James

ON ST. JAMES, BISHOP,

AT NISIBIS IN MESOPOTAMIA.

ABOUT THE MIDDLE OF THE FOURTH CENTURY.

James, Bishop, at Nisibis in Mesopotamia (S.)

BY THE AUTHOR G. C.

§ I. The cult of St. James.

The most eminent author of the Ecclesiastical Annals, Baronius, at the year of Christ 338, testifies that the memory of this holy Prelate is celebrated yearly not only by the Syrians, but also by the Greeks and Latins. Certainly in the sacred Fasti of the Ethiopians and of other nations his name recurs frequently. The eulogy of St. James of Nisibis in the manuscript Coptic Martyrology, But I do not wish here to transcribe the individual monuments of these peoples, lest I be compelled too often to repeat the same things with the reader's weariness. It will suffice to have selected one or another brief eulogy from them. The manuscript Coptic Martyrology, which Simon Moses the Maronite translated at Rome in the year 1633, describes our Saint on the XVIII day of January thus: Of St. James the bishop, the preceptor of St. Ephrem. This saint was from the city of Nezbin, and was a Syrian by his idiom, and from his adolescence chose the monastic life, and clothed himself with a hair-cloth, and this name sounds of the hair of she-goats or of horses and of pigs and of things like these, and with it he made to pass the heat of summer and the cold of winter; and his food was the shrub of the earth, and his drink only rain-water. Therefore his body was weak; but his soul shone, and therefore he merited the gift of prophecy and of working miracles. And he foreknew the deeds of men, before they were done. But the miracles which he wrought are many. And this one was one of the holy fathers of the Council of Nicæa against Arius. It is sufficiently clear that the Maronite interpreter was not very skilled in the Latin language, since he put "of she-goats" capreis for "of goats" caprinis and "of lilies" susinis for "of swine" suillis or porcinis and other things, which the learned reader will easily observe.

[2] The Greeks in the Menæa on the XIII day of January exhibit a sufficiently prolix compendium of the Acts; and in the printed Greek Menæa, but since the Acts themselves are afterward to be given entire, that being omitted, I here render only into Latin the things which in the same Menæa on the last day of October are thus read in Greek: This holy father of ours, James, was bishop of Antioch of Mygdonia, which is also called Nisibis. But on account of his supreme virtue a great worker of miracles, since he spoke by divine inspiration,

he raised the dead by the power of Christ, and converted many from idolatry to the knowledge of God, and made many, who through human fear had denied Christ, return to him. He also composed a very useful book. Theodoret, bishop of Cyrus, expressed certain things after the pattern of that book in his Religious History. He, having suffered many temptations from the idolatrous emperors, and not yielding to them, persevered even until the great emperor Constantine, and in the first synod was one of the three hundred and eighteen holy Fathers; and when he had, with his companions, sealed and confirmed with a seal the things which had there been piously published, he set out to Constantinople to the great Metrophanes, and after he had communicated with him, and had cared for the funeral of the deceased, he returned to his own see, and, surviving a little and shining forth with signs, rested in the Lord.

[3] In this eulogy certain peculiar things occur, concerning which we shall here briefly discourse. certain phrases of which are examined. First indeed, that which concerns the book of St. James, after the likeness of which Theodoret wrote certain things, is so obscure that Tillemont, in volume 7 of the Ecclesiastical Memoirs, page 265, having placed in the margin the Greek word ἐξεικονίζει, frankly confesses that he does not know what the Greeks mean, when in the Menæa they say that St. James of Nisibis composed a useful book, from which Theodoret represented certain things in the Philotheus. The text of the Menæa runs thus: Καὶ βίβλον πάνυ ὠφέλιμον συνετάξατο. Ἐξεικονίζει δέ τινα τῶν τῆς βίβλου ταύτης Θεοδώρητος ὁ τῆς Κύρου ἐπίσκοπος ἐν τῇ φιλοθέῳ αὐτοῦ ἱστορίᾳ, that is, he also composed a very useful book; Theodoret, bishop of Cyrus, expresses certain things after the pattern of that book in his Religious History. I do not find an apter interpretation besides that which I have given. For ἐξεικονίζω signifies, as I suppose, I express from a pattern, I fashion after a pattern, I make after a likeness, I depict, I represent, and other things of this kind. In this opinion I am not a little confirmed by the expression of Maximus, Bishop of Cythera, who in the Lives of the saints, written in Greek-barbarous, in the eulogy of St. James of Nisibis on the XXXI of October, uses for ἐξεικονίζει the word μιμεῖται, that is, imitates. Whether perhaps St. James wrote a book, in imitation of which Theodoret composed the Philotheus, I have hitherto not explored for certain. The second thing which is here said concerning St. James's conversation with Metrophanes, bishop of Constantinople, and the last rites paid to him, although it could have happened, yet is established by no testimony, that I know of, of the old writers. The third thing which is added, namely that after the Nicene synod, ended in the year of Christ 325, and the obsequies of Metrophanes being celebrated, St. James, returned to his own see, survived but little, is altogether false, since he survived at least until the year of Christ 350, as we shall afterward prove at length.

[4] The Latin Martyrologies, both ancient and more recent, record this holy prelate of Nisibis. The Little Roman simply thus enunciates: The Latin Martyrologies celebrate the same Saint, At Nisibis, of James the bishop. The most ancient of the Hieronymian Martyrologies makes mention of the same in as many words: Of James the bishop of Nizibis. More prolix is Ado, who on the Ides of July has it thus: At Nisibis, the birthday of St. James the bishop, a man of great virtue, so that at his prayers the city was often freed from danger. He was one of the number of the confessors under the persecution of Maximian, and of those who in the Nicene synod condemned the perversity of Arius by the opposition of the homoousion: And within the walls of his city, by the command of the Emperor Constantine, he was buried for its protection and defense, afterward, by the zeal of Julian the Apostate, carried outside the city and entombed. But soon that same city, bereft of the relics of so great a patron, fell under the dominion of the Persians. Usuard trod in Ado's footsteps, and thus transcribed the first part of it: At Nisibis, the birthday of St. James the bishop, a man of great virtue. He was one of the number of the confessors, under the persecution of Maximinus, and of those who in the Nicene synod condemned the perversity of Arius by the opposition of the Homoousion. It is sufficiently clear that Usuard took these things from Ado, except that for Maximian he put Maximinus. Which reading is to be preferred, I shall not easily say, since these generous champions of Christ could have received wounds under either persecutor of the Christians, whose glorious scars they brought to the Nicene synod. If our Saint was wounded for his constant profession of the Christian faith, Tillemont thinks that he rather suffered under Maximinus, since Mesopotamia obeyed him. Whatever it be, Maximinus is also the reading of the Roman Martyrology emended by the care and study of Cardinal Baronius, in which we thus read: At Nisibis, the birthday of St. James, bishop of the same city, a man of great holiness. He, illustrious for miracles and erudition, was one of the number of the confessors under the persecution of Maximinus, who in the Nicene synod condemned the perversity of Arius by the opposition of the Homoousion. By whose prayer, and that of Alexander the bishop, Arius himself received at Constantinople the worthy wages of his iniquity, his bowels gushing out. Concerning this last assertion of the Roman Martyrology we shall treat in another place; now let us examine the addition of certain Martyrologies.

[5] who in some codices is said to have seen the ark of Noah; Certain codices of the Hieronymian Martyrology, after these words, of James the Bishop of Nisibis, subjoin this new history, unknown to Theodoret and Gennadius; who in the body (the Corbie manuscript inserts here suffered many things and) did many signs, and alone saw the ark of Noah on the mountain; no other * of those who had gone with him was permitted to see. The same, but more correctly, has on the Ides of July the Martyrology of Bede with the supplement of Florus and others, which can be seen in our Acts before volume 2 of March. Notker narrates the same miracle, and calls the mountain on which it happened Taurus. Florentinius, in his Notes on the Hieronymian Martyrology, writes thus concerning this addition: But nothing in these (he speaks of Theodoret and Peter de Natalibus, writers of the Acts) is narrated concerning Noah's ark being inspected; as neither in the most ancient Martyrology. Whence, both in our codices and in the Corbie one, from ancient time, and in their prototype, I should scarcely doubt that the episode was added contrary to custom. But he calls this addition ancient, because Notker also inserted it into his Martyrology.

[6] Florentinius in the same Notes laboriously disputes concerning the relics of the ark, on which occasion he disputes concerning the relics of the same ark, which he proves to have survived after the times of James of Nisibis in this manner: But that which is narrated concerning the relics of the ark preserved on Mount Taurus is not a fable. Eusebius, or St. Jerome, on the Hebrew Places, from the older chronologists adduced by Josephus in the first book of the Jewish Antiquities—Berosus the Chaldean, Jerome the Egyptian, Cansia, Nicolaus of Damascus—teaches that in the mountains of Ararat or of Armenia, which Berosus calls the mountains of the Cardueni, or on a mountain by the name of Beatis above Muniades, the ark, or Noah surviving the flood, settled, and that for many ages its signs were wont to be shown, nay, that some, plucking bitumen from it, carried it about, that they might use it, especially those who were being purified and expiating themselves. But that more recently, in the time of Constans and Constantine, in which the holy bishop of Nisibis died, the relics of the ark still endured, Philostorgius from common report is a witness in the epitome of Photius, book III, number VIII; nay, that they endured even to his own age under Theodosius the younger he adds in these words, Godefroy interpreting: "But the river Euphrates rises from the Armenians, according to what indeed appears, where is the mountain Ararat, which is even now so called among the Armenians, where the Scripture says the ark rested, in which they say there are even now not small fragments of wood and of nails, which were there left remaining." These fragments of the ark endured to the age of Benjamin of Tudela, who in his itinerary, Arias Montanus interpreting, narrates that the city of Nisibis or Nesibin is distant no more than two days' journey from the roots of Mount Ararat or Taurus, where is the city of Gezirben Ghamar, and is no more than four miles from the place in which Noah's ark had rested. But that ark, he says, Ghamar-ben-Alcheseb, having taken it up from the ridge of the mountain, adapted and translated to the use of a mosque of the Ishmaelites. Thus far Florentinius, who from these concludes that it is not incongruous that St. James the bishop went from the neighboring city of Nisibis to see the relics of the ark.

[7] That which last Florentinius here brings from Benjamin of Tudela, concerning the ark taken up from the mountain and applied to the structure of a Mohammedan temple, and concerning this matter divergent is opposed by a certain Belgian Itinerary printed at Amsterdam, in which, page 230, it is asserted that the ark even now survives there, according to a testimony which is said to have been written in Latin by a certain Roman hermit and given to the author of the Itinerary, in this tenor: Since I could not fail the petition of Jan Janszoon, whereby he prayed that I would give him a written testimony, that the aforesaid Jan Janszoon was with me on the holy mountain Ararath, going up about thirty-five miles; where the aforesaid Jan healed me of one great rupture: therefore I give him the greatest thanks for his great diligence, which he showed me, and to him for this benevolence I gave a cross, which was a piece of wood from the true ark of Noah, where I was inside in person, and that from which this cross is made I cut with my own hands from a chamber. Where I told Jan Janszoon more perfectly by word of mouth the truth, how that ark is made. Upon this I also gave him a stone, which I myself plucked with my own hands beneath the ark, where the ark rests. All this I confess to be true, as true as I truly do in fact live in this my holy hermitical dwelling. Given on Mount Ararath, the XX of July, 1670. Dominicus Alexander, a Roman.

