the apostle made, by framing his preaching in the context of heightened narrative-drama with scenes of deception and adventure. What distinguishes the Acts of Mari from other Syriac missionary stories is its integration of motifs from other Persian religions, including Zoroastrianism and Manichaeanism. Beneath this story of conversion, we detect the hagiographer’s knowledge of Zoroastrianism as he weaves his patron apostle into stories of typically Zoroastrian trials, suggesting that the community behind the text was in contact with neighboring Zoroastrians. Payne notes this feature in another Sasanian hagiography, roughly contemporary with the Acts of Mari: the “Martyrdom of Pethion, Adurhormmizd, and Anahid.”45 The Acts of Mari is part of a group of texts from the Christian Sasanian milieu that show interest in transforming Sasanian topography into Christian sacred landscape. Payne notes how this contrasts with the stories of conversion and martyrdom from the Roman milieu: “Whereas the Christians of the Roman world ‘fought with stones’ to neutralize pagan sacred space, the Christians of the Iranian world fought with words and texts to provide new models of interpretation with which to engage a landscape potentially inconsonant with their beliefs. . . . To engage with topography is to engage with power, to contest rival claims as to what constitutes a place.”46 We note that the Acts of Mari contains a polemic against both Zoroastrian and Manichaean religious views; whoever wrote the Acts of Mari betrays knowledge of the belief systems of both these traditions. Like other Sasanian Christian hagiographers, the authors of the Acts of Mari infused the landscape, which Zoroastrianism had dominated, with Christian symbols and structures. Zoroastrianism was the state religion of Iran from the sixth century b.c.e. to the seventh century c.e. Fire and water are the most basic objects of the Zoroastrian religion, which sees the world as a dualistic system, divided into principles of goodness, righteousness, and light, in opposition to evilness, wickedness, and darkness. Mary Boyce notes the many gods the IndoIranians worshipped: “As well as the cult gods (Fire, the Waters, Haoma and Geush

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Urvan) there were ‘nature’ gods, who personified some physical phenomenon: Sky and Earth, whom the Iranians called Asman and Zam; Sun and Moon, for them Hvar and Mah; the two gods of the Wind.”47 Zoroastrian cosmology infuses the land with the divine, and this was a tension that Christian missionary hagiographies addressed as they told stories about the beginnings of their foundations in Mesopotamia. The scene in the story that shows the authors’ knowledge of Zoroastrianism most convincingly is one in which Mari engages in an ordeal. The ordeal is a typically Iranian means of establishing religious truth between two sides.48 As Payne notes, whereas Roman martyrdom texts use Christians’ ability to withstand torture as proof of Christianity’s power, Sasanian texts portray ordeals involving fire, drinking sulfuric water, or foot binding to illustrate the supremacy of Christianity.49 In Seleucia, Mari hides his Christianity to infiltrate the assembly and impresses them with his entertainers from Edessa. He bargains with the Seleucians: if they convert to Christianity, the singers will belong to them. They counter with the demand that Mari pass through fire to prove the truth of the Christian God, who, according to Mari, can kill their goddess.50 The leader of the army of Arbela in this section recognizes Mari. His name is Zaradush, which sounds like Zarathushtra, the name of the great prophet of the Zoroastrians.51 The narration of this ordeal helps to construct a Christian landscape in the Sasanian milieu.52 The Acts of Mari fuses an exotic construct of Persia with a literary pattern of apostolic missionary journeys. This fits literary patterns of the apostolic acts genre: often the heroic apostle is sent to a distant “East” representing the “limits of civilization,” a land of the unknown, an empty canvas on which hagiographers can paint their imaginative setting in which the human and the divine, the natural world and the supernatural, are inextricably intertwined.53 Shifting Places: Replacing the Zoroastrians, Refuting the Manichaeans In order to build a landscape that reflects its new Christian status,54 Mari first destroys the old gods and the earth of demons, exorcising the land as a body before Christian baptism, and winning Persia for Christianity according to the ordered principles of liturgical practice.55 He casts idols into the Greater Zab River.56 There, expelling evil spirits from trees, streams, and fire, Mari contests the authority of the dominant Zoroastrian worldview, while not denying the demons’ existence.57 Mari fashions the land into a vessel of the divine, in stark contrast to the largely negative view of creation that the Manichaeans espouse. A number of cities through which Mar Mari travels are marked by memories connected to events in the personal life of Mani. The Manichaean Psalter is attributed to a disciple called Tom (Thomas or Toumis). Mani himself identified his own circuitous missionary journey with the movement of the apostle Thomas toward India. When Mani leaves the baptist movement of the Mesenians where he spent his childhood, Mani

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gains India, a region of the apostle Thomas, and then he goes to Persia in the heart of the Sasanian Empire.58 Mari uproots and demolishes the structures of competing religions.59 When Mari does not crush the structures of his competitors, he transforms them. After the king of Shahqirt pronounces his adherence to the Christian God, Mari turns the furnace used to cook sacrifices for idols into a well above which he builds a baptistery.60 The structure of the former cult remains, but Mari changes it to match the practices that the new Christian order introduces.61 The disgruntled people of Arbela call Mari the “destroyer of our gods”62 before he wins them over to Christianity as a divine healer. The Acts of Mari makes no mention of Mar Paqida, whom the Chronicle of Arbela claims is ordained by Addai to bring Christianity to Arbela. The authenticity of the Chronicle of Arbela is highly disputed.63 The presentation of these violent mythic origins of Persian Christianity contrasts, however, with the healing and restoration that Mari’s Christianity brings to Mesopotamia.64 Healing miracles demonstrate the power of the Christian God and rituals, Mari’s superiority over his competitors,65 and the falsity of rival claims about the interaction of the human and divine in the world.66 From the possessed to the paralyzed, Mari cures the sick with sacred oils, water, his hands, and heightened speech, including the Christian baptismal formula.67 Mari’s acts resemble, in type, a liturgy, with Mari serving as priest, the world around him providing the material goods he sanctifies, and his followers symbolizing the congregation. They respond to his gestures with words of wonder, a disposition of piety required of communicants in the liturgy.68 Once the people and natural world have been healed, Mari has forged a new social body.69 Mari never leaves a group of newly converted communities without first ordaining a bishop, priests, and deacons to continue the ritual work. Symbols of Family Life In the Church of the East’s self-presentation of a universal conversion of Persia to Christianity, the text brought together two loci of religious practice, the household and the city,70 under the authority of their missionary.71 The text differentiates Mari from the practitioners of the native Persian religion,72 because Mari moves back and forth between domestic space and civic life, uniting them through his Christlike healings.73 The biblical precedent of Jesus’s healing of Jairus’s daughter74 creates a type that the authors of the Acts of Mari incorporate in the text in order to move Mari into the royal household of Shahqirt.75 Phrat ̣ia, the king’s daughter and an only child, is paralyzed with a disease that prevents her from moving or walking.76 She cannot perform the domestic work of the women within the household. In the meantime, when the saint arrives, Phrat ̣ia’s father is sacrificing to the gods outside the home, tending to the religious practices of the civic cult. The saint, with his Christian mes-

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sage and his healing practices, coordinates both private and public spheres through healing the girl and restoring her to do the domestic work. Mari orders Phrat ̣ia, however, to bake bread for the Christian Eucharist in place of pagan rituals. Her recovery also results in the conversion of the king. Mari casts out the demons living in the outer shrines of the king, just as he purifies the girl within her home. In bringing an end to pagan rituals of both spaces, Mari creates a new family of Christian laborers. In the Acts of Mari, however, household relations are asymmetrical:77 the text mentions no queen and only a few sons.78 The favored models are father-daughter (kings and their daughters) and master-disciple (Mari and his friends). The genealogy of the monastery of Qunni itself is also mythologized back to a father-daughter pair of converts: Mari cures the princess Qunni and her grateful father, King Art.aban, builds the saint a house of prayer “destined for greatness.”79 The text blends these relationships together in its configuration of new “Christian” families (kings, holy man, and daughters)80 to correspond to the hierarchy that Christianity introduces and the new interstitial locations for the performance of its rituals.81 Mari, as mediator between the laity and Christ, absorbs the leadership roles previously allotted to the king or the king’s priests. The myth’s reassignment of religious labor through conversion places Mari at the top and closer to the divine. The king’s attempt to worship Mari reinforces this.82 Mari admonishes the king because he, and not the king, has the access to divine insight that allows him to understand man’s fitting disposition toward God.83 Despite its attention to reforming these relationships, absent from the text are ascetic rules, provisions about sexuality or gender, and encratitic language.84 Following and Surpassing Addai: Missionary Saints as Symbols of Churches The Acts of Mari shows reverence for the Addai tradition on two important levels. It includes a paraphrased summary of the Teaching of Addai,85 creating a disciple, Mari, whom Addai ordains. Addai is the apostle, and Mari the disciple who succeeds him. This taxonomy shifts by the end of the narrative. Mari gains a disciple, Adda, who is docile to him.86 The Acts of Mari legitimizes the apostolicity and orthodoxy of the Church of the East first by connecting Mari to Edessa’s Addai, and then by presenting narrative developments that elevate Mari to a higher status than Addai. The authors of the Acts of Mari borrow from the prestige of Addai while separating themselves definitively from Edessa and its saints.87 A critical comparison of these texts, their Syriac vocabulary, their hierarchies, and absences and additions, shows the reworking of the missionary figure for two important centers of Syriac-speaking Christianity, one in the East, the other in the West.88 The Acts genre of Mari’s story associates Mari with other Syriac missionaries and joins southern Mesopotamian Christians to the Addai/Abgar traditions of Edessa in the north.

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The Teaching of Addai, which narrates the correspondence of Jesus with King Abgar of Edessa, is an important prototype for the Acts of Mari: scribal acts and epistolary exchanges lead to the conversion of a city.89 In both stories, the act of writing makes the holy men present to those seeking them. The Acts of Mari mirrors the Teaching of Addai in its scenes of the creation and exchange of verbal and visual icons.90 In the Teaching of Addai, Jesus cannot go to Edessa to see Abgar, so he sends him a letter, an apostle, and an icon. Addai cannot go to Persia, so he sends Mari.91 In the same way, the text of the Acts of Mari cannot produce an image of Addai, Mari, or Jesus, but writing the story conveys images of the saints to the imagination of its listeners. Both texts create a memory of Christianization through a foundation story and affirm that what they record is what they see.92 The Acts of Mari’s self-conscious mirroring of the Teaching of Addai positions the Edessan tradition in an authoritative relationship to the Church of the East. Mari’s descendants, however, use hagiography to rectify this construction by glorifying Mari and diminishing Addai. Though implying that Mari’s authority is distinct from Addai’s, the monks behind this text still link Mari to Addai and Edessa.93 Mari builds a church in Addai’s name along with those of Peter and Paul.94 In so doing, he advances Addai’s rank to that of “founder.” Mari writes to the community of Edessa for advice on how to convert the obstinate populace of Seleucia,95 “an evil place full of thorns.”96 Yet, Mari, not Addai, acts, moves, and plows the land of Mesopotamia: clearing it of its non-Christian vestiges in order to plant Christianity in their place. Addai gains Abgar and Edessa; Mari converts not one king but many, not one city,97 but several regions.98 The Acts of Mari indicates a struggle for authority that is realized in the arena of textual production.99 Although the Acts of Mari establishes Mari’s authority through his connection to Addai and Jesus, calling him throughout the text Addai’s “disciple,” the text invokes Mari in the preface as “apostle,” slipping into that nomenclature midway through the text,100 and ends with this same classification for him.101 He, not Addai, is one of the seventy-two whom Jesus ordains.102 The text reveals its interest in elevating Mari above Addai.103 For the Church of the East, Mari’s authority matches that of the seventy-two, even if the text backtracks to acknowledge Addai as one of the seventy-two and Mari as his disciple.104 The text redefines Mari as an apostle to the “children of Babel,” using the difference in these terms to rectify the relationship between Mari and Addai, setting Mari apart for Sasanian Christians.105 I N T H E F O O T S T E P S O F T HOM A S A N D M A N I ?

Jullien and Jullien have suggested that the Acts of Mari rewrote the story of Mani, clothing him in Christian garb.106 While this point may be difficult to prove, the presence of the Manichaeans in the Acts of Mari and their shared veneration of the

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Acts of Thomas place the authors of the Acts of Mari and of Manichaean literature in the same symbolic universe. Both had an interest in showing potential converts their suitability for the Sasanian context. Joel Walker notes that the shah Bahram II persecuted Christians and Manichaeans alike, and he could not tell them apart.107 Manichaeanism posed a formidable threat to Christians, as Manichaean missionaries enjoyed widespread success throughout the Persian Empire.108 The Manichaean myth was well suited to missionary activity, since it was grounded in a cosmic drama and not the story of a particular people.109 The Acts of Mari attempts, similarly, to be universally appealing, yet with motifs and symbols particular to the Sasanian milieu. The practices, concerns, and modes of expression in the story were meaningful to the Christians of Mesopotamia, while the narrative emphasizes links among Christian Persian communities and Christians in a larger world beyond Edessa: a world that extended back to Jerusalem and Christ himself. Thomas himself does not appear in the Acts of Mari, but his converts meet Mari on the latter’s travels. In this way, the Acts of Mari connects Mari to Thomas not only through Addai (whom Thomas ordains) but also through communities of Thomas’s lineage. The text recounts that in Beth Lapat ̣ Mari, with great surprise, found Christians whom tradesmen of that region had converted.110 The Mari tradition in Seleucia inscribed Thomas into its map of Christian Persia. Its promotion of Christianity in Beth Lapat ̣, moreover, reveals the anti-Manichaean polemic of the text. Beth Lapat ̣ was a sacred destination for Manichaean pilgrims, who traveled there to visit the place where Mani died.111 Both the Manichaeans and the Church of the East venerated Thomas. We can construe sections of the Acts of Mari as variants on Mani’s and Thomas’s lives.112 Mari makes creedal statements in the Acts of Mari that stress the incarnation and anti-Manichaean theology. Mari’s deeds and travels align him with Thomas. Mari’s healings, conversions of kings, attention to sick women, and appearances in dreams mirror Thomas’s.113 The motifs shared by the Acts of Mari and the Acts of Thomas thus associate Thomas with the East Syrian Christians in Persia. As Jullien and Jullien argue, moreover, the text contains polemical language directed against baptizing movements in Persia114 and nonorthodox Christian groups, including the Marcionites. In the Middle Zab, river, Mari meets the boatman Dousthi. Handicapped by gangrene of the feet and hands, Dousthi cannot transport voyagers across the stream. This, for Jullien and Jullien, recalls “Dositheos,” a hemero-baptist, or someone who baptizes himself every day, like the disciples of John the Baptist. Mari heals Dousthi and baptizes him. The name Dousthi more specifically calls to mind a group of baptists called “Dostheans.” In his Chronicle, Michael the Syrian recounts the arrival of this group in Persia in the fifth century during the reign of Zeno and the Sasanian Shah Balash (484–88). Thus Mari’s miracles resembled those of his rivals,115 but he cleaned up and unified the sectarian mess they created. The Acts of Mari borrows from these literary

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traditions and includes Mari in the ranks of the holy men of Persia. The Acts of Mari envisions a Christian society in the Sasanian milieu, established by Mari, an apostle for the Church of the East. H I ST O R IC A L C I R C UM STA N C E S

The Acts of Mari legitimates the independent authority of the Dyophysite Church of the East by illustrating how Mari, its apostle, superseded his predecessors and the Christian and non-Christian traditions they represented. Despite this triumphal missionary narrative, East Syrian Christians never enjoyed imperial sponsorship as their Western counterparts did. Certain shahs, however, are remembered in Christian sources for their sympathy toward the Christians in their empire. In the Synodicon orientale, for instance, we read of the support that Shah Yazdgard (r. 399–421) gave to Christian communities: “In his entire kingdom, the temples [i.e., churches] that had been overturned by his ancestors [were to] be grandly rebuilt during his days and the altars that had been demolished carefully restored to service, and those who had been tried and tested for the sake of God by imprisonments and beatings [were to] be freed, and the priests and leaders [of the church] together with the entire holy covenant [qyāmā] circulate freely in public without fear.”116 Walker notes the importance of this shift under Yazdgard for Sasanian Christians: “Yazdgard’s repeal of the persecution against the Christians of his empire marks a decisive innovation in royal policy, which paved the way for the gradual integration of Christians into the political and social fabric of the Sasanian empire.”117 The Church of the East endured sporadic periods of persecution, which produced a band of martyrs. The rich collection of the texts of the Persian martyrs shapes the memory of the East Syrian Christians.118 But rather than martyrdom, the Acts of Mari focuses on the changes that Mari brought to the Sasanian landscape. The text never mythologizes Mari as a martyr, nor does it mention the martyrs of Persia.119 Two inventions of the Acts of Mari—the political sponsorship of Christianity and the absence of persecution against Christians—conflict with the historical reality experienced by Persian Christians. The authors’ (or author’s) focus on political conversion, an imagined peace among rulers, religious leaders, and laypeople, reflects the interests of monastic and episcopal leaders in the sixth century. The authors reveal their literate, educated status in many places in the text. Their knowledge of Mesopotamian geography is particularly significant. They map out Mari’s world from Karka d-Beth Slokh (today, “Kirkuk”) to Kohke to create a plausible backdrop for his activity. The polemic in the Acts of Mari against Zoroastrian beliefs and imagined rulers, however exaggerated and caricatural, demonstrates how Christian leaders in Sasanian Persia used hagiography to engage in a larger conversation or debate about Christianity’s place in Iran. The authors of the Acts of Mari were acquainted with the

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religious symbols of the regnant religion of the empire, and used hagiographic composition and invention to promote cults of local saints whose shrines and stories transformed the sacred landscape of Mesopotamia into a specifically Christian one. HAG IO G R A P H Y A N D C H R I S T IA N R I VA L R I E S

Christianity in the Syriac-speaking milieu, in both the Roman and the Sasanian empires, experienced important changes in the fifth and sixth centuries, the results of which are still evident today. The rivalry between Dyophysites and Miaphysites intensified, and Syriac-speaking Christians divided into different parties, as bishops and intellectuals disputed theological articulations and the positions that their communities should take with respect to the emperors and shahs. In Edessa, for instance, the Dyophysite Christology and biblical interpretation of Theodore of Mopsuestia was promoted under the leadership of Hiba.120 When the school of the Persians closed in 489 by order of the emperor Zeno,121 however, Edessa’s Dyophysite population fled to Nisibis. Edessa then became a center of Miaphysite Syriac Christianity, and the emerging Syrian Orthodox Church, although a noteworthy Syriac-speaking population of Chalcedonians (the Melkites) remained. Christians of the Persian Empire, as I have noted, largely formed the Dyophysite Church of the East, enjoying independence from the Byzantine church since 410, when the see of Seleucia-Ctesiphon of the Church of the East declared itself independent from the West. The Church of the East therefore positioned itself to flourish in the Persian Empire as the unrivaled form of Christianity. Trouble developed, therefore, with the arrival of the Miaphysites in the Persian Empire in the sixth century. Chalcedonian emperor Justin I’s persecution of the Miaphysite bishops in 518 pushed them increasingly outside the Roman Empire, creating a new religious rival for the Church of the East: the Miaphysite community.122 The missionary work and ordinations of Jacob Baradaeus, Philoxenus of Mabbug (himself born in Persia), Simeon of Beth Arsham, and Ah ̣udemmeh strengthened Miaphysite ecclesial and monastic foundations.123 We will examine the Miaphysite “version” of their expansion into the Sasanian Empire in chapters 5–7. As Miaphysite missionaries from Edessa stitched the apostles Thomas and Addai into their lineage, the Church of the East inscribed Mari into its history,124 calling him “apostle to the apostles.”125 The Persian Miaphysites, in contrast, claimed authority through their connections to Edessa, Alexandria, Constantinople, and Antioch and established their center in Persia in Tagrit.126 We discuss the development of their missionary stories in chapter 7, on the tradition of Ah ̣udemmeh. With Miaphysites proselytizing members of the Church of the East as well as non-Christian Persians, the Dyophysites responded with competing claims to antiquity, and this Zeitgeist corresponded with the creation of Mari. In Mari, the

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authors of the Acts of Mari portrayed an apostolic figure that belonged uniquely to the Church of the East, superseding both the gods of non-Christian holy sites and Mari’s apostolic father, Addai.127 A New Saint for an Ancient Church: Papa and Mari The discontinuity between the actual past of the Church of the East and the apostolicity that the Church of the East ascribed to its past was resolved in the joining of a historical figure, Papa, an early bishop or catholicos of Mesopotamia, and Mari, a holy person whose tomb lies in Dayr Qunni.128 Papa bar Ἁggai, “the first definitively historical bishop of the Sasanian capital (285/91–327),”129 is described in the Acts of Mari as the first disciple of Mari. Papa bar Ἁggai represents the authority of the see of Seleucia-Ctesiphon, and through Mari he is also linked to centers of religious authority outside of the Sasanian Empire, like Edessa. By changing Mari into an apostle and Papa into his first disciple, the authors of the Acts of Mari closed the gaps in the murky history of the patriarchate of Seleucia-Ctesiphon: “Papa fut en effet le premier prélat à imposer l’hégémonie et l’autorité morale du siège de Séleucie Ctésiphon sur tous les évêques de l’Église syro-orientale.”130 At the second council of Constantinople in 553, Justinian reasserted the patriarchal sees of authoritative status: Rome, Constantinople, Jerusalem, Antioch, Alexandria, and Jerusalem.131 Bishops from the Roman Empire never included Seleucia-Ctesiphon in any list of this type. Earlier in Christian history, each city or region connected a patron apostle to itself: Peter and Paul were connected to Rome, Thomas to India,132 Addai to Edessa.133 The saints eventually represented images of the prestige of the see, recalling the literary motif from the apocryphal Acts narratives of the division or allotment of countries that Christ himself governs to the apostles. The Acts of Mari promoted the interests of the see of Seleucia-Ctesiphon, ancient Kokhe, the administrative center of the East Syrian Church of the East.134 The Acts of Mari created a different lineage for the see of Seleucia-Ctesiphon, near Qunni on the hill of Kokhe,135 by forging a new order of superordinates and subordinates.136 Mari’s story elevated two centers of episcopal and monastic activity for Christians living under the Sasanians, Kokhe (a hillock southwest of Ctesiphon on the Tigris) and the nearby monastery of Dayr Qunni. At the 585 synod in Iraq, Catholicos Ishoʿyahb I rewrote the patriarchal order of sees to include Persia.137 He deleted Jerusalem and replaced it with Seleucia-Ctesiphon. Thus we should situate the Acts of Mari within a set of texts from the Church of the East, including historical synod records, that resist the imperially championed Chalcedonian bishops. The Acts of Mari replaced the hierarchy of saints of the West with that of the saints of the Sasanian Dyophysites. It can be situated with other texts of the sixth century that are meant to expand the prestige of Seleucia-Ctesiphon, as the Teaching of Addai did for Edessa a century before.

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The Acts of Mari demonstrates how missionary narratives are used to make an area inhabitable for the sustenance of Christian institutions.138 Mari’s story, the challenges and odds he faced, set him apart from those whom he calls in the text “his companions”—the other apostles. By the end of the text, Mari has no superordinates, only subordinates. Mari’s status corresponds to that of the catholicos of Seleucia-Ctesiphon, as he fashions a Mesopotamian church independent from the apostles of the Roman, Greek, and West Syrian churches. In the narrative setting of the Acts of Mari, Seleucia is located on a new map, and is established as a center that advances Persian Christianity at the boundary of “civilization.”139 Just as it crafts a legend for Sasanian Christian history, so the Acts of Mari orders time for the Church of the East. It purifies its past, contends with other Persian religions of the present, and lengthens its history vis-à-vis the “recent” Christianities of the sixth century. Mari’s feast day, which the text announces at its end, brings this chronological reordering to a close, fixing Mari’s memory in the calendar of the Church of the East.140 Promotion of Ascetic Foundations The Acts of Mari also advanced the interests of the sixth-century monastery of Dayr Qunni. Unlike Addai, Mari consecrated monks.141 The story constructs Mari, an apostle buried at Dayr Qunni, as the founder of the monastery, and Mari and his group of disciples represent a protomonastery with Mari as abbot. The text recounts Mari’s burial there,142 and states that the patriarchs of Seleucia-Ctesiphon are buried next to their “founder.”143 Thus the interest of the Acts of Mari in defining monastic and episcopal lineages corresponds with the circumstances of the Church of the East in the sixth century. This contrasts with the earlier text the Teaching of Addai, which had no interest in discussing monasticism or monastic foundations. Although the Acts of Mari contains no discourse or depiction of the practices of sixth-century East Syrian ascetics, the authors present themselves as the descendants of a missionary monk, not just an itinerant healer.144 The authors of the Acts of Mari wrote an apostolic memory to attribute the reflection of a divine hierarchy to their human institutions. Mari’s ordination of monks, bishops, and deacons portrays structures absent from the earliest beginnings of Christianity in Persia. In spite of these anachronisms, the monks of Qunni wrote that they recounted an ancient story.145 Their claim to antiquity reveals an authorial sense of literary conventions—“how to write a missionary or foundation story”—that places a premium not on the piety of the saint but rather on the institutions that he begins. In the contest for orthodoxy, Mari’s building projects and ordinations connected the monasteries of Mesopotamia and extended their genealogy as far back as the second century.146 In the competition for a myth of origins, East Syrians compiled sources and information on Persian religion and geography, as well as the early leadership of the Church of the East, and created the Acts of

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Mari in the image of the apostles in the canonical and noncanonical Acts of the apostles.147 As I have discussed above, Mari’s “hagiographers” sought to elevate the monastery of Dayr Qunni to make it known as the monastery of Mar Mari.148 Many of the future patriarchs had been monks or students at Dayr Qunni.149 When Mari ordained Papa at Dayr Qunni to be his successor, he aligned in apostolic succession all of Papa’s descendants, the catholicoi, back to Christ.150 The text set Papa and Mari apart for East Syrian Dyophysites, as a bishop and a monk, as prototypes of the religious specialists ordering the religious life of the Persian Christians. The text glorified the monastery by making the first successor of Mari to the seat of Seleucia-Ctesiphon a monk. Mari’s tomb, to which the monastery of Dayr Qunni laid claim, became a place of pilgrimage for future patriarchs of the Church of the East.151 The writers of missionary stories used legends of their patrons to represent miniaturized versions of their own idealized history. Mari, symbolizing the Church of the East, broke away from Addai and never returned to the West. At the end of the sixth century, monastic authors of the Church of the East created a figure, Mari, through whom they relocated the hub of Christian activity away from Rome, Jerusalem, Constantinople, and even Edessa, to Dayr Qunni, near the see of SeleuciaCtesiphon. Stepping out of the genre of hagiography,152 the Acts of Mari does not sketch memories of Mari. Rather, the story it presents functions as a guide to a new world: Christian Persia. The text of the Acts of Mari resolved the ambiguity of the roots of Christianity in Persia through the creation of a story that claimed apostolicity for the Church of the East. Mesopotamian Christians redefined their lineage through the composition of the Acts of Mari.153 Just as the sixth century became, as Averil Cameron has argued, an age of “defining the authorities on whom one could rely for the totality of correct Christian doctrine,”154 so, too, as Mari shows, missionary narratives from this time, focused on the delineation and creation of sacred history. Out of struggles and positions of subjugation and marginalization, the East Syrian Dyophysites composed the Acts of Mari to retell their story. Monks of the sixth century wrote the Acts of Mari to present themselves as the heirs of Mari’s conversion, and they legitimized their relationships with the Persian imperial regime and Christians of the Roman Empire through this narrative.

4

John of Ephesus as Hagiographer and Missionary

In the introduction to this book, we discussed the theological controversies that arose at the Council of Chalcedon. New parties and new heroes emerged during that contentious period. In his Lives of the Eastern Saints Bishop John of Ephesus (507–89) memorialized sixth-century figures who protested against the twonature Christology articulated at the Council of Chalcedon. Perhaps because of his own extensive missionary activity at the behest of Justinian and Theodora, John’s hagiographical collection exhibited a penchant for missionary themes. Like the legends of Thomas, Addai, and Mari, John’s narratives memorialized charismatic holy men who completed their missions with the assistance of royal leaders. John dedicated two substantial chapters to the missionary saints Jacob Baradaeus and Simeon of Beth Arsham, whom I analyze in chapters 5 and 6. John made the saints’ features iconic of the Miaphysite body as a whole: they were poor, persecuted, and divinely ordained to survive. John’s apologetic voice defended the dissident position of the sixth-century Miaphysites.1 He played a unique role in shaping how the later Miaphysite church would identify itself as the Syrian Orthodox Church,2 projecting his hopes for the expansion of his community onto the missionary saints. Many historiographical sources present the gradual schism of the Chalcedonians and the Miaphysites.3 Hagiographic accounts distinguish themselves from other sources in not just retelling stories but in providing inspiring, motivating, and providing a positive retelling of painful events. Dissidents from Chalcedon like John of Ephesus imitated models of sanctity inherited from their literary past that harmonized with their politically and socially dissident religious affiliation.4 In his Lives of the Eastern Saints and Ecclesiastical History, John of Ephesus wrote about many 72

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types of holy people, lay and cleric. Although John himself was a monk and later a bishop, his favorite title for himself was “destroyer of the pagans.” He wanted his community to remember him for the part that he played in abolishing the traditional forms of Greco-Roman religion that survived the Christianization of the Roman Empire. Yet the source for this missionary work was John himself, and thus he might have embellished his deeds in accord with his own agenda. J O H N ’ S C O N T E X T O F E C C L E SIA L S T R I F E

John of Ephesus wrote the Lives of the Eastern Saints between 567 and 569, four years after the death of Justinian and three years before Justin II reinstated persecution of the opponents of Chalcedon. John vividly described Justin II’s persecution of the Miaphysites and his fits of madness and also portrayed the empress Sophia in an unfavorable light.5 He finished his other major work, the Ecclesiastical History, during the reign of Justin II (ca. 578), while imprisoned in Constantinople for Miaphysite loyalties. John blamed the sloppiness and frenetic tone of his writing on his incarceration. His portrait of the imprisoned missionary intersected with the narrative typology of the missionary saint. While John smuggled chapters out of prison for circulation, he lamented the divisions in his church. He wrote from his personal experiences in Constantinople, cobbling together letters and oral reports.6 The first part of the three-part Ecclesiastical History is lost.7 Much of the second part is incorporated in part 3 of the eighth-century Syriac Chronicle of Zuqnin and addresses the persecution of the Miaphysites by the Chalcedonians and John’s time in Constantinople (527–65). The third part of John’s history covers the period 571–85 and discusses the internal conflicts among the Miaphysites. John focuses on the Tritheist controversy, which divided the different groups of Chalcedonian opponents into the followers of John Ascotzanges and those of Theodosius of Alexandria in 557–70. John felt impelled to write the later part of his history by another persecution against the Miaphysites in 572. Both his history and his hagiographies emphasize the brutality of Chalcedonian “law enforcers” against the Miaphysites. In his Lives of Simeon and Sergius in the Lives of the Eastern Saints, John provides an intimate account of both monastic and lay pillars of the community and their responses to the persecution of the Chalcedonians: “A short time before, a persecution had been set afoot by those who served the synod of Chalcedon, and men who possessed the name only of churchmen. . . . They arrested and imprisoned many, they drove many to death with stripes inflicted with rods, and many more they greedily and mercilessly plundered; and others they reduced to submission by force, and, when men had eaten and drunk wine and meat, they would open their mouths with lashing and hides and rods, and stuff the oblation into their mouths.”8 John of Ephesus portrayed his church as the direct descendants of the apostles, who

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endured trials for the cause of orthodoxy: “[John’s] literary works were part of the propaganda-war against the Chalcedonians.”9 The disputed author of the Chronicle of Zuqnin composed his history in the eighth century in the monastery of Zuqnin, not far from Amida. Part 3 of the Chronicle transmits part 2 of John of Ephesus’s Ecclesiastical History, which contains an account of John’s conversion of the pagans of Asia Minor.10 Parts 3 and 4 of the Chronicle of Zuqnin cover three centuries (488–775).Although the form of the Chronicle is straightforward, seeming more historical than hagiographic, this history nevertheless has features also found in sacred narrative and legends: nonhuman characters, miracles, and grotesque accounts of martyrdom.11 Much of the information that survives concerning the aggression of Chalcedonian bishops against dissidents comes from John of Ephesus. The conflicts and attempts at resolution that characterized the Miaphysite religious experiences of the sixth century also shaped John’s life and writings.12 John was born in Ingilene near Amida in 507. Amida was one of the most important cities on the Eastern frontier in the early Byzantine period.13 After Maro the Stylite raised John, he was educated at the monastery of St. Yoh ̣anna Urt ̣aya, itself named after a monk, Mar John or “Yoh ̣anna,” who had been a missionary in the area of Anzetene in 389.14 Although John was born in northern Mesopotamia, he spent much of his life in Constantinople.15 Jacob Baradaeus, whose life John memorializes and whom I discuss in chapter 6, ordained John titular “Bishop of Ephesus” in 558. By 566, John had become abbot of the monastery of the Sycae outside of Constantinople.16 The Miaphysite presence in Constantinople remained considerable in the sixth century.17 Although the emperor Justinian promoted the cause of the Chalcedonians, his wife, the empress Theodora, championed the side of their opponents. Chalcedonian persecution against the Miaphysites started under Justin I in 519, and this aggression forced John and his monastic brothers away from their monastery in Amida for nearly a decade. The brothers moved from the monastery of Mar Yoh ̣anna Urt ̣aya to the Monastery of Mar Māmā, and then to the Monastery of the White Poplars. The Chalcedonian bishops under whom this persecution took place were Paul “the Jew” (519–21) and Euphrasius (521–26).18 Relations between Miaphysites and Chalcedonians improved in the early years of Justinian’s reign. Indeed, for a while it seemed that the two groups would be able to reach a resolution. During that time, in 529, John of Tella ordained John of Ephesus a deacon. By 536, however, the Chalcedonian bishop of Antioch, Ephrem, rekindled the persecution against Miaphysite clergy.19 The Miaphysite hierarchy was soon in danger of dying out, and their leaders hid from the Chalcedonians and disguised themselves.20 The restructuring of a separate hierarchy for the Miaphysites fell on the shoulders of many, but John of Tella, John of Hephaestopolis, Simeon of Beth Arsham,

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and Jacob Baradaeus played critical roles in John of Ephesus’s retelling of their stories in his Lives. In the years leading up to 540, when John left northern Mesopotamia for the imperial capital, he traveled to Egypt, Syria, and Palestine. On his journey to Egypt, he met John of Hephaestopolis, who ordained Miaphysite priests and created a hierarchy of clergy for the persecuted Miaphysites.21 The hagiographies of John of Ephesus present John of Hephaestopolis and John of Tella as ascetic bishops of superhuman endurance.22 John of Hephaestopolis (originally from Gaza) escaped from Constantinople and spread Christianity (in union with his Miaphysite community) in the Aegean Islands. In Tralles, John of Hephaestopolis ordained fifty Miaphysite clergy in the upper gallery of a church while the Chalcedonians conducted their liturgy below.23 John of Tella served Miaphysite laity by meeting their sacramental and pastoral demands.24 His hagiographers claimed that he ordained 170,000 priests to revive the suffering Miaphysite clergy. The two Lives of John of Tella distinguish different aspects of his work: John of Ephesus narrates primarily John of Tella’s extensive ordinations, whereas Eliya emphasizes his asceticism and imprisonment by the Chalcedonians. For John, it was incumbent on him and his brothers to see that Miaphysite communities received their sacraments, lest their salvation be lost through communication with the Chalcedonians.25

J O H N ’ S SE L F- P O RT R A I T A S A M I S SIO NA RY

In the second part of his sixth-century Ecclesiastical History, transmitted in the Chronicle of Zuqnin, John of Ephesus relates how the emperor Justinian, although a Chalcedonian, commissioned him to convert the last remnants of “paganism” in the Roman Empire. He made a monastery at Tralles his missionary center. This part of the History also exemplifies how John aligned himself with the emperor Justinian. The bishop of Tralles had opposed John’s oversight of the monastery, but Justinian (at least according to John’s account) sided with John against the bishop, giving the former stewardship of the monastery.26 John identified himself as Justinian’s missionary: In the year 542 the grace of God visited [the territories of Asia], Caria, Lydia, and Phrygia, through the zeal of Justinian the Victorious. And it emanated from him in abundance through the mediation of our humble self,—that is [John of Asia]—so that with the might of the Holy Spirit seventy [thousand of persons] might be instructed and convert from erring paganism, worship of idols [and exaltation of devils], to the knowledge of the truth. They converted and were confirmed in and baptized [in the name of our Lord Jes]us Christ. . . . So when God opened the minds [of all the people and enlightened] their intelligence with the truth, they uprooted with their own hands, along with us, [their sanctuaries, destroyed the ranks] of their idols, [overthrew] their rows of altars everywhere, brought down their [altars] made

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John’s self-presentation as a “missionary” hearkens back to other models of the itinerant holy man in the Syrian past. Even before Justinian commissioned John to convert the pagans, John journeyed widely with the Miaphysites (in flight from Chalcedonian aggressors) throughout Egypt, Palestine, Syria, and Mesopotamia,28 mapping out territory of future Miaphysite jurisdiction. John applied the image of a missionary “bishop on the run” as a hagiographical defense of the Miaphysite position. In the mid-sixth century, the emperor Justinian promoted a single Christianity (Chalcedonian) for the unity of his empire. Adherence to Chalcedon became an expression of loyalty to the emperor. To identify with Chalcedonian Christianity meant to inscribe oneself into Roman civic life.29 Justinian’s law codes reinforced the exclusivity of religions in the late Roman Empire, and this made the question of one’s religious affiliation critical. The practice of paganism was outlawed in the fourth century under Emperor Theodosius (d. 395),30 and Justinian introduced new legislation to persuade practitioners of Greco-Roman religions to convert to Christianity.31 He stipulated the punishment for those who refused to give up their pagan practices. The Codex Justinianus reads: “If any unholy and defiled pagan does not make himself manifest, whether living here or in the countryside, and run to the churches with his household, that is to say wives and children, let him submit to the aforesaid penalties, let the fisc confiscate their property, and let them be given over to exile.”32 The persecution of the pagans happened in two waves (in 545 and again in 562).33 Justinian (Chalcedonian) commissioned John of Ephesus (Miaphysite) to evangelize pagans and schismatic Christians in Caria, Phrygia, and Lydia. In the Lives of the Eastern Saints, in contrast to his History, John boasts that he converted 80,000 people (10,000 more than he claims in his History),34 built ninety-eight churches in Asia Minor, and twelve monasteries,35 and transformed seven synagogues into churches.36 The figures in John’s hagiographic embellishments are difficult to interpret, but the nature of his expression reveals his apostolic and imperial ideology. John would like us to believe that he spent much of his life (thirty years to be specific, from 536 to 566) completing missionary tasks.37 In commemorating himself as a missionary, John places himself in the larger tradition of Syriac wandering missionaries whose lives Syrian religious memory canonizes. John applies the symbolic power of the missionary figure to himself as a strategy of ascribing legitimacy to his own, otherwise dissident, ecclesiastical loyalty. John incorporates his missionary discourse in his description of the violent end of the last pagans in the royal city (545–46).38 He does not demonize them as he

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does the rural pagans (to whom I will return later), because this group represents an upper class of literati, not “barbarians.” John calls them “famous people,” grammarians, sophists, lawyers, and physicians. He does not elaborate on their practices or “heathen manners.” His rhetorical strategy is more careful. These pagans are brought or handed over to the churches that they might learn Christianity, as is fitting for their class. John introduces a certain Phocas into his narrative, a patrician whose devotion to the traditional gods prevents him from converting to Christianity. Phocas, we are told, drinks poison to avoid baptism. Lest John construct Phocas as a “noble martyr” of the traditional gods, John reports the ignominy of the lack of a decent burial for Phocas, who is buried like a donkey. Phocas’s story functions as evidence for John: human design cannot thwart God’s divine plan of systematic extermination of the pagans in the empire—a project in which John participates.39 The Chronicle of Zuqnin preserves John’s depiction of the pagan h ̣anpe40 community in the Phoenician city of Baʿalbak.41 John writes that lightning destroyed Baʿalbak’s temple. This edifice was the pride of the pagan civic community. John’s narrative implies that God himself destroyed the “monstrosity” because God’s Christian servants could not: Erring pagans, while misled by the strength of this building, were especially proud of it, and slaughtering, vows, and endless burnt sacrifices for demons used to take place continually in this temple. And indeed, no one was able to destroy it or to bring an end in it the error of idols [sic]. But God, who saw the deviation and erring of people because of the magnificence of this temple, suddenly kindled fire from Heaven in it.42

John uses this rhetoric of divine destruction to reframe a natural disaster through his hagiographic and apologetic lens. In the Ecclesiastical History John portrays his missionary work in Caria, Phrygia, Asia, and Lydia in greater detail.43 He presents the mountainous inhabitants of Caria in his report of their pagan society; he boasts that he razed the temple at Deira to the ground and had a monastery built in its place.44 Ernst Honigmann notes that we cannot determine the exact location of this place, but in a personal communication, Peter Brown has suggested that new evidence seems to indicate that Deira is the location in Magnesia to which John refers.45 Deira is behind Magnesia at the head of the Meander.46 This means, as Brown notes, that Deira is not an isolated part of the empire, and perhaps the traditional “pagan” forms of GrecoRoman religion practiced there are not so removed from the center of the empire. Archaeological evidence in Troas in Asia Minor supports John’s claim that lands once owned by pagan temple complexes were taken over by monastic communities.47 John’s self-styling of himself as a missionary on the edges of the world is perhaps his own invention. But it shows the power of the missionary symbol among the Syriac-speaking storytellers: John is fitting himself into the narrative

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typology of the missionary saint that the Syriac imagination associated with sanctity, asceticism, and triumph. In his description of the destruction and transformation of these pagan societies, John associates himself with the emperor Justinian by devising a common enemy. For the most part, John does not portray Justinian in a favorable light, saving his praise instead for Theodora. Yet through aligning his interests with the emperor’s desire to eradicate paganism, John diminishes the differences between the Chalcedonians and the Miaphysites. His exoticizing of the pagans allows him to draw a strong boundary separating the Christians (whatever their Christological confession) from the pagans. By presenting himself as a missionary in Asia Minor, moreover, John presents the Miaphysites as a flourishing group whose commitment to asceticism and orthodoxy warrants that Justinian select them to convert “pagans” and “heretical” Christians. His missionary tales drew on the motifs of the stories of the first apostles: mythological landscapes and divine intervention intertwine as heroes create new communities of Christians out of barbarians. Just as John forges an alliance with the Chalcedonians through a common pagan enemy, his rhetorical constructions of the Montanists allow him to contrast their heterodoxy with his group’s orthodoxy. Following Justinian’s bid, John claims that he destroyed what had once been a flourishing Montanist community in Phrygia.48 He finds the bones of Montanus, exhumes them, and he then burns the Montanists’ church: “At this time, the corrupting heresy of Montanus—the story of whom and how it emerged was written down for us at the time of the Apostles—was ridiculed and uprooted. For through the exhortation of holy John, Bishop of Asia, the bones of Montanus—he who said about himself that he was the Spirit Paraclete—Cratius (his associate), Maximilla and Priscilla, his prophetesses, were found.”49 By portraying the divinely ordained demise of the Montanists, John identifies himself as a servant of the Christian empire. Through this self-presentation, John establishes a continuum between the Chalcedonian church and the Miaphysites. When the emperor Justinian determines that the empire will identify itself as Chalcedonian, Miaphysites like John of Ephesus downplay their dissociation from the empire by narrating their participation in Justinian’s violent missionary campaigns. The irony is hard to miss: John of Ephesus and his Miaphysite party present themselves as the victims of Chalcedonian aggression; nevertheless, they join the Chalcedonians in afflicting other religious groups of the sixth-century Byzantine world: both nonChristian and marginalized Christian groups deemed “heretical.” Thus in the mid-sixth century, John of Ephesus does not see himself as belonging to a different church than the emperors. John’s missionary rhetoric contrasts with his narratives of the plagues, persecutions, and internal crises that threatened the Miaphysites throughout the sixth century. Future generations of Miaphysites transmitted John’s description of himself as the “converter of the pagans.”50

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The transmission of the historical and hagiographical works of John of Ephesus preserved his testimony and a Miaphysite memory. By the time that medieval chroniclers like Michael the Syrian and Bar ʿEbroyo fashioned their versions of sixth-century Miaphysite stories, religious leaders of subsequent generations had already consecrated heroes of their past (John of Ephesus, Severus of Antioch, Jacob Baradaeus).51 Their canonized status affected how later authors represented them. I turn now to an analysis of two of John’s missionary saints, Jacob Baradaeus and Simeon of Beth Arsham, to see how John focuses on the missionary theme of these two saints to elevate their memory.

