ing institution.[1] There were Solitaries (ḥdnânâye) and monks in community. The common name for a monk (but used also for a clerk in holy orders) is "Son of the Covenant."[2] There were also "Sons of the Church," or "Sons of the Faith," men who lead an ascetic life, apparently without having taken vows, who had no "covenant" or "pact" to bind them to this life.[3] And there were "Daughters of the Covenant," too. A later tradition ascribes Persian monasticism to a certain Eugene (Augīn), who brought it from the Egyptian desert, and founded the famous monastery of Mount Izlâ near Nisibis in the early 4th century.[4]
The most important, almost the only, authority for these earliest times is Afrahaṭ,[5] the "Persian Sage." He lived in the first half of the 4th century, was a monk and a bishop. Tradition makes him head of the monastery of Mâr Matai (St. Matthew), north of Mosul. Between the years 337 and 345 he wrote twenty-three Homilies or "Demonstrations," arranged acrostically, each beginning with a letter of the Syriac alphabet. These are the chief source of our knowledge of the theology, discipline and customs of the Persian Church before the persecution.
Afrahaṭ writes Trinitarian doxologies, naming the three Divine Persons in the usual way; but he does not know of the Council of Nicæa (325).[6] His theology is hardly at all influenced by Greek ideas. He describes the Paschal Feast as kept on the 15th of Nisan, and lasting a week. It begins with baptism, and still has several Jewish observances.[7] "The Lord with his own hands gave his body to be eaten and his blood to be drunk before he was
- ↑ So Afrahaṭ: Demonstr. vi.: Patrol. Syr. i. (ed. by Dom Parisot, Paris, 1894), p. lxv.
- ↑ Bar ḳyâmâ: not easy to translate. Ḳyâmâ is a military station, a law, treaty, dogma, etc. (ḳam, to stand).
- ↑ Labourt: op. cit. 29–30.
- ↑ See the Life of Eugene (9th cent.), ed. by P. Bedjan (Acta martyrum et sanctorum, Leipzig, 1890–1895; iii. 376–480). Labourt does not think much of this story. Thomas of Margâ knows nothing of it (see p. 110).
- ↑ Ἀφραάτης.
- ↑ There was one Persian bishop at Nicæa; see Harnack: Mission u. Ausbreitung des Christentums, p. 442. Labourt denies this, and thinks that the "John of Beit-Parsaya" found in Syriac lists of the Nicene Fathers is an error for John of Perrhæ (Le Christ. dans l'emp. perse, p. 32, n. 2).
- ↑ Dem. xii. (ed. Parisot, i. 505–540).
