Narses and Joseph and Companions

ON SS. NARSES AND JOSEPH AND COMPANIONS, MARTYRS IN PERSIA,

IN THE YEAR 343

PRELIMINARY COMMENTARY

Narses, martyr in Persia. (S.)

Joseph, martyr in Persia. (S.)

Companions, martyrs in Persia. (SS.)

BY P. P.

[1] The Syriac Acts In the catalogue of Eastern martyrs which is appended to that very well-known Syriac martyrology of the year 412, among the bishops there is named: , Narses, bishop of Sahrqarth Acta SS., Nov. vol. II, 1, p. [LXIV; cf. F. Nau, Un martyrologe et douze ménologes syriaques, in Patrologia orientalis, vol. X [1912], p. 24.]. He is assuredly the holy man whose illustrious confession is related by the Syriac Acts which we are about to give below. These belong to a certain hagiographical corpus which Simon Joseph Assemani [Bibliotheca orientalis, vol. I, pp. 174–79; cf. Bibliothecae Apostolicae Vaticanae codicum manuscriptorum catalogus, vol. III (Rome, 1759), pp. 319–20, 324–25.], and after him Stephen Evodius Assemani likewise, his nephew [Acta sanctorum martyrum orientalium et occidentalium, part I (Rome, 1748), p. XLVI and following.], trusting too much in a codex he had found, supposed to have been written in the fifth century by Marutha, metropolitan of Tagrit, maphrian of the East † in the year 649; on whom BHO. 719., of SS. Narses and Joseph whom both thought to be Marutha, bishop of Martyropolis, that is of Maipherqat, the contemporary of Theodosius II. But more recent scholars have shown more clearly than daylight that the Passions of which the work of Marutha was believed to consist were composed by different writers, and not at the same period; although they do not deny that out of their number some perhaps may be reckoned among those ὑπομνήματα which the bishop of Maipherqat is said to have written about the Eastern martyrs [See R. Duval, La Littérature syriaque, 3rd ed. (Paris, 1907), pp. 122–23; J. Labourt, Le Christianisme dans l'empire Perse (ibid., 1904), pp. 52–55; A. Baumstark, Geschichte der syrischen Literatur (Bonn, 1922), pp. 55–57; and especially O. Braun, Ausgewählte Akten persischer Märtyrer (Kempten, 1915), pp. X–XIII.]. Some years ago, however, Michael Kmosko, a Hungarian, thought he must strive to restore Marutha to his former possession S. Symeon Bar Sabba'e, in Patrologia syriaca, vol. II (Paris, 1907), pp. 685–87.. A vain claim, which does not compel us to linger over a matter long since judged, especially since the Acts of SS. Narses and Joseph bear sufficiently clear testimony about themselves, as we shall presently see.

§ I. On the history of SS. Narses and Joseph.

[2] from the Vatican codex The Syriac Acts of SS. Narses and Joseph are found in the Syriac codex 160 of the Vatican Library [Assemani, Bibliothecae Apostolicae Vaticanae codicum manuscriptorum catalogus, vol. III, pp. 319–24.]; from it Evodius Assemani first edited them among the Acts of the Eastern and Western martyrs Work cited, pp. 97–101.. The codex, brought from the monastery of the Syrians in Nitria, consists of 239 parchment leaves, of middle size, which once belonged to three volumes. The first part (fols. 1–79), which contains the most celebrated Life of St. Symeon the Stylite [Cf. H. Lietzmann, Das Leben des heiligen Symeon Stylites, in Texte und Untersuchungen zur Geschichte der altchristlichen Literatur, series 3, vol. II, 4 (1908), p. 211.], written in "strongyle" letters, was completed on 17 April of the year 471. The second part extends from fol. 80 to 219; the third, finally, from fol. 220 to the end. The writing of each is likewise strongyle, in which Evodius Assemani thought he recognized a hand of the tenth century Catalogus, work cited, p. 324.. But in truth the learned Eugène Tisserant, as an example of Syriac writing of the fifth century, chose a fragment of the Passion of St. Theodota and her sons Specimina codicum orientalium (Bonn, 1914), p. VIII and plate 21 b., which is read in this very manuscript at fol. 173 Assemani, Catalogus, work cited, p. 122.. And than this specimen the Acts of St. Narses, which are found in the same codex at fols. 104v–106, are older by at least some days. In so great a discrepancy of opinions let faith be given to the more recent judge, who uses better-tested rules; yet the discipline of the philologists would not seem overturned if someone were to assign these very letters and strokes to the sixth century.

[3] and from that of Amida, Another copy of the Passion of SS. Narses and Joseph exists, or at least existed before the recent war, at Amida, in the codex of the church of St. Pythion (Mār Pethion), which Ebedjesus Khayyat, a Chaldean, bishop of Amida, a not severe judge of the letters of his fathers, considered to be not older than the seventh century, nor more recent than the eighth. Of this codex, about the year 1882, the same Ebedjesus Khayyat furnished a transcript to the learned J. B. Abbeloos, which he himself checked against the fidelity of the archetype. J. B. Abbeloos published an accurate description of his transcript in the Analecta Bollandiana Vol. IX, pp. 5–8.. The same copy, which he had kindly lent by its owner, was used by Paul Bedjan of blessed memory, who among the other Passions of the Persian martyrs which he reprinted from the work of Evodius Assemani also put the Acts of St. Narses into type anew Acta martyrum et sanctorum, vol. II (Paris, 1891), pp. 284–89.. He, however, as one who had regard for the pious readers of his own nation rather than for our scholars, seems not to have sinned by an over-fastidious diligence in noting the variant readings of the codices. Thus, in the very lemma of the Amida transcript, the name of St. Narses is written , Narse or Narsaï Abbeloos, Anal. Boll., work cited, p. 6., and not as in the Vatican codex: a discrepancy of forms which Bedjan did not think worthy of mention. And in those which he judged of greater moment you will not easily discern where he preferred the codex of Amida, and where he corrected the Assemani edition freely and of his own accord.

[4] so far as known. Of neither that transcript nor the archetype from which it was copied have we been able today, after so many upheavals, to find out anything. Therefore in our edition we have held to this rule: the Vatican codex (= V), with the exception only of a very few places where it is manifestly corrupted, has held first place, not only because it seems superior in antiquity, but chiefly because a photographic image, which the distinguished Silvio Giuseppe Mercati most kindly offered us, made us more certain of its words and letters. The variant readings by which Bedjan departs from it, or rather from the Roman edition, or which he himself added in his critical notes, gathered from wherever, are commonly marked with the letter B.

[5] The history of the martyrs, The sum of the history, in which the two codices plainly agree, is this. In the fourth year of the persecution, when King Shapur was present in the province of Beth Garmaï, or Garamaea, at the halting-place which is called , ṣaphthā or ṣephthā, there were brought to him Narses, bishop of Sahrqarth, an old man already eighty years of age, and Joseph his disciple, or familiar cleric, a youth in the flower of his age. The king first tried them with blandishments, to entice them to abjure Christ. But when he understood that they were immovable in the faith, he at once pronounced a capital sentence against them. On the very day and hour, as it seems, punishment was exacted of them. Both martyrs, first Joseph and then Narses, were slain with the sword outside the camp, in the presence of an immense multitude, to which Narses bade a fatherly farewell. Their death befell on the tenth moon of the month of Tesrin the latter. These are roughly the things which the hagiographer related, in a language somewhat grandiloquent, but with an ingenuous clarity that wards off all suspicion of fraud. partly obscured, Yet the sum of the things narrated seems a little more meagre than you would expect from a contemporary or nearly contemporary writer, let alone from an eyewitness who had been present with the dying saints. Nor was it from a desire for brevity or from mere negligence of the narrator that there were passed over in silence the name of the magistrate by whom the saints were arrested, the charge of which they were accused before the king, the day of the week on which they died, and other things of that kind, which the Persian hagiographers, when they know them, are not accustomed to leave unsaid. Although therefore the writer of the Syriac Acts, speaking of the persecution of Shapur, calls it ours, he is not on that account to be thought to have himself seen in person the first beginnings of this long tempest, or to have committed to writing things lately done, which had reached him by recent report or testimony.

[6] yet showing good knowledge of antiquities, On the other hand, the accurate notation of times and places contributes much to confirming the authority of our Passion; which has all the greater credit because the hagiographer, relating memories already partly obscured, does not himself seem to have perceived how these cohere with history and what might be gathered from them by probable deduction. Sahrqarth [That this is the city which is called χατράχαρτα by Ptolemy, book VI, 1, Theodor Nöldeke most learnedly conjectured, Ueber iranische Ortsnamen auf kert und andere Endungen, in Zeitschrift der Deutschen Morgenländischen Gesellschaft, vol. XXXIII (1879), especially p. 148. Other forms of the Greek name see in Pape-Benseler, Lexicon der griechischen Eigennamen, under the word.], (šāhrqart), of which Narses is said to have been bishop, was in fact an episcopal city of the province of Garamaea, which was at first subject to the metropolis of Chirchaseleucus (Karkā de Beth-Selok) [Synod of the catholicos Isaac, in the year 410, canon XXI; J. B. Chabot, Synodicum orientale ou Recueil de synodes nestoriens, in Notices et extraits des manuscrits de la bibliotheque Nationale, vol. XXXVII (1902), pp. 33, 272; cf. O. Braun, Das Buch der Synhados (Stuttgart, 1900), p. 31.], and then, from about the middle of the fifth century, was itself for some time the metropolis [See the History of Chirchaseleucus. Bedjan, Acta martyrum et sanctorum, vol. II, pp. 521, 527. Relying on this testimony Georg Hoffmann thought that Sahrqarth had anciently been the metropolis of Garamaea, and that its

primacy then passed to the see of Chirchaseleucus. Auszüge aus syrischen Akten persischer Märtyrer, in Abhandlungen für die Kunde des Morgenlandes, vol. VII, 3 (1880), pp. 270–72, a work of remarkable erudition which most of the more recent writers have obsequiously preferred or tacitly plundered. It is surprising, however, that the distinguished Anscharius Braun was moved by the authority of Georg Hoffmann to make more of the fabulous History of Chirchaseleucus, which was scribbled by an unlearned man not before the sixth century (see below), than of the canon of the synod of the year 410, which Hoffmann had not yet been able to read.], but after the year 607 it no longer appears on the roll of the Persian hierarchy [E. Sachau, Zur Ausbreitung des Christentums in Asien, in Abhandlungen der Preussisschen Akademie der Wissenschaften, phil.-histor. Klasse, 1919, 1, p. 56; where, however, it is reported too hesitantly that a bishop of this city named Narses is recorded before the year 412.]. The older form of the name seems to be that which is read in the fuller spelling in our Acts [In canon XXI of the synod of the catholicos Isaac, Chabot, work cited, p. 33; cf. p. 682.], but in the contracted form in the index of Eastern martyrs which was annexed in the year 412 to the Edessene epitome of the Antiochene martyrology See above, no. 1.. This form too the Syrians commonly used formerly [For example in Mešiḥāzekā, Historia ecclesiae Adiabenae, ed. A. Mingana, Sources syriaques (Leipzig, n. d.), p. 59; cf. E. Sachau, Die Chronik von Arbela, in Abhandlungen der Königl. Preussischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, hist.-phil. Klasse, 1915, no. 6, pp. 65, 81. See also the critical apparatus to the Passion of St. Narses. In the lemma of the Vatican codex it is written by a manifest error: šhrqdt, and a little below: , šrhqdt, or šrhqrt]. The Arabs interpreted the name of the city some one way, some another: (sahrqart, sāhqird, sāqird, saharqird), from which last form among the more recent Syrians the metaplasm , sahrgird, was fashioned [For example, in the History of Chirchaseleucus, Bedjan, work cited, vol. II, pp. 521, 527. Inventions of the copyists are (Acts of St. Mari, in Anal. Boll., vol. IV, pp. 73, 74, 76) and whatever others of the same stamp are read in the codices.]. Thus in the very name of the city and in the episcopal title of St. Narses our Acts bear a genuine mark of antiquity. The stronghold or town of Sahrqarth, on the witness of the geographer Yaqut, was situated between Daquq (dāqūqā) and Arbela [Šāhqird, a rather large village between Dāqūqā and Arbel, with a fort, in which village there are figs such as are nowhere else. Iacut's Geographisches Wörterbuch, ed. F. Wüstenfeld (Leipzig, 1866), vol. III, p. 237.], as it seems, not far from the present-day city of Kerkuk, which is commonly thought to be the ancient city of Beth-Seleucia, in Syriac Karkā de Beth-Selok [Hoffmann, work cited, pp. 267–68. J. Marquart, Erānšahr, nach der Geographie des Ps. Moses Xorenac'i, in Abhandlungen der Kgl. Gesellschaft der Wissenschaften zu Göttingen, new series, vol. III, 2 (1901), p. 21. Of the town of Karka de Beth-Selok (Chirchaseleucus) there will be talk fairly often below.].

