ISAAC
176
ISAAC
ing of his people. Armenia was then passing through
a grave crisis. In 387 it had lost its independence and
been divided between the Byzantine Empire and Per-
sia; each division had at its head an Armenian but
feudatory liing. In the Byzantine territory, however,
the Armenians were forbidden the use of the Syriac
language, until then exclusively used in Divine wor-
ship: for this the Greek language was to be substi-
tuted, and the country gradually hellenized. In the
Persian districts, on the contrary, Greek was abso-
lutely prohibited, wliile SjTiac was greatly favoured.
In this way the ancient culture of the Armenians was
in danger of disappearing and national unity was
seriously compromised. To save both Isaac invented,
with the aid of St. Mesrop, the Armenian alphabet,
and began to translate the Bible; their translation
from the Syriac Peshito was revised by means of the
Septuagint, and even, it seems, from the Hebrew text
(between 410 and 430). The hturgy also, hitherto
Syriac, was translated into Armenian, drawing at the
same time on the Liturgy of St. Basil of Csesarea, so
as to obtain for the new service a national colour.
Isaac had already established schools for higher edu-
cation with the aid of disciples whom he had sent to
study at Edessa, Melitene, Byzantium, and elsewhere.
Through them he now had the principal masterpieces
of Greek and Syriac Christian literature translated,
e. g. the writings of Athanasius, Cyril of Jerusalem,
Basil, the two Gregorys (of Nazianzus and of Nyssa),
John Chrysostom, Ephrem, etc.
Armenian literature in its golden age was, therefore, mainly a borrowed literature. Through Isaac's ef- forts the churches and monasteries destroyed by the Persians were rebuilt, education was cared for in a generous way, the pagan worship of Ormuzd which Shah Yezdigerd tried to set up was cast out, and three councils held to re-establish ecclesiastical discipline. Isaac is said to have been the author of liturgical hymhs. Two letters, written by him to Theodosius II and to Atticus of Constantinople, have been preserved. A third letter addressed to St. Proclus of Constanti- nople was not written by him, but dates from the tenth century. Neither did he have any share, as was wrongly ascribed to him, in the Council of Ephesus (431), though, in consequence of disputes which arose in Armenia between the followers of Nestorius and the disciples of Acacius of Melitene and Rabulas, Isaac and his church did appeal to Constantinople and through St. Proclus obtained the desired explanations. A man of enhghtened piety and of very austere life, Isaac owed his deposition by the king in 426 to his great independence of character: in 430 he was al- lowed to resume his patriarchal throne. In his extreme old age he seems to have withdrawn into solitude, djdng at the age of 110. Neither the exact year nor the precise month of his death is known, but it seems to have occurred lietween 439 and 441. Several days are consecrated to liis memory in the Armenian Church.
Neumann, Versuch einer Gesch. der armen. Literatur, 28-30; Moses de Chorene in Langlois, Collections des hisloriens an- dens el modernes de I'Armenie, II (Paris, 1869), 159-73; Le- QUlEN, Oriens Christianus, I, 1375-7; Bardenhewer, Patrol- ogie, 549; Ter-mi-kelian, Die armenische Kirche (Leipzig, 1892), 33-9; FmcK in Gesch. der. chrisH. Litteraturen des Orients (Lcipiie. 1907), 82-5; Smith, Did. of Greek and Roman Geog- raphy, III, 290.
S. Vailhe.
Isaac of Nineveh, Nestorian bishop of that city in the latter half of the seventh century, being conse- crated by the Nestorian Patriarch George (660-80). Originally a monk of the mona.stery of Bethabe in Kurdistan, he abdicated for unknown reasons after an episcopate of but five months, and retired to the monastery of Rabban Shapur, where he died at an advanced age, blind through study and austerity. Towards the end of his life he pas.sed under a cloud as his Nestorian orthodoxy became suspected. He was author of three theses, which found but little accept-
ance amongst Nestorians. Daniel Bar Tubanita,
Bishop of Beth Garmai (some 100 miles south-east of
Mossul), took umbrage at his teaching and became
his ardent opponent. The precise contents of these
theses are not known, but they were of too Catholic a
character to be compatible with Nestorian heresy.
