5. Interval between Visit to Basil and Persecution by Valens.--The interval of four years or more, which the Life seems to place between Ephraim's return from Cæsarea to Edessa, and the persecution of the Edessenes by Valens, is likewise impossible. For at Cæsarea all agree that Ephraim found Basil Archbishop. But Basil was consecrated late in 370, and therefore Ephraim's first meeting with him, which was on the Feast of the Epiphany, cannot be placed earlier than January, 371. But the persecution took place probably in 371, or at latest in 373--thus reducing the possible length of interval to two years at most--probably to a few months. It may be said, however, that the biographer, though he relates the persecution after mentioning the four years' interval, does not mean to imply that it was subsequent in time to that interval. But it will be shown farther on (under next head) that the four years' interval is inadmissible, independently of the date of that persecution; inasmuch as Ephraim survived only three years after his visit to Basil.
6. Death of Basil before that of Ephraim.--The story of the lady who was sent by Basil to Ephraim, and by Ephraim back to Basil, only in time to see his corpse,--and of Ephraim's grief for Basil's death, cannot be accepted unless we set aside the consent of the chronologers, who agree that Ephraim died in 373, [292] --whereas Basil survived to 1st January, 379. It is true that there is extant among the Greek works ascribed to Ephraim, an encomium on Basil, [293] which seems to be genuine. This, however, is not to be regarded as an eulogium pronounced after Basil's death; but rather as a panegyric in which the living man is apostrophized. [294] We may safely conclude that the story, which rests on a basis of erroneous chronology, is itself a fiction.
But the story of Ephraim's helpful intervention and activity in a time of famine, which is undated, having early attestation, may well be accepted as true, and assigned to the winter of 372-3. The authorities who attest the date of his death as 373, place it in the month of Haziran (June); [295] and we may reasonably conjecture that the exertions and anxieties of the season of famine had told too heavily on a frame already wasted by years and by excessive austerities, and had thus hastened his end.
[278] This is related also in the Greek version of the Testament, but is an evident interpolation. It is not in the Syriac.
[279] This has been pointed out by Dr. Payne Smith (Dict. of Christian Biography, Vol. II., p. 137), who cites the passages here adduced, from Opp. Syr. II. 499; Opp. Gr. I. 129.
[280] This was first clearly established by Spanheim (Observationes in Julianum, pp. 183 ff.; 188 ff.; 1696) in part anticipated by Petave (Petavius) and de Valois (Valesius). He has been followed in this by nearly all historians, including Gibbon (Decline and Fall. chap. xviii).
[281] Juliani Orationes, ed. Spanheim (1666), Orat. II., pp. 62 ff.; see also pp. 26 ff. (Orat. I.).
[282] The Life gives but seventy days as the whole duration of the siege--a period quite insufficient for the construction of the embankment.
[283] Ephraim seems to convey that Sapor, when repulsed, at once withdrew: Julian represents his withdrawal as gradual. The former probably has in view the raising of the siege; the latter, the retreat from the invaded territory.
[284] Compare Sachau's description, Reise, pp. 390, 391.
[285] That Valgesh is the "third" Bishop here meant, appears by comparison with Hymn XVII. 2, where the three are named, Jacob, Babu (not elsewhere mentioned), and Valgesh.