5

Legends of Simeon of Beth Arsham, Missionary to Persia

John of Ephesus wrote two important accounts of Miaphysite missionary saints of the emerging Syrian Orthodox Church. The first of these was Simeon of Beth Arsham (d. 540).1 Historical sources attribute the expansion of the Miaphysite community into Persia and the Sinai Peninsula to Simeon’s efforts. His hagiographer called him the “Persian Debater.” In relating Simeon’s story, John fit Simeon’s life into the narrative typology of the itinerant missionary, attributing to his subject the virtues of simplicity, intelligence, asceticism, zeal, and political savoir faire. As this chapter will show, the hagiography of Simeon of Beth Arsham embodied the ideals of the Miaphysite Christians of the sixth century. Simeon of Beth Arsham was a Persian who understood that the Miaphysites had to compete with the Church of the East in order to flourish in the Sasanian Empire, yet his frequent encounters with the court and officials of Constantinople gave him the know-how to maintain links with his coreligionists in Byzantium. John of Ephesus spun these ambassadorial talents into a narrative typology of the missionary saint. Hence Simeon was not just a hero of the sixth century, but rather an apostle, like Thomas or Paul, whose missionary zeal generated a new church. A saint of the borderlands between the Roman and Persian empires, Simeon of Beth Arsham traveled between Constantinople, H ̣ irta, and the areas of Mesopotamia lying between the two empires. On his journeys, he created pockets of Miaphysite communities in areas where the Church of the East was strong. In 505/506 Simeon attended a synod in Armenia to support the cause of the Miaphysites.2 As both Simeon’s writings and John’s hagiography demonstrate, Simeon’s life was

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caught up in the struggle and intense rivalry between his Miaphysite community and the Dyophysites, both the Church of the East and the Chalcedonians.3

T H E H I S T O R IC A L SI M E O N O F B E T H A R SHA M A N D T H E L E G E N D

Although this chapter focuses on the literary presentation of Simeon’s life, brief mention should be made of the some of the historical sources for Simeon. Simeon wrote letters; two or perhaps three are extant.4 In the first, “On Bars ̣auma bishop of Nisibis and the heresy of the Nestorians,” probably written during the reign of Emperor Anastasius (r. 491–508),5 Simeon denounced the leaders of the Church of the East and the school of the Persians.6 Just as genealogies traced back to Christ and the apostles were used to show apostolicity and orthodoxy, in this letter Simeon constructed a genealogy of leaders to demonstrate heresy: After having traced the genealogy of (what he saw as) Nestorianism from the Jews in Jesus’ day to Paul of Samosata, Diodore of Tarsus, Theodore of Mopsuestia, Nestorius, Theodoret of Cyrrhus, Hiba of Edessa, and the School of the Persians, he forcefully denounces leaders and scholars of the School, in particular Aqaq, Bars ̣auma of Nisibis, and Narsai. To these he opposes those who remained faithful to the true faith and rejected Nestorianism and any mention of “two Sons, one by nature and one by adoption.”7

Another letter of Simeon of Beth Arsham draws attention to the plight of Christians living under the Jewish H ̣ imyarite king Yūsuf in Najran in southern Arabia.8 Yūsef persecuted and put Christians to death (528 or 523). The Book of the H.imyarites (H ̣ imyar is in present-day Yemen) and two extant Syriac letters preserve accounts of their persecution and deaths.9 Irfan Shahid also attributes another letter on this subject to Simeon.10 As a result of his widespread missionary and pastoral activity, the memory of the historical Simeon of Beth Arsham was mythologized into a sacred legend, recounted in John of Ephesus’s hagiography. John chronicled not only Simeon’s missionary activities but also the shifting social boundaries and convoluted imperial relationships of the sixth-century Miaphysites. John of Ephesus wrote his Life of Simeon about twenty years after the holy man’s death and included it in his Lives of the Eastern Saints.11 John shows how Simeon sustained the Miaphysite communities living in the “Nestorian” areas of the Persian Empire during the reigns of the Roman emperors Anastasius, Justin I, and Justinian. He describes Simeon’s conversion of the Arabic foederati tribes living between the Roman and Persian empires.12 He narrates the defense of a singlenature Christology that Simeon presented in a debate with Babai, catholicos of

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the Church of the East, before the Persian marzban, a local Sasanian governor or margrave.13 John’s presentation of Simeon shaped the later Syriac Orthodox memory. His narrative about Simeon was repeated in shortened form in the twelfthcentury Chronicle of Michael the Syrian.14 This chapter considers the legend of Simeon through a literary study on Simeon as a missionary saint, an analysis of John’s constructions of the Persians in the hagiography, and an examination of how Simeon’s story maps out John’s vision for the Miaphysite leaders. John presented Simeon’s work in storied form to interpret both the future and the past of the Miaphysites.15 By “storied form,” I mean that John set Simeon’s memory in narrative so that the legend itself would act as a powerful myth for the Miaphysite interpretation of their past. As Simeon’s hagiographer, John looked for points of commonality between Simeon’s ministry and his own world in Constantinople. As I will show, Simeon’s hagiographic identification as a Persian, itinerant bishop, homilist, defender of orthodoxy, and converter of “heretics” mythologizes the Persian borderlands for the Miaphysite community, giving them a new setting in which to think through their shifting affiliations with the Roman Empire. BAC KG R OU N D A N D H I ST O RY O F T H E HAG IO G R A P H Y

John of Ephesus’s Life of Simeon the Bishop is chapter 10 in his collection Lives of the Eastern Saints and thus dates to 566–68.16 John, writing about twenty-five years after Simeon’s death, describes Simeon as “a great wonder,”17 a “warrior for the orthodox faith,”18 whose labor spread the “good news” to the outer regions of the world in the image of Christianity’s most famous missionary, Paul.19 Simeon was magnificently trained in Scripture and debate.20 With his Persian background and rhetorical skills he was well poised to fight the followers of Nestorius, Theodore, Mani, and Marcion, the groups especially disparaged by John of Ephesus.21 John recounts Simeon’s zealous travels from his home in H ̣ irta to help Christian and non-Christian Arabic tribes (the T ̣ ayye). He converted “Nestorians” and Magians to the Miaphysites, baptized households and kingdoms, and supported highborn Magian martyrs. He changed his appearance to protect himself, calling himself a “foreigner” as he went from place to place to debate theology.22 Simeon negotiated on behalf of the Byzantine emperor Anastasius with the Persian shah Khusro I to help the Miaphysite Christians in Persia.23 His talent impressed the Persian marzban, and Simeon demonstrated through his arguments why the Miaphysites could be counted among loyal subjects of the Persian shah.24 Simeon’s followers, against Simeon’s will, made him a bishop of Beth Arsham.25 The town of Beth Arsham was probably situated near Ctesiphon, south of present-day Baghdad. Simeon ministered to imprisoned bishops and traveled from king to king in various regions, gathering the seals of royal support for the Miaphysites.26 Simeon’s

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resourcefulness even helped him to create protective bindings for the Scriptures and carrying devices to guard them from wear and tear. John thus portrays a saint who took the “Orthodox” Christian message to the outer limits of the empire, north, south, east, and west.27 John presented Simeon of Beth Arsham as a bishop on the run, writing letters, converting, preaching, and negotiating among rulers and Christian leaders with opposing Christological positions. Simeon journeyed back to Constantinople where he died a noble death, surrounded by his fellow Miaphysite bishops in house prison in Constantinople under Theodora’s protection.28 John’s hagiography of Simeon shows marked parallels with earlier Syriac missionary narratives. John’s circumstances in Constantinople, however, gave him an idiosyncratic schema that informed how he made the memory of this Persian bishop a model for his Miaphysite group. John conceptualized Simeon in the idiom of the missionary saint to persuade his readers that internal and external conflicts would not prevent them from expanding both within the Byzantine Empire and beyond it. John envisaged a Christian society led by bishops like Simeon, faithful to orthodoxy and shrewd in their interactions with political leaders. Sidestepping questions of the historical Simeon of Beth Arsham, I will focus on John’s hagiographic presentation of Simeon’s career. I argue that John, writing in a time of political conflict with Chalcedonian Byzantium, crafted Simeon’s narrative to hearken back to the hopeful and comforting memory of the reign of Emperor Anastasius, whom the Miaphysites called “the believing king.” I will show how John of Ephesus projected pieces of himself, a self-styled “missionary to the pagans,” onto his subject. John’s point of commonality with Simeon framed John’s remembrance of him. SI M E O N I N T H E NA R R AT I V E T Y P O L O G Y O F T H E SY R IAC M I S SIO NA RY S T O RY

Syriac hagiographers of the sixth through eighth century associated missionary saints with traits of holiness that the apostles, such as Thomas and Addai, embodied. For John of Ephesus, Simeon’s missionary work modeled the ideals of an ascetic bishop: poverty, simplicity, detachment, and a commitment to spreading the gospel. As we have seen in previous chapters, Syriac missionary literature shows a specific interest in illustrating the conversion of kings and queens, and the Life of Simeon exemplifies this interest. John’s story portrays Persian, Arab, and Roman rulers in a positive light, despite John’s own ambiguous relationship to the Byzantine emperors. In particular, the Life of Simeon reflects a Miaphysite idealization of the reign of Anastasius that presents his rule (491–518) as an epoch of attempts at reconciliation between the Chalcedonians and the Miaphysites, prior to the period of pain and crisis under Justin I, Justinian, and Justin II.29 In John’s account, Simeon

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did not convert Anastasius, but rather cooperated with the power of the Roman court in order to promote Miaphysite Christianity in Persia and to differentiate between Simeon’s group and the Church of the East. Centers of West Syrian Miaphysite Christianity sprung up in the Persian areas that resisted “Nestorian” religious homogenization at the end of the fifth century. These same places received refugees from the Roman Empire who were fleeing the persecution of Justin I, Justinian, and Justin II. John claims that the bishops of the Church of the East accused the Miaphysites of treason against the Persian shah on account of their ties to Constantinople. “In our time, the Nestorian bishops of well-known cities came together. They told the Persian emperor about all the believing [Miaphysite] bishops there. Thus they said, ‘These are the traitors of your empire! How can you teach your religion and mysteries with these Romans?’ That Magi believed them. He ordered that a persecution begin against the orthodox in his empire.”30 Simeon of Beth Arsham rose to defend the Miaphysites. John tells us that Simeon organized an embassy to the faithful emperor Anastasius to help the Miaphysites: Blessed Simeon with the acuteness of his zeal brought this to the attention of the believing emperor of the Romans, Anastasius, that [Anastasius] might show favor to the church of the believers in the region of the Persians. He said, ‘Who will be able to appeal to the believing king about these things if I do not? Thus he left to ask the believing king for peace for the faithful in the region of the Persians.’ He reached the emperor Anastasius swiftly and made these things known to him. That emperor and friend of God, since he is faithful and a friend towards the faithful, did not delay in doing his request.31

There was an exchange of gifts between the Roman emperor and the Persian shah, and the Miaphysites in Persia benefited from the peace that Simeon brokered between the rulers.32 John thus shows Simeon’s diplomacy among rulers as key in combating his Christian rivals. The way to battle Dyophysite Christianity was not only through doctrinal quarrels, but also through winning the favor of the Persian shah with the help of Byzantine imperial gifts.33 Other themes in the Life of Simeon resonate with those of the Acts of Thomas and the Teaching of Addai and suggest that John had these paradigms in mind as he added to a growing body of Miaphysite saints in the Lives of the Eastern Saints. Like Thomas, for example, Simeon’s outward appearance changed to fit the necessities of different situations.34 And like Thomas, Simeon never stayed in one place for long. Simeon’s imprisonment in Nisibis also recalls Thomas’s imprisonment under King Mazdai. Both missionaries met the challenges of life on the periphery of civilization on the roads connecting the exotic kingdoms of their travels.35 The Teaching of Addai offered John of Ephesus another paradigm for fashioning a missionary saint for his church. Using a common hagiographic trope, John

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claims that his narrative merely creates an image or impression of Simeon’s many virtues—dubore,36 and John’s comparison of his hagiographic enterprise to that of a painter of an image, ̣salmo, shows a pronounced similarity to the interest in divine likenesses that we see in Addai.37 Simeon, like Addai, formed networks through epistolary exchanges. John’s construction of the missionary as a bearer of orthodoxy and a preacher is a theme shared with the Teaching of Addai, as we recall from the long discourses of Addai to the people of Edessa, after the conversion of Abgar’s court.38 Although John’s text is shorter than other missionary narratives, it is also denser. John painted epic hero motifs, romantic themes, and episodes of miracles into his portrait of Simeon. While there is no trip to the underworld, Simeon journeyed all over the outer world. There are no long discourses on theology, but there are theological debates. John tells us nothing of Simeon’s life before he embarked on his mission. But what John wrote was specific, precise, memorable, schematized, and idealized. I T I N E R A N C Y A N D P OV E RT Y

The Life of Simeon recapitulates the theme of the wandering, itinerant saint from the Acts of Thomas.39 Simeon travels from place to place and declares himself a foreigner or nukroyo whose life embodies the zeal and energy of one driven to the extremes of the earth to accomplish God’s plan: [Simeon] entered one of the cities and he found clergymen sitting at the gate. Just as a foreigner coming from afar, they asked him, “Where are you from?” And he said to them, “I am a foreigner.” They said to him, “Have you heard where that Simeon the debater is, who has been traveling from place to place?”40

This topos in Syriac literature, which attaches homelessness and itinerancy to holiness, emerges with a different nuance, however, in the sixth century. John frames Simeon’s homelessness as a voluntary condition, and he modifies Simeon’s charisma as an unattached wanderer by emphasizing his ordination to the bishopric of Beth Arsham. Simeon’s investment in the bishoprics of Persia ties him to his Miaphysite coreligionists in the Roman Empire. By tracing the pattern of Simeon’s travels in narrative, John inscribes himself and his circle in Constantinople into Simeon’s Persian journeys. L I N G U I ST IC C HA R I SM A

John weaves several references to the apostles into his description of Simeon, comparing Simeon’s conversion efforts to Paul’s,41 and describing Simeon’s work as “apostolic labor.” Yet John locates apostolicity not in the healing capacity of the

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original twelve, but rather in multilingualism: “Nor did he not fall short of the labors of the apostles nor did he grow weary . . . as [he had] the gift granted to the apostles, that new tongues might speak.”42 John envisions the Miaphysites as an expansive group who can translate their message for new peoples and debate their theology before distant leaders. As I discuss in chapter 4, John of Ephesus tried to show that the Miaphysites were not separate from the Roman Empire but ambassadors of it, and John projected that agenda onto his legend of Simeon. Modern scholars have discussed the issues of language and power, Greek and Latin versus Syriac, Coptic, Armenian, and Arabic, as they have or have not related to the gradual development of a separate Syrian Orthodox Church.43 John’s mythologizing of the Miaphysites into an expanding movement, transcending linguistic barriers, contradicts such interpretations of the split between the Chalcedonians and the Miaphysites. This missionary rhetoric allowed John to present his group as a unified Christian society, glossing over their linguistic differences and divergent political loyalties. John detached Simeon from wealth and attached linguistic prowess to him instead: a more precious commodity for the portrayal of the Miaphysites. Simeon modeled an ideal missionary founder of new societies of Miaphysite Christians not limited to a specific ethnic or linguistic group and not bound by imperial affiliations or borders. In his book Power and Persuasion in Late Antiquity, Peter Brown argues that the holy man in late antiquity replaced the philosopher as a critic of social mores speaking with frank boldness, or parrhesia.44 This theme recurs in Simeon’s hagiography in a pronounced way. John writes that it was not unlike Simeon “to speak with boldness, in the likeness of Saint Paul.”45 John transforms Simeon’s missionary story into a series of linguistic victories, as Simeon wins followers not with miracles but with speech acts. Simeon converts both Christians and non-Christians. John’s portrayal of Simeon with motifs that evoke the classical philosopher sets Simeon apart from other missionaries in the Syriac hagiographic memory, yet it associates him with another holy man of the same name, Simeon the Elder “the Stylite” (d. 451). Both Simeons are presented in their hagiographies as mediators among ethnically diverse peoples, intercessors for their flocks, and holy men purportedly detached from political advancement yet closely involved with rulers.46 Whereas the holy man of apostolic missionary narratives works wonders as he establishes churches, later Syriac texts depict him as a pastor of divine eloquence. In Simeon of Beth Arsham’s hagiography, John combines two literary types in one person: the apostolic bishop, an emblem of hierarchy and stability, and the ascetic monk, disinterested and liberated from constraints of social patronage. Simeon addresses emperors and kings and encourages martyrs. His freedom of movement and speech, however, does not divorce him from his network of episcopal relationships. His journeys end in visitations; he sets his speech in stone with letters and seals. The shift in symbols of authority for the missionary bishop, from healing and

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miracles to doctrinal clarity, rhetorical skills, and epistolary persuasion, distinguishes missionary texts after the fifth century from the earlier prototypes.47 In the apostolic Acts genre, we often find scenes in which the saint asserts the validity of his religion vis-à-vis other competitors, whether pagan, Jewish, or rival Christian, often with some display of divine protection or favor. In the case of Simeon of Beth Arsham’s story, the “adversaries” of the hero are the bishops of the Dyophysite Church of the East. Whereas Thomas and Addai heal and perform miracles to display their likeness to Christ and their access to divine power and insight, John sets Simeon apart from his Dyophysite competitors by accentuating Simeon’s linguistic gifts and theological acumen for debate, calling him the dorusho. Simeon speaks multiple languages, and John portrays this gift as an apostolic charisma.48 Simeon, unlike other missionaries in this study, proselytizes other Christians, such as those “blinded by the Nestorians,”49 and the Arabic tribes near H ̣ irta (presumably Dyophysite Lakhmids), as well as non-Christians, including a Magian leader. In the text, Simeon brings both Magian prince and Arab king under his banner. John describes Simeon as a type of debating soldier who fights on behalf of the orthodox.50 John depicts Simeon with features that evoke the Pauline virtues of the “ambassador in bonds,” equipped for spiritual warfare, gifted with bold speech.51 The shift in ideology from “healer” to “armed debater” constructs a different set of values for the audience of the text. John portrays Simeon as vigorously, even militantly, orthodox in his Miaphysite theology so that no other group could claim him: “This holy Simeon showed an acute and bubbling zeal on behalf of the orthodox faith until death. Magnificently he is trained in the Scriptures. He set forth in his debating passionately as no other person I know, nor as any of the fathers before, since God’s gift is with him.”52 Simeon’s negotiations for the Roman emperor could have been seen as useful for the Chalcedonians. As Athanasius wrote the Life of Antony to affiliate Antony of Egypt (295–373) with the Nicene Christians, so John of Ephesus’s story joins Simeon of Beth Arsham to the Miaphysites.53 John precludes the Chalcedonians from recasting Simeon as one of theirs. The saint’s memory is an area of contest. John perhaps understands that his Chalcedonian contemporaries could exploit the charisma of Simeon to promote Dyophysite Christology. Accordingly, John’s depiction of Simeon is a preemptive rejoinder to his Chalcedonian counterparts. This hagiography creates points of commonalities with Simeon that match John’s needs to bond a group to a figure who can articulate theological differences from their counterparts in Constantinople. John’s audience is not in Persia, but in the imperial capital, and John crafts Simeon as an ambassador and missionary of the Byzantine court. The Byzantine rulers send Miaphysites to expand their empire into the Sasanian world. Simeon’s life idealizes John’s agenda of presenting the compatibility of Miaphysite Christianity with Byzantium. Through Simeon’s

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missionary story, John and his audience mythologize their loyalty to Constantinople and the Christology and bishops they see as orthodox. T H E A M B IG U I T Y O F I M P E R IA L A F F I L IAT IO N S

During Simeon’s lifetime, two major shifts occurred in the orientation of Roman and Persian rulers toward Christianity. In the West, the Byzantine Empire endorsed Chalcedonian bishops. In the East, the Sasanian Empire granted to the bishops of the Church of the East the privilege of being the only tolerated type of Christianity in the Persian Empire. This Persian imperial preference for the Church of the East began following the catholicate of Bars ̣auma of Nisibis (435–96).54 Thus the Miaphysite bishops needed to negotiate a relationship with the rulers of both empires and legitimate their orthodoxy. In the Life of Simeon, the holy man’s Nestorian “enemy,” an established “foe” for those who aligned themselves with Cyril of Alexandria, provided John with a religious adversary against whom he could unify his bishops. By clearly identifying Simeon’s opponents, John circumvented the ambiguities and delicate complexities of his coreligionists with regard to the Roman imperial family, the Miaphysites in Egypt, and the Chalcedonians themselves.55 John’s condemnation of the Persian bishops of the Church of the East helped him to increase his group’s cohesion. Missionary texts usually portray a saint as a replacement for religious or political rivals. In his Life of Simeon of Beth Arsham John of Ephesus identifies his saint with multiple groups and affiliations, weaving different social and linguistic designations into his description of Simeon’s world: “T ̣ayye/Arab,” “Persian,” “Roman,” and religious groups such as “Nestorians” and “Marcionites.” The framing dynamic of the hagiographic genre gives John the literary and mythic conventions to flatten distinctions or accentuate differences among these categories depending on his agenda. As John ascribes multiple affiliations to Simeon, he reveals the relational predicaments of the Miaphysites in the Roman and Sasanian empires. In distinguishing the Christian foes against whom Simeon skillfully debates, John maps out an area in the Sasanian Empire that can be a place of expansion for his church. John makes Simeon a symbol of the best of “Roman” and “Persian” affiliations, bringing his flock and fellow shepherds together in their adherence to a single-nature Christology. John depicts the variety of religious traditions found in the Sasanian milieu, pointing out Simeon’s unique suitability for missionary activity there: The fact that he is Persian met another demand, as he was especially active in that region. The teachings of Theodore and Nestorius ran rampant in that area. There were very few bishops and authorities with him. There also the teaching of Mani, and Marcion and Bardais ̣an, were widely disseminated. For Mani had been in that region and overturned things there. They had flayed [Mani] while he was alive, and he died

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there. Bardais ̣an and Marcion had been there since the time of the school of the Persians in Edessa. These Persians were acutely keen for investigations. They were experienced in the ideas of Bardais ̣an and Marcion.56

In the hagiography of Simeon of Beth Arsham, John of Ephesus claims the Persian area and the political buffer zones of the Ghassanid and Lakhmid tribes for the Miaphysites. John uses Simeon’s story to stake out areas between the empires and convert them to his group’s position, while John remains entrenched in imperial life in Constantinople. John distinguishes different categories of religious groups in his text: (1) pagans/heathens; (2) Jews; (3) rival Christians sects (Bardais ̣anites, Marcionites, and Manichaeans); (4) unorthodox Nicene Christians: the Dyophysites and Eutychians (radical Miaphysites). Simeon represents an idealized bishop for John, with his linguistic background and adaptability to ambiguously non-Roman groups like the Arab tribes, coupled with a strict sense of adherence to Miaphysite doctrine. John also describes Simeon’s conversion of highborn Zoroastrians to Christianity. In this narrative section, John sets Simeon in the tradition of Syriac missionaries who convert through the royal household. He also ascribes to these highborn converts the status of martyrs: [Simeon] converted not just the heretics but also the Magians [Zoroastrians] to God. Indeed, he converted one of the grandees of our time and a famous child of the Magians, and he baptized them. When their households heard the message, they abandoned their Magian religion and became Christians. But they received a command from the shah that if it is, in fact, true that they had abandoned [their Zoroastrian religion], they needed to renounce Christianity or else face the danger of death. Some of them became worthy of the crown of life. When they faced the threat of the sword of the king, they did not fear or tremble. The blessed one supported them by the fervor of his witness [‫ ]ܣܗܕܘܬܐ‬on behalf of eternal life. And they stood up [‫ ]ܩܡܘ‬against the command and threat of the sword that had gone out against them. They spoke thus, “Far be it from us to renounce the living God who made heaven and earth! Or his Son our Lord Jesus Christ! He who summoned us and brought us near through the grace that is with him. Far be it from us to renounce him ever. Let us bear witness to him before his creation.” In this way, the blessed ones, only ten days after their spiritual birth, turned toward God in blessed martyrdom and received the crown of the sword through their death.57

The Persian martyr tradition of Syriac Christian literature flourished beginning in the fourth century.58 The conversion and martyrdom of highborn Zoroastrians is a well-loved motif of East Syriac Christian literature, and John interpolates it into Simeon’s story. John brings martyr and missionary together, attributing to Simeon features reminiscent of Thomas and Addai/Aggai. In his larger project of creating a new hierarchy of saints, this episode shows how John’s hero brings both newly baptized Christians and highborn convert-martyrs into the ranks of the Miaphysites.

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Thus the twofold intertextuality of this episode shows how John’s story is in dialogue with literary traditions of the canonical and noncanonical apostolic Acts genre (conversion of royal households) and the Sasanian Persian martyr Acts.59 In John’s story of Simeon of Beth Arsham, the Zoroastrian marzban moderates the debate between the Miaphysites and the Church of the East and ultimately sides with Simeon’s group. Instead of highlighting the Persian leader’s affiliation with a non-Christian group, John presents him as a neutral intermediary. By mythologizing Simeon’s Christological debate with the Nestorian catholicos and using the Persian ruler as a way to praise Simeon, John aligns the Miaphysites with the marzban. The Church of the East held the coveted position of being the favored or tolerated form of Christianity in the Sasanian Empire. Through Simeon, John strips the Church of the East of this status and elevates the Miaphysite bishops to replace it. The Miaphysite bishops pray for the health of the Persian emperor, in an expression of loyalty to the Sasanian ruler: “In your wisdom and uprightness, may God grant you many years! May God double the things he pours out on you.”60 John’s rhetoric forges an alliance between the Sasanian member of the upper class and the expanding Miaphysite community in Sasanian Mesopotamia. Missionary and shah come together successfully in this story, in contrast to the Miaphysites’ failure to win Justinian’s support in Constantinople. In framing Simeon’s successful Christological debate before another ruler, John memorializes the saint’s doctrinal and missionary victories, forgetting the divisive theological quarrels John witnesses before the emperors Justin I and Justinian.61 Simeon’s successful intercession and mediation symbolize a victory for the Miaphysites in the Sasanian Empire that his coreligionists in Byzantium will never experience. Absent from the text is any discussion of Simeon’s ecclesiastical lineage. Rather than establishing or defending his holy man’s religious legitimacy, John, in the tradition of Ephrem the Syrian, presents a lineage of heretical decay that Simeon attacks. In his digression on the history of Christian heresies in Persia,62 John conceptualizes “Persia” as a place teeming with corrupt Christian sects, Manichaeans, Marcionites, and Nestorians, mapping out an environment ripe for Simeon’s missionary activity. Unlike the hagiography of Jacob Baradaeus, which focuses on ordinations and the internal expansion of the Miaphysites,63 in John’s text Simeon wins prestige for his group by gaining the support of Persian Zoroastrians. John veils the political ideologies of these episodes in the mythic language of miracles. Simeon fosters the Persian Miaphysites with help from the non-Christian Persian rulers: “Thus it is divine providence that this would be done through the power of the pagans, that the true mystery of the orthodox faith be proclaimed.”64 The narrative’s resolution through a non-Christian character, in a manner reminiscent of biblical prototypes,65 establishes commonality with the apostles, whose limitations of language or mobility are resolved miraculously by God.66

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T H E O L O G IC A L I D IOM S A N D NA R R AT I V E I D E O L O G I E S

Scholars have examined the debates and distinctions of sixth-century Christology and theology and searched for key moments in the divergence between the Chalcedonians and the Miaphysites.67 John of Ephesus’s Lives of the Eastern Saints illuminates the importance of theological formulations in distinguishing the emergent Miaphysite church. Hagiography also reveals, however, that there was widespread confusion and misinterpretation of what each of the groups believed. Volker Menze has argued that Miaphysite and Chalcedonian hagiography from the sixth century shows that the laity often could not distinguish between the Chalcedonian and the Miaphysite liturgies.68 John’s presentation of Simeon’s debates with the catholicos is an entirely inaccurate representation of the Christology of the Dyophysite Church of the East. He may have deliberately presented the Dyophysites’ theology as illogical, to elevate Simeon. In any case, the scene illuminates how John used theological slogans and ritualized debate to affiliate Simeon with his group and demonize the Dyophysites. Simeon’s debate with the catholicos Babai before the marzban presents Christological formulations in narrative form. The Nestorian catholicos, Babai, couches his argument in imperial language, using metaphors of kings and sons to explain and frame his defense of a two-nature Christ: Catholicos Babai said, “My lord, what are we to say about our faith, since you are a man like us, born of woman as we were? You have confirmed the orthodoxy and righteousness of the word of God. If the King of Kings should find the son of a beggar on a heap of dung, wearing rags, and should command that they raise him from the dung hill and strip off his rags to be clothed in royal garments, and if the king over all people should command him to be called his son . . . so . . . God wished to call him his son in grace, while he is not his son in nature.”69

This explanation does not impress the marzban, who gives Simeon the chance to offer a rejoinder. Simeon uses biblical texts to demonstrate the miraculous nature of Christ’s birth.70 Despite the opacity of his answer, Simeon debates persuasively to win the argument. When the marzban asks the catholicos for his reply, Babai has nothing to say: “When the catholicos is asked these things by the marzban, along with the whole group of bishops, their lips were covered and their heads bowed low. They could not give an answer.”71 Two Christian minorities before the Persian throne, therefore, present their positions in this schematized presentation of two-nature Christology. In Simeon’s story, John portrays a charismatic bishop of his church who acts in harmony with “empire,” as he uses the Persian ruler to think through the role that the Byzantine emperor plays in the Chalcedonian and Miaphysite debates. John, as a bishop in Constantinople, also occupied an ambiguous position in relation to the rulers of the Roman Empire, who, with the exception of Theodora, sided with the

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Chalcedonians. This shaped John’s presentation of the theological debates of Simeon and Babai. John’s construction of his group’s affiliation with Simeon, however, aligns his group with the winner.72 Although the narrative presents the Miaphysites as the imperial favorite, they were in fact socially, politically, and economically at risk of becoming a dwindling religious minority, when compared to the Byzantine Chalcedonians or the Sasanian Church of the East. John presents Dyophysite East Syriac Christology as a radical adoptionist Christology, which does not reflect the thinking of Theodore of Mopsuestia, the most important Dyophysite theologian.73 John’s misrepresentation of the position of the Church of the East might reflect his attempt to disprove the two-nature Chalcedonians as well, without having to blatantly criticize the Chalcedonian Roman emperor. He can project his critique of the proximate Chalcedonian “other” onto the distant Nestorian “other.” Thus, as John constructs these differences, he relativizes the distance between his group and that of the Chalcedonians, classifying the Church of the East as the more menacing foe. In this way he is also more critical of the Chalcedonians by virtue of their proximity. F R OM L E G E N D T O HAG IO G R A P H Y: J O H N O F E P H E SU S’ S I N T E R P R E TAT IO N O F A F U T U R E F O R T H E E M E R G E N T SY R IA N O RT HO D OX C H U R C H

John of Ephesus presents stories to foster greater group cohesion among the Miaphysites, and his texts come from his struggle to represent the Miaphysites as a body of unified believing bishops. The social and economic conditions that form the context for the production of his text, however, contrast with the hagiographic setting of the story of a poor and energetic bishop on the run. John of Ephesus wrote the Lives of the Eastern Saints in Constantinople, in the last years of the 560s, following the death of Justinian. By that time, he had lost imperial favor, and, in fact, was living under house arrest. Moreover, the status of the Miaphysite leaders in the empire had become more precarious after the failure of the Second Council of Constantinople to reunite the Chalcedonians and their opponents.74 Nevertheless, while he wrote in the shadow of the Byzantine emperor, it was John’s intent to promote the leaders of his dissident party for his Miaphysite audience.75 Although his political ideology was Roman, or Byzantine, John’s theological idioms and the framing dynamics of his storytelling were Syriac. John situates Simeon’s story among the Persians and Arabs, speaking only briefly of Simeon’s time in Constantinople.76 At that time, Simeon journeyed to Constantinople to bring the plight of the Miaphysite Sasanian Christians to the attention of the Roman emperor Anastasius. In focusing on the limits of the empire and Simeon’s activity there in the recent past John creates an escape for himself, and a wholly “other” landscape in which to trace new beginnings for his

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group in crisis. Thus John’s creation of a memory for Simeon is simultaneously an interpretation of John’s own position as a leader of the Miaphysite bishops. John uses hagiography to chart his desires for his coreligionists. Restless homelessness and doctrinal confidence correspond to John’s desires for his bishops, and he inserts these features in his portraits of the Miaphysite heroes. John resists Chalcedonian opponents through the construction of Simeon as a missionary debater, and through his emphasis on Simeon’s theological intelligence and ascetic zeal, thereby presenting the Miaphysites as an expanding group that transcends political boundaries.77 John’s emphasis on Simeon’s affiliations with the emperor Anastasius and the Roman Empire, and on Simeon’s diplomatic work with the Persians, suggests that John wished to create in Simeon a bishop whose work could be useful to Byzantine imperial interests. John identifies Simeon as a rival of the Church of the East and an ambassador before the Persian king and Arab foederati. Simeon represents a figure who has the potential to reconcile the Chalcedonians and Miaphysites, because he works in an area in which Chalcedonians and Miaphysites share political interests and have heretical rivals in common. Simeon symbolizes a potential place of alliance for the Chalcedonians and Miaphysites. SI M E O N ’ S HAG IO G R A P H Y: D I S C O N T I N U I T Y AND CONTINUIT Y

In a text such as Simeon’s hagiography, written in a time of crisis, focusing on mythic discontinuity as much as on continuity can help us extract the ideology of the text and shifts in cultural metaphors.78 I have been arguing in this book that the missionary saint became a symbol for Syriac Christians that allowed them to idealize their past and interpret their present, as they envisioned an idealized Christian society. The missionary story is a form of apology. John’s retelling of the historical events surrounding Simeon reveals how hagiography can be used in ideological representation.79 Through his use of the missionary “type” in Simeon’s hagiography, John was able to incorporate traces of himself in his portrait of Simeon. The commonalities between John and Simeon included travel, missionary fervor, and political zeal. Simeon traveled around Persia and Sinai. While in Constantinople John lived under house arrest, before that he had traveled extensively and idealized his own travels in his literature.80 John styled himself as a converter of pagans. Like Simeon, he wandered a great deal and associated with imperial figures. John’s elevation of intellectual practices, particularly of speech and language, in his Life of Simeon reflected his agenda of forging models that combined ascetic and intellectual virtues to provide an idealized picture of the Miaphysites.81 Thus, as John painted a portrait of Simeon, John’s own image was reflected in that portrait.

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Although the intent of this analysis is not to focus on the historical Simeon, but rather his construction in hagiography, Simeon’s story exemplifies the confluence of history and legend, and his hagiography had broad implications for the history of the Miaphysites. Indeed, the preceding analysis of John’s Life of Simeon helps us to describe the gradual process by which the Syrian opponents of Chalcedon become the separate Syrian Orthodox Church. Simeon’s story as told by John of Ephesus was passed down and incorporated into the twelfth-century Chronicle of Michael the Syrian.82 Michael portrays Simeon as a debater, firm in faith, who makes the Nestorians, Marcionites, and Manichaeans tremble.83 He relates how Simeon baptized three Zoroastrians, and he describes Simeon’s trip to Constantinople to lobby on behalf of his coreligionists in Persia, against whom the members of the Church of the East were fighting. The lengthiest portion of Michael’s summary of the hagiography of Simeon concerns Simeon’s debate with the catholicos of the Church of the East. One statement alludes to Simeon’s missions, but it is vague and condensed;84 however, Michael incorporates the section of John’s narrative that describes Simeon’s multilingual talents, as well as the incident with the book covers that Simeon devised to transport holy books and creedal statements.85 By the time of the Chronicle’s composition in the twelfth century, the Syrian Orthodox Church was separate from the Chalcedonian Byzantine church, with distinct sacraments and ecclesiastical orders. Indeed, it had been distinct from the Chalcedonian church for at least four hundred years. Simeon’s work with the Arabic tribes and his conversion of the Sinai Peninsula is absent from Michael’s version of John’s story. Michael the Syrian was interested in the lasting effects of the missionary work of Simeon of Beth Arsham. The Syrian Orthodox community successfully established a new center outside the empire in an area that Church of the East had dominated.86 This became the center of the maphrian, the patriarch of the Syrian Orthodox Church outside of the Byzantine Empire, with its own jurisdiction and authority.87 Later generations of Syrian Orthodox, therefore, knew that the charisma and efforts of their dorusho, the Persian debater, helped to establish a Syrian Orthodox center outside of the Byzantine Empire. Thus the reception of John’s hagiography of Simeon by later generations can be attributed to the actual success of Simeon’s efforts. In incorporating portions of the Simeon’s story in his Chronicle, then, Michael was preserving the memory of the victories of his forefathers. As hagiographers create narratives for saints, they order complicated lives and present them in memorable mythological packages.88 John of Ephesus codified his saints in the Lives of the Eastern Saints during a chaotic period of the sixth century. By memorializing figures like Simeon and making their lives a treasure of the Miaphysite community, John resisted the uncertainty that divisive councils, internal conflicts, and fragmentation caused for his group.89

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Simeon’s story contains a rhetorical polemic against the Church of the East. The absence of explicit condemnation of the Chalcedonians comports with John’s implicit argument that the victory of the Chalcedonian position is merely a temporary phenomenon. The Miaphysite identification of John and his saints does not alter or affect their affiliation with the Byzantine court. When John wrote the Life of Simeon in the 560s in Constantinople, he had not given up hope that there could be peace between the Miaphysites and the Chalcedonians. By the end of his life, he was much more discouraged. The Life of Simeon of Beth Arsham thus became a narrative idealization of the interests of the Miaphysites of the sixth century: orthodoxy, political endorsement, and divine protection for following the apostolic pattern of spreading the gospel to convert unbaptized kingdoms to Christianity. Amid the turbulence of the sixth century, hagiography provided a means for the Miaphysites to rewrite their own narrative using rhetoric and allusions that portrayed their biblical and apostolic past. Missionary hagiography enshrined leaders of a group that was not on the verge of dissipation but in the process of growth. With these accounts, and the allusions to biblical and apostolic prototypes that they contained, the Miaphysites created their own set of heroes to validate their orthodoxy and unify their present. The missionary saint offered these authors an idiom that matched their interest in creating narratives of expansion and divine protection for the emergent Syrian Orthodox Church and a Christian society that missionary bishops like Simeon of Beth Arsham would govern.

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Hagiographical Portraits of Jacob Baradaeus

As we track the lives of the Syriac missionaries, we discern in their stories the formation of the Syrian Orthodox Church and the Church of the East. The hagiographic portraits of these itinerant missionaries became emblems of the churches and monasteries that traced their roots to them. Some communities even named themselves after their missionary founder, as we saw in the case of the “Thomas Christians” of India. The Syrian Orthodox Christians, for their part, named themselves after a missionary saint of the sixth century: Jacob Baradaeus.1 They became known as the “Jacobites.” We have discussed the doctrinal conflicts of the fifth and sixth centuries that arose with the Councils of Ephesus and Chalcedon. By the end of the sixth century, Chalcedonian bishops had won the protection and endorsement of the Byzantine emperor. Thus Miaphysite bishops and monks in the Roman Empire were inferior to their Chalcedonian counterparts, as the latter had gained the protection and sponsorship of the state. The Miaphysites, however, retained widespread support in Egypt, Syria, Armenia, Arabia, Nubia, Ethiopia, northern Iraq, and northern Mesopotamia. The emperors Justin I and Justinian adopted the position of the Council of Chalcedon, estranging the Miaphysite bishops. Yet these same bishops profited from a gesture by Justinian’s wife, the empress Theodora. She and the Ghassanid federate king H ̣ arith bar Gabala asked the Miaphysite patriarch Theodosius to commission Jacob Baradaeus, bishop of Edessa, to ordain priests, bishops, and patriarchs to resuscitate the dwindling numbers of Miaphysite religious leaders.2 The Miaphysites would survive by expanding their church outside of the Roman Empire. Jacob Baradaeus’s extraordinary efforts in this movement helped to save the Syrian Orthodox Church from extinction.3 96

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HAG IO G R A P H IC M E M O R I E S O F JAC O B

Stories about Jacob Baradaeus circulated during his life and evolved into embellished legends. The subsequent production and circulation of hagiographies of Jacob Baradaeus served the memory-making work of the Syrian Orthodox Church.4 We have two hagiographies of Jacob Baradaeus: a two-part hagiography in John of Ephesus’s Lives of the Eastern Saints (written in 566) and a longer, late seventh-/early eighth-century hagiography, The story of the way of life of the holy Jacob Metropolitan of Edessa, and of the regions of Syria, attributed to John of Ephesus.5 In his edition of John’s Lives of the Eastern Saints, Ernest Walter Brooks refers to this text as the Spurious Life of Jacob; I will refer to it as the Longer Life. Scholars maintain that John of Ephesus was not the author of the Longer Life, and David Bundy discusses the literary differences between the two hagiographies in detail.6 These divergences, I will argue, indicate important shifts in the selfunderstanding and self-presentation of Syrian Orthodox Christians vis-à-vis their heroes of the sixth century. The authorial context of those who produced The Longer Life gave them a point of view toward their past that diverged from that of John of Ephesus. John wrote in sixth-century Constantinople and died in 588, not knowing how or if divisive conflicts with the Chalcedonians would be resolved.7 By contrast, when monks in the mid-seventh or early eighth century wrote the Longer Life ecclesiastical and political circumstances situated them in a more hostile position than that of John of Ephesus with respect to their Chalcedonian counterparts. Such circumstances in turn elevated the memory and legends of their sixth-century Miaphysite forefathers, including John of Ephesus and Jacob Baradaeus. Through authorial imitation of John, through the transformation of Jacob into a divine holy man, and through the accentuation of John’s and Jacob’s likeness to missionary saints,8 the Longer Life constructed a uniquely Miaphysite hierarchy of heroes that placed both the hagiographer John and his subject Jacob at the apex. The memory created became the treasured possession of the emergent Syrian Orthodox Church, used to legitimize and inspire a religious group trying to expand between the Roman and Sasanian empires. The Miaphysites used hagiography to restructure their new hierarchy of bishops and to legitimize their estrangement from the emperor’s graces. They used narrative to identify themselves with Jacob and his hagiographer, John of Ephesus, and forged a genealogy of apostolic orthodoxy as they wrote themselves into Jacob’s longer story. In this chapter, I sidestep the question of the historical details of Jacob’s life and focus instead on the dramatic symbols in his later hagiography that synthesize complex ideologies in story form.9 I explain how particular cultural interests and theological agendas of the emergent Syrian Orthodox Church

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functioned together to produce the Jacob of the Longer Life. By expanding Jacob’s story, Syrian Orthodox monks put into circulation a symbolically powerful social actor—the hagiography itself—that imagines Jacob as a salvific superhero, worthy to be the patron of the “Jacobite” Church.

