[The dying Saint recalls in the following lines the vision of his childhood, and praises God for its fulfilment.]
"I swear by your lives I lie not: in this thing that I tell.
For when I was a little child: and lay in my mother's bosom,
I saw (I was as in a dream): a thing which has come to pass in truth.
There grew a vine-shoot on my tongue: and increased and reached unto heaven,
And it yielded fruit without measure: leaves likewise without number.
It spread, it stretched wide, it bore fruit: all creation drew near,
And the more they were that gathered: the more its clusters abounded.
These clusters were the Homilies; and these leaves the Hymns.
God was the giver of them: glory to Him for His grace!
For He gave to me of His good pleasure: from the storehouse of His treasures."
This farewell strain has no doubt suffered interpolation, but the main part of what is above translated is confirmed as genuine by the references to it of Gregory, who had undoubtedly read it in a Greek version. [276] As it has reached us, it ends with a narrative, which at most can only claim to be an appendix added by a disciple, of the lamentations uttered at his deathbed by a maiden named Lamprotate, daughter of a man of rank in Edessa, who entreated permission to make a tomb for him and another at his feet for herself. The narrative concludes with his consent to this petition, his parting commands to her, and her promise of obedience.
His body was followed to the grave by all the people of the city and neighborhood, and by the Bishops, priests, and deacons of the province, with the monks, whether "anchorites, stylites, or coenobites"--solitary, or living in communities. It was laid (as he had desired) in the strangers' burial-ground; but not long after, the citizens removed it thence, and made a grave for him, deacon as he was, among those of their Bishops,--probably in the monastery (now belonging to the Armenians) of St. Sergius on the Mount of Edessa, where his tomb is shown to this day, as we learn from the Reise in Syr. u Mesopot. of Dr. Sachau (p. 202).
13. Death and Burial.--His death occurred in Haziran (June), on the 15th according to our History (Vat.), but other authorities differ, assigning it to the 9th, 18th, or 19th. The shorter Syriac Life gives the year as 372,--thus contradicting the History which represents him as living in the year of Basil's death (378).
Even in the time of Gregory of Nyssa, an annual commemoration of Ephraim had become customary in the Church, which gave occasion for the Encomium above referred to. In the East, it was held on the 28th of January; but in the Roman Martyrology his name is recorded on the 1st of February.
[251] The strong and ancient city...which, since the time of Lucullus had been deservedly esteemed the bulwark of the East. Gibbon, Decline and Fall, ch. xviii.
[252] Now called Jaghjagh,--an affluent of the Khabur (Chaboras) which joins the Euphrates at Circesium.
[253] Not elsewhere named: perhaps we ought to read Beth-Garme; for which see B. O. II., De Monophysitis, s.v.
[254] So the Paris text: the Vatican has "Origen." The person meant is probably the Eugenius who came from Egypt with 70 disciples to Nisibis, to introduce the ascetic life into that region, and lived there from the time of the consecration of St. Jacob till the surrender in 363. His life is related in the inedited ms. Ad'd. 12174 (Lives of Saints), of the British Museum.
[255] This city lay quite out of the region of the Nitrian monasteries. Possibly in the original form of this biography, the "Enaton" (i.e. the Ninth District) of Alexandria was named as the place of Ephraim's sojourn and subsequent transcribers changed the word into Antino.
[256] As represented by Gregory Ephraim was a very Democritus among saints: "As with all men to breathe is a natural function unceasing in exercise, so with Ephraim was it to weep. There was no day, no night, no hour, no moment however brief, in which his eyes were not wakeful and filled with tears, while he bewailed the faults and follies, now of his own life, now of mankind. By groans he made a channel for the streams of his eyes or rather, by the outflow of the eyes he looked his groans....There was no interval of time between them, groans succeeding to tears and they again to groans, as in a sort of circle; so that it was impossible to distinguish which made the beginning and which was the cause of the other. Any one who makes acquaintance with his writings will perceive this characteristic; for he will be found lamenting not only in his treatises on penitence, or morals, or right conduct, but even in his panegyrics, in which it is the habit of most writers to show an aspect of rejoicing. But he was every where the same, and abounded perpetually in this gift of compunction."
