soon as Baradai was ordained he began those amazing journeys up and down Syria which fill the rest of his life, by which he practically re-created his sect, for which certainly he deserves the everlasting gratitude of the Jacobites who inherit his name.[1] He was, of course, compelled to hide from the Government (then rigidly enforcing the decrees of Chalcedon). Fleeing always from the officials, soldiers and Melkite bishops, disguised in the ragged cloak which his name has made famous, for nearly forty years James travelled over Syria, Egypt, Thrace and the islands of the Archipelago. For a great part of his missionary journeys he was accompanied by two monks, Konon and Eugene, whom he had sent to Egypt to be ordained bishop, so that he with them could ordain others.[2] Everywhere he fanned into flame the dying embers of Monophysism. He is said to have ordained twentyseven bishops and one hundred thousand priests and deacons[3] for his sect. He acted always in friendly co-operation with the Egyptian Monophysites. But he was not so much wanted there, where the party was already strong. His work was in Syria. He did not himself become Patriarch of Antioch, but he ordained two. When Severus of Antioch was dead in exile (c. 543)[4] he ordained Sergius of Tella (543–546) to succeed him,[5] then an Egyptian monk, Paul. From these descends the line of Jacobite Patriarchs of Antioch, by the side of their Orthodox rivals. From this time, then, we may count the Syrian Jacobites as a separate sect. Worn out by his labours, Baradai died in 578. Although the Monophysites of Syria naturally look back to Severus of Antioch[6] as their great champion, we may rightly
- ↑ See p. 336.
- ↑ There was already the general rule that it takes at least three bishops to ordain one.
- ↑ Assemani: Bibl. Or. ii. (Diss. de Monoph.) v. says he ordained more than two thousand priests.
- ↑ Gustav Krüger says that Severus died in 538 (Prot. Realenc. xviii. 256).
- ↑ So the Life of James Baradai in Land (Anecdota syriaca, ii. 256). Lamy doubts whether Baradai ordained Sergius (Barhebræus, i. 214, n. 2).
- ↑ "The Patriarch Severus, the excellent, clothed with light, occupant of the See of Antioch, who became a horn of salvation to the Orthodox Church (the Monophysites)." Hist. of the Patr. of Alexandria (ed. cit.), p. [185], see Barhebræus i. 194: "the holy Severus, scorning life and despising earthly glory."