T WO P O RT R A I T S O F JAC O B

John of Ephesus’s Life of Jacob Baradaeus John of Ephesus’s edifying and rich account of the life of Jacob Baradaeus—a simple, energetic, and rigorous missionary—brings disparate elements together in a single story to craft a schematic view of the past. Jacob lived in Constantinople for fifteen years before he began the ordinations that revived the Miaphysites.10 Although he became bishop of Edessa, he spent little time there, as a rival Chalcedonian bishop occupied the see of this important center. In his Lives of the Eastern Saints, John of Ephesus crafts a wider episcopal see for his beloved Jacob. In John’s account, Jacob journeys throughout the Eastern Roman Empire and parts of Persia with sacred swiftness and leonine confidence. John thus expands Jacob’s image from bishop of Edessa to missionary of the Miaphysites. In John’s account, no one has the stamina to keep up with Jacob’s energy: And so in the upper and lower countries, while he was running the vigourous course without ceasing from the Persian frontier even as far as the royal city of Constantinople, and Alexandria and all the countries, and fulfilling the work of the ministry to all the orthodox believers, not only by organizing the clergy and the giving of the priesthood, but also by consoling and comforting and edifying and strengthening and teaching all the party of the believers everywhere; so that consequently his fame was carried over all quarters, and in every country and city.11

Jacob consecrated twenty-seven bishops (including John of Ephesus himself) and two patriarchs and ordained many priests. John praises the speedy Jacob for his zeal, his vigilant ministry, his mission, and his cautious adherence to church canons.12 Jacob was one apostolic servant among many shining lights; John does not divinize Jacob, however. In fact, in his later Ecclesiastical History, John notes that Jacob suffered on account of his guileless nature—Jacob’s simplicity made him an easy pawn in the machinations of craftier, more ambitious bishops around him.13 John remembers Jacob as a steadfast, heroic bishop, but an imperfect soul, whom others easily manipulated. The Ecclesiastical History was written between 578 and 588—at least fourteen years after John wrote the hagiographical account of Jacob included in the Lives of the Eastern Saints. This more critical portrait of Jacob undoubtedly stemmed from Jacob’s involvement in a controversy over leadership between two bishops, Paul of Antioch and Peter of Alexandria.14

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The Longer Life, Attributed to John of Ephesus The Longer Life (written between 628 and 741) has a separate textual history from John of Ephesus’s hagiography, although the unknown hagiographer of the Longer Life identifies himself as John of Ephesus.15 A certain priest and stylite, Mar Theodosius of the monastery of Phesilta, recopied the text in 741.16 Although John’s hagiography celebrates Jacob Baradaeus, the Longer Life also glorifies the monks of Phesilta, the convent in which Jacob was purportedly educated.17 The Longer Life is dated to roughly a century after John of Ephesus’s account and Jacob’s lifetime. The communities of Syrian Orthodox monks around Edessa, Mardin, and Dara that venerated Jacob experienced direct and indirect effects of the Muslim invasions in 632–40,18 but it is difficult to ascertain whether the Longer Life is a pre-Islamic or post-Islamic text. Differences and Embellishments In contrast to John of Ephesus’s Life, the Longer Life embellishes Jacob and forgets his flaws.19 It contains an infancy narrative: Jacob, in the tradition of other great ascetics,20 was born to a couple declared barren, who entrusted him to the monastery at a young age.21 The Longer Life presents miracle accounts and introduces “divine beings” into the story. When Jacob performs the Divine Liturgy in Amida, the congregation miraculously sees the angels standing around him.22 In the Longer Life, Jacob is not just bishop, but a metropolitan, whom not only Theodosius, but also the great hero of the Miaphysites, Severus of Antioch, himself ordained.23 The Longer Life builds on the tradition of Jacob’s expansive missionary travels, but in the Longer Life he begins his travels to faraway places in dreams, before he even leaves the monastery.24 John of Ephesus’s “man of God” becomes a pure vessel of divine grace, impermeable to the temptations or struggles of an ordinary monk. The Longer Life represents Jacob as a superhuman “savior” of the Syrian Orthodox faith. The decision to revise and embellish John of Ephesus’s account of Jacob is an indication of the appeal of John’s story to Miaphysite monastic audiences. The Life of Jacob, more than others in John’s Lives, especially attracts the author of the Longer Life because of his shared monastic ancestry with Jacob: both he and Jacob hailed from the monastery of Phesilta near Tella. Jacob’s genealogy made him an obvious choice for hagiographical recasting to celebrate Phesilta’s most famous son, now from a retrospective vantage point, to magnify his name and life’s work. Although a missionary, Jacob begins and ends his journeys in his cell; the hagiographer made the monastery of Phesilta the hub of Jacob’s travels: While he fasted and kept a constant vigil, he was embracing the immaterial labor of the angels. Day by day he added to his divine practices. He did not wish that he be seen outside his cell. All the faithful wanted to come to him, having heard of his way of life. Even from the land of the Persians a variety of sick people gathered before him. The people at the monastery immediately began to be cured, without even seeing him. He

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visited many people in far-away places, for he saw them beforehand in a vision of the Holy Spirit. And he appeared to them in dreams and they were healed from their pain.25

Jacob corrects Chalcedonian “heretics.”26 Like Simeon of Beth Arsham, he debates theology before the court.27 He is fluent in Greek and Syriac, and he reads the Bible in both languages.28 He surpasses his contemporaries in his ascetic training; even the patriarch Sergius cannot measure up to Jacob.29 As the account of John of Ephesus emphasizes, when Jacob performs his ordinations, he scrupulously obeys the ecclesiastical canons.30 He combines intellectual talents with healing gifts, and he joins his love of monastic community with a commitment to healing the urban communities around him. Jacob is presented as a selfless ambassador traveling to Miaphysite communities throughout the Byzantine and Persian empires, and when he cannot reach groups on foot, he appears in dreams or is present through epistolary exchanges. The mythologized Jacob becomes a wonder-working ascetic and healer whose gifts both Byzantines and Persians honor. In the Longer Life, Jacob is an itinerant holy man, traveling with a portable Bible and altar.31 His orthodox speech has the power to heal. Miaphysite Christological definitions replace rituals of healings. When he, mirroring Christ, raises a young boy and instructs him to get up and walk, he commands him, “In the name of Jesus Christ, one nature without division, who is crucified for our sake, get up and walk.”32 The healing formula is a Miaphysite Christological statement. Theological slogans matter in the competition for apostolicity, and placing them in the mouth of Jacob as a prayer legitimates the single-nature Christological formula of the dissidents of the Council of Chalcedon. Such miracle accounts in the Longer Life advance the ideologies of Miaphysite theologians.33 Jacob ranks in the highest echelon of their religious hierarchy, and the miracles in the text distinguish him from the laity and the monks in his midst. Jacob’s miracles, like those of other holy men, reflect those of the canonical Jesus. In another example, Jacob cures a blind man, Timaeus bar Timaeus: There was a certain blind man among the people in the city. He heard about the marvels of the blessed one and went to him through one of his kinsmen. And he said to him, “O Lord have mercy upon me as your Lord had mercy on the blind man Timaeus son of Timaeus. Give me in his name the light to see, so that his name on account of me might be glorified.” When the blessed one heard these things, he wept with suffering. He was strengthened in spirit and said, “Approach me and see the glory of God.” He approached him and he placed his right hand on his eyes and said, “Our Lord Jesus Christ, fashioner of our creation, undivided, one, only-begotten, in your name, may his eyes see light so that this man might serve you.” And at that moment the blind man saw and the groups of people were amazed. They glorified God saying, “Truly, this is a man of God.” 34

In John of Ephesus’s account, John praises Jacob together with many bishops, like John of Tella and John of Hephaestopolis, whose ministry and ordinations

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revived Miaphysite communities. John knows Jacob personally: Jacob ordained him bishop of Ephesus.35 The author of the Longer Life, in contrast, knows Jacob through John’s original hagiography, which he now imitates. The Longer Life’s temporal distance from the events that it describes also allows the author to promote his ideological agenda and change Jacob into a “holy man” according to the narrative typology of ascetic missionary heroes.36 Jacob’s devotees sidestep biographical details to inscribe themselves in Jacob’s story. The longer hagiography remembers Jacob as a bishop who constructed networks of churches and monasteries together. His itinerancy and his care to increase the numbers of Miaphysites made him a “variety” of the missionary type:37 “He expanded and propagated all of the Orthodox.”38 Monasticism is a chief theme of the Longer Life. The Longer Life expands the number of places that Jacob visits on his itinerary,39 adding the monasteries of Qartmin (or Mar Gabriel) and Mar John Qayumā.40 From Phesilta, near Tella, Jacob sojourns in monasteries and interacts with their monks, ordaining some of them bishops.41 This rhetorical strategy promotes the authority of certain monasteries by inserting them into Jacob’s itinerary. This differentiation of monasteries and cities, and their consecration through Jacob’s interaction with them, demonstrate how the hagiographical memory of one saint becomes the common treasure of a larger network of communities. Both hagiographies portray Jacob as an apostle in rags, safe from the pursuit of his adversaries, whose fame follows him as he moves swift-footed. He treks through Syria, Cilicia, Isauria, Pamphylia, Lycaonia, Lydia, Phrygia, Caria, Rhodes, Chios, and Mitylene, as far as Constantinople.42 The Longer Life adds, however, that after all of Jacob’s missions of ordination, the saint always returned to his beloved Phesilta.43 This particularity of the story joins the saint to that later community, connecting the monks of Phesilta as beneficiaries of Jacob’s efforts, the heirs to his divine authority, his children carrying his name. According to the Longer Life, Jacob died near Mount Casion (i.e., Mount Casius) on the Egyptian frontier in 578, far from the monastery he loved.44 The people of Tella mourned the distance of his relics.45 This makes the later tradition in Phesilta anxious to reclaim him. The story moves Jacob securely into the imagined hierarchy of Syrian Orthodox saints as it elevates the prestige of the monastery of Phesilta. SH I F T I N G M I S SIO NA RY P O RT R A I T S : HAG IO G R A P H Y A N D T H E F O R M AT IO N O F T H E SY R IA N O RT HO D OX C H U R C H

The memory of Jacob’s missionary activities as presented in the Longer Life is thus an idealized miniature portrait of the Syrian Orthodox Church as a whole. The mythologized Jacob is portable and memorable because of the vivid episodes

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recounted in the Longer Life, chosen on account of the interests and religious sensibilities of the monks who wrote the text. In this sense, writing a hagiography can be likened to painting a miniature. As Susan Stewart notes, artists of miniatures select only a few traits to highlight, omitting some features and magnifying others. The new image becomes easier to carry and describe than a life-size likeness: “The miniature always tends towards exaggeration—it is a selection of detail that magnifies detail in the same movement by which it reduces detail.”46 The category of “missionary ascetic saint” in which John of Ephesus puts Jacob is expanded in the Longer Life to that of “founder,” even “savior,” of what remained of the Syrian Orthodox Church. The Longer Life lacks apologetic rhetoric to argue for Jacob’s sanctity; the text just assumes it. John of Ephesus established Jacob’s apostolic lineage and arranged a place for him in his hierarchy of Miaphysite saints. The Longer Life elevated Jacob’s status to that of a founder: “He established the faith of the Church that had almost disappeared. He fought against heresy strongly, and he restored the leadership of a depressed Church.”47 The Longer Life elevated Jacob’s status from the time of his birth. His was not the story of a sinner turned saint or even an ascetic who, after years of harsh training, forged a perfect container for the Holy Spirit in his body. Rather, from birth to death Jacob was superhuman, outdoing all his contemporaries in his rigor. The static position of Jacob as a holy man from start to finish underscores the Longer Life’s assumption of Jacob’s “canonized” status, which is absent in John of Ephesus’s account. The Longer Life sutures the Miaphysites’ celebrated bishop, John of Ephesus, to Jacob, and through them back to the apostles and famous “Jacobs” of the past. The Longer Life dubs Jacob “the new James,” recalling the relative of Jesus, so prominent within the canonical Acts of the Apostles.48 Moreover, Jacob’s rescue of Edessa from the attack of the Persian emperor Khusro I Anushirvan (r. 531–79) resembles the account in Theodoret in which another Jacob, Jacob of Nisibis, saves his city from attack by the Persians.49 Hagiographical memories of “Jacobs” thus abound in the Syriac Christian literary imagination. The Longer Life forges a Jacob who sacralizes Syrian Orthodox history.50 Émile Durkheim observes that communal or individual things become sacred when possession of them becomes exclusive.51 By making Jacob’s memory exclusive to the Syrian Orthodox, his hagiographers produced a communal sacred entity. Jacob’s characteristics encapsulated the values of asceticism, simplicity, and selfless religious labor that Syrian Orthodox bishops and monks attributed to their church. The Longer Life differentiates Jacob from the Chalcedonian bishops to contrast his piety with their boorishness: “Chalcedonian bishops from all sides were embittered against him and wanting to seize the holy man and threaten him. When they were altogether rushing after him with threats, he was concealed by divine grace. He was not handed over into the hands of his persecutors seeking his soul.”52 But the text does not represent Jacob as a disobedient subject of the Byzantine emperor.

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Jacob, in both his early and later hagiographies, works fully within the infrastructure of both the Persian and the Roman empires, acting as a bridge between them.53 The political position of the author of the later text, however, had shifted significantly since the time of John of Ephesus.54 In later Miaphysite imagination, the news of Jacob’s holiness dispersed like incense, and Persian and Byzantine emperors and distant peoples from Egypt to Arabia honored Jacob universally: “So that on account of the miracles the news flew to all quarters in the likeness of choice fragrance. And victorious emperors of the Romans and the Persians and distant peoples heard the good news of the wonders of the holy man himself.”55 The absence of blatant attacks on Justinian or Chalcedonian rulers is a noteworthy discontinuity of the Longer Life with John of Ephesus’s accounts in his Lives of the Eastern Saints. Admittedly, John of Ephesus wrote fully within the boundaries of imperial life in Constantinople. His construction of Justinian is ambivalent, especially in comparison to Theodora, whom he lauds.56 The Longer Life relativizes and passes over the difference or distance between Miaphysite bishops and Justinian.57 The Longer Life uses all political figures in the text, not just H ̣ arith and Theodora, to affirm Jacob’s holiness. When the Longer Life records Chalcedonian aggression, the blame for the violence rests on the bishops’ shoulders, not Justin’s or Justinian’s. The Longer Life softens the Kaiserkritik of the sixth century, as the different claims or stakes in the empire have changed. The hagiographer of the Longer Life inserts words and gestures of respectful admiration for Jacob into the mouths of all leaders, Persian and Byzantine.58 These imperial declarations advance a taxonomy that sets Jacob into relationship with themselves and his other bishops. They fix Jacob in a position that is higher than the leaders of the land. Yet, for this rhetorical strategy to work, the author is dependent on the political power of the imagined rulers in the text to use their authority to affirm his. T H E L AT E R L I F E O F JAC O B BA R A DA E U S A N D T H E F O R M AT IO N O F T H E SY R IA N O RT HO D OX C H U R C H

Although Jacob is similar to missionary heroes of the Syriac past, the Longer Life produces a hagiography that sets him apart from his sixth-century contemporaries. The Longer Life shows that Syrian Orthodox Christians self-identified with Jacob’s story more than with the stories of saints in John of Ephesus’s hagiographic repertoire. Later Syrian Orthodox Christians considered themselves Jacobites.59 Whatever the historical Jacob did or did not do, monastic hagiographers remembered him in story and language as a sacred founder. They ignored sad memories associated with Jacob and recreated him in their own monastic image. Their hagiographical retelling generated self-reflective narrative. Polemic against the Chalcedonians was embedded in both versions of Jacob’s story. But its reconfiguration in the later text imagined a different Chalcedonian

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“other.”60 For the later tradition, Chalcedonian villagers, the “proximate religious other,” symbolized potential converts to Miaphysite Christianity. Yet by the eighth century, the Chalcedonians and Miaphysites had broken into separate Christian churches. Unlike John of Ephesus, the authors of the Longer Life interpreted Jacob’s story from the perspective of knowing that the Chalcedonians and Miaphysites never united. Various groups of Miaphysites nearly destroyed their communion in Syria and Egypt at the end of the sixth century.61 The “historical” Jacob failed to maintain unity with the empire and among his fellow Miaphysites.62 Fortunately for Jacob’s memory, these events did not form part of the hagiographical memory. By the time that the Syrian Orthodox monks composed the Longer Life, the Christianity of the Byzantine Empire has become definitively Chalcedonian. The Syrian Orthodox Christians of the eighth century, unlike John of Ephesus, could not contest the fact that the Chalcedonian bishops had won religious authority in the Byzantine Empire. Through hagiography, however, they could hide behind John’s authorship and challenge Chalcedonian claims to orthodoxy. Jacob’s story located his descendants incontrovertibly on the side of “orthodoxy,” irrespective of their ambiguous or adversarial relationship to the empire. These rhetorical claims reached an internal Syrian Orthodox audience. Yet in advancing an ideology that Syrian Orthodox Christianity represented the true, ascetic faith of the first apostles, and that Chalcedonian Christianity sanctioned “innovation by straying from holy tradition into heresy,”63 the authors of the Longer Life wrote from an empowered stance of resistance to the dominant form of Christianity in the empire. The narrator of the Longer Life covered over the discontinuity of his world and that of the sixth century and forgot the pain of his Miaphysite ancestors.64 Scholars of oral myth and memory have shown that narrators remember details of the past more vividly when their tales are about happy times. The details of stories located within contexts of violence, duress, or loss, or in times of pain and stress, by contrast, tend to be more easily forgotten. As the sixth century was largely a painful period for the Miaphysites and for the Eastern Roman Empire as a whole, it is not surprising that the Longer Life generalizes the details of Jacob’s life, and that his struggles, oversights, and conflicts with other Miaphysites are absent from the text.65 F O R G E R I E S A N D AC C E S S T O T H E D I V I N E

The hagiographic traditions of Jacob Baradaeus also show us how hagiography, in both its composition and its recitation, is a means of reaching the saints and their power. Our anonymous author hides behind the authority of John of Ephesus’s talent for hagiographical creation. The hagiography of John of Ephesus provides a narrative frame in which the author (who pretends himself to be John of Ephesus) of the

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Longer Life places his story. Our unknown author elevates John of Ephesus’s authority and endorses the composition of hagiographical forgeries as an ascetic act. Writing his own hagiography allows him to imitate John of Ephesus, emulating and revising the scribal act that produced the first sacred memory of Jacob. The anonymous author becomes an image or icon of John of Ephesus.66 The expansion of his life offers access both to Jacob’s intercession and to that of John of Ephesus. The hagiography makes Jacob available to the community that sanctifies his memory. In a twelfth-century periphrastic recension of this life, contained in British Museum 12774 (1197),67 the scribe, glossing the title of the text, shares his theory that his copying of the hagiography brings Jacob’s presence to his community. The Longer Life boosts Jacob to the position of a veritable savior of the Syrian Church, and this attributed authority lasts. For medieval monks who read the Longer Life, the recital of Jacob’s story brings his holy presence among them. Hagiographic recitation and reading are liturgical: Praise to God who adorned His Church with his saints. He filled her with the riches and treasures of their relics. He surrounded her with the praiseworthy flowers of their ways of life that are written in their stories and formed before the eyes of the heart of the faithful. Whenever we read the way of life of one of them, we are consoled as if he were with us. In his love, our minds exalt, especially with respect to this saint, who adorned the Church with gifts as he filled her with grace. He handed himself over for her sake. Our discourse is not sufficient to narrate a small fragment of his way of life. For if the Lord had not had mercy upon His Church . . . she would have been destroyed by the evil persecutors, the Dyophysites. This is the beginning of his story that we established in order to illuminate [what we learned of him] from investigation and debate. We ask him to help us by his prayers that we might speak and write these chapters on him. Thus from here we confirm that we shall bring forth a memorial of his story.68

R E C L A I M I N G A N D R E U SI N G “JAC O B I T E”

The communal bond of the Miaphysites can be attributed in part to the way in which sacred narratives themselves became social actors, shaping the social world in which they circulated. This phenomenon helps explain the “storiedness” of the Miaphysites’ process of self-identification with heroes of the past.69 For those known as Jacobites, Jacob’s life was an easy model for imitation. They projected their own values and anxieties onto the hagiographical Jacob of the text, and the text advanced Jacob’s “canonization process.” The term “Jacobite” had infelicitous origins, however. It began as a label in 575 to distinguish those Miaphysites who followed Jacob Baradaeus from those who followed Paul of Antioch.70 The label signified not religious creed but episcopal affiliation and was generated by internal conflict among Miaphysites. Although

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the term was not used in the account crafted by John of Ephesus, the Longer Life referred to the followers of Jacob as “Jacobites.” The later hagiography embellished Jacob Baradaeus and transformed him into an icon of the apostle James, bishop of Jerusalem, using apostolic discourse to elevate him. The “New James” carried the orthodox faith of the original twelve and transmitted it to those he ordained. The text associated the term “Jacobite” with the Syrian Miaphysites, and “Theodosian” with the Egyptian Miaphysites. The Longer Life used the names of bishops to differentiate linguistically and geographically distinct groups of Miaphysites. This framing dynamic and group rhetoric gathered Syrians, Persians, and Armenians under the apostolic banner of Jacob. The author of the Longer Life expanded Jacob, his monastic forefather, to become patron of all the eastern Syrian Orthodox. The Longer Life thus redefined the term “Jacobite” as an expression of collective solidarity rather than internal conflict:71 For he [Jacob] stood up and protected the faith of the apostles that he had received from the first bishop Jacob in Jerusalem. He filled the entire Church with virtues. When the sides of the orthodox and the heretics met one another, they were asking, “Who are you?” The orthodox answered, “From the faith of Jacob in the flesh, who was called the first among the apostles and brother of the Lord, which this divine Jacob [yaqub hono alohoyo] also proclaims to us.” But those who were against him would say, “Of Ephrem in Amida” or “John Syrmia.” . . . And from there the word went out in all of Syria and the regions of Persia and Armenia, “We are from the faith of Jacob” and in Alexandria and in Egypt, the message went out, “We are of Theodosius” just as from there the faithful in Egypt were called Theodosians, and the Syrians Jacobites- suryoye yaquboye.72

The title Baradaeus demonstrates how words and symbols in Jacob’s hagiographical tradition acted within the society in which the sacred fictions circulated. Jacob owed his epithet Baradaeus to hagiography. As far as I have been able to determine, the epithet is missing in sixth- and seventh-century historical (as opposed to hagiographical) sources that mention Jacob. In the Chronicle of Zuqnin, for example, he is called “Jacob of Phesilta.”73 Jacob’s hagiographies, however, focus on the rags he wore, playing with the ascription Burdʿana, meaning “shabby.” John of Ephesus discusses the extreme poverty of Jacob, even during his imprisonment at home under Theodora.74 Jacob tore his cloak in two to make the most of the garment.75 The simplicity of Jacob’s dress epitomized his perfect Christian discipleship, reminiscent of the poverty and simplicity extolled in the Syriac literary imagination. Jacob’s hagiography, which promoted his ragged vesture by coining the word Burdʿana, joined the adjective to Jacob’s name. Even sources of the Chalcedonians and the Church of the East—from the Chronicle of Seert76 to the late Chalcedonian Ecclesiastical History of Nicephorus Callistus (fl. 1320)—refer to him as Jacob Baradaeus, thanks to the hagiographical traditions that spread this nickname. Nicephorus Callistus writes that Jacob “was the founder of the heresy of the

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Jacobites and much celebrated also today, [he] was of the Syrian race, of obscure and insignificant beginnings. He was also called Tzanlanlos [Greek translation of Baradaeus, meaning “with tattered cloak”] on account of his utter shabbiness.”77 The Longer Life builds episodes in its narrative based on the epithet Burdʿoyo. Skeptical villagers mock the holy man’s attempt to raise a youth of their village from the dead: “What do this man’s rags desire?”78 Jacob’s rags became emblematic and metonymic of him. They embodied the hagiography’s portrait of Jacob’s honorable simplicity. Like the Acts of Thomas, the Longer Life advances poverty and itinerancy as virtues. In addition to symbolizing the ideals of humility and simplicity, Jacob’s poverty was a useful tool for self-promotion for the Miaphysites, whose position and hierarchy the Byzantine Empire had rejected. Although famines, plagues, poverty, and political conflicts tended to signify divine disapproval in Greek and Syriac historiography,79 the Miaphysites reinterpreted their disenfranchisement through a different lens. The model of the wandering itinerant missionary, who takes nothing with him for the road,80 proved useful for this strategy of legitimization. Beginning with John of Ephesus and culminating in later texts like the Longer Life, the Miaphysites presented themselves as the church that retained the orthodox faith and was uninterested in material gain. The Miaphysite bishops Jacob, John of Tella, and John of Hephaestopolis were presented as ascetic and self-sacrificing; the Chalcedonians, or Melkites, in the rhetoric of the Miaphysites, were interested in political gain and serving the emperor, not God.81 Thus, the simplicity of Jacob’s dress became a metonym for the entire church: Jacob was Burdʿoyo, and his followers were Yaquboye, participants through their genealogy in the holiness of Jacob. In connecting Jacob to the notion of holy poverty and the gestalt of the missionary apostle, his hagiographers ascribed to him, and by extension to themselves, ideas of sanctity embedded in a complex and multilayered system of references. S AC R E D B O D I E S , S AC R E D T E X T S

A further short story concerning the monks of Phesilta, who stole Jacob’s body from the monastery of Casion in Egypt and brought it to its final resting place in Phesilta near Tella, is contained in the eighth-century text “Narration of Mar Quryaqos, bishop of Amida, concerning holy Mar Jacob.”82 The scribe Mar Theodosius attached this anecdote to the Longer Life and attributed it to Bishop Mar Quryaqos of Amida. This additional text shows how the hagiographical tradition of Jacob grew within a broader context of his cult.83 Let us consider Cyriac’s authorship of this addendum in order to locate Jacob’s cult in seventh-century Osrhoene. Both manuscripts that contain Jacob’s burial narrative place it immediately after the Longer Life.84 The ending of the Longer Life—“ The story of Jacob th Bishop that Mar John of Asia wrote has ended”—85 precedes the title of the burial narrative

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“The narrative of Mar Quryaqos, Bishop of Amida, concerning the holy Jacob.” 86 The eighth-century Chronicle of Zuqnin mentions that the author of the narrative, Mar Quryaqos, is “well known,” and succeeded Mar John as bishop of Amida in 577–78. That was the same year that Jacob Baradaeus died.87 Mar Thomas succeeded Mar Quryaqos as bishop of Amida in 622–23.88 Thus, Mar Quryaqos could have known about Jacob’s death and the translation of his body to Phesilta. Yet the narrative, as Brooks notes, speaks of events that happened in 628—that is, after Mar Quryaqos’s supposed death.89 But the Chronicle of Zuqnin also dates the Arab conquest of Palestine to 620–21.90 Thus, either the Chronicle of Zuqnin misdates Quryaqos or the later information is an interpolation. Jacob’s burial narrative ends with a note that the priest and stylite Theodosius copied the account of Quryaqos in 741,91 so perhaps the copyist added the interpolation. It is possible that Theodosius wrote the Longer Life and then appended Mar Quryaqos’s story to his hagiography. It does not seem possible, however, that Mar Quryaqos wrote both the Longer Life and the burial story. This entertaining vignette portrays the capture of Jacob’s body from its resting place in Egypt on Mount Casion by three deceptive monks of Phesilta. They, under orders from their archimandrite Mar Zakay, visit the monastery of Casion, pretending to be ambassadors of their monastery on a trip bound for Alexandria. One of the monks feigns sickness and remains in the monastery with a friend, while the others continue their journey. The sick man sleeps close to Jacob’s sarcophagus, takes his body, and wraps it in silk. He then brings it back with him to Tella. There the bishop and the local church meet the body with tapers, incense, and pomp, and it is laid into the monastery of Phesilta near Tella.92 As a foundation myth, this explains how Jacob’s body came to rest in Phesilta.93 The story evidences that Jacob’s body itself became a treasured possession of the community. Jacob became sacred through John’s hagiographic memory. The Longer Life embellished this memory to frame it according to the interests of the later Syrian Orthodox. John of Ephesus and the author of Longer Life set Jacob apart in the religious memory of the Syrian Orthodox, and that recollection belongs exclusively to their emergent church. Miaphysite hagiographer John of Ephesus identified his community with the missionary bishop Jacob Baradaeus. Later Syrian Orthodox elevated Jacob’s position in their tradition, and their narrative of his life, the Longer Life, became emblematic of how they wanted to see themselves: ascetic and poor, growing and indefatigable, protected by divine providence. The portrait of Jacob Baradaeus embodied the traits of a saint who crossed borders and formed networks of monks, bishops, clergy, and laity. His two-part name denoted his apostolic orthodoxy and zealous ragged asceticism, and the Miaphysites attributed these virtues to themselves, calling themselves “Jacobites.” Jacob’s name itself, Jacob or James Baradaeus, helped

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both John of Ephesus and the author of the Longer Life to craft an etymology and foundation myth for their hero and his disciples. The emergence of the Syrian Orthodox Church was neither “a given” nor a fixed occurrence in time, but a gradual process. Jacob’s longer seventh- or eighth-century narrative exemplifies how stories constituted important actors in this contingent and variable process.

7

Ah ̣udemmeh among the Arabs

While the Chalcedonian churches grew within the Roman Empire,1 churches of the East and West Syriac traditions flourished outside the Byzantine world in the region that is present-day Iraq, under the rule of the Sasanian shahs. The East Syrians became known as the “Nestorian” Church of the East, under the leadership of the catholicos of Seleucia-Ctesiphon. The Dyophysite Church of the East asserted its autonomy and the supreme ecclesiastical authority of the catholicos of Seleucia-Ctesiphon;2 in the sixth century, however, the Miaphysite church of the West Syrians expanded into Persian territory, causing shifts and developments in the Christian landscape of Sasanian northern Mesopotamia. The Miaphysite West Syrians became the Syrian Orthodox Church of Persia, under the leadership of the maphrian, who was second in rank to the Syrian Orthodox patriarch of Antioch. This Miaphysite church expanded especially in the borderlands between the Byzantine and Sasanian empires. Christianity never became the dominant religion of the Sasanian Empire. Nevertheless, Persian Christians used their position in Sasanian society and culture to create communities that developed and, at times, even flourished independently of the churches in the Roman Empire. The result was a rich variety of Christianity shaped by and in response to the Sasanian milieu. The Christians of Persia, both Miaphysite and Dyophysite, wrote distinctive texts and created their own political theology. Their bishops debated Christology before the shah, and they built monasteries and centers of learning. In addition, as we have already seen, Persian Christians, both East Syrian (Church of the East) and West Syrian (Syrian Orthodox Church), crafted a distinct hierarchy of saints and inaugurated festivals to remember them. We examined the East Syrian Acts of Mari in chapter 3 and the 110

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hagiographic traditions of Simeon of Beth Arsham from the West Syrian Orthodox Church in chapter 5. We turn now to the missionary saint of the Miaphysite church in the Sasanian Empire, Ah ̣udemmeh. In the previous chapter, I discussed the work of Jacob Baradaeus, whose ordinations revived a dwindling ecclesiastical hierarchy for the Miaphysites. Historical sources claim that one of the bishops whom Jacob Baradaeus ordained to work in the region that is northern Iraq today was Ah ̣udemmeh, who was consecrated bishop of Beth ʿArabaye in 559. The Miaphysites of the Sasanian Empire credited the conversion of Bedouin tribes in northern Mesopotamia to Ah ̣udemmeh. The diocesan boundaries would have been formed by Tagrit to the south, Nisibis to the north, and the Khabur River (which flows into the Euphrates) to the west.3 The Life of Ah ̣udemmeh blends themes and motifs of miracles, ordinations, and conversion of royalty that situate Ah ̣udemmeh in the literary traditions of Syrian missionary bishops.4 This seventh-century vita, like other stories in this study, mythologizes a historical missionary to craft an apostolic past. The text offers a portrait of late antique Sasanian Miaphysites in a landscape dotted with monasteries, churches, and apostolic foundations.5 The author of the Life of Ah ̣udemmeh lived in a time of increased conflict between the two major Christian groups of late antique Persia: the Dyophysite Christians of the larger Church of the East and the Miaphysite Christians of the emergent Syrian Orthodox Church. When I use the term “Persian Christians” or “Persian Christianity,” I am referring to geographical location, not ethnicity or language. In the sixth century, the Miaphysites in the region that is now Iraq would have been mainly native Aramaeans, former Zoroastrian Persians, and former pagan Arabs.6 The Church of the East can be identified with the Sasanian Empire beginning in the fourth century, and the number of Miaphysites increased in what is now Iraq throughout the sixth century. The Life of Ah ̣udemmeh, as I will show, depicts the ambiguities of the religious and political affiliations of the Sasanian Miaphysites visà-vis their coreligionists in the Byzantine Empire. It portrays a relationship that offered the Miaphysite church independence in jurisdiction and unity in the common profession of a single-nature Christology. An important source on the gradual formation of the Syrian Orthodox Church, the Life of Ah ̣udemmeh reconfigures the relationships of the Sasanian Persian Christians with their rival and sister Christian groups. As A. M. Schilling has noted, this text is one of several produced by the Miaphysites in the sixth and seventh centuries to promote the Miaphysite brand of Christianity as a second Christianity of the Sasanian milieu.7 The Life of Ah ̣udemmeh is not the only source of information about Ah ̣udemmeh. Historical sources shed light on the importance of Ah ̣udemmeh for the Miaphysites.8 John of Ephesus and sources dependent on him characterize Ah ̣udemmeh as a sixth-century missionary bishop of the Roman/Persian borderlands, and describe episodes of his interactions and debates with prominent

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ecclesiastical and political figures of his time. The hagiography of Ah ̣udemmeh, by contrast, offers a tableau of Sasanian Miaphysite communities, blending common literary features of the Syriac missionary genre with details suggestive of the circumstances of minority Christians in late antique northern Iraq. In its portrayal of Sasanian Christianity, the Life reflects the distance between the seventh-century context of the text’s composition and the sixth-century context of the story.9 Its mythic elements recall the eras of earlier Syriac missionary saints and the Persian martyrs. The Life of Ah ̣udemmeh frames its hero as an “apostle” at the center of a burgeoning Christian society. This hagiographic memory is distinct from a portrait of the historical Ah ̣udemmeh. The tableau presented in the Life freezes a picture of missionary life in Mesopotamia, to create continuity with the past for the minority Miaphysite Christians of seventh-century Iraq, who, far from their Christian counterparts in the Roman Empire, live in tension with Christians of the proximate Church of the East. This chapter examines the literary features of the Life of Ah ̣udemmeh and the memory-making work the hagiography performed for the Miaphysites of Persia, building on the work of scholars who have studied the Life for its historical value.10 I juxtapose the story’s historicizing elements and the motifs it shares with other Syriac missionary stories. I show how political tension between the Byzantine and Persian thrones lies in the background of this narrative.11 I argue that the text provides the Sasanian monastic landscape as a backdrop for this apostle’s travels and identifies the Miaphysites with the Sasanian Empire by undermining Dyophysite claims to the Sasanian court. It crafts an apostolic memory for both Tagrit, the see of the maphrian (i.e., the patriarch outside of the Roman Empire), and Mosul/ Nineveh, the center of Sasanian Miaphysite monasticism. The narrative focuses on Ah ̣udemmeh work among the Arabs, a group with both Dyophysite (Lakhmid) and Miaphysite (Ghassan) tribes. The Arab inhabitants of the borderlands served as military allies of both the Romans and the Persians. Elizabeth Fowden has observed that the intermediary position of the Arab inhabitants intensified the flexibility of the border: “In the great SyroMesopotamian spaces, these fixed places were flash points where all forms of human interaction—social, economic, political, and religious—tended to concentrate. Within this landscape, the political frontier between the Roman and Iranian empires acted as an artificial divide. In order to maintain their territorial claims, both empires turned to military alliances with the Arab inhabitants of the region and to the construction of fortifications.”12 The Life of Ah ̣udemmeh portrays a founder who replaced Arabic tribal itinerancy with monasteries, converted tribes to build up the celestial army, and delivered his neck to a wicked emperor. This narrative and the roles played by the story’s characters clarified ambiguities regarding later Sasanian Miaphysites and closed a view of their past, as their positions vis-à-vis their political and religious

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rivals and supporters shifted continuously throughout the late sixth- and seventh centuries. PRÉCIS

The Life of Ah ̣udemmeh has the longest introduction of any of the texts examined in this book and contains a distinctively Miaphysite creedal statement.13 Using genealogical rhetoric, the anonymous hagiographer appeals first to the universal “race of Adam” and discusses how the example of holy people benefits them. Like John of Ephesus, the hagiographer of this text likens the lives of the saints to shining lights: “He [Christ] willed that we human beings become his followers, in accordance with the authoritative message that Christ spoke, ‘May your light shine before men, that they may see your good deeds and give glory to your father in heaven.’ Thus indeed the blessed Ah ̣udemmeh did, whose great things we now narrate, as is necessary, [telling the story first of] his region, nationality, and his city, that he might be glorified.”14 The author introduces Ah ̣udemmeh as the son of “unbelieving,” possibly “Nestorian,” parents.15 Ah ̣udemmeh comes from Balad in the region of Beth ʿArabaye.16 He is versed in the Scriptures, and after reaching maturity, he leaves the religion of his birth. Ah ̣udemmeh chooses the missionary life on account of his desire to follow the example of the apostle Paul.17 An unnamed illustrious personage ordains him bishop of Beth ʿArabaye.18 Ah ̣udemmeh converts “barbaric” and “murderous” Arab tribes in the region of Gazarta, although they resist his message at first.19 Demons hear Ah ̣udemmeh’s petitions to the apostles and chanting of the Psalms, and they fight with him as he waits outside the Arab camps. Ah ̣udemmeh’s prayers cure the Arabic tribes from a plague of lepers besetting them. In striking similarity to the Acts of Mari, Ah ̣udemmeh then converts the tribe by exorcising a demon from the daughter of the tribe’s leader.20 He baptizes and instructs these “pagans” in Christianity, and he then converts the Arabs of other surrounding areas.21 Ah ̣udemmeh establishes an ecclesiastical structure for the tribes, ordaining bishops and priests, building altars, and teaching them to care for the poor.22 The text is silent about the existence of other Christians in the Sasanian Empire,23 yet it abruptly introduces the existence of monasteries in northern Iraq: Sinjar, Mar Matay and Beth Mar Sergius (all Miaphysite settlements). Sinjar is located in Beth ʿArabaye, the area south of the Izla Mountains, approximately a hundred kilometers southeast of Nisibis. The monastery of Mar Matay is twentyfive kilometers northeast of Mosul/Nineveh.24 Ah ̣udemmeh connects his burgeoning communities to the cult of Saint Sergius and Bacchus in Resafa. He builds a church to these saints at ʿAynqenoye that resembles its counterpart on the west side of Euphrates, and it becomes a center of worship for the Arabs. Some scholars

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believe that the remains of a small basilica named for Saint Sergius, Qasr Serij, near Mosul is the same one mentioned in this text at ʿAynqenoye.25 While it is certainly not impossible that the hagiographical attestation of a building project of a bishop like Ah ̣udemmeh could be traced to these remains, the matter is far from determinable. The text describes the beauty of the church’s hymns, the community’s hospitality to the poor, and their shining works of asceticism. It contrasts the disorder of the outside world with the peace of Ah ̣udemmeh’s church. After the community is disrupted and destroyed by “demons,” Ah ̣udemmeh repairs the damage and rebuilds a monastery on the site of the church.26 Ah ̣udemmeh then constructs another monastery called Gaʿtany, near an existing one at Aqrunto, near Tagrit.27 According to the text, the son of the Persian shah desires to be baptized, and so he flees his father’s court in search of Ah ̣udemmeh.28 The apostle perceives the prince’s righteousness, baptizes him, and anoints him.29 After anointing his eyes with oil and bestowing crosses on him, Ah ̣udemmeh sends the royal convert into “Roman country.” The flight of the prince spurs his father to chase after him. When the shah’s spies find Ah ̣udemmeh, they turn their hearts to Christianity and honor the holy man.30 They begrudgingly take Ah ̣udemmeh to the shah, and the Arabic tribes weep for the loss of their bishop. While being taken to prison, Ah ̣udemmeh encounters a camp of Arabs tormented by a plague. His guards allow him to offer prayers and incense to lift the plague.31 When brought before the Persian ruler, Ah ̣udemmeh identifies himself as a bishop “appointed by God for the work of baptizing people, sending them from darkness to the true light, and [bringing them] from the error of paganism to the perfect knowledge of Christian work.”32 The shah imprisons him. Ah ̣udemmeh lives without food or drink for twelve days, and people see this as a sign that he is a servant of God. A series of miracles occur through Ah ̣udemmeh’s intercession while the saint is in confinement. The community of Arabs tries to save their missionary: Those who were taught by him and through him had entered the divine house were very sad. Indeed, great suffering and sadness seized them truly on account of their brother. Many were crying out that they were deprived of his company; they were enflamed with great zeal and burned like fire. They considered how they might devise a play to save him. . . . They said to him, “What are we to do, since we have no one except you? Are you leaving us orphaned? They were crying to him as a child that had been separated from his mother.”33

Like the apostle Paul imprisoned in Rome,34 Ah ̣udemmeh stays incarcerated for two years, and people visit him and seek his intercession.35 An angel of the Lord appears to Ah ̣udemmeh in prison to comfort him, and Ah ̣udemmeh spends the night in prayer.36

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Ah ̣udemmeh dies in prison. After his death, the guards cut off his head. His followers bribe his prison guards to give them the head of the holy man. The text likens Ah ̣udemmeh to John the Baptist, whom Herod beheads. Ah ̣udemmeh’s sentinels decapitate Ah ̣udemmeh’s corpse and cast the cadaver to the dogs. The beasts miraculously do not touch it, sensing the holiness of the body. If the hagiography harmonizes with the historical accounts, the arrest of Ah ̣udemmeh would have happened in 573 and his death in 575.37 Ah ̣udemmeh’s followers take his body first to the city of Seleucia-Ctesiphon and place it in a church in a town called Rebibe. The body shines miraculously.38 His disciples then move his body to Beth Oso next to the city of Aqrunto, where Ah ̣udemmeh began his work. The abbot moves the saint’s relics to the city of Tagrit. There is a conflict over which city, Aqrunto or Tagrit, will be permitted to keep the saint’s bones, and they decide to share them. Some of Ah ̣udemmeh relics go to the monastery at Aqrunto and others to the church of Tagrit.39 H I S T O R IC A L BAC KG R O U N D

The Life of Ah ̣udemmeh alerts us to the tensions between the Miaphysites and the Dyophysites that vexed Sasanian Mesopotamia. The end of the fifth century saw internal divisions among the Christians living under the rule of the Persian shah. The Dyophysite Church of the East emerged as the dominant Sasanian Christianity after Bars ̣auma of Nisibis’s (fl. 488) harassment of “non-Nestorian” Christians of Iran and Iraq. Emperor Anastasius, who favored the Miaphysites, wrote to Shah Kawad to intervene and stop the violence against the Miaphysites. The Codex Justinianus, furthermore, indicates that “Nestorians” were also officially condemned in 488: “We further decree that those who esteem the impious faith of Nestorius or follow his unlawful teaching, if they be bishops or clerics, be ejected from the holy churches, but if laity anathematized.”40 Not all areas of Sasanian Persia,41 however, wished to align with the form of Dyophysite Christianity that Bars ̣auma imposed, and centers of West Syrian Miaphysite Christianity grew in the Persian areas that resisted Bars ̣auma’s religious homogenization. Later Miaphysite historians retrojected an anachronistic landscape onto this time period to make their monasteries the “faithful remnant” that resisted Bars ̣auma of Nisibis.42 These same places received refugees from the Roman Empire who were fleeing the persecution of Justin I, Justinian, and Justin II. This combination of native anti-Nestorian Persians and anti-Chalcedonian Byzantines grew into a new conglomerate in northern Iraq with strongholds around Tagrit and the monastery of Mar Matay.43 When Jacob Baradaeus, and Simeon of Beth Arsham, and later Ah ̣udemmeh conducted their missionary work in northern Iraq, they had the cooperation of the indigenous groups around the monastery of Mar Matay. The Iraqi Miaphysites are a mixed population of “native” Persian Christians (anti-Nestorians), Arab (Lakhmid)

