Page 102 - Edessa, 'The Blessed City'-01, by J. B. Segal (Oxford, 1970). Chapters 1-3

ST. EPHRAIM 89

As a writer Ephraim was exceptionally prolific. He poured out a stream of
metrical homilies and hymns, commentaries on the Scriptures, expository
sermons, and polemical tracts. They were quickly translated into Greek,
Armenian, Coptic, Arabic, Ethiopic, and Latin; their influence extended,
not only throughout Mesopotamia and Syria, but through the whole of
Christendom. Ephraim was acquainted with the work of Greek philosophers,
but possibly little with that of Greek theologians. It is doubtful, in spite of
legends to the contrary, whether he was greatly proficient in the Greek
language: he certainly did not understand Persian. Of Syriac style, however,
he was a master, and he earned eulogies that were bestowed on him in his
own day and shortly afterwards—Prophet of the Syrians, Lion of Syria,
Harp of the Holy Spirit, Pillar of the Church. His work, it must be con-
fessed, shows little profundity or originality of thought, and his metaphors
are laboured. His poems are turgid, humourless, and repetitive. In his hymn
to maidens in praise of Virginity are the banal verses:
Do not trust in wine, for it is an impostor and an agitator that surrenders thy fortress,
that the captive-taker may come and take captive thy freedom into handmaidenship,
that thy love may follow his will.
And when moreover thou hast lost thy true Bridegroom and got in his stead a false
one, when thou hast the consolation that even if thou hast lost but yet thou hast found,
[what will it profit thee] ? For his love is lying and deceitful; it alights on everything, it
does not cleave to thee—and then the regret will be great.
Youthfulness is like a branch of first-fruits that is fair in the summer, and when its
fruits and its leaves have been stripped off it becomes hateful, and everyone turns his
face from it, and what was desired of all becomes despised of all. O inexperience, do not
show thy beauty to those outside; when it becomes hateful and aged, those that see
despise it.

There is little, too, that is novel in his praise of Edessa:
O Edessa, full of chastity, of wisdom and intelligence, clothed with prudence and
judgement, adorned with the girdle of faith, armed with the helmet of unchangeable
truth and the breastplate of charity, the universal ornament.

But Ephraim's writings reflect his courage, his sincerity, his unswerving
zeal for the faith and his sympathy for the poor. He knew well the lives and
thoughts of the ordinary man:

Let us rejoice ... in the needs of all of us, for in this way unity is produced for us all.
For inasmuch as men are dependent on one another, the high bend themselves down to
the humble and are not ashamed, while the lowly reach out towards the great and are not
afraid. And also in the case of animals we exercise great care over them. Obviously our
need of everything binds us in love towards everything. . . .
If other thoughts occurred [to the husbandman] so that he pondered and reasoned as
to whether the seed was sprouting or not, or whether the earth would fail to produce it
or would restore it again, then the husbandman could not sow. . . . The husbandman

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