Ecclesiastical History, Part Three

John came from Amida in northern Mesopotamia, lived for many years at Constantinople and was made bishop for Ephesus by Jacob Baradaeus; he describes himself as present at court when Nubian envoys were received (4.8). His translator’s preface explains that the history had three parts, of which the first is lost and the second is known from extracts in a later chronicle; the third is fragmentary, and Payne Smith marks the places where chapters are missing, as at the opening of book 4. In that book John says that he is writing in the year 896 of the Greeks, which is 585 (4.61).

He writes as a member of one party, which he calls “the believers” and “the orthodox”; the supporters of Chalcedon are “the synodites”. On Nubia he is the admirer of the missionaries Julian and Longinus and of the empress Theodora, and no account from the emperor’s side is cited in this wiki to set beside his. On the quarrel inside his own church between Jacob and Paul of Antioch he knew both men and received letters from both camps, and he is frank about the faults of his own side. He often quotes letters, and for dates he uses the Seleucid era.