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converts to Miaphysite Christianity, and exiled Miaphysites from the Roman Empire (or their descendants). Christian loyalty to the Byzantine and Sasanian rulers fluctuated during the late sixth and early seventh centuries. Schilling has shown that some of the shahs were presented in Christian stories and synod reports as favorable to Christians and even open to their theology, including Yazdegerd I (lived 399–420) and Khusro I “Anushirvan” (r. 531–579). John of Ephesus calls the latter a “prudent and wise man.”44 The elevation of these shahs, whom Christians remember as “righteous men,” is embellished, mythologized, and incorporated into a consecrated narrative typology of Syriac missionary literature: the conversion of the king (shah). We find this motif in literature by Christians from the Iranian milieu who imagine that their shahs, like Constantine, converted to Christianity.45 We can contrast the benevolent portrait of the shah occasionally found in both East and West Syriac sources with the consistently hostile depiction that Christians create of their Christian rivals from opposing churches. The tensions between the West Syrian Miaphysites and the Dyophysite Church of the East sharpened in the sixth century and are portrayed in high relief in historical and hagiographic sources from both Christian groups. The influx of the Miaphysites into Persia alarmed the Church of the East, especially as the Miaphysites converted the Dyophysites. A synod in 596 of the Church of the East forbade members to associate with the Miaphysite, “heretical,” church: “It has been brought to our attention that there are those who wear the clothing of the monk who make heretical distinctions in their mind concerning the true faith of the Orthodox. They stand in opposition to the true teachers of the church. . . . If anyone dares to cause a schism and not receive this definition of the true faith, we will treat him as alien, excommunicated, abandoned, and removed from all participation with Christians, until he corrects his ways and adheres to the true faith of the Church.”46 Miaphysites, for their part, won support from the shah Khusro II (r. 590–628), whose court physician converted to their church from Dyophysite “Nestorian” Christianity, yet the alternating periods of peace and conflict between Rome and Persia made a definite act of affiliation with the Sasanians imperative for the survival of Miaphysite foundations.47 In this same period, the Miaphysites and Chalcedonians in the Roman Empire became increasingly polarized, and the former group looked to areas beyond Byzantium to expand.48 It is here that the missionary monk Ah ̣udemmeh entered the picture. The people whom Ah ̣udemmeh converted, the T ̣ayye, seem to have been Bedouin Arabs who lived between the Persian and Roman empires. Fowden has noted the diversity of this geographical area’s population: Because of its size and diversity, the Syro-Mesopotamian plain could not be dominated by one group of its inhabitants. Instead, pastoralists, farmers, craftsmen, mer-

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chants, monks, and soldiers were joined in a network of symbioses. The eastern, northern, and western fringes were densely populated in many places, and their inhabitants, especially in the eastern half, were very diverse. They included Zoroastrians, Jews, polytheists, and Christians of Nestorian, Chalcedonian, and AntiChalcedonian (“Monophysite”) allegiance. Many of both the permanent and of the less permanent inhabitants of Syria and Mesopotamia were mobile by vocation— pastoralists, semi-pastoralists, merchants, teachers, students, and pilgrims.49

It is beyond the scope of this book to speculate about the historical overlap between the Christianization of these tribes and Ah ̣udemmeh’s work in this process.50 We can note here, however, that the ethnically mixed group of Sasanian Miaphysites affiliated themselves with an apostle who brought an institutionalized form of Syrian monasticism to the tribal leadership of the nomadic and seminomadic Bedouin of northern Iraq. H I ST O R IC A L S OU R C E S A N D S AC R E D F IC T IO N S

The significant contrasts between the historical and hagiographical accounts of Ah ̣udemmeh show how hagiography does not preserve the particular details of the saint’s life that do not speak to the needs or advance the interests of its author or community.51 Jacob Baradaeus’s ordination of Ah ̣udemmeh, a prominent feature of John of Ephesus’s “historical” account, is missing from the hagiography, suggesting a more ambiguous relationship between seventh-century Sasanian Christians and their Roman “Jacobite” counterparts. John of Ephesus explains that Ah ̣udemmeh, after his debate with the emperor Khusro I, “returned home with great parrhesia without fear. When all the Orthodox in the region of the Persians received this message, they dared to do a great deed. Through the hands of blessed Mar Jacob [Baradaeus], bishop of the Orthodox, they ordained him [Ah ̣udemmeh] catholicos. This had not yet taken place in the region. Thus, up until today there has been a catholicos in the region of the believers.”52 If our hagiographer had known of John of Ephesus’s account and left Jacob Baradaeus out of Ah ̣udemmeh’s lineage, this egregious contrast would be significant in its implications for the relationship between Sasanian Miaphysites and their counterparts living in the Roman Empire. Jacob Baradaeus, himself a prominent Miaphysite missionary, would have been a symbolically powerful means for the hagiographer to forge a commonality between his community and its Byzantine coreligionists. Perhaps Jacob’s absence from the Life of Ah ̣udemmeh hints at an interest in elevating the independence of the jurisdiction of the bishop of Beth ʿArabaye, or perhaps the monks who produced this text were unfamiliar with their saint’s connection to Jacob. Bar ʿEbroyo (thirteenth-century Syrian Orthodox church historian, chronicler, and maphrian of Tagrit) relates that Ah ̣udemmeh was ordained a priest by

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Jacob Baradaeus, then bishop by the Armenian catholicos Christopher, and then metropolitan of the East by Jacob Baradaeus, yet his account also shows knowledge of Ah ̣udemmeh’s hagiography: After the persecution of the Orthodox in the East, there stood up Ah ̣udemmeh, metropolitan of the East. Jacob first ordained him in the year 870 of the Greeks. It was said that Christopher, catholicos of the Armenians, ordained him bishop for Beth ‘Arabaye. Jacob then conferred on him the title of metropolitan of the East. Mar Ah ̣udemmeh went to the people of the T ̣ayye, tent dwellers, and he converted many of them. God worked through his powerful and mighty hands. The number of priests and monks increased. He built them a monastery called ʿAynqenoye and another monastery on the bank of the Tigris called Gaʿtany.. Also in Tagrit he converted a large number of Magians. He also converted a child from the lineage of the Persian Empire. He baptized him and called him Georgi. When the king heard, he became angry and had Ah ̣udemmeh beheaded, on Friday, the second, in the month of Ab in the year 886 of the Greeks. The faithful demanded his body and wrapped it and buried it in Mah ̣uzo.53

Historical sources on Ah ̣udemmeh highlight the story of a theological debate between Ah ̣udemmeh and the catholicos of the Church of the East before Shah Khusro I.54 Both accounts explain that the catholicos of the Church of the East (perhaps Joseph, 552–65) argued his Dyophysite position unconvincingly,55 in contrast to Ah ̣udemmeh who was lucid and calm. Shah Khusro I promised Ah ̣udemmeh that the Miaphysites would “suffer no more harm at the hands of the dominant church in Persia, the Church of the East.” They [the Miaphysites] received [Khusro’s] blessing and they said, “[The Church of the East] persecutes us and assails us with weapons. They uproot our churches and monasteries, and do not allow us to approach God with prayers and supplications to God for the sustenance and preservation of your life and kingdom.” Therefore confidently [Khusro] commanded them, “Go and build your churches and monasteries. No one will be allowed to harm you.” At this, Ah ̣udemmeh’s party worshipped him and prayed for him. They returned to their regions in great joy.56

The expectation that Christian bishops living under Sasanian rule would pray for their Magian shahs appears in contemporary Church of the East sources as well. This important vignette is absent from Ah ̣udemmeh’s hagiography. Historical and hagiographical sources on Ah ̣udemmeh also diverge in their constructions of the shah. Schilling has highlighted this trajectory in Christian literature.57 John of Ephesus identifies him as Shah Khusro I and describes him as a wise man, fond of learning, well read in matters of religion, and respectful of the belief systems of the Christians: The Persian [emperor] Khusro . . . was shrewd and wise. He was steadfast his whole life in the study of philosophy, according to what was said. He carefully gathered

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books of all the religions together. He read and pondered them to discover which were true and wise and which were despicable, full of babbling and vain amusements. He read and contemplated them all, and he especially perused the books of the Christians and said, “These books are truer and wiser than all the other religions.” Because of this, he was especially committed to reading their books. He read and believed their message. On account of this, he did not at all appear hateful to the Christians.58

The hagiography, in contrast, condemns the unnamed shah. As Ah ̣udemmeh approaches his death, the king of the Persians becomes increasingly demonized, and Ah ̣udemmeh’s superhuman endurance grows. Ah ̣udemmeh remains calm and is full of parrhesia when the emperor questions him.59 Schilling notes the difficulty of harmonizing the historical and hagiographic traditions of Ah ̣udemmeh,60 yet he and I reach the same conclusion: these texts share an interest in recognizing the orthodoxy of the Miaphysite church. Schilling calls this the recognition of a second Miaphysite Christianity in the Sasanian milieu.61 This tradition demonstrates the malleability of the literary symbol of “king” and the characteristic ambivalence of the Miaphysites toward imperial figures. In their own ways, however, both hagiography and historiography weave the Sasanian court into the texture of Christian life in Iraq. The hagiography introduces a fictive convert prince into the text, whereas the historical sources cast Khusro I as a sympathetic “philosopher-king.” John of Ephesus’s historical presentation of Ah ̣udemmeh as a debating bishop bears striking similarities to his hagiographical portrait of Simeon of Beth Arsham. Likewise, Ah ̣udemmeh, in the hagiographic depiction, resembles not Simeon of Beth Arsham but rather Addai/Aggai in the Teaching of Addai.62 Whereas John of Ephesus from Constantinople forms a link between two Persian bishops (Simeon and Ah ̣udemmeh), who both use rhetoric to advance the Miaphysite position before their respective emperors, the Persian hagiographies attach missionaries to motifs specific to the Sasanian cultural milieu. The Persian hagiographies locate their saints among Magians, and the holy men convert through their displays of divine power. These differences are relativized through the common narrative thrust that they share: a reconfiguration of religious hierarchies to replace regnant authorities with an apostolic missionary. Both are works of literary propaganda from the Miaphysites, but Ah ̣udemmeh’s hagiographical portrait comes from within the Sasanian milieu, and from a slightly later period, at the dawn of the seventh century, whereas John of Ephesus’s less embellished account comes from the sixth century, written from the perspective of a Syriac-speaking Miaphysite rooted in Greek Constantinople. As in the case of Jacob Baradaeus, therefore, we see the pattern that narratives about the missionary saints become more idealized and fantastic the more distant in time the texts are from the events they purport to describe.

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The Life of Ah ̣udemmeh draws together significant and contradictory literary elements (apostles, barbarians, emperors, and monks) to offer a way of viewing the past that makes sense of the confusion of Christian loyalties for the emergent Syrian Orthodox in Sasanian Mesopotamia. The Life of Ah ̣udemmeh contains miracles accounts, travel, imprisonment, imaginary kingdoms and communities, a display of parrhesia before political figures, and a quasi martyrdom account. These similarities with other Syriac missionary texts illustrate how the author cloaks his saint in traditional missionary garb. The miracles of Ah ̣udemmeh mirror the actions of Jesus and the apostles from the canonical Gospels and the apostolic Acts genre.63 As in the Acts of Thomas, the Teaching of Addai, the Life of Simeon of Beth Arsham, John of Ephesus, and the Acts of Mari, Ah ̣udemmeh converts through the royal households of Persia and Arabia. Ah ̣udemmeh is a healer,64 like Thomas, Addai, Jacob Baradaeus, and Mari. As in the case of Thomas, Ah ̣udemmeh’s glory shone while the saint was in prison. Ah ̣udemmeh displays authority over demons, as did Addai and Mari.65 Like Mari, Ah ̣udemmeh uproots pagans from the East Syrian landscape,66 and his healing of the child of a pagan king leads to the conversion of an entire tribe. The story delineates Ah ̣udemmeh’s apostolicity by modeling Ah ̣udemmeh’s actions on biblical precedents. The hagiographer likens Ah ̣udemmeh’s love for his community to Jesus’s love of his beloved disciple.67 The text sets up a paired relationship in which the missionary becomes a type of Christ and those whom he converts become the apostles.68 Typological connections between Ah ̣udemmeh and John the Baptist create similarity between the saints to bridge the distance between Ah ̣udemmeh’s foundations and the biblical past. Both are righteous ascetics beheaded at the behest of a king.69

C I V I L I Z I N G A BA R BA R IC PA ST: WO R D S , SI L E N C E , A N D S A I N T S

The text calls those whom Ah ̣udemmeh converts “barbarians,” introducing a new category of social classification to Syrian missionary stories.70 It demonizes the tribes as idolatrous eaters of wild beasts, barbaric tent dwellers, and murderers living in darkness. Ah ̣udemmeh brings them, however, “to labor as cattle with the refreshing and gentle yoke of our Lord,”71 and by the end of the story the “barbarian Arabs” have been transformed into ascetic saints who have visited their pastor in prison.72 Thus, the word “barbarian” has many connotations that call up a caricature that the text recreates as an icon of Christian conversion. Christianity also brings speech in the Life of Ah ̣udemmeh. The hagiography records the words of the Arabic leaders only after Ah ̣udemmeh has baptized them.

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Baptism not only moves the Arabic tribes to a higher position in an imagined celestial hierarchy, but it also endows them with eloquence. Thus, conversion to Christianity is presented as a replacement for barbarism.73 This was also a motif in the Acts of the Apostles: Peter gained eloquence after the descent of the Pentecostal Holy Spirit.74 “Speech” and “silence” motifs shift the status of these Arabic converts from “barbarians” to participants in Ah ̣udemmeh’s sanctification. The Life of Ah ̣udemmeh distinguishes itself as a specifically monastic narrative. In addition to the monastery of Mar Matay, the hagiographer mentions the monastery of Aqrunto on the Tigris, not far from Tagrit, as well as the communities of ʿAynqenoye, Rebibe, and the monks on the mountain of Sinjar. These sites, however, were not yet built in the sixth century. The hagiographer anachronistically retrojects monasteries onto the Mesopotamian landscape to lengthen the lineage and increase the prestige of these institutions. It was in Kokhe, just south of Ctesiphon, that the Persian Christians established their see, long before the distinction between Nestorian and Miaphysite existed. Later Christians of both varieties, however, recognized the authority of this early Christian site, and both had stories connecting their communities to it. Absent from the Miaphysite hagiography, however, is any mention of the presence of the Church of the East, which had long enjoyed a foothold in Mesopotamia. Ah ̣udemmeh transforms the “barbarian lifestyle” through his construction of churches and monasteries, and the ordination of priests and deacons.75 He creates sacred space, religious labor, and, like Addai, forges a hierarchical order of workers to continue his foundations.76 His work includes building projects, church dedications, saints’ cults, and the ordination of clergy. Liturgies, hymns, and vigils replace the “uncivilized” behavior of the pre-Christian Arabs. Ah ̣udemmeh consecrates men and women for the monastic life, and they move into a new Christian hierarchy to replace the disorderly barbaric tribal past.77 Again, through the missionary saint the hagiography envisions a transformed Christian society. The interest in targeting the Bedouin Arabic tribes and inscribing them into the lineage of the Sasanian Syrian Orthodox Church emerges in the text’s affiliation with Resafa, a center of the cult of Sergius and Bacchus.78 The cult of Sergius and Bacchus provides a bridge between the Roman and Persian empires for Christian Arabs.79 The hagiography mentions that Ah ̣udemmeh established a church to Saint Sergius in Beth ‘Arabaye, probably near his hometown of Balad,80 with the rocks of the church purportedly taken from Resafa’s shrine itself.81 This materializes the connection between the two shrines, as Ah ̣udemmeh erects a schematized version of the Resafa center in Beth ‘Arabaye.82 In the same way that hagiographies provide miniature forms of a saint, compact and transportable, so the small rock of the greater shrine acts as a relic for the altar that it sanctifies. The hagiographer uses Ah ̣udemmeh as an apostle to organize and transform northern Iraq into a Miaphysite monastic landscape. In other missionary stories

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discussed in this study, we have observed how itinerant missionary bishops represent ideal types for Syriac religious memory. The Life of Ah ̣udemmeh redefines the itinerancy of the tribes that Ah ̣udemmeh converts as “barbaric.” Ah ̣udemmeh stops their movement and fixes them in churches and monasteries. The rhetoric of demonization emphasizes the “barbaric” nature of the tent-dwelling tribes before their conversion and connects this “barbarism” to itinerancy.83 Ah ̣udemmeh’s divine helpers assure him that the intransigent barbarians will convert eventually, and the angels compare the tribes to cattle that they must control: “The barbarians will obey you. They will labor as cattle with the refreshing and gentle yoke of our Lord.”84 Thus Ah ̣udemmeh’s story epitomizes “orthodox” Christianity as fixed, stable, politically unified, and ordered. The text presents the monasteries that Ah ̣udemmeh establishes as thriving ascetic communities whose holiness and religious practices surpass all others. The text’s focus on specific Miaphysite Sasanian communities reveals its intention of promoting the orthodoxy of these locations: The holy and divine monastery of Mar Matay, of Kokto, and of Beth Mar Sergius, along with the assemblies of monks on the mountain of Sinjar, with all the rest of the holy nuns of the faithful in the land of the Persians and Romans, gave grand gifts that were sold for a great price. They not only had gifts of the church and monasteries and poor and foreigners, but they also delighted in fasting and asceticism, more than all Christians.85

The Life of Ah ̣udemmeh presents contrasts—barbarian versus monk, murder versus almsgiving, speech versus silence—to illustrate the uncivilized past that Christianity redeems. The landscape is dotted not with the tents of idolatrous Arabic tribes, but with monasteries under the patronage of recognized saints.86 The construction of Miaphysite buildings in northern Iraq, and of the important monasteries of Mar Matay, Kokto, and Beth Mar Sergius, correlates with the production of this text—a narrative intended to add prestige and legitimacy to these monastic communities.87

K I N G S , E N E M I E S , A N D C O N V E RT S : I N T E R NA L A N D E X T E R NA L VO IC E S

Throughout this book, we have explored the role of kingly figures in the missionary stories of the Syrians. In the sixth century, emperors involved themselves in the controversies among Christians. Both Justinian in the West and Khusro I in the East invited Christian representatives from each side to debate at their respective courts.88 The missionary saint in the royal court, an established topos in Syriac literature, acquires a new, historicized force in the Life of Ah ̣udemmeh. Both historical and hagiographical sources memorialize Ah ̣udemmeh as a bishop who competed with

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priests of the Dyophysite Christian and the Zoroastrian religions—groups that enjoyed the favor of the Persian shah. The hagiographical version of Ah ̣udemmeh’s life reflects the delicacies of political loyalty for Christians living under Sasanian rule. As previously mentioned, the name of the shah is missing in the hagiographical account. The nameless ruler could have evoked the memory of three shahs: Khusro I “Anushirvan” (r. 531–79), who lived during Ah ̣udemmeh’s lifetime,89 his successor Hormizd (r. 579–90), or Khusro II (r. 590–628), the only Sasanian sovereign who venerated Christian saints.90 Although Khusro II was amicable toward Christians at the beginning of his reign, his friendly posture shifted,91 and by the 620s, the once tolerant shah had become more hostile toward Christians of both the Church of the East and the Syrian Orthodox Church.92 By the sixth century, persecution of Christians in Persia was sporadic and occasional;93 Persian rulers (or at least the Magian priests who served them) punished only upper-class converts to Christianity.94 Yet the martyr traditions in Persian Christianity circulated in liturgy and stories, and through the Ah ̣udemmeh narrative, Miaphysites inscribed their story into the longer mythologized tradition of Persian martyrdom. Their story demonized the shah as the cause of Ah ̣udemmeh’s martyrdom and as sponsor of the rival Magian priesthood;95 this martyrdom episode resembled the one found in the Teachings of Addai.96 As in the stories of Simeon of Beth Arsham and Thomas, the imprisonment of the saint offered an opportunity for the missionary to reveal his holiness, by performing miracles in prison, gaining converts, or creating liturgical space within prison. This motif was patterned on Paul’s imprisonment in the book of Acts.97 The Life of Ah ̣udemmeh, however, expressed the ideology of the “convert king,” reminiscent of the Teaching of Addai or the Acts of Thomas, through the conversion of the shah’s son. Ah ̣udemmeh “purified [the prince’s] soul from the ancient mire of paganism and anointed him with words of the holy books.”98 Ah ̣udemmeh then sent the prince into the land of the Romans. Ah ̣udemmeh’s baptism of this Sasanian prince ultimately caused Ah ̣udemmeh’s execution. Ah ̣udemmeh’s status as the missionary par excellence derives, however, from his conversion of the Arabic tribes. Yet the story elevates him for protesting and transgressing the one law established for Christian minorities in the late sixth-century Sasanian Empire: they were not supposed to make converts among the Zoroastrian priestly class.99 By crossing that social boundary, and bringing Christianity to the powerful, Ah ̣udemmeh transgressed the rules of the state and advanced toward martyrdom. In Ah ̣udemmeh, the Persian West Syrians, ancestors of the Syrian Orthodox in the Persian Empire, would be able to claim a martyr bishop, just as their East Syrian Dyophysite counterparts had. The Life of Ah ̣udemmeh thus orders a chaotic time of shifting borders and loyalties, between emperor and Christian leaders, and between rival Christianities themselves. The Christian culture of the Life of Ah ̣udemmeh sets Christian order

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against a turbulent landscape to give Miaphysites a more cogent defense of their apostolic legitimacy. I N V E N T I N G A N A P O ST L E : L A B E L S A N D L I N E AG E

By the seventh century, the Miaphysites had set up a center in Tagrit,100 and maintained a relatively independent status from their mother church to the north and west.101 Sasanian Miaphysites had delineated how their Christological position distinguished them from their Dyophysite opponents, both the Church of the East and the Chalcedonians.102 The Life of Ah ̣udemmeh reflects this seventh-century distinction and retrojects it onto the mid-sixth-century narrated context.103 The author expresses his veiled interests in an autonomous jurisdiction for Miaphysites of the Sasanian milieu through his arbitrary use of the word “apostle” as a title for Ah ̣udemmeh. He classifies Ah ̣udemmeh as (1) saint or qadisho, (2) apostle or shlih ̣ o, and (3) holy martyr or sahdo qadisho.104 He arbitrarily attaches the word “apostle” to Ah ̣udemmeh’s name to join a coherent portrait of apostolic monastic stability to the Arabic tribes’ nomadic and seminomadic past.105 The hagiographer likens Ah ̣udemmeh to the apostles Paul and Peter and appeals to their common ascetic practices and martyrdoms: “I wish to occupy myself now with St. Ah ̣udemmeh, who, like Peter and Paul, received the heavenly, exulted and praiseworthy crown of the call from above through asceticism.”106 The text emphasizes the prayers that Ah ̣udemmeh makes to the apostles for support.107 The memory of Ah ̣udemmeh as an apostle is thus crafted through his own selfidentification with them.108 SE A L S , S O L D I E R S , A N D S A N C T I F IC AT IO N

The Syriac narrative idiom shows a preference for typology as a mode of expressing relationships between the human and divine. Baptismal imagery is a marked feature of Syriac missionary stories, beginning with the Acts of Thomas. In the Life of Ah ̣udemmeh, the author builds on a multivalent understanding of baptism as “sealing” or rushmo [rushmā, East Syriac transliteration] to elevate Ah ̣udemmeh’s authority over that of the shah. Andrew Palmer has shown how Syriac storytellers often used the polyvalence of the idea of a “seal” to express how divinity comes to humanity through the material world.109 In the Life of Ah ̣udemmeh, we see this term used in two distinct ways. First, rushmo describes the baptismal anointing that Ah ̣udemmeh bestows on the converted.110 Rushmo also signifies the two brands that the shah impressed on Ah ̣udemmeh’s body: the first when the shah imprisoned Ah ̣udemmeh,111 and the second when the guards branded the head of the decapitated saint.112 Both play with the Syrian understanding of rushmo as symbolizing ownership, and the intersection of the material and immaterial worlds.113

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We have seen throughout this book that hagiographical composition makes the memory of a particular missionary sacred by claiming exclusive communal possession of the saint’s memory in story.114 We read such rhetoric in the Life of Ah ̣udemmeh in the narrative’s wordplay and its inversion of notions of sealing, possession, or enrollment as a soldier of Christ. In its first use of rushmo to signify baptismal “anointing,” liturgical practice seals Bedouin tribes and Sasanian princes together into one community. In its second use as “branding,” the symbol reflects the complexities of conflicting loyalties that face the Sasanian Miaphysites, while simultaneously shrinking them into a bodily tattoo that marks the savageness of the ruler.115 If the missionary motif symbolizes expansion and cultural transformation from barbarism to civilization, the narrative freezes this new order with military imagery: a counterpart to itinerancy that made boundaries and fixed social strata. The Life of Ah ̣udemmeh gives prominence to images of ownership and enrollment of Arabs in the celestial hierarchy. The hagiographer likens the hierarchy of saints to a celestial army,116 thus defining conversion as a means of populating armies for Christianity.117 Although military rhetoric is especially common in Sasanian sacred stories, in the Life of Ah.udemmeh it speaks to the unique conflicts facing the Miaphysite population in Persia:118 people exchanged and displaced between the Sasanians and the Romans and who inhabit territory between the two empires.119 T H E E M E R G E N T SY R IA N O RT HO D OX C H U R C H I N S A S A N IA N M E S O P O TA M IA

The kinship of the Dyophysite Church of the East and the Sasanian Miaphysites,120 both Christian minorities under Sasanian rule, intensified their rivalry.121 The similarity between these Persian Christian groups necessitated a narrative to differentiate them from each other and to classify the Miaphysites as “orthodox,” particularly before the eyes of their non-Christian rulers. As noted at the beginning of this chapter, the Church of the East identified itself as the Christianity of the Sasanian Empire.122 Although the Church of the East experienced a monastic revival under a contemporary of the historical Ah ̣udemmeh, Abraham of Kashkar (fl. 588),123 its members perceived themselves to be threatened by the Miaphysites.124 The two Christian communities competed for converts and the blessing of the shah. The actual involvement of Khusro II (r. 590– 628) in internal conflicts among Christians at the end of the sixth century suggests that we think of the story related in the Life of Ah ̣udemmeh not simply as a pious fiction, but rather as encapsulating the desire of a religious group to compete at a level within its sphere of power: hagiographic composition. The Life of Ah ̣udemmeh focuses on the theme of the conversion of prominent Sasanians from the Church of the East and Magian religions to Miaphysite Christianity,125 a theme that reflects advances of Miaphysite bishops in the Sasanian

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government. Khusro II hired a Miaphysite as his court physician: Gabriel of Sinjar (fl. 612), a prominent convert from the Church of the East.126 He organized a debate before Khusro II against the “Nestorian” George of Izla.127 Khusro II venerated Saints Sergius and Bacchus, the same pair to whom Ah ̣udemmeh consecrates a shrine.128 These connections between Ah ̣udemmeh’s Christianity and the Sasanian court stand in contrast to the hagiography’s pronounced silence concerning the Byzantine court or Chalcedonian church. Unlike the missionaries of John of Ephesus’s Lives, Ah ̣udemmeh’s hagiographers orient their saints, bishops, and monasteries toward the Persian shah, not Constantinople. The Life of Ah ̣udemmeh constitutes an important source in the history of the Syrian Orthodox Church, as it highlights in story form the internal dilemma of the Miaphysites in Persia and their autonomy vis-à-vis their coreligionists in the Roman Empire. The real centers of leadership for the Syriac-speaking Miaphysites were Edessa, Amida, and the monastic communities around Mount Izla, and this hagiography demonstrates how Syrian Orthodox Christians outside of Byzantine territory used hagiography as an expression of their autonomy of jurisdiction. The hagiographer composed a different version of the conversion of Persia than that in the Acts of Mari, focusing not on Seleucia-Ctesiphon, but on Tagrit, the seat of the maphrian or patriarch for the Syrian Orthodox outside of the Roman Empire.129 Ah ̣udemmeh circumscribed his work to the area that became the center of Miaphysite Sasanian Christianity. Tagrit gains prominence at the end of the Life of Ah ̣udemmeh, as the text presents an extensive account of the body of Ah ̣udemmeh and its connection to a monastery called Aqrunto where the saint’s bones come to rest. The bones move from this monastery to Tagrit by stealth. Tagrit and its adjacent monastery gain relics of the saint to share.130 The narrative binds monastic and civic communities together. Ah ̣udemmeh epitomized the “first maphrian,” just as his story projects an idealized relationship between the Miaphysites in Persia and those within the Roman Empire. The two groups shared a clearly defined orthodox lineage, but the Sasanians asserted a separate prestige through their apostle and claimed a distinct martyrological and missiological heritage.131 Like other missionary stories that I have discussed in this book, the Life of Ah ̣udemmeh is a microcosm portraying an idealized view of the past for an entire community. Rhetorical strategies of demonization of Dyophysite Christian churches, both the Chalcedonians and the Church of the East, make the Life of Ah ̣udemmeh the most internally polemical missionary story that we have analyzed. This text demonstrates the distance between the Chalcedonians and the Miaphysites in the early decades of the seventh century and the gradual movement of the Miaphysites toward becoming a separate Syrian Orthodox Church, distinct from the Byzantine Chalcedonian church.

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In Ah ̣udemmeh, the hagiographer crafts a hybrid character, thoroughly Sasanian, yet authentically Miaphysite. Ah ̣udemmeh’s story gives his monks and their descendants a common sacred past and constructs a system to draw them into a clearer relationship with their political and religious friends and competitors. The Life of Ah ̣udemmeh interprets the circumstances of the Miaphysite church in Persia in the early seventh century by crafting an apostolic past for Sasanian Christians who opposed the Nestorianization of northern Mesopotamia. This text portrays an apostle who connects Sasanian Christians to their Byzantine roots in the canonized hagiographic garb of a Syriac missionary, yet who identifies them with the Sasanian political and cultural milieu. The Life of Ah ̣udemmeh denotes and idealizes a new epoch of autonomy for the Miaphysites of Iraq, as it portrayed the church’s separation from the Chalcedonians, its strength in numbers against the Church of the East, and its independence from the Miaphysite see of Antioch.

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Conclusion

The missionary story has a privileged place in Syriac religious and literary memory. The seven missionary narratives examined in this book—the Acts of Thomas, the Teaching of Addai, the Acts of Mari, the Life of Simeon of Beth Arsham, the Life of Jacob Baradaeus (two versions), and the Life of Ah ̣udemmeh—come from areas and authors of divergent political affiliations, cultural habits, and forms of Christianity. Nevertheless, they use similar images and literary conventions to write about their Christian beginnings. Thus we can speak of a Syriac missionary rhetoric, a narrative typology of the Syriac missionary saint, that these texts use to imagine an idealized Christian society. It is an important strand in Syriac literature for understanding how communities of the Miaphysite Syrian Orthodox Church and the Dyophysite Church of the East viewed their past. These missionary stories shaped memories of the past and legitimated the apostolicity and orthodoxy of particular regions, cities, and religious communities. Both the Miaphysites and the Dyophysites advanced their theological agenda by mythologizing their saints, demonizing their religious competitors, and creating associations with political rulers. These narratives offered a means of expression through which they could understand themselves as autonomous churches. The motifs of the missionary story were handed down to them through oral and written traditions, and through the power of associative imagination, they forged their own links to the apostles and the political leaders of the past. Through stories of their apostolic founders, Christian communities paradoxically asserted both their independence and their interconnected history with other Christian churches. Syriac missionary stories exemplify the intertextuality of late antique Christian literature. The third-century Acts of Thomas provides a model of the Syriac 129

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missionary story. The multiple levels of this text, translated back and forth between Syriac and Greek, suggest the popularity of this story among both pre- and postConstantinian Christian groups. This story attributes to Thomas the conversion of the kingdoms of India. It idealizes the trade routes from the eastern Mediterranean to northern India as thoroughfares for wandering apostles. Healing and liturgy resolve the civic disorder that the coming of Christianity brings to the Orient. The Acts of Thomas constitutes a paradigm for missionary stories and hagiographies. In the fifth century, we encounter the Teaching of Addai, an apostolic narrative of the journeys, miracles, and preaching of Addai that mythologizes the coming of Christianity to Edessa. The entire story presents an image of a Christian imperial city, an earthly “Jerusalem” in the Syrian East. King Abgar, whom Addai heals and baptizes, represents an ideal type of a Christian king or emperor. The story “blesses” the city from king to commoner, as it narrates how the apostle regulates civic life through ritual practice and the formation of ascetic communities. This story glosses over the diversity of Edessa’s Christian past as it recounts the conversion of the city en masse. The religious homogeneity of Edessa’s Christian origins as presented in the story provides a defense of orthodoxy for Nicene and Cyrillian Christians of fifth-century Edessa. Christians of Mesopotamia in the Sasanian Empire in the sixth and seventh centuries wrote a separate cycle of missionary stories to promote their heritage. These texts show literary parallels with missionary themes that circulate among Syriac speakers in the Roman Empire. The sixth-century apocryphal narrative the Acts of Mari claims apostolic roots for Dyophysite Sasanian Christians. It sanctifies the see, and thus the bishop, of Seleucia-Ctesiphon for the Church of the East through the invention of an East Syrian missionary saint, Mari, whom Edessa’s patron Addai ordains. While the Acts of Mari joins the Church of the East with the prestige attached to the community in Edessa, the story also serves as propaganda for the East Syrian Church. Its leaders use hagiography to advance their authority; they find in this genre a means of creating a mélange of symbols and motifs to construct a landscape of Christian Mesopotamia. By elevating Mari above his rivals and his teacher Addai, the text elevates the independent authority of the East Syrian Church of the Sasanian Empire. The Acts of Mari presents the monastic communities of Mesopotamia as ancient foundations, and the story promotes the primacy of the catholicate of Seleucia-Ctesiphon. It highlights issues of political loyalty and religious identification for Christians in the Sasanian Empire. With the sixth-century missionary hagiographies from John of Ephesus’s Lives of the Eastern Saints, the book shifts to an analysis of embellished accounts of historical figures, and the complex social realities embedded in the simplicity of these schematized and idealized portraits. John of Ephesus wrote two such missionary stories, one on Simeon of Beth Arsham and one on Jacob Baradaeus. He modeled them according to images of sanctity inherited from his literary past and harmo-

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nized them with the politically dissident religious affiliation of the Miaphysites. These stories came out of a period in which the Miaphysites changed their posture toward the Byzantine (Chalcedonian) Empire and the Persian Empire (whose Christians were members of the Church of the East). Following on the Roman Empire’s espousal of the Chalcedonian Christological formula, West Syrian Miaphysite bishops, many exiled from their sees, established new communities in the borderlands between the Persian and Roman empires. The narration of these missionary efforts provided a chance for John to present his group as Byzantine emissaries rather than imperial dissidents. He himself boasted that he participated as a missionary in Justinian’s campaigns to eradicate remnants of paganism in the Byzantine Empire. The support of the empress Theodora for the Miaphysite cause, in contrast to Justinian’s support of the Chalcedonians, epitomized the delicacy of political loyalties and Christian affiliations for bishops like John of Ephesus, who dissociated themselves from the Chalcedonian formula and its proponents, yet wished to keep a tie to Constantinople. John of Ephesus’s portrait of the missionary bishop Simeon of Beth Arsham, the Persian debater, offers an icon of the shifting boundaries and loyalties of the sixthcentury Miaphysites. In John’s story, we learn how Simeon of Beth Arsham converted tribes of the Arabian Peninsula (Dyophysite, East Syrian Christians) and highborn Sasanian Zoroastrians who became martyrs for the Miaphysite cause. Using the narrative typology of the missionary saint, John describes Simeon’s speed, adaptability, and rhetorical charisma. In writing Simeon’s hagiography, John connects the Miaphysite West Syrians in the Roman Empire with Miaphysites in the Sasanian Empire, and presents the borderlands as a haven for the growth of their burgeoning church. Two hagiographies of Jacob Baradaeus are also associated with John of Ephesus: he is the author of a sixth-century Life, and a longer, more embellished Life from the eighth century is attributed to him. In the shorter life, John of Ephesus remembers Jacob Baradaeus as an itinerant bishop on the run, whose ordinations sustained a dwindling Miaphysite clergy. John portrays Jacob in the image of Thomas, Addai, and the apostle James. The eighth-century Life crystallizes a Miaphysite view of the past and their sixth-century heroes, including both John of Ephesus and Jacob Baradaeus. They remember this century of pain and division also as a time of expansion and heroism. The later Life redefines the pejorative term “Jacobite.” The hagiographies of Jacob Baradaeus epitomize the cogency of the missionary figure for the Syrian Orthodox Church. The eighth-century Life of Jacob evidences a definitive social and religious differentiation between the Chalcedonians and the Miaphysites or Syrian Orthodox. By the time that the text of Jacob’s longer Life is written, Jacob is a hero of the Syrian Orthodox “Jacobite” Church. The saint whose name the Jacobites bore is a missionary saint, an itinerant bishop and monk. His later Life illustrates the authoritative role attributed to Jacob Baradaeus and celebrates the ideals of asceticism and itinerant service that he embodies.

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The final missionary story, the late sixth-/early seventh-century hagiography of Ah ̣udemmeh, “apostle to the Arabs,” focuses on a Miaphysite missionary in a region of Persia in which the Church of the East has flourished. The agenda of this hagiography is to carve out a monastic lineage and apostolic foundation in Sasanian northern Mesopotamia for the West Syrian Miaphysite Church. The story attributes to Ah ̣udemmeh the conversion of the Bedouin Arabic-speaking tribes. The creation and elevation of the saint’s memory advance the pedigree and legitimacy of the West Syrian Miaphysites in the Sasanian Empire. This text challenges the claims of the Church of the East to primacy in the Sasanian Empire. The Life of Ah ̣udemmeh also promotes the independence of the Miaphysite community in the Sasanian Empire and the see of Tagrit. L I T E R A RY PAT T E R N S , NA R R AT I V E T Y P O L O G I E S , A N D I N T E RT E X T UA L I T Y

The Syriac tradition uses missionary stories to craft an apostolic past. These stories freeze a picture of the “missionary life” of their founders. The missionary saint is an emblem of the intersection of human and divine power. Hagiographers use the missionary saint to mythologize Christian society and the Christian city. Their narratives offer entertaining episodes of heroic missionary feats amid conflicts regarding cultural and religious affiliations. By identifying a missionary founder and telling his story, hagiographers strengthen the cohesion of their communities. This becomes especially important for Syriac Christians in the sixth century under circumstances in which political estrangement or propinquity to religious rivals threatens communal claims to orthodoxy and legitimacy. Although these stories emerge from disparate contexts, the similarities in the stories reveal that they are variations on a common theme that is canonized in Syriac sacred stories. Invented relationships of ordination join apostles to one another just as mimesis and Syriac missionary rhetoric link the authors of these stories. Thomas ordains Addai, Addai ordains Mari, Jacob Baradaeus ordains John “bishop of Ephesus,” John recounts Jacob’s ordinations, and the anonymous hagiographer of Jacob’s later life writes in John’s name. All of these missionaries heal; all of them speak with boldness. Their converts were once pagans, Zoroastrians, and other types of Christians. Jewish converts are absent, except for a “Hebrew” flute girl in the Acts of Thomas. Sealing imagery recurs in the Acts of Thomas, the Life of Simeon of Beth Arsham, and the Life of Ah ̣udemmeh as a motif from liturgical practice that embodies the Christian community’s “ownership” of the newly baptized. The missionaries establish networks of social, urban, and monastic or protomonastic centers. The conversion of the imperial or royal household preoccupies these narratives, although no Syriac-speaking church ever becomes the dominant religion of any kingdom or empire. Religious rivals and political lead-

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ers challenge the authority of the holy men or cause their imprisonment or martyrdom. The saints’ suffering raises their status, validates their mission, and attracts followers. The narratives legitimate the missionaries and place them at the apex of a new hierarchy. From Thomas to Ah ̣udemmeh, the stories feature the mythic creation of a sacred landscape, as the missionary transforms his region or city through the establishment of new edifices and institutions. Many of these texts promote asceticism. Syriac foundation myths endorse monastic forms of Christianity.1 The Acts of the Apostles and the example of Paul, as well as the memory of the travels of Thomas, create an intertextual space in which a rhetoric of Syriac missionary legends emerges. In claiming the intertextuality of missionary stories, I have not argued that any particular text is the basis of another story. My project is not focused on “source and influence” but rather on religious memory and the use of narrative typologies in hagiography. The circumstances and ideologies of each story are distinct. Yet the protagonists look like icons of one another, as authors used conventions from the tradition that they received to depict saints, imitating styles, motifs, and mythic forms from the biblical and hagiographic past. Jonathan Culler uses the term “intertextuality” to describe the energy released when authors “rub texts together.”2 His image fits late ancient hagiography. I cannot prove whether John of Ephesus has the text of another hagiographer in his hand as he writes his Lives of Jacob and Simeon. Yet John crafts his stories by “rubbing” his texts together with earlier paradigms, making Jacob Baradaeus itinerant like Thomas, and Simeon of Beth Arsham eloquent before kings like Addai. Hagiographers associate missionaries with expansion, orthodoxy, and strength, and they imagine their stories according to similar patterns. The telling, writing, and reading of the stories solidify, reinforce, and confirm the distinctions among Syriac-speaking Christians, just as the similarities of these stories suggest that their authors may be in dialogue with one another. These narratives use missionary discourse to accentuate differences among religious communities through expressions of Christological affiliations, conflicts with religious competitors, and postures of the missionaries toward their rulers. A similar pattern can be seen in the historical chronicles of Syrian Orthodox Christians from the early eighth century on. Michael Morony notes that history becomes a “vehicle to emphasize sectarian boundaries and to accommodate to Muslim rule.”3 Enumerating the common framing dynamics, similarities, and connections among these stories shows that Syrian Christians created an apostolic past by crafting stories modeled on earlier paradigms. These sacred fictions include a theological layer from the Bible, and thus the stories of the saints echo the narratives of the apostles and the themes of missionary life from the letters of Paul. Andrew Palmer uses an analogy from the world of music to describe how symbols and intertextuality in Syriac literature function.4 Stringed instruments offer a metaphor for the way that symbols work together in Syriac narrative: “The upper

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layer—a story so simple that anyone can reproduce it—may be compared with a single string of the lyre; symbolic meanings are added strings, creating a chord under each note of the clear upper melody; the Bible is a sounding-box, in which the music resonates deeply.”5 Expanding on this metaphor, we might liken the missionary stories to distinct movements within a symphony. Each narrative harmonizes with the next, and we hear a common melodic thread playing throughout these stories. Yet each saint’s life plays a slightly different song, with its own unique key and theme. The common melodic thread or narrative typology of the missionary story comes primarily from the biblical precedents of the Acts of the Apostles and the letters of Paul. The individual timbre of each saint’s story remains. Yet when all the stories are read together, they harmonize. Their distinctions work together in counterpoint. Typically Syriac The stories in this book idealize the Syriac concept of apostolicity or shlih.uyutā.6 The word for “apostle” in Syriac is the same as the word for “missionary, messenger, or emissary” shlih.ā.7 In that sense, to the Syrian ear, all missionaries are “apostles.” Syriac missionary literature evokes the multivalent quality of the word shlih.ā. Missionary saints exist in every ancient Christian tradition. Yet, Thomas, Addai, Mari, Simeon of Beth Arsham, Jacob Baradaeus, and Ah ̣udemmeh typify Syriac Christianity in their idealization of poverty, healing, homelessness, and asceticism. Their missionary stories reflect how Syriac-speaking Christianity spread over the trade routes of the East. Authors sanctified motifs relevant to their merchant culture by attributing holiness to itinerancy. The wanderings of Syrian missionaries orbit around kings. The saint embodies detachment from the world, modeled on Jesus and his apostles. Yet the missionary accommodates his ascetic ideals for the sake of converting the royal household and gaining an entrance to the rest of society. Even if the saint does not win the patronage of the king, he wins the ruler’s attention and earns martyrdom through the ruler’s condemnation. The narratives appeal to the mythic tension between the poles of Christian discipleship and imperial power. A Seamless Past The councils and theological articulations of Nicaea, Ephesus, and Chalcedon set divergences among late antique Christians into high relief. The missionary stories of this book present a uniform view of the past that cleans up the messiness of the religious origins of the Syrians and packages a lineage unbroken and undivided since the time of the apostles. Each community forges a single legend out of many competing accounts. It is arbitrary that some stories remain while others do not. In conceptualizing stories as artifacts of the cultures that produce them, this book’s analysis bridges hagiography and historiography. While we should take care not to attribute too much meaning to these texts, I show that the mode of expres-

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sion of the missionary story establishes legitimacy of origins and orthodoxy for Syriac-speaking Christians. Scholarly interpretations of the process through which the Church of the East and the Syrian Orthodox Church distinguish themselves from the Chalcedonian Byzantine Church must take these texts into account. John of Ephesus mythologizes Jacob Baradaeus and Simeon of Beth Arsham in memorable, schematized, and idealized packages. When we juxtapose his stories with the synodical records from the sixth century, the differences in literary conventions guide us to read John’s stories differently than the acts of a sixth-century council. Such dissimilarity of genre is not lost on ancient readers. Both historical and hagiographical accounts of the same events and actors focus on different details to add verisimilitude to their portrayal of the past. Each genre recollects and disregards certain aspects of the same episodes and thus produces accounts divergent in form and content. This book illustrates how both hagiography and history are necessary for a more accurate portrayal of the sixth-century’s religious landscape of both the Roman and the Sasanian empires. Hagiographers of missionary literature reveal a preoccupation with distinguishing themselves from their rivals. This concern for delineations and boundaries prevails also in historical sources. Both genres establish or relativize differences between Miaphysites and Chalcedonians, the Church of the East and Miaphysites, depending on the agenda of the author. The record of Justinian’s meeting with the Miaphysites and the Chalcedonians in 532, for instance, displays definitions and statements of unity or anathema, painstakingly crafted, as Miaphysite bishops separated themselves from Chalcedonian “synodists.” Similarly in the hagiography of the West Syrians, John of Ephesus focuses on a few details of a saint’s life that join the holy man’s memory to the context of the legend’s circulation. Meticulous articulations of theology as found in historical sources contrast with bold, memorable, hagiographic accounts of a saint’s life. Cities affiliate themselves with the Chalcedonian or Miaphysite position through their communion with particular bishops. Orthodoxy and heresy are conceptualized as something to be “caught” the way the modern mind thinks of catching germs.8 Bishops “infect” their cities with heresy through their relationships to other bishops.9 The Miaphysites claim purity of lineage through their missionary stories. Chalcedonian, Church of the East, and Miaphysite authors circulate competing stories of local saints to defend their orthodoxy. L AT E R T R AJ E C T O R I E S

By the time that the Syrian Orthodox chroniclers Michael the Syrian (1126–99) and Bar ʿEbroyo (1226–86) fashioned their accounts of religious history,10 Syrian Orthodox intellectuals had canonized the memories of John of Ephesus, Severus of Antioch, Jacob Baradaeus, and other Miaphysite leaders.

