Babowai, as patriarch, had no easy time of rule. It was not only the hourly danger that he, a conspicuous "apostate," must run from the Magi; but he had under him a suffragan of the most awkward character to control, viz., Bar-soma, metropolitan of Nisibis. This was the man who was to be protagonist in the first part of the drama that was to be played; one of the most striking and picturesque, but not one of the most saintly, figures in the history of his Church.
By birth he was of Cordyene, and was possibly slave-born,[1] though he must have attained freedom, in that case, early in life, for when Ibas was Bishop of Edessa this youth, with several other Assyrians destined to high office in their Church, was a student in the college there. This college, though of no great antiquity (for it owed its foundation to St. Ephraim, and was therefore of later date than the migration of that saint from Nisibis to Edessa, after the cession of the former city to Persia in 363), had become the centre of theological and Western culture to the Christians of the East. There were in Persia, as far as we know, no Christian schools, though Magian colleges abounded, and the teacher was a recognized and honoured grade in their hierarchy. The Christian who desired learning (and the Assyrian thirst for it is keener than even his thirst for money) must cross the frontier to where Christianity ruled.
To Edessa, then, went many an Assyrian, during the long period of peace that marked the patriarchate of Dad-Ishu; and Bar-soma had for companions (amongst others) Acacius, afterwards patriarch of Seleucia, Narses, called "the harp of the Spirit," and first head of the college that was to spring from Edessa, M'ana, afterwards Bishop
- ↑ Shimun of Bait. Arsham. Assemani, i. 351.
