Jacobites is the name by which the different com- munities in Syria, IMesopotamia, and Babylonia, who hold to the Monophysite doctrine, have been knov.-n since their union, about the middle of the 6tli century. See EuTYCHiANisji ; MoNOPHYSiTES. The most prominent party in accomplishing the union of these Monophy- sites, who, near the middle of the Gth centime, were very weak, and threatened with extermination, was Ja- cob (or James) Albardai, or Baradajus (or Zanzalus), a zealous disciple of Severus, a monk and presbyter of the convent of PhasUta, near Nisibis, and it is after tliis Ja- cob that the united Monophysites were named after their union, and not, as some have supposed, after James, the brother of Christ, or Jacob the patriarch, or after Dioscorus, who was called Jacob before his ordina- tion. It is true, however, that these commmiities are sometimes designated as the Severians, Dioscorians, Eu- tychians, and even as the Theodosians (for the Egyptian Monophysites, see Copts; for the Armenian, see Ar- aiENiAN Church : and for the Abyssinian, see Abyssin- ian Church). The surnames of Jacob who united the Monophysites, however, have no bearing on his relation to the sects, but are strictly personal. Tlius the coarse- ness of the dress in which he travelled through the East for the benefit of his party (says D'llerbelot, Bibliotheque Orientule, p. 435) gained him the name of Baradai (i. e. a coarse horse-blanket ; compare Assemani, ii, 66, 414 ; Makrizi, Geschichte der Kopten, edited by Wustenfeld ; Eutychius, Annales, ed. Pococke, ii, 144, 147). Jacob was made bishop of Edessa in 541, and then, says Dr. Schaff (Ch. History, iii, 775), " this remarkable man de- voted himself for seven and thirty years with unwea- ried zeal to the interests of the persecuted i\Ionophy- sites. ' Light footed as Asahel' (2 Sam. ii, 18), and in the garb of a beggar, he journeyed hither and thither amid the greatest dangers and privations; revived the patriarchate of Antioch ; ordained bishops, priests, and deacons ; organized churches ; healed divisions ; and thus saved the Monophysite body from impending ex- tinction." He died in 578.
" The Jacobites have always protested against being considered followers of Eutyches ; but, while tliey pro- fess to anathematize that heresiarch, they merely re- ject some minor opinions of his, and hold fast his great distinguishing error of the absorption of the humanity of our Saviour in his divine nature. They think that in the incarnation, from two natures there resulted one. In other words, they believe that the Redeemer does not possess two natures, but one composed of t^vo. ilhis- I trating their dogma in this way: 'Glass is made of sand;
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but the whole is only glass, no longer sand : thus the divine nature of Christ has absorbed the human, so that the two have become one.' " A middle way between Eutychiauism and orthodoxy was chosen by Xenayas (q. V.) and his school, who on the incarnation maintain " the existence in Christ of one nature, composed of the divinity and lumianity, but without conversion, confu- sion, or commLxtiu-e. He teaches that the Son, one of the Trinit_v, united himself with a human body and a rational sold in the womb of the Virgin. His body had no being before this union. In this he was born, in it he was nourished, in it he suffered and died. Yet the divine nature of the Son did not suffer or tlie. Nor was his human nature, or his agency, or death, merely vis- ionary, as the Phantasmists taught, but actual and real. Moreover, the divine nature was not changed or trans- muted into the human, or commixed or confused there- with ; neither was the human nature converted into the divine, nor commixed or confused with it; but an ad- unation of the t\vo natures took place, of a mode equiv- alent to that which, by the union of body and soul, makes a human being; for as the soul and body are luiited in one human nature, so, from the union of the Godhead and manhood of our Lord Jesus Christ, there has arisen a nature peculiar to itself, not simple, but com- plex; 'one double nature.'" Here is evidently main- tained a distinction from the Eutychians that the flesh ol Christ taken from the Virgin was actual and real, and united with the divine in Christ, " without confu- sion, change, or division;" and from the orthodox, in holduig that, after the vmion, the two natures united in one, losing their distinctiveness. This view of Xe- nayas, says Etheridge {Syrian Churches, p. 143), seems to be at present the doctrine of the Jacobites ; but, as the laity is very moderately educated, this remark ap- plies only to the clergj-. As an indication that they have only an imperfect idea on this point, Etheridge cites their usage of " making the sign of the cross with only the middle finger of their hand, holding the others so as to render them invisible," evincing thereby that the -whole subject is to them an unsolved mystery.
Like the Greek Chiu"ch, the Jacobites, as a rule, deny tha jwocession of the Holy Ghost from the Son, holding, however, to the orthodox doctrine of the personality and deity.
Sacraments. — It is generally believed that the Jaco- bites, with the Koman Catholics, hold to the septenary n\iml)er on the sacraments, but Etheridge says (p. 144) that " this must be taken in a qualified sense, as they have no distinct service of confirmation, nor do they use extreme unction, unless it be sometimes imparted to members of the priesthood. Auricular confession, too, is scarcely known among them. And in the Eu- cliarist, while they profess to recognise the real presence, it must, not be imdcrstood in the Papite sense of tran- substantiation, but the presence of the Saviour which accompanies, in an imdescribed manner, the elements of tlic lircad and wine: a species of consubstantiation, illustrated by Bar SaUb (in Matt, xxviii, Cochl. Syr. C'lcinenl. Vatic. 10, fol. 29) under the idea of iron in union with fire, and receiving from it the properties of light and heat, while its own nature remains unaltered' (comp. Bar-Hebra3us, Menorath Kudshi, or the " Lamp of the Saints," fundam. vi, sect. 2). At the celebration of the Eucharist they administer newly-made unleav- ened bread (Kiidiger, however, in Herzog, lieal-Ency- Mopudie, vi, 400, asserts that they use leavened bread), conmiixed with salt and oil, and of both kinds, but gen- erally dipping, like the Nestorians, the cake into the wine. The sacrament of baptism they arc said, but very improbably, to have performed by imprinting on the subject (of course infants), with a burning iron, the figure of the cross, on some part of the body, generally the arm, sometimes even the face.