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The elevated status of such men in the later Syrian Orthodox tradition affects how authors portray them. The Chronicle of Michael the Syrian, for example, draws extensively on John of Ephesus’s Ecclesiastical History for its discussion of the sixth century. As Michael composes and compiles his Chronicle, however, he inscribes his own later, post-Islamic views into the text. Michael represents his forefathers as vigorously, unequivocally Miaphysite. But he knows that sixthcentury bishops never resolve their conflicts over the formula of Chalcedon, and this shapes his presentation.11 In the Refutation of Sa͑ îd ibn-Batriq,12 a Miaphysite defense of Dioscorus by the Coptic patriarch Sāwīrus (Severus) ibn al-Muqaffa͑ (ca. 987),13 al-Muqaffa͑ writes a competing narrative of “Jacobite origins” that circulates in the early centuries of Islam and reveals how the leaders of sister churches of the Copts and the Syrian Orthodox venerate Jacob. Al-Muqaffa͑ presents the arrival of Islam as “liberation” from Byzantine/Chalcedonian rule.14 He characterizes his forefathers, the Miaphysites, as selfless leaders. In his version of the story, the Chalcedonians sought political prestige, but the Miaphysites pursued doctrinal truth and displayed selfless leadership. He strengthens his argument by playing with the etymologies of the labels of the competing Christian churches, “Melkites” and “Jacobites.” Byzantine Chalcedonians in the Islamic Middle East were known as the “Melkites” a name derived from a word meaning “imperial”15 and linked to words like malko, meaning “king” or “ruler.” He argues that the Miaphysite Jacobites never traded their orthodoxy to win favor with the king as the Chalcedonian Melkites did.16 The designations “Jacobite” and “Melkites” thus highlight again the role of the emperor in the identification and self-presentation of rival Christian groups. Whereas in the sixth century the king was an ambivalent symbol in Syriac missionary literature, al-Muqaffa͑ evokes the image of the king to accuse the Chalcedonian Melkites of corruption and infidelity to orthodoxy. His group, he proudly asserts, descends from Jacob Baradaeus, whom al-Muqaffa͑ identifies as an icon of ascetic loyalty whose simple life replicated that of the apostles. • • •

While scholars have analyzed the apostolic Acts and hagiographical texts separately, the contribution of this book, it is my hope, is to establish how Syriac missionary texts work together as a system that authors use to present their history as a harmonious past. Missionary hagiography mythologizes an ideal of a Christian society in which bishop and sovereign cooperate as rulers over their respective domains, and Christians who are in a single orthodox community enjoy the freedom to build monasteries, schools, hospitals, and churches for their people. What, however, do these texts mean for Christians of the Church of the East and Syrian Orthodox Church who lack political sponsorship and support to build autonomous Christian cities and societies? The Syrian Orthodox and East Syrian Dyophysite churches and monasteries are established in areas in which these

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Christians are always a religious minority. Although the hagiographic traditions of the Syrians elevate missionary saints who baptize royal households and build Christian strongholds, in reality the Syriac bishops living in the Roman and Persian empires do not convert kings. There is no sacred city of Jerusalem or imperial stronghold like Constantinople that the Syrian churches can claim. They use hagiography, however, to carve a place for themselves in the landscape of northern Mesopotamia and the lineage of its apostolic founders. Syriac missionary stories provide a lens for understanding how the intellectuals of the hierarchy of the Miaphysite West Syrian and Dyophysite East Syrian churches presented themselves as distinct bodies. By tracing how Syriac missionary literature created apostolic memories and served to legitimize their orthodoxy, this book shows that sacred fictions and their literary symbols map out shifts in the value systems of the communities that produce them. As Christians of the Byzantine Empire were isolated from their counterparts and rivals living under Muslim rule, Syrian Orthodox authors of the middle and late Byzantine period elevated the heroes of the sixth century whom they identified as founders. Hagiography and apostolic legend are rich sources for understanding the diversification of late antique Syriac Christianity. The idealized presentations of missionary legends from the third through the fifth century give Syriac authors from the sixth through eighth century a shared memory of how their ancestors answered Jesus’s injunction to baptize in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.17

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1. John of Ephesus, Life of Simeon the Bishop, 137. 2. Harvey, Asceticism and Society in Crisis, 35–37. 3. John of Ephesus, “Preface,” 4. 4. Harvey, Asceticism and Society in Crisis, 40. 5. Hansen, “Acts of Witnessing,” 45–46. 6. See Milburn, Early Christian Art and Architecture, 237–38. 7. John of Ephesus, Life of James, 489–90 (691–92). 8. See Marquis, Transient Apostle, 13. 9. Conzelmann, Acts of the Apostles, xxxiii. 10. For a collection of these texts, see New Testament Apocrypha. 11. Czachesz, Commission Narratives, 92. 12. Johnson, “Apostolic Geography.” 13. For pilgrimage and the creation of religious memory in late antiquity, see Frank, Memory of the Eyes. 14. Brown, Cult of the Saints, 12–14. 15. Murray, Symbols of Church and Kingdom, esp. 1–40 and 159–204; and Brock, Luminous Eye, esp. 13–84. 16. Palmer, “Logos of the Mandylion,” 127. 17. Ibid. 18. Payne, “Christianity and Iranian Society,” 43. 19. Lincoln, Theorizing Myth, 77–78. 20. Ibid., 149.

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NOTES to pages 7–9

21. For narrative typology, see Bodman, Poetics of Iblis, 59–95. Wood also focuses on the role of kings and imperial discourse in Miaphysite Syriac narratives and hagiographies; see Wood, “We Have No King but Christ.” 22. Menze, Justinian and the Making of the Syrian Orthodox Church, 6. 23. See Eusebius, Life of Constantine, trans. Cameron and Hall. For the Greek, see Eusebius, Vita Constantini, ed. Winkelmann. 24. See Ayres, Nicaea and Its Legacy, 167–69. See the discussion by Brock, “Eusebius and Syriac Christianity,” 212–34. 25. See Daley, “Building the New City.” See also Bowersock, Julian the Apostate. See Ephrem the Syrian, Hymns against Julian, in McVey trans., Ephrem the Syrian: Hymns, 219–58. For the Syriac, Hymnen de Paradiso et Contra Julianum, ed. and trans. Beck, CSCO 174–75/Scr. Syr. 78–79. 26. See Griffith, “Ephraem the Syrian’s Hymns ‘Against Julian’,” 241. Griffith cites Murray, Symbols of Church and Kingdom, 110–11. See Ephrem the Syrian, Des hl. Ephraem des Syrers Hymnen de Paradiso et Contra Iulianum, ed. Beck, CSCO 174/Scr. Syr. 78, 67–70. 27. See Seven Ecumenical Councils of the Undivided Church, trans. Percival, in Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers 14, ed. Schaff and Wace, 192–242. 28. Grillmeier, ““Die theologische und sprachliche Vorbereitung,” 5–202, esp. 164–76. 29. See Daley, “Christ and Christologies.” 30. See Acts of the Council of Chalcedon, trans. Price and Gaddis. This edition is based on the Greek text published in Schwartz, ACO II. 1 with supplements from the ancient Latin version in Schwartz, ACO II. 3. 31. See Lebon, Le monophysisme severien; Lebon, “La christologie du monophysisme syrien,” 425–580. 32. See Torrance, Christology after Chalcedon; see also Lebon, “La christologie du monophysisme syrien.” 33. This was championed at the so-called Robber Council of 449, orchestrated by Eutyches, Bars. auma of Nisibis, and Dioscorus. See Grillmeier, Christ in the Christian Tradition, 1:525–26. See also Evagrius, Ecclesiastical History of Evagrius Scholasticus, trans. Whitby, 1:9–10, 26–29. For Greek text, see Evagrius, Ecclesiastical History, ed. Bidez and Parmentier; and Zachariah, Bishop of Mitylene, Syriac Chronicle known as That of Zachariah of Mitylene, trans. Hamilton and Brooks. 34. See Allen and Hayward, Severus of Antioch. 35. See Gray, “Legacy of Chalcedon,” 225–26. 36. Frend, Rise of the Monophysite Movement, 185 n. 6. See Michelson, Practical Christology of Philoxenos of Mabbug. 37. Frédéric Alpi’s book La route royale, which traces the episcopate of Severus in Antioch, is invaluable and organizes all the pertinent documents connected to Severus’s patriarchate. Severus’s texts, as Alpi demonstrates, present a wealth of information for the social and religious history of the early sixth century. 38. See, for example, John of Ephesus, Life of Simeon the Bishop, 137. 39. Justin I abandoned the Henotikon of 482, a formula intended to reconcile the Chalcedonians and the Miaphysites. 40. See Menze, Justinian and the Making of the Syrian Orthodox Church. Menze’s book focuses on the period 518–53; for the vacillating affiliations of Justin I, see esp. 21–25.

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41. Van Rompay, “Society and Community,” 255. 42. Honigmann, Évêques et évêchés, 159. 43. John of Ephesus, Ecclesiastical History, trans. Smith, 150. For the Syriac text, see Iohannis Ephesini Historiae ecclesiasticae pars tertia, ed. and trans. Brooks, CSCO 105–6/54–55. 44. Van Rompay, “Society and Community,” 255. See also Harvey, Asceticism and Society in Crisis, 57–75. 45. Bacht, “Die Rolle des orientalischen Mönchtums.” 46. See Harvey, “Theodora the ‘Believing Queen’ ”; and Browning, Justinian and Theodora, 178–81. See also Baldwin, “Prokopius of Caesarea.” For the Greek, see Procopii Caesariensis, Opera omnia, ed. Haury; for an English translation, Procopius, trans. Dewing. 47. See Debié, “Syriac Historiography and Identity Formation”; and Wood, “We Have No King but Christ,” esp. 163–208. 48. See Van Ginkel, John of Ephesus, 16–23. 49. The earliest account of a Persian martyr dates to the reign of Vahran II (274–91), but the text itself is from the fifth century. See “Martyr at the Sasanid Court,” ed and trans. Brock. According to the “Myth of Constantine” by Eusebius of Caesarea, Constantine wrote a letter to Shapur II asking that he grant protection or toleration of Christians in Persia. See Eusebius, Life of Constantine, 4.8–13. For context, see Bowman, Garnsey, and Cameron, Crisis of Empire, 104–6. See also Walker, Legend of Mar Qardagh, 111. For an excellent introduction to the Acts of the Persian Martyrs, see Brock, History of the Holy Mar Maʿin. See also Smith, “Constantine and Judah the Maccabee,” 16–33. 50. Walker, “From Nisibis to Xi’an,” 1001. 51. The Church of East was called “Nestorian” by its detractors, although its theology was indebted not to Nestorius, but rather to Theodore of Mopsuestia. See Brock, “The ‘Nestorian’ Church: a Lamentable Misnomer.” 52. See Winkler and Baum, Church of the East, 53–54. 53. See Payne, “Christianity in Iranian Society,” 8. 54. See Fiey, Jalons, passim; see also Fiey, Communautés syriaques en Iran et Iraq. 55. Thomson, “Mission, Conversion, and Christianization.” 56. For the Latin missionary stories, see Wood, Missionary Life. 57. Engelkerdt, Mission und Politik in Byzanz. 58. Debié, “Syriac Historiography and Identity Formation,” 95. 59. Schilling, Die Anbetung der Magier und die Taufe der Sasaniden. 60. Ibid., 10–11. 61. Ibid., 12–17. 62. I do not treat Syriac Chalcedonian texts in this book. 63. Menze, Justinian and the Making of the Syrian Orthodox Church, 10. 64. See Acta conciliorum oecumenicorum, ed. Schwartz. For the synods of the Sasanian Church of the East, see Synodicon orientale, ed. and trans. Chabot. 65. Delehaye, Legends of the Saints. See also T. Head, “An Introductory Guide to Research in Medieval Hagiography,” http://www.the-orb.net/encyclop/religion/hagiography/guide1 .htm. 66. Nau, Histoire d’Ahoudemmeh et de Maroutha. 67. Harvey, Asceticism and Society in Crisis; Brock and Harvey, Holy Women of the Syrian Orient.

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68. Brock, “Saints in Syriac”; Brock and Harvey, Holy Women of the Syrian Orient. 69. Amar, Syriac Vita Tradition of Ephrem the Syrian. 70. Harrak produced an edition and translation of both the Acts of Mari and the Chronicle of Zuqnin, which shares many features of hagiography. See Harrak, Acts of Mar Mari; Harrak, Chronicle of Zuqnin. 71. I discuss Palmer’s analysis of the Greek Acts of Thaddeus and the Syriac milieu below. 72. A. Bingelli, ed. L’hagiographie syriaque, esp. 3–7. 73. Cameron, Christianity and the Rhetoric of Empire, esp. 89–119. 74. I have tried to follow the guidelines for transliteration of Syriac words provided in the Gorgias Encyclopedia of the Syriac Heritage, [GEDESH], x, with some modifications. Syriac consonants are transliterated as ʾ, b, g, d, h, w, z, h ̣ , ̣t , y, k, l, m, n, s, ʿ , p, ̣s , q, r, sh (not “š” as listed in GEDESH), t. In the case of personal names, I have generally preferred the more familiar anglicized version, hence “Jacob Baradaeus” instead of “Yaʿqub Burdʿoyo.” In the case of place names, I have generally followed the spelling from GEDESH and the Syriac Gazetteer from syriaca. org: http://syriaca.org: (http://syriaca.org/geo/browse.html). I have used both East and West Syriac transliteration systems. For East Syriac words, vowels are transliterated a for short a, ā for long a, e for short e, i for long e, o for o, and u for u. For West Syriac, vowels are transliterated a, o, e, i, u.  I have used the East Syriac vowel system for Syriac words taken from texts that date before the sixth century (the Acts of Thomas and Teaching of Addai) as well as the Acts of Mari, produced by East Syriac Christians. The Syriac words coming from the hagiographies and texts of John of Ephesus and Ah.udemmeh are transliterated according the West Syriac vowel system. 75. See Van Rompay, “Society and Community.” See also Gray, “Legacy of Chalcedon.” 1 . S A I N T T HOM A S , M I S SIO NA RY A P O S T L E T O I N D IA

1. For the Greek text of the Acts of Thomas, see Drijvers, Acts of Thomas, in New Testament Apocrypha, ed. Schneemelcher, 2:322–411. For an English translation of the Syriac text, see Klijn, Acts of Thomas. In this chapter, I have translated the Syriac version of the Acts of Thomas from Wright, Apocryphal Acts of the Apostles, 1:171ff., 2:146ff. The numbers that I cite are the chapter numbers of the text. Klijn also used Wright’s edition of the text for his English translation; my chapter numbers correspond to those in Klijn’s English translation. This text is based on the MS British Museum, Add. 14645, dated to 936 c.e., which is a Syriac translation of the Greek text that has been lengthened in some sections, including chap. 113, “Song of Praise of Thomas the Apostle.” See Klijn, Acts of Thomas, 16. As Drijvers and Klijn have noted, this text represents a catholicizing revision, but preserves much of the original Syriac. See Drijvers, Acts, 323; and Klijn, Acts, 1–17. 2. Acts of Thomas 1. Whether North or South India is meant, or a combination of these, remains unclear. Other traditions attach the apostle Bartholomew to India. See Jullien and Jullien, Apôtres des confins, 20. 3. In addition to an English translation, Klijn produced a commentary on the Syriac version of the Acts of Thomas: see Klijn, Acts of Thomas. Bremmer edited a volume of essays on the Acts of Thomas, including an essay of his own: see Bremmer, Apocryphal Acts of

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Thomas. Drijvers produced an English translation of the Greek text: see Drijvers, Acts of Thomas. For a full scholarly review of Thomas literature, see the introduction to Klijn’s edition of the Acts, esp. 13–26; the essays in Bremmer, Apocryphal Acts of Thomas; and Drijvers, Acts of Thomas. 4. See Drijvers, Acts, 323 n. 1; also Attridge, “Original Language of the Acts of Thomas,” 250; Klijn, “Acts of Thomas Revisited,” 4 n. 16. 5. Childers, “Thomas, Acts of,” 410. 6. Ibid. 7. Acts of Thomas 1–3. Thomas tells Jesus that he does not want to go to India because he is a humble Hebrew. Jesus assures the apostle that grace will accompany him to India. 8. Acts of Thomas 12. This might allude to the merchant in the Bible who bought the pearl, a symbol for the kingdom of heaven. “Again, the kingdom of heaven is like unto a merchant man, seeking goodly pearls: Who, when he had found one pearl of great price, went and sold all that he had, and bought it.” Matt. 13:45–46. See Drijvers, Acts of Thomas, 326. 9. Acts of Thomas 4. “The apostle landed in India, the kingdom of Gundophar, at the port Sandrôkh, a slight clerical error for Sindrôdh, the river ‘Sindh’, hence modern Karachi, old Diabul.” Herzfeld, Archeological History of Iran, 61–62. 10. See Tissot, “Les Actes apocryphes de Thomas.” See also Klijn’s introduction to Acts of Thomas, 1–16. 11. Acts of Thomas 34. 12. Acts of Thomas 48–49. 13. Matt. 28:8–20; Mark 16:9–20; Luke 24:13–49; John 20:11–21:25. 14. Acts of Thomas 119–20. 15. Acts of Thomas 93–94. 16. Acts 5:17–26. 17. Drijvers, Acts, 323. 18. This is an image from Phil. 2:11. 19. Gen. 37:25–36. Joseph is also seen as a type of Christ in Christian biblical interpretation. See, for instance, the typological analogy drawn between the suffering and endurance of Joseph and Jesus in the writings of the fourth-century bishop Ambrose of Milan (339– 97). See J. Newman, “Joseph,” in Kessler and Wenborn, eds., A Dictionary of Jewish-Christian Relations, 241–42. 20. Acts of Thomas 107. 21. See Hock et al., Ancient Fiction and Early Christian Narrative. See esp. Thomas, “Stories without Texts and without Authors.” 22. Teixidor, “L’apôtre d’après la littérature syriaque.” 23. Drijvers, Acts, 325. 24. Acts of Thomas 12–13, 98–99, 55–56, 34–39. 25. See Murray, Symbols of Church and Kingdom; Brock, Luminous Eye. 26. For example, Thomas resurrects a dead boy; Acts of Thomas 30–31. 27. Acts of Thomas 11. 28. See especially Acts of Thomas 11–12 and 117. 29. Matt. 4:19. 30. Acts of Thomas 1–3.

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31. Thus Mygdonia notes: “This is the feast of corruption, and that the feast of eternal life. Those were the bridesmaids and groomsmen that pass away, but these are the groomsmen and bridesmaids that are betrothed forever.” Acts of Thomas 123. 32. See Acts of Thomas 47, 50, 79–80; 28, 35–37, 53, 80, 136; 76, 97–98, 120, 121, and esp. 124. 33. Acts of Thomas 40, 32. 34. Acts of Thomas 32. 35. Acts of Thomas 38. 36. So also Thomas endures a blow to the cheek from the serving man, as the servile Hebrew flute girl identifies him as one from her country. Acts of Thomas 7–8, 17–18. 37. Acts of Thomas 34. 38. See Murray, Symbols of Church and Kingdom, 132. 39. This is a poetic section of the Acts of Thomas that circulated independently from the rest of the text. See Poirier, L’hymne de la perle. The hymn is transmitted in one Syriac MS (British Museum, Add. 14645) and one Greek MS (Rome, Bibliotheca Vallicelliana, B 35). It probably also circulated independently under the name of Judas Thomas, and is therefore an important element in the Syriac missionary tradition. This didactic poem conflates and interprets the parables of the prodigal son and the pearl of great price. Luke 15:11–32; Matt. 13:45–46. See also Drijvers, Acts, 330–31. 40. Drijvers, Acts, 331. 41. Thomas prays or is said to be praying at least twenty-two times in the text: Acts of Thomas 3, 10, 20, 29, 34, 53, 54, 67, 88, 94, 104, 108, 115, 117, 141, 144, 145, 156, 157, 160, 167, and 170. 42. The pearl and toga are symbolic of his royal birth. Acts of Thomas 108–10. 43. Acts of Thomas 116. 44. Acts of Thomas 109, 6–7. 45. Similarly the Persian Christian Aphrahat urges his community of celibates in the fourth century to follow the model of Christ’s homelessness: “My friend, let us accept the pattern of our Lifegiver. Though he was rich he made himself poor, and though he was exalted he humbled his greatness. Though his dwelling-place was on high, he had no place to lay his head. Though he will come on the clouds, he rode on a colt and entered Jerusalem. Though he is God and Son of God, he took on the likeness of a servant. Though he brought rest from all labours, he was wearied from the work of the journey. Though he was a fount that quenched thirst, he grew thirsty and asked for water to drink.” Aphrahat, Demonstration 6.9, trans. Lehto, 185. I am led to these references by Caner, Wandering, Begging Monks, 81. 46. See Caner, Wandering, Begging Monks, 77–82. 47. See Caner, Wandering, Begging Monks, 59. 48. Acts of Thomas 21, 24. 49. See Harvey, “Holy and the Poor.” 43–66. 50. Acts of Thomas 16–17. 51. Acts of Thomas 11–12. 52. Acts of Thomas 16. 53. Acts of Thomas 106–9. 54. Acts of Thomas 98–99. 55. See Drijvers, “Apocryphal Literature,” 233. 56. Namely, the father of the bride and groom (Acts of Thomas 13), Gundaphorus (Acts of Thomas 17–81, passim), and Mazdai (Acts of Thomas 82–170).

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57. Bible: righteous prophet versus wicked king or queen (i.e., 1 Kings 21, Elijah before Naboth and Jezebel); Jesus versus Pilate (John 18:28–19:16). Nonbiblical: philosopher or poet versus the king or emperor, as in Alexander the Great and Diogenes the Cynic of Sinope. See Diogenes Laertius, Lives of Eminent Philosophers, vol. 2, 6.32. 58. This is a motif that becomes normative in late antique Christian discourse. See Brown, Power and Persuasion in Late Antiquity. 59. Acts of Thomas 139. 60. Both kings required extra persuasion to be converted in comparison to the women and laity in the text. Herzfeld suggests that if there was an historical personage linked to the contemporary king of Iran and “enemy of Christian propaganda,” it might have been Gotarzes II Gewpuhr: “Gotarzes’ son Wezhan and his wife Manezha, the heroines of the love-romance of the Shahname, in the Acts of Thomas are living at the court of Gundopharr.” Herzfeld, Archeological History of Iran, 62. 61. There are several examples of this. Thomas helps the poor, Jesus is described as poor, and the poor are the first beneficiaries of divine blessings. See Thomas’s prayer in the bridal chamber; Acts of Thomas 10. Thomas builds a temple for the poor; Acts of Thomas 19. Thomas prays after he casts out the demon who raped a girl: “Jesus, poor man and hook of fish for the banquet and the feast, satisfying many ships from a small harbor.” Acts of Thomas 47. 62. Acts of Thomas 39. 63. Acts of Thomas 37. 64. See Brock, “Early Syriac Asceticism.” 65. Acts of Thomas 21–24. 66. The ubiquity and number of times that these words are used in the text evidences their pervasiveness. King/kingdom: malkā / malkutā occurs 150 times. 67. Apostle: shlih.ā; the authors, however, identify him as the “Apostle of the New God.” This word “apostle” occurs 127 times in the Syriac text. “Thomas” occurs 35 times, and Judas 20 (he is often Judas Thomas). This word also means “messenger, emissary, or missionary.” In that sense, as I mention in the conclusion of this book, all “missionaries” in Syriac could be called “apostles.” 68. Merchant: tagārā. This word occurs 19 times. 69. Stranger: nukrāyā. This word occurs 23 times, or the translated Greek, xenios, aksenāyā. appears. 70. Healer: āsyā : This word occurs 51 times. 71. Announce/preach: kraz. This word occurs 25 times. 72. Freedom/free: h.͗ erutā/h.͗ erārā: This word occurs 49 times. 73. Teach the faith: tālmed. This word occurs 10 times. 74. Redeem: shabaq. This word occurs 17 times. 75. Stand: qām. This word occurs 60 times. 76. Praise: shubh.ā. This word occurs 79 times. 77. Acts of Thomas 113. 78. An exception is John of Ephesus’s Life of Simeon of Beth Arsham. However, he uproots heresy, which is represented as a type of sickness or disease; see chapter 5. 79. The Syriac version of Thomas’s prayer reads: “Rather, believe and hope in the Lord Jesus Christ whom we are proclaiming, and live with him forever. He will be for you a harbor in a troubled sea and a source of living water in the place of thirst and he will be for you

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a full basket in the place of famine and he will be for you life for your souls. And he will be healing and life for your bodies.” Acts of Thomas 37. The phrase “healing and life for your bodies” is absent from the Greek text. See Klijn, Acts of Thomas, 105. 80. See Shemunkasho, Healing in the Theology of St. Ephrem, 25–44. Susan Ashbrook Harvey has written extensively on this theme. See Harvey, “Embodiment in Time and Eternity”; see also her article “Healing the Christian Body: An Ancient Syriac Theme.” Harvey discusses the olfactory character of the healing theme in her book Scenting Salvation, esp. 36, 69, 74, 90–92, 120, 147–50, 202–19. 81. This is a commonplace generic to all in the genre of apostolic Acts narratives. As a specific example in the Acts, Thomas resurrected a boy whom a snake had bitten; Acts of Thomas 30. 82. This is especially true of the missionary stories the Teaching of Addai and the Life of Simeon of Beth Arsham. See chapters 2 and 5. 83. Acts of Thomas 26–27. 84. The general of the king prays: “I believe in you Jesus Christ, God, who are the living Son of God. You became man and appeared as healer and life-giver and savior for all who converted to you in truth.” Acts of Thomas 65. 85. The bride, who chooses Christianity over sexual intercourse, tells her mother that the “veil of corruption” has been lifted away from her; Acts of Thomas 14. 86. Acts of Thomas 56. 87. Acts of Thomas 42–43 and 52. 88. The language of sealing is important in the baptismal formula. See Acts of Thomas 52–54. 89. Acts of Thomas 84–85. 90. For correlation of the rituals in the Acts of Thomas with Syriac practices, see Klijn, “Ancient Syriac Baptismal Liturgy.” 91. Acts of Thomas 27. 92. Acts of Thomas 132–33. 93. Acts of Thomas 5. Likewise later in the text the newly baptized are initiated with oil: “While he [Thomas] said these things he placed oil on their heads and said, ‘Praise to you, merciful fruit! Praise to you name of Christ! Praise to you, hidden power released in Christ.’ He said this, and they brought a great tub and baptized them in the name of the Father and Son and Holy Spirit.” Acts of Thomas 132. 94. Acts of Thomas 29, 49–50, 133–34. The Eucharist is called sorcery or magic by Thomas’s detractors, like King Mazdai; Acts of Thomas 152. 95. Mygdonia plays the part of deaconess as she baptizes the women; Acts of Thomas 157. 96. For the Eucharist performed in prison, see Acts of Thomas 121. 97. Klijn, “Acts of Thomas Revisited,” esp. 7. See also Layton, Gnostic Scriptures, 357–409; Poirier, “Evangile de Thomas, Actes de Thomas, Livre de Thomas”; Klijn, “John XIV 22.” 98. Sellew, “Thomas Christianity.” 99. Acts of Thomas 2. 100. See also Colless, “Traders of the Pearl.” 101. See Klijn, “Der Einfluss der politischen Lage.” See also Bremmer, “Acts of Thomas: Place, Date, and Women.” 102. Parker, Making of Roman India, 6. See also Harrison, Greeks and Barbarians, 295–96.

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103. See Parker, Making of Roman India, 2. 104. All of this, as Drijvers notes, “is in harmony with the image of Parthia as the missionary field of Judas Thomas, and with an origin of the Hymn in Edessa, the daughter of Parthia.” Drijvers, Acts, 332. 105. Eusebius, HE 3.1.1. See Junod, “Origène, Eusèbe et la tradition sur la répartition.” 106. Bremmer, “Acts of Thomas: Place, Date, and Women,” 77. See also Van den Bosch, “India and the Apostolate of St. Thomas.” 107. “Gondophores’ dynasty represented the house of Suren, highest of the five premier families of Arsacid Iran, invested with the hereditary right of commanding the royal armies, and placing the crown on the king’s head at the coronation.” Bivar, “Gondophores”; Konow, Corpus Inscriptionum Indicarum II/1, 57–62, esp. 62. See also Dihle, “Neues zur Thomastradition,” 54–70; Dihle, “Conception of India.” 108. Young, Rome’s Eastern Trade, 14. 109. Ibid., 17. 110. Ibid. 111. Ibid., 5–6. See Casson, Periplus Maris Erythraei. 112. Young, Rome’s Eastern Trade, 28. 113. Ibid., 187. 114. Ibid., 136 and 142. 115. Amm. Marc. 14.4. 3, as cited and trans. by Young, Rome’s Eastern Trade, 188. 116. Jacob of Serug, “Memra on the Apostle Thomas, when he argued with the Lord and his disciples, ‘I am not going to India’ ”; “Memra on the Apostle Thomas, when he is sold by our Lord to the merchant Habban and the cup-bearer who hit him”; and “Memra on the Palace on high that the Apostle Thomas built.” See Syriac edition with German translation in Strothmann, Jakob von Sarug. 117. Young, Rome’s Eastern Trade, 190–94. 118. Drijvers, “Apocryphal Literature,” 235. 119. Bardais.an wrote about this, and Porphyry used his work. Porphyry, Fragments of Greek History III, C 719, F.1. Drijvers, Bardaisan of Edessa, 10, 173–75, 218. 120. For the bilingual environment of the Acts of Thomas, see Layton, Gnostic Scriptures, 364. 121. The creation of the apostle’s genealogy began with the text’s classification of Thomas for India. See Acts of Thomas 12 and 16–17. 122. See Van den Bosch, “India and the Apostolate of St. Thomas.” 123. Acts of Thomas 170. See Dihle, “Neues zur Thomas-Tradition,” 61. 124. Ephrem, Carm. Nis. 42, ed. and trans. Beck, CSCO 102–3, 37–40 (Syriac) and 28–31 (German); and Egeria, Itin. Eger. 17.1; 19.3. Garitte, “La passion arménienne de S. Thomas.” See Drijvers, Acts, 325. 125. Egeria, Itin. Eger. 19.2. See Itinerarium Egeriae, ed. and trans. Maraval. See also Wilkinson, Egeria’s Travels, 224–25; Caner, Wandering, Begging Monks, 57. 126. The narrative of the “Martyrdom of Judas Thomas” appears for the first time in the Acts of Thomas and goes on to enjoy independent circulation. See Drijvers, Acts, 325. 127. I am not assuming that the traditions started in India or Edessa, nor do I think that the order or direction of the exchanges of narratives can be determined. The stories are probably oral in their earliest phases. The earliest “absolut unbezweifelbare Erwähnung

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südindischer Christengemeinde” is from Kosmas Indikopleustes (sixth century). See Dihle, “Neues zur Thomas-Tradition,” 63. 128. Acts of Thomas 94. 2 . T H E T E AC H I N G OF A DD A I : F OU N D I N G A C H R I ST IA N C I T Y

1. The first English translation of this text was Phillips, Doctrine of Addai, the Apostle. For this edition with a new English version, see Howard, ed. and trans., Teaching of Addai. I use the Syriac text of this edition. Unless otherwise noted, translations are my own. For an excellent edition with extremely useful footnotes, biblical references, and MS history, and a French translation, see Desreumaux, Histoire du roi Abgar et de Jesus. For a review of the scholarly status questionis, see Drijvers, “Abgar Legend.” 2. See Barnard, “Origins and Emergence of the Church”; see also Drijvers, “Edessa and Jewish Christianity.” 3. Brock, “Transformations of the Edessa Portrait,” 48. 4. Teaching of Addai, 8 (Syriac). 5. See Howard, Teaching of Addai, vii. 6. Teaching of Addai, 8, 10 (Syriac). 7. See Cameron, “History of the Image of Edessa”; and Cameron, “The Sceptic and the Shroud.” See also Runciman, “Some Remarks on the Image of Edessa.” 8. The historical kings of Edessa, as Segal notes, ruled through a council of elders similar to Arab tribal chieftains. The kings of Edessa had a group of confidants known as the sharrire. See Segal, Edessa, 17–20. 9. See Griffith, “Doctrina Addai as a Paradigm.” See also Wood, “We Have No King but Christ,” 82–95. 10. Bauer, Orthodoxy and Heresy in Earliest Christianity, ed. and trans. Kraft and Krodel, 1–43. 11. On the religions of Edessa, see Drijvers, “Persistence of Pagan Cults.” 12. See Segal, Edessa; Drijvers, “Edessa and Jewish Christianity.” 13. Segal, Edessa, 3. 14. Carlson and Michelson, “Euphrates.” 15. Butcher, Roman Syria, 32. 16. Bauer, Orthodoxy and Heresy, 27. 17. Drijvers, “Edessa and Jewish Christianity,” 6. 18. Castelli, Martyrdom and Memory, 30. 19. Matt. 8:1, 13:2, 14:13, 15:30, 19:2; Matt. 26:3–5; Mark 3:6; 11:18; John 11:47—these are from only two pages of the text (4 and 6). Biblical allusions are on nearly every page. I was not aware of their prevalence (some are paraphrased) until I read Desreumaux’s translation. 20. Teaching of Addai, 8 (Syriac). 21. See Burkitt, Euphemia and the Goth, Analecta Gorgiana 57, esp. sections 27, 31, and 40. 22. Teaching of Addai, 102–4. 23. Harrak, “Edessa,” 138. 24. Wardle, “Abgarids.” See also Brock, “Eusebius and Syriac Christianity.” See also the discussion in Wood, “We Have No King but Christ,’’ 82–100.

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25. See Lincoln, Theorizing Myth, 3–25. 26. Teaching of Addai, 64. 27. See Palmer, “King Abgar of Edessa.” See also Cameron, Christianity and the Rhetoric of Empire, 68–74. 28. See Debié, “Syriac Historiography and Identity Formation,” 99–101. 29. See Daley, “Building the New City.” 30. On the different versions of the legends of Protonike, see Drijvers, “Protonike Legend.” See also Wood, “Syriac and Syrians,” 178; Wood, “We Have No King but Christ,’’ 101–10. 31. Teaching of Addai, 10–17. 32. See Eusebius, Life of Constantine, 3.25–30. 33. See Eusebius, Life of Constantine, 4.42–47. 34. Drijvers, “Protonike Legend,” 301. 35. Ibid., 304. 36. 2 Cor. 11:7–11. “I did not acquire anything in the world. The Word that made me rich was sufficient for me.” Teaching of Addai, 92. For the significance of Paul working with his hands, see Hock, Social Context of Paul’s Ministry. 37. Segal notes: “The legend of the correspondence between Abgar and Jesus became famous throughout Christendom. In the course of time it received various accretions. Probably the earliest was a sentence attached to ‘the letter of Jesus’: ‘Your city shall be blest and no enemy shall ever be master of it.’ ” Segal notes that this blessing was not known to Eusebius or Ephrem the Syrian, but it was known to Augustine (mentioned in a letter from 429) and to Jacob of Serug (451–521). The sixth-century chronicle of Joshua the Stylite, finally, “considers [the blessing’s] effectiveness proved by the ignominious withdrawal of the Persian king Kawad from the siege of Edessa in 503.” Segal, Edessa, 73. 38. Teaching of Addai, 44; Mark 6:11; Luke 9:5; 10:11. 39. Teaching of Addai, 62. 40. To borrow the spatial terminology of J. Z. Smith, Addai brings the religions of the “here,” the sphere of domestic religions, into contact with the “there” of public, civic, and state religions. See Smith, “Here, There, Anywhere,” esp. 23. 41. See Cameron, Christianity and the Rhetoric of Empire, 155–88. 42. Teaching of Addai, 16. 43. Teaching of Addai, 94 and 96. 44. Teaching of Addai, 96. 45. Teaching of Addai, 80. 46. Teaching of Addai, 98. 47. Teaching of Addai, 8. 48. Teaching of Addai, 8. 49. Teaching of Addai, 22. 50. Teaching of Addai, 22. 51. Teaching of Addai, 32. 52. The cults of Bel and Nebo were diffused among the Aramaean populations of the Near East up to Elephantine and are attested in the Roman period up to Palmyra and northern Syria. Bel and Nebo are the chief gods before the Christian God. They are mentioned in the Acts of the Martyr Sharbil. Desreumaux, Histoire, 120–21. 53. For more on the pagan cults of this area, see Desreumaux, Histoire, 84 n. 110.

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54. Taratha is female divinity of fertility known in Greek by the name of Atargartis. She had a strong cult in Hierapolis and is attested in Edessa. Bardais.an said that this cult was forbidden by Abgar. Desreumaux, Histoire, 132–33. 55. Desreumaux, Histoire, 84 n. 112. 56. The first star preceding the sun, called Al ‘Ouzza by the Arabs, whose cult is in Nabatea, is identified with Venus. 57. Teaching of Addai, 24. See Drijvers, “Protonike Legend,” 305. 58. See Teaching of Addai, 24. 59. Teaching of Addai, 44: “Do not delight in the evil habits of the pagans, your fathers. Do not distance yourself from the life of holiness and truth in Christ.” 60. Teaching of Addai, 18. 61. Teaching of Addai, 46. 62. Teaching of Addai, 36. 63. For the Jewish community of late ancient Edessa, see Segal, Edessa, 100–104. 64. The fourth-century Syrian hymnist Ephrem the Syrian wrote against many of these groups, including the Bardais.anites, Marcionites, and Arians. See Griffith, “Doctrina of Addai as a Paradigm,” [36]. 65. The Edessans had not always been oriented to Rome. When the Seleucids were divided between Rome and Parthia, Osrhoene lay on the side of the suzerainty of the Parthian Empire. See Barnard, “Origins and Emergence of the Church,” 162. 66. See AMS 1:120–30; and Cureton, Ancient Syriac Documents, 63–85. 67. Drijvers, “Addai und Mani,” 171–85; see also Drijvers, “Protonike Legend,” 301. 68. Griffith, “Doctrina of Addai as a Paradigm,” [45]. See also Drijvers, “Image of Edessa,” 15–16. 69. See Doran, Stewards of the Poor. See Drijvers, “Rabbula, Bishop of Edessa,” 139–154. 70. Rabbula seems to have “switched sides” in the Christological debates, as he started on the side of Theodore of Mopsuestia (made famous at the School of Edessa) but may have changed positions to support Cyril and maintain his see. See Drijvers, “Protonike Legend,” 306. 71. Barnard, “Origins and Emergence of the Church,” 165 and 175. 72. See Drijvers, “Protonike Legend,” 307–9. See also Doran, Stewards of the Poor. 73. Drijvers, “Protonike Legend.” 74. Teaching of Addai, 42, 44. 75. Teaching of Addai, 44. 76. For monastic legislation under Rabbula, see Harvey, “Holy and the Poor.” 77. The MS tradition for the Teaching of Addai is extensive. The text is preserved in a sixthcentury MS of St. Petersburg and partially in three MSS in London. See Desreumaux, Histoire, 22–23. Parts of the story are scattered in many other texts and in several ancient languages. 78. In 1891, Gottheil published a translation of an Arabic version of the Abgar legend. The legend contains none of the sermons of Abgar as the Teaching of Addai does, but it does have an elaboration of the legend about the image of Jesus in the text. See Gottheil, “Arabic Version of the Abgar Legend.” 79. Eusebius, Ecclesiastical History 1.13. 80. Ibid. 81. See Debié, “Syriac Historiography and Identity Formation,” 96.

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82. The list of sources derives from my own research, but also from two important articles: Brock, “Transformations of the Edessa Portrait,” esp. 48; Palmer, “Logos of the Mandylion.” 83. Egeria’s Travels 19.15–19. 84. See Brock, “Transformations of the Edessa Portrait,” 48 and n. 9. 85. “So when they came to complete despair, they brought the divinely created image, which human hands had not made, the one that Christ our God sent to Abgar when he yearned to see Him. Then, when they brought the all holy image into the channel they had created and sprinkled it with water, they applied some to the pyre and the timbers [of the Iranian siege-mound pointedly described in the preceding lines as a ‘hill made with hands’]. And at once the divine power made a visitation to the faith of those who had done this, and accomplished what had previously been impossible for them: for at once the timbers caught fire and, being reduced to ashes quicker than speech, they imparted to it what was above as the fire took over everywhere.” Bidez and Parmentier, eds., Ecclesiastical History of Evagrius with the Scholia, 175 = Mansi, Sacrorum conciliorum XII (n. 81), col. 192, in Whitby’s translation, Emperor Maurice (n. 67), 226f., as cited by Palmer, “Logos of the Mandylion,” 146. 86. See Brock, “Transformations of the Edessa Portrait,” 48–49; and Palmer, “Logos of the Mandylion,” 131 and 146. 87. See the edition and translation in Palmer, “Logos of the Mandylion.” 88. See Brock, “Transformations of the Edessa Portrait,” 50. 89. See Brock, “Transformations of the Edessa Portrait,” 49. 90. See Palmer, “Logos of the Mandylion,” 144; and Brock, “Transformations of the Edessa Portrait,” 50. 91. See Brock, “Transformations of the Edessa Portrait,” 50. See On Orthodox Faith 4.16 (89) (ed. Kotter, 2:208). 92. See Griffith, “Theodore Abū Qurrah’s Arabic Tract,” 53–73. 93. As cited in Palmer, “Logos of the Mandylion,” 145 n. 91. Mansi, Sacrorum conciliorum XII (n. 81), col. 192. 94. Palmer, “Logos of the Mandylion,” 145. 95. See section 56 of the Narratio in von Dobschuetz, Christusbilder, 39–85. See Weitzmann, “The Mandylion and Constantine Porphyrogennetos,” 183–184; and Brock, “Transformations,” 46 n. 2. For the account of the translation of the mandylion, see Delehaye, Synaxarium Ecclesiae Constantinoplitanae, cols. 893–901. 96. See Ragusa, “Iconography of the Abgar Cycle.” See Brock, “Transformations of the Edessa Portrait,” 54. 97. For a picture of this image, see Brock and Taylor, Hidden Pearl, 2:49. See Weitzmann, “Mandylion and Constantine Porphyrogennetos.” See also Brock, “Transformations of the Edessa Portrait,” 46 and 55. 98. Brock, “Transformations of the Edessa Portrait,” 46. 99. Desreumaux, Histoire, 25–28. 100. See Russell, Zoroastrianism in Armenia, 113–17. 101. Palmer, “Logos of the Mandylion,” 127. 102. Ibid., 121–25, here 121. 103. Ibid., 123. 104. Teaching of Addai, 21. As cited by Palmer, “Logos of the Mandylion,” 125.