[257] For this monastery, see below, p. 143, note 1. For the history of Pesoës, see Palladius, Hist. Lausiaca, XV.
[258] Cæsarea, the see of Basil, lay far from the sea, in the heart of the inland province of Cappadocia. The Cæsarea of the Acts of the Apostles (Stratonis), the metropolis of Palestine was a seaport.
[259] The feast of St. Mamas (a Cappadocian martyr) falls in August, not in January. A sermon of St. Basil for that feast is extant (Hom. XXIII.). Probably the author of this History knew that sermon, and was thus led to mention the commemoration here, carelessly disregarding the time of year.
[260] To the pseudo-Amphilochius.
[261] Paroenesisxxvi. 11 (Opera Syr.), Tom. III. p. 467. The word, however, is perhaps not to be taken literally.
[262] Opera Syriaca, Tom. I., p. 8.
[263] In Syriac, Bardaisan (son of Daisan), so called from his birthplace beside the river above mentioned.
[264] See Bickell, Carmina Nisibena, p. 101.
[265] Opera Syriaca, Tom. II., p. 554, see also Homily I.
[266] The Seven Æons (or Beings) of Bardesan's heresy; see Opp. Syr. II., p. 550.
[267] The heretic Apollinaris seems to have been a younger man than Ephraim, whom he survived by some years. Possibly his father, the elder Apollinaris, is here intended. But he is not recorded as having taught heresy.
[268] To this church were translated the bones of St. Thomas the Apostle, from his burial place in India, in the time of Eulogius the successor of Barses (378-387),--as we learn from Barhebræus, Chronicon Eccles. I. 21 (p. 65 of Abbeloos and Lamy's edition). But the above narrative, as confirmed by Socrates (IV. 18), shows that it had been built and was held in special reverence before that. It is the church at which our History places the healing of the paralytic (above). Sozomen's account (VI. 17) in the main agrees; also Theodoret's (IV. 17).
[269] Baronius, Annales, IV. p. 308. The Vatican Life reads Julian for Valens in this narrative, thus introducing inexplicable perplexity into the chronology. Julian died before Ephraim became a resident of Edessa.
[270] Printed in Overbeck's Ephræmi S. Opera Selecta, p. 137; also in the (Roman) Opera Græca, at the end of Tom. II., p. 395.
[271] St. Matth. xxvii. 46.
[272] i.e., as a relic.
[273] The allusion is to the legend that Abgar, King of Edessa, hearing the fame of the Lord Jesus, sent a letter inviting him to his city, and received in reply a letter from Him conveying His blessing, and a promise to send a disciple to teach him and his people. This promise was afterwards fulfilled by the mission of Thaddeus (Addae) to Edessa. (Eusebius, Hist. Eccles. I. 13.)
[274] The Greek version has "may heal." The Syriac may be brought to agree with this, by changing t into r in the verb used.
[275] The sect of Ophites.
[276] The Greek version that has reached us is paraphrastic, and interpolated; but on the whole represents the original with no great divergence. See Opera Græca, Tom. II., p. 230; Ephraim Syr. Græce, p. 365 (Oxford edition).
IV.--Recapitulation of Authentic Facts of Life.
The Life, whence the above narrative is mainly derived, though evidently put into its present form by compilers many generations later than the time of Ephraim, is in its leading outlines to be accepted as historically trustworthy, though it has no doubt been largely amplified by the incorporation of exaggerated or fictitious details. Of its essential points, not a few are confirmed by his own writings; and many more (as has been said above, p. 121), by evidence of hardly later date,--especially by the Encomium of Gregory of Nyssa (d. 395), who assures us that he derives his account from Ephraim's written statements and from no other source. [277] This Father, as being brother of Basil with whom Ephraim was so closely associated in his later life, may well have known personally the man of whom he wrote, and was at least in a position to collect and verify with discrimination the facts of his life. Further, the general historical framework of the biography is sufficiently attested as correct by the contemporary secular historians, non-Christian as well as Christian--notably (as will appear farther on), as regards the siege of Nisibis, by one whom Ephraim most abhorred, the Emperor Julian.
