St. Jacob Baradaeus

• Jacob Baradaeus has no extant writings. The following details are biographical only:
• Ordained bishop of Edessa with oecumenical authority throughout the East. By his indomitable zeal and untiring activity, this remarkable man rescued the community from the extinction with which persecution by the imperial power threatened it.
• The name of Jacob Baradaeus (“the ragged”) was applied in the eighth century to the non-Chalcedonian churches in Asia Minor, Syria, Lebanon, Palestine, and Egypt - the “Jacobites.” This nomination is rejected by the Syrian and Coptic Orthodox Churches because they are apostolic churches founded by the apostles themselves at the beginning of Christianity, and not by Jacob Baradaeus in the 6th century.
• There are two Syriac biographies of his life by his contemporary, John of Asia bishop of Ephesus, who was ordained by him. The surname Baradaeus is derived from the ragged mendicant’s garb patched up out of the old saddle-cloths. His father, Theophilus Bar-Manu, was one of the clergy. In pursuance of a vow of his parents, St. Jacobus,when he was two years old,was placed in the

monastery of Pesilto in the region of Nisibis under the care of abbot Eustathius, and trained in Greek and Syriac literature and in the strictest asceticism. He became remarkable for the severity of his self-discipline.

• With Sargis, another monk of his house, he went in 527 to Constantinople as an ambassador for his interests of the non-Chalcedonians in Syria. The Empress Theodora was noted for her sympathy to the non-Chalcedonian party.
• After the death of his parents, he manumitted the slaves and made over all his inherited property to them, reserving nothing for himself. He became a presbyter, his fame spread over the East. The empress Theodora was eager to see him and she received him with much honor. He lived in a monastery at Constantinople for 15 years as a complete recluse after which time he was made bishop of Edessa. At the same time, a fellow non- Chalcedonian, Theodosius, became bishop of Bostra in response to a request from Harith ibn-Gabala, sheikh of the Ghassanid Arab tribes at the eastern Roman border, for an “Orthodox,” that is, non-Chalcedonian, leader.

• Making the most of his appointment, Jacob began to fill numerous bishoprics in Asia Minor and Syria with non-Chalcedonians, of ten monks from prominent Syrian monasteries. Thus he re-established a non-Chalcedonian hierarchy disrupted after the ouster in 518 of St. Severus, patriarch of Antioch. His appointment of Sargis as patriarch of Antioch completed his task.
• Justinian enforced the Chalcedonian decrees universally, and the bishops and clergy who refused them were punished with imprisonment, deprivation, and exile. Whole districts of Syria and the adjacent countries were thus deprived of their pastors. A considerable number of bishops from all parts of the East, including Theodosius of Alexandria, Anthimus the deposed patriarch of Constantinople, Constantius of Laodicea, John of Egypt, Peter, and others, who had come to Constantinople in the hope of mitigating the displeasure of the emperor, were held by Justinian in one of the imperial castles in a kind of honorable imprisonment. By them Jacobus was consecrated to the episcopate.

• Jacobus in his tattered beggar’s disguise, traversed on foot the whole of Asia Minor, Syria, Mesopotamia, and the adjacent provinces, even to the borders of Persia, everywhere ordaining bishops and clergy, by his exhortations or his encyclical letters encouraging depressed co-religionists to courageously maintain their faith against the advocates of two natures, and organizing them into a complete spiritual body.
• He consecrated bishops, ordained clergy, and united the scattered elements in an organization so well planned and so stable that it has subsisted unharmed through all the many political and dynastic storms in that portion of the world. He is stated to have ordained the incredible number of 80, 000 clergy. John of Ephesus says 100, 000, including 89 bishops and two patriarchs.
• At last, he set out to Alexandria. On the arrival of his party, including several bishops, at the monastery of Cassianus or St. Romanus on the Egyptian frontier, a deadly sickness attacked them, and St. Jacob himself fell victim to it. His episcopate lasted 37 years and his life 73 years.