[8] and mutually conflicting If this testimony had been brought by a man worthy of trust, I should easily have believed it. But since the author of that Belgian Itinerary narrates so many marvelous things, not to say incredible, and sometimes manifestly false, I began everywhere to hold him suspect of falsehood. For we are not wont to believe a lying man even when he speaks the truth. The same cause entirely is present, says Melchior Cano in his Theological Places, book II, chapter 6, why those histories also are very suspicious, which, although they bear before them the name of some author, yet who or of what sort he is, is obscure and uncertain. Of which kind, a few days before this, certain fables came forth, whose authors and places are separated by so long an interval, that whether they lie cannot be found out, whether these things be so, may even be doubted. But it is well that the whole body of the narration appears fabricated, so that what is worn in the speech of the Spaniards, that too you may easily prove in this matter; long roads, long lies. I have, moreover, the contrary testimony of a priest of our Society, which increases my suspicion not a little. He is the Reverend Father Philippe Avril, mathematician of the king of Gaul, who, having traveled through almost the whole East, convicts this Belgian Itinerary of falsehood. In the description of his journey

published in French at Paris in the year 1693, book 1, page 58, treating of Mount Ararat, he asserts that he studiously observed the situation of that mountain for almost a whole month, and investigated many things concerning it; and at last concludes that that mountain is inaccessible, and thus explodes as fabulous the journey of the Belgian upon it.

[9] narrations are set forth. There remains another difficulty, which I do not see can be reconciled with all those things which have hitherto been said concerning the ark, if indeed the narration be true, which Vincent of Beauvais has in his Historical Mirror, in which, after he had narrated, in book 30, chapter 95, the devastation of Georgia made by the Tartars in the year 1220, he then, in chapter 97 of the same book, writes the following concerning Mount Ararat: But that mountain, namely Ararat, is most excellent, nor is any man ever said to have ascended thither, except one monk. He indeed, moved by a certain ardor of devotion, as it is said, on account of Noah's ark, which rested there, attempted many times to ascend thither by what efforts he could. And when he had ascended some part of the mountain, and gave his wearied bodily members to rest, always after resting, awaking, he found himself at the foot of the mountain. But at last the Lord, condescending to his effort, and hearing his vow and prayers, admonished him by his angel to ascend once, yet so that he should by no means attempt to ascend thereafter. Then, therefore, he ascended in safety, and afterward, descending thence, carried away with him one plank from the ark. Then at the foot of the mountain he built a monastery, in which he devoutly placed that same plank as for sacred relics. To reconcile these conflicting narrations among themselves is not our task: for it suffices for our purpose that this history of the vision of the ark was afterward probably intruded into the martyrologies, since the most ancient Martyrologies and Theodoret, describing the deeds of St. James of Nisibis expressly, make no mention of that vision. But of this matter more than enough. Let us proceed to other things.

* read: no other.

§ II. The deeds of St. James of Nisibis in the Council of Nicæa and of Antioch.

It can be doubtful to no one that our St. James was present at the Council of Nicæa, since, besides other old writers, Theodoret in the Philotheus, chapter 1, thus expressly affirms it: St. James of Nisibis was present at the Council of Nicæa, After, therefore, he (namely the Emperor Constantine) had gathered together all the presidents of the churches at that time at Nicæa, there came with the others the great James also, about to contend for the true decrees, as a brave man and prince of the whole phalanx: for Nisibis then obeyed the Roman empire. But after that sacred assembly had been dismissed, and each one had returned to his own house, this man too returned as a brave man who had obtained victory, exulting over the trophies of piety. In his Ecclesiastical History, book 1, chapter 6, treating of the Council of Nicæa, he repeats the same thus. Three hundred and eighteen bishops had assembled: but the Roman, on account of his extreme old age, was not himself present, but sent two priests with power of assenting to the Acts. There were at that time many excelling in apostolic gifts; many also who bore the stigmata of the Lord Jesus, like the divine Apostle, in their body. For James, bishop of Antioch of Mygdonia, which the Syrians and Assyrians call Nisibis, both raised the dead and restored them to life, and wrought countless other miracles, which I think it superfluous to insert again in this book, since they have been commemorated by me in the History which is entitled the Philotheus.

[11] These things are sufficiently certain. But a more intricate question is, [and according to a certain fragment of the history omitted in some editions of Theodoret,] whether our St. James afterward at Constantinople, joining his prayers with St. Alexander, bishop of Constantinople, obtained from God the sudden death of Arius, as the Roman Martyrology intimates in these words: By whose prayer, and that of Alexander the bishop, Arius himself received at Constantinople the worthy wages of his iniquity, his bowels gushing out. I scarcely doubt that this clause of the Roman Martyrology was taken from certain editions of Theodoret: for in the Philotheus, which Lipomanus, Alberico Longo interpreting, edited in Latin in the Lives of the Saints, volume 2, the death of Arius is ascribed to the prayers of St. James and Alexander. In the edition of the works of Theodoret, which our Sirmond published Greek-Latin at Paris in the year 1642, volume 3, in the Philotheus, chapter 1, there is read concerning the deeds of James and the death of Arius the same History which we shall here set before the eyes of the reader, because in certain editions of Theodoret it is not found, and therefore is to be omitted in the Acts of St. James afterward to be given.

[12] Therefore in the Sirmond edition, after these words placed in the Acts at number 11, but inserted into the Sirmond edition of his works, for Nisibis was then in the dominion of the Romans, the following fragment is inserted: In this great synod, therefore, when many things had been said well and rightly, many also otherwise (for there were a few who indeed held contrary opinions, but dared not betray their impiety, and covered it with certain snares, not known to all in common, but clearly perceived by those who penetrated the secrets of truth) there was recited the confession of faith which now prevails throughout the whole world, and is preached; and all subscribed, and by hand and pen professed that they so believed and thought. But the greatest part of them did this gladly: only seven defenders of the blasphemy of Arius assented indeed with tongue and hand; but they retained an opinion repugnant to their tongue, according to the prophecy: This people honoreth me with their lips, but their heart is far from me; and according to the express word of Jeremiah: Thou art near in their mouth, and far from their reins. And in agreement with these concerning the same, blessed David also said: With their mouth they blessed and with their heart they cursed. And again: Their words were softer than oil, and the same are darts.

[13] after fastings and prayers were enjoined, These men asked Alexander, bishop of great Alexandria, to have mercy on Arius, degraded by that whole phalanx. But he, since he both knew their crafty mind, and held that man's wickedness suspect, and therefore did not accede to their demands, certain others of simpler disposition, discoursing much on the praises of clemency, suggested that the God of all is especially delighted also with this: And when the great Alexander called clemency toward one that was unjust unclemency, which would be pernicious to many, and affirmed that it would be an occasion of harm to all the flocks, the divine James exhorts all to give themselves to the maceration of fasting, and for the space of seven days to pray to God with him, that he would be willing to consult the profit of the churches.

[14] he obtained from God the sudden death of Arius, The counsel of the holy man being approved by all (for they knew that he was endowed with apostolic grace), prayers were joined to the fasting, and the governor of the churches provided for their profit. And when the Lord's day had come, on which day most hoped that the impious man would be received, and the time of the divine liturgy was at hand, and all were expecting to see the enemy of God pardoned, a wholly divine and stupendous miracle happened. For when that impious man, in filthy and stinking places, was voiding the excrements of his insatiable gluttony, with these he voided also the intestines in which they were contained, and his bowels being in this manner loosed and poured out with the dung, the wretch suddenly fell and died that most shameful death, paying the penalties of his stinking blasphemy in stinking places, and receiving the deadly blow through the tongue of the great James.

[15] and he is praised for his zeal. The divine Scripture indeed admires Phinehas the priest, and rightly admires him, because he slew Zambri the author of the people's destruction. Whence also David singing said: Phinehas stood up and appeased, and the slaughter ceased, and it was reputed to him unto justice, unto generation and generation for ever. But he, using a warlike weapon, wrought that just and celebrated slaying; but for this one, in place of spear and sword, the tongue was enough, which destroyed the impious man, that he might not see the glory of the Lord. And this one thing indeed would suffice to refute the madness of the Arian impiety, that this so great man was the herald and defender of the doctrines which are celebrated by us; and that he so detested the impiety of those men, that he transfixed its parent with the point of his tongue. This whole history, at least as to its substance, is found inserted also in Theodoret's Philotheus in Lipomanus, in the place cited above. After this the thread of our Acts is resumed, and these words follow, But after that sacred assembly had been dismissed, and the rest, which can be seen in the Acts afterward to be exhibited, at number 11.

[16] Our Garnier, in volume 5 of the works of Theodoret, Dissertation 2, Garnier deservedly convicts this fragment of error, in his observations on the several chapters of the Philotheus, folio 200, notes these things upon this history: Concerning the first chapter, which is of St. James of Nisibis, it is to be observed first, that Theodoret erred by a lapse of memory in the things which he writes concerning the death of Arius: For he says that he perished at Nicæa immediately after the council, James persuading all to fast, when Alexander bishop of the church of Alexandria refused to receive the heresiarch. But it is established by sure testimonies that Arius perished at Constantinople in the tenth year after the council, James being far away, Alexander prelate of Constantinople refusing to receive Arius into the church, Macarius the Alexandrian priest joining his own prayers to those of the prelate of Constantinople. Socrates is to be seen, book 1, chapter XXV, Sozomen book II, chapter XXVIII, and Theodoret himself book 1 of the Ecclesiastical History, where he tacitly retracts his error in this place by the letters of Athanasius, narrating the whole matter, to Apion. It is truly a wonder that so great an error of Theodoret was not observed by Baronius, a man so perspicacious. It is also a wonder that through inadvertence it was erred by Valesius the Latin interpreter, and by the French interpreter following Valesius, in a matter so open. For they confounded the Ecclesiastical History with the Religious. For in this latter is the error which they attributed to it, in which, however, concerning the death of Arius nothing, save in the words of Athanasius, is related exactly according to the truth.

[17] Rightly indeed Garnier observes the gross errors of this narration, which does not seem to be attributable to Theodoret. and justly wonders that Valesius and his French interpreter Cousin carelessly took the Ecclesiastical History of Theodoret for his Religious History. But in one thing I cannot assent to him; namely in that he supposes this history of the death of Arius to have been written by Theodoret. I prefer to deny that supposition of Garnier and others: For although I would not have Theodoret exempt from all error, yet I shall not easily admit so many and so palpable lapses of memory in this learned man and studious of history, who in his Ecclesiastical History shows often enough that he is mindful of the things which he had written in the Philotheus. Who would believe that Theodoret was so dull, that he would place the public death of Arius, handed down to posterity by Athanasius and other contemporaries, and, so to speak, known to the blear-eyed and to barbers, in another time and place? Who would believe that he was so forgetful of himself, that he would confound Alexander bishop of Alexandria, whom, dead five months after the Nicene synod, he relates that Athanasius succeeded, book 1 of the Ecclesiastical

History, chapter 25, with Alexander of Constantinople? Who, I say, would believe that the very same man wrote things so discordant, who truthfully sets forth the whole catastrophe of Arius from the letters of Athanasius, book 1 of the Ecclesiastical History, chapter 13, where concerning St. James of Nisibis he makes no word? Therefore I rather suspect that this fragment, added by some unskilled little Greek, crept into some copies of Theodoret's Philotheus. The chief reason of my suspicion is that in certain editions of Theodoret it is not found. Certainly Gentian Hervet does not seem to have read this faulty history in his Greek copy, who edited the Religious History of Theodoret, rendered from Greek into Latin, at Paris in the year 1570. This edition of Hervet was followed by others, in which concerning this history—shall I say, or fable—there is deep silence.

[18] How St. James was present at the Council of Antioch, Another controversy, no less laborious, is whether our St. James was present at the Council of Antioch, which our Labbe exhibits in volume 2 of the councils, column 559 and following, and subscribed his name. The most eminent parent of the Ecclesiastical Annals, Baronius, at the year of Christ 341, after examining the acts of this assembly and discussing the four formulas of faith, at length, at number 27, thus pronounces: Moreover, all these things were written and edited only by the Eusebians, by those, I say, thirty-six bishops, who had shamefully consented to the condemnation of Athanasius and the substitution of Gregory, the rest of the professors of the Nicene faith without doubt resisting, among whom shone that great James, bishop of Nisibis, who is numbered among those few who are found written before the canons of the Council of Antioch. Would the great James have borne with an even mind that the Nicene profession should be infringed, and the word CONSUBSTANTIAL utterly abolished? Who (as was said above in its place from Gennadius), after many labors and combats undertaken and faithfully drained for the defense of the Council of Nicæa, either had before written, or after these things composed to refute the rashness of these men, a distinguished commentary on this very point, That Christ is the Son of God and consubstantial with the Father; which we rather believe, since before this the Eusebians had published no public monuments of their perfidy in writing.