[286] So (e.g.) Baronius, Annales (s. q. 338); Acta Sanctorum, Febr. (I. p. 51). A few quite recent writers follow these. This error of Theodoret thus ascribing to the first siege the events which belong to the history of the third, is easily accounted for. His narrative of the siege and the breaching of the walls, the apparition, and St. Jacob's prayer answered by the plague of mosquitoes, originally appeared in his earlier work, the Religious History--a collection of lives of miracle-working saints of whom St. Jacob stands first--from which (as he himself notes) he has transferred it with little change, to his Ecclesiastical History. As the biographer of this, the greatest Bishop of Nisibis, Theodoret would naturally associate with his name all that history or tradition reported of Divine protection extended to the city in her perils--especially in those of her last and most signal siege which ended in her most signal deliverance. He probably knew that a siege of Nisibis had occurred in St. Jacob's time, and would readily overlook the brief interval of twelve years by which the saint's death preceded the later siege. One of the Nisibene Hymns (XIII. 18, 19, 21) suggests a further explanation how this third siege came to be attached to the legend of St. Jacob. His body was treasured reverently in the city, and to its presence her deliverance was attributed. Thus, he was still (in Ephraim's words) "the fountain within her," "the fruit in her bosom," "the body laid within her that became for her a wall without." The traditions of that dead presence in the last siege, and of his living presence in the first, would soon blend together; and the expression of pious gratitude for the protection ascribed by the besieged of 350 to the virtue of his remains, would be mistaken as evidence that the man himself was among them to help them by his prayers and exhortations in the struggle by which the fall of their city was so narrowly averted.
[287] In the Chronicle, we read that Sapor saw, in the daytime, "a man running to and fro on the walls," in the likeness of the Emperor; but again, we are told of "the angel that appeared." In Theodoret's narratives the apparition wears the royal "purple and diadem," and is described as "divine" (Hist. Relig.), and "incorporeal" (Hist. Eccles.). In the Chronography, "an angel stands on the tower, in shining raiment, holding by the hand the Emperor Constantius"; a duplication of the vision which seemingly arose from a misunderstanding of the Chronicle. That Constantius was not in Nisibis during this siege, is a point on which all authorities are agreed. Julian, while lavishing on the Emperor unmeasured praises for the repulse of Sapor, attributes it not to his personal presence, but to his foresight in previous preparations made a year before. He is known, however, to have sojourned in the city in May, 345,--see Cod. Theodosianus, (XI. 7, 5) for a law issued thence by him on the 12th of that month (Lex. 5 de exactionibus).
[288] The Nisibene Hymns, only recovered some fifty years ago from the Nitrian Monastery of the Theotokos, and first printed in 1866, yielding as they do authoritative and contemporary confirmation of the accounts of the siege given by Julian and by Valgesh, come in as decisive evidence to prove that the Chronicler of the seventh century and the Chronographer of the ninth had better fortune or better judgment in their choice of authorities than Theodoret in the fifth. It is, moreover, a signal instance of the true historical instinct that guided Gibbon in his great work, that in relating this history (ch. xviii.), he followed Julian and the Chronicle, and refused to be misled (as our biographer was) by Theodoret--except as regards St. Jacob whom he supposed to have been still Bishop in 350. The first to point out this error as to St. Jacob, was Valesius in his note on the passage in Theodoret (H. E. II. 30), as above. He remarked that "the Alexandrine (Paschal) Chronicle makes Vologeses (Valgesh), not Jacob, Bishop of Nisibis in 350." It was replied (and with justice) that the Chronicle, though it records the siege, and cites the Epistle of Valgesh, Bishop of the city, does not say that he was Bishop at the time of the siege. Another Chronicle, the Edessene (a relic of the sixth century), first printed by Assemani in 1719 (Biblioth. Orient. I., pp. 388 ff.) determines 338 as the date of Jacob's death, and 361 as that of Valgesh. Our Nisibene Hymns (see above, note 4) make it plain that Valgesh was bishop in 350, as Valesius rightly (though on insufficient grounds) laid down.
[289] The shorter Syriac Life agrees in affirming the fact of his visit to Egypt, but says nothing of its duration. No other authority, earlier or contemporary, hints at it.
[290] Assemani, Biblioth. Orient., I., p. 46, note 1.
