Jacob of Serugh

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Oriental Orthodox)
3 Koiak (Coptic calendar)
AttributesStaff, pointed hood, flute

Jacob of Serugh (

romanized: Mār Yaʿquḇ),[1] was one of the foremost Syriac poet-theologians, perhaps only second in stature to Ephrem the Syrian and equal to Narsai. He lived most of his life as an ecclesiastical official in Suruç, located in modern-day Turkey. He would finally become a bishop (of Batnan) near the end of his life in 519.[2] He belonged to a Miaphysite or Non-Chalcedonian Christianity, although he was fairly moderate compared to a number of his contemporaries.[3]

The positive reception of his work earned him various nicknames, including "Flute of the Holy Spirit" (alongside his predecessor Ephrem the Syrian) and "Lyre of the Believing Church" (in Antiochene Syriac Christianity). Writing in the late seventh and early eighth centuries, Jacob of Edessa attributed 763 mimre to him, of which 400 remain extant, at least 225 have been edited and published, and the longest of which is 1,400 verses.[2] His prolific work had already achieved him a great reputation before the end of his lifetime, and his extant corpus makes him the third-largest single author collection of homilies from late antiquity, behind only Augustine of Hippo and John Chrysostom.[4]

Life

Jacob was born around the middle of the fifth century in the village of Kurtam (ܟܘܪܬܘܡ) on the

Kavadh I within the Roman borders.[5]

In 519 and at the age of 67, Jacob was elected

anti-Chalcedonians became increasingly brutal towards the end of Jacob's life, he remained surprisingly quiet on such divisive theological and political issues. However, when pressed in correspondence by Paul, bishop of Edessa, he openly expressed dissatisfaction with the proceedings of Chalcedon.[citation needed
]

Literary activity

The primary genres Jacob composed his writings in, for which he is now best known for today, include those of sugyoto (dialogue poems with an acrostic), turgome (prose homilies for liturgical feasts), madroshe and mimre (narrative or verse poems without strophies).[2]

Jacob's homilies on the Genesis creation narrative was the first Hexaemeron to be composed in the Syriac language.[6] Later, Jacob of Edessa would also compose his own Hexaemeron.[7]

Jacob's literary activity was unceasing. According to

Christian martyrs, the fall of the idols and the First Council of Nicaea.[8]

Of Jacob's prose works, which are not nearly so numerous, the most interesting are his letters, which throw light upon some of the events of his time and reveal his attachment to Miaphysitism, which was then struggling for supremacy in the Syriac churches, and particularly at Edessa, over the opposite teaching of Nestorius.[8]

Jacob gained sufficient repute as an author and composer of works that others began to compose works and pseudonymously attribute them to Jacob, one example being the Song of Alexander, thought to have been written sometime between the last quarter of the sixth and the first half of the seventh century.[9][10]

Political affairs

Towards the end of his life, the fate of Miaphysite leaders such as himself took a turn for the worse with the accession of

Abgar of Edessa, the man credited with introducing Christianity to Edessa.[11] To some surprise, aside from praising these two, Jacob also praised the faith of Justin in his letter to Paul: for allowing Paul to return to the city, by comparing him to Abgar, by describing his crown which displays features of the cross of Jesus, and more.[11]

Another affair that Jacob became somewhat involved in was during the persecutions of the Christian community of Najran under the Himyarite king Dhu Nuwas, which had caused widespread reactions in the world of Syriac Christianity. Between 518 and 521, Jacob composed his Letter to the Himyarites to help extol them for their faith and their endurance. This text is also the only extant literary composition that was sent into pre-Islamic Arabia.[12][13]

Works

Jacob is especially famous for his metrical

dodecasyllabic verse of which, says Bar Hebraeus, he composed over eight hundred known to us.[14] Only a selection of them have been published in modern translations, but an ongoing translation series is underway and being published by Gorgias Press. As of 2018, 20% of Jacob's corpus had been translated and 33% had been assigned to scholars for translation.[15]
The most recent compilation of the works of Jacob is Roger-Youssef Akhrass and Imad Syryany, eds., 160 Unpublished Homilies of Jacob of Serugh (Damascus 2017), 1:xiv – xxiii.

Editions

Translations

Homilies on specific figures

Homilies on creation

Other homilies

See also

References

Citations

  1. ^ Brock, Sebastian (2011). "Yaʿqub of Serugh". Gorgias Encyclopedic Dictionary of the Syriac Heritage: Electronic Edition.
  2. ^ a b c Chatonnet & Debié 2023, p. 150–151.
  3. ^ Forness 2022, p. 156.
  4. ^ Forness 2022, p. 156–157.
  5. ^ McLean 1911, pp. 114–115.
  6. ^ Tumara 2024, p. 170.
  7. ^ Romeny 2008, pp. 146–147.
  8. ^ a b McLean 1911, p. 115.
  9. ^ Reinink, Gerrit J. (2003). "Alexander the Great in Seventh-Century Syriac 'Apocalyptic' Texts". Byzantinorossica. 2: 150–178.
  10. ^ Tesei 2023, p. 22.
  11. ^ a b Forness 2022.
  12. ^ Forness 2019, p. 115–131.
  13. ^ Durmaz 2022, p. 75.
  14. ^ The earliest witness is a fragmentary palimpsest from Mesoptamia formerly stored at Deir el-Suryan, Egypt see Christa Müller-Kessler (2020). "Jacob of Serugh's Homily on the Presentation in the Temple in an Early Syriac Palimpsest (BL, Add 17.137, no. 2)." ARAM 32: 9–16.
  15. ^ Gorgias Press (28 June 2018). "Jacob of Sarug in English Translation".

Sources

  • Chatonnet, Françoise Briquel; Debié, Muriel (2023). The Syriac World: In Search of a Forgotten Christianity. Yale University Press.
  • Durmaz, Reyhan (2022). Stories Between Christianity and Islam: Saints, Memory, and Cultural Exchange in Late Antiquity and Beyond. University of California Press.
  • Forness, Michael (2019). Preaching Christology in the Roman Near East: A Study of Jacob of Serugh. Oxford University Press.
  • Forness, Philip Michael (2022). "Faithful Rulers and Theological Deviance: Ephrem the Syrian and Jacob of Serugh on the Roman Emperor". In Forness, Philip Michael; Hasse-Ungeheuer, Alexandra; Leppin, Hartmut (eds.). The Good Christian Ruler in the First Millennium. pp. 141–167.
  • Romeny, Bas Ter Haar (2008). "Jacob of Edessa on Genesis: His Quotations of the Peshitta and his Revision of the Text". In Romeny, Bas Ter Haar (ed.). Jacob of Edessa and the Syriac Culture of His Day. Brill. pp. 145–158.
  • Tesei, Tommaso (2023). The Syriac Legend of Alexander's Gate. Oxford University Press.
  • Tumara, Nebojsa (2024). "Creation in Syriac Christianity". In Goroncy, Jason (ed.). T&T Clark Handbook of the Doctrine of Creation. Bloomsbury Publishing. pp. 164–175.

 This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: McLean, Norman (1911). "Jacob of Sĕrūgh". In Chisholm, Hugh (ed.). Encyclopædia Britannica. Vol. 15 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. pp. 114–115.

Further reading

  • George Kiraz (ed), Jacob of Serugh and His Times: Studies in Sixth-Century Syriac Christianity, Gorgias Press, 2010.
  • Philip Michael Forness, Preaching Christology in the Roman Near East: A Study of Jacob of Serugh, Oxford University Press, 2019.
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