[19] and subscribed his name to it, But if St. James opposed himself to the decrees of this council, how is his name read subscribed to it? Severinus Binius in his notes on this council, to loosen this knot, first seized upon the response that presented itself: For he says that to the names of the subscribing bishops was added by the Eusebians that distinguished James, bishop of Nisibis. But this, I judge, can be more easily said than proved. For Schelstrate, in the book in which he defends the Council of Antioch, Dissertation 2, chapter 19, page 84, thinks that St. James subscribed his name; and to prove this he alleges the preface of the most ancient Corbie codex, the Catalogue of subscriptions in Dionysius Exiguus in the manuscript codices Sangermanensis and Colbertine, and finally the preface of the manuscript codices of the Thuanæan and Oxford library, in which among the Fathers of Antioch is found James of Nisibis, whom Aubert Le Mire, in his scholion on Gennadius, On Illustrious Men, testifies to have been present not only at the Nicene, but also at the Antiochene council, as it is had, he says, in the Acts of St. Alexander, bishop of Constantinople. The same Baronius confesses in his Notes on the Roman Martyrology on the XV day of July.

[20] Schelstrate explains sufficiently probably. Schelstrate from the things said in the place just cited thus concludes: And from these it is clear that those err who think, with Severinus Binius, that this James of Nisibis was not present at the Council of Antioch, and that his name was inserted into the Catalogue by the Arians to conciliate authority to the Antiochene synod through the name of this man; as if only the name of this Saint had been expressed, and not also that of St. Paul, bishop of Neocæsarea. This James of Nisibis was really present, whom Theodoret indicates as prince of the whole assembly in the history of the holy Fathers. But Schelstrate himself here at the end is mistaken, when he thinks that Theodoret in the History of the Fathers treats of the Antiochene synod. For he expressly speaks of the Nicene synod, when he names the great James prince of the whole phalanx, as will be manifest to one reading the Acts at number 11. But this primacy I judge is so to be understood, that Theodoret does not mean him to have been prince of the whole Council of Nicæa, but the chief of those who had come to the Nicene synod from Mesopotamia or the neighboring regions. However that be, Schelstrate in an entire volume, which was printed at Antwerp in the year 1681, learnedly contends that all the things wrongly done in this Antiochene assembly do not belong to the beginning of this synod, celebrated by ninety fathers, but to the end of the Antiochene conventicle, held by about forty Eusebians. This opinion of Schelstrate various more recent writers embrace.

[21] Tillemont, to avoid these difficulties, enters upon a plainly different way, Tillemont's evasion concerning a twofold Antiochene synod and one hitherto trodden by few: for in order to separate the catholic bishops from the Arians, whose names we read subscribed to the Antiochene council promiscuously, he devises two Antiochene synods, at the former of which the Catholics, at the latter the Arians or Eusebians, were present. In volume 7 of the Ecclesiastical Memoirs, page 23, he supposes rather than proves that the first was held in the time of Eustathius bishop of Antioch, or, as he says elsewhere, before the year of Christ 335. I do not think he wishes us blindly to embrace this opinion of his, or rather hypothesis, although subtly devised, yet destitute of the solid weight of reasons and of the testimony of antiquity. Then, in volume 6, pages 311, 315, and following, he treats of the other Council held at Antioch in the year 341 at the dedication, which he somewhere calls a conventicle of iniquity, some of whose canons and formulas of faith he explains as favoring the Arian heresy. Finally, in the Notes of the same volume 6, page 753, he endeavors to show that the canons of the twofold Antiochene Council were confounded, some of which he contends are to be attributed to the first synod, others to the second conventicle of the Eusebians. The same he judges concerning the subscriptions of the bishops: For the names of the Catholics he thinks pertain to the first synod, but those of the Arians to the second conventicle.

[22] And all these things indeed he supposes himself to prove so happily, the way is barred, that in volume 6, page 756, he confidently asserts that his observation alone on the fourth canon suffices to overthrow the entire system of Schelstrate. I doubt whether all will pass the same judgment who have attentively turned through the learned work of Schelstrate on this matter. However that be, I oppose to all the conjectures of Tillemont only two testimonies of contemporary Fathers. The first is that of Athanasius, who in his book on the synods reproaches the Arians for having afterward changed the faith promulgated at the Antiochene dedication. It is well to hear his words. In the book on the synods, in the Paris edition of the works of Athanasius of the year 1698, volume 1, part 2, page 737, concerning a certain formula of faith composed in this council, he premises these things: Moreover, a certain Theophronius, bishop of Tyana, proposed before all this formula of faith composed by himself, to which, the man's faith being approved, all subscribed… Moreover, the bishops who had assembled at the dedication were ninety in number, in the consulship of Marcellinus and Probinus, in the XIV Indiction, when the most impious Constantius was there. That is, in the year of Christ 341.

[23] Then St. Athanasius in the same book on the synods, in the edition just cited, page 753, thus inveighs against the Arians: and the words of St. Athanasius, But what wonder if they fight with their elders and with their fathers, when they themselves contend with themselves, and dash against their own selves: for when at Antioch, at the dedication, as they call it, they had declared the Son to be the image of the substance of the Father without any dissimilarity, and had sworn that they so thought, and had damned with anathema those who thought otherwise, nay, had written so in Isauria; We do not shun the authentic faith set forth at the Dedication of Antioch (but there the name of substance is written), as though forgetful of these things, a little after in Isauria itself they wrote things opposed to them, namely we reject as foreign to the scriptures the ὁμοούσιον and the ὁμοιοούσιον, that is, the consubstantial and the like in substance, and we take away from the midst the name of substance, since indeed it is not found in the Scriptures. Who therefore will henceforth esteem men of this kind Christians? Or what faith is there among those with whom neither words nor writings are firm, but all things are changed and inverted according to the reason of the time: For if, O Acacius and Eudoxius, you do not shun the faith set forth at the Dedication, and in it it is written that the Son is the image of the substance of the Father without discrepancy, why in Isauria do you write, we reject the ὁμοούσιον?

[24] and of Hilary But lest anyone cavil, and contend that St. Athanasius argues only ad hominem, as they say, and that the Nicene faith is not clearly enough expressed in this Antiochene council; let him hear St. Hilary, bishop of Poitiers, who in his book on the synods objects to himself the same question and solves the objection. In the edition made at Paris in the year 1693, Hilary in his book on the synods, or on the faith of the Orientals, prefixes this title to the formula of faith promulgated in this Antiochene synod: The exposition of the ecclesiastical faith, which was set forth in the synod held at the Dedication of the church of Antioch, when completed. Ninety-seven bishops who were present set it forth, when one of the bishops had come into suspicion of holding perverse opinions. Then, the text of the formula being produced, he forms this objection, column 1170: This faith seems perhaps to have spoken less expressly concerning the indifferent likeness of the Father and the Son, especially since it so held concerning the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit that there was signified in the names the proper substance and order and glory of each of those named, so that they are indeed three by substance, but one by consonance.

[25] Presently St. Hilary answers this objection thus: And first it is to be known the objections to his opinion are opposed. that the assembly at Antioch was not against the heresy which dared to preach the Father and the Son of dissimilar substance, but against that which, after the holy synod of Nicæa, had rushed into this, that it wished to ascribe three names to the Father, concerning which we shall treat in its place… The gathered synod of the Saints, therefore, wishing to destroy that impiety which eluded the truth of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit by the number of the names; so that, the cause of each name not subsisting, a threefold appellation might obtain union under the falsity of the names, and the Father alone and one the same should have both the name of the Holy Spirit and of the Son: therefore they said there were three substances, teaching the persons of the subsistents through the substances, not separating the substance of the Father and the Son by the diversity of a dissimilar essence. That here by three substances is understood τρεῖς ὑποστάσεις, as the Greeks speak, is commonly known to theologians. On that matter may be seen Epiphanius, Heresy 73, Gregory Nazianzen, oration 29, and others. I would have it here observed that by St. Hilary, taking the denomination from the greater part, this Antiochene council is called the synod of the Saints; which appellation certainly could not befit it, if it had been celebrated by the Arians alone, as Tillemont will have it. From these things it becomes altogether probable that our St. James, at this assembly,

was present at the Antiochene council, and that all the things afterward done violently are to be attributed to the Arians alone, who in the beginning had covered their virulent hatred against the defenders of the true faith with an impious simulation of the catholic religion, that so much the more safely they might harm their enemies. He who desires more on this matter, let him read the most learned work of Schelstrate praised above. We meanwhile hasten to another controversy concerning the writings of our Saint.

§ III. His writings.

Gennadius, in the work which was edited by Le Mire, On Illustrious Men, chapter 1, having first adorned James, bishop of Nisibis, with a eulogy, thus places him among the ecclesiastical writers: The reason why St. James was omitted by Jerome in his Catalogue of writers, James, surnamed the Wise, bishop of Nisibis, a city now noble among the Persians, was one of the number of the confessors under the persecutor Maximinus, and of those who in the Nicene synod condemned the perversity of the Arians by the opposition of the ὁμοούσιον. Why the blessed Jerome, in the book of Chronicles naming this man as a man of great virtues, did not place him in the Catalogue of Illustrious writers, will easily be excused, if we consider that he testifies that he read the very three or four Syrians whom he placed, and them translated into Greek. Whence it is clear that at that time he was ignorant of the Syriac language or letters, and therefore did not know this writer, who was not yet translated into another tongue.

[27] This reason of the Hieronymian omission, assigned by Gennadius, displeases me. it is refuted. For who would believe that Jerome, most studious of the oriental languages, long conversant in Syria and the neighboring regions, was ignorant of the Syriac tongue? For if, as he himself testifies in his Preface to Daniel, he spent immense labor in learning the Chaldean language, how, living among the Syrians, would he have neglected the knowledge of that common tongue lying ready to hand? Add that in his Preface to the book of Job he thus writes concerning his version into the Latin tongue: But this translation follows no one of the old interpreters, but from the very Hebrew and Arabic speech, sometimes also from the Syriac, will echo now the words, now the sense, now both together. But that book, according to the Paris edition of the year 1693, was rendered into Latin by Jerome about the year of Christ 391. But Jerome in the year 392 or 393 wrote the Catalogue of Illustrious Men, as Antoine Pagi learnedly shows in the Prolegomena of his Hypatic Dissertation, number 35. Hence the consequence flows of its own accord; namely that Jerome at the time when he wrote the Catalogue of illustrious men understood the Syriac language well enough. I should therefore prefer to believe that the works of our St. James, if they existed in Syriac, did not reach Jerome, lurking in his corner of Bethlehem, as he himself intimates concerning certain others in the Preface to the Catalogue of illustrious men in these words: But if any of those who have written even to this day have been passed over by me in this volume, they will have to impute it to themselves rather than to me: For, concealing their writings, of those which I have not read I could not know; and what is perhaps known to others, will have been unknown to me in this corner of the earth. Certainly, since they have become illustrious by their writings, they will not greatly sigh at the loss of our silence.