[7] of places, A surer guarantee of truth is this, that, with no explanation added, St. Narses and his disciple are related to have been brought to Shapur outside the city of Sahrqarth. Both martyrs are set before the king when he was (so the Vatican codex) , at the halting-place which is called Sephtha Passion §2.. The place is otherwise unknown to us [Hoffmann, work cited, p. 277. The name Ṣephtha in the Syriac language means: anxiety, care, etc. (from the verb ) or a mat, the bezel of a ring, a gem, a little box (from the verb ). From the words of our Passion §2 it cannot be gathered whether the faithful who stood around the dying saints (if indeed they were faithful, and not idle soldiers) belonged to the flock of St. Narses.]. By the name , or more correctly , as the codex of Amida has it and the Vatican codex itself below, in the index of the martyrs of Garamaea §6, some place or little village could have been designated; but in the proper sense of speaking it must be understood as "a lodging where one stops on a journey, a halting-place, a station," or something similar. From this halting-place therefore the holy martyrs were led out to punishment , outside the divisions, which was a military word and here certainly designates "the camp" [, Bar-Bahlul, Lexicon Syriacum, ed. R. Duval, p. 1564. The more widespread sense, and nearer to the etymology, is: military ranks, forces, army.]. By these words, therefore, the hagiographer teaches us what he himself did not know: that the guards who were dragging St. Narses to the royal tribunal met Shapur on his journey [Hence it is gathered that the city of Sahrqarth was not situated on the very road which led from Seleucia and Ctesiphon to Arbela.], when, his annual expedition against the Romans having been accomplished, he was returning to Babylonia properly so called: for assuredly it is not at all likely that the king of the Persians came into Garamaea in the month of November to carry war into a region from which he would then have been distant by a journey of many days.

[8] shows knowledge of times, Now the king's arrival in Garamaea seems to have offered the occasion which the accusers of the holy martyrs used. The words of the Passion plainly hint at this: , Narses was arrested… when the king was present in the region (§1). Certainly it could have happened by chance that at the very time when Shapur was passing through the province a case should unexpectedly arise which belonged to his tribunal. But this interpretation is far-fetched and rather remote from hagiographical style. It is far more probable that by the presence of Shapur the opportunity of destroying St. Narses was offered to the hatred of the magi. For the prefects of the provinces in that age could condemn Christians to death for the sole crime of religion, as not a few examples demonstrate [Labourt, work cited, pp. 56–82; cf. A. Christensen, L'Empire des Sassanides. Le peuple, l'État, la cour, in Det Kongelige Danske Videnskabernes Selskabs Skrifter, series 7, vol. I (Copenhagen, 1907–1909), pp. 68–74; E. Sachau, Von den recthlichen Verhältnissen der Christen im Sasanidenreich, in Mitteilungen des Seminars für Orientalische Sprachen, vol. X (1907), pp. 69–74.]. Whether therefore the enemies of St. Narses could not move the magistrates of the place against him, or something else stood in the way of their designs, they seem to have tried their fortune with the king himself. Now the same occasion had already been offered them a few months before, when at the beginning of spring or in summer, at the time when kings are accustomed to go forth to wars 2 Kings 11:1., Shapur had led his army through the same province against the Romans. But if they did not use it, from that perhaps it is to be concluded that they had not yet then broken out in their hatred against the Christians, and that before St. Narses there had been no martyr in the city of Sahrqarth. And indeed in truth scarcely any martyrs of this city are known to us, while in the neighbouring city of Chirchaseleucus the persecution was much more bloody See below.. However this diversity of things is to be explained, it was necessary to note it in this place.

[9] In the chronology The hagiographer relates that SS. Narses and Joseph suffered in the fourth year of our persecution (§1), on the tenth day by the moon of the latter month (§3). This note of time is sufficiently clear in itself, provided it is not obscured by the subtleties of the learned, who, having badly framed the question, have wished to bend the surer monuments of the persecution of Shapur to false or doubtful conclusions. But whatever Michael Kmosko lately attempted to the contrary [Patrologia syriaca, work cited, pp. 690–705. We have not thought it right to repeat in this place what we have argued with set purpose on this question elsewhere: Le début de la persécution de Sapor d'après Fauste de Byzance, in Revue des Études Arméniennes, vol. I (1920), p. 26 and following.], this controversy is now obsolete. That the edict of Shapur, from which the beginning of the persecution is reckoned, was issued in the month of August of the year 340, the most learned Theodor Nöldeke alone demonstrated with invincible clarity [Geschichte der Perser und Araber zur Zeit der Sasaniden, aus der arabischen Chronik des Tabari (Leiden, 1879), pp. 410–11.]; whose opinion Anscharius Braun confirmed with new arguments [Ausgewählte Akten persischer Märtyrer, pp. VIII–X. To the year 341 also will he be brought back who wishes to convert to the solar tables the movable feasts which in the Passion of St. Symeon bar Sabbā'e are noted by days of the moon; cf. below, no. 27, p. 420, note 3.]. From that beginning, therefore, the fourth month of November came in the year 343: in which month the tenth moon fell on the twelfth day. In this very year, on 4 July, the emperor Constantius was at Hierapolis in Syria, through which he seems to have hastened from Antioch to the East to conduct the Persian war in person. Fortune must be thought to have favoured the Romans to some extent, for, on the witness of St. Athanasius, the Eastern bishops who wished to withdraw from the council of Sardica [That the council of Sardica was assembled at the end of the year 343 Hefele shows, Conciliengeschichte, vol. I, 2nd ed. (Freiburg i. B., 1873), pp. 533–37.] brought forward this excuse: ὡς βασιλέως αὐτοῖς ἐπινίκια κατὰ Περσῶν γράψαντος [Historia Arianorum ad monachos, §16, P. G., vol. XXV, p. 712; cf. O. Seeck, in Pauly-Wissowa, Real-Encyclopädie, vol. IV, 1, p. 1057.]. Whence it is also understood that King Shapur, when he returned home after a failure, could have been moved against the Christians more easily than usual.

[10] what is less certain. Thus far, then, everything seems to fit together quite aptly. Yet it must be confessed that this reckoning of times is not confirmed by the calendars of the Greeks; for you would question the Orientals about St. Narses in vain [From the books of the Greeks Sliba borrowed the mention of SS. Narses and Joseph at 20 November, he who is for the most part ignorant of the Syriac Acts of the older Persian martyrs. Anal. Boll., vol. XXVII, pp. 142, 168; cf. pp. 134–35.]. In the synaxary of Constantinople, at 9 November, there is announced: Ἄθλησις τῶν ἁγίων μαρτύρων Ὀνησιφόρου καὶ Πορφυρίου, Χριστοφόρου καὶ Μαύρας, Τιμοθέου καὶ Ἀρτέμωνος καὶ Ναρσῆ. In other copies: Ὀνησιφόρου καὶ Πορφυρίου, Χριστοφόρου, Μαύρας καὶ Τιμοθέου· καὶ τὰ ἐγκαίνια τῶν Προτασίου καὶ τῶν ἁγίων μαρτύρων Ἀρτέμωνος καὶ Ναρσῆ: in others finally: Χριστοφόρου καὶ Τιμοθέου καὶ Μαύρας καὶ Ἀρτέμωνος καὶ Ναρσεῖ, or a series of names which differs from these only in number or order Synax. Eccl. CP., pp. 203–206.. In these elogia, indeed, not a true family of martyrs is recorded, but fragments gathered into one from various lists

is established from what has been noted above at the single names Among those passed over at 9 November, pp. 2–10, here and there., except Narses. But who he was, and whence the mention of him crept in there, we cannot divine from so slender an indication. But if this bare name was taken, as it seems, from an old calendar, you would not improbably conjecture from it that in that calendar there was announced at 9 November St. Narses himself, bishop of the city of Sahrqarth [The form Ναρσεῖ which is read in the codex of the Laurentian Library agrees wonderfully with the variant reading of which above, no. 3, p. 412.]. In it, then, there was reckoned the tenth moon of November of the year 346, which fell on the ninth day of the month. In most copies, however, as we shall presently see, the elogium of St. Narses and his companions is inscribed at 20 November, which indicates the year 345; in none at the 12th, which, in our judgment at least, is clearly signified in the Passion. Therefore, lest we should seem to set our little conclusions before the letter of the monuments, we have preferred to take the tenth moon of the month of Tesrin the latter for the tenth day of November, not a wandering one: which the astronomers are accustomed to concede to the hagiographers with good grace [In the history of the Persian church by the distinguished Jérôme Labourt, the days of the moon are taken for days of the solar year.].

[11] The Greek version of the Acts. Of the Syriac Acts there seems once to have existed a Greek version or metaphrase, today lost, but of which an epitome has been preserved in the synaxaries at 20 November, contracted in one way here and in another way there. In the Milan codex of the Ambrosian Library D. 74. Sup. there is read Synax. Eccl. CP., pp. 241–42.: Νηρσᾶ ἐπισκόπου καὶ Ἰωσὴφ μαθητοῦ αὐτοῦ. Τούτων τῶν ἁγίων ὁ μὲν Νηρσᾶς ὑπῆρχεν ἐτῶν ὀγδοήκοντα, ὁ δὲ Ἰωσὴφ ἐτῶν ὀγδοήκοντα πέντε, ἀμφότεροι ἐπίσκοποι ὄντες· πολλοὺς δὲ ἐπιστρέφοντες ἀπὸ τῶν εἰδώλων ἐπὶ τὸν Κύριον, ἐκρατήθησαν παρὰ τῶν ἀθέων Περσῶν. Καὶ παραστάντες τῷ βασιλεῖ ἔφησαν ὅτι· “Εί δύνασαι, βασιλεῦ, μετὰ τὸ θανατῶσαι ἡμᾶς ἑπτάκις ἀναστῆσαι ἡμᾶς, οὐκ ἂν χωρήσῃς ἀπὸ τῆς ἀγάπης τοῦ Χριστοῦ.” Καὶ ταῦτα εἰπόντες ἀποκεφαλίσθησαν. [Of Narsas, bishop, and Joseph his disciple. Of these saints Narsas was eighty years old, and Joseph eighty-five, both being bishops; and as they were turning many from idols to the Lord, they were seized by the godless Persians. And standing before the king they said: "If you are able, O king, after putting us to death, to raise us up seven times, you would not separate us from the love of Christ." And having said this they were beheaded.] And in the Sirmondian codex: Τῇ αὐτῇ ἡμέρᾳ ἄθλησις τῶν ἁγίων Νηρσᾶ Codex 1594 of the Bibliothèque Nationale of Paris: Νιρσᾶ. ἐπισκόπου καὶ Ἰωσὴφ μαθητοῦ αὐτοῦ καὶ ἑτέρων σὺν αὐτῷ τελειωθέντων ἐν Περσίδι. Ὧν ὁ μὲν ἐπίσκοπος Νηρσᾶς ἦν ἐτῶν π᾽, ὁ δὲ Ἰωσήφ, καὶ αὐτὸς τῇ τοιαύτῃ ἀξίᾳ τετιμημένος, ἦν ἐτῶν πε᾽ The same: Νιρσᾶς ἦν ἐτῶν πε᾽. Μεθ᾽ ὧν καὶ ἕτεροι πλεῖστοι ἐπίσκοποί τε καὶ ἱερεῖς καὶ τῶν ἐκ τοῦ ἰδιωτικοῦ τάγματος καὶ παρθένοι, γυναῖκες, ἀσκήτριαι διαφόρως ἐδωκιμάσθησαν καὶ ἐν διαφόραις κολάσεσιν ἡτάσθησαν καὶ τὸν τῆς μαρτυρίας ἀπηνέγκαντο στέφανον. [On the same day, the contest of the holy Narsas, bishop, and Joseph his disciple, and of others perfected with him in Persia. Of whom the bishop Narsas was 80 years old, and Joseph, himself also honoured with the same dignity, was 85. With whom also very many others, bishops and priests and of the lay order, and virgins, women, ascetics, were tried in various ways and examined under various punishments, and carried off the crown of martyrdom.] To one who compares both elogia it is manifest: 1° that both are derived from the same Greek source, and 2° that in this source the Syriac Acts were rather ineptly interpolated. That SS. Narses and Joseph were seized by the Persians because they had converted many from idolatry to the faith, the translator added of his own. That very many of the clergy and the Christian people were crowned with martyrdom together with them, either he himself or the synaxarist, flying lightly over the Passion, persuaded himself, as we shall presently see Below, no. 12.. Finally, by a grave error of one or the other it came about that Joseph, the disciple of Narses, from a younger cleric in the flower of his age became an aged bishop, five years older by birth than his master himself. And of Greek Acts of SS. Narses and Joseph no other trace seems to us to have been preserved.

§ II. On the martyrs of Garamaea.

[12] The index of the martyrs of Garamaea With the Passion of SS. Narses and Joseph in the Vatican codex, in one unbroken course and with no lemma interposed, there is continued a certain historical list of the martyrs who arose from Garamaea or are recorded to have won the palm in the same province. In the codex of Amida, however, so far as it is known to us from the transcript of John B. Abbeloos of blessed memory J. B. Abbeloos, in Anal. Boll., vol. IX, p. 6., that list was entirely separated from the Passion of SS. Narses and Joseph. For this is immediately followed by a certain short corpus of narratives about the martyrs of Adiabene: first the Passion of SS. James bar-Mariam, bishop of Arbela, and James the priest (BHO. 500); then the Passions of St. Abraham, likewise bishop of Arbela (BHO. 12), of St. Ananias, a layman of Arbela (BHO. 372), of SS. James, priest of Tell-Salila, and Mary his sister (BHO. 426), and finally of the holy virgins Thecla, Mariamne and their companions (BHO. 1157). After all of these, a return having been made to Garamaea, there is inserted the list of which we are now about to speak. To it is prefixed the lemma: , Likewise a collection of martyrs from (the town of) Chirchaseleucus and from various places [Cf. Abbeloos, place cited, and Bedjan, Acta martyrum et sanctorum, vol. II, p. 286.]; which inscription Bedjan retained, although he joined the index again with the Passion of SS. Narses and Joseph, at least in position. whether it is continuous with the Passion, Now one or other of the codices is corrupted. For either in the Vatican the lemma was omitted, or in that of Amida the Passion of SS. Narses and Joseph was cut into two parts, and a spurious lemma was prefixed to the separated part. To which witness, then, must firm credit be given? In our opinion, at least, until more and surer indications come to light, to neither. Meanwhile, however, in a doubtful matter, it is better to cling to the good codex, which alone we know from examination. Add that in that copy also from which the Greek version was drawn, the list of the martyrs of Garamaea was joined with the Passion of SS. Narses and Joseph in the same connection as in the Vatican manuscript: which is clearly shown from both classes of synaxaries, where this collected cohort of martyrs seems to accompany St. Narses.