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105. Palmer, “Logos of the Mandylion,” 125–26. 106. Ibid., 145–48; Brock “Transformations of the Edessa Portrait,” passim. 107. Palmer, “Logos of the Mandylion,” 150. 108. Brock, “Transformations of the Edessa Portrait,” 47; see n. 5 for further bibliography on the confusion of the sudarium, Veronica’s cloth, and the Mandylion. 109. Brock, “Transformations of the Edessa Portrait,” 47. Brock notes (47 n. 7) that this priest, and assistant in the production of the first printed Peshitta New Testament (sixteenth c.), gives this fascinating tidbit in a marginal note to Michael the Syrian’s Chronicle, which the priest copies in ca. 1560. See also J.-B. Chabot, Chronique, xxxix. 3 . M A R I A S A P O ST L E T O T H E C H U R C H O F P E R SIA

1. Abbeloos first edited the Acts of Mari in Acts of Mar Maris/Acta Sancti Maris, 43–138. Raabe, shortly thereafter, produced a German translation, Die Geschichte des Dominus Mâri, eines Apostles des Orients. I use the Syriac text from Harrak’s edition and translation, Acts of Mar Mari the Apostle; hereafter, Acts of Mari. In the introduction, Harrak notes that the other text that narrates Mari’s conversion of Mesopotamia is an Arabic source “commonly referred to by its translated title Liber Turris (Book of the Tower),” Harrak, Acts of Mari, xi and xvi. There is also a French translation of this text with a helpful introduction by Christelle and Florence Jullien, whose thorough work on this text has shaped my reading throughout this chapter. See Jullien and Jullien, Les actes de Mar Mari; hereafter, Les actes. For the Church of the East joining itself to traditions of Addai and Mari, see Jullien and Jullien, Apôtres des confins. The Julliens conduct a historical, contextual, literary, and theological analysis of the Acts of Mari in the published version of their dissertation: Aux origines de l’église de Perse. For an overview of sources formative to the Christian identity of Christian Persians, see Walker, Legend of Mar Qardagh, 1–13. 2. For an introduction to the scholastic culture of the Church of the East, see Becker, Fear of God. 3. Brock and Coakley, “Church of the East,” 99–100. 4. Harrak, Acts of Mari 6, pp. 10–11. 5. See Cassis, “Kokhe,” 244. 6. For an excellent volume on this genre, see Les apocryphes syriaques, ed. Debié, Desreumaux, Jullien, and Jullien. 7. Jullien and Jullien, Les actes, 47. The Sasanian Empire spanned the period 224–636 in Persia. See Harrak, Acts of Mari, xv. For a general history of Christians under the Sasanians, see Brock, “Christians in the Sasanian Empire.” There is a large and important corpus of ancient literature that pertains to the persecution of the Christians by of Shapur II (309–47). 8. See Thomson, “Mission, Conversion, and Christianization,” 29. 9. See Jullien and Jullien, “Les Actes de Mar Mari,” in Aux origines, 41–60. 10. Building and healing are central themes in the Acts of Thomas, too. Yet, in the Acts of Thomas, the building projects of the apostle are not actual “buildings” but a metaphorical building of the new community; Acts of Thomas 20. 11. See Fiey, “Topographie chrétienne de Mahozé,” esp. 397–401. The switching of the river’s course is known to the author of the Acts of Mari, as Mari’s building projects near Kokhe reflect the geography before the riverbed’s shift. See Acts of Mari 29, p. 66.

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12. For the independence of the Church of the East from Roman jurisdiction, see canon 12 of the Acts of the Council of Seleucia-Ctesiphon, which grants supreme ecclesiastical authority to the catholicos of Seleucia-Ctesiphon, in Chabot, ed. and trans., Synodicon orientale, 266 (French), and 27 (Syriac). 13. Acts of Mari 1, p. 1. 14. See Harrak, Acts of Mari, xviii. 15. The Acts of Mari may have drawn on earlier narrative traditions that attributed the conversion of Mesopotamia to the apostle Mari. Other traditions crediting the conversion of Mesopotamia to Mari include the martyrdom stories of Karka beth Slokh (581–637), History of Karka d-Beth Slokh: “The city (of Karka) remained pagan until the coming of the apostles Addai and Mari.” AMS 2:507–35 (Syriac text), 512. See also Hoffmann, Auszüge aus syrischen Akten persischer Märtyrer, 45; and History of Rabban Hormizd the Persian and Rabban BarIdta, vol. 1, 138:2 (Syriac), 205: “Mar Mari, the apostle of truth, who first taught the Orient the knowledge of the only God.” An Arabic version of the story, called the Didascalia of Addai, later than the initial Syriac text of the fourth century, made Mari the match for the southern apostolate of Addai. In this text, Mari obtained all of Mesopotamia, Mossul, Babel, Sawad, and islands and countries of the Arabs up to Najran. This text was translated into German by W. Riedel, Die Kirchenrechtsquellen des Patriarchats Alexandrien. Elie of Damas presents him as the first planter of Christianity in Iraq, but that is a ninth-century source. See J. S. Assemani, Bibliotheca orientalis III/2, XVII. In Salomon of Basra’s thirteenth-century text, the Book of the Bee, Mari figures among the seventy-two disciples and is present at the last meal of Christ on Holy Thursday. See Salomon of Basra, The Book of the Bee. See Jullien and Jullien, Aux origines, 48–49; Jullien and Jullien, Les actes, 19, 22–24; and Jullien and Jullien, Apôtres des confins, 77. 16. This point has been argued thoroughly by Jullien and Jullien, “La défense de l’unité dans l’Église,” in Aux origines, 61–106. 17. On the beginnings of Christianity in Persia, see esp. Labourt, Christianisme dans l’Empire; Fiey, Jalons pour une histoire de l’Église; and Chaumont, La christianisation de l’empire iranien . 18. Fiey, Jalons pour une histoire de l’Église, 40–44. See also Jullien and Jullien, Les actes, 18. 19. Moving away from a positivistic reading of the text as “history,” Jullien and Jullien have argued that this text serves primarily to reinforce the independence of the Church of the East. Jullien and Jullien, Aux origines, 1–3. 20. Unlike other missionary stories analyzed in this book, this text enjoyed no western diffusion. Jullien et Jullien, Les actes, 17. 21. In his farewell speech (Mari dies a peaceful death, unlike Thomas!) Mari exhorts his disciples to create unity. Acts of Mari 33, pp. 76 (Syriac), 77 (English). Jullien and Jullien emphasize how the text’s denunciation of heresies functions as a defense of the unity of the Church of the East. Jullien and Jullien, Les actes 35; and Jullien and Jullien, Aux origines de l’église de Perse, passim. 22. Jullien and Jullien, Les actes, 13. 23. Luke 10:1–24. Sometimes seventy apostles are mentioned, sometimes seventy-two apostles. Similar passages exist in Matt. 9–10 and Mark 6, but only Luke mentions this number. It is curious that Mari used this tradition, in whatever form that the authors knew it, since Jesus said to go out only to the Jews in Galilee. This is an interesting example of harmonization.

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24. See chapter 2 in this book. Addai is also one of the seventy (or seventy-two) apostles. See Teaching of Addai, 10–11. 25. In the Acts of Mari, Addai commissioned Mari on his deathbed. Acts of Mari 6, pp. 12–13. Addai places his right hand on Mari and sends him to southern Mesopotamia. In the Teaching of Addai, Judas Thomas commissions Addai to go to Edessa. See Teaching of Addai, 10–11. 26. Acts of Mari 7. 27. They change names throughout the story. In chapter 7 of the Acts of Mari they are called Philippus, Malkiso, and Adda. That Mari has a disciple named Adda is an important point to which I return below. 28. See, for example, Acts of Mari 5, p. 10. 29. The main points of the Teaching of Addai that the Acts of Mari recapitulates include Addai’s journey to the house of T.ubānā and Addai’s healing of Abgar (Acts of Mari 4; Addai 9–10), Addai’s healing of ʿAbdu son of ʿAbdu (Acts of Mari 5; Addai 10), Abgar’s words addressed to the apostle (Acts of Mari 4; Addai 9), and the meeting of the Edessan laity (Acts of Mari 5; Addai 10). These are discussed thoroughly in Jullien and Jullien, Les actes, 29; and Jullien and Jullien, Aux origines de l’église de Perse, 40–46. 30. See the Chronicle of 846, ed. Brooks, Chronica Minora II CSCO 3/Scr. Syr 3; and Michael the Syrian (1:51, 147–51); both attribute to Aggai the conversion of the area—including Persia, Athor, Armenia, Media, Beth-Huzaye, Beth-Gelaye, as far as India. Bar ʿEbroyo writes that Addai preached Christianity in Persia, Assyria, Armenia, Media, and Edessa. The Ecclesiastical History of Bar ʿEbroyo that goes up to 1285 relied on Michael the Syrian; it mentions Mari as one of the first apostles of the East together with Thomas and Addai. See Bar ʿEbroyo, Gregorii Bar Hebraei Chronicon ecclesiasticum, ed. and trans. Abbeloos and Lamy, vol. 2. Mention of Addai as an apostle to the East is found in the East Syrian Synodicon orientale. In the synods of the Church of the East between 410 and 612, no mention is made of Mari, just an unnamed apostle to Persia. See Synodicon orientale: 564 (Syriac) and 581 (trans.); and 63–64; 313 (trans.); 319–20. See Harrak, Acts of Mari, xxxiii. See also Jullien and Jullien, Les actes, 22–24. 31. The additional sources tracing the conversion of Iraq to a Mar Mari are all sixth century and hagiographic. See Harrak, Acts of Mari, xxxv. I am not concerned with the exact origin of the story, just that the written tradition of the Acts of Mar Mari is sixth century and consonant with the concerns of the Church of the East at that time. 32. Genette, Palimpsests, 1. I came across this concept in Clark, History, Theory, Text, 128. 33. The Acts of Mari represented a contrasting interpretation of Jesus’s injunction to go out and preach to the nations in Matt. 28:18–20. As in the Teaching of Addai, the theme of the Acts of Mari is that salvation’s message goes out among the nations, not just among the Jews. Acts of Mari 1–2, pp. 1–7. 34. Mari is also called a foreigner or aksenāyā. Acts of Mari 19, p. 45. 35. See Acts of Mari, xxxi. 36. Acts of Mari 6, pp. 10–11, emphasis mine. 37. Conversion through royal households is a theme of both the Teaching of Addai (King Abgar) and the Acts of Thomas (King Mazdai) 95. 38. Abgar, in the Acts of Mari, is clothed in rags. Acts of Mari 4, pp. 8–9.

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39. Acts of Mari 1, pp. 4 (Syriac) and 5 (English). The Teaching of Addai, in contrast, reads simply, “The good news flew down from heaven into the whole world with signs that the disciples, our friends, did on earth.” (Teaching of Addai, 42, my trans.). 40. This theme is strong in the Acts of Thomas (62) and Teaching of Addai (44 and 94). 41. Brown, “Rise and Function of the Holy Man in Late Antiquity.” For revisions of and retrospectives on this important article, see Brown, “The Rise and Function of the Holy Man in Late Antiquity, 1971–1997.” 42. As Harrak notes, the Acts of Mari ignores the fact that the Parthians are the masters of Persia and Mesopotamia by the first century. Harrak, Acts of Mari, xv. 43. See Schilling, Die Anbetung der Magier, VII–IX. 44. Acts of Mari 7, p. 14; Acts of Mari 8, p. 16. 45. Payne, “Christianity and Iranian Society,” 57–60. 46. Ibid., 31–33. 47. Boyce, Zoroastrians, 1–4, here 4. 48. Payne, “Christianity and Iranian Society,” 72–78. 49. Ibid., 74. 50. Acts of Mari 23, pp. 50–55. 51. Acts of Mari 20–23. See Jullien and Jullien, Les actes, 27. 52. For this theme elsewhere in Sasanian Christian hagiography, see Payne, “Christianity and Iranian Society,” 78–79. 53. See Teixidor, “Géographies du voyageur au Proche-Orient ancien”; Winkler and Baum, Church of the East, esp. 7–41; and Brock, “Christians in the Sasanian Empire.” 54. I am borrowing the notion of “shifting places” from Smith, “Trading Places.” 55. For creedal formulae of the Acts of Mari, see Jullien and Jullien, Aux origines de l’église de Perse, 37, 61–65. 56. Acts of Mari 10, pp. 21–22. 57. When Mari reaches Darabad, for example, he exorcises a demon from a fig tree, worshipped by the local pagans, yet inhabited by a demon who stones anyone who tries to taste its figs. Acts of Mari 15, pp. 32 (Syriac) and 33 (English). 58. For Jullien and Jullien, the Acts of Mari is a type of narrative reconquest for Christianity of lands thought to be Manichaean. Jullien and Jullien, Les actes, 42–43. 59. The text contrasts the language of destruction with the language of building. See, for example, Acts of Mari 7, pp. 12 (Syriac), 13 (English), in which Mari first goes to Nisibis in order to plant (a wordplay, as Harrak indicates, on the root ns ̣b) Christianity. First, however, Mari destroys the idolatry indigenous to Nisibis. See also Acts of Mari 10, where a king and his family from the region of Ninevah/Mosul throw down their idols after a demon is exorcised from the son their military commander. Acts of Mari 9–10, pp. 20 (Syriac), 21 (English). 60. Acts of Mari 13–14, pp. 29–32. 61. Of this pattern in conversion stories, Brown notes: “In many cities, pagan temples had, indeed, undergone surgical ‘desacralization’ through the destruction of their cella, their holy of holies. But their facades remained intact for centuries to come. Polytheists still benefited from an ‘ideology of silence.’ ” Brown, “Conversion and Christianization,” 109. I am grateful to Professor Brown for a conversation on this point at the Dorushe Graduate Student Conference at Princeton University, April 14, 2007. 62. Acts of Mari 8, pp. 16 (Syriac), 17 (English).

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63. See Chronicon Ecclesiae Arbelae, 2, 5–8, ed. Kawerau. Cf. also Lieu, Manichaeism, 35. 64. Acts of Mari 6, pp. 10–11. The connection between healing and conversion is established in the Acts of Thomas. It is likewise found in the Teaching of Addai: “After these things he [Addai] placed his hand on him [Abgar], and by the power of Jesus all his illnesses are healed. Abgar wondered and is amazed.” Acts of Mari 4. 65. For example, in Beth Garmai, Mari heals the daughter of King Shahgirad from paralysis. Acts of Mari 12–13, pp. 26–31. 66. The Manichaeans, widespread in the East Syriac world, did not construe the human body as the creation of a good God. Lieu, Manichaeism, 7. 67. His healing formulae also include anti-Jewish rhetoric. He heals the king of Arzon, “in Jesus’ name, whom the Jews in Jerusalem crucified.” Acts of Mari 7, p. 16. 68. The text uses Syriac words for wonder, miracles, signs, and power in every chapter of the Acts of Mari; the author claims that he cannot name all the signs and wonders that he performed. For example, see Acts of Mari 3–5, pp. 8–10. The theme of signs and wonders is widespread in the Gospels, particularly the Gospel of John and the Acts of the Apostles. 69. Each sequence in the text contains the pattern that the apostle heals converts, builds, and ordains. See, for example, Acts of Mari 7, pp. 16 (Syriac), 17 (English). 70. On the division of religious labor between the household and city, see Smith, “Here, There, and Everywhere,” passim. 71. See Smith, “Topography of the Sacred.” 72. The magi, the priests of the Zoroastrian religion, are the principal agents of opposition to Mar Mari. Mari’s rivals are of the sacerdotal class. Acts of Mari 10, 11, and 25. The text also contains references to the cult of fire, in Acts of Mari 23–24. See Jullien and Jullien, Les actes, 26. 73. Abgar and Mari model Christ as they heal royal families in the texts. Abgar writes, in the version of his letter in the Acts of Mari, that Christ came to heal all creation. Acts of Mari 2, pp. 4–5. 74. Mark 5:35–43. Jullien and Jullien discuss other important biblical references. Jullien and Jullien, Les actes, 15. They include Naaman the Syrian (2 Kings 5:14), Mari as the new Moses (Exod.), and the youths in the fiery furnace (Dan. 3). 75. Acts of Mari 12, pp. 26–30. For another example of a daughter of a king healed by Mari, see the narrative in Acts of Mari 16 about King Adar in the region of Darabad; his daughter is also healed. 76. Acts of Mari 12. This pattern has been noted by scholars: “The miraculous healing of the princesses always resulted in the conversion of the rulers and after them the populace in a systematic manner.” Harrak, Acts of Mari, xxx. 77. For family relationships in Syriac hagiography, see Harvey, “Sacred Bonding.” 78. The king of Athor has a son possessed by a demon whom Mari cures. Acts of Mari 8, p. 18. 79. Acts of Mari 28–29; see p. 63 n. 129. 80. Female characters abound in the Acts of Mari. Another example of the daughter of a king being healed can be found in Acts of Mari 16, pp. 37–39. Here, the king of Beth Garmai is also absent (out hunting). The text shares this literary feature with other narratives in the apocryphal Acts. In the Acts of Thomas, for example, the apostle converts women of the royal household first, and it is a Hebrew flute girl who responds first to the apostle’s

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message. See Acts of Thomas 4. The Teaching of Addai lacks such an interest in the use of women as representatives of piety or channels through which the apostle can reach the political rulers. 81. Smith’s construction of “anywhere”: “In archaic or classical formations, religions of ‘anywhere’ include religious clubs and other forms of associations, entrepreneurial religious figures (often depicted as wandering), and religious practitioners not officially recognized by centers of power.” Smith, “Here, There, Anywhere,” 330. 82. Mari’s correction of the king’s adoration, and his instruction to the king that the king should worship God, in fact, serve to reinforce Mari’s authority. 83. Apostles mistaken for gods is a pattern set in the Acts of the Apostles, where the citizens of Lystra mistake Paul and Barnabas for Zeus and Hermes. See Acts 14:8–18. 84. This absence is noted also by Harrak, Acts of Mari, xxxi. 85. Acts of Mari 2–5. See Jullien and Jullien, Aux origines de l’église de Perse, 41–46. 86. Jullien and Jullien, Aux origines de l’église de Perse, 31. Adda is first mentioned in the Acts of Mari 7. 87. It is important to recall that Thomas is just as much a part of Edessa’s tradition as Addai is. Thomas’s relics are the prized possession of the Edessan Christian community, as I discuss in Chapter 2. See also Jullien and Jullien, Les actes, 20. 88. The Acts of Mari names the commissioning of Christ a grace to go out and preach to the nations. Acts of Mari 5, p. 10. 89. I discuss this in more detail in chapter 2, on the Teaching of Addai. 90. Teaching of Addai, 10; Acts of Mari 6–7. In the Acts of Mari, we find an interesting interpolation concerning the statue of the hemorrhaging woman that might point to eighthcentury conflicts concerning iconoclasm. See Jullien and Jullien, Les actes, 54. 91. Acts of Mari 2–5. 92. Teaching of Addai, 4: “They were there in Jerusalem ten days. Johannan the Tabularius writes down everything that he saw that Christ is doing.” 93. The Teaching of Addai, while alluding to early Syrian ascetic traditions of the Sons and Daughters of the Covenant (100), does not mention “monks” or “monasteries.” The Acts of Mari, however, underscores that Mari builds monasteries, as well as churches. The later authors of Mari thus reveal their knowledge of sixth-century East Syriac monastic traditions and their interest in promoting a view of their antiquity. 94. Acts of Mari 11, pp. 25–26. 95. The people of Seleucia are depicted as being wealthy, evil pagans. Acts of Mari 17, 39, and 22, passim. 96. Acts of Mari 19, 42. 97. In the Acts of Mari, the text says that immediately all of Edessa converted; the important details of Abgar’s discourses, as discussed in the Teaching of Addai, are absent from the Acts of Mari. Acts of Mari 5, p. 10. 98. For an example of the king bowing before Mari, see Acts of Mari 16. Addai focused his work on one city: Edessa. Mari moves throughout Mesopotamia as he creates new communities of Christians from Nisibis to Beth Huzaye to Beth Aramaye. Absent from the Acts of Mari are the long doctrinal speeches or flashback narratives of the Teaching of Addai. Mari faces little opposition. 99. Lincoln, Theorizing Myth, 150–51.

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100. Acts of Mari 8, p. 18. The king of Athor mistakenly calls Addai an apostle. 101. See Jullien and Jullien, Aux origines de l’église de Perse, 47–48. 102. Acts of Mari 1, pp. 1 (Syriac), 2 (English). 103. Jullien and Jullien, Aux origines de l’église de Perse, 50. 104. This might not be genuinely deliberate. Rather, it could be accidental narrative. 105. Acts of Mari 6. 106. See Jullien and Jullien, Apôtres des confins, 21. 107. Walker, “From Nisibis to Xi’an,” 999. 108. Lieu, Manichaeism, 8. As Lieu shows, the main portion of Mani’s canon comprises seven works: (1) the Living Gospel, (2) the Treasure of Life, (3) the Pragmateia, (4) the Book of Mysteries, (5) the Book of the Giants, (6) the Letters, and (7) Psalms and Prayers. In Mani’s sermon on the Light-Mind, he explains: “You have seen that the [kings] of the world with many graces and gifts with armor and military campaigns have hardly subjected the cities and mastered the lands. [I, on the other hand, have subdued . . . ] without armor and with [military power . . .] distant [cities] and far away lands through the word of God, and they praise my name and it comes to be exalted in all lands.” Keph. XXXVIII, 100, 29–101. As cited in Lieu, Manichaeism, 32. 109. The text “Concerning the Origin of His Body” elucidates the missionary activity of Mani. See Lieu, Manichaeism, 32. 110. When Mari reaches Beth Lapat., he notes that Christians have already arrived. Acts of Mari 31, p. 75. 111. Jullien and Jullien, Les actes, 43. 112. To cite but one of many examples, Mari has a disciple named T.umis just as Mani has a disciple named Tom. 113. Jesus appears to Mari in a dream, instructing Mari to send his disciple T.umis (homonym of Thomas) to the area west of the Greater Zab River into Greater Armenia. Tumis, after Mari lays his hands on him, eventually is martyred there. His grave became a source of benefits for all. The texts created a feast day for him on the first of July, Tammuz, evincing the wordplay between Tumis and Tammuz. Acts of Mari 11, pp. 24–25. 114. Some Christian baptizing movements were established in southern Mesopotamia, particularly Mesene, in the early third century. According to the Manichaean codex of Cologne, the father of Mani, Pattiq, is a member of this sect of the Baptistai. The Coptic Kephalia mentions baptizing movements as far east as India. Jullien and Jullien, Les actes, 24. See esp. Jullien and Jullien, “Les Actes de Mar Mari,” in Aux origines de l’église de Perse, 26–40. 115. There are striking parallels between the story of Dostheos and Mari and narratives about Ado, the founder of the Dosthean movement. Theodore bar Konai’s Book of the Scholia presents Ado, the founder of the Dosthean movement, as an Adiabene who came as a beggar to the country of Mesene, where he arrived at the Karun River. Ado’s family entrusted him to a man met there. The disciples of Ado are not just called partisans of Dosthai but also Nazoreans (the name of a group of Persian Christians at an earlier date). See Jullien and Jullien, Les actes, 45. See also Jullien and Jullien, Aux origines de l’église de Perse, 28–31. 116. Synodicon orientale, ed. Chabot, 18, lines 5–9; trans., 254 (slightly modified), as cited by Walker, “From Nisibis to Xi’an,” 994. 117. Walker, “From Nisibis to Xi’an,” 994.

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118. See also Brock, History of the Holy Mar Maʿin . This volume began a new series published by Gorgias Press that will make the Persian Martyr Acts available in bilingual (Syriac/English) editions. 119. Given the importance of the cult of the martyrs in East Syrian Christianity and Thomas’s martyrdom in the Acts of Thomas, this is a striking difference. For martyr cults in sixth- and seventh-century Christianity, see Walker, Legend of Mar Qardagh, 246–79. 120. A disciple of Hiba is also known as Mari. Hiba writes a missive to Mari that he is sent to spread the thought of Theodore. This letter became the object of controversy. The letter is preserved in the conciliar Acts, but it is known thanks to Simeon, anti-Chalcedonian bishop of Arsham from 503. This letter was written in 510, and it concerns the propagation of Nestorianism in Persia. I will discuss it further in chapter 5 on Simeon of Beth Arsham. It is an important historical document about the closing of the School of Edessa. See Van Esbroeck, “Who Is the Mari Addressee of Ibas’ Letter?” 121. The greatest portion of the Greek corpus of Theodore of Mopsuestia was translated from Greek into Syriac in the first half of the fifth century at the School of Edessa by Hiba and his group of disciples. The school’s movement to Nisibis established a true break between northwestern Mesopotamia and the frontier regions across the Tigris. See Jullien and Jullien, Les actes, 31. 122. See Jullien and Jullien, Aux origines de l’église de Perse, 53–55. See Acts of Mari 18, p. 40. 123. Unlike other apostolic Acts stories, tradition ascribes to Mari the foundation of 365 monasteries in Beth Aramaye alone. 124. Mari does not seem to be in the synodical records; rather, he appears to be a hagiographical creation. But whether devotion to a certain Mari (the name just means “my lord”) came first, and the text followed, or whether he was invented by the monks, synodical records do not mention his name. 125. Acts of Mari 26, p. 60. 126. Yet the authority of this see did not grow until the seventh century. This bishopric developed into the office of the maphrian, a Miaphysite catholicos in the Persian Empire. See Hage, Die syrisch-jakobitische Kirche. 127. Jullien and Jullien note the text’s “tacit rivalry” with Edessa: “The Acts of Mari constitute a correlation of the history of Addai for the whole of southern Mesopotamia.” Jullien and Jullien, Les actes, 35, my trans. 128. Papa is mentioned in the earliest synods of the Church of the East. Bar ʿEbroyo dates his episcopate from 245–46 to 324–25. Additionally, Papos is the name of the first Manichaean missionary of Mesopotamia and Egypt. See Fiey, Jalons pour une histoire de l’Église, 17, 55, 64–65. For Papa as a Christianized form of Papos, see Jullien and Jullien, Aux origines de l’église de Perse, 87–90. 129. Walker, “From Nisibis to Xi’an,” 1002. 130. Jullien and Jullien, Aux origines de l’église de Perse, 105. 131. See Jullien and Jullien, Les actes, 52. The Second Council of Constantinople famously condemned Theodore of Mopsuestia, Hiba of Edessa (whose letter to the Persian Mari is mentioned in the Acta of the council), and some of the writings of Theodoret. The veneration or valuation of these important theologians by the Church of the East served to isolate further the Christians of Persia from those of the Roman Empire. See Hefele, History of the Christian Councils, 4:289.

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NOTES to pages 69–71

132. Magi traditions are also attached to these Thomas traditions. Both Rufinus and Socrates linked Thomas to Parthia, but Bartholomew to India. “In the division of the earth that is done by drawing lots by the apostles in order to preach the word of God, when the various provinces are entrusted to different apostles . . . Bartholomew is attached to India according to what is determined by drawing of lots.” Rufinus of Aquileia, Historiae ecclesiasticae, 10.9.971. So Socrates of Constantinople knew the tradition that Thomas had been in Parthia, but Bartholomew in “India”: “Bartholomew obtained India, which is within the boundaries of Ethiopia. But before the epoch of Constantine, interior India, which is neighboring multiple populations and diverse languages, is not yet illuminated by the light of Christ.” Socrates of Constantinople, Histoire ecclésiastiaque, ed. G. C. Hansen and trans. Périchon and Maraval, 1.19.2–3, 190–91. See Jullien and Jullien, Apôtres des confins, 20 and 44. 133. In some configurations, Bartholomew became the apostle to Armenia. The Greekspeaking Christians had Andrew, Philip, and John. In the Arabic and Semitic world, Simon went to Egypt and Jude to Mauretania. Matthew went to Hieropolis and Matthias to Ethiopia. See Jullien and Jullien, Apôtres confins, 20, 36. 134. Other bishoprics in Iraq, such as Beth Lapat. and Kashkar, could have contended for this place. Jullien and Jullien note that the Acts of Mari’s inscription of Papa’s and Mari’s names into the history of Seleucia-Ctesiphon served to valorize the see of SeleuciaCtesiphon. See Jullien and Jullien, Les actes, 53. 135. The leaders of the East Syrian Church held synods in Kokhe and buried twenty-four catholicoses there. 136. Smith notes: “Difference is seldom a comparison between entities judged to be equivalent. Difference most frequently entails a hierarchy of prestige and the concomitant political ranking of superordinate and subordinate.” Smith, “What a Difference a Difference Makes,” in Relating Religion, 253. 137. See the Synodicon orientale, ed. Chabot, 394; 132, ll. 23–29; 133, ll. 1–2). See Jullien and Jullien, Les actes, 52. On the synod of 585, see also Walker, Legend of Mar Qardagh, 93. 138. For example, Mar Mari casts out the demons from the fig tree and sends them into a river called the Nile; it is renamed then Nahr-Mari after Mar Mari. Acts of Mari 15, pp. 33–35; see p. 35 n. 79. 139. Jullien and Jullien, Apôtres confins, 16. 140. Acts of Mari 34, p. 78. 141. Acts of Mari 5, p. 10. 142. Acts of Mari 33, p. 76. 143. Harrak, Acts of Mari, xviii. 144. For foundation narratives in Syrian literature, see Jullien and Jullien, “Figures fondatrices,” in Debié et al., Les apocryphes syriaques. 145. Acts of Mari 6, pp. 10–11. Citation above, see 6–7. 146. The earliest Christian asceticism in Iraq that we know of is Aphrahat’s community (ca. 330 c.e.), which seems to be a group that calls itself the Covenanters, in the tradition of the Sons and Daughters of the Covenant. This is not the structured monasticism of the fifth and sixth centuries. 147. The geographical flourishes show the author’s familiarity with the landscape. In one telling passage, he explains how Mari’s building project in Kokhe would have been complicated by the humidity of the area. See Acts of Mari 29, p. 66.

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148. Harrak, Acts of Mari, xvii–xviii. Acts of Mari 33, pp. 76 (Syriac), 77 (English). 149. Dayr Qunni and its school were associated with the primates of the Orient: Aha the First (410–14) and Yahbalaha the First (415–20). Jullien and Jullien, Les actes, 47. 150. Acts of Mari 33, p. 76. 151. Harrak, Acts of Mari, xxxv. 152. Some sections, however, remind one of hagiography. For example, at the beginning of the text the author invokes Mar Mari and his prayers. 153. Here I am following the set of questions for unpacking myth as Lincoln defines it in Theorizing Myth, 150–51. 154. See Cameron, “Models of the Past,” 217. 4 . J O H N O F E P H E SU S A S HAG IO G R A P H E R A N D M I S SIO NA RY

1. Van Ginkel, John of Ephesus, 23–24. See also Wood, “We Have No King but Christ,” 163–208. 2. See Debié, “Syriac Historiography and Identity Formation”, esp. 109 and 113. 3. John’s account of sixth-century religious history presents a different picture than that of Evagrius Scholasticus. For the Chalcedonian version of the story, see the Ecclesiastical History of Evagrius. For the Miaphysite side, see Historia ecclesiastica Zachariae Rhetori vulgo adscripta. For the Ecclesiastical History of John of Ephesus, see John of Ephesus, Iohannis Ephesini Historiae ecclesiasticae pars tertia, ed. Brooks. For a partial English paraphrased translation of John of Ephesus’s history, see John of Ephesus, Third Part of the Ecclesiastical History of John Bishop of Ephesus, trans. Payne Smith. The second part of John of Ephesus’s Ecclesiastical History is preserved in part 3 of the Chronicle of Zuqnin, pts. 3 and 4, A.D. 488–775, trans. Harrak; hereafter, Chronicle of Zuqnin. 4. John of Ephesus, Lives of the Eastern Saints. For an introduction to John’s life and writings, see Harvey, Asceticism and Society in Crisis, 29–34. See also Wood, “We Have No King but Christ,” 163–208. 5. See Ecclesiastical History of John of Ephesus, ed. Brooks, pt. 3, bk. 3, chaps. 1–5, pp. 120–29 (Syriac), 88–95 (Latin). 6. Van Ginkel, John of Ephesus, 77 and 197. 7. The first part treats the history of Christianity from the days of Caesar until the days of Justin II. 8. John of Ephesus, Lives of the Eastern Saints, PO 17:95–96; trans. Brooks, with my modifications. 9. Van Ginkel, John of Ephesus, 99. 10. Chronicle of Zuqnin, 92–93. 11. Chronicle of Zuqnin, 21. 12. See Harvey’s Asceticism and Society in Crisis, 28–30. See also Van Ginkel, John of Ephesus, 27–37. See also the introduction to Margoliouth, Extracts from the Ecclesiastical History of John of Ephesus, No. XIII, I-VI. 13. See Palmer, Monk and Mason on the Tigris Frontier, 4 and 6. 14. See Harvey, Asceticism and Society in Crisis, 58. For John’s description of the monastery of Mar Yoh.anna Urt.aya, see John of Ephesus, PO 19:207–9. 15. John of Ephesus, Lives of the Eastern Saints, PO 18:624. See Harvey, Asceticism and Society in Crisis, 29.

162

NOTES to pages 74–76

16. John of Ephesus, Lives of the Eastern Saints, PO 17:298. See also Honigmann, Évêques et évêchés, 158. 17. See Beck, Kaiserin Theodora und Prokop; Daube, “Marriage of Justinian and Theodora”; Evans, Age of Justinian. 18. See John of Ephesus, Lives of the Eastern Saints, 35, PO 18:621–23. 19. See John of Ephesus, Lives of the Eastern Saints, 35, PO 18. See also Van Ginkel, John of Ephesus, 28–29. 20. Honigmann, Évêques et évêchés, 157. 21. For the Life of John of Tella, see John of Ephesus, Lives of the Eastern Saints, PO 18:513–26. For the Life of John of Hephaestopolis, see John of Ephesus, Lives of the Eastern Saints, 25, PO 18:526–40. 22. See Menze and Akalin, John of Tella’s Profession of Faith. 23. See Life of John of Hephaestopolis, John of Ephesus, Lives of the Eastern Saints, 25, PO 18:536–39. See also Frend, Rise of the Monophysite Movement, 288. 24. Harvey argues that John of Ephesus’s Life of John of Tella “exemplified all that John of Ephesus admired: he was ascetic, priest, hero, and martyr. He distinguished himself early in his career as a solitary but was raised to the bishopric of Constantina/Tella in 519. John of Ephesus tells us that John of Tella conducted his ecclesiastical affairs while continuing his severe ascetic labors.” Harvey, Asceticism and Society in Crisis, 100. 25. John of Ephesus, Lives of the Eastern Saints, 24, PO 18:521. For the Life of John of Tella by Eliya see Vita Ioannis episcopi Tellae; English translation by Ghanem, “Biography of John of Tella.” 26. John of Ephesus, Ecclesiastical History, bk. 3, chap. 37, pp. 171 (Syriac), 125 (Latin). 27. Chronicle of Zuqnin, Years 541–542, 92–93. See also Nau, “Analyse de la second partie inédite,” 482. See Trombley, “Paganism in the Greek World,” 333. See also John of Ephesus, “Of the Refugees in Constantinople,” Lives of the Eastern Saints, PO 18:681. See also Michael the Syrian, Chronique de Michel le Syrien, ed. and trans. Chabot, 4:288, 2:207–8. 28. See Engelkerdt, Mission und Politik in Byzanz, 12. 29. See Adshead, “Justinian and Aphthartodocetism.” For loyalty to the emperor Justinian as a defining aspect of Roman identity in the sixth century, see Greatrex, “Roman Identity in the Sixth Century.” 30. See Bettenson, “Theodosius I (379–395) on Catholic and Heretic,” in Documents of the Christian Church, 22. 31. Despite Justinian’s legislation, however, the canons of the Quinisext Council in 691 indicate that pagan practices persisted over a century after Justinian’s efforts. See Nedungatt and Featherstone, Council of Trullo Revisited. 32. CJ 1. 11.10.3, ed. Krueger, Corpus iuris civilis, 2.64. See Trombley, “Paganism in the Greek World,” 328. 33. See MacMullen, Christianity and Paganism, 26–27. 34. John of Ephesus, Lives of the Eastern Saints, PO 18:679. 35. Honigmann, Évêques et évêchés, 209. John of Ephesus, Ecclesiastical History, bk. 3, chaps. 36–37; see also Michael the Syrian, Chronicle, 2:320. 36. John of Ephesus, Ecclesiastical History, bk. 3, chaps. 36–37. 37. John of Ephesus, Lives of the Eastern Saints, PO 17:681. See Trombley, “Paganism in the Greek World,” 330–31.

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38. See Chronicle of Zuqnin, Years 540–541, 91–92. See also Engelkerdt, Mission und Politik in Byzanz, 17. 39. For this narrative, see Nau, “Analyse de la seconde partie inédite,” 481–82. This is cited also in Maas, Readings in Late Antiquity, 186. 40. Large groups of these peoples persisted in Edessa, Harran, Antioch, and Baalbek. See Trombley, “Paganism in the Greek World,” 346. 41. See Chronicle of Zuqnin, Years 554–555, 126–27. 42. Chronicle of Zuqnin, Years 554–555, 126–27. 43. Trombley, “Paganism in the Greek World,” 329. 44. See Trombley, “Paganism in the Greek World,” 329. Honigmann, “Geographica,” 620–21. 45. Honigmann, “Geographica,” 620–21; Brown, e-mail message regarding an earlier version of this chapter, August 2012. 46. Therefore for the approximate location, I searched for Magnesia. C. Foss, G. Reger, R. Talbert, T. Elliot, and S. Gillies, “Places: 599788 (Magnesia ad Maeandrum),” Pleiades, http://pleiades.stoa.org/places/599778/magnesia-ad-maeandrum. 47. See Trombley, “Paganism in the Greek World,” 330. See also Jullien, “Stratégies du monachisme.” 48. See Van Ginkel, John of Ephesus, 32. 49. See Chronicle of Zuqnin, Years 549–550, 123–24. Cf. Michael the Syrian, Chronicle, 4:323–25; 2:269–72. In the Chronicle of Zuqnin, which preserves part 2 of John of Ephesus’s Ecclesiastical History, John relates his sweep across Phrygia to rid the countryside of this so-called schismatic group. 50. We see this, for example, in the seventh-century hagiography Life of Jacob Baradaeus, as well as the twelfth-century Chronicle of Michael the Syrian. Spurious Life of Jacob Baradaeus in PO 19:242. See Michael the Syrian, Chronicle, 4:288 [2:208]. See Chronicle of Zuqnin, 92 n. 3. 51. The Chronicle of Michael the Syrian (1126–99), for example, draws extensively on John of Ephesus’s History for its discussion of the sixth century. Bar ʿEbroyo was a medieval polymath (1264–86) and maphrian of Tagrit, who wrote the Chronicon ecclesiasticum in 1285. Bar ʿEbroyo presented an account of the sixth century from the perspective of a postIslamic Miaphysite religious leader. Michael the Syrian’s and Bar ʿEbroyo distance from the events that they narrate calls for caution on the part of historians who use them as sources. See Fiey, Jalons pour une histoire de l’Église, 14–15; Van Ginkel, John of Ephesus, 81. 5 . L E G E N D S O F SI M E O N O F B E T H A R SHA M , M I S SIO NA RY T O P E R SIA

1. There is a large body of literature on Simeon of Beth Arsham. For an excellent summary of sources, see Van Rompay, “Shemʿun of Beth Arsham.” Only limited attention has been paid to his hagiographical tradition. Harvey analyzes his story as it relates to the larger corpus of the Lives of the Eastern Saints by John of Ephesus. Harvey discusses Simeon’s mission in Asceticism and Society in Crisis, 33, 97–99, 176 n. 4, and 184–85, esp. n. 13. See also Baumstark, Geschichte syrischen Literatur, 145–46. Simeon of Beth Arsham’s letters on the murders at Najran are analyzed by Walter Stevenson in his larger study on state-sponsored missions, Religion and Empire: State-Sponsored Missions in Ancient India, Iran, and Rome (forthcoming).

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For the expansion of the Miaphysite group into Persia, see Van Rompay, “Society and Community.” See also Shahid, Byzantium and the Arabs , vol. 1, pts. 1 and 2. See also Dauvillier, “L’expansion de l’Église Syrienne”; Engelkerdt, Mission und Politik in Byzanz, esp. 153–55. 2. See Garsoïan, L’église arménienne, 438–50 and 450–56. 3. Van Rompay, “Shemʿun of Beth Arsham.” 4. Ibid. 5. Ibid. 6. See Simeon of Beth Arsham, Epistola de Barsauma episcopo Nisibeno, ed. and trans. Assemani (Syriac text with Latin translation). See also Garsöian, L’église arménnienne, 450– 56 (French). See also Becker, Sources for the Study of Nisibis, 21–39. See also Hainthaler, “Der Brief des Simeon.” 7. Van Rompay, “Shemʿun of Beth Arsham.” 8. See Guidi, “La lettera di Simeone vescovo,” 501–15 (Syriac) and 480–95 (Italian); “Simeon’s New Letter,” in Shahid, Martyrs of Najran, 44–64. See also Smith, “Events in Arabia”; Shahid, “Byzantium and South Arabia.” For textual and chronological issues, see Robin, Beaucamp, and Briquel-Chatonnet, “La persécution des chrétiens.” 9. Shahid, Martyrs of Najran; Brock and Harvey, Holy Women of the Syrian Orient, 100– 21. See also Van Rompay, “Nagran,” 302. 10. Shahid, Martyrs of Najran, 31–40. 11. I follow the Syriac text of John of Ephesus’s Life of Simeon the Bishop, in Lives of the Eastern Saints, ed. Brooks, PO 17:137–59. For a historical introduction to this period, see Frend, Rise of the Monophysite Movement, esp. 297. 12. Simeon is known for the role he played at the conference in Ramla in 524. See Engelkerdt, Mission und Politik in Byzanz, 153. The Ghassanid feudal king H.arith also played an important role in this sequence of events. See Shahid, Byzantium and the Arabs in the Sixth Century, vol. 1, pt. 1, 34; and Shahid, Byzantium and the Arabs in the Sixth Century, vol. 1, pt. 2, 755–56. 13. See Walker, Legend of Mar Qardagh, 118, 134. See Gray, Defense of Chalcedon in the East (451–553). 14. See Chronique de Michel le Syrien, ed. and trans. Chabot, bk. 9, chaps. 8–10, pp. 165–67 (French), 261–63 (Syriac). 15. See Somers, “Narrativity, Narrative Identity, and Social Action.” 16. Brooks, introduction to John of Ephesus, Lives of the Eastern Saints, PO 17:vii. The Syriac text in the PO is the edition of Brooks based on a late seventh-century MS from the British Museum, Add. 14647. 17. Life of Simeon the Bishop, 137. 18. Life of Simeon the Bishop, 137. 19. Life of Simeon the Bishop, 138. 20. Life of Simeon the Bishop, 138. 21. Life of Simeon the Bishop, 138–39. 22. Life of Simeon the Bishop, 144–46. 23. See Fiey, Jalons pour une histoire de l’Église, 122–27. 24. Life of Simeon the Bishop, 147–48. 25. Life of Simeon the Bishop, 152. See Barsoum, Scattered Pearls, 90 n. 3. See also Fiey, Assyrie chrétienne: Contribution à l’étude de l’histoire et de la géographie ecclésiastiques et monastiques du nord de l’Iraq, 3:289.

