Page 112 - Edessa, 'The Blessed City'-01, by J. B. Segal (Oxford, 1970). Chapters 1-3

EDESSA A MONOPHYSITE CENTRE 99
Isaiah. It should be noted that Isaiah belonged, like Yunan, to the eastern
branch of the Jacobite Church; evidently the Persians regarded it as inex-
pedient to nominate a bishop who might accept the ecclesiastical authority of
Antioch.
The Monophysites welcomed the accession of Emperor Phocas, who had
dethroned their oppressor Maurice,1 although Phocas was no less a devout
Chalcedonian and disapproved of Monophysite doctrines. But Phocas, in his
turn, was removed by Heraclius. The new Emperor visited Edessa during his
campaign in the East in, probably, 628. He was impressed by his reception,
and by the numbers of monks and scholars in the city. Learning that they
were Monophysites, he determined to restore them to the official Church,
declaring, 'How can we abandon so admirable a people [and allow them to
remain] outside our [community] ?' But his politic intentions were thwarted
by what a Monophysite historian himself calls 'the fervour of zeal or, to
tell the truth, the simplicity or lack of breeding' of the Jacobite bishop,
Isaiah. The latter refused to permit Heraclius to receive the oblation in the
Cathedral, as was the privilege of a reigning Emperor, unless he first anathe-
matized the Council of Chalcedon and the Tome of Leo on which were
based the rulings of the Council. Enraged, the Emperor expelled the bishop
from his cathedral and handed Monophysite churches to the Melkites.
Many Monophysite monks defected to their rivals. Isaiah was accompanied
into exile by members of aristocratic families of Edessa who had endowed
the local Monophysite church with 'treasure of gold and silver and [the
revenue of] gardens and mills and shops and baths'. They hoped that when
Heraclius returned to his capital they would recover their property. But they
had not foreseen the cataclysm that was soon to engulf the whole of the
Near East. Mesopotamia, impoverished and weakened by constant war-
fare, was an easy prey to the Arabs. In 639 Edessa fell to the Moslem general
Tyad.
The Moslems punctiliously ordered the Christians of Edessa to maintain
the situation which obtained at the time of the capture of the city. Melkites
therefore kept the property, including the churches, of their rivals. The
Monophysite historian, however, comments philosophically:

The God of vengeance . . . seeing the cruelty of the Byzantines, who, wherever they
ruled, plundered cruelly our churches and monasteries and condemned us without
mercy, brought from the southern land the sons of Ishmael, to deliver us through them
from the hands of the Byzantines. And indeed, we have suffered some hurt because the
catholic churches, having been snatched from us and given to the Chalcedonians, have
remained with them—for when the cities submitted to the Moslems, the latter gave to

1 Curiously, however, there is evidence that that he •was considered a saint by both sects;
the Monophysites, as well as the Melkites, see, for example, Janssens, Byzantion xi, 1936,
were devoted to the memory of Maurice and 499.

www.knanayology.org