Edessa
A royal city east of the Euphrates, ruled by its own kings, several of them named Abgar. It had a church building by AD 201 and was an early centre of Syriac-speaking Christianity.
Edessa, called Urhai in Syriac, lay in Upper Mesopotamia between the Euphrates and the Tigris, in the district the Romans called Osrhoene. It had its own line of kings, and Eusebius calls it “a royal city” (Eusebius, Church History 1.13.5). The river Daisan ran through it and in November 201 flooded the palace of Abgar VIII and the buildings along its banks; the record of that flood names a church of the Christians among the buildings destroyed (Chronicle of Edessa 8). A few years earlier the churches of Osrhoene had taken part in the correspondence about the date of Easter (Eusebius, Church History 5.23.2). Eusebius says that he drew the story of King Abgar’s letter to Jesus from documents kept in the city’s archives (Eusebius, Church History 1.13.5).
What happened here
- about AD 201, estimated dateChristianity Takes Root in Edessa
A flood report of November 201, kept in the archives of Edessa, lists a church of the Christians among the buildings destroyed. It is dated evidence of a church in the Syriac-speaking East, where a later tradition traced the church back to a letter from Jesus.
- about AD 542 to AD 578, estimated dateJacob Baradaeus and the Syriac Orthodox Church
When the opponents of Chalcedon are short of bishops, the empress Theodora has the monk Jacob consecrated. John of Ephesus, his admirer, tells how he travelled the East for over thirty years, hunted by the emperor’s agents, ordaining clergy and bishops for a separate church.
Primary sources
The Chronicle of Edessa
- Chronicle of Edessa 8tertullian.org