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26. Life of Simeon the Bishop, 154–56. See Schilling, Die Anbetung der Magier, 12–13. 27. Life of Simeon the Bishop, 155. 28. As many as five hundred monks stayed in the Palace of Hormisdas under house arrest in Theodora’s care. See John of Ephesus, Lives of the Eastern Saints, 47, PO 18:677. See also Honigmann, Évêques et évêchés, 158. According to the later chronicler Michael the Syrian (dependent on John of Ephesus), she gave the monks under Theodosius of Alexandria asylum from 539 to 548. See Michael the Syrian, Chronique, ed. Chabot, 2:195. See also the introduction to this book. 29. John refers to Anastasius as the believing or faithful emperor, mhaymono malko. See Life of Simeon, 142. See Harvey, Asceticism and Society in Crisis, 23; Frend, Rise of the Monophysite Movement, 194–220; and Honigmann, Évêques et évêchés, 11–21 and passim. Anastasius became the irenic champion of the Miaphysite position. 30. Life of Simeon the Bishop, 142. John calls the Church of the East heretics. Life of Simeon, 143. 31. Life of Simeon the Bishop, 142, emphasis mine. 32. Life of Simeon the Bishop, 139. 33. Life of Simeon the Bishop, 143. 34. Life of Simeon the Bishop, 145. 35. Life of Simeon the Bishop, 154. See Acts of Thomas 21. 36. Life of Simeon the Bishop, 137. 37. Recall that Syriac missionary texts show a pronounced interest in images. The word s.almā is found throughout the Syriac texts of the Teaching of Addai (famous image of Christ), and in the Acts of Thomas we read dmutā, or “likeness.” Christ spoke to the princess bride in her chamber in the image of Judas Thomas; Acts of Thomas 11–12. 38. See Griffith, “Doctrina Addai as a Paradigm.” 39. I discuss this in chapter 1, on the Acts of Thomas. 40. Life of Simeon the Bishop, 145. 41. For the notion of “linguistic charisma,” see Life of Simeon the Bishop, 143; for the comparison with Paul, see 133. 42. Life of Simeon the Bishop, 155, emphasis mine. 43. Indeed linguistic differences have been one of many reasons given for the development of a separate Syriac Orthodox Church in the seventh and eighth centuries. See Frend, Rise of the Monophysite Movement, 295; Brock, “Greek and Syriac in Late Antique Syria,” 149–60; and ter Haar Romeny, “From Religious Association to Ethnic Community.” 44. See Brown, Power and Persuasion in Late Antiquity, esp. 106–8 and 144. 45. Life of Simeon the Bishop, 138. 46. For the hagiographies of Simeon the Elder, see Lives of Simeon Stylites, trans. Doran. For the holy man in late antiquity, see Brown, “Rise and Function of the Holy Man in Late Antiquity,” 80–101. See also Harvey, “Stylite’s Liturgy.” 47. For debate as a practice of the Church of the East, see Walker, Legend of Mar Qardagh, 164–205. 48. Life of Simeon the Bishop, 155. 49. Life of Simeon the Bishop, 140. 50. Life of Simeon the Bishop, 139–40. 51. Eph. 6:10–20.

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NOTES to pages 87–94

52. Life of Simeon the Bishop, 138. 53. See Gregg, Life of Antony and the Letter to Marcellinus. For anti-Arian polemics in the Life of Antony, see secs. 69–70, 82, 86, 89, and 91; 82–83, 91, 93, and 95–97 in Gregg’s translation. 54. See Walker, Legend of Mar Qardagh, 175. 55. I discuss the internal crises of the Miaphysites in chapter 6 on Jacob Baradaeus. 56. Life of Simeon the Bishop, 138–39. 57. Life of Simeon the Bishop, 141. 58. I discuss this in more detail in chapter 3 on the Acts of Mari and chapter 7 on the Life of Ah ̣udemmeh. 59. That motif itself is patterned on earlier Roman martyrs, biblical and philosophical heroes, and the “noble death.” 60. Life of Simeon the Bishop, 152. 61. See my discussion in the introduction to this book. 62. Life of Simeon the Bishop, 138–39. 63. The same is true of John’s hagiography of John of Tella. 64. Life of Simeon the Bishop, 147. 65. This is a New Testament motif that outsiders proclaim divine truths. One thinks of the Roman centurion at the crucifixion proclaiming Jesus’s divine Sonship (Mark 15:39) or the Samaritan woman at the well (John 4:4–42). 66. Acts 2:4. 67. See Lebon, “La christologie du monophysism syrien,” 425–580; and Van Roey, “Les débuts de l’Église jacobite.” 68. See Menze, “Priests, Laity, and the Sacrament of the Eucharist.” 69. Life of Simeon the Bishop, 148–49, emphasis mine. Catholicos Babai (497–502) served as the secretary of the marzban of Beth Arabaye. Walker, Legend of Mar Qardagh, 176 n. 45. See also Baumstark, Geschichte syrischen Literatur, 113. 70. Life of Simeon the Bishop, 149–51. 71. Life of Simeon the Bishop, 151. These are gestures of grief. 72. See Brock, “Conversations with the Syrian Orthodox.” 73. See McLeod, Roles in Christ’s Humanity in Salvation. See also Brock, “Christology of the Church of the East.” 74. See Gray, “Legacy of Chalcedon.” 75. See Van Ginkel, “John of Ephesus on Emperors”; Van Ginkel, John of Ephesus. 76. Life of Simeon the Bishop, 138, 142, 155. John meets Simeon on one of Simeon’s trips to Constantinople. See Schilling, Die Anbetung der Magier, 17. 77. Life of Simeon the Bishop, 140. 78. Clark, History, Theory, Text, 62. 79. I borrow this phrase from Clark’s History, Theory, Text, 95. 80. See chapter 4 in this book. 81. See Harvey, Asceticism and Society in Crisis, chaps. 2 and 5 and passim. 82. Chronique de Michel le Syrien, bk. 9, chap. 9, pp. 161–67 (French), 261–64 (Syriac). 83. Chronique, bk. 9, chaps. 9 and 10, pp. 165 (French), 263 (Syriac) . 84. Chronique, bk. 9, chap. 10, p. 165. 85. Chronique, bk. 9, chap. 10, p. 167. 86. See chapter 7 on Ah ̣udemmeh. Histoires d’Ahoudemmeh et de Marouta, ed. and trans. Nau, PO 3:1–96. See esp. Hage, Die syrisch-jakobitische Kirche.

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87. He is like a patriarch of the Syrian Orthodox Church whose jurisdiction comprised areas in the Sasanian Empire. 88. Lincoln, Theorizing Myth, 147. 89. I argue this point in chapter 6 on Jacob Baradaeus as well. 6 . HAG IO G R A P H IC A L P O RT R A I T S O F JAC O B BA R A DA E U S

1. For the entire hagiographical collection, see John of Ephesus, Lives of the Eastern Saints, ed. and trans. Brooks, PO 17–19:1–208. I cite Brooks’s translations for the Life of James, John of Ephesus, Lives of the Eastern Saints, 49, PO 18:690–97; and for the Lives of James and Theodore, 50, PO 19:154–58 (499–504). The spurious life of Jacob Baradaeus attributed to John of Ephesus is included in Brooks’s edition and translation of John of Ephesus’s Lives of the Eastern Saints, PO 19:228–68. The English translation is my own from the Syriac in Brooks’s edition. The Longer Life is contained in an eighth-century MS, Berlin Sachau 321; a thirteenth-century MS, Paris 235; and a twelfth-century MS, British Museum 12174, which is a paraphrase of the eighth-century text; see Brooks, PO 17:viiviii, xiii. 2. Most ancient sources agree that Empress Theodora and H.arith bar Gabala were instrumental in condoning the ordination of a Miaphysite hierarchy to replace those driven away by the Byzantine Empire’s embrace of Chalcedonian Christianity in 519 under Justin I. See John of Ephesus, Lives of the Eastern Saints, 49, PO 18:693; 50, PO 19:153–58 (499–504). One notable exception, however, is the Miaphysite Chronicle of Pseudo-Zachariah. This text, by a Greek rhetor named Zachariah, was translated into Syriac, abbreviated, and lengthened by a sixth-century Syriac chronicler, “Pseudo-Zachariah.” This source describes Jacob’s consecration by a bishop named Cyrus: “And then after due deliberation they consecrated and appointed chief priests in Arabia; and these were Theodore the monk, a strenuous man, and James, the laborious and industrious, the very strenuous, who was then in the royal city. And he was to be found everywhere, visiting and exhorting with readiness. And he practiced poverty and asceticism, and was swift on his feet, and travelled like ‘Asahel. And he was a presbyter in the Monastery of the Quarry in the village of Gamawa, which is on the mountain of Islo.” Zachariah Rhetor, Syriac Chronicle, trans. Hamilton and Brooks, bk. 10, chap. 12, 314, in Historia ecclesiastica Zachariae rhetori, ed. and trans. Brooks. 3. Healey, “Jacob Baradaeus,” in Blackwell Dictionary of Eastern Christianity, 261. 4. See Castelli, Martyrdom and Memory, 11–12. 5. See Brooks, “Introduction,” PO 17:vii. 6. See Bundy, “Jacob Baradaeus.” For his discussion of the differences between the two, see 52–53 and esp. 71–72. 7. See Frend, Rise of the Monophysite Movement, 284–85. See also Van Roey, “Les débuts de l’Église jacobite”; Van Rompay, “Society and Community.” 8. John of Ephesus’s title in the Longer Life is “Converter of the Pagans.” See Longer Life, 242 (588). John calls himself this, too. See my discussion in chapter 4. 9. Lincoln, Theorizing Myth, 77–78. 10. John of Ephesus, Lives of the Eastern Saints, 49, PO 18:691 (489); see n. 3. 11. Life of James, John of Ephesus, Lives of the Eastern Saints, 49, PO 18:690–97 (488–495). 12. See John of Ephesus, Lives of the Eastern Saints, 50, PO 19:154–56 (500–502).

168

NOTES to pages 98–101

13. John of Ephesus, Iohannis Ephesini Historiae ecclesiasticae, ed. and trans. Brooks, CSCO 105/54 (Syriac), 106/55 (Latin). For the internal conflicts among the leaders of the Miaphysites, the mediation efforts of Arabic tribes, and the death of Jacob and his friends, see bk. 4, chaps. 12–33, 144–60 (Latin), and 194–215 (Syriac). 14. For dating the third part of the Ecclesiastical History, see Van Ginkel, John of Ephesus, 71–73. 15. See Kleyn, Jacobus Baradaeus, 105–10; and Dyakonov, Ioann Effisakiya, 105. This is on account of historical inaccuracies and divergences with the “Life” of John of Ephesus. Brooks followed this lead. See Brooks, PO 17:xiii, for textual transmission of the Jacob traditions attributed to John of Ephesus. See also Bundy, “Jacobus Baradaeus,” 52. 16. Pace Brooks, PO 17:xv. I am persuaded by Palmer regarding the recopying of the narrative on the relics, discussed below, which is attributed to Mar Quryaqos. See Palmer, Monk and Mason on the Tigris Frontier, 153–54 n. 33. 17. Here I am in agreement with Kleyn, Kugener, and Dyakonov. See Kleyn, Jacobus Baradaeus, 105–10; Kugener, “Récit de Mar Cyriaque.” See also Bundy, “Jacobus Baradaeus,” 52. 18. See Chronicle of Zuqnin, trans. Harrak, 143. For the Syriac, see Incerti auctoris Chronicon anonymum, ed. Chabot, CSCO 91/43 and 104/53. See also Al-Tabari, IV 53: H. 17 and H. 19 in Al-Tabari, ed. and trans. Bosworth, History of Al-Tabari, vol. 5. 19. This tendency to embellish early hagiographies is certainly not unique to the Jacob tradition. An interesting parallel to this phenomenon is the Syriac Life of Antony, a later translation of the Greek original. See the important article by Brakke, “Greek and Syriac Versions,” esp. 42–44. 20. On childhood and saintly children, see Hatlie, “Religious Lives of Children and Adolescents,” 182–200. 21. Longer Life, 230–31 (576–77). 22. Longer Life, 258–59 (604–5). 23. PO 19:228 (574). 24. Longer Life, 232 (578). 25. Longer Life, 232 (278). 26. Longer Life, 244 (590). 27. Longer Life, 255 (601). For a discussion of the holy man as a debater, see Walker, Legend of Mar Qardagh, 164–205. 28. Longer Life, 237 (583). 29. Longer Life, 237 (583). 30. John of Ephesus, Lives of the Eastern Saints, 50, PO 19:155 (501). Longer Life, 239 (584). This was an important point of anxiety for the Miaphysites, as Van Ginkel reminded me in a personal conversation, June 26, 2007. 31. Longer Life, 236 (582). Both traditions mention that he traveled with a portable altar. 32. Longer Life, 245 (591), emphasis mine. 33. Lincoln, Theorizing Myth, 147–49. 34. Longer Life, 264 (610), emphasis mine. Note here, again, the insertion of the Miaphysite Christological formula. For an excellent discussion of the use of biblical narrative in hagiography, see Krueger, Writing and Holiness, esp. 15–32. 35. John of Ephesus, Lives of the Eastern Saints, 50, PO 19:157 (503).

NOTES to pages 101–103

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36. I use the term “holy man” in the sense in which Peter Brown established it in his article “Rise and Function of the Holy Man in Late Antiquity,” 81–101. An interesting parallel to Jacob’s reconfiguration in the later tradition into a Byzantine monk in Syriac literature can be found in the Vita tradition of Ephrem the Syrian. Ephrem, although a hymnographer and theological poet of the fourth century, is represented in sixth-century Syriac hagiography as an ascetic Byzantine monk, mistaken even for a holy fool. See Amar, Syriac “Vita” Tradition; and Amar, “Byzantine Ascetic Monachism.” 37. Longer Life, 238 (584). 38. Longer Life, 239 (585). 39. The author mentions the monasteries of Aphthonia in Laodicea, Mar Bassus in Qenneshrin, Aphthonia in Charrhae, Mar Bzy in Seleucia, and Mar Haninina in Sura, as well as the monastery of Mar John in Amida. See John of Ephesus, Lives of the Eastern Saints, 50, PO 19:156, 158 (502, 504). 40. For the relationship of the monastery of Qartmin to the Life of Jacob, see Palmer, Monk and Mason, 153–54. Palmer argues persuasively against Brooks and Kugener that the author of the appendix to the Longer Life was Mar Quryaqos of the monastery of Phesilta. Mar Theodosius recopied the text in 741. 41. The monasteries mentioned in the text include Beth Aphthonia, Mar Bzy, Mar Bassus in Qenneshrin, Mar Haninina in Sura, Mar John in Amida, Qartamin, Mar Yoh.annan Qayumo, and Casion near Egypt. John of Ephesus, Lives of the Eastern Saints, 49, PO 18:241, 242, 246, 266 (586, 587, 592, 612). 42. Longer Life, 239 (584). 43. The monastery of Phesilta is mentioned twelve times in the Longer Life: 230 (576), 231 (577), 232 (578), 233 (579), 235 (581), 248 (594), 249 (595), 251 (597), 252 (598), 258 (604), 611 (265), 614 (268). John of Ephesus, in contrast, mentions it only once. John of Ephesus, Lives of the Eastern Saints, 49, PO 18:690 (488). 44. See Honigmann, Évêques et évêchés, 177. This story is embellished in the Longer Life: Jacob predicted the day on which he would die. Longer Life, 266. 45. Longer Life, 267–68 . 46. Stewart, Nonsense, 101, quoted in Smith, “Trading Places,” 227. 47. Longer Life, 255 (601). 48. Acts 15. 49. Longer Life, 262–64 (608–10). Theodoret of Cyrrhus, “James of Nisibis,” in History of the Monks of Syria, trans. Price, 12–22; for the siege of Nisibis, see secs. 11–13, 18–20. 50. I am influenced here by Smith, who, following Durkheim, emphasizes that the designation of the sacred is a product of human agency, “not the human response to a transcendental act of self-display.” See Smith, “Topography of the Sacred.” 51. See Durkheim, Elementary Forms of Religious Life, 142. 52. Longer Life, 248 (594). 53. John of Ephesus, Lives of the Eastern Saints, 49, PO 18:488–95 (690–97). 54. See Whitby, Rome at War. 55. Longer Life, 248 (594). 56. See Van Ginkel, John of Ephesus, 32, 124, 169, 178, 152. For the divergent ways in which Theodora is remembered in hagiographical traditions, see Harvey, “Theodora the ‘Believing Queen’.”

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NOTES to pages 103–107

57. Smith, “Differential Equations,” 11. 58. “And victorious emperors of the Romans and the Persians and distant peoples heard the good news of the wonders of the holy man himself.” Longer Life, 248 (594). 59. This is a safe assumption, as the late sixth- or early seventh-century Chalcedonian text Narratio de rebus Armeniae names the followers of the Jacobites Iakobitai. This is an ecclesiastical history written from the Chalcedonian point of view, or a history of the Armenian Church in terms of its relationship with the Byzantine Church. It mentions that Julian Halicarnassus and Jacob rose and separated from the Chalcedonians. 60. See Longer Life, 260 (606). 61. See the introduction to this book. 62. For an excellent discussion of these debilitating internal controversies, see Van Rompay, “Society and Community.” . 63. See Harvey, Asceticism and Society in Crisis, 22. 64. As Clark notes, the search for discontinuity is a valuable contribution by the structuralists (Derrida and Lévi-Strauss) to the study of premodern texts. See Clark, History, Theory, Text, 62. 65. See Harvey, Asceticism and Society in Crisis, passim; and Harvey, “Remembering Pain.” 66. For the notion of authorial performance, hagiography, and the cultivation of the Christian self, see Krueger, Writing and Holiness, 1–10. 67. See Brooks, PO 17:viii. 68. See Longer Life, 228–29 (574–75), n. 1. This is Brooks’s translation, which I have modified where I thought fit. 69. For communal “storiedness,” see Somers, “Narrativity, Narrative Identity, and Social Action.” 70. I discuss this conflict in chapter 1. This controversy is discussed in detail in book 4 of John of Ephesus’s Ecclesiastical History. For a discussion of the controversy, see Brooks, “Patriarch Paul of Antioch.” Paul had great support in Syria, the “Paulites.” Jacob had great support in Mesopotamia, the “Jacobites.” See Honigmann, Évêques et évêchés, 177. 71. My attention to group rhetoric and the importance of “framing dynamics” is indebted to Brubaker, Ethnicity without Groups, 18–19. 72. Longer Life, 256 (602). 73. See Chronicle of Zuqnin, 114, 124, 136–37. The epithet is also missing in PseudoZachariah. 74. John of Ephesus, Lives of the Eastern Saints, 49, PO 18:488–95 (690–91). 75. John of Ephesus, Lives of the Eastern Saints, 49, PO 18:488–90 (690–92). 76. Histoire Nestorienne (Chronique de Seért), ed. Scher and trans. Griveau, PO 7:2, 140–42. 77. Nicephorus Callistus, Ecclesiastical History, PG 147, cols. 437–46; my translation of PG 147, col. 437, C-D. 78. Longer Life, 245 (591). 79. Van Ginkel discusses this strategy at play in John of Ephesus’s Ecclesiastical History. See Van Ginkel, John of Ephesus, esp. 20, and 197–216. 80. Matt. 10:1, 7–11, 14; Mark 6:6b-13. Luke 9:1–6. It is interesting that in Matthew and Luke, Jesus instructs his disciples to take no staff (Matt. 10:10; Luke 9:3) for the road, whereas in Mark, Jesus commands them to take nothing but a staff for the road (Mark 6:8).

NOTES to pages 107–111

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81. This characterization was perpetuated and passed down in later Miaphysite apologetics. For example, the Coptic patriarch Severus “Sāwīrus” ibn al-Muqaffa͑ (ca. 987) in the Refutation of Sa͑ îd ibn-Batriq speaks of the constant suffering and persecutions endured by the Jacobites. He contrasts them, his ancestors, to the Melkites, who preferred the benefits of imperial sponsorship to those of orthodoxy. See Ibn al-Muqaffa͑, Réfutation de Sa͑ îd ibnBatriq, ed. Chébli, PO 3:204. See also chapter 8, notes 13 and 18. 82. This text was edited by Kugener in “Récit de Mar Cyriaque.” It is included in Brooks’s appendix, PO 19:268–72 (614–18). See also Bundy, “Jacobus Baradaeus,” 72. 83. Krueger discusses the importance of seeing hagiographical authors situated in a larger cult of saints. Krueger, Writing and Holiness, 11. 84. The MSS are Berlin Sachau 321 (end of the eighth c.) and British Museum 12174 (twelfth c.). When Brooks included this narrative at the end of the Longer Life, he (following Kugener, who edited the text) was skeptical about the attribution of the text to Mar Quryaqos. See Brooks, PO 17:xiii.. 85. Longer Life, 268 (614): “The narrative of Bishop Jacob has ended, that I, John of Asia, wrote.” 86. Longer Life, 268 (614): “A text of Mar Quryaqos, bishop of Amida, concerning holy Mar Jacob.” 87. Chronicle of Zuqnin, pt. 3. The third part of the Chronicle is borrowed from part 2 of John of Ephesus’s Ecclesiastical History. The Chronicle of Zuqnin (137) calls Jacob “Mar James of (the monastery of) Pesilta.” 88. Chronicle of Zuqnin, pt. 4, 142–43. 89. The text mentions Emperor Heraclius’s conquest of Mesopotamia, in 628. See Palmer, Monk and Mason, 153–54 n. 33. See also Brooks, PO 17:xiv. 90. This is impossible: Muhammad does not emigrate to Medina until 622. Harrak notes this, too, in Chronicle of Zuqnin, 141 n. 6. 91. Here I follow Palmer, Monk and Mason, 153–54, contra Brooks, in reading ethktebat as “copied” rather than “written.” Longer Life, 273 (619). 92. PO 19:268–72 (614–18): “Narration of Mar Quryaqos, bishop of Amida, concerning holy Mar Jacob.” 93. For a discussion of the theme of relic theft in the Syriac traditions, see Saint-Laurent, “Bones in Bags: Relics in Syriac Hagiography,” in Syriac Encounters: Proceedings of the 6th North American Syriac Symposium (forthcoming). 7 . A H. U D E M M E H A M O N G T H E A R A B S

1. This delineation of the jurisdiction or extent of the church and its correspondence to imperial borders has been noted by scholars. Morony, Iraq, 342. 2. See Canon 12 of the Acts of the Council of Seleucia-Ctesiphon, which granted supreme ecclesiastical authority to the catholicos of Seleucia-Ctesiphon in Synodicon orientale, ed. and trans. Chabot, 26–27 (Syriac): “Canon Twelve, on the Honor that is due and owed to the Catholicos who sits on the throne of Seleucia and Ctesiphon.” For context, see Morony, Iraq, 373. 3. See the Barrington Atlas of the Greek and Roman World, map 91. See also Fowden, Barbarian Plain, 121.

172

NOTES to pages 111–113

4. Schilling, Die Anbetung der Magier, 2 and 231. 5. Histoires d’Ahoudemmeh et de Marouta: Métropolitains Jacobites de Takrit et de L’Orient (VI et VII Siècles), ed. and trans. Nau, PO 3:1–96. Nau’s edition and French translation of this text comes from a single MS dating to 936: British Museum, Add. 14645. I will refer to the text hereafter as Life of Ah ̣udemmeh, with the page numbers of Nau’s text. English translations are mine from Nau’s Syriac text. For information about the MS tradition and historical sources, see Nau, introduction to Life of Ah ̣udemmeh, 8–13. 6. See Morony, Iraq, 373. 7. Schilling, Die Anbetung der Magier, 231. 8. See John of Ephesus, Iohannis Ephesini Historiae ecclesiasticae, ed. and trans. Brooks, CSCO 105/54 (Syriac), 106/55 (Latin). For John’s description of Ah ̣udemmeh, see 316–18 (Syriac) and 240–41 (Latin). For a later attestation, see Bar ʿEbroyo, Chronography of Gregory Abul-Faraj, ed. and trans. Budge, 2:99–100; for the Syriac text, see Bar ʿEbroyo, Gregorii Bar Hebraei Chronicon ecclesiasticum, ed. and trans. Abbeloos and Lamy, 2:97. The Ecclesiastical Chronicon of Bar ʿEbroyo, dates the martyrdom of Ah ̣udemmeh to 575. See Bar ʿEbroyo, Chron. eccl. 2.99–100. 9. My interpretation of Ah ̣udemmeh has been shaped by Susan Stewart’s excellent theoretical work on narratives and representation. In her essay on the miniature, Susan Stewart notes that there are two major features of the tableau: “the drawing together of significant, even if contradictory elements, and thereby the complete filling out of ‘point of view’; and second, the simultaneous particularization and generalization of the moment.” She explains further: “The tableau offers a type of contextual closure which would be inappropriate to genres rooted in the context of their utterance; the tableau effectively speaks to the distance between the context at hand and the narrated context; it is possible only through representation, since it offers a complete closure of a text framed off from the ongoing reality that surrounds it.” Stewart, “The Miniature,” 48. 10. See Walker, Legend of Mar Qardagh, 178–79, 185; Shahid, Byzantium and the Arabs in the Fourth Century, 419–22; and Shahid, Byzantium and the Arabs in the Sixth Century, vol. 1, pt. 2, 773, 842–43, 854–55, 924, 959, 1020; Fowden, Barbarian Plain, 122–27; and Schilling, Die Anbetung der Magier, 10–13, 37–40, 231. 11. See Hage, Die syrisch-jakobitische Kirche, 1–3. 12. Fowden, Barbarian Plain, 3. 13. Following typical patterns of hagiography, in the prologue the author also speaks of his inadequacy to perform his task. Life of Ah ̣udemmeh, 17. 14. Life of Ah ̣udemmeh, 18. 15. Life of Ah ̣udemmeh, 19. 16. The capital of Beth ‘Arabaye is Nisibis, a city that was always on the border between the Persian and Roman empires. See Walker, Legend of Mar Qardagh, 100. See also Pigulevskaja, Les villes de l’état iranien, 49–59. 17. Life of Ah ̣udemmeh, 20. 18. The hagiography does not affiliate Ah ̣udemmeh with Jacob Baradaeus. I discuss this further below. 19. Life of Ah ̣udemmeh, 21. 20. Life of Ah ̣udemmeh, 25. 21. Life of Ah ̣udemmeh, 26.

NOTES to pages 113–116

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22. Life of Ah ̣udemmeh, 28. 23. Yet we know that the region of Beth Aramaye (area around Seleucia-Ctesiphon) already had five dioceses of (Dyophysite) Christians by 410. See Walker, Legend of Mar Qardagh, 99 n. 46. 24. Life of Ah ̣udemmeh, 27–28. For an overview of the history of monasticism in Beth ‘Arabaye, see Fiey, Assyrie chrétienne, 3:147–261. See Barrington Atlas, map 89. 25. For this discussion see Oates, Ancient History of Northern Iraq, 106–17; Fowden, Barbarian Plain, 124; and Fiey, “Identification of Qasr Serej,” Sumer 14 (1958): 125–27. 26. Life of Ah ̣udemmeh, 32. 27. Near Tagrit, according to Bar ʿEbroyo. Nau references Bar ʿEbroyo’s mention of this monastery, but he does not provide a citation for Bar ʿEbroyo. See Nau, introduction to Life of Ah ̣udemmeh, 12 n. 2. 28. If there is any truth to this account, this would have been the son of Khusro I, “George”; see Nau, introduction to Life of Ah ̣udemmeh, 12. 29. For baptism in the Syrian tradition, see Brock, “Transition to a Post-Baptismal Anointing.” 30. Life of Ah ̣udemmeh, 36. 31. Life of Ah ̣udemmeh, 36. 32. Life of Ah ̣udemmeh, 41. 33. Life of Ah ̣udemmeh, 37. This is a common hagiographic topos. See, for example, Gregory of Nyssa’s Life of Macrina. The sisters of Macrina lament for their spiritual mother like children orphaned. See P. Maraval, Vie de Sainte Macrine [par] Grégoire de Nysse: Introduction, texte critique, traduction, notes et index, SC 178 (Paris, 1971), secs. 26, 229–33. 34. Acts 28:16ff. 35. Life of Ah ̣udemmeh, 44. 36. Life of Ah ̣udemmeh, 45. 37. See Nau, introduction to Life of Ah ̣udemmeh, 12. It is a topos of hagiography that animals respond miraculously in the presence of a holy body. See, for example, the wasps in the story of Anahid, the Persian martyress. Rather than stinging the holy woman’s body, they act as a wall protecting her. See “Anahid,” in Brock and Harvey, Holy Women of the Syrian Orient, 82–99, here 98. See also Payne, Christianity and Iranian Society, 28–44. 38. This is a hagiographic topos. See, for example, the Life of Macrina by Gregory of Nyssa, in which the body of the holy woman shines in the dark, even after her death. See Vie de Sainte Macrine [par] Grégoire de Nysse, sec. 32, p. 246 (Greek). 39. Life of Ah ̣udemmeh, 49–51. 40. Edict of February 17, 488, Cod. Iust. I. 1. 3. ACO I. i. 4, no. 138, 66:12–14; See Whitby, introduction to Ecclesiastical History of Evagrius Scholasticus, 33. 41. See Morony, Iraq, 372. See Labourt, Le Christianisme dans l’Empire Perse, 199 ; and Fiey, Assyrie chrétienne, 2:822–23; 3:127–28. 42. See Fiey, Jalons pour une histoire de l’Église, 118. See also Walker, Legend of Mar Qardagh, 117 and 175; Fiey, Jalons, 113–19. 43. Morony, Iraq, 373. 44. See Socrates of Constantinople, VI 8, 18–20a, 354, ed. Hansen. In Syriac sources, Yazdegerd is praised by Christians for his virtues, see Synodicon orientale, ed. and trans.

174

NOTES to pages 116–119

Chabot, 18 (Syriac) 254 (French). For John of Ephesus’s praise of Khusro, see John of Ephesus, Ecclesiastical History, bk. 6, chap. 20. See also Schilling, Die Anbetung der Magier, 2. 45. See Schilling, Die Anbetung der Magier, passim. 46. “Synod of Mar Catholicos SabarJesu,” in Synodicon orientale, ed. and trans. Chabot, 456 and 459 (French) and 196 and 198 (Syriac). See Walker, Legend of Mar Qardagh, 94 n. 26. 47. Between 605 and 607, the Sasanian Empire conquered the Roman cities of Edessa, Dara, and Amida, all centers of West Syriac Miaphysite communities, whose location on the border had drained these areas of resources and enervated local inhabitants. The classic text describing urban suffering in this region is the Chronicle of Joshua the Stylite, preserved in the third part of the Chronicle of Zuqnin, although these events happened a century before this conquest. See Chronicle of Zuqnin, trans. Harrak; and Chronicle of Joshua the Stylite, ed. and trans. Wright. 48. We know this especially from the third part of John of Ephesus’s Ecclesiastical History. By the beginning of the seventh century, the likelihood of unification with the imperial Chalcedonian church had slipped away. 49. Fowden, Barbarian Plain, 2–3. 50. For the spread of the Miaphysites among the Arabs, see Trimingham, Christianity among the Arabs, 163–88. 51. The hagiography dates Ah ̣udemmeh’s death to 575 c.e.—a noteworthy instance of correspondence between hagiographical and historical portraits. Life of Ah ̣udemmeh, 46. 52. John of Ephesus, Ecclesiastical History, 318 (Syriac), 241 (Latin). Nau cites this excerpt (Syriac with a French translation) in his introduction to the Life of Ah ̣udemmeh, 8–9. 53. Bar ʿEbroyo, Gregorii Bar Hebraei Chronicon Ecclesiasticum, ed. and trans. Abbeloos and Lamy, 2:97, translation mine. 54. Two historical sources, John of Ephesus and the thirteenth-century Chronicon of Bar Hebraeus, relate this story, which shows striking similarities to the Life of Simeon of Beth Arsham. See John of Ephesus, Life of Simeon the Bishop, in his Lives of the Eastern Saints (Brooks, PO 17:147–52). Khusro is in fact more inclined than other Persian kings to have been more favorably disposed to Christianity, as his own Mobed mother, according to Christian tradition, is healed by a Christian monk. 55. Oates thinks that this patriarch is Catholicos Joseph. Oates, Ancient History of Northern Iraq, 115. 56. John of Ephesus, Ecclesiastical History, 317–18 (Syriac), 241 (Latin): “Christians were expected to express their loyalty to the Sasanians by praying for the monarch, and by using the terms which he used for himself.” Morony, Iraq, 337. I agree with Joel Walker that the historicity of these statements is dubious, as the sympathetic picture that John of Ephesus paints of Khusro I served John’s apologetic interests. Walker goes as far as to believe that this debate actually happened. Walker, Legend of Mar Qardagh, 179. See also Schilling, Die Anbetung der Magier, 31–32. 57. Schilling, Die Anbetung der Magier, 2–4. 58. John of Ephesus, Iohannis Ephesini Historiae Ecclesiasticae, 316 (Syriac) and 240 (Latin), translation mine. See also Schilling, Die Anbetung der Magier, 10–13, 37–40. 59. Life of Ah ̣udemmeh, 41. 60. Schilling, Die Anbetung der Magier, 231.

NOTES to pages 119–121

175

61. Ibid. 62. We recall that the descendant of Abgar, a rogue king, breaks the legs of Aggai, the successor of Addai. See the Teaching of Addai, 103–4. 63. These include healings, prison escapes, and exorcisms. See the chapters 1–3 in this book on the Acts of Thomas, the Teaching of Addai, and the Acts of Mari. 64. There are vivid narratives about his healing of lepers. See Life of Ah ̣udemmeh, 24. 65. “Those demons whom the barbarian peoples worshipped perceived immediately that their authority had passed, and that [the people] ceased worshipping them, that light reigned, and darkness had dissipated.” Life of Ah ̣udemmeh, 23. 66. These “pagans” are called T.ayye. Life of Ah ̣udemmeh, 16, 23–24. 67. John 19:25. 68. See the abundance of “apostle” language, for example, in Life of Ah ̣udemmeh, 18 and 21. 69. Life of Ah ̣udemmeh, 47. 70. Some of the pagans are depicted as barbaric in the Acts of Mari, but they are called “evil pagans,” noshe bishe d-h.anuputā. See Acts of Mari, 19, 42–43. “Barbarians” appear elsewhere in Syriac literature: they are called Huns and Goths. See, for example, Cyrillonas’ Hymn on the Invasion of the Huns, in Cyrillonas, L’agneau véritable, trans. Cerbelaud, 72–87; and Euphemia and the Goth, trans. Burkitt, 48–77 and 129–53. Historian Walter Goffart has problematized this term for Western scholarship. See, for example, Goffart, “Conclusion,” in Barbarian Tides, 229–39. 71. Life of Ah ̣udemmeh, 24. 72. Life of Ah ̣udemmeh, 41–42. 73. Life of Ah ̣udemmeh, 26. This theme also appears in missionary literature of the West. See Wood, Missionary Life, passim. 74. Acts 2. 75. Life of Ah ̣udemmeh, 27. For Addai’s ordination, see Teaching of Addai, 75–80. 76. The Ah ̣udemmeh of history actually participated in building projects, if Fiey’s identification of the ruins at Qasr Sarij (east of Jabal Sinjar, near Ah ̣udemmeh’s purported birthplace in Balad) as Ah ̣udemmeh’s complex is correct. If so, the hagiographical commemoration, and the emphasis that it places on the saint’s construction of holy space, make sense. Fowden, Barbarian Plain, 124; Fiey, Sumer, 125–27; and Oates, Ancient History of Northern Iraq, 106–17. 77. So at the synod of 585 contemporary Dyophysite counterparts likened the Christian hierarchy to what Michael Morony calls “a microcosm of the celestial order governed by a hierarchy of Archangels, Powers and Thrones.” Morony, Iraq, 335. See Synodicon orientale, ed. and trans. Chabot, 159–60, 419–20. 78. Saint Sergius also plays an important role in the hagiography of Mar Qardagh, appearing to the Persian military saint and encouraging him to persevere in his Christian loyalty: “But the blessed Qardagh traveled along his path, rejoicing and praising God. And while he was at a rest house along the road, there appeared to him in a dream holy Mar Sergius, the martyr, who said to him, ‘Qardagh, my brother, you have begun well. Struggle bravely that you may become my brother for eternity.’ ” “The History of the Heroic Deeds of Mar Qardagh,” secs. 30, 37, trans. Walker, in Legend of Mar Qardagh.

176

NOTES to pages 121–123

79. This is the main argument of Fowden’s book Barbarian Plain. Indeed, the emperor Khusro II dedicated a golden votive cross to the monastery of St. Sergius in Resafa while in exile. See Morony, Iraq, 333; Peeters, “Les ex-voto de Khosrau Apawez à Sergiopolis,” 18. 80. See Nau, introduction to Life of Ah ̣udemmeh, 12. 81. See Fowden, Barbarian Plain, 121–28, 78, 80, 93, 95, 118, and 159. 82. Elizabeth Fowden called this building project “a deliberate attempt to interrupt the flow of local Arab pilgrims across the Euphrates to the Sergius shrine at Rusafa. Ahudemmeh carefully channeled their enthusiasm for local benefit. Not only its name, but the very plan of the new shrine imitated its rival at Rusafa.” Fowden, Barbarian Plain, 124. 83. Life of Ah ̣udemmeh, 21. 84. Life of Ah ̣udemmeh, 24. The MS that preserves this hagiography was brought to the monastery of the Syrians in the tenth century by Abbot Moses of Nisibis, a Mesopotamian transplanted to Egypt. Ah ̣udemmeh’s hagiography is a way for his Syriac-speaking Mesopotamia Miaphysites living now in Egypt to preserve a memory of their Christian origins between the Tigris and the Euphrates. 85. Life of Ah ̣udemmeh, 28. 86. This myth of religious freedom is equivalent to Sasanian imperial toleration, from which their Dyophysite rivals had profited throughout the sixth century. “Toleration [from the Sasanians] . . . brought with it the requirement for royal permission to build churches and monasteries, to practice Christian burial, to promulgate monastic rules, and to elect the catholicos. Toleration was bought at the expense of interference by the state in church affairs.” Morony, Iraq, 339. 87. In her article on the building projects of Marutha of Tagrit, successor of Ah.udemmeh, Elizabeth Fowden discusses how Arabic monks competed with one another in the construction of monasteries (the houses of Al-Mudhir, Ghassan, Banu, and H.arith [Najran]) to outdo the beauty of each other’s edifices. See Fowden, “Monks, Monasteries, and Early Islam.” See also Morony, Iraq, 373; Fiey, Assyrie chrétienne, 2:327, 628–29, 765; 3:18; Trimingham, Christianity among the Arabs, 169. 88. Walker, Legend of Mar Qardagh, 179. 89. Shah Khusro I is almost an exact contemporary of Emperor Justinian. 90. This gave Christians access to the relic of the “true cross” from the Holy Land. It was presented to Christian minister Yazdin of Karka d-Beth Slokh. See Walker, Legend of Mar Qardagh, 150, esp. nn. 120 and 121, for a guide to the sources on the cult of the true cross in the East. 91. This shift occurred primarily after the time of the emperor Maurice (602), the Persian capture of Jerusalem (614), and the counterinvasion by the Byzantine emperor Heraclius (626). As Reinink has argued, however, the religious politics of Khusro II helped to strengthen the position of the Miaphysites. See Reinink, “Die Entstehung der syrischen Alexanderlegende,” 264. 92. See Guidi, Chronica minora, 1:21; 2:19. See also Morony, Iraq, 334. 93. Morony, Iraq, 342. 94. See Walker, Legend of Mar Qardagh, 88–90; Fiey, Jalons pour une histoire de l’Église, 95. 95. “From its foundation in 224, the Sasanian dynasty allied itself closely with the Zoroastrian priesthood and promoted the ‘good religion’ of Ahura Mazda over all other faiths.” Walker, Legend of Mar Qardagh, 109.

