CHAPTER X
THE JACOBITES
The Jacobites are the Monophysites of Syria. They have never been more than a comparatively small, poor and scattered sect. They never succeeded in capturing all Syria, as their co-religionists the Copts captured all Egypt. Now, especially, they are a very small body scattered around Diyārbakr, with colonies in most Syrian towns. In religion they agree with the Copts, with whom they are in communion. In rite they are quite different. They alone keep, in the Syriac language, the old rite of Antioch. This is perhaps the chief importance of the sect to students.[1]
1. The Foundation of the Jacobite Church
In discussing the general history of Monophysism we have seen that already in the 5th century the Egyptian party (against Chalcedon) made many converts, expecially monks, in Palestine
- ↑ For all Jacobite history the chief sources are the Chronicle of Michael the Syrian (Michael I, Jacobite Patriarch of Antioch, 1166–1199), ed. in Syriac and French by J. B. Chabot (Paris, 4 vols., 1899–1910), and Barhebræus (Gregory Abu-lFarāǵ ibn Harūn, called Bar ‘Ebrāyā), Mafrian († 1286): Chronicle, of which the Ecclesiastical history has been edited by J. B. Abbeloos and T. J. Lamy: Gregorii Barhebræi chronicon ecclesiasticum (two sections in three volumes, Louvain, 1872–1877, Syriac and Latin). Barhebræus was a prolific writer, and one of the most learned men the learned little sect produced (p. 330). However, a comparison shows that he took most of the matter of his Chronicle from Michael. Joseph Simon Assemani: Bibliotheca Orientalis, vol. ii.: De Scriptoribus Syris Monophysitis (Rome, 1721), with a Dissertatio de Monophysitis, contains a mass of material. But the Dissertatio is not paged.
323