[13] and from where was it gathered? Now from the words of the hagiographer himself it is established that this list was put together from written monuments: , so far as the history supplied. What these sources were, and consequently what the age of the catalogue itself is, will have to be discerned from the subject matter of the things narrated. Let us now survey the single elogia. These are arranged in no order of times that we can discern, but by grade of dignities. In the first place are named bishops and priests, whom one religious follows, after him secular men, then a pious matron, finally nuns, or virgins consecrated to God.

[14] John, bishop of Chirchaseleucus, The column is led by John, bishop of the town of Karkā de Beth-Selok, which we have already above called by its Greek name Chirchaseleucus [Passion of St. Sira, §2 and following. Acta SS., May vol. IV, p. 172 and following. In the synaxaries the name Βηθσαλωχόν is also read, which was derived from the Syriac by another route. See below, no. 44, p. 425.]. No place was given to this martyr in the History of Chirchaseleucus, which a hagiographer of the flock wrote in the Syriac language, in the sixth century as it seems [BHO. 705; cf. Labourt, Le Christianisme dans l'empire Perse, p. 55 and following.]. For the one bishop John whom it records to have sat in the reign of Shapur II presided over the church after Isaac the martyr and before 'Aqbālāhām, likewise a martyr. He himself, however, is not said to have fallen for the name of Christ Bedjan, Acta martyrum et sanctorum, vol. II, p. 515.. But praise is attributed to him that, together with St. James of Nisibis and John, bishop of Arbela, he shone at the synod of Nicaea Ibid.. That this trifling fable lacks all authority there is no need for us to remark. From it, however, it is evident that in the city of Chirchaseleucus itself in the sixth century the memory of John the martyr had become somewhat obscured, and that his genuine Acts, if they ever existed, had already then perished. On the contrary, the Edessene index of the Eastern martyrs See above, no. 1, p. 411. designates him more surely in these words: John and Sapor, bishops of (the town of) Chirchaseleucus. A bishop John too, with no name of see or city added, is recorded by Sozomen among the Persian martyrs who were killed by Shapur II Historia ecclesiastica, II, 13, ed. R. Hussey, vol. I (Oxford, 1860), p. 149.: whether ours or another is entirely uncertain.

[15] by the petty king of Adiabene That John indeed [Another John, bishop of Chirchaseleucus, is named in the throng of martyrs which is said to have been slaughtered in the year 449, when Yazdgerd was raging against the Christians. Bedjan, work cited, p. 524; cf. below, no. 42, p. 424.] of whom we are now speaking was condemned to death by Artašir, king of Adiabene. Whatever has been protested to the contrary, nothing incongruous is detected in this title. For a custom prevailed anciently among the Persians that the greater provinces, among whose number was Adiabene, should be administered, as so many lesser kingdoms, by governors of the royal house and stock, who held the vicarious power of the king of kings [Cf. Christensen, L'empire des Sassanides, place cited, p. 22, and the sources adduced there.]. Nor does the name of this petty king present a difficulty. For he whom our Acts call Artasir is the very same who was called by the Greeks Ἀρτάξηρ, Artaxerxes in Latin Artaxerses [Agathias, Historiarum book IV, ch. 25, ed. Niebuhr (Bonn, 1828), p. 263; Theophanes, Chronographia, ed. de Boor (Leipzig, 1883), p. 59. From the Persian etymology the same name as Ἀρταξέρξης. Other Greek forms run: Ἀρταξάρης, Ἀρτασήρ, Ἀρτασίρας, Ἀρτασίρης, Ἀρτασήριος, Ἀδεσηρ (Ἀρδέσηρ) and any that escape us. See F. Justi, Iranisches Namenbuch (Marburg, 1895), p. 35, and what we ourselves have noted in Byzantion, vol. I, soon to be published.], the full brother [Th. Nöldeke, Geschichte der Perser und Araber zur Zeit der Sasaniden, aus der arabischen Chronik des Tabari (Leiden, 1879), pp. 69–70; Christensen, place cited, p. 22.] or kinsman Justi, Iranisches Namenbuch, p. 35. of Shapur, who succeeded him in the kingdom on his death. At what time he pronounced sentence against St. John can neither be gathered with certainty from the documents nor built up with sufficient probability by conjecture. Of the other martyrs whom our catalogue reports condemned by Artaxerses, petty king of Adiabene, Guhištazad the eunuch seems to have fallen already in the year 342, in the month of April See below, nos. 23–30; pp. 418–420.. Thirty-four years afterwards the same Artaxerses ordered SS. Abdas and Ebedjesus to be killed, who suffered in the month of May, in the thirty-sixth year of the persecution, that is the year of Christ 376 [Assemani, Acta martyrum orientalium, p. 153; Bedjan, Acta martyrum et sanctorum, vol. II, p. 333.]. Through this long interval of time, in not a few Passions and histories, different magistrates and prefects of Adiabene meet us, as, for example, that Pagrasp or Pargasp, in Mešiḥāzekā, in the ecclesiastical history of Adiabene

See below, no. 16.; Perozes Tamsapor (Ṭamšābur), in the same place and in the Passion of SS. John, bishop of Arbela, and James the priest, at the year 343 [BHO. 500; Bedjan, work cited, vol. IV, p. 128. John, bishop of Arbela, is named in the Edessene index of the Eastern martyrs. Acta SS., work cited, p. LXIV. His death is related by Mešiḥāzekā, who however joins to him not James the priest but Narses the priest, with Ananias and Reḥima the deacons. Mingana, work cited, p. 54. Mešiḥāzekā seems to compute the times by a certain reckoning of his own, which surer documents do not confirm in every point. See below, no. 15.]; Adurpareh, at the same year, in the Acts of St. Abraham, likewise bishop of Arbela [BHO. 12; Bedjan, ibid., p. 128. Abraham is associated with John, bishop of Arbela, in the Edessene little index of the Eastern martyrs. Acta SS., place cited.]; Aduršag in the Passion of St. Ananias of Arbela [BHO. 426; Assemani, Acta martyrum orientalium, p. 122; Bedjan, work cited, vol. II, p. 307. James the priest in Telāthā Šelilā is named in the Edessene index of the Eastern martyrs, Acta SS., work cited, p. [LXV].]; Narses Tamsapor (Ṭamšābur), in the Passion of SS. James, priest of Tell-Salila, and Mary his sister [BHO. 138; Assemani, work cited, p. 139; Bedjan, work cited, p. 314. A certain Bar Ḥadbešabā is named among the priest-martyrs of Adiabene in the index of the Eastern martyrs, place cited. The same Sapor Tamsapor is recorded with Zarhust (Zarahušt, that is Zoroaster) the archimagus at the year 379 in the Passion of SS. Acepsimas, Joseph and Aeithalas. Assemani, work cited, pp. 192, 197; Bedjan, vol. II, pp. 380, 387.], and likewise in the Passion of the holy nuns Thecla and her companions, who are all believed to have been killed in the year 347 [BHO. 29; Bedjan, work cited, vol. IV, p. 134. Their history is followed by Mešiḥāzekā, Mingana, work cited, pp. 58–60.]; Sapor Tamsapor (Šābur Ṭamšābur), in the Passion of St. Barḥadbešaba, deacon of Arbela, at the year 354 BHO. 138; Assemani, Acta martyrum orientalium, pp. 129–30., and in the Passion of SS. Aeithalas (Aitilāhā) and Hafsaï at the year 355 BHO. 29; Bedjan, vol. IV, pp. 133–37.; Churcasid (Kurkašid) in the Passion of SS. James the priest and Azad the deacon of Beth-Nagare at the year 371 BHO. 423; Bedjan, ibid., p. 137.. Finally in the year 375, in the very year therefore in which Artaxerses, petty king of Adiabene, consigned SS. Abdas and Ebedjesus to death, SS. Acepsimas and his companions were arrested at Arbela by the prefect Adarchurcasar (Adārkurkašar, otherwise Adurkurkašar), in Greek Ἀδαρχώσχαρ [H. Delehaye, Les versions grecques des Actes des martyrs persans sous Sapor II, in Patrologia orientalis, vol. II, 1905, p. 485 and following. For the various forms of the same name in the Greek codices, see ibid., p. 558. There is certainly room for doubt whether this Adarchurcasar is other than the Churcasid of whom above, note 14. To him there succeeded, as has just been said, Sapor Tamsapor and Zarhust. (Cf. above, note 10).], who after three years had not yet left his office [BHO. 22–23; see Bedjan, work cited, vol. II, pp. 363, 380; BHG. 15–20, Delehaye, work cited, p. 505.]. But all these are commonly called by the title or , which among the Persians was the name of a priestly dignity, in Parthian or Pahlavi magupat (moĝpet), whence in the age of the Sassanids arose the form movpet, in Persian , prince of the magi [Hübschmann, Armenische Grammatik, pp. 195–96; Christensen, L'empire des Sassanides, work cited, pp. 34–35. On the more recent form of the name, cf. also P. Horn, Persische Grammatik, in Geiger and Kuhn, Grundriss der iranischen Philologie, vol. II, pp. 50, 188.], in Greek ἀρχιμάγος and sometimes, in imitation of the Syriac name, μαυπτάς [Passion of St. Pherbutha, Delehaye, Actes des martyrs persans, work cited, p. 439 and following; Passion of St. Sira, Acta SS., May vol. IV, p. 172; etc.]. He seems in fact to have been killed. Artaxerses alone is distinguished by the title of king: a distinction which denotes some tested source, or a sure knowledge or memory of witnesses, and is far from seeming to have been introduced by the will and licence of hagiographers. For Artaxerses, through the long time in which he administered Adiabene in the king's stead, is not to be thought to have himself judged all the Christians accused of religion; but sometimes, assuredly, when he was either absent from the province or occupied by other business, he must have entrusted their cases to lower magistrates. In this, therefore, the trustworthiness of our Acts is not at all suspect.

[16] at an uncertain time, however, Therefore the time at which St. John, bishop of Chirchaseleucus, was killed must be chosen within that long space of about thirty-five years in which Artaxerses administered the province of Adiabene in place of the king. And although sure indications are lacking, yet from the very first place which he holds in the catalogue of the martyrs of Garamaea, he seems to have been put to death in the first outbreak of the persecution. Certainly, if what Mešiḥāzekā says is worthy of credit Historia ecclesiastica Adiabenae, Mingana, work cited, pp. 52–53., in Adiabene, with which Garamaea was then joined in one dominion, a bloody persecution did not blaze up before Perozes Tamsapor, archimagus, succeeded to the place of Pagrasp or Pargasp, a mild and pious man, who for two whole years restrained the slaughter of the Christians. But however much this praise of a Persian magistrate, nay of a pontiff, differs from the hagiographers' traditional refrains, I rather think that Mešiḥāzekā was deceived by some futile little memory, or himself wished to win for himself an appearance of fairness [The distinguished E. Sachau seems to have found no difficulty in this place, who however does not show how the narrative of Mešiḥāzekā can be reconciled with surer testimonies. Die Chronik von Arbela, place cited, pp. 35–36.]. Older documents certainly oppose his testimony. For he has entirely forgotten the petty king Artaxerses; nor does he remember the many martyrs put to death by his decree, among whom one at least, and he attached to the court of the petty king, nay even most dear to Shapur himself, seems to have perished in the tumultuous slaughter which, at the beginning of spring of the year 342, suddenly pervaded the whole kingdom, as will presently be explained Below, no. 25.. It is not improbable that in the first surge of that storm St. John too fell, especially since after him two other bishops of the same city were put to death by the same Artaxerses.

[17] and place. Of the place where John was killed nothing is established. The Vatican codex relates that the slaughter of the holy martyr took place , between Ḥaṣin the village, which you might deny without injustice to be correctly written; but that of Amida, unless Bedjan corrected the transcript of his own accord: , in the village of Beth Ḥaṣin, which is more consistent with grammar. It could also be understood: in the village called Ascia or Axilla: for that is what the appellation means. For Ḥaṣin, deceived by an ambiguous stroke, Evodius Assemani read , Ḥaṣiṣ, by which error he deluded the sagacity of Georg Hoffmann Auszüge aus syrischen Akten persischer Märtyrer, p. 277.. But I rather doubt whether the most learned man would have stuck equally at the form Ḥaṣin, which to us is a bare name. There is indeed recorded in the History of Chirchaseleucus (Beth-Selok): , a field (or village) named Ḥaṣa, in the suburb of that place, below the slope where the bishop Ma'nā was killed: in which field, while the persecution was raging, the Christians had built themselves a certain chapel [G. Mösinger, Monumenta syriaca, vol. II (Innsbruck, 1878), p. 66; Bedjan, work cited, vol. II, pp. 514–15; cf. below, no. 36, pp. 422–23.], famous for the memory of martyrs. Perhaps some plural form of this name could be devised, from which that Ḥaṣin might have been derived, as if there had been twin little fields of the same name. But this conjecture is extremely uncertain. Nor more securely, from such documents as now survive, would you wish to arrive by divining at whether in the village of Ḥaṣin itself the petty king Artaxerses pronounced sentence on John, or whether the holy bishop was overpowered by assassins sent there.