[28] The little works written by St. James are enumerated in various ways, In the enumeration of the little books which are said to have been composed by St. James, almost all the copies of Gennadius's Catalogue, both manuscript and printed, differ. Our manuscript Gennadius says that he wrote XXXVI books. But without doubt it is the error of the copyist, who carelessly added an X: For in the very computation of the books not even twenty-six are enumerated. Trithemius, in his Ecclesiastical Writers, reckons only XXV, whom a certain manuscript and printed codex supports. The Corbie or Sangermanensis manuscript ascribes to him XXVII books, as the monks of St. Maur testify in the edition of the works of St. Jerome published at Paris in the year 1706, volume 5, page 50. Most of the printed Catalogues attribute to St. James XXVI little works; but enumerate only XXIV. Gennadius, edited at Cologne in the year 1580 by Suffridus Petrus, and at Antwerp in the year 1639 by Aubert Le Mire, has it thus: But he comprehended his whole work in twenty-six books: On faith; against all heresies; On general charity; On special love toward one's neighbor; On fasting; On prayer; On the resurrection; On life after death; On humility; On patience; On penance; On satisfaction; On virginity; On the sense of the soul; On circumcision; On the blessed berry, of which it is read in Isaiah, the cluster is not to be destroyed; On Christ, that he is the Son of God, and consubstantial with the Father; On chastity; Against the Gentiles; On the construction of the tabernacle; On the conversion of the nations; On the kingdom of the Persians; On the persecution of the Christians; He composed also a chronicle of less curiosity indeed than that of the Greeks, but of greater trustworthiness, because, written with so great authority of the divine Scriptures, it stops the mouths of those who by presumptuous suspicion vainly philosophize concerning the coming of Christ or of our Lord. In enumerating these little works there differ both our manuscript Gennadius, and the one lately printed at Paris after the works of St. Jerome, volume 5, page 27.

[29] concerning whose author our Garnier doubts; To this testimony of Gennadius our Garnier acquiesces in the Theodoretian Supplement, or volume V of the works, printed at Paris in the year 1684; but in the second Dissertation, in the observations on the several chapters of the Philotheus, page 200, he thus disputes: It is to be observed thirdly that concerning the doctrine and books of James of Nisibis nothing was written by Theodoret, although it would have contributed much to his commendation: Nothing by Jerome, either in the Chronicle, or in the Catalogue of Ecclesiastical writers; nothing likewise by Ebedjesu, otherwise a diligent inquirer into the books of the Syrians; nothing by any of the ancients, except Gennadius alone, who recounts twenty-four books. But the authority of Gennadius does not seem to me so great as to pluck out every scruple: for whence did he know the Syriac works, who scarcely knew the Greek? Whence does he know that they were passed over by Jerome, for the reason that they were not yet translated into the Greek language, nor did Jerome yet understand the Syriac tongue? Were they afterward translated both into the Greek and into the Latin language, that they might become known to Gennadius, not most skilled, as it seems, in the Greek tongue? If they were translated into both languages, how did they perish altogether, since they would have been scattered, as it were, over a threefold world, the Latin, the Greek, and the Syrian? Why known to none of the ancients? Not even to Photius, so great and so curious a critic of the old writers? The suspicion is increased by this, that Gennadius attributes to James the surname of the Wise as though common, of which nevertheless no one makes mention, except one who transcribed Gennadius. Whence I should easily believe that writings were falsely attributed to James of Nisibis which were those of another James, as, for instance, of the most illustrious hermit of Amida. But in so great obscurity to whom I should adhere I know not. Thus far Garnier, some of whose arguments are truly not to be despised.

[30] A certain heterodox writer, who in his Select Exercitations, Exercitation VI, instituted a ridiculous, not to say impious, comparison between St. James of Nisibis, the keenest defender of the Catholic faith, but a certain heretical writer objects various little reasons and his own father James, a follower of the Lutheran heresy, refutes Garnier more sharply than is fitting. That refutation we shall give in his own words, lest perchance we should seem to wish to take away its force from him. But since the responses are sometimes extended and scattered here and there in a ὕστερον πρότερον, let it be permitted at least to reduce them into an epitome and order, so that they may be directly opposed to the arguments of Garnier. First he brings forward a text of Theodoret, from which he will no more squeeze out the books of James of Nisibis than oil from a pumice-stone. And so, seeing that he does not succeed by this way, he brings forward another cause of Theodoret's silence in these words: For in the Religious History it was his purpose to extol not so much the writings as rather the deeds of the ascetics, which he attended to also in James of Nisibis, as is proved by two places of the Ecclesiastical History, in which, having testified that he had praised James in the Philotheus, he intimates that the commendations were drawn from no other source than the miracles. But that this reason is altogether uncertain is clear from Theodoret himself, who in book 2 of the Sirmond edition, which in this Commentary I generally follow, chapter 26, narrating the siege of Nisibis, where certainly it in no way pertained to his purpose, calls St. Ephrem the most excellent writer among the Syrians. It is truly a wonder that he said nothing similar concerning St. James of Nisibis, of whom he treats often, if he wrote so many little works.

[31] Then that heterodox writer gives the same reason for the Hieronymian silence, he objects to Garnier, which we gave above, and thus proceeds. Wherefore there is no reason why anyone should think, for this cause, that James of Nisibis wrote nothing, because Jerome passed him over; much less because Ebedjesu was silent. For he lived only in the last century, nor applied so great diligence as Garnier ascribes to him. For he proposed to himself to recount chiefly the Nestorian writers; but the Eutychians, Jacobites, and Melchites he all but passed over. Hence in him no mention of Severus, that noted Eutychian, none of Moses Bar-Cepha or of similar Jacobites. Then he thus concludes: No impediment, therefore, can the silence of a novice and negligent man, serving his own sect, bring. But what of that? Are Jerome, Gennadius, Isidore, Honorius of Autun, Sigebert of Gembloux, Henry of Ghent, Bellarmine, and other collectors of ecclesiastical writers to be accused of negligence, because they omitted various authors, whose knowledge did not reach them? But be it so: let Ebedjesu have of set purpose passed over certain writers, and served his own sect. This I believe the assailant of Garnier when he asserts it, nay, I gladly concede it; but for this very reason Ebedjesu can profit or harm neither party.

[32] While Garnier says that no one of the ancients, except Gennadius, made mention of the books of James of Nisibis, that heretical Thraso, as though victory were won, and from the testimony of St. Athanasius, wholly boastful, exults, and opposes to him an Achilles, invincible, as he indeed thinks, namely the testimony of St. Athanasius, which he often repeats, and adduces in these magnificent words: But lest I detain the readers longer in an obscure matter, or seem to confirm the writings of James of Nisibis only from more recent men, I shall bring forward into the midst a most illustrious and most firm passage of Athanasius, which is found in his first oration against the Arians according to the present division. Then, after certain digressions and the Greek text of Athanasius, he subjoins this his Latin interpretation: If, therefore, those writings proceeded from the orthodox, such as are those of that great man and confessor Hosius (or rather, of the holy confessor) Maximinus of Gaul, or of his successor, or of Philogonius and Eustathius, bishops of the East, or of Julius and Liberius, bishops of the Romans, etc., or of James and the rest of the prelates of Mesopotamia, or of our blessed Alexander, and of the rest who are with him of the same opinion, there would be nothing which in these writings you should suspect: for the dispositions of Apostolic men are sincere and simple. Thus far are the words of St. Athanasius, to which the interpreter subjoins these: You see Athanasius recounting very many orthodox writers.

[33] But I beseech you, glorious sir, do not sing your triumph before the victory. This passage of Athanasius, which you call most illustrious and most firm, seems to me most wrongly understood,

obscure and weak for proving what you intend. That the controversy may be more clearly understood, it must be known that Athanasius here reproaches the Arians for twisting, in their writings, words drawn from the sacred Letters in favor of their heresy, and for fraudulently covering their impious doctrine under ambiguous words of the orthodox faith. We shall give the entire text of St. Athanasius, which is found in the Greek-Latin edition of his works published at Paris in the year 1698, volume 1, part 1, page 278, where this interpretation is given: And so, if the things which they write were written by the orthodox, as by the great man and confessor Hosius, and Maximinus of Gaul or his successor: Philogonius and Eustathius of the East, or Julius and Liberius bishops of Rome, Cyriacus of Mysia, Pistus and Aristæus bishops of Greece, Sylvester and Protogenes of Dacia, Leontius and Eupsychius bishops of Cappadocia, Cecilianus of Africa, Eustorgius of Italy, Capito of Sicily, Macarius of Jerusalem, Alexander of Constantinople, Pæderos of Heraclea, the great Meletius and Basil and Longianus, and others from Armenia and Pontus; as likewise Lupus and Amphio bishops of Cilicia; or James and the rest from Mesopotamia, or finally as also our blessed Alexander, and others who think the same as they. If, I say, these were like these, there would surely be no place for suspicion in their writings: for the disposition of apostolic men is simple and candid.

[34] in vain he endeavors to prove that St. James wrote various things. Now let us argue a little concerning this passage of Athanasius. In the first place indeed the reading of this text is various, since in the Paris edition just cited it is read thus in Greek: Εἰ μὲν οὖν παρὰ ὀρθοδόξων ἦν τὰ γραφόμενα, οἷα ἂν ἐγεγόνει παρὰ τοῦ μεγάλου καὶ ὁμολογητοῦ Ὁσίου, etc. It is to be noted that the particle ἂν, omitted in certain editions, is often the sign of the subjunctive; so that I might interpret this beginning thus: If, therefore, those writings proceeded from the orthodox, such as would have been those of the great man and confessor Hosius. But let us grant that the particle ἂν is expletive, as it sometimes is; these words sufficiently express a conditional sense: Εἰ μὲν οὖν παρὰ ὀρθοδόξων ἦν τὰ γραφόμενα, if indeed, therefore, the writings were from the orthodox. But by what rule of dialectic is it permitted, from a conditioned proposition, if they had written or should write, to infer this absolute consequence: therefore they wrote? These words οἷα ἂν ἐγεγόνει I interpret such as would have been. Such an interpretation that long series of prelates demands, which that it should be reckoned entire among the ecclesiastical writers no one will easily prove. But if anyone will not acquiesce in our explanation, let him declare in what Catalogue of writers these are found, and at the same time indicate the cause why Jerome and Gennadius did not insert these celebrated defenders of the Catholic faith, illustrious by their writings, into the Catalogue of illustrious men. But let us gratuitously concede to Garnier's adversary his version of the Athanasian text. Will he thence dig out the books of James of Nisibis which Gennadius enumerates? At the most it could thence be inferred that St. James of Nisibis wrote one or another epistle against the Arians, as some of the bishops enumerated there wrote. In vain also is Elias Du Pin here called to aid, who in volume 2 of his Library says that Athanasius spoke of James of Nisibis as of a bishop who had written. But besides that from this general manner of speaking nothing can be evinced, that man of inferior doctrine rashly cast many things upon paper, which, examined by the learned, are convicted of manifest error.

[35] Let us discuss other things, which the aforesaid heterodox thus opposes to the remaining arguments of Garnier: Other arguments of the same heterodox writer, Nor is it of any weight that he doubts whence Gennadius knew the Syriac works, who scarcely knew the Greek, nor was most skilled in the Greek tongue. For, to begin from the latter, Garnier ought to have remembered the things which a little before he himself had said, page CLXXIX. "At the time when Gennadius was writing at Marseilles, where he was a priest, the Greek language was better known than in any other part of the West; not only on account of the origin of the city, founded, as it is reported, by the Greeks, but also on account of the fame of Cassian, who had come thither from the East; to whom St. Celestine sent the letters of Nestorius to be translated and refuted." Who then will deny to Gennadius so great a knowledge of the Greek tongue as was enough for conversing with his people of Marseilles and reading the writings of the Greek Fathers? Especially since to Garnier himself he seems to have read in Greek the works of Theodoret which he records. This man fights against shadows: for Garnier does not deny to Gennadius some knowledge of the Greek tongue; but only says that he was not most skilled in this language. But it could happen that in the city of Marseilles the Greek language was better known than in any other part of the West, nay, that Gennadius read the works of Theodoret in Greek, and yet was not very skilled in the Greek tongue. This I declare by a common example known among us. At Brussels the French language is better known than in any other city of Brabant, nay, very many inhabitants of that city read and understand French books after a fashion, and yet it can truly be said that some of them are not most skilled in the French tongue.

