Lives of the Eastern Saints

John of Ephesus collected these lives of people he had known or heard of in the East and at Constantinople. Chapter 49 speaks of the emperor Justinian’s death, which fixes its writing after 565. He calls his subject James; Jacob is the same name.

He was close to what he describes. He says that many of the bishops whom Jacob Baradaeus consecrated were ordained in his presence, and he lists himself among them as “John the Syrian, the converter of the pagans”, bishop for Ephesus (50). He writes to honour his heroes and their cause: Jacob’s opponents are “synodites” and the empress Theodora is “the believing queen”. His figures, such as a hundred thousand clergy ordained by Jacob, are a partisan’s praise. Brooks also prints a later, interpolated life of Jacob, which he calls spurious; it is not used in this wiki, apart from a heading and a marginal note in its manuscripts that Brooks quotes (vol. 19, pp. 228–229).