[18] Sapor, bishop of Chirchaseleucus. He who is named next, Sapor, bishop of Chirchaseleucus, is assuredly the one who is associated with John in the Edessene catalogue of the Eastern martyrs of which above No. 15, p. 415.. Among the bishops of unknown see whom Sozomen reports to have fallen as martyrs in the reign of Shapur II Hist. eccl., II, 13, Hussey, place cited., there also appears some Sapor or other. Ours, on the contrary, the History of Chirchaseleucus passes over in silence. What is recorded here in passing about his punishment is read also in the Passion which we are about to edit, and whose origin will be better investigated below.

[19] Isaac, bishop of Chirchaseleucus, may perhaps be the one who is named first after Sapor by Sozomen Ibid.. Mention of him you would seek in vain in the appendix of the Syriac martyrology. But the History of Chirchaseleucus, Isaac, bishop of Chirchaseleucus; after it has related that the bishop Ma'nā was stoned near the village of Ḥaṣā, goes on further in these words Bedjan, work cited, p. 515; cf. Mösinger, work cited, p. 66.: After these things blessed Isaac came forth, of noble stock; who also was crowned with martyrdom. They overwhelmed him with stones, driven by the king's command, the freeborn [Properly: free men, in Persian āzātān (āzādhān); see Christensen, L'empire des Sassanides, pp. 44–45.] men of the city, who called themselves Christians by name. He was stoned on the hill which overhangs the village of Kanar, at the halting-place of Niqāṭor. Immediately joined to these is the mention of the bishop John, his memory whom the writer invented to have been present at the synod of Nicaea, as we said above No. 14, p. 415.. Hence it is evident how mendacious this testimony would seem, unless authority came to it from elsewhere. Yet whoever compares this place of the History of Chirchaseleucus with the entry of our catalogue will at once perceive that both had a common source, which was copied out more fully in the history. The village of Kanar, or Kanār, in which St. Isaac was stoned, seems to have been situated near the station of Niqṭor or Niqāṭor. Both places the distinguished Georg Hoffmann searched for in vain Auszüge, pp. 48, 277.. Nor could the matter succeed more happily for us. it seems to have been transferred to another. Perhaps, however, it is not unworthy of note that in Adiabene near Arbela a Nicatorian mountain, τὸ Νικατόριον ὄρος, was indicated by Strabo [Geographia, XVII, 1, 4, ed. C. Müller and F. Dübner (Paris, 1853), p. 628. On the name Strabo notes this: ὃ προσωνόμασεν Ἀλέξανδρος νικήσας τὴν περὶ Ἄρβηλα μάχην.]. It is surprising, and not without suspicion, that in the year 449 two priests, Isaac and Stephen, led out of the town of Chirchaseleucus, were stoned on the top of the slope which overhangs the village of Kanar See below, no. 42..

Although the name Kanār, which in Pahlavi means shore or boundary, could have been given to several places, yet everyone will think he recognizes the same story when he reads that Isaac the bishop and Isaac the priest were alike killed in the village of Kanār. Our St. Isaac is associated with St. Sapor the bishop in the Passion which we are about to edit below. It is better therefore to attach to that the remaining questions which arise about the memory of both.

[20] Isaac the priest. Isaac, priest of the village of Ḥulsar, is named in the last place in one of the entries of the Edessene index of the Eastern martyrs Acta SS., Nov. vol. II, 1, p. [LXV; Nau, work cited, p. 25.]: Bibā, Māri, Symeon, Pāpā, Isaac, priests of Ḥulsar. Neither the men nor the place are known from elsewhere. Likewise unknown is Adargušnasp the archimagus Cf. below, no. 32. by whom Isaac is said to have been killed.

[21] A certain Papas is recorded in the Edessene list among the priests who suffered martyrdom in Adiabene cod.; cf. Acta SS., work cited, p. [LXV; Nau, work cited, p. 25.]: Papas the priest. cod.; cf. Acta SS., work cited, p. [LXV; Nau, work cited, p. 25.], Marsan, Pāpā, Ithamar, Barḥadbešabā (that is, Dominicus) from Adiabene. He is probably the same as Papas, priest of the village of Ḥelmin, whom our catalogue reports to have been put to death by the petty king of Adiabene in the village of Gelal, or, as it seems to be written in the codex of Amida, in the fortress of Ga'al. Yet some doubt is cast by this mention, which follows after a few interposed lines in the same appendix: Papas, deacon, from Ḥelmin. About the city or village of Helmin you would question in vain the documents which devouring time has spared Cf. Hoffmann, Auszüge, p. 277.. Gelal, however, may be Ḥarbagelal or Harbathgelal, an episcopal city of Garamaea Chabot, Synodicon orientale, work cited, p. 672. on the Lesser Diabas Zāb.. For from the Acts of St. Mari §15 it is gathered that by this fuller word was called the village which was named Gelālā, that is, spring of waters [Ed. J. B. Abbeloos, Anal. Boll. vol. IV, pp. 80, 82. Hence therefore Hoffmann, Auszüge, p. 277, must be corrected.].

[22] The boy Vahunam seems to be the same as Behnam, Uhnam, a young religious from the city of Chirchaseleucus, differs only by a corrupted name from Ὠνὰμ τῷ ἀσκητῇ, who in the synaxaries of the Greeks at 20 November Synax. Eccl. CP., p. 243. is reported to have been stoned with SS. John, Sapor and their companions, of whom again below. But neither is Uhnam a corrected name; for which one can confidently write back Vahūnām, a form most worthy of note. For the Pahlavi Vahūnām, otherwise Vehvehnam, that is, well-named, Ἀγαθώνυμος or Εὐώνυμος [Justi, Iranisches Namenbuch, pp. 341–42, 360; Hübschmann, Armenische Grammatik, p. 81; cf. Bedjan, Acta martyrum et sanctorum, vol. II, p. 397, and below, note 11.], afterwards became in Syriac , Behnam. Our little index therefore was composed before the more recent form prevailed. Nor does only the spelling of the name smack of obsolete antiquity. The saint himself, as time went on, seems to have put on a new character. And indeed in truth, in the monastery of Beth-Gubbe, a place not without fame in the parts of Zabdicene bordering on Adiabene, between Nineveh (Mauṣil) and Arbela [See Hoffmann, Auszüge, pp. 177–78, where the testimonies of travellers are brought forward.], there is seen even today the tomb [This about the year 1879 the Catholics (Chaldeans?) held. Hoffmann, place cited, p. 177. How the matter stands today I do not know. The church of St. Behnam is certainly not counted among the monasteries and parishes subject to the Chaldean archbishop of Mosul. See J. B. Chabot, État religieux des diocèses formant le patriarcat chaldéen, in Revue de l'Orient chrétien, vol. I (1896), pp. 436–37; J. Tfinkdji, L'Église chaldéenne catholique autrefois et aujourd'hui, in Annuaire Pontifical, 1914, pp. 451, 482.] of St. Behnam and of Saraï his sister [The same one whom we mentioned in the annotations to the Life of John of Dabra Bizan, above, p. 265, note 7.], brother of Saraï. whose Acts are extant in Syriac [BHO. 177, Bedjan, work cited, pp. 397–441. The Passion and Miracles of St. Behnam, son of Sennacherib king of Assyria, are preserved also in the Ethiopic language, in the British Museum codices Orient. 689, no. 31; 686, no. 29; 687–688, no. 34. W. Wright, A Catalogue of the Ethiopic Manuscripts in the British Museum, pp. 160–161, 167, 169,]. He is said to have been the son of Sennacherib king of Assyria, who, converted to the faith by St. Mattaï, gave himself to ascetic labours, and in the year of the Greeks 663 (of Christ 351–352), in the reign of Shapur, fell as a martyr. Yet it can not absurdly be doubted whether he is other than St. Vahunam the boy, whom we read was crowned with martyrdom at the same time, in the same region. For his Persian name suggests, not indeed by a certain or constant but yet by a probable indication, that he was born of heathen parents. And that he is called , son of the covenant, that is "bound by the religion of a vow" [It can also be understood: "cleric", as Evodius Assemani prefers, Acta martyrum orientalium, p. 96; but the Greek who called him ἀσκητήν was not to be accused of error, since the Syriac word signifies both. Or perhaps so many holy virgins who are called were deaconesses?], agrees with not a few examples of Persian martyrs who, having received baptism, embraced an even holier kind of life. The place Gazak, where the Christian matrons of Chirchaseleucus, compelled by the petty king of Adiabene, overwhelmed the holy youth with stones, could not have been situated far from the territory of the town [Of that great Gazak, , which the hymn of the soul that was inserted into the Acts of Thomas celebrates, there can be no talk here, especially since G. Hoffmann showed that by this name the city of Gandzak in Atropatene is designated, Auszüge, p. 250, note 1982; the same, Zwei Hymnen der Thomasakten, in Zeitschrift der neutestamentliche Wissenschaft, vol. IV (1903), p. 273; cf. J. Marquart, Osteuropäische und ostasiatische Streifzüge (Leipzig, 1903), p. 300, note 1.]. The village of Ganzak, which seems to have been written in the transcript of Amida, unless Bedjan corrected this too at his own discretion, must assuredly be sought in the same neighbourhood. For whoever believes that the city of Gandzak in Atropatene is designated by this name will have made the whole narrative utterly absurd. Now that the relics of a martyr killed near Chirchaseleucus were afterwards found at Beth-Gubbe, a place of a neighbouring province, no one will wonder to whom it is not entirely unknown how such inventions are wont to happen. Nor by an unheard-of and incredible chance did there then supervene a hagiographer who thought he was making the history of this martyr more ornate with his own inventions. But if in fact that Behnam of Beth-Gubbe and Vahunam, the young martyr of Chirchaseleucus, are one man under doubled names, we should have to discharge in this place a duty omitted by our predecessors, who neglected SS. Behnam and Saraï at 10 October, on which day they are commemorated among the Syrians. But in an uncertain necessity let it be permitted to decline so great a mass of labour.

[23] Guhištazad, eunuch of Artaxerses The first elements of the name Guhištazad F. Nau read with a certain most sharp-eyed perspicacity in almost the last line of this index of the Eastern martyrs, which we have so often already preferred Patrologia orientalis, work cited, p. 26.. There, then, among the laymen, was inscribed Guhištazad, the renowned martyr of Garamaea, who holds a certain principal place in our catalogue. He was an inhabitant of Chirchaseleucus, a eunuch of the petty king of Adiabene. Ordered by him to adore the sun, he refused to abjure the faith of Christ. Artaxerses therefore compelled a captive named Varathrān, priest of the village of Salqunā, to kill him. When Guhištāzād saw him approaching him, he warned him of the crime he was committing; but soon, understanding that he was speaking to a deaf man, he calmly offered him his neck. One word in this entry presents a difficulty, Salqunā, or, as seems to have been written in the codex of Amida, Saluqānā. But or could easily have been written for [See a similar error above, in the collection on St. Demetrian, no. 9, p. 386, note 2.], which would be the Syriac name τοῦ Ἀλουακῶν, a place which the Acts of St. Sira show to have been situated not far from the city of Chirchaseleucus [§18, 21–22; Acta SS., May vol. IV, pp. 179–81; on which name Papebroch notes too learnedly, p. 181, that a city Ἀλούακα in Media is recorded by Ptolemy. See Pape-Benseler, under the word.]. But if this conjecture does not please, let us say that this was one of the little villages of Assyria whose name will always be unknown. The rest is entirely plain and open. , Varathrān, is the ancient form of the name Varahran, in Greek Οὐαραράνης, in the more recent Pahlavi language Bahrām. In the same letters is read written the name of the grandfather of Shapur II in a Syriac codex of the sixth century [British Museum Add. 12142; W. Wright, A Catalogue of the Syriac Manuscripts in the British Museum, p. 1093; cf. F. Nau, Martyre de Qandida, in Revue de l'Orient chrétien, 2nd series, vol. XX (1915–1917), p. 23. On the form of the name, Th. Nöldeke, in Zeitschrift der Deutschen Morgenländischen Gesellschaft, vol. XXVII (1873), p. 196, note 1; the same, Geschichte der Perser und Araber, p. 46, note 3; Justi, Iranisches Namenbuch, p. 361.].

[24] changed into many shapes: Once again, then, an indication of venerable antiquity strikes the eyes here. But the name, condition and history of Guhistazad himself are repeated in the literature of the Syrians and the Greeks with a most suspicious variety. From our little index or its source, through I know not how many channels, was derived the elogium τῶν ἁγίων μαρτύρων Βοηθαζὰτ τοῦ εὐνούχου καὶ Σασάνους καὶ τῶν σὺν αὐτοῖς ἁγίων ἀνδρῶν καὶ γυναικῶν, Boethazat, eunuch of Shapur, which in the Greek synaxaries at 20 November follows the elogium of SS. Sapor, Isaac and their companions, of whom there will be talk below Nos. 40, 47, pp. 423–25.. Of Boethazat the eunuch these things are further narrated: Ὁ μὲν Βοηθαζὰτ χριστιανὸς ἐκ βρέφους ὤν, κρατηθεὶς καὶ μὴ πεισθεὶς θῦσαι τῷ ἡλίῳ καὶ τῷ πυρί, προστάξει τοῦ Περσῶν βασιλέως ἅμα τοῖς ἁγίοις Σασάνῃ καὶ τοῖς λοιποῖς μετὰ πολλὰς βασάνους καὶ τιμωρίας ἀνῃρέθη· μεθ᾽ ὧν καὶ γυναῖκες ἁγίαι ἀσκήτριαι Βαουθᾶ… [Boethazat, being a Christian from infancy, having been seized and not persuaded to sacrifice to the sun and to the fire, was put to death by order of the king of the Persians, together with the saints Sasanes and the rest, after many torments and punishments; with whom also holy women ascetics, Bautha…] Synax. Eccl. CP., p. 243; cf. below, no. 44.. These women, who will shortly meet us again, let us dismiss for a little. The same story is read a little more contracted in other copies of the synaxaries, where, however, the names of the companions who were driven into this collected throng are recorded more fully. However depraved, this mention was first drawn from some excellent document. That the translator slipped in the title of the petty king

of Adiabene is his fault, and does not prove a defect of the source. The name Βοηθαζάτ, if, with one little letter restored, you read Βοησθαζάτ, agrees in a plainly wonderful way with the Pahlavi Vahištāzād, which was the origin of the Syriac word itself. Whoever therefore first made that Greek was manifestly not unskilled in the old Persian language.