[291] It is mentioned by Huntington (afterwards Provost of Trinity College, Dublin, and finally Bishop of Raphoe) who visited the place, 1678-9 (see his Epistolæ, XXXIX., p. 69): again by J. S. Assemani in 1715 (see reference in note 6). More recent visitors (Lord de la Zouche in 1837, and Archdeacon Tattam in 1839) do not speak of it. Of the Nitrian monasteries (reputed to have once numbered fifty, or even more), the principal one, that of the Theotokos, whence the libraries of the Vatican and of the British museum have derived their most precious acquisitions of Syriac mss., belongs to the Syrian Jacobites, whose Church has always been in full communion with that of the Copts. A second belongs to the Copts; a third to the Greeks. The fourth (that of St. Pesoës) does not appear to be specially appropriated, but to be mainly Coptic, though (as appears above) not to the exclusion of Syrians.
[292] See Professor Lamy's edition of Ephraim, II., coll. 94ff., for the authorities on this point,--of which the chief are:--The Edessene Chronicle (sixth century) and Jacob of Edessa (seventh century--cited by Elias of Nisibis), both of whom give 373 as the date, as does also the early Chronicle contained in the "Book of the Caliphs." Jerome (De Viris. Illustr. cxv.) merely says that Ephraim died in the reign of Valens,--i.e. not later than 378, and therefore before Basil.
[293] Opp. Græc.,II., 289 ff.
[294] See Lamy as above, coll. 84 ff.
[295] On the 9th, according to Chron. Edes. and the shorter Life; the Vatican Life says the 15th; the Book of the Caliphs (see Land's Anecdota, Tom. I., p. 15 [Syr. text]) and most other authorities, the 18th; Dionysius, in his Chronicle, the 19th (ap. Assemani, B. O. II., p. 54).
VI.--Rectification of the Vatican Text of the Life.
If the Life had reached us in its Vatican form only, it would have been necessary to correct one or two farther errors:
1. Date of his Baptism Mistaken.--According to the Vatican Life, Ephraim was baptized at the age of 28, after the surrender of Nisibis by Jovian. The surrender was in 363, and the age assigned to him would therefore make 334 the earliest admissible date for his birth--ten years after the Council of Nicæa, at which the Life records that he was present! The Parisian Life corrects this absurdity and shows how the mistake arose. The statement, in this version of the story, is that after quitting Nisibis, "he retired to Beth-Garbaia, where he had received baptism at the age of 18." By omitting the auxiliary "had" (which in Syriac, as in English, expresses the pluperfect) the Vatican scribe or editor introduces this blunder about the date of the baptism. It is probable that, without having any distinct knowledge of the date of the departure from Nisibis, he felt that Ephraim must have been more than 18 at this stage of the narrative, and strove to make the age cohere better with the time required for the events related, by changing 18 into 28.
2. Julian substituted for Valens.--The substitution of the name of Julian for that of Valens as the persecutor of Edessa, has been already noticed. That the story (with the incident of the martyr-mother with her two sons) belongs to the time of Valens, is established by the united testimony of Socrates, Sozomen, and Theodoret. The whole history is clear, and coherent with itself and with chronology, in the Parisian Life; whereas the Vatican version of it, by bringing Ephraim to Edessa in the reign of Julian, makes hopeless confusion. [296] It is to be noted that the names Julianus and Valens, so distinct as written in Latin, differ but little when transliterated (without vowel-points) into Syriac.
[296] It is to be regretted that neither the Parisian Life, nor the Nisibene Hymns, was before the writer of the article Ephraim in Smith and Wace's Dictionary of Christian Biography. The former would have warned him from being misled by the Vatican Life into the error of ascribing to Julian the persecution under Valens; the latter would have shown him that both versions of the Life confuse the first siege of Nisibis with the third.
VII.--Chronology of the Life of Ephraim.
Thus the fixed points for determining the chronology of Ephraim's life are:
1. The death of his patron, St. Jacob, Bishop of Nisibis, in 338, after the first siege of that city.
2. The third siege, in which he was among the defenders of the city, in 350.
3. The surrender of Nisibis by Jovian, and its abandonment by its Christian inhabitants, 363; followed by Ephraim's removal to Edessa.