[36] More probable are the following, which he answers to Garnier asking the objections to Garnier are weighed, how Gennadius knew the Syriac works of St. James: But to know, he says, what books James of Nisibis wrote, he had no need at all of a knowledge of the Syriac language (which nevertheless I do not deny him) but seems to have been aided by monuments preserved in the monastery of Marseilles. For it is credible that Cassian, who built that monastery, and, most devoted to the ascetic life, highly praised the illustrious hermits, and traveled through the monasteries of Syria and Egypt, in that pilgrimage of his curiously noted the deeds and writings of the more celebrated ascetics and carried them with him to Marseilles; from which records of Cassian Gennadius seems to have had knowledge of the Syrian and Egyptian authors whom he praises. However that be, Garnier falsely supposes that the writings of James of Nisibis had to be translated into the Greek and Latin language after Jerome, that they might become known to Gennadius: For that this was not done even in his own age Gennadius expressly confesses, when he says, who is not yet translated into another tongue. Wherefore vain are whatever things Garnier thence elicits concerning the writings of James, scattered over a threefold world and to be read by Photius. That these things could so have happened I do not deny. But meanwhile the difficulties proposed above remain.

[37] and his futile cavil is exploded. Altogether frivolous, nay false, is that which toward the end he reprehends in Garnier in this manner: Hence it is sufficiently clear that Garnier objects those scruples without any foundation; who, since he knew that in Theodoret and Theodore the Reader James is adorned with the encomium of μεγάλου or the Great, without reason quibbles about the surname of the Wise attributed to him by Gennadius as common; since this is not taken away by that, but rather included and presupposed. New indeed is this method of reasoning. As though, forsooth, there were not very many who, by the sanctity of their life, by warlike fortitude, or by other illustriously performed deeds, obtained the surname of Great; to whom nevertheless the name of the Wise would by no means befit. Do not the Greeks venerate very many martyrs whom they have decorated with the surname of μεγάλου, who nevertheless scarcely knew letters? But it wearies me to refute these cavils longer. Now let us pass judgment on the matter itself: for hitherto I have argued ad hominem, as they say, and have impugned only the reasons of Gennadius and of that heterodox writer, being ready easily to admit that our Saint wrote some things, as will presently be seen.

[38] [Certain little works of St. James are said to have been lately found in an Armenian codex,] Joseph Simon Assemani, who lately edited at Rome the Oriental Library in two volumes, in the Life of St. James of Nisibis, page 20, number 10, contends that James of Sarug is confounded by Gennadius with the one of Nisibis, and namely takes away from our James the writing On the Kingdom of the Persians, On the Persecution of the Christians, and the Chronicle, which he thinks is to be attributed to Marutha of Tagrit or to James of Sarug. Afterward, however, in volume 1 of the same Oriental Library, page 557, among the addenda and corrigenda, he warns that he had heard from certain Armenians that at Venice, in the hospice of the Armenian monks of St. Anthony, there existed an illustrious codex written in the Armenian tongue, in which were read certain writings of James of Nisibis to St. Gregory the Illuminator of Armenia. Having received this new information, he says that the Most Reverend Peter Mechitar, abbot of those same monks, was asked by him by letter to have that codex copied by a learned monk and transmitted to the Vatican library. That codex, according to Assemani, besides other things contains a Treatise of St. James of Nisibis divided into eighteen chapters: namely I On faith. II On charity. III On fasting. IV On prayer. V On spiritual combat. VI On piety. VII On penance. VIII On the resurrection of the dead. IX On humility. X On the offices of pastors. XI On circumcision against the Jews. XII On the sabbath against the same. XIII On the choice of foods. XIV On the pasch. XV On the election of the Gentiles, and the reprobation of the Jews. XVI That Christ is the Son of God. XVII On virginity and chastity against the Jews. XVIII Against the Jews who await the Messiah, that he may gather together their dispersion. Then is added an Epistle of the same St. James to the bishops, priests, and deacons of Seleucia and Ctesiphon, concerning the dissensions and contradictions which arise from pride, and concerning ambition. This enumeration of little works differs not a little from the Gennadian Catalogue, as will be clear to one willing to compare them. Moreover, whether these little works were first written in Armenian, or translated from the Syriac language into the Armenian, I know not. Gennadius intimates that those which he enumerates were written in Syriac. Whatever be the case with the idiom, at least Assemani judges that those which are found in the aforesaid Armenian codex are the genuine writings of St. James of Nisibis. In this matter I shall not oppose his opinion.

[39] Another controversy concerning the writings of James of Nisibis pertains to the famous dispute about the Arabic canons of the Nicene synod, but the same does not seem to be the author of the Arabic canons which flourished greatly in the last century, some defending those canons as genuine, others contending that they are supposititious. To settle this suit is not of this place; meanwhile the curious reader will be able to see their defense in volume 2 of the Councils of our Labbe, who inserted into it the dissertation of Abraham Ecchellensis, and the preface of our Francisco Turriano. Against these and other defenders of the Arabic canons very many keenly oppose themselves, whose reasons if anyone desire to know, let him see, besides various French historians, Christianus Lupus, Part 1 of the Councils, page 570, Schelstrate, Part 2 of the Illustrated Antiquity, Dissertation 2, chapter 4, and more briefly in the preface to the Reader, number 6, Cardinal Aguirre in the great collection of all the Councils of Spain, Dissertation 8; where, arguments being brought forward on both sides, he accurately examines this matter. But whether these canons be spurious or genuine, we here only ask whether St. James of Nisibis was their compiler. Abraham Ecchellensis in the dissertation inserted into Labbe's collection of the councils, volume 2, column 400, treating of

the Syriac version of those canons, says that some think that it had as its author the Lord James, bishop of Nisibis, who was present at that council. Concerning this opinion Schelstrate, Part 2 of the Illustrated Antiquity, Dissertation 2, chapter 4, number 169, thus deservedly judges: It displeases, however, that Abraham Ecchellensis thinks that these canons had as their author James, bishop of Nisibis in Mesopotamia, exhibited from the Catalogue of subscriptions of the Nicene Council: For that one of the holy Nicene fathers collected the Acts of the synod, or rather the canons, which are opposed to the mind of that council, no one of the skilled will admit. Then he proves from various statutes, later than the Nicene synod, that that collection was made only about the time of the Emperor Justinian. Assemani, praised above, takes away the same canons from our Saint.

[40] The last question is whether St. James of Nisibis illustrated the sacred Scripture with Commentaries. This our Cornelius a Lapide affirms in the Prolegomena of his Commentaries on Ecclesiasticus, chapter 3, thus writing: although he perhaps wrote certain other things. On Mount Lebanon there exist in Syriac manuscript Commentaries of St. Ephrem (and similar ones of that great James, bishop of Nisibis, who was present at the Council of Nicæa) on the whole sacred Scripture, as I received at Rome from the Maronites, which would that someone might translate into Latin and edit. Athanasius Kircher, Part 1 of China Illustrated, chapter 5, page 39, and Cardinal Bona, On Liturgical Matters, book 1, chapter 9, number 9, make him the author of a Liturgy, which Abraham Ecchellensis testifies exists among him with other oriental ones, in his Notes on the Catalogue of Ebedjesu, page 134. Although some call these writings into doubt, we prefer to believe the Maronites asserting it, than rashly to judge concerning a matter hitherto unknown to us.

§ IV. The errors of certain authors, and the siege of Nisibis.

Our St. James was born of the city of Nisibis, Theodoret, in the Philotheus, chapter 1, testifies that the country of our Saint was Nisibis, in these words: Nisibis is a city on the border of the kingdom of the Romans and of the Persians, which once indeed was tributary to the Romans and obeyed their empire. Born of it, that great James embraced the solitary and quiet life. This Theodore of Byzantium, reader of the church of Constantinople, follows, who flourished at the beginning of the sixth century, and in the Excerpts of the Ecclesiastical History edited by Henri Valois, page 553, thus expressly declares: ὁ Νισιβινὸς ἦν ὁ μέγας Ἰάκωβος. The great James was born at Nisibis. I wonder that after so manifest testimonies of the old writers, Andreas Masius, a man otherwise learned, and skilled in Greek, Hebrew, and Syriac, was here so mistaken as to say that he was of Edessa, or rather confounded him with James of Edessa. Perhaps he was led into this error by Moses of Mardin, a Syrian ignorant of ancient history, with whom he had great familiarity.

[42] [and he is distinct from another James the Younger, and contemporary of Theodoret.] Concerning the miracles wrought by St. James, no smaller errors are detected. In the Acts, numbers 4, 5, and 6, it is narrated more fully how immodest maidens were miraculously chastised by him. Theodore the Reader, in Valois in the place just cited, thus comprehends the same miracle in few words: The great James was born at Nisibis, but with how great virtue he was endowed appears from the miracle which was done upon certain gentile maidens who were washing at a fountain: For these, after James's imprecation, grew hoary, and the fountain itself dried up; which presently James by his prayers restored; but the maidens themselves he left hoary. But lest anyone confound James of Nisibis with the other, Theodore immediately after the preceding words thus warns: It is moreover to be known that this James, who wrought that miracle at the fountain and upon the maidens, is other than he who wrote back to the encyclical letters. For that one of Nisibis lived in the times of Constantius. But this younger James also was illustrious for miracles, as Theodoret testifies in the Religious History, the Philotheus. Notwithstanding this forewarning, Nicephorus Callistus was so dull that in book 15 of the Ecclesiastical History, chapter 22, describing the same miracle from Theodore the Reader almost verbatim, he attributed it to the other James, concerning whom Theodoret, his contemporary, narrates many things in the Philotheus, chapter 21, which the imprudent Nicephorus applies to this bishop of Nisibis.

[43] Another miracle Theodoret subjoins concerning a certain unjust Persian judge, [Our Rader wrongly interprets a certain miracle of his, but afterward corrected his error.] who by the prodigious crushing of a stone, made by St. James's execration, was impelled to revoke his iniquitous sentence. This is thus expressed in Greek in the Menæa of the XIII of January: Καὶ δικαστὴν Πέρσην ἀδίκῳ ψήφῳ χρησάμενον θεασάμενος, λίθῳ τινὶ μεγίστῳ αὐτοῦ που κειμένῳ ἐπαρασάμενος, τοῦτον συνέτριψε, that is, having beheld a Persian judge giving iniquitous sentences, by his imprecation he crushed a very great stone which happened to lie there. Rosweyde, in the Notes on the ninth book of the Lives of the Fathers edited at Antwerp in the year 1638, page 858, observes the error of our Rader in the Little Garden of the Saints, Part 1, page 21, in print, concerning this passage of the Menæa, in these words: What in the Menæa is τοῦτον συνέτριψε our Rader translates AND HE CRUSHED THE JUDGE, referring τοῦτον to the judge, not to the stone. But since the judge survived and changed his sentence, it is clear from Theodoret that it is to be translated in the Menæa; HE CRUSHED THAT STONE. But Rader himself, in his manuscript observations on the Menæa, which we preserve in our Museum, candidly acknowledges his error and corrects it in these words: I had once edited: And a certain Persian judge, oppressing the innocent with an iniquitous sentence, he crushed with a huge rock lifted up. For "the rock being lifted up" I emend: For there is not in the Greek ἐπαράμενος from ἐπαίρω, as I had at first read, which means I LIFT UP; but ἐπαρασάμενος from ἐπαράομαι, that is, having execrated or imprecated evil upon the rock, which he crushed. The rock, I say, he shattered, crushed, and reduced to dust. Τοῦτον therefore, which follows, is to be referred not to the unjust judge, but to the stone, which our most learned Rosweyde rightly noted. The genuine candor of this man, if in any matter we stray from the truth, we desire to imitate.