[25] Azad, likewise a eunuch of Shapur, From another source Sozomen, after he has recorded the edict which Shapur issued against the Christians in the second year of the persecution, which was the 32nd of his reign and age, adds these words a little below: Ἀφειδῶς δὲ πάντων χριστιανῶν κτιννυμένων πλεῖστοι καὶ ἐν αὐτοῖς τοῖς βασιλείοις ἀνῃρέθησαν, καὶ Ἀζάδης ὁ εὐνοῦχος τὰ μάλιστα βασιλεῖ κεχαρισμένος ὤν. Ὃν ἐπείπερ ἀποθανεῖν ὁ Σαβώρης ἐπύθετο, περίλυπος εἰς ἄγαν ἐγένετο. Καὶ τὴν δημώδη σφαγὴν ἔστησε, μόνους δὲ τοὺς καθηγητὰς τῆς θρησκείας ἀναιρεῖσθαι προσέταξε [And as all the Christians were being slain without mercy, very many were put to death even in the palace itself, including Azades the eunuch, who was especially dear to the king. When Sabores learned that he had died, he became exceedingly grieved. And he stopped the general slaughter, and ordered only the teachers of the religion to be put to death.] Historia ecclesiastica, II, 11, Hussey, work cited, pp. 143–44.. Almost the same things are read, in the Syriac language, at the end of the oration, or rather lamentation, on the most savage slaughter of martyrs which took place in the 32nd year of Shapur, from the sixth hour of the sixth feria on the Parasceve to the Sunday of the following week BHO. 124.; in which threnody, however, it is not at all hinted that Azades was killed in the royal palace. From this dirge seems to have flowed the elogium τῶν χιλίων μαρτύρων καὶ Ἀζὰτ τοῦ εὐνούχου, which in the synaxaries of the Greeks immediately follows the commemoration of St. Symeon, archbishop of Seleucia and Ctesiphon, and his companions, at 17 April [See below, nos. 27–28, p. 420. In other copies the feast day of St. Symeon is 14 April. Synax. Eccl. CP., pp. 601–602.]. Of the same confused massacre in which Azad the eunuch perished there exists another history BHO. 704., which betrays itself as devised a long time afterwards. In this fable, of too unskilled an artifice, Azad was made the colleague of the great eunuch Guhištazad Bedjan, work cited, vol. II, p. 244.. He, when he saw the Christians being slaughtered in flocks in Huzaïna, of deliberate purpose put on the monastic habit and offered himself of his own accord to the slayers. The next day, summoned by the king, he did not appear. Therefore, an investigation having been made, some magus was found who thought he had recognized among the Christians consigned to death a certain monk very like Azad the eunuch. His body therefore, at the command of Shapur, was searched for and found Ibid., pp. 245–46.. Of this futile little tale, already enough and more than enough.

[26] Azad, of the same name as another, Here we must digress for a little from this St. Azad, who properly belongs to our history, to someone of the same name. For there exists the Passion of St. James, priest of Aspargalta, and of Azad, deacon of Beth-Naggare, martyrs of Adiabene Synax. Eccl. CP., pp. 607–608., who are both narrated to have been arrested in the 32nd year of the persecution and, after they had been tormented in prison at Arbela for seven months, to have fallen with their necks cut off, on the 14th day of the month of Nisan, on the Parasceve. To examine these things by the reckoning of times is not the business of this place [The sixth feria of Passion Sunday, in that whole interval of time, does not fall on 14 April except in the years 366 and 377, neither of which was the 32nd year of the persecution (371–372). Either, therefore, for the 14th day of the month of Nisan must be read the 14th moon of the month of Nisan, which in the year 371 agrees with the 15th day of Nisan; or the seven months which SS. James and Azad spent in chains must be extended to seven years, so that the holy martyrs died in the year 377. But of these things more fully elsewhere.]. It will be enough to have indicated what is noted in the Syriac document. This Passion too was turned into Greek, and from it was derived the elogium of SS. James the priest ἀπὸ κώμης λεγομένης Φαργαθᾶ and Azas (Ἀζᾶς) the deacon ἀπὸ κώμης λεγομένης Βηθνηρῆ Synax. Eccl. CP., p. 608., which is found at the same day in the synaxary of Constantinople, after the elogium of Azad the eunuch of whom we have just spoken. From this Passion, or from some mixture cooked up again from it, Sozomen learned what he mentions in passing and confusedly about SS. James and Azad (Ἀζαδάνης) in the history of SS. Acepsimas and his companions Hist. eccl., II, 13, Hussey, work cited, p. 147..

[27] who in a new character All these were surpassed in celebrity by the other St. Guhistazad who is introduced in the Syriac Acts of St. Symeon Bar-S̗abbā'e [BHO. 1117; see now M. Kmosko, Patrologia syriaca, work cited; Martyrium beati Simeonis Bar Sabba'e, nos. 26–33, pp. 750–58; Narratio de beato Symeone Bar Sabba'e, nos. 50–64, pp. 863–87.]. He too was a eunuch, not of Artaxerses but of Shapur himself, and likewise most dear to the king, whom he had brought up as a boy. Having become a betrayer of the Christian faith, when he wished to greet the holy bishop, who had been dragged to the royal palace, he was gravely rebuked by him, and began to be tormented by the consciousness of the crime he had committed. Therefore he went to the king of his own accord, boldly made known to him his changed mind, and having overcome alike his threats and his blandishments, was at length ordered to be struck with the sword, on the thirteenth moon of the month of Nisan, the fifth feria of the Great Week Kmosko, work cited, p. 887. The notes of time fit the year 341.. His history is related in summary by Sozomen Hist. eccl., II, 9–10, Hussey, work cited, pp. 136–40., from whose words our Henschen once set out the Acts of St. Symeon Acta SS., Apr. vol. II, pp. 844–47.. The same was contracted from another source, as it seems, by the synaxary of Constantinople Synax. Eccl. CP., p. 607.. I pass over others who re-sing others' words. The name Guhistazad in the books of the Greeks has put on a variety of forms, which were derived from the Syriac archetype neither at the same age nor by the same route. As examples let there be, in Sozomen, Οὐσθαζάνης [Ed. de Boor, vol. I, p. 25. Another codex has Οὐσθαδοξάδης. From where Kmosko fished out Ὀγκταξάδης, which he thinks more correct (work cited, p. 749, note 2), I do not know.]; in Theophanes, Οὐσθάξαδ In Cedrenus, ed. Bekker, vol. I (Bonn, 1838), p. 498., which differs less from the Pahlavi form; but in the synaxary, Γουσθαζάτ, which agrees more with the Syriac, and will give us next the abundance of an even rougher form, to be avoided.

[28] was called Eleutherius, Not yet has the wandering through the windings been sufficient. For St. Gusthazat, eunuch of the Royal Gate, some trifler invented a history, which was inserted into the Passion of St. Mahducht the virgin and her brothers Adurparva and Mihrnarses BHO. 1106; cf. Hoffmann, Auszüge, pp. 9–16.. While the holy martyrs were living in Christian fashion on the mountain Brāïn or Bren, of the region of Garamaea [About twenty miles from the village of Gelal, of which above, no. 21, p. 418. Hoffmann, ibid., pp. 261–62.], far from their parents, Shapur sent to search for them a eunuch named Gusthazat. He, being atrociously racked with gout, is healed by the saints. By this and other prodigies the eunuch is converted to the faith of Christ. The young people send him on to St. Symeon Bar-S̗abbā'e, that he may wash him with baptism, and at the same time they prophesy to the catechumen that he will be crowned with martyrdom one day before St. Symeon Bedjan, work cited, p. 34.. The rest of the fable we are not compelled by the present question to unroll [The later inventions too, each more absurd than the other, can be left to idle people. In making sport of the truth of history the chronographer of Seert went no less far, who among other inventions says that St. Gusthazat was the father of two monks. Ed. Addaï Scher, Patrologia orientalis, vol. IV, p. 300.]. From there there certainly flowed the history Ἐλευθερίου τοῦ Πέρσου which in some codices of the synaxaries was contracted at 13 April, one day before the feast of St. Symeon Synax. Eccl. CP., pp. 599–600; ibid. pp. 603–604, at 14 April.. He who turned it into Greek rendered, only in part yet not ineptly, the etymology of the Pahlavi name Guhištāzād, which consists of guhišt, or vahišt, "best", and āzādh, or āzāt, "freeborn, free" [See Justi, Iranisches Namenbuch, p. 340; cf. above, no. 19, p. 417, note 9. In the Syriac Passion, no. 26, a partly false interpretation is supplied: , Guhištāzād, which by interpretation is called freeborn of the kingdom. Kmosko, work cited, p. 750. Similarly, roughly, the Armenian version: Bibliotheca armenia, vol. XX (Venice, 1854), p. 31. For the plainly fallacious interpretation of Thomas Ardsruni the Armenian see Justi, Namenbuch, place cited.]. The first word the translator omitted, the second he retained, unless the Persian name in the Syriac copy itself was already truncated of its head, so that in it there was read not Guhištāzād but Azād the eunuch.

[29] there are as many forms To embrace all these things in a few words, then, two Gusthazats meet us, the one a eunuch of Artaxerses, the other of Shapur himself, of whom the former was slaughtered at Arbela, the latter at the Royal Gate, at Susa (Karkā de Lēdān). Midway between the two there comes a third eunuch named Azad, likewise most dear to Shapur, who without his knowledge and against his will was killed in a tumultuous slaughter. A fourth, finally, is mixed with these, Azad the deacon, whose name, not one alone, could have been a cause of error, as we shall presently see. of one man, But that of these names, one echoes another when heard, the synaxary itself shows, where the last three are heaped onto one day. And who is so simple or so slow as not to perceive at once that shadows were attached to men? The whole matter can be briefly explained thus [Cf. what has been argued more fully on this question in Anal. Boll., vol. XXIX, pp. 150–56.]. Gusthazat the eunuch, who had been the foster-father of Shapur, also brought up Artaxerses, his younger kinsman, whom he then followed into Adiabene. In this way, therefore, in that indiscriminate slaughter of the Christians, it could happen that in the court of Artaxerses, far from Shapur, there was killed a most dear man whom the king wished safe and unharmed. Therefore this Gusthazat, martyr of Adiabene or Garamaea, is the very same as Azad the eunuch, whose unforeseen slaughter Shapur is reported by Sozomen and others to have borne most grievously [This Simon Assemani had already perceived, Bibliotheca orientalis, vol. I, p. 194, who for this wise saying is unskilfully reproved by his nephew Evodius, Acta martyrum orientalium, p. 50, note 4.]. Of the change of his name perhaps this may have been the cause. That other Azad, whom we mentioned above, deacon of Beth-Naggara No. 26, p. 419., was cast into chains in the 32nd year from the edict of Shapur, and after long hardships of prison completed his martyrdom on the 14th of the month of Nisan, on the day of the Lord's crucifixion. When these things hastily

the writer of that meagre declamation read in some epitome or mutilated codex, he supposed that this Azad was the same as Gusthazat the eunuch, put to death in the 32nd year of Shapur in the unbridled slaughter which broke out on the sixth feria, on the Parasceve; and so he transferred the name of the one to the other.

[30] whose manifold history Much less still is it to be believed that besides Azad, the friend of Shapur, there existed another Gusthazat, Shapur's tutor, whom the king himself condemned to death. That is to say, at one time in the royal palace of Persia there were not so many eunuchs of the same name and likewise Christians, of whom Artaxerses killed one, Shapur another, and the same Shapur bewailed a third, put to death by chance. But the second must be entirely excluded, who was no one else but another character of the first. For since that Gusthazat, eunuch of Chirchaseleucus, whom Artaxerses killed, had been a eunuch of Shapur, and died on almost the same day, though not in the same year, as St. Symeon Bar Sabbā'e, that grandiloquent rhetorician who stuffed the Acts of St. Symeon with so many empty words wished to bring Gusthazat into them too. Therefore he devised a little story which, if it is accepted, the catalogue of the martyrs of Garamaea, Sozomen, and all who record that Azad the eunuch was killed against Shapur's will, must almost be convicted of open falsity. has proceeded from our Acts. Add that the narrative itself betrays itself as depraved from the Acts of St. Gusthazat, martyr of Adiabene. For in these we read that the holy old man was killed by an apostate priest to whom Artaxerses entrusted this foul office. And this seems to agree aptly with the manners of the Persian tyrants. For, to pass over other examples which are read in our very catalogue of the martyrs of Garamaea, SS. Thecla, Mariamne and their companions were killed by Paul, an unworthy priest [BHO. 1157, Assemani, Acta martyrum orientalium, p. 124 and following; cf. Synax. Eccl. CP., at 9 June, pp. 739–40.]; St. Barḥadbešabā (Dominicus), deacon of Arbela, by Gagaï, a nobleman who had fallen away from the faith of Christ BHO. 138, Assemani, work cited, pp. 129–30.; St. Badimus the archimandrite, by Narses, a Christian who had been shut up in the same prison [BHO. 131, Assemani, ibid., pp. 166–167; cf. Delehaye, Actes des martyrs Persans, work cited, pp. 475–77.]. The citizens of Arbela are compelled by the archimagus of Adiabene to stone St. Joseph, the companion of St. Acepsimas: which cruel command a pious matron named Iezdanducht bravely resisted Assemani, ibid., pp. 197–98; Delehaye, work cited, p. 515.. In short: these things sufficiently show that the narrative of our little index agrees in this too with the truth of things, or at least with the manners of the hagiographers. On the contrary, in the Passion of St. Symeon, Gusthazat himself abjured Christ, and for this reason is rebuked by the holy martyr just as that assassin Varathran was by Gusthazat, the eunuch of Artaxerses: so that he seems to have taken on the character of both at once. The rest of the narrative too, if it is attentively considered, departs in many parts from the norm of human nature. Nor would he be too obstinate who thought it invented for the ornament of the discourse. But of these things perhaps already at greater length than the matter required.

