Page 118 - Edessa, 'The Blessed City'-01, by J. B. Segal (Oxford, 1970). Chapters 1-3

PAGANS OF EDESSA 105
is said to have received at the altar the offerings of pagans who feared
retribution for their sins, and this was contrary to Church canons; perhaps he
sought in this way to convince them of the merit of Christianity. Neverthe-
less, centuries later, after the coming of Islam, Christian writers still felt
an air of unclean mystery over the region of Harran where stonemasons
found human skeletons fossilized in the rocks.1 As far away as Persia it was
known as a home of the black arts. The Persian king Khusraw I refused to
accept money from the citizens of Harran who came to offer ransom for their
city in 540; he said that their gift 'did not belong to him, because most of them
are not Christians but are [followers] of the old faith'.2
For Harran and its pagans the writers of Edessa had a contempt born of
conscious virtue. In the fourth century, St. Ephraim—in somewhat humour-
less vein, if one considers the relative age of Edessa and Harran—declared:

Thy waters are bitter and thy children harsh; O Harran, make thyself sweet with the
Cross . . . My treasure, O Harran, is in thy vicinity, the famed and beauteous Edessa.
O daughter, be like thy mother who is the salt of the universe, and with her doctrine
season thy mind . . Thou, O Harran, art filthy. Behold, thy mirror is beautiful and pure;
adorn thyself by her, the blessed one that is before thee.
Elsewhere he is more reassuring:
In Harran they have brought forth thorns in the desires [of men]. . . . [But] the thorns
have changed to roses and lilies, a crown for the husbandmen who bore a crown of thorns
. . . The way of reconciliation and the path of joy stretch from Edessa to the midst of
Harran, and men go in concord from church to church.

But was Edessa herself, whom poets crowned with epithets like 'the first
betrothed of Christ', free of blemish ? Occasional allusions in histories and
biographies, and scattered information from other sources enable us to
build up a different picture. Even the Doctrine of Addai admits that the
great altar in the midst of the town survived when the pagan priests were
converted to Christianity; and a pagan altar was still to be found at a late
period at the Monastery of the Naphshatha, or tomb towers, in the hills
south of Edessa.3 Names with pagan associations remained hi the sixth
century, like Kephar Selem (village of the idol), outside the walls of Edessa,
and Kephar Nabu (village of Nabu). Some are to be found to the present day,
like Sarimagara or Sanimagara (cave of the idol).4 There was a community of
Manichaeans at Edessa in the fourth century and later, and we may recall
the bon mot of Ephraim: 'because Mani was unable to find another way out,
he entered, though unwillingly, by the doors which Bardaisan had opened'.
The songs of Bardaisan were popular in the time of Ephraim, and his efforts
to replace them by his own hymns and choirs were in vain, for they survived
to the days of Rabbula.
1 See p. an below. 2 See p. 113 below. 3 Cf. p. zg above. 4 Cf. p. 57 n. 8 above.

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