[44] In the third miracle which follows, concerning a poor man feigning death and therefore punished with real death, St. James punishes the fraud of the feigned poor man, no error, that I know of, has been committed. But the same miracle, according to the testimony of St. Gregory of Nyssa, before our James, Gregory Thaumaturgus, and after him St. Epiphanius, is read to have wrought. Yet I would not, on account of this similarity of history, doubt of the truth of these miracles, but I candidly pronounce with Sozomen, who, in the Valesian edition, book 7, chapter 27, about to narrate a similar miracle wrought by St. Epiphanius, thus prefaces: It pleases me, moreover, to commemorate another thing which is related concerning him. This indeed I have received to have been done by the admirable Gregory, who once governed the church of Neocæsarea, and I gladly believe it. But not for that reason ought it to seem incredible that the same was also done by Epiphanius: For not only Peter the Apostle raised a dead man from below, but also John the Evangelist in the city of Ephesus, and the daughters of Philip at Hierapolis; and we have found that many, both of the ancient and of the pious men of our memory, often did the same things. The same I would have understood in this matter concerning St. James of Nisibis. Sozomen subjoins to these the miracle of St. Epiphanius, which is similar to the former of St. Gregory Thaumaturgus and to ours, except that St. James recalled that dead man to life; but those two saints, by the just judgment of God, left their mockers dead.

[45] The last miracle is so celebrated that Philostorgius himself, the keenest defender of the Arians, and consequently the enemy of our James, did not dare to involve it in silence. and prodigiously frees the city of Nisibis from the siege of the Persians; It is well to hear the prodigious virtue of our Saint, though jejunely and briefly praised, from the enemy himself. Thus it is had in the Epitome from the ecclesiastical histories of Philostorgius made by Photius, book 3, section 23, in Valois, folio 490: Philostorgius says that Sapor, king of the Persians, made war on the Romans and besieged the city of Nisibis; but, the matter unaccomplished, beyond all expectation, affected with shame, he retired, when James, the bishop of that city, had shown the citizens what was to be done, and, with firm hope and confidence in God, had admirably fought for the safety of the city. Theodoret describes that miracle at greater length in the Acts, from number 12 to 17. The same he describes fully in book 2 of the Ecclesiastical History, chapter 26, where the same things are narrated in almost another phrase, and St. Ephrem the Syrian is read to have been present, in these words: Then indeed the admirable Ephrem, who among the Syrians was the most excellent writer, asked the divine James to ascend the wall, to look upon the barbarians, and to hurl the darts of imprecation upon them. That admirable man, obeying him, ascended a certain tower, and, having seen the innumerable multitude of men, imprecated upon them no other evil; but prayed only that gnats and mosquitoes might be sent upon them, that from the tiny little creatures they might know the power of him who aided them. The rest of the things which are narrated agree, as to substance, with those which we shall afterward give in the Acts from Theodoret's Philotheus.

[46] which prodigy Abulpharagius ascribes to St. Ephrem. Perhaps from this presence of St. Ephrem, Gregory Abulpharagius took an occasion of erring, who in his History written in Arabic distinguishes two sieges of Nisibis; and the first indeed, a little before the death of Constantine the Great, he asserts to have been dissolved by the miraculous prayers of the saints James and Ephrem, the other a little after the death of the same Constantine by the prayers of Ephrem alone. Of the first, Pococke interpreting, he thus writes, page 85. At that time Sapor, king of the Persians, when he had besieged the city of Nisibis thirty days, by the prayers of St. James its bishop, and of St. Ephrem his disciple, with vain effort retired from it, and in returning hostilely laid waste Mesopotamia. But of the second, having narrated the death of Constantine the Great and his burial, he thus speaks, page 87: In this year Sapor, king of the Persians, went up to besiege Nisibis, having heard that Constantine the victor was dead; but when he had besieged it thirty days, from it, the matter unaccomplished, he returned into his own kingdom, which was done by the prayers of holy Mar Ephrem: For God, granting his prayers, sent into the army of the Persians bugs (the interpreter, I suppose, wished to say gnats) and mosquitoes, which put their elephants and horses to flight. When the Arab author makes mention of these little creatures, he betrays himself: For this miracle Theodoret expressly attributes to St. James, whom, as the more ancient, we rather believe.

[47] Theodoret in narrating the siege of Nisibis is in part convicted of error, But it is worse that Theodoret himself, in setting forth the raising of the siege of Nisibis, seems to have confounded the times. Our Garnier, in volume V of the Works of Theodoret, in the place already several times cited, thus convicts him of error: It is to be observed, secondly, that Theodoret also lapsed by a slip of memory in the narration of the siege of Nisibis by the Persians: for whereas there were three

sieges, the first in the year CCCXXXVIII; the second in the year CCCL; the last in the year CCCLIX, he confounded the first two into one, and was silent concerning the third, since indeed it happened after the death of James. Still more does Valois accuse Theodoret, in his Notes on Theodoret's Ecclesiastical History, edited by him, book 2, chapter 30, thus writing, page 26: Theodoret is here deceived in many ways: For first he confounded two sieges of the city of Nisibis with each other. Then he wrongly assigns the time of that siege which he here describes to after the synod of Ariminum and Seleucia, that is, after the year of Christ CCCLIX. And this twofold error of Theodoret Dionysius Petavius already long ago noted in his annotations on the first oration of the Emperor Julian. A third error is that of Theodoret by no means noticed by Petavius: for he says that the second siege of Nisibis was raised by the prayers of James, bishop of Nisibis; whereas nevertheless at that time, in which the second siege of Nisibis was made under Constantius, that is, in the year of Christ CCCL, not James but Vologesus was bishop of the city of Nisibis, as the author of the Alexandrian Chronicle teaches.

[48] But I think that Valois himself, in convicting Theodoret of the third error, erred: in part he is defended. For the Paschal Chronicle, commonly called the Alexandrian, in the Olympiad CCLXXII, or the year of Christ 350, having narrated the siege of the city of Nisibis, only adds that there is circulated a letter of Vologesus, bishop of Nisibis, in which these things are set forth one by one. But thence it in no way follows that Vologesus was bishop of Nisibis at the time of the siege, as Tillemont rightly observes in the History of the Emperors, volume IV, page 675: For Vologesus, even while still a deacon or priest, could have written this letter, and afterward have been made bishop of Nisibis, and thus be called the letter of the bishop of Nisibis, just as Valois himself calls the first oration of the Emperor Julian, although Julian wrote it before obtaining the dignity of empire. Vologesus could also, being bishop of Nisibis, have written that letter, but one or another, nay even several years after the siege, at which perhaps he had before been present. Whatever be the case concerning the siege raised by St. James's prayers, we prefer the clear testimony of Theodoret to the ambiguous and easily explicable text of the Alexandrian Chronicle.

[49] Of greater difficulty is it to fix the epoch of the various sieges of Nisibis. Our Petavius, from various writers, These intricate and confused times our Petavius endeavors to unravel in his Notes on the first oration of Julian the Apostate. His entire discourse on this matter I shall here insert, because it contains new information and apt to ecclesiastical history. This history of the siege of Nisibis, he says, has need of a sharp and most attentive reader: For from it the reasonings of the chronicles and Annals ought to be corrected and directed. Jerome, in the supplement of the Eusebian Chronicle, at the year next after the death of Constantine the Great, who is the first of his three sons, notes this. "Sapor, king of the Persians, having laid waste Mesopotamia, besieges Nisibis for almost two months." Presently. "James of Nisibis is recognized, at whose prayers the city was often freed from danger." Theodoret, reviewing the deeds of St. James in the Philotheus, makes mention of that siege, which followed immediately after the death of Constantine, when Sapor despised his sons as weaklings. In the same he writes that all those things happened which are here related by Julian; and among the rest, the course of the river flowing past being checked by dikes: Then, when it had swelled with the waters collected in greater measure; the dikes being broken, it was let out with great force against the walls. He adds also the swarms of mosquitoes sent by the prayers of the divine man against the enemy; and also that one in the habit of an Emperor was seen by the Barbarian before the walls: Which that man, wondering—those who had said that the Emperor of the Romans was absent, and had been the authors of that siege—he punished with capital punishment.

[50] compared with one another, But the same Theodoret, in book II, chapter XXX, pursues at greater length this very history of Nisibis besieged and saved by James; where also he refers the reader to the things which he had written in the Philotheus. He relates, moreover, that Sapor, seventy days being consumed in that siege, and the river being checked and presently let in against the walls, returned home deceived of his hope. But as regards the year of the siege; he disagrees with himself: For he shows that it happened not immediately after the death of Constantine, and at the very beginning of Constantius, as in the Philotheus, but long afterward; namely after the conventicles of Ariminum and Seleucia, which were celebrated in the year of Christ CCCLIX, the XXIII of Constantius, and after the see of Antioch was seized by force by Eudoxius, and the rescript of Constantius to the Antiochenes against the same Eudoxius was issued; which happened in the preceding year, CCCLVIII of Christ. Finally Theodoret indicates, chapter XXXI, that Constantius was at Antioch during the same time in which Nisibis was besieged. But Theophanes describes, in the year next after the death of Constantine, that siege of Nisibis, which held sixty-three days, and by the prayers of St. James came to nothing; nor does he make mention of the mosquitoes and the other things. Zosimus, in book III, treats of the siege of Nisibis, asserts that its history was handed down to memory by Julian himself, and thence bids the reader seek it. But he writes that this happened when Julian was already Cæsar; and after the Franks, Salii, and Quadi were subdued by him; when also, affairs being settled in the West, Constantius was in the East, and wholly bent upon the Persian war. And so it will have happened in the year CCCLIX or rather CCCLX, when, the Persians invading the borders of the Roman empire, Constantius, envying the glory of Julian, summoned two Celtic legions from the Gauls. Which thing, a military sedition being stirred up, paved for Julian the way to usurping the empire.

[51] and from the oration of Julian the Apostate, With the narrations of these writers let us now compare those things which Julian himself wrote in this oration. Thus we shall lay open the many errors of many, and shall give light to this history, which hitherto has been unknown. First of all Julian is a witness that, news being brought of the death of Constans and the tyranny of Magnentius and Vetranio, Constantius, the towns of Syria being fortified, set out into the West, but that the Persians, intent upon that occasion, the Emperor being occupied with civil and western wars, attacked Nisibis, in which they spent four months. This siege is no other than that which Theodoret relates: For he too writes that the river, being retained, was afterward dashed with great force against the walls; and concerning the engines and the rest he recounts nearly the same. But the year is indicated by Julian to be CCCL of Christ, in which, the death of Constans being brought, Constantius set out into the West. A threefold time, therefore, is gathered from the comparison of those historians whom we have cited as witnesses: Namely the year CCCXXXVIII, CCCL, and CCCLX, which are all fixed for the same siege.

[52] To me it is not doubtful that Theodoret and Zosimus most gravely erred, and are to be corrected from this narration of Julian. he fixes the epoch of the threefold siege of Nisibis, Thus therefore hold: that Nisibis was often besieged by the Persians, and defended by St. James, as Jerome indicates. That it was besieged three times Rufus affirms. Moreover two sieges were remarkable above the rest. The former happened immediately after the death of Constantine, of which Jerome and Theophanes make mention, which held for almost two months. The latter, Constantius being absent and having set out into the West against the tyrants, in the year CCCL, which Julian and Theodoret describe, and Zosimus mentions. These two sieges Theodoret melted into one and the same, and besides followed the error of Zosimus in this, that he assigned the time of the latter and most celebrated one several years too late: For that siege which Julian here sets forth, and which Zosimus and Theodoret had in mind, is to be attributed to the year CCCL; before not only Julian, but not even Gallus his brother, was Cæsar. Wherefore it is no wonder if Ammianus Marcellinus, a diligent and accurate historian of those times, made no mention of that siege, since the earlier books of that history have perished. From these things the annals and chronicle-books are to be corrected, and so ours, insofar as, in the year CCCXXXVIII, when we ascribed the siege of Nisibis, following Theodoret and others, we struck against the same rock. But this oration of Julian ought to be the more acceptable to the learned and studious of history, by whose help it has come about that a new and hitherto unknown account of this history was established.