It may be briefly affirmed that the external independent evidence covers all the facts included in the summary given above (pp. 120, 121), at the opening of this Section. It extends farther to many incidents related in the Life,--such as the attempt of Sapor to take Nisibis by turning the river against its walls, Ephraim's encounter with the woman who met him as he entered Edessa and her retort to his rebuke, his borrowing the music of the heretic in order to popularize the orthodox teaching of his own hymns, the call to the Episcopate and his evasion of it, the constancy of the faith of the Edessenes when threatened by the persecutor Valens, the famine and the work of relief organized by Ephraim in the last year of his life; also to a few of the details which belong to or verge on the supernatural,--the dream of the vine-shoot which foreshadowed his literary fertility, the vision of the Angel with the book who appeared to his brother-anchorite, and that of the dove, which he himself seemed to see, inspiring the discourses of Basil. In these facts, greater and smaller taken together, we have sufficient data for the derivation of the main outlines of his life and the leading features of his character.
[277] There is no ground for supposing that Gregory could read Syriac. It follows therefore that some of Ephraim's writings must have been at a very early date translated into Greek; and that one of these was the Testament which Gregory refers to no less than five times in the Encomium.
V.--Historical Criticism of Mediæval Amplifications.
But along with the genuine and trustworthy matter, the compiler has embodied much that is unattested and in many cases inherently improbable, and even some things that are demonstrably untrue.
i. The Miraculous Details.--To the category of the improbable--the fiction of hagiology or the growth of myth--belong the miracles so freely ascribed to Ephraim and the miraculous events represented as attending on his career. It is noteworthy that Ephraim himself, though no doubt he believed that he was the recipient of Divine intimations in dream or vision, never lays claim to supernatural powers. Nor does Gregory in the Encomium attribute to him any such--except in the case of the rich friend who for his mistaken zeal was given over to an evil spirit; and on his repentance relieved through Ephraim's intercession. [278] The voice that issued from his father's idol foretelling his future war against idolatry--the answer of the new-born babe that cleared him from calumny--the crowned phantom on the walls of Nisibis that scared the besiegers--the plague of insects that drove them into disastrous flight--the Angel sent to call him back to Edessa when he had fled thence--the storm hushed and the sea-monster slain by his word on the voyage to Egypt--the monk whom he delivered at once from demoniacal possession and from heresy--the sudden gift of tongues which enabled him to speak Coptic with Bishoi and Greek with Basil--the restoration to life of the youth who had died of a viper's bite at Samosata--the paralytic healed at the church door in Edessa--the disappearance of the record of guilt from the scroll on which the penitent of Cæsarea had written her confession--all these belong to the later growth of legend that springs up naturally over the tomb of a saint. Some of them may be safely set aside as purely fictitious; others are probably due to metaphoric expressions mistaken for literal assertions, or to rhetorical amplification throwing a false coloring of the supernatural over ordinary events. Most of them, moreover, bear evident signs of having been dressed by the compiler into spurious resemblance to the miraculous narrations in the Old and New Testaments, of the Divine dealings with Prophets and Apostles,--Elisha, Jonah, St. Peter, St. Paul, or even of the works of power which attested the mission of our Lord Himself on earth. In reading these, one cannot fail to feel painfully--though the narrator seems quite unconscious of--the irreverence of the travesty. It is noteworthy that some, even of the non-miraculous incidents of the Life appear to have been similarly handled. Thus the account of the stoning of Ephraim outside of Edessa seems modelled after that of St. Paul at Lystra, (Acts xiv. 19, 20): and the simulated madness by which he evaded the call of the Episcopate is apparently borrowed from the history of David's behavior before Achish and his servants at Gath (1 Sam. xxi. 13-15).