NOTES to pages 123–124

177

96. See 40-41 of this book. . 97. See Acts 16:16–38; 28. 98. Life of Ah ̣udemmeh, 34–35. 99. “There was also a degree of official toleration in the late Sasanian period. According to the terms of the treaty between the Sasanians and Byzantines in 561, Christians living under Sasanian rule were to be allowed to build churches, exercise their cult freely, and bury their dead, in return for which they were not supposed to make converts among the Magians.” Morony, Iraq, 333. This peace treaty was to be binding on the Arab states in the borderlands as well. See Menander, Fragmenta, Teubner ed., 24, ll. 16–28, translated by Ure, Justinian and His Age, 99. See Oates, Ancient History of Northern Iraq, 113. 100. On the Christian foundations in Tagrit, see Fiey, Assyrie chrétienne, 131 (discussion of the monastery of Beth Qoqa, where Maroutha, successor of Ah.udemmeh, founded a school), 137, 175, 178, 230, 329–33, 337–39, 352, 416–21, 429, 433, 438–39, 443, 452–53, 473, 484, 488, 559, 598, 614, 630, 662, 667, 762, and 826. 101. The bishop of Tagrit did not solidify his loyalty to the Miaphysite patriarch of Antioch until 629. The bishops or archimandrites of Mar Matay ordained each other up to 629. See Fiey, Jalons pour une histoire de l’Église, 129. 102. The creedal statement that opens the hagiography demonstrates this, and the hagiography provides a myth to support the ideologies and theology outlined in the introduction: “For our sake, he [Christ] was crucified according to divine dispensation. He ascended upon the cross in order to tear out the transgression of Adam from its roots, and in its place he planted the cross of victory. By the stripping of his flesh, he put to shame the principalities and authorities of this dark world. He entered the place of death to announce the message of joy to the souls there. He arose on the third day from the grave, and he raised us up with him in glory,” Life of Ah ̣udemmeh, 16. 103. One of the important realities to consider is the fact that the union between the Miaphysites in Persia and their coreligionists in the Roman Empire, who called themselves the “Patriarchate of Antioch,” occurred only after the mid-seventh century, in the time of the patriarch of Denha, author of the Life of Maroutha. For the Life of Maroutha by Mar Denha, see Nau, PO 3:52–96. For historical orientation, see Hage, Die syrisch-jakobitische Kirche, 28–29. 104. “The Narrative of Holy Mar Ah ̣udemmeh, Apostle and Saintly Martyr,” Life of Ah ̣udemmeh, 15. 105. Memory making and myth as concepts that craft a coherent portrait of the past are discussed in Castelli, Memory and Martyrdom, 30. 106. Life of Ah ̣udemmeh, 18. The hagiographer elsewhere appeals to the apostles: “Let our service be in heaven according to the word of the apostle, ‘Let us seek the things above and not below on earth’ ” and “Thus the message of the holy apostle Paul was heard, ‘the Good News shines forth in every region.’ ” Life of Ah ̣udemmeh, 17 and 20. 107. “And he asked the company of the apostles that they petition God with him on behalf of the proclamation. He was mindful of psalm 67 . . . ‘May God show mercy on us.’ . . . The holy apostles hymned this psalm beautifully and gracefully, so that through this they might cry out to God that he be with them and help them in their preaching of the Gospel.” Life of Ah ̣udemmeh, 22. 108. For instance, the text advances the “apostolicity” of Ah.udemmeh by inserting Psalm 67 into his mouth and reinterpreting this as a hymn of the apostles that the saint sings

178

NOTES to pages 124–126

as he walks in their footsteps. The text presents the chant of Psalm 68—“God will arise and his enemies will be scattered”—as a source of empowerment for Ah.udemmeh as he attempts to convert “idol worshippers”; see Life of Ah ̣udemmeh, 21 and 23. This is a paschal verse also used in the Life of Antony and still in the Orthodox Easter liturgy. 109. Palmer, “Logos of the Mandylion,” 129–30. 110. Life of Ah ̣udemmeh, 34. 111. “They [the prison guards] carried an iron hook, threw it around his neck, and imprinted [on it] the seal of the shah.” Life of Ah ̣udemmeh, 41–42. 112. “They cut off his head and set the seal of the shah upon it.” Life of Ah ̣udemmeh, 47. 113. Brock notes the association of rushmo with ownership: “Very frequently the mark of ownership is viewed as a brand mark identifying the baptized as sheep in Christ’s flock.” Brock notes that this pastoral imagery, rushmo of Christ’s flock, is also present in the Acts of Thomas (secs. 25 and 131). It is also connected to circumcision. This idea is recurrent in texts of all periods; its equivalent under the Old Covenant was circumcision, a fact of which all early writers are very much aware. The East Syrian ordo indeed speaks of the baptized being “circumcised by it (sc. the oil) with a circumcision without hands, stripping off the flesh of sins with Christ’s circumcision.” See Brock, “Transition to Post-Baptismal Anointing,” 217. 114. I am influenced here by Smith’s article “Topography of the Sacred.” 115. For the tattooing of Montanists and slaves, see Elm, “Pierced by Bronze Needles.” 116. Life of Ah ̣udemmeh, 17. 117. Life of Ah ̣udemmeh, 26. 118. This area, and the Arabic tribes within it, was often fraught with invasions and war in the mid-sixth century. The Greek historian Procopius writes of Ghassanid Arabs, fighting for Rome against Persia under the phylarch Arethas, who inflicted great damage on the villages of Beth Arabaye, the area of Ah.udemmeh’s conversion work. This is one campaign of the Roman-Persian war of 540–45. In this conflict, the Ghassanid Arabs fought on the side of the Romans, and the Lakhmids on the side of the Sasanians. See Procopius, History 2.19.15–18 (Wirth 233–34), trans. Dewing (423). See also Walker, Legend of Mar Qardagh, 144–45. 119. “The church in the Sasanian empire became an agent of the state to secure the loyalty of its Christian subjects. Its extent came to be defined by the borders of the Sasanian empire.” Morony, Iraq, 334. 120. The seventh-century Miaphysite Chronicle of Zuqnin mentions Ah.udemmeh as a bishop renowned among the Persians as catholicos. See Chronicle of Zuqnin, pt. 3, p. 114. 121. The competitors of the Miaphysites, the Church of the East, enjoyed the responsibility of keeping the Christians loyal to the Sasanian sovereign. See Morony, Iraq, 338. 122. See Morony, Iraq, 4. 123. Under the leadership of Abraham of Kashkar, the School of Nisibis trained many future priests, bishops, and monks in the sixth century. 124. See Becker, Fear of God, 3. 125. Ah.udemmeh himself converted from the religion of his family to the Miaphysites. Life of Ah ̣udemmeh, 19–20. 126. Gabriel of Sinjar and Ah.udemmeh are, in several senses, comparable figures, as both are Persian Miaphysites who rose to positions of prominence in their religious communities, a status shift that attracted the attention of their Dyophysite counterparts. Both

NOTES to pages 126–136

179

had purportedly been a part of the Church of East and converted to the Miaphysite church. Both had conflicts with the Church of the East in which the Persian shah became involved. 127. For these debates, see Babai the Great, Acts of Mar George the Priest, 49, ed. Bedjan, AMS 2:513–14; and the Khuzistan Chronicle, in Guidi, Chronica minora, CSCO ser. 3, vol. 4, 22–23 (Syriac). The Khuzistan Chronicle presents the events from the point of view of the Church of the East. 128. See Peeters, “Les ex-voto de Khosrau Apawez à Sergiopolis,” 5. 129. The term maphrian does not appear until the eighth century. The maphrian can be likened to the patriarch, only for the Miaphysites living outside the Roman Empire. He ostensibly enjoyed a wide jurisdiction and freedom in his leadership. See Hage, Die syrischjakobitische Kirche, 25–27. The patriarch of the Miaphysites claimed Antioch as his see, although in fact no patriarch had lived there since the time of Severus of Antioch (exiled from his see in 518). For further discussion on the impact of the maphrian on later Syrian Orthodox self-understanding, see Debié, “Syriac Historiography and Identity Formation,” 110–11. 130. See Saint-Laurent, “Bones in Bags: Relics in Syriac Hagiography,” in Syriac Encounters: Proceedings of the 6th North American Syriac Symposium (forthcoming). 131. There is no full-length monograph in English on the history of the maphrian, despite the fact that this office became very important to the Miaphysite church. Indeed, one of the most important polymaths of the medieval church, Bar ʿEbroyo (d. 1286), held this office. C O N C LU S I O N

1. The monasteries are the training ground for Miaphysite bishops. See Bacht, “Die Rolle des orientalischen Mönchtums.” 2. Culler, “Presupposition and Intertextuality,” 1387. 3. See Morony, “History and Identity in the Syrian Churches,” 32. 4. Palmer, “Logos of the Mandylion,” 127. 5. Ibid. 6. Payne-Smith, Compendious Syriac Dictionary, 580. 7. Ibid. 8. I owe this analogy to Susan Ashbrook Harvey. 9. See Menze, Justinian and the Making of the Syrian Orthodox Church, 69–70. 10. Van Ginkel, John of Ephesus, 81. 11. See Van Ginkel, John of Ephesus, 198. 12. Severus ibn al-Muqaffaʿ, Réfutation de Saʿîd ibn-Batriq (Eutychius), ed. and trans. Chébli, PO 3.2:125–225. 13. Dioscorus was an Alexandrian bishop, an adherent of Cyril, and champion of the “Robber Council” of 449. He was condemned at Chalcedon. 14. “Also the faithful remained in every place humbled, persecuted, and submitted to much worse treatment in the fifty years, that is to say until the time of the Muslim conquest, under the reign of Heraclius, the sixteenth day of Baouneh. God delivered them then by freeing them from the Greeks, and by placing them under the domination of Islam. . . . At the same time, the Copts, Syrians, and Armenians persevered in orthodoxy. As far as the Greeks, and in terms of their language, they adhere to the Chalcedonian creed.” Réfutation

180

NOTES to pages 136–137

de Saʿîd ibn-Batriq, ed. Chébli, 204, emphasis and English translation mine, from the French translation of Chébli. 15. “Those who merited injury and the blame, of the Jacobites who suffered constantly persecutions, who shed their blood for the defense of their faith, who saw their houses ruined and their bodies tormented for the preservation of this same faith; or of those, for vain glory of the world and for the good pleasure of an earthly king, disobeyed the heavenly king, are therefore called Melkites in order to show their dependence on the emperor? God knows, who renders to each according to their deeds.” Réfutation de Saʿîd ibn-Batriq, ed. Chébli, 204. 16. Réfutation de Saʿîd ibn-Batriq, ed. Chébli, 204–5. 17. See Matt. 28:19.

abbreviations

ACO AMS AnBoll ANRW BHO BJRL BSOAS BZ CSCO Sub. DOP GCS HTR JAAS JAOS JECS JRS JTS LCL MLN NPNF OCA OCP OLA

Acta conciliorum oecumenicorum Acta martyrum et sanctorum Analecta Bollandiana Aufstieg und Niedergang der römischen Welt Bibliotheca hagiographica orientalis Bulletin of John Rylands Library Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies Byzantinische Zeitschrift Corpus scriptorum christianorum orientalium Scr. Syr. Scriptores syri Subsidia Dumbarton Oaks Papers Die griechischen christlichen Schriftsteller Harvard Theological Review Journal of Assyrian Academic Studies Journal of the American Oriental Society Journal of Early Christian Studies Journal of Roman Studies Journal of Theological Studies Loeb Classical Library Modern Language Notes Select Library of Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers Orientalia christiana analecta Orientalia christiana periodica Orientalia Lovaniensia analecta 181

182 OrSyr PG PO PS SC SCH SH SP SVTQ VC

abbreviations L’orient syrien J. P. Migne, Patrologia graeca Patrologia orientalis Patrologia syriaca Sources chrétiennes Studies in Church History Subsidia hagiographica Studia patristica St. Vladimir’s Theological Quarterly Vigiliae christianae

bi bli o g ra phy

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Index

Abgar VIII, king, 41 Abgar V Ukkāmā, king (“The Black”): communications with Jesus Christ, 36, 37, 39–40, 43, 49, 50, 51, 53; as component of idealized Christian city, 39, 46; and conversions, 36, 37, 59; corrupt son of, 40–42; healing of, 36, 37, 42; and Jesus Christ’s blessing of Edessa, 37, 38, 39, 43, 45, 49, 50, 53; and Mandylion, 53–55; as model sovereign, 41–42; and Tiberius, 37, 40, 42. See also Addai/Abgar tradition Abraham of Kashkar, 125 Acta martyrum et sanctorum, 14 Acts of the Apostles, 5, 21–22, 23, 41, 102, 121, 133, 134 Acts of Andrew, 23, 31 Acts of John, 22–23, 31 Acts of Mari: Addai/Abgar tradition in, 59, 61, 64–65, 66; as apostle to Mesopotamia, 57; as “apostle to the apostles,” 68; authorship of, 58, 71; burial site of, 69, 70; Christian landscapes in, 57, 61, 62, 65, 68, 130, 152n10; and Chronicle of Arbela, 63; conversion commission in, 58–59, 153n25; conversion of royal households by, 60–61, 63–64, 66; conversions by, 57, 58–59, 59, 65; Dayr Qunni monastery in, 58, 64, 69, 70–71; destruction of local cults in, 57, 62, 63; elevation of Mari’s status in, 60, 64, 65, 70, 130; exorcisms in, 57,

62, 64; healing in, 57, 61, 63–64, 66; independent authority of East Syrian Church in, 67, 68, 70, 130; and intertextuality, 59–60; as invented saint, 130; itinerant missionary healer motif in, 59; lineage construction in, 57, 66; liturgical practices in, 62, 63, 68, 69, 70, 71; Manichaeanism in, 61, 62–63, 65–66; Marcionism in, 66; miracles in, 63, 66, 158n115; ordinations in, 37, 39, 63, 64, 68, 70, 71; and Papa bar Aggai, 69, 71, 154n29; polemic text in, 61, 66, 67; reassigned religious labor through conversion, 64; relics of, 101; Seleucia-Ctesiphon in, 57–58, 68, 69–70, 71, 130; summary of, 58–59; and transtextuality in, 59; and Zoroastrianism, 56, 57, 59–60, 61–62, 67 Acts of Paul, 31 Acts of Paul and Thecla, 5, 22 Acts of Peter, 31 Acts of Philip, 23 Acts of Pilate, 22 Acts of Thaddeus, 51–55. See also Teaching of Addai Acts of Thomas: as apocryphal narrative, 17, 21–22; asceticism in, 17, 18–19, 26, 27, 28–29, 34; baptisms in, 19, 20, 21, 30; bridal imagery in, 18, 19, 24, 27, 29; Christian practices as form of civic regulation in, 23, 130; conversion of royal households by, 19, 20,

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Acts of Thomas: (continued) 21, 26, 27–28; conversions by, 17, 18, 28, 130; and detachment, 25–26, 34; donkey motif in, 19, 20, 24, 28; and Edessa’s cult of Thomas, 33–34; Eucharist practices in, 19, 20, 21, 30, 34; exorcisms in, 19, 20; and Gundaphorus, 18–19, 26–27, 28, 31–32; and Habban, 18, 31, 33; healing in, 28–29, 34, 130, 145n78; Holy Spirit as Mother, 29–30; and “Hymn on the Pearl,” 20, 24, 34, 143n39; imprisonment of, 20, 21, 23, 25, 26, 28; and intertextuality, 59, 129–30; as itinerant missionary, 25, 26, 35; Jesus’s commissions in, 17, 18, 24, 31, 41; lineage construction in, 23, 30, 35; liturgical practices in, 29–30, 34; marital continence in, 18, 20, 26–27, 29, 34; and Mygdonia, 20, 22, 27; novelistic elements in, 22–23, 35; parrhesia in, 27; poet apostle imagery in, 20, 25; resurrections in, 19, 22, 29; sacred travel in, 24–25; Satan in, 30; sealing imagery in, 29, 30, 146n93; serpent motif in, 24; as slave, 18, 22, 23, 25, 28, 33; summary of, 18–21; Thomas Christians, 35; and trade routes, 17, 31, 32–34, 35, 130; translations of, 17, 18, 28, 29, 33–34, 35; twin discourse in, 23–24; as twin of Jesus, 17, 18, 22, 23, 25, 28, 35; underworld visitations in, 19, 22; wandering apostle motif, 24, 32, 34 Addai/Abgar tradition, 36, 47, 49–53, 54, 61, 64 Agathias, 9 Aggai, 37, 40–42, 69, 71, 89, 119 ʿAynqenoye monastery, 113–14, 118, 121 Alexandrian Christology, 8 Amar, Joseph, 14 Amida, 74, 99, 106, 107, 108, 126 Ammianus Marcellinus, 32–33 Anastasius, emperor, 8, 81, 82, 83–84, 92, 93, 115 Anthea, 22 anti-Chalcedonians. See Miaphysites Antiochene Christology, 47 Antiochus Sidetes, 41 Antony of Egypt, Saint, 53, 87 Aphrahat, king, 60 apocryphal narratives, 4–5, 17, 21–22, 51, 130 apostolic Acts genre, 62, 90, 120, 136 Aqrunto monastery, 114, 115, 121, 126 Arbela, 62, 63 Art.aban, king, 60, 64 Arzon, 58, 61 Asia Minor, 74, 76, 77, 78 Assyrian Church, 10. See also Church of the East Athanasius of Alexandria, 8, 87 Athor, king, 61

Baʿalbak, 77 Babai, catholicos, 81–82, 91–92 Babai, Sharbēl’s sister, 46 Bacchus, Saint, 113, 121, 126 Bacht, Heinrich, 9 Bahram II, shah, 66 Balaam’s ass, 19, 24. See also donkey/serpent motif Balad, 113, 121 Balash, 66 barbarians, 120–22, 125 Bardais.an, 33, 88–89 Bar ʿEbroyo, 79, 117–18, 135–36 Bars.auma of Nisbis, 81, 88, 115 Barsamyā, 46 Basil the Great, Saint, 42, 53 Batnae, 32–33 Bauer, Walter, 38 Bedjan, Paul, 14 Bedouin tribes, 111, 116–17, 121, 125, 132 “believing king,” 8, 83. See also Anastasius, emperor Beth ‘Arabaye, 111, 113, 117, 118, 121 Beth Lapat., 66 Beth Mar Sergius monastery, 113, 122 Beth Oso, 115 Bibliotheca hagiographica orientalis (Peeters), 14 Bingelli, André, 14 bishop on the run imagery, 76, 83, 92, 131 Bnay/Bnāt Qyāmā, 37 Book of the H.imyarites, 81 Boyce, Mary, 61–62 Bremmer, J., 17 bridal imagery, 18, 19, 24, 27, 29 Brock, Sebastian, 6, 14, 49, 54, 55, 56 Brooks, E. W., 14, 97, 108 Brown, Peter, 14, 77, 86 Bundy, David, 97 Cameron, Averil, 14, 41, 71 Caner, Daniel, 25 Caria, 75, 76, 77 Casion monastery, 107, 108 Castelli, Elizabeth, 38 Chalcedonians: Byzantine Empire support of, 88, 92, 96, 104; and Codex Justinanus, 76; conflict between Miaphysites and, 50, 72; Justinian’s support of, 9, 74, 76, 96, 131; Justin I’s support of, 9, 68, 74, 78, 96; Marcian’s support of, 8; and Miaphysite shared anti-paganism position, 78; persecution of Miaphysites by, 9, 68, 73–74; polemic against, 103–4; as potential Miaphysite conversions, 103–4;

index Pulcheria’s support of, 8; split with Miaphysites, 12, 78, 86, 91, 94, 104, 126, 127. See also Church of the East Childers, J. W., 17 Christianity and the Rhetoric of Empire (Cameron), 14 Christological controversies, 8, 9, 12, 13, 49, 56 Christologies: Alexandrian, 8; Antiochene, 47; of Cyril of Alexandria, 47; Sarx-Logos, 8; single-nature, 8, 10, 46, 47, 81–82, 88, 100, 111; two-nature, 8, 10, 47, 56, 72, 91, 92 Christopher, 118 Chronicle of Arbela, 63 Chronicle of Michael the Syrian, 66, 82, 94, 136 Chronicle of Seert, 106 Chronicle of Zuqnin, 73, 74, 75–76, 77, 106, 108 Church of the East: conversions of by Miaphysites, 125–26; and debate with Babai, 90, 91, 92, 94, 118; as dominant Sasanian Christianity, 88, 90, 111, 115, 125; independent authority of, 67, 68; legitimization of through Acts of Mari, 64–65; location of, 57–58; Mari as apostle of, 12, 67, 68–69, 71, 130; and Miaphysite rivalry, 115, 125–26; Nestorians and, 110; and Papa bar ʿAggai, 69; persecution of, 67; and Persian Empire Christians, 68; self-presentation of Persia’s universal conversion, 63; Simeon of Beth Arsham’s denouncement of, 81, 88; veneration of Thomas by, 66 Church of the Holy Sepulcher, 42 Claudius, emperor, 37, 42, 46 Coakley, J. P., 56 Codex Justinianus, 76, 115 Constantine, emperor, 7–8, 10, 42, 53, 55, 116 Constantinople: death of Simeon of Beth Arsham in, 73; John of Ephesus in, 73, 83, 89; John of Hephaestopolis’s escape from, 75; and the Mandylion tradition, 37, 52, 53, 55; Miaphysite presence in, 74; Simeon of Beth Arsham at, 80, 83 Constantius, 8 Council of Chalcedon, 3, 8, 48, 49, 72, 96, 100, 134 Council of Ephesus, 8, 47, 96, 134 Council of Nicaea, 7–8, 38, 48, 134 Ctesiphon, 57, 58, 60, 69, 82, 121. See also Seleucia-Ctesiphon Cult of the Saints, The (Brown), 14 cults: of Addai, 37; community support of, 12; development of saint, 5, 14; of Edessan martyrs, 40; Edessa’s pagan, 45; of Jacob Baradaeus, 107; Mari’s destruction of, 57, 63;

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pagan, 45; of Sergius and Bacchus, 113–14, 121, 126; of Thomas, 31, 33–34; Zoroastrian, 61–62 Cyril of Alexandria, 3, 8, 10, 47, 88 Czachesz, István, 5 Dayr Qunni monastery, 58, 64, 69, 70, 71 Debié, Muriel, 11, 41, 49 Deira, 77 Delehaye, Hippolyte, 13–14 Desreumaux, Alain, 49, 53 detachment, 25–26, 34, 48, 83, 134 Diatessaron, 47 Diodore of Tarsus, 10, 81 donkey/serpent motif, 19, 24, 28, 30 Dousthi, 66 Drijvers, H. J. W, 17, 22, 33, 46, 47 Durkheim, Émile, 102 Dyophysite Church of the East, 110, 115, 125–26. See also Church of the East Dyophysites, 69; and Acts of Mari, 70–71; and conflicts with Miaphysites, 47, 68, 115, 125–26; misrepresentation of by John of Ephesus, 91–92; and Theodore of Mopsuestia, 68. See also Chalcedonians; Church of the East East Syrian Church: advancement of through hagiography, 10; early formation of, 10, 56–57, 58, 69, 130; independent authority of, 67, 68, 70, 130; Selecuia-Ctesiphon as center of, 69. See also Church of the East East Syrian Dyophysites, 61, 71. See also Dyophysites Ecclesiastical History (Eusebius of Caesarea), 49–50 Ecclesiastical History (Evagrius Scholasticus), 50–51 Ecclesiastical History (John of Ephesus), 73, 74, 75–76, 76–77, 78, 98, 106, 136 Ecclesiastical History (Nicephorus Callistus), 106–7 Edessa: apostolic origins of, 39, 40; as center of one-nature Christology, 47; and creation of lineage to Christ, 39; cult of Thomas in, 33–34; as idealized Christian city, 38–39, 40, 41, 43–44, 45, 55, 130; Jesus Christ’s blessing of, 37, 38, 39, 43, 45, 49, 50, 53, 149n37; martyrdom in, 40, 46; non-Christian polemic in, 44–45; origins of Christianity in, 36–37; religious background of, 38; sacred relics at, 40; school of Persians at, 47; as superior to other Christian cities, 46

204

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Edict of Milan, 10 Egeria, 34, 50 Elagabulus, emperor, 33 Eliya, 75 Engelkerdt, Isrun, 11 Ephrem, bishop of Antioch, 74 Ephrem the Syrian, Saint, 6, 8, 34, 90 Eucharist practices, 19, 20, 21, 30, 34, 43 Euphemia, 40 Euphrasius, 74 Eusebius of Caesarea, 7–8, 9, 31, 32, 42, 49, 51 Eutychians, 8, 89 Eutychius, 9 Evagrius Scholasticus, 50 Évêques et évêchés d’Asie antérieure au VIe siècle (Honigmann), 13 exorcisms, 19, 20, 21, 23, 29, 57, 62, 113 Formula of Reunion, 47 Fowden, Elizabeth, 112, 116–17 Frend, W. C., 13 Gabriel of Sinjar, 126, 179n126 Gad, 19 Gaʿtany monastery, 114, 118 George of Izla, 126 Gospel of Nicodemus, 22 Gregory of Nazianzus, 42 Gregory the Illuminator, Saint, 11 Griffith, Sidney, 37, 46 Gundaphorus, king, 18–19, 26–27, 28, 31–32 Guria, 40 Habban, 18, 31, 33 H.abib, 40 hagiographies: as access to saints’ power, 6, 104; and apostolic discourse, 5; and formation of religious memory, 4; interpretation of, 2–4; and Late Antiquity studies, 13–14; and legitimization strategies, 6–7; and lineage constructions in, 6; as narrative portraiture, 1–2; place in formation of Syriac churches, 12–13; sources for, 4–5; typologies of, 5–6. See also specific hagiographies H . annan, 37, 39, 50, 51, 53 H . arith bar Gabala, king, 96, 103, 167 Harrak, Amir, 14, 58, 59 Harvey, Susan Ashbrook, 14 healing, 6, 15, 16, 130, 134. See also specific hagiographies Helen, 42

Hiba of Edessa, 47, 68, 81, 158–59nn120–121, 159n131 holy man, 100, 101, 102 holy man qua slave motif, 22, 143n19 Holy Spirit as Mother, 29–30 Honigmann, Ernst, 13, 77 Hormizd, shah, 123 “Hymn on the Pearl,” 20, 25, 34, 143n39 Ibn Al-Muqaffa, Severus, 136 idealized Christian cities, 29–30, 38–39, 43–44, 93, 129, 136 image made without human hands, 54–55. See also Mandylion tradition intertextuality, 59–60, 129–30, 133 Ishoʿyahb I, 69 itinerant missionaries, 25, 26, 35, 48, 59, 80, 96, 107, 122 Jacob Baradaeus. See Life of Jacob Baradaeus; The story of the way of life of the holy Jacob Metropolitan of Edessa; and of the regions of Syria Jacobites, 96, 103, 105–8, 131, 136 Jacob of Nisibis, 102 Jacob of Phesilta, 106 Jacob of Serugh, 33, 50 James, apostle, 42, 102, 106, 131 Jesus Christ: blessing of Edessa by, 37, 38, 39, 43, 45, 50, 55, 149n37; as bridegroom, 27; commission of apostles by, 5, 18, 21–22, 24, 31, 36; and communications with Abgar V Ukkāmā, 36, 37, 39–40, 43, 49, 50, 51, 53; Hannan’s portrait of, 37, 39, 40, 48, 52; healing of Jairus’s daughter by, 63; image of made without human hands, 54–55; and kenosis, 22; and Mandylion tradition, 37, 52, 53–55; modeling of, 39, 43, 100, 120, 134; triptych image of, 53; as twin of Thomas, 17, 18, 22, 23, 25, 28, 35. See also Addai/Abgar tradition Jews, 38, 44, 45, 89, 132 John, bishop of Amida, 108 John Ascotzanges, 73 John of Antioch, 10, 47 John of Damascus, 52 John of Ephesus: and alignment with Justinian, 78; background information on, 98; and bishop on the run imagery, 76; and church as apostles’ descendants, 73–74; as “destroyer of pagans,” 73; destruction of Montanism community by, 78; divine destruction

index rhetoric of, 77; and Ecclesiastical History, 72, 73, 74, 75–76, 76–77, 78, 98, 106, 136; and extermination of pagans, 76–77, 131; and hagiography as narrative portraiture, 1; historical information about, 74; imprisonment in Constantinople of, 73; and Justinian’s conversion commmission, 75–76, 78; and Life of Jacob Baradaeus, 131; and Life Simeon of Beth Arsham, 131; and Lives of Simeon and Sergius, 72; and Lives of the Eastern Saints, 72–74, 76–77, 91, 92, 95, 97, 98, 103, 130–31; ordainments of, 74; oversight of Tralles monastery by, 75; persecution of Miaphysites in writings, 73–74; and power of missionary symbol, 77–78; praise for Khusro I by, 116, 118–19; and purpose of hagiographies, 3–4; self-presentation as missionary, 75–78. See alsoThe story of the way of life of the holy Jacob Metropolitan of Edessa; and of the regions of Syria. See also Chronicle of Zuqnin John of Hephaestopolis, 74–75, 100–101, 107 John of Tella, 74–75, 100–101, 107 John the Baptist, 66, 115, 120 Judas Thomas, 17, 18, 24. See also Acts of Thomas Julian the Apostate, emperor, 8, 42 Jullien, Christelle, 53, 57, 58, 65, 66 Jullien, Florence, 53, 57, 58, 65, 66 Justin I, emperor, 9, 68, 74, 84, 96, 115, 122 Justinian, emperor, 8, 9, 11, 69, 74, 75–76, 78, 90, 92, 96, 115 Justinian and the Making of the Syrian Orthodox Church (Menze), 13 Justin II, emperor, 73, 83, 84, 115 Karish, 20, 21, 27 Kavad I, shah, 11 Kawad, shah, 115 Khusro I Anushirvan, shah, 11, 82, 102, 116, 117, 118–19, 122, 123 Khusro II, shah, 116, 123, 125, 126, 176n79, 176n91 Klijn, A. F. J, 17, 18 Kokhe, 57–58, 69 Kokto monastery, 121, 122 legitimization strategies, 6–7, 27, 39, 107, 129, 133, 135, 137 L’hagiographie syriaque, 14 Life of Ah.udemmeh: absence of Jacob Baradaeus in, 117; as apostle, 124; Balad in, 113, 121;

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baptisms in, 114, 124; as bishop of Beth ‘Arabaye, 111; construction of Christian buildings by, 121; construction of Christian buildings in, 118; conversions in, 111, 113, 116–17, 118, 121, 126; conversions of royal households by, 114, 120, 123; and cult of Sergius and Bacchus, 113, 121; death of, 115, 118, 123; debates before Khusro I in, 117, 118, 122; demonization of barbarians in, 120, 122, 126; exorcisms in, 113; Gazarta in, 113; healing in, 113, 120; historical background of, 115; historical/hagiographical differences, 117–20; historical sources for Ah.udemmeh, 111–12; imprisonment of Ah.udemmeh, 114, 120, 124; martyrdom in, 123; as metropolitan of the East, 118; Miaphysite center at Tagrit, 68, 124, 126, 132; military rhetoric in, 125, 178n118; miracles in, 114, 120; monasteries in, 113–14, 115, 118, 121, 122, 126; as monastic narrative, 121–22; and Mosul/Nineveh, 112, 113; ordainment of, 111, 117–18; ordinations by, 117–18; parrhesia in, 117, 119, 120; promotion of Miaphysite Christianity through, 111; relics of, 115, 126; Resafa in, 113, 121; rushmo in, 124–25, 178n113; Saint Sergius in, 113–14; saints’ lives as lights, 113; and Sasanian court connections, 125–26; speech/silence motif in, 120–21; summary of, 113–15; and T.ayye, 116–17; tribal itinerancy as barbaric, 122 Life of Antony, 87 Life of Constantine, 8, 42 Life of Jacob Baradaeus: absence of in Life of Ah.udemmeh, 17; background information of, 98; as bishop of Edessa, 98; as Burdʿana, 106, 107; burial narrative in, 107–8; comparison to Life of Simeon of Beth Arsham, 90; comparison to The story of the way of life of the holy Jacob Metropolitan of Edessa; and the of the regions of Syria, 99, 100–101; hagiographies of, 97–98; and Lives of the Eastern Saints, 75, 97; as missionary ascetic saint, 26, 72, 102, 107; as missionary of the Miaphysites, 98; name variations of, 79, 105, 106–7; narrative portraiture in, 3; ordinations in, 96, 111, 117–18; significance of Jacob’s poverty in, 105; Syrian Orthodox Church expansion efforts by, 96. See also The story of the way of life of the holy Jacob Metropolitan of Edessa; and of the regions of Syria Life of Jacob of Galash, 50 Life of Mar Ah.udemmeh, 14

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Life of Simeon of Beth Arsham, 68; absence of ecclesiastical lineage in, 90; apostolic descriptions of Simeon in, 85–86; as ascetic bishop, 83; as bishop on the run, 83, 92; and changes in appearance, 84; in Chronicle of Michael the Syrian, 82, 94, 167n2; comparison to Jacob Baradaeus, 68; comparison to Paul, 80, 82, 85, 86; conversions by, 81, 82, 83–84, 89, 94, 130; death of, 83; demonization of Dyophysites in, 91, 92; embassy to Anastasius in, 84; favorable presentation of Anastasius in, 83–84; hagiographical background of, 82–83; historical sources for, 81–82; imprisonment under Theodora’s protection, 84, 106, 165n28; as itinerant missionary saint, 72, 80, 83, 85; letters of, 81; linguistic abilities of, 86; and Lives of the Eastern Saints, 81, 82; martyrdom in, 89; and Miaphysite expansion, 76, 80–81, 88–89; and Miaphysite support, 81, 87; misrepresentation of Church of the East in, 92; as missionary saint narrative typology, 80, 83, 130; multi-group affiliations of, 88; narrative portraiture in, 85; ordinations in, 82; parrhesia in, 86; Pauline virtues of, 87; as Persian debater, 80, 85, 94, 131; portrayal as Byzantine ambassador, 87–88; theological debates in, 81–82, 82–83 Life of Simeon the Bishop, 82 Lincoln, Bruce, 7 lineage constructions, 3, 5, 6–7, 36, 134–35, 137. See also specific hagiographies liturgical practices, 29–30, 56, 62, 125, 132. See also specific practices Lives of Simeon and Sergius, 73 Lives of the Eastern Saints, 72–74, 76–77, 91, 92, 95, 97, 98, 103, 130–31 Longer Life. See The story of the way of life of the holy Jacob Metropolitan of Edessa; and of the regions of Syria Lydia, 75–76, 77, 101 Macarius of Jerusalem, 42 Magians, 82, 89, 118, 119, 123, 125. See also Zoroastrianism Mah.uzo, 57. See also Kokhe Mandylion tradition, 37, 52, 53–55 Mani, 53, 62–63, 65–66, 82, 88–89 Manichaeanism, 46, 61, 62–63, 65–66 Marcian, emperor, 8 Marcionites, 66, 82, 88–89, 90, 94 Mar Gabriel monastery, 101

marital continence, 18, 20, 26–27, 29, 34 Mar John, 74 Mar Mama, Monastery of, 74 Mar Matay monastery, 113, 115, 121, 122 Mar Yoh.annan Qayumā monastery, 101 Mar Yoh.annan Urt.aya monastery, 74 Maro the Stylite, 74 Mar Paqida, 63 martyrdom, 10, 11, 40–42, 61, 62, 89, 123, 134. See also specific hagiographies “Martyrdom of Pethion, Adurhormmizd, and Anahid,” 61 Maximilla, 78 Mazdai, king, 20–21, 27, 84 Melkites, 68, 107, 136, 180n15. See also Chalcedonians Melkite manuscript colophon, 51 Menander Protector, 9 Menze, Volker, 12, 13, 91 Miaphysites: Anastasius’s support of, 82; and anti-paganism position shared with Chalcedonians, 78; and Church of the East tensions, 47, 68, 115, 125–26; and conversions from Church of the East, 125–26; conversions in, 126; creation of hierarchy for, 74–75; and debate with Babai, 90, 91, 92, 94, 118; expansion of, 68, 76, 80–81; internal conflicts among, 73; in Iraqi, 115–16; and John of Ephesus, 76; Khusro II’s support of, 116; Khusro I ‘s support of, 116, 118; and Magian conversions, 126; Magian persecution of, 123; as narrative typology of Syriac missionary saints, 129; persecution of, 9, 73–74; presence of in Constantinople, 74; and Refutation of Sa͑ id Ibn Batriq, 136; self-promotion through poverty, 107; and Severus of Antioch, 8; Theodora’s support of, 9, 74 Miaphysite Syrian Orthodox Church, 13. See also Syrian Orthodox Church Michael the Syrian, 66, 79, 82, 94, 135–36 monasteries: ʿAynqenone, 113–14, 118, 121; Aqrunto, 114, 115, 121, 126; Beth Mar Sergius, 113, 122; Casion, 107, 108; Dayr Qunni, 58, 64, 69, 70, 71; Gaʿtany, 114, 118; Kokto, 121, 122; Mar Gabriel, 101; Mar Mama, 74; Mar Matay, 113, 121, 122; Mar Yoh.annan Urt.aya , 74; Phesilta, 99–100, 101, 107–8; Qartmin (Mar Gabriel), 101; Rebibe, 115, 121; Sinjar, 113, 121, 122; Sinai, 53; Sycae, 74; Tralles, 75; White Poplars, 74 monastic narratives, 121–22

index Monophysites. See Miaphysites Montanism, 78 Mount Casion (Mount Casius), 101, 108 Murray, Robert, 6 Mygdonia, 20–21, 22, 27 “Narration of Mar Qyriacus, bishop of Amida, concerning holy Mar Jacob,” 107–8 Narration of the arrival of the image in Constantinople, 52–53 narrative portraitures, 1, 2, 3, 73 narrative typologies: conversion of royal households, 7, 116; itinerant missionaries, 26, 80; missionaries/pious kings, 10–11; missionary apostles, 55; missionary holy man, 59; missionary saints, 36, 58, 73, 80, 129, 131, 134 Nau, François, 14 Nestorians, 8, 10, 81, 84, 88, 115, 141b51. See also Church of the East; Dyophysites Nestorius of Constantinople, 10, 81–82, 88–89, 115 Nicene Christians, 8, 38, 40, 87, 89, 130 Nicephorus Callistus, 106–7 Nisibis, 33, 34, 58, 68, 84, 111, 113 novelistic elements, 5, 14, 22–23, 24, 35 Of the Orthodox Faith, 52 one-nature Christology. See single-nature Christology On the Orthodox Faith, 52 Origen, 31 Osrhoene, 9, 34, 41, 107 paganism, 44, 45, 76–77, 145n61 Palmer, Andrew, 6, 14, 41, 49, 52, 53–54, 54–55, 124 Palmyra, 32 Papa bar ʿAggai, 69, 71, 89, 119 Parker, Grant, 31 parrhesia, 27, 86, 117, 119, 120 Parthia, 31–32, 33, 34, 38, 41 Paul, Saint: church named for, 55, 65; comparison of Addai to, 42; comparison of Ah.udemmeh to, 113, 124; comparison of Simeon of Beth Arsham to, 80, 82, 85, 86, 87; and connections to Rome, 69; and image of Jesus Christ’s kenosis, 22; imprisonment of, 114, 123; letters of, 4–5, 133, 134; triptych image of, 53; as wandering apostle model, 32. See also Acts of Paul; Acts of Paul and Thecla

207

Paul of Antioch, 98, 105 Paul of Samosata, 81 Paul “the Jew,” 74 Payne, Richard, 6, 59–60, 61, 62 Peeters, Paul, 14 Periplus Erythraei, 32 Persian debater (Simeon of Beth Arsham), 80, 94, 131 Peter, Saint, 31, 42, 55, 65, 69, 121, 124 Peter of Alexandria, 98 Phrat.ia, 63–64 Phesilta monastery, 99–100, 101, 107–8 Philoxenus of Mabbug, 8, 68 Phocas, 77 Phrygia, 75, 76, 77, 78, 101 pious monarch imagery, 41 Power and Persuasion in Late Antiquity (Brown), 86 Priscilla, 78 Procopius, 9 Protonike narrative, 37, 42, 44, 45, 46, 47 Pulcheria, empress, 8 Qasr Serij basilica, 113–14 Quryaqos of Amida, 107–8 Rabbula, 46–47, 48, 150n70 Rebibe monastery, 115, 121 Refutation of Saʿid Ibn Batriq, 136, 179n14 religious memory, 4, 13, 17, 46, 76, 108, 122 “Rise and Function of the Holy Man in Late Antiquity, The “ (Brown), 14 Rise of the Monophysite Movement, The (Frend), 13 Rome’s Eastern Trade (Young), 32 Resafa, 113, 121 rushmo, 30, 124–25. See also sealing imagery sacred travel, 24–26 saints’ lives as lights, 113 Sarx-Logos Christology, 8 Sasanian Miaphysites, 111, 112–13, 117, 124, 125. See also Miaphysites Sasanian milieu, 10, 60, 61, 66, 88–89, 110, 111, 119 Satan, 19, 23–24, 30 Schilling, A. M., 11, 61, 111, 116, 118, 119–20 school of Edessa, 47 school of the Persians, 47, 68, 81, 89 Second Council of Constantinople, 69, 92 Seleucia, 57, 62, 65, 66, 70

208

index

Seleucia-Ctesiphon, 33, 57–58, 68, 69–70, 71, 110, 115, 130. See also Ctesiphon Seleucus Nicator, 57 Sergius, Saint, 113–14, 121, 126, 175n78 Sergius and Bacchus, Saints, cult of, 113–14, 121 serpent/donkey motif, 19, 24, 28 seventy-two apostles, 36, 58, 65 Severus of Antioch, 8–9, 79, 99, 135 Shahid, Irfan, 81 Shapur II, 10, 141n49 Sharbēl, 46 Sinjar monastery, 113, 121, 122 Shmona, 40 Simeon the Elder (“the Stylite”), 86 Simon Peter, apostle, 42. See also Peter, Saint single-nature Christology, 8, 10, 46, 47, 81–82, 88, 100, 111. See also Miaphysites slave/holy man motif, 22, 143n19 Société d’Études Syriaques, 14 “Society and Community in the Christian East” (Van Rompay), 13 Sons and Daughters of the Covenant, 37 Sophia, empress, 40, 73 speech/silence motif, 120–21 spiritual journeys, 24–25 Spurious Life of Jacob. See story of the way of life of the holy Jacob Metropolitan of Edessa; and of the regions of Syria, The Stewart, Susan, 102 story of the way of life of the holy Jacob Metropolitan of Edessa; and of the regions of Syria, The, 101; author presented as John of Ephesus, 103, 105; authorship of, 97, 105, 108; burial narrative in, 107–8; Chalcedonian religious authority in, 103–4; Chalcedonians as Miaphysite converts, 104; and church founder, 102, 103; comparison to Chalcedonian bishops in, 102; comparison to Life of Jacob Baradaeus, 99, 100–101; copy of produced by Mar Theodosius, 99; death of, 101; divine beings in, 99; elevation of status in, 102, 103, 105, 106; and hagiographic forgeries as ascetic act, 104–5; H.arith in, 103; healing in, 100; as holy man, 100, 102, 103, 169n36; infancy narrative in, 99; Jacobites in, 105–6; lineage construction in, 102, 121, 124, 132; miracles in, 99–100, 101, 103; as missionary ascetic saint in, 101, 102; monasteries in, 99–100, 101; monasticism in, 101; as the “new James,” 102; ordainment of, 99; polemic text in, 103–4; praise for

Theodora in, 103; as savior of Syrian Orthodox Church, 102; and “the new James,” 102, 105; theological debates in, 105; and title of Baradaeus, 105. See also “Narration of Mar Quryaqos, bishop of Amida, concerning holy Mar Jacob” Synodicon orientale, 67 Syrian Orthodox Church: emergence of, 68, 95, 109, 111; hagiography in the formation of, 97–100, 101–3, 137; and Jacob Baradaeus, 101–2, 102, 103, 105, 106, 108, 136; members as Jacobites, 96, 103, 106; preservation of through expansion, 96; separate from Chacledonian Byzantine church, 86, 94; and Simeon of Beth Arsham, 80, 90, 93, 94 Tagrit: Ah.udemmeh’s conversions at, 118, 126; Ah.udemmeh’s relics at, 115, 126; apostolic memory of, 112; as Miaphysite center, 68, 124, 132, 179n129; monasteries near, 14, 118, 121; seat of Syrian Orthodox maphrian, 126, 179n129 Tale of Euphemia and the Goth, The, 40 T.ayye, 82, 88, 116–17, 118 Teaching of Addai: Abgar as pious king in, 41–42; Addai/Abgar tradition in, 36, 47, 49–53, 50, 54, 61, 64; Aggai’s martyrdom in, 40–42; as apostolic narrative, 130; and apostolic origins of Edessa, 39, 40; asceticism in, 37; Christian practices as form of civic regulation in, 37, 41, 44; conversion of royal households in, 37, 43; cult of, 33–34; death of, 44; and diffusion of texts, 46, 49–52; Edessa as idealized Christian city in, 39–40, 43, 46; and Hannan’s portrait of Jesus, 37, 40; healing in, 36–37, 42, 43; as homilist, 48; and intertextuality, 59; Jerusalem connections in, 46; Jesus Christ’s blessing of Edessa, 37, 38, 39, 43, 45, 49, 50, 53, 149n37; and lineage construction, 39–41, 42, 45, 46, 53, 57; Mandylion tradition in, 53–55; martyrdom of Aggai in, 40–41; missionary saint characteristics of, 42–43; name variations of, 50, 53; as narrative typology of missionary saint, 36; ordinations in, 37, 38, 39, 40; as poet apostle, 25; polemic text in, 44–45, 149n52, 149n54; Protonike narrative in, 37, 42, 45, 46, 47; relics of, 40; and religious diversification, 38, 44–45; as reluctant apostle, 33; and sacred relics in Edessa, 40; sacred relics of, 40; as slave, 18; and sources connected to, 49–53;

index summary of, 36–37; theological exposition in, 48. See also Addai/Abgar tradition Tella, 99, 101, 107, 108 Tertia, queen, 21 Thaddeus, apostle, 36, 49, 50, 53, 54. See also Teaching of Addai Theodora, empress, 3, 9, 11, 72, 74, 83, 96, 103, 106, 133 Theodore Abu Qurrah, 52 Theodore of Mopsuestia, 10, 47, 56, 68, 81, 92 Theodoret, 81, 102 Theodosius I, emperor, 76, 96 Theodosius II, emperor, 47 Theodosius of Alexandria (patriarch), 73, 96 Theodosius (scribe), 99, 107, 108 Theophylact Simocatta, 9 Thomas Christians, 35, 96 Thomson, Robert, 11, 57 Tiberius, emperor, 37, 40, 42 Timaeus bar Timaeus, 100 trade routes, 17, 31–34, 35, 38, 130, 134 Tralles, 75 Trdat, king, 11 Tritheist controversy, 73 true cross legends, 37, 42, 44, 46 twin discourse, 23–24 two-nature Christology, 8, 10, 47, 56, 72, 91, 92. See also Dyophysites

209

underworld visitations, 19, 22, 23, 85 Van Rompay, Lucas, 13 Vizan, 21 Walker, Joel, 66, 67 wandering apostle motif, 24, 25, 32, 34, 130 “We Have No King but Christ”: Christian Political Thought in Greater Syria on the Eve of the Arab Conquest (Wood), 13 West Syrian Miaphysites, 84, 110, 115, 116, 131, 132. See also Syrian Orthodox Church Wood, Ian, 11 Wood, Philip, 13, 47 Xanthippus, 20 Xenophon of Ephesus, 22 Yazdegerd I, shah, 116, 117 Young, Gary K., 32 Yūsef, king, 81 Zakay, 108 Zaradush, 62 Zeno, emperor, 66, 68 Zoroastrianism, 56–57, 59–60, 61–62, 67, 89–90, 117, 123, 131