[53] To this reasoning of Petavius, Valois consents in his Notes on Ammianus Marcellinus, book 20, to which chronology certain more recent authors subscribe; chapter 7, except that he would have the first siege of Nisibis happen in the year 337. Concerning this epoch Antoine Pagi, in his critique of Baronius at the year of Christ 338, thus judges: In the same year, namely CCCXXXVII of Christ, Nisibis was besieged by the Persians, as Theophanes has it, who describes the siege excellently, and says that it lasted sixty-three days, which same number of days the author of the Alexandrian Chronicle relates the city was besieged, in the year CCCXXXVII. Wherefore, since Jerome in the Chronicle, according to the edition of Scaliger, couples that siege with the year of Abraham MMCCCLIV, which begins on the Kalends of October in the year of Christ CCCXXXVII, it is to be understood of the earlier months of that year. Tillemont, however, after these things, in the History of the Emperors, volume 4, page 668, defends the opinion of Petavius, and thinks that the first siege of Nisibis is better placed in the year of Christ 338. This small discrepancy of time can perhaps be reconciled, if it be said that the first siege of the city of Nisibis was begun in the year 337, and still lasted in the year 338.

[54] Not so easily can be reconciled the things which Tillemont, in the History of the Emperors, volume 4, [but concerning the time of the third siege Tillemont not without reason dissents.] page 674, relates concerning the third siege of Nisibis, which, against Petavius and Valois, he anticipates by nine or ten years. For he distinguishes three sieges of that city, of which he places the first in the year 338, the second in 346, the third in the year 350, and, the arguments of his adversaries being solved, contends that Nisibis was not besieged by the Persians after the year of Christ 354, both because Ammianus Marcellinus, the accurate writer of the Persian war, at which he was present, makes mention of no siege after that time, but on the contrary, book 20, chapter 7, asserts that Sapor in the year 360, Singara being intercepted and laid waste, avoided Nisibis by prudent counsel, mindful, namely, of the things which he had often there endured. But if, says Tillemont, it had been besieged in the year 360, we should reckon not only three, but four sieges of Nisibis; whereas meanwhile Festus Rufus records that that city was besieged only three times under the empire of Constantius. These and other arguments of Tillemont render his opinion altogether probable. It suffices us that, according to the testimony of St. Jerome in the Chronicle, that city, in whatever year at last besieged, was often freed from danger by the prayers of our Saint.

§ V. His death, burial, and the writers of his Life.

Concerning the death of St. James of Nisibis, Theodoret, after narrating the siege of the city of Nisibis and its prodigious liberation, thus briefly and indeterminately describes the death of St. James in the Acts to be subjoined to this paragraph, number 17: Persevering in these things, and taking increases in divine matters day by day, he closed his life with the highest glory, and departed from these places. Nor also does he sufficiently

determine concerning this holy Prelate does Gennadius, in the Catalogue of Illustrious Men, chapter 1, thus writing: This man dies in the times of Constantius. This vague note of time Abulpharagius, in his Arabic history rendered into Latin by Pococke, restricts to a more certain epoch thus, page 87: Then Constantine, having set out for Nicomedia, embalmed the body of his father which he had received, and, enclosed in a golden ark, carried it to Constantinople, where he placed it in the temple of the Apostles. In this year Sapor, king of the Persians, went up to besiege Nisibis, having heard that Constantine the victor was dead. But when he had besieged it thirty days, from it, the matter unaccomplished, he returned into his own kingdom, which was done by the prayers of holy Mar Ephrem: For God, granting his prayers, sent into the army of the Persians bugs (that it should be read gnats I warned above) and mosquitoes, which put their elephants and horses to flight. Then Sapor grievously persecuted the Christians who were in his power. In this year St. James, bishop of Nisibis, died, Babawaih being substituted in his place.

[56] a certain year or day cannot be assigned. If it were permitted to trust this Arab historian, we should easily attain the very year of his death: but we have already shown above that this writer confounded the times, and committed other errors in the sieges of Nisibis. Certainly, if St. James was present at the Council of Antioch, which was celebrated in the year 341, as we taught above from Schelstrate, surely his death is to be deferred beyond the first siege of Nisibis. What of the fact that Abulpharagius himself sufficiently manifests his error, when he attributes the gnats and mosquitoes sent against the elephants and horses to the prayers of Ephrem, which Theodoret most expressly ascribes to our James? And hence it can be concluded that St. James survived at least until the year 350, since that famous siege of Nisibis, by the common opinion of the more excellent chronologers, is proved to have happened in the year 350. But although we cannot assign a certain year to his death, yet we believe that he departed this life between the year 350 and 361, in which Constantius died, because Gennadius asserts that he died in the times of Constantius. Nor is the day of his death more certain: for the Syrians celebrate his feast on the XVIII of January, the Greeks on the XIII of the same month and the XXXI of October, the Latins on the XV of July. But whichever of these be the true day of his death, we, following the Roman Martyrology, have placed him on the XV of July.

[57] By unanimous consent the writers assert that the body of St. James was buried in the very city of Nisibis. The relics of St. James were translated from the city of Nisibis, In passing I here observe the error of Laurentius De la Barre, who in the Religious History of Theodoret, edited by him at Paris in the year 1583, at the end of the first chapter, notes in the margin that a sepulchral chest was provided for this James of Nisibis by Theodoret. Perhaps he followed Nicephorus Callistus, book 15, chapter 23, erring in the same matter. That for another James, an anchorite, he himself provided a sepulchral chest, Theodoret clearly testifies in the Philotheus, chapter 21. Concerning the translation of the sacred bones, or rather the cause of that translation, Gennadius and Theodoret go off into diverse opinions. Gennadius indeed, in the work on illustrious men, after composing the eulogy of the holy Prelate and enumerating his writings, chapter 1, thus proceeds: This man dies in the times of Constantius; according to the command of his father Constantine, he is buried within the walls of the city of Nisibis, namely for the guardianship of the city; which was done according to the faith of Constantine: For after many years Julian, entering the city, and either envying the glory of the buried man or the faith of Constantine, whose house on that account he persecuted, ordered the Relics of the sacred body to be carried out of the city, and after a few months, though for the sake of consulting the Commonwealth, the Emperor Jovian, who had succeeded Julian, delivered the city to the barbarians, which even to this day serves, subject with its borders to the dominion of the Persians.

[58] A plainly different occasion of this translation relates Theodoret in the Acts, in our version at number 17, thus writing: of which translation a different cause is brought forward, But in the succession of time, when the city had been delivered into the Persian dominion by him who then reigned, all the inhabitants departed, and carried out the body of their defender, bearing the migration indeed with grief and sorrow, but celebrating with praises the virtue of their most valiant victor: for while he survived they would not have come into the power of the Barbarians. Concerning this surrender of the city made by Jovian to the Persians, there treat also St. Jerome in the Chronicle, the author of the Paschal or Alexandrian Chronicle, and John of Antioch, surnamed Malalas, of whom the two latter assert that the citizens of Nisibis departed from the city with their goods, but make no special mention of the Relics of St. James then translated at the same time. Although the narration of Gennadius is not out of keeping with the character of Julian the Apostate, since he, unable to bear the splendor of the miracles, ordered even the sacred body of St. Babylas, bishop of Antioch, to be translated, yet I judge that Theodoret, as the nearer in time, is rather to be believed.

[59] In what place the relics of St. James are today I dare not affirm. [and concerning the present state of the sacred bones nothing certain is established.] Biagio Terzi, in his Sacred Syria printed at Rome in Italian in the year 1695, book 1, chapter 150, speaking of the modern state of Nisibis and of the temple of St. James, once its prelate, whose ruins are even now seen, says: There the Christians of three nations (he would rather have said of three sects) the Armenians, Nestorians, and Jacobites, celebrate the Office. By subterranean steps one goes down into a chapel, where they say his body is kept. To this Angelus a S. Joseph openly contradicts, who says that there is shown the tomb of St. James of Nisibis empty of Relics; concerning which matter, in the Treasury of the Persian language, page 251, at the word Nisibis, he has these things: Scarcely any other trace of so great a city survives than the huge mass of the basilica of St. James the bishop, whose tomb is even now seen in the crypt, empty of remains. The edifice is of the most excellent marble, marvelously carved with great labor. But now the house of God is turned into a receptacle of owls and bats. The more recent writers, in the description of their Oriental journeys, agree concerning the tomb and basilica of St. James, but make no mention of the Relics. Jean Baptiste Tavernier, book 2 of his Persian Itinerary, chapter 4, narrates that in the morning he entered the church of Nisibis, heard the liturgy of the Armenians, and, with his Capuchin companions, the Armenian bishop showing it, saw the tomb of St. James of Nisibis. Thevenot, Part 2 of the Itinerary, book 1, chapter 10, records the same church, but by a huge error thought it dedicated to the name of St. James the brother of the Lord. From these things it is clear that I can assert nothing certain concerning the present state of the Relics. Now let us add a few things concerning the various writers and editors of the Acts.

[60] Various authors are recounted who made mention of the deeds of St. James. The deeds of our holy prelate both Latins and Greeks committed to writing. Of the Latins indeed Gennadius, priest of Marseilles, in the work on illustrious men, chapter 1; Marcus Aurelius Cassiodorus in the Tripartite History, collected by him from three Greek authors translated into Latin by Epiphanius Scholasticus and reduced into a compendium, book 5, chapter 45; Vincent of Beauvais in the Historical Mirror, book 13, chapter 82; Peter de Natalibus, bishop of Equilio, book 6, chapter 102; Mombritius, volume 2, folio 49; Lipomanus, and other more recent writers, whom I here omit. Among the Greeks Theodoret, bishop of Cyrus, book 2 of the Ecclesiastical History, chapter 26, describing the siege of Nisibis, who also makes mention of him book 1 of the Ecclesiastical History, chapter 6, where he says that he was present at the Council of Nicæa, raised the dead, and wrought countless other miracles; Theodore the Reader in the Excerpts from the Ecclesiastical History, book 1, in Valois, page 553; Nicephorus Callistus, book 8, chapter 14, and book 9, chapter 28, and others, who made mention of him only in passing. But the Acts of the holy man Theodoret copiously described in Greek in the Philotheus, chapter 1, from which Lipomanus, bishop of Verona, edited them, Alberico Longo interpreting, in volume 2 of the Lives of the Saints, page 197. The Philotheus or Religious History Gentian Hervet also rendered into Latin, and committed to print at Paris in the year 1570. This edition of Hervet was followed by Laurentius De la Barre in the Christian History of the ancient Fathers printed at Paris in the year 1583, Surius in the Lives of the Saints on the XV day of July, and our Rosweyde in the Lives of the Fathers, book 9. Finally the same Religious History our Sirmond published at Paris in the year 1642 among the other works of Theodoret in volume 3, in Greek and Latin, whose interpretation, as clearer than the others, we here follow.

ACTS

By the Author Theodoret, bishop of Cyrus.

From the Greek-Latin edition of the Works of Theodoret, made at Paris in the year 1642, volume 3, from page 764, James Sirmond, S.J., interpreting.

James, Bishop, at Nisibis in Mesopotamia (S.)

FROM THE PRINTED EDITIONS.

PROLOGUE.

Moses the divine lawgiver, who opened the bottom of the sea, and overwhelmed with waters the dry solitude, Theodoret, having prefaced certain things, and did all the other miracles, wrote the deeds of the ancient Saints, using not that wisdom which he had learned from the Egyptians, but the splendor of grace received from heaven. For whence otherwise would he have known the virtue of Abel, or the divine love of Enoch, and the justice of Noah, and the pious priesthood of Melchisedech, and the vocation of Abraham, his faith, fortitude, and exquisite hospitality, the celebrated sacrifice of his son, and the catalogue of his other excellent deeds, and, to say all in sum, the combats, victories, and heraldings of the divine men, unless he had received the rays of the intelligent and divine Spirit? Of this help I too have need at present, who attempt to write the life of the Saints who a little before us, and in our times, shone forth, and would set forth certain laws, as it were, for those desiring to imitate them. Their prayers, therefore, are to be invoked, and the narration begun.

CHAPTER I.

The harsh life of St. James, and certain miracles.

