St. Rabbula of Edessa

• St. Rabbula, a contemporary of Marutha, bishop of Maiferqat, was born in the 4th century in Chalcis (Qenneshrin).
• The tradition is that his father was a wealthy pagan priest and that his mother was a Christian. He became a Christian under the influence of Eusebius, bishop of Chalcis and Acacius, bishop of Aleppo, and subsequently retired to the monastery of Abraham at Chalcis.
• When Diogenes, the bishop of Edessa died, Rabbula was selected by a synod at Antioch as his successor, a post which he held for 24 years.
• These were difficult times for any eastern bishop, and not less so for a bishop in Edessa, for, so his biographer claims, Rabbula found that he had to contend with Bardaisanites, Arians, Marcionites, Manichaeans and Messalians.
• This situation was further complicated by the controversy centering on Nestorius, who had become patriarch of Constantinople in 428.
• Rabbula at first had sided with Nestorius, and at the Council of Ephesus (431) he had supported John of Antioch, a friend of Nestorius, but a few months later he decided that St. Cyril of Alexandria, an opponent of Nestorius, was right.
• He translated some of the writings of St. Cyril from Greek to Syriac, including the work of St. Cyril On the True Faith which he had sent to Theodosius II.
• A visit to Constantinople, 431-32, only confirmed him in

this position, and from this time on he was an opponent of Nestorianism. This made the work in his own see all the more difficult, for Edessa was traditionally sympathetic with Theodore of Mopsuestia, and Rabbula’s public burning of the works of Theodore and of Diodore of Tarsus, only added to his troubles, especially when his own clergy, headed by Ibas, were increasingly discontented with his leadership.

• But he saw clearly that the evil must be attacked at his source in the works of Diodore and Theodore.
• That this austere and scholarly monk had his human side is shown by his constant concern for the poor. From the time he disposed of his private property when entering Abraham’s monastery until his establishment in Edessa of hospitals for the sick and needy of both sexes, his social conscience was very much alive, and helps to explain why his death was an occasion for general grief in the city.

• Whatever his earlier education, St. Rabbula was sufficiently bilingual for his biographer to credit him with translating the New Testament from Greek into Syriac.
• He may have sponsored the Peshitta Syriac translation of the Bible
• He established firm rules of conduct for priests and monks, some of which have come down to us and have been edited, most recently, by A. Voobus. The canons for monks are of special interest because they indicate that coenobitical monasticism was expanding within the Syrian Church at this time.
• He wrote a set of 26 monastic rules; some of these rules are summarized below: 1. No women are to enter monasteries. 4. Monks shall not drink wine. 5. Monks shall not grow hair. 10. Heretical books are not to be found in monasteries. 11. Buying and selling in the monasteries is forbidden except for needful things. 12. No monk shall own private possessions. 13. The monks shall not meet with relatives. 14. Sickness is to be endured within the monastery, and is not to be used as a pretext for visiting the village or town. 16. Attendance at the hours of worship is compulsory and no excuses for absence are

accepted. 17. Strangers are to be received kindly. 18. Dwelling in isolation (within the monastery?) is allowed to a monk only rarely. 24. If a monk dies, he is to be buried quietly by the monks without the presence of outsiders. 26. An itinerant monk is to be received only if he is recommended by the abbot of the last monastery he was in.

• Nearly all his few surviving works were printed by Overbeck in the original Syriac text in his edition of Ephraem Syrus (Oxf. 1865, pp. 200-248, 362-378). They include the scanty remains of the 640 letters which according to his biographers, he wrote to the emperor, bishops, prefects, and monks.
• Rabbula, also with Acacius of Melitene, wrote to warn the Armenian bishops of the Nestorian heresy in the writings of Diodore and Theodore.