[31] The martyrs of the city of Lasumon. Lašom is assuredly the rustic little town τὸ Λασουμὼν κτῆμα, of which mention is made in the Passion of St. Sira, §28 Acta SS., May vol. IV, p. 183; cf. Hoffmann, Auszüge, p. 274.. That it was situated not far from the present-day village of Dāqūq, therefore in the territory of the city of Šahrqarth See above, no. 6, p. 413., G. Hoffmann has shown by evident testimonies Place cited, pp. 274–275.. This was an episcopal see subject to the metropolis of the Garamaeans Chabot, Synodicon orientale, pp. 675–676.. The place, then, is not entirely unknown to us; yet none the better known for that are the four laymen Sāsān, Māri, Ṭimaï and Zaruān, who, all carried off from that city into Huzaïna, were killed there by Shapur's command. The codex of Amida, omitting Mari, records in the third place Noḥ, that is Noah. Of these names, , Sāsān, the Edessene list of Eastern martyrs exhibits in as many letters, in the roll of the priests who suffered in the province of Garamaea Acta SS., Nov. vol. II, 1, p. [LXV; Nau, Patrologia orientalis, work cited, p. 25.]. Marin likewise, a priest, we read there associated with some others to that Isaac, priest of Hulsar, who is recorded in our catalogue Above, no. 16, p. 417.. Noḥ, Timaï and Zaruān do not even have namesakes, about whom it could be asked whether one put on the character of another. The whole column such as it occurs here is plainly recognized in the Ambrosian codex of the Greek synaxary at 20 November, where St. Boethazat the eunuch is read to have suffered ἅμα τοῖς ἁγίοις Σασάνῃ, Νοηλμάρῃ, Ζαρουαντίνῃ [Synax. Eccl. CP., pp. 243–44; cf. above, no. 24, p. 419; and below, no. 43, p. 425. Nor let it escape the reader that in this place the Greek agrees on the one hand with the codex of Amida, on the other with the Vatican codex, where the catalogue of the martyrs of Garamaea is joined with the Passion of St. Narses.]. The names of these, then, have been preserved after a fashion; but whatever of their history is read as handed down among the Greeks is openly false.

[32] Bautha the matron. Ba'uthā, a noble secular matron, who at Chirchaseleucus, before the doors of her house, was ordered to be killed by Adargušnasp the archimagus, became Βαουθᾶ, a nun, in the most confused mention of the Greek synaxary which is presently to be brought forward. Her memory was preserved nowhere else.

[33] Thecla the virgin and her companions. By the same archimagus, though not in the same place nor, as it seems, at the same time, two nuns were condemned, Thecla and Dinaq; for so the name must be read, which is properly Persian [Th. Nöldeke, Persische Studien, in Sitzungsberichte der philos.-hist. Classe der kais. Akademie der Wissenschaften, vol. 116 (Vienna, 1888), p. 417; Justi, Iranisches Namenbuch, pp. 84–85; cf. p. 77.]. These too the Greek wrongly attached to the troop of which we must now treat.

[34] The nuns of Chirchaseleucus; Ṭaṭun, Māmā, Mazachiā and Anā, sacred virgins, were killed by the archimagus of Chirchaseleucus in the suburb which was called Ḥaurā, that is, white or bright. From their blood there sprang a portentous fig tree, which was afterwards cut down by the Manichees. Having taken these from our catalogue, read now the Milan synaxary, in the place which we brought forward above Above, no. 24, p. 419.: μεθ᾽ ὧν καὶ γυναῖκες ἁγίαι ἀσκήτριαι Βαουθᾶ, Θέκλα, Δινάχ, Τέντους, Μάμα, Μαλοχία καὶ Ἄννα ἀπεκεφαλίσθησαν, καὶ Νάνα, καὶ Ἄστη καὶ Μαλὰχ ἀειπάρθενοι μαχαίραις κατεκόπησαν. Ὅπου δὲ ἔρρευσε τὸ αἷμα αὐτῶν συκῆ ἀνελθοῦσα ἰαμάτων χάριν παρεῖχε τοῖς πιστοῖς. [with whom also holy women ascetics, Bautha, Thecla, Dinach, Tentous, Mama, Malochia and Anna, were beheaded, and Nana and Aste and Malach, ever-virgins, were cut down with swords. And where their blood flowed, a fig tree springing up afforded the grace of healings to the faithful.] Almost the same the Sirmondian codex, which, however, while it omits most of the names, has preserved the last little part of the history: ἥτις (συκῆ) ὕστερον ἐξεκόπη ὑπὸ τῶν ἀθέων Μανιχαίων, φθονησάντων τῇ τῶν θείων θαυμάτων ἐνεργείᾳ [which (fig tree) was afterwards cut down by the godless Manichees, who envied the working of the divine wonders] Synax. Eccl. CP., place cited.. From this it is manifest that both Greek elogia had a common source, which stood nearer to the Syriac archetype.

[35] their history The memory of those holy virgins was embellished by the writer of the History of Chirchaseleucus, who however, in his manner, caring nothing for the order of times, reports that the blessed martyrs were killed in the time of the bishop Maana, whom he asserts to have sat before the synod of Nicaea Above, no. 17, p. 417.. You may hear him narrating these things himself Bedjan, Acta martyrum et sanctorum, vol. II, pp. 513–14.:

[36] "Further, the bishops succeeded one another in perpetual series down to Maana, bishop and invincible martyr, in whose age a persecution arose against the Christians and the church was overthrown; and the chastisement proceeded (from) the townsmen themselves, among whom were the overthrowers of the churches of their own city. In the town, indeed, there was savagery not only by slaughter, but also by plundering of goods, captivity and cruel punishments; so that even the nuns, bound by the vow of virginity, who had migrated from the royal city because of the persecution of the church and were living in our city, were accused on a false charge before the prefect of the foot-soldiers [païḡānsalar, ἀρχίπεζος;; Acts of St. Sira, §24–25, Acta SS., May vol. IV, p. 181; cf. Hoffmann, Auszüge, p. 47, note 409; Christensen, L'Empire des Sassanides, pp. 60–61.] by the Manichees who were in the city. That cruel man ordered them to be killed outside the city, in the place which is called Ḥaura. And after those saints had been crowned, in the very place where they had received the crown, from their blood a fig tree blossomed, which imparted health to those seeking protection in it. The Manichees, when they had seen the prodigies which were done by that fig tree, cut it down, and burned with fire the (sacred) place in which it was. But God, whose mercy had not allowed them to be mocked by their enemies, sent upon these the disease of leprosy, which did not depart from them until they were utterly extinguished and destroyed from the city. And this place in which the saints triumphed has the name of the Fig down to the present day, and has now become a place of protection for all the faithful; and every year, when the great day of the crucifixion is commemorated, and they go up to the greater church of the martyrs, as is the custom of the city, the whole ecclesiastical assembly, the shepherd with the flock arranged in their several orders, the cross going before at their head, turn their way to the house of the Fig, leading a most ample procession, amid hymns and sacred proclamations of praise befitting God the Lord of all, to the shame of the unbelievers, but to the exultation of the believers, and for us sinners to pardon, grace and salvation. Amen. Of these things thus far. But because of the vehemence of the persecution a small band of men from the town, with a vigilant shepherd, a most brave man, in an enclosure [The Syriac name is also taken for "monastery, laura". So Hoffmann, Auszüge, p. 47, note 413. But a clandestine chapel could not have been situated in a laura.] which adjoins the town, beside the estate whose name is Ḥāṣā See above, no. 17, p. 417., built certain little buildings in the manner of a church, where they used to perform the sacred rites secretly. When the fraudulent unbelievers had got wind of this, moved by envy against the strenuous athlete, they went there, and raged against him like wild beasts. When they saw that he would not be bent to their will, nor exchange the truth for a lie, they overwhelmed him with stones on the slope which overhangs (the village of) Ḥāṣā, and by stoning he received the crown of martyrdom."

[37] more ample, not more true. Thus far a man not at all acute, not indeed amplifying that paragraph from the index of the martyrs of Garamaea, which, if he read it, he twisted here as elsewhere more ineptly even than mendaciously, but, as it seems, excerpting some little commentary which ours too could have used. In which document, however, if it was truthful, the history of the holy virgins

was not interwoven with the Passion of the bishop Maana, who does not appear in the list of Garamaea. With what is narrated about the annual feast of the holy martyrs, G. Hoffmann learnedly compared a place from the Passion of St. Sira, §16: οὕτω γὰρ αὐτῆς ἐν τῷ δεσμωτηρίῳ φυλαττομένης, ἔφθασεν ἡμέρα, καθ᾽ ἣν ἅπαξ τοῦ ἔτους ἐπιτελεῖται σύναξις μαρτύρων ἔν τινι τῶν εὐκτηρίων οἴκων ἔξωθεν τῆς πόλεως. Ἐπεθύμει γε ἡ ἁγία Σιρὴ νυκτὸς ἐξελθεῖν καὶ ἀφανῶς τὴν παννυχίδα θεάσασθαι [For while she was thus kept in the prison, the day came on which once a year an assembly of the martyrs is celebrated in one of the houses of prayer outside the city. And the holy Sira desired to go out by night and secretly to behold the vigil.] [Place cited, p. 47, note 412; cf. Act. SS., work cited, p. 178. In the same place, before the age of St. Sira, other martyrs were killed, mention of whom will occur below, no. 42.]. Certainly that in the neighbourhood of Chirchaseleucus other places existed sacred to the memories of martyrs, the very testimony which has just been recited shows See also below, no. 42.. But it is not improbable that it was especially at heart for the holy captive to be present at the solemnity of the virgin martyrs. Therefore in the year 558, in which these things were done, the cult of the holy virgins was still flourishing, in its own chapel.

[38] Abiath, Hattaï and Mamlacha, The column is closed by SS. Abiath, Ḥattaï and Mamlāchā For Mamlāchā the codex of Amida brings in Mazachia again from the entry above., nuns from the province of Garamaea, who are reported to have been condemned by Shapur himself, when he was present in the province. That these were recorded, with mutilated names, in the synaxary of the Ambrosian Library among the companions of St. Boethazat, who is also Gusthazat, we have already noted above No. 24, p. 419.. But we must see whether perhaps they have wandered even further. For on 5 October (elsewhere the 4th) in the Greek synaxaries there is announced St. Μαμέλχθα, martyr in Persia, who is also Mamelchtha. ἱέρεια ὑπάρχουσα τοῦ ναοῦ τῆς Ἀρτέμιδος, and her sister, by whom she was converted to the Christian faith Synax. Eccl. CP., pp. 104, 107–108; cf. the annotations, p. 955.. does not differ much from , and in the mouth of the people sounded almost the same as , sister. The similarity of the name Μαμέλχθης with Mamlāchā did not escape Simon Assemani, who rightly perceived that the same martyr is designated on both sides Bibliotheca orientalis, vol. I, p. 190., and in this he had his nephew Evodius as supporter Acta martyrum orientalium, pp. 102–103.. Of Mamelchtha and her sister there is narrated a remarkably fictitious history, which our predecessors at 17 October received with too much indulgence, drawing from it an argument against the opinion of both Assemani Acta SS., Oct. vol. VIII, pp. 53–55.. To us indeed, the example of SS. John and Sapor having been compared, it is plainly evident that for the holy virgins Mamlacha and Hattaï, after their cult had been carried into Constantinople, an image of a Passion was concocted out of shadow and smoke by some Greekling, which is to be reckoned not of little but of no account.

[39] The antiquity and authority of the Garamaean martyrology. These things having been set out as briefly as we could, it is now clearly established that in the catalogue of the martyrs of Garamaea a good and trustworthy source is recognized. Although it declares itself to have been collected after many years (§14), from memories already growing obsolete (§16), yet nothing is detected in it which does not smack of antiquity or which seems to have been reworked at a more recent time. Artaxerses, petty king of Adiabene, is named in passing, as by a writer who had not yet seen him, after Shapur's death, reigning over the whole empire of the Persians. So far are the inventions of later hagiographers from having infected the little book that of the martyrs nearly contemporary with the age of Shapur none has been entered in it. For already in the year 412, in the Edessene collection of the Eastern martyrs which we have so often recorded, there are listed eight priests of Garamaea Acta SS., Nov. vol. II, 1, p. [LXV; Nau, Patrologia orientalis, work cited, p. 25.]: , Abo, Abraham, Peter, Pembaq [In Greek: Πάβεκος, Agathias, Historiarum book II, 26, ed. B. G. Niebuhr (Bonn, 1838), p. 123 and following; or Παμβεκός, George Syncellus, Chronographia, ed. G. Dindorff (ibid., 1829), p. 677. Cf. Justi, Iranisches Namenbuch, under the word Pāpak. The form Πάπακος is adduced by P. Horn, in Geiger and Kuhn, Grundriss der iranischen Philologie, vol. I, 2 (1898), p. 50; but in what place it is read I have not found.], Susaï, Papas, Sāsān, Baris [Bāris, otherwise Pāris, or Pārs, that is lynx or leopard. See Justi, work cited, under the word Pārs.] from Garamaea. Yet, setting aside Sasan, who is perhaps the layman Sasan of whom above No. 31, p. 421., of all the rest none has obtained a place in our catalogue. And not by silence only, but much more by the ancient and sober simplicity of the whole discourse, the document testifies that it is ancient. and authority. Wherever it could be compared with other sources, we have found that it surpasses them in age and historical trustworthiness. Since these things are so, you would not imprudently conjecture that the catalogue of the martyrs of Garamaea, no less than the Passion of SS. Narses and Joseph to which it is appended, was composed at the close of the fourth century, and perhaps even while Shapur II was still alive.