Nisibis ^a is a city situated on the border of the kingdom of the Romans and of the Persians, which once was tributary to the Romans, he describes the mean sustenance of St. James, and obeyed their empire. Born of it, the great James embraced the solitary and quiet life, and, having occupied the summits of the highest mountains, in these he passed his life, in spring indeed and summer and autumn seeking the woods and having heaven for his roof; but in the time of winter betaking himself into a cave, which afforded him a small covering. His food was, not that which is born and sown with labor, but that which is produced of its own accord: for gathering from the wild trees the fruits sprung of themselves, and from the herbs the esculent ones, and those which are like vegetables, from these he gave to his body what was enough to sustain life, refusing altogether the use of fire.

[3] The use of wools also he counted superfluous, and his clothing, and other virtues, and their place the roughest hair of goats supplied, from which both a tunic was made for him and a simple mantle. Thus afflicting his body, he assiduously supplied spiritual nourishment to his soul, and, purging the edge of his mind, and making it a clear mirror of the divine Spirit, with unveiled face, according to the divine Apostle,

beholding the glory of the Lord, he was transformed into the same image from glory to glory, as by the Spirit of the Lord. Hence his confidence in God increased day by day, and asking of God the things which it behoved to ask, he obtained them straightway. Hence also he foresaw the future after the manner of the prophets, and received from the grace of the most holy Spirit the power of working miracles. Of these I shall commemorate a few, and shall open to those who know them not a ray of his apostolic splendor.

[4] and he narrates how the Saint, on account of the immodesty of certain maidens, There flourished at that time among men a madness toward images, and the inanimate statues indeed claimed for themselves divine worship; but the worship of God was commonly neglected by very many, and those were held in contempt who were unwilling to be partakers of their drunkenness, and who, endowed with perfect virtue, discerned things, and, laughing at the weakness of the images, adored the Maker of all. But he had come at that time into Persia, to see the plants of the true religion, and to exhibit to them fitting care: and when he happened to cross a certain fountain, the maidens who were washing garments in it, and cleansing clothes with their feet, having in no wise reverenced his new and seemly habit, with modesty put off and forehead hardened, and with immodest eyes gazed upon the divine man, neither covering their heads, nor letting down the garments which they had girded up.

[5] dried up a fountain, and made their hair hoary; Bearing this ill, the man of God, thinking it opportune to show the power of God, that by an illustrious miracle he might free them from impiety, execrated the fountain, and it forthwith ceased to flow: the maidens also he execrated, and chastised their immodest youth with untimely hoariness; and the word was straightway followed by the deed, and the black color of their hair was changed, and they became like young trees, which in spring are covered with autumnal leaves. Thus touched by the sense of the punishment (for both the streams of the fountain had fled, and, gazing at one another's heads, they saw that sudden change) they hastened at a run to the city, to report what had happened. And presently running up, when they came to the great James, they asked him to restrain his anger and remit the penalty.

[6] [and afterward, the fountain being restored, but the hoariness left as a punishment to the maidens,] But he, nothing delaying, offered prayers to the Lord, and bade the streams gush forth again: then they, once more derived from their recesses by the nods of the Just man, burst out. This being obtained, they asked that also the former color should be restored to the hair of their daughters. They relate, moreover, that he granted this too, and sought the maidens who had been plaited with this punishment; and since they did not come, he left the punishment, that it might be a document of temperance, and an argument of honesty, and a perpetual and evident monument of divine virtue. Such was the miracle of this new Moses, which indeed was accomplished not by the striking of a rod, but by the sign of the Cross. But to me, besides the miracle, it occurs to admire his meekness. For he did not, like the great Elisha, deliver those immodest maidens to savage bears, but by a certain harmless discipline, as one that had little of disgrace, taught them at once piety and moderation. Which things indeed I have said not to accuse the prophet of cruelty (far be it that I should so rave) but to show that he, having the same virtue, rather did those things which agreed with the meekness of Christ and the new testament.

[7] The same, when he had once seen an iniquitous sentence pronounced by a Persian judge, and by a prodigy corrected an unjust judge. execrated a certain very great stone which was near, and bade it be crushed and scattered, and reprove his iniquitous sentence; but the stone being immediately shattered into innumerable particles, those who were present were terrified, and the judge, full of horror, revoked the former and pronounced another sentence ^b. And here too he imitated his Lord, who, to show that he underwent his passion of his own accord and willingly, and could easily, if he wished, have punished the wicked, inflicted no punishment on them, but by drying up with a word the inanimate fig-tree, demonstrated what he could do: which clemency he also imitating, did not punish the unjust judge, but by the striking of a stone thoroughly taught him justice.

ANNOTATIONS.

CHAPTER II.

The episcopate of St. James, a miracle, his presence at the Council of Nicæa, the siege of the city of Nisibis prodigiously raised by his prayers.

Being therefore illustrious for such things, and lovable to all, and his fame being on the mouth of all, When he had been made bishop of Nisibis, he is drawn to the office of the pontificate and set over his own country. But when he had changed that mountain habitation, and taken up the urban one not according to the mind of his soul, he changed neither his food nor his clothing, but, the places being changed, the manner of his life took no change. But his labors increased, and were many more than before: for to fasting and lying on the ground, and the sackcloth with which he was clad, there had been added also the cares of all the needy, so that he was both solicitous for the widows and provided for the orphans, and reproved those who did injury, and brought just aid to those oppressed by injury. And what need is there to recount all things before those who know what things befit those who have undertaken this province? But he embraced these labors in a signal manner, as one who signally both loved and feared the Lord of the sheep.

[9] But the greater riches of virtue he collected, the greater grace of the most holy Spirit he enjoyed. a certain poor man feigning himself dead before him, For when he had once a journey to a certain village or town (for I cannot say the place for certain) there came to him certain poor men, setting forth one of their companions as though dead, and asking of him certain things necessary for burying him. But he assented to their request, and offering prayers to God as though for the dead man, asked that he would forgive him the things which he had sinned in life, and admit him into the assembly of the just. And while these things were being said by him, the soul of him who feigned death flew away, and coverings were supplied for the body.

[10] is punished with real death, whom the Saint recalls to life. Then, the holy Man having proceeded a little farther, those who had composed the fable, bidding him who lay to rise, when they saw that he did not hear, and that in very deed had happened what was feigned, and that the person was truly changed in face, hasten to the great James, entreating and prostrate at his feet, and saying that the cause of their bold deed had been poverty, asked that he would forgive them the offense, and restore the soul taken from the dead man. Imitating therefore the clemency of the Lord, he admitted their prayers, and exhibited a miracle, restoring by prayers the life taken away by prayers. But to me this seems similar to the miracle of the great Peter, by which he delivered to death Ananias and Sapphira, guilty of theft and lying: for here too likewise he deprived of life him who had filched the truth and uttered a lie. But he indeed, the theft being known (for the grace of the Spirit had revealed it), inflicted the punishment; but this one, not knowing the matter, broke off by his poured-out prayers the course of life of him who had feigned. And the divine Apostle indeed did not snatch the dead from calamity, because the beginnings of the saving preaching had need of fear; but this one, filled with apostolic grace, both punished for a time, and presently remitted the penalty, because he knew that he would thus gain those who had sinned.

[11] St. James was present at the Council of Nicæa against Arius. But we must proceed to other things, and these too are to be briefly set forth. For when Arius, the father and artificer of blasphemy against the Only-begotten and the Holy Spirit, moving his tongue against him who had created him, had filled Egypt with tumult and disturbance, and Constantine the greatest Emperor, the Zerubbabel of our flock (since he, like that man, brought back the whole captivity of the pious from exile, and raised on high the divine temples leveled to the ground) had summoned all the presidents of the churches to Nicæa, there came with the others the great James also, about to contend for the true doctrines, as a most valiant warrior and prince of the whole host: For Nisibis was then in the dominion of the Romans ^a… But after that sacred assembly had been dismissed, and each one had returned to his own house, this man too returned as a strenuous victor exulting over the trophies of piety.

[12] The king of the Persians vigorously assaults the city of Nisibis, But as time went on, that great and admirable Emperor departed from life with the crowns of piety, and his sons succeeded to the empire of the world. Then the king of the Persians, whose name was Sapor ^b, despising these as unequal to their father's forces, moved war against Nisibis with great forces of horse and foot: he led also very many elephants, and, the army being divided for the siege, encompassed the city, and built engines, and raised siege-works, and, fixing palisades, and interweaving the intervals with branches after the manner of hurdles, commanded the soldiers to heap up earth, and to raise towers against the towers. Then, placing archers upon them, and bidding them cast darts against those who were on the walls, he ordered others to dig below and to undermine the walls.

[13] But when all things came to nothing, disturbed by the prayers of the holy Man, and, letting in the river, he destroyed its walls; at length, checking by the labor of many men the course of the river ^c flowing past, when the waters, repressed by the dikes set against them, had gathered the greatest force, he suddenly let them in against the wall, like some most violent engine; which, not able to bear the force of the water, shaken by its impact, fell utterly in that part. Then they raised a great shout, as though the city were now easy to capture (for they knew not the great wall ^d of the citizens); yet they deferred the assault, because they saw that the city could not then be approached on account of the waters. And so, retiring farther, as if to recover breath from labor, they both rested themselves, and tended their horses.

[14] But the inhabitants turned more ardently to prayers, having the great James as their intercessor: wherefore the inhabitants, brought to extremities, implore the aid of St. James. but those who still flourished in age, with the greatest effort they could, restored the walls, having regard neither for beauty nor for neatness, but arranging all things at random, both stones and bricks, and whatever each had brought: and so in one night the work advanced, and grew to so great a height that it both barred the entrance to the horses, and men could not ascend without ladders. Then all pray the man of God to show himself on the walls, and to strike the enemy with the darts of his execrations. But he, entreated, ascended, and, having contemplated the infinite multitude of these, asked of God to send upon them a cloud of gnats ^e and mosquitoes. And while he asked this, God, obeying him as he did Moses, straightway sent them. And the men indeed were wounded by the divine darts; but the horses and elephants, their bonds broken, since they could not bear those stings, were borne hither and thither, scattered.

[15] Seeing therefore that the impious king, that all his engines had been useless to him, and in a wondrous manner they are freed from the siege. and that the irruption of the water

had come to nothing, the wall being again built in that part where it had fallen; and moreover his whole army both exhausted with labors and struggling with discomforts under the open sky, and struck with a plague divinely sent. When he had also beheld the divine man walking upon the walls, and had conjectured that it was the Emperor himself intent upon the work, because he appeared girt with purple and diadem, he was indignant against those who had deceived him, and had counseled the expedition, and had said that the Emperor was not present: wherefore, condemning them to death, he dismissed the army and returned as quickly as possible to his palace.

[16] Such things, wonderfully, God did under this Ezechias also, and things not less than those, but greater, in my judgment. A digression of the author, For that, the wall being fallen, the city was not captured, what greater miracle could there be? But I moreover admire this exceedingly, that when he used execrations, he did not ask that lightnings and thunderbolts might be sent upon them from heaven, which the great Elias did, when to him came each of the two captains of fifty with his soldiers. For he had heard that the Lord had openly said to James and John, when they attempted to do the same thing: You know not of what spirit you are. And therefore he did not ask that the earth should gape open for them, nor pray that the phalanx should be consumed with fire, but that it should be wounded by those little creatures, whence, acknowledging the divine power, they might at length some time learn piety.

[17] and an epilogue. So great was this man's confidence with God, so great the grace he obtained from heaven. Persevering in these things, and taking increases in divine matters day by day, he closed his life with the highest glory, and departed from these places. But in the succession of time, when the city had been delivered into the Persian dominion by him who then reigned, all the inhabitants departed, and carried out the body of their defender, bearing the migration indeed with grief and sorrow, but celebrating with praises the virtue of their most valiant victor: for while he survived they would not have come into the power of the Barbarians. These things concerning the divine Man being set forth, imploring his blessing, I shall proceed to another narration.

ANNOTATIONS.