Page 100 - Edessa, 'The Blessed City'-01, by J. B. Segal (Oxford, 1970). Chapters 1-3

ST. EPHRAIM 87
assemblies thereafter. The churches and religious institutions of the city
increased in number, and the Church authorities disposed of considerable
revenue. Their activities largely governed the social life of Edessa, as we
shall see in a later chapter.

The outstanding personality of the fourth century at Edessa, and the most
celebrated Father of the Syrian church, was St. Ephraim. His career should
be seen outlined against the troubled events of the period. The hostility in
Mesopotamia between the West and East had grown sharper. It was now a
conflict of faith as well as of politics, since after 313 Christianity had become
the official religion of the Roman Empire, of which the capital was now
Byzantium. Ephraim was aware of the conflict from his earliest years. He
was born in about 306 at Nisibis or its neighbourhood, that is, on the borders
of the Empire. His parents may have been pagan, but he was reared in a
Christian atmosphere. In his youth he came under the influence of three
well-known bishops of Nisibis, Jacob, Babu, and Walagash (Vologases),
and especially under that of Jacob; he calls Nisibis the 'daughter of Jacob'.
Tradition attributes to him an active part in the desperate but successful
defence of Nisibis against the attack by the Persian army in 350,' and his
early 'Carmina Nisibena' gives us a graphic account of the event. Ephraim
probably composed his hymns 'Concerning Paradise' and 'Against Here-
sies' at this period of his life. When Nisibis was ceded to the Persians by
Jovian in 363, Ephraim was already a distinguished writer.
Under the terms of the treaty between Byzantium and the Persians, the
Christian population of Nisibis was authorized to withdraw freely to the
West. Ephraim lived for a short time at Amid, and then settled at Edessa
where he spent the last ten years of his life. He refused advancement to high
ecclesiastical office; according to legend he worked as a bath-attendant on
first coming to the city. But he was an active preacher, as well as an adviser to
the leaders of the Church of Edessa. There is no direct evidence that he
founded, or taught at, the School of the Persians, a theological academy at
Edessa which was celebrated in the Eastern Church for the remarkable
attainments of its teachers and students; but it would be strange if he were
not associated with it. A biographer relates that, so great was the trust of his
fellow-Edessans in Ephraim, he was requested to administer relief work
among the poor during a famine towards the end of his life. Before he
died, in 373, Ephraim asked to be buried among the graves of the destitute
and criminals; but shortly afterwards his remains were moved, we are told,
to the place of burial of the bishops of Edessa. Under the name of Khudr

1 The Life of St. Ephraim must be regarded details that are also in the Life of Jacob of
with caution, in particular those sections that Nisibis. PI. 66.
describe his career at Nisibis, since it contains

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