Page 96 - Edessa, 'The Blessed City'-01, by J. B. Segal (Oxford, 1970). Chapters 1-3

MARTYRS OF EDESSA 83
The spurious martyrologies of Sharbil, Babay, and Barsamya may be
intended to show that the nobles of Edessa, and its bishop, were prepared to
make the supreme sacrifice for Christianity. For in the reign of Diocletian
there were indeed martyrs at Edessa, but these were ordinary villagers, not
sophisticated city dwellers.1 The accounts of the martyrdom of Shmona,
Gurya, and Habbib (unlike those of Sharbil, Babai, and Barsamya) deserve
to be accepted as historical documents. They may not have acquired their
present shape before about A.D. 360, but they have 'a naturalness and tone of
real feeling' that suggest they were based on the narrative of a contemporary.
They may indeed be preserved largely in the form in which they were set
down by that Theophilus, who claims (according to our present text) to have
witnessed the. execution in, probably, 309 and 3io.2 Whoever he was, the
writer of the Acts of these three martyrs knew the topography of Edessa well,
and he reflects in a sincere, direct style the atmosphere of the city at this time.
In 303, it was decreed that copies of the Scriptures throughout the Empire
were to be surrendered and destroyed, churches were to be demolished, and
Christian worship forbidden. Christians were deprived of their honours.
Christian priests, later laymen also, were instructed to worship Zeus and the
Emperor (not, as so improbably in the Acts of Sharbil and Barsamya, the
local deities Bel and Nabu). These regulations were interpreted with varying
degrees of severity in the East. At Edessa the Governor summoned to his
presence two villagers, Gurya and Shmona, who were encouraging other
Christians in the villages to remain firm in their faith. They were thrown
into prison. At first the Governor was hesitant about his course of action.
After consultation with the authorities at Antioch, however, he threatened
Shmona and Gurya with fearsome punishment; they suffered the tortures of
stretching and dragging and scourging, but refused to yield. They were
confined in the prison known as the 'Dark pit', from August to mid-November
309, Shmona undergoing more tortures, but not Gurya because he was weak
and old. The day of reckoning was not far off:
On the 15th November in the night that dawns into the third day of the week, when the
cock had crowed twice, the Governor had risen and gone down to his Court of Justice,
and with him was all his corps of officials, and there were torches and flambeaux3 lighted
before him. And when he had sat down on his tribunal in the Basilica by the winter
baths, at the same time he had sent eight soldiers with the gaoler for Gurya and Shmona;

1 So also in Adiabene, as Kirsten points out, Bishop of Edessa, and Sha'duth the presbyter,
Christianity seems to have spread first in the and Aitallaha the deacon, and while he was
villages rather than in the cities. tormenting them Licinius was killed. The vic-
2 One chronicle states that Habbib was torious Constantino ordered that the persecu-
martyred in the persecution by Licinius 'after tion should cease, and then they were released.'
that of the days of Diocletian'. Another This is no doubt echoed in the apocryphal
chronicler seems to maintain that the martyr- martyrdom of bishop Barsamya.
dom of Shmona and Gurya was in A.D. 306-^7. 3 The rendering is doubtful.
It adds that '[Licinius] also seized Qona,

www.knanayology.org