Jacob Baradaeus

The account of Jacob given here comes from John of Ephesus, who was consecrated by him and writes as his admirer. John says that he came from Tella, was trained in the monastery of Fsiltha, and lived for about fifteen years as a recluse at Constantinople under the protection of the empress Theodora; the nickname Burd’ana, his editor notes, comes from the ragged cloak he wore (John of Ephesus, Lives of the Eastern Saints 49 (Patrologia Orientalis 18, pp. 690–697)). In the sixteenth year of Justinian he was made bishop for Edessa, at Theodora’s order and at the request of Harith, king of the Saracens. With other bishops he then ordained, by John’s count, twenty-seven bishops and two patriarchs of Antioch (John of Ephesus, Lives of the Eastern Saints 50 (Patrologia Orientalis 19, pp. 153–158)), and John credits him with the ordination of a hundred thousand clergy between the Persian frontier and Alexandria (John of Ephesus, Lives of the Eastern Saints 49 (Patrologia Orientalis 18, pp. 690–697)).

In his Ecclesiastical History John shows another side: an old man of great zeal and simplicity who was managed by those around him, and whose break with the patriarch Paul split his church (John of Ephesus, Ecclesiastical History 3.4.15). He died at the monastery of Cassian on the border of Egypt, on his way to Alexandria (John of Ephesus, Ecclesiastical History 3.4.33); a note in one manuscript of a later Life, which John’s editor prints as spurious, puts his death in the year 889 of the Greeks, which is 577–578, and the heading of that Life in another manuscript says that the “Jacobites” were named after him (John of Ephesus, Lives of the Eastern Saints notes in manuscripts of the later, spurious Life, quoted by Brooks (Patrologia Orientalis 19, pp. 228–229)). See Jacob Baradaeus and the Syriac Orthodox Church.