Page 122 - Edessa, 'The Blessed City'-01, by J. B. Segal (Oxford, 1970). Chapters 1-3

CHRISTIAN PILGRIMS 109

[leading] so extraordinary a life that it can scarcely be described'. They ate
neither bread nor meat, and drank no wine; their food was grass, as they
'dwelt in the hills, and continually celebrated God with prayers and hymns'.1
Such was Abraham, the recluse of Qiduna and the supposed contemporary
of St. Ephraim, who passed his days in fasting and vigil and squalor, but also
in humility and charity. His redemption of his wayward niece is described by
a Syriac writer with rare delicacy. A stylite, Theodoulos, is said to have
spent forty-eight years on a pillar near Edessa, in the latter half of the fourth
century; and many pillars seem to have been erected for this purpose in the
vicinity of the city. The stories of Abgar's correspondence with Jesus, of the
sacred portrait, and the evangelization of Edessa, whether by Addai or
Thaddaeus or Thomas, were known wherever Christianity was propagated,
from Britain to the remote regions of Iran. From all Christendom, pilgrims
flocked to visit the shrines of Edessa with their holy relics of Addai and
Abgar, of the martyrs Shmona, Gurya, and Habbib, and the bodies of St.
Thomas, St. Cosmas, and St. Damian.

1 Sozomen.

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