§ III. On the Passion of SS. Sapor, Isaac and their companions.

[40] The Passion of SS. Sapor and Isaac Already in the seventh or eighth century, if in fact the codex of Amida, of which above, no. 3, was written then, the people of Edessa had persuaded themselves that the relics of certain Persian martyrs rested within the walls of their city. There, then, by some domestic rhetorician, with an art neither new nor difficult, there was worked up the Passion of Sapor, bishop of Nicatorium, Isaac, bishop of Chirchaseleucus, Maana (Ma'na), Abraham and Symeon, which we are about to edit anew below [BHO. 1042, Assemani, Acta martyrum orientalium, pp. 226–29; Bedjan, Acta martyrum et sanctorum, vol. II, pp. 51–56; it was turned into German by Braun, Ausgewählte Akten persischer Märtyrer, pp. 1–4.]. How faithfully it has been transmitted is not clear. A transcript of the little book, besides that of Amida, has been preserved uniquely by the Vatican Syriac codex 161, formerly Nitrian 2, of parchment, now comprising 216 leaves of middle size, in one column, written in "strongyle" letters. Its memorial inscriptions perished with the first and last leaves. Both Assemani indeed call it very old in their Catalogue. But what Syriac parchment was not very old to them? From that, indeed, we are not taught the age of the writing [Vol. III, pp. 319–24. On the age of the codex the learned men who edited parts from it are equally silent: Evodius Assemani, Bedjan, and the distinguished J. B. Chabot himself, Histoire de Jésus-Sabran, in Nouvelles Archives des Missions scientifiques et littéraires, vol. VII, (1897), pp. 486–87.]. In the photographic image, however, which we received from the distinguished Silvio Gius. Mercati, we seem to ourselves to recognize a hand of about the tenth century. To the ninth century Michael Kmosko refers the strokes and the form of the writing Patrologia syriaca, work cited, p. 714.; whose opinion we not unwillingly believe. Therefore the Passion of SS. Sapor and Isaac may be somewhat older than the ninth century. freely invented He who composed it either received the subject of the narrative from the one who brought the relics to Edessa, or took care to provide it for himself. Whichever of the two is guilty of the fraud, his artifice was the same. For he plundered a little book most like the catalogue of the martyrs of Garamaea, not to say that this very catalogue, such as it is now read, fell into his hands. And indeed in truth, besides the little parts of history which are preserved in it, the hagiographer knew absolutely nothing of SS. Sapor and Isaac; nor did he enlarge them except with inventions and fabrications, his own or others', which agree neither with the sequence of the narrative nor with the truth of things. It will be useful to have briefly noted these few points.

[41] by an Edessene. St. Sapor, equally with St. Isaac, was bishop of Chirchaseleucus See above, nos. 19–20, p. 417.. But since the writer of the Passion, to adorn his tragedy more conveniently, preferred to interweave the fates of both, and could not bring in two prelates of the same city at once, he therefore made St. Sapor bishop of Nicatorium, or Beth Niqāṭor: which name he found in the elogium of St. Isaac. Nor did it move him that Nicatorion was never an episcopal city. From what has been said it is also evident that whatever the hagiographer relates about the confession of the holy bishops before Shapur himself must be banished to fables. For on both sentence was pronounced not by Shapur but by Artaxerses, petty king of Adiabene. Nay rather, on St. Sapor the bishop no judgment seems to have been passed; he died in prison uncondemned. When his death was reported to Artaxerses, he, suspecting a fraud of the guards, ordered the cut-off head of the martyr to be brought to him. These things too the Edessene hagiographer transferred to King Shapur, as if he himself, twisting the little narrative of the catalogue, had not said above that the holy bishop two days before had been almost finished off by cudgelling before the eyes of the king himself. And the rest with which the Passion is stuffed: the complaints of the magi, the search for the Christians, the martyrs' altercations and exchanges with the tyrant, finally the manner of the punishment, are scarcely anything other than word-paint fetched from common little books, which give the appearance of a fable even to true and certain things.

[42] Companions joined to the martyrs To SS. Sapor and Isaac were joined as companions Maana, Abraham and Symeon. These the learned Jérôme Labourt cleverly noticed Le Christianisme dans l'empire perse, p. 74. to be named in the History of Chirchaseleucus among the martyrs who in the year 449 [This number of years, namely, is gathered from the History of Chirchaseleucus; for the slaughter of the indiscriminate multitude with which Abraham, Maana and Symeon were killed is said to have taken place on the sixth feria, 25 August, and the following Saturday; which does not fit the year 446, which Labourt indicated.], in the reign of Yazdgerd, are said to have suffered in that metropolis. a whole century later. To unravel here the long narrative, not free of difficulties, is superfluous. It will be enough to have copied out the place which concerns us Bedjan, work cited, vol. II, pp. 526–27.: "And the ministers of the clergy who were with them, the priests named Isaac and Stephen, with his companions, he (Ṭahmiasgerd, procurator of the magi) ordered to be overwhelmed with stones on the slope which overhangs the village of Kanar See above, no. 20, p. 417.… But as regards Abraham and Symeon and Maana, they dug a place for them on the top of the slope, where they had stoned Stephen and his companions. So they brought these, loaded with heavy chains. And the rest of the throng, three thousand in number, was crowned in the place where the day before they had burned John and his companions. And against the companions of Abraham and Symeon and Maana designated above they sent foot-soldiers, who, when they had been placed in the pit, pierced them through 〈with stones and var. l.〉 with javelins. They also fixed heated nails into the pupils of their eyes, while they drove other fiery nails into the bodies of the invincible men. They were crowned on the second

day, the twenty-fifth (of the month) of Ab, on the Sabbath day."

[43] A fabricated little book These things our Edessene judged not varied elegantly enough. Therefore he wrote that Maana perished with his skin stripped off from the head to the girdle; and among Abraham and Symeon he distributed the punishments which the History of Chirchaseleucus relates of all in common. He used no other art to surround SS. Sapor and Isaac with a retinue and to make his narrative more ample. In this, however, the diligence of the man is to be admired, that he chose companions for the saints who belong to the history of the same church.

[44] was turned into Greek. The Passion of SS. Sapor and Isaac seems to have been turned into the Greek language. From this metaphrase was contracted the elogium Ἰωάννου καὶ Σαβωρίου καὶ Ἰσαακίου τῶν ἐπισκόπων καὶ Ἀγαπίου καὶ Ἰσαακίου τῶν πρεσβυτέρων, which is read at 20 November in the synaxary of the Ambrosian Library and in some codices of the same family Synax. Eccl. CP., pp. 241–44.. Of the life and end of the saints these things are narrated: Οὗτοι οἱ ἅγιοι διὰ τὴν εἰς Χριστὸν ὁμολογίαν κρατηθέντες παρὰ τοῦ βασιλέως Περσῶν καὶ πολλὰ τιμωρηθέντες καὶ μὴ ἀρνησάμενοι τὸν Χριστὸν ἀλλ᾽ ἐλέγξαντες τὴν τῶν Περσῶν πλάνην καὶ ματαιότητα, προστάξει τοῦ τυράννου ἐλιθοβολήθησαν, καὶ οὕτως ἐτελειώθησαν σὺν τῷ ἁγίῳ Ὠνὰμ τῷ ἀσκητῇ. [These saints, having been seized by the king of the Persians for their confession of Christ, and having been punished much, and not having denied Christ but having exposed the error and vanity of the Persians, were stoned by order of the tyrant, and so were perfected together with the holy Onam the ascetic.] In the Sirmondian codex only four are named, John, Sapor (Saborius), Isaac and Papias, πρεσβύτεροι χρηματίζοντες πόλεως Βηθσαλωχόν Ibid., p. 243.. For the rest, their history, if this is to be called history, is the same which, enclosed in fewer words, we have just recited. If you note that this was inserted between the elogia of St. Narses and St. Boethazat the eunuch, and that with the same there was joined the mention of St. Vahunam the boy Cf. above, nos. 11, 24, 22, pp. 414–15, 418–419., it is now seen more clearly than daylight that the synaxary entry of SS. John, Sapor and their companions is a medley most unskilfully mixed from the catalogue of the martyrs of Garamaea and from the Passion of SS. Sapor and Isaac.

[45] Its authority is nil. The Edessene hagiographer refers the contest of SS. Sapor and Isaac to the thirtieth year of Shapur, which was 338–339 from the birth of Christ, and preceded by two whole years the beginning of the bloody persecution. Either, therefore, for the thirtieth year of Shapur must be read the thirtieth year of the persecution of Shapur [Cf. above, no. 29, p. 420. This year, however, could be the year of death either of Sapor or of Isaac, not of both, as will presently be said.], or in the number of years, as has so often happened elsewhere, the copyists erred, or something even worse is to be suspected here. For the Vatican Syriac codex 161 is the same which falsely claims that the historical laudations of the Eastern martyrs were written out by Marutha, bishop of Tagrit See above, no. 1, p. 411.. Who then would allow himself to be moved when he finds in the same volume a note of time which is no less openly false? But if in fact the composer of the Passion himself set it down, in this too as in many other things he betrayed himself a trifler. St. Sapor and St. Isaac, who were both bishops of the same see, could not have been crowned with martyrdom at the same time, as has already been noted above; and if the most probable indications persuade anything, neither of them suffered before the bloody persecution which broke out in the month of April of the year 341, and perhaps not even before the year 343, in which St. Narses, bishop of Sahrqarth, seems to have fallen as the first martyr in Garamaea. Shadows, therefore, were grasped at by the learned men who, neglecting the better-tested documents in which the memory of SS. Sapor and Isaac has been preserved, used their fabulous Passion to fix the beginnings of the persecution of Shapur, or to conjecture that some lesser slaughters preceded the general edict [Cf. G. Van Hooff, in the Prelim. Comm. to the Acts of SS. Acindynus and companions, no. 16; Acta SS., Nov. vol. I, pp. 449–50. The distinguished Anscharius Braun, in that sober and learned inquiry which we praised above, no. 9, p. 414, denies that any Passions of martyrs older than the edict of Shapur are extant, except the fabulous Acts of St. Mahducht and her companions (cf. above, no. 28, p. 420) and the no less insipid Acts of SS. Jonas and Barachisius (BHO. 531, BHG. 942–943); Ausgewählte Akten persischer Märtyrer, p. VIII; cf. Labourt, Le Christianisme dans l'empire perse, p. 78. To these should have been added the Passion of SS. Sapor and Isaac, which Labourt mentions, ibid., p. 74.].

[46] The church of the saints at Edessa. In the rubricated lemma which is prefixed to the Passion, SS. Sapor, Isaac and their companions are said to rest at Edessa, within the walls, in the new martyrium. Whether by this name there is signified one of the churches of Edessa which was called "the New" from the time when it was in fact new, or a proper chapel dedicated to the name of the holy martyrs, it is idle to conjecture. At Edessa already in the sixth century there existed so many churches, martyria, chapels, shrines [Cf. A. Baumstark, Vorjustinianische kirchliche Bauten in Edessa, in Oriens Christianus, vol. IV (1904), pp. 164–83.], that it can scarcely be discerned now to which buildings are to be referred those mentions, rare indeed and obscure, which are found here and there in books of a later age.

[47] The method of the edition. In editing the Passion we have held to the way which was indicated above, nos. 2–4. The variant readings which it seemed good to receive from Bedjan are marked with the letter B.

I. THE PASSION OF SS. NARSES AND JOSEPH AND OF THE MARTYRS OF GARAMAEA.

Narses, martyr in Persia. (S.)

Joseph, martyr in Persia. (S.)

Companions, martyrs in Persia. (SS.)

From the Vatican codex Syr. 160 (= V), collated with the transcript of the codex of Amida according to the edition of Paul Bedjan (= B). Cf. Prelim. Comm., nos. 2–4.

The Passion of Narses, bishop, and of Joseph his disciple, from the city of Sahrqarth Sahrqadath V. in Garamaea.

[1] Narses and Joseph, In the fourth year See Prelim. Comm., no. 9, above, p. 414. of our persecution, when the king himself was present in the region, Narses, bishop of the city of Sahrqarth Šarhqadath (?) V. See Prelim. Comm., no. 6, above, p. 413., was arrested with Joseph his disciple, and they were brought forward productus est V. before the king. He, having caught sight of them, first by Shapur with blandishments said to blessed Narses: "How venerable and comely is your old age, and how flourishing the youth of your disciple. I pity your beauty; would that it might not perish by a bloody death and slip down to the underworld by a miserable end. Rather, comply with me now; adore the divine sun; and I will honour you with gifts and presents. For the comeliness of your aspect delights me very much, and the sweetness aura (suavis) V. of your graceful bearing breathes upon me." St. Narses answered him and said: "This coaxing speech of yours is grievously troublesome to us, and your flatteries are fraudulent and deceitful; since it is your intention to cast us down from our rank and dignity into the ignominy of this painted and unstable world, in which you glory, as if the whole of it had been given to you and you alone ruled it. Nor do you understand that it is slipping away from you, flying like a dream of the night and like a passing shadow, and never standing still. But I am an old man, eighty years of age, through all of which I have religiously worshipped the one and true God. Nor may it befall me now that, keeping the covenant, I break the covenant, tear my faith away from his faith, and adore and worship the sun, which he himself created."