From an extant prayer of his, addressed to Christ,
it is certainly difficult to realize that its author was a
Nestorian. Eager to claim so great a writer, the
Monophysites falsified his biography, placing his life at
the beginning of the seventh century, making him a
monk of the Jacobite monastery of Mar Mattai, and
stating that he retired to the desert of Scete in Egypt.
Since the discovery of Ishodenah's " Book of Chastity "
by Chabot in 1895 the above details of Isaac's life are
beyond doubt, and all earlier accounts must be cor-
rected accordingly.
Isaac was a fruitful ascetical writer and his works were for centuries the main food of Syrian piety. Only very little of the original Syriac has been pub- lished — two chapters on "Grades of Knowledge " and the "Essential Qualities of Virtues" by Zingerle ("Monum. Syriaca", I, 1869, pp. 97-101), and three dialogues by Chabot at the end of his treatise "De Isaaci vita " (see below) . A German translation of some six chapters was made directly from the Syriac by Bickell (" Biblioth. derKirchenvat.", Kempten, 1874). A complete list of Isaac's works is given by Chabot in "De Isaaci vita" and "Notes sur la litt. Syr." in the " Revue Semitique " (1896), p. 2.')4. Isaac's works were early translated in Arabic, Ethiopic, and Greek. The Greek translation was made by two monks of St. Saba, Patrick and Abraham, and published by Nice- phorus Theodoces under the title ToC o<rlov irarpis V"' Iirad/c . . . TO. evpeSivra dcTKijTiKd (Leipzig, 1870). This publication, however, does not represent any precise work of Isaac, but is rather a corpus asceticvni, con- taining treatises, letters, colloquies, all in one. Two Latin recensions thereof have been published: the one entitled "Sermones beati Isaaci de Syria" (Venice, 1506) and the other in the "Max. biblioth, vet. Pat- rum.", XIII (Lyons, 1677). This latter recension is reprinted in Gallandi, XII, and again in Migne, P. G., LXXXVI, 1, 811-86, and bears the title "De Con- temptu Mundi ". It is erroneously ascribed to Isaac of Antioch, with whom Isaac of Nineveh is often con- founded. The Latin gives but half the contents of the Greek, which itself has undergone a number of manip- ulations. The long letter to Simeon of Csesarea pub- hshed in Mai's "Nov. Patr. Biblioth.", VIII, 3, forms the last chapter of Thcodorus's Greek. Marius Bes- son published apophthegmata of Isaac's in Greek in "Oriens Christ.", I (1901), 46-60. The Arabic trans- lation of this corpus ascclicum is much fuller than the Greek, and divided into four books. Isaac's writings possess passages of singular beauty and elevation, and remind the reader of Thomas a Kempis.
Chabot, De Isaaei Ninivitce vita, etc. (Paris and Louvain, 1892); Duval, Anc. Lillcratures chrct. Lit. Syriaque (Paris, 1907); Wright, Short History of Syriac Literature (2nd ed., London, 1894); Bardenhewer, Hist, of Ancient Church Litera- ture (tr., Baltimore, 1908).
J. P. Arendzen.
Isaac of Seleucia, Patriarch of the Persian
Church, d. 410. Isaac is celebrated among the pa-
triarchs of the Persian Church for having reorganized
it after the terriljle persecution that overwhelmed
it under Sapor (Shapur) II. We know little or noth-
ing definite of his early days. Acconling to the most
probable tradition he was enabled, through the influ-
ence he had with King Yazdgerd I, to restore the
Catholicate of Seleucia, which had been vacant for
twenty-two years. Another account says he was
chosen to replace a certain Qayom, who had been
deposed by his fellow-bishops for incapacity. Isaac's
great work was the organizing of the Council of Se-