[2] then tried in vain with threats, But the king said to them: "You seem to have come to me in an unlucky hour; for by neither a moment nor a space of time do I separate your life from death unless you obey my command." To him again Narses: "Even if, O king, it were in your power to kill us and, having restored us to life, to slay us again seven times, still we would not fall away from our God, nor carry out your command." Forthwith sentence was pronounced against them, by which their heads were ordered to be cut off with the sword. And the king was at the halting-place Ibid., no. 7, above, p. 413. which is called S̗aphtha Ibid., no. 5, above, p. 412..

[3] while the people watch When therefore they were led out of the camp, many men went out with them to see how ubinam B. they would be killed. When they came to the place where they were to be slain, Narses, raising his eyes, looked back at the multitude which stood around them. Joseph, addressing him, said: "O venerable old man, why do you gaze at this crowd, in which all, with their eyes raised to you, (are waiting) until you dismiss them to their homes and yourself depart to your own?" Then the old man with a cheerful face looked at Joseph with admiration, and approaching kissed him, and said: "Blessed are you, most upright Joseph, since the world has not got round you with its frauds; but with joy, with unveiled face, you have entered the narrow gate of the kingdom." Then, first of the two, Joseph was killed, they are struck with the sword. and after him that renowned old man. Those saints were crowned in the month of Tesri the latter, on the tenth day by the moon Ibid., no. 10, above, p. 414..

[4] The martyrs of Garamaea: bishops, John Ibid., nos. 14–17, above, pp. 415–17., bishop of Chirchaseleucus, was killed in the village of Beth-Ḥaṣin Ibid., no. 17, above, p. 417., by order of Artaxerses, king of Adiabene.

[5] Sapor [Ibid., no. 18, above, p. 417, and the Passion of SS. Sapor and Isaac, below, nos. 2–4, pp. 430–32.], bishop of Chirchaseleucus, worn out with blows, died in prison. Further, the same king of Adiabene said: "Cut off his head, and bring it omits V. to me, that I may see it myself." For he did not trust them. They cut off his head and brought it and showed it to him.

[6] Isaac See Prelim. Comm., no. 19, above, p. 417., bishop of (the town of) in oppido (Chirchaseleuco) V. Chirchaseleucus, was overwhelmed with stones at the station of Nicatorium Ibid. and no. 41, p. 424., by the freeborn (men) of the city, Christians indeed in name, whom the king of Adiabene had driven (to it).

[7] priests, Isaac Prelim. Comm., no. 20, above, p. 417., priest of the village of Ḥulsar, was overwhelmed with stones outside Chirchaseleucus, by order of Adargušnasp the archimagus.

[8] Papas Ibid., no. 21, above, p. 418., priest of the village of Ḥelmin, was killed in the village of Gelal arce Ga'al B; cf. Prelim. Comm., no. 21., by order of the king of Adiabene.

[9] a religious, Vahunam Ibid., no. 22, above, p. 418., a boy consecrated to God, in the village of Gazak Ganzac B(?); cf. Prelim. Comm., no. 22., was overwhelmed with stones by the noble

matrons of Chirchaseleucus, Christians in name only, whom the king of Adiabene had driven (to it). This youthful martyr had (sprung) from the same town.

[10] secular men, Gusthazat Ibid., nos. 23–30, pp. 418–21. was a eunuch from (the town of) Chirchaseleucus, and belonged to the court of the king of Adiabene. Further, there was then there a captive who had the name Varathran That is, Vararanes; cf. Prelim. Comm., no. 23, above, p. 419., and was in name only a priest in the village of Seluqana Sulqānā, Sevelqānā (?) A; cf. Prelim. Comm., no. 23. That is, τὸ Ἀλουακῶν? Cf. Prelim. Comm., no. 23, above, p. 419.; who, pressed by distress, abjured the faith and fell away from the truth. To him, then, the king of Adiabene gave orders that he should kill Gusthazat, since he had not obeyed his command nor adored the sun. And when this Varathran rushed upon blessed Gusthazat to kill him, he shuddered at the sight of him, and said to him: "Priest, are you going to kill me?" But at once he repented of what he had said; and he said to him: "I did it unwisely, to call you a priest. Come, approach, and carry out your purpose. It has profited you eum V. no more to be a priest Word for word: your priesthood (his V). than it profited Judas to be an apostle. For I know that your mind has been enticed by Satan, so that you should serve his will." He, not at all frightened, most shamelessly slaughtered him.

[11] Sasan Prelim. Comm., no. 31, above, p. 421. a layman, Mari a layman, Timaï a layman and Zaruan [(Sasan - Zaruan) Sasan I. Zaruan l. Noe (Noḥ) 1. Timaï B; cf. Prelim. Comm., no. 31.] a layman, from Lasumon Lāšum; cf. Prelim. Comm., place cited., a rustic little town, bound with chains, were sent across into the province of Huzaïna; where by decree of King Shapur they were killed, because of their sincere faith in Jesus Christ.

[12] a noble matron, Bautha Prelim. Comm., no. 32, above, p. 421., a noble secular woman from (the town of) Chirchaseleucus, was killed occisae sunt B. before her house, by order of Adargušnasp the archimagus.

[13] sacred virgins. Thecla Ibid., no. 33, p. 421. a nun, and Dinaq likewise a nun, from (the town of) Chirchaseleucus, were killed by order of Adargušnasp the archimagus.

[14] Tatun Ibid., nos. 34–37, pp. 421–23. a nun, Mama a nun, Mazachia a nun, Ana a nun, from (the town of) Chirchaseleucus, by order of the archimagus of the town were put to death outside the walls in the place in benedictione V (?); cf. Prelim. Comm., no. 36. which is called Ḥaura. From their blood a fig tree arose which for many years bestowed life gratiam B. and health, until the wicked Manichees, moved by envy, rooted it out. Upon them was sent a spirit of leprosy, and it harassed them, so that they themselves confessed for what cause this had befallen them. And a great prodigy was shown et sibi visum esset V; quod iis visum est B (var.) against them.

[15] Abiath Ibid., no. 38, p. 423. a nun from the region of Garamaea, Ḥattaï a nun from the region of Garamaea, Mamlacha Mazachia B., likewise a nun from the region of Garamaea, were put to death by order of King Shapur, when the king himself was present in that region.

[16] And of them, so far as the history supplied us, we have committed these things to writing.

II. THE PASSION OF SS. SAPOR, ISAAC AND THEIR COMPANIONS

Narses, martyr in Persia. (S.)

Joseph, martyr in Persia. (S.)

Companions, martyrs in Persia. (SS.)

From the Vatican codex Syr. 161, collated with the transcript of the codex of Amida (= B) according to the edition of Paul Bedjan. Cf. Prelim. Comm., nos. 3–4, 47.

The Passion of Sapor, bishop of Nicatorium [Beth-Niqaṭor; see Prelim. Comm., no. 19, above, p. 417. The codex of Amida, here and below: Beth-Nigador; otherwise in the Passion of SS. Narses and Joseph, §5, above, p. 427.], Isaac, bishop of Chirchaseleucus, Maana, Abraham and Symeon, who suffered in the time of Shapur, king of the Persians; and now they are at Edessa in the new martyrium, in the inner city.

[1] The holy martyrs In the thirtieth year See Prelim. Comm., no. 45, above, p. 425. of the reign of Shapur, king of the Persians, the magi, approaching (him), accused the Nazarenes, and said to the king: "We cannot worship the sun, or clarify the air, or purify the water, or expiate the earth, because of the Nazarenes, who revile the sun, mock the fire, and do not reverence the water." And Shapur, filled with great fury, gave up the journey on horseback on which he was about to set out, and decreed that the Nazarenes should be arrested. So the prefects of the guards and the couriers Ταβελλάριος. of the king went out, and arrested Maana, Abraham and Symeon. The next day the magi stood before the king of kings, and crying out said: "Sapor, bishop of Nicatorium, and Isaac, bishop of Chirchaseleucus, build shrines Νάος., raise churches, and entice men with coaxing words." The king commanded (in these words): "Let them be set before my court on the third day." So the horsemen went off by night and by day, because the king's command was pressing Codex: they hastened because of the king's command., and brought them, and showed nuntiaverunt B. the king that Sapor and Isaac had arrived. 1 Kings 21:8. The king ordered these to be carefully guarded in prison with their companions. So they were shut in as he had commanded.

[2] are brought to judgment. The next day the king called together the nobles Properly: the freeborn, the free; cf. Prelim. Comm., no. 19, above, p. 417., to whom he said: "Do you know Sapor and Isaac, the Nazarenes?" They said: "We know them." And the wrath of the king blazed up; and he ordered them to be set before him. So they brought the bishops Sapor and Isaac, Maana, Abraham and Symeon; who stood before him, as he had commanded. The king said to them: "Do you not know that I am of the race of the gods? I adore the sun and venerate the fire. But what sort of men are you, who resist my command, revile the sun and mock the fire?" They all answered with one voice and said: "We adore one God and worship him alone." The king said to them: "What God is more excellent than Hormizd, or heavier in fury than Ahriman? Or what wise man does not adore the sun?" Sapor the bishop answered and said to him: St. Sapor, "We know no god other than the God who made heaven and earth and the sun and the moon and all things both visible and invisible. Colossians 1:18. And we believe in him who was begotten of him, Jesus, who is called the Nazarene." Having heard this, the king commanded that his mouth be beaten. And they beat him until his molars and front teeth fell out. The king said to him: "Call upon Jesus, that he may give you molars and teeth." Sapor said to him: "Jesus has given dabit B. me something which you cannot understand." The king said to him: "How can I not understand it?" Sapor said to him: "Because you are evil." Then the king, roused by great fury, ordered him to be beaten with clubs. left half-dead by clubs, And they beat him so long that all his bones were crushed. And when scarcely a breath of life remained in him, the king commanded that he be bound with iron chains in prison. is cast into chains. So they bound him as (the king) had ordered.

[3] St. Isaac, They brought Isaac too before him: whose cloak the king ordered to be pulled off; so they pulled off his cloak. The king said to him: "Have you too been so seized captus B. by the madness of Sapor that your blood must be mingled by me with his blood?" Isaac said to him: "Nay rather, what you have called madness is surpassing wisdom, which you do not perceive." The king said to him: "I see that you are talkative: I shall order your tongue to be cut off." Isaac said to him: "It is written: Psalm 118:46. I will speak just things before kings and will not be ashamed." The king said to him: "From where ubi B. do you have this audacity, to build a church?" Isaac said to him: "And when have I left off building churches?" When he had said this, the king blazed with anger, and having called together the nobles of the town said: by the nobles "Do you not know that a man in whose mind or tongue deceit has been found is guilty of death? Does it then please you that I should be violated, and does it delight you that I should be held in mockery in this way? For you have attached yourselves to Isaac and have been initiated into his mysteries. I swear by the sun and by the fire which is not extinguished, if I am left in doubt [A corrupt place B: si in ferro (vinculis?) manebo. Assemani translates: si tamen solium retinebo; Braun: wenn ich in meiner Hülle (? am Leben) bleibe. See the Syriac.], you will go before him to the ossuary on which name cf. N. Marr, , vol. XX (1911), p. 065, note 2.." When they had heard these things said by the king, is stoned. their courage melted; they fell on their faces; they drove Isaac away from the king's sight, and having led him out to a suitable place [From this inept periphrasis it is manifest that the name of the halting-place Niqaṭor, where St. Isaac was stoned, was deliberately avoided. Cf. the Passion of SS. Narses and Joseph, §6, and Prelim. Comm., nos. 15, 41, above, pp. 417, 424.] they overwhelmed him with stones; and he died, because those nobles, Christians in name only, dreaded the wrath of the king (6).

[4] St. Sapor dies in prison. And when Sapor the bishop heard in prison that Isaac had died, stoned by the nobles, he rejoiced and praised God, who had crowned him. But he himself after two days was worn out by the blows and the weight of the chains. And it was reported to the king that Sapor had died in prison: and he ordered his head to be cut off and brought to him. So they brought him the cut-off head (of Sapor): for he did not believe that he was dead [Cf. the Passion of SS. Narses and Joseph, §5; and Prelim. Comm., no. 41, above, p. 424.].

[5] Of Maana, Abraham and Symeon After Isaac had been stoned and Sapor had perished in prison, the king ordered Maana, Abraham and Symeon to be brought to him: to whom he said: "Do you adore the sun and venerate the fire?" Answering they said to him: "God forbid. We adore Jesus and confess him." Then the king decreed various kinds of death for them. He ordered the skin of Maana to be stripped off from the head down to the girdle of the loins; various punishments. and he perished with his skin stripped off. For Abraham he ordered iron nails heated in the fire to be fixed into both eyes; and he died after two days had passed. But as regards Symeon, (the king) ordered a pit to be dug, in which he was covered with earth up to the breast; and he commanded the archers to pierce him through with darts. And he died [Cf. the place adduced from the History of Chirchaseleucus in Prelim. Comm., no. 42, above, p. 424.]. And the Christian brethren, approaching, the corpses

of them, secretly stolen away, they buried [Adds B: Absoluta est Passio Saporis et Isaac episcoporum atque Maanae, Abraham et Symeonis.].