A Dictionary of Greek and Roman biography and mythology

7. Of EDESSA, the elder, called also by a Latinized form of his Syrian cognomen BARADAEUS, and by the Greeks Zanzalus (Ζανζαλος), a word which Nicephorus Callisti interprets as meaning " poor," was originally a monk in the monastery of Phasilta. and was elevated to the bishopric of Edessa A. D. 541. He took a leading part in the Monophysite council, in which Paulus was elected patriarch of Antioch of their party. He succeeded in uniting the various subdivisions of the Monophysites into one sect, and they have received from him the name of Jacobites. He died A. D. 578. The Nestorians speak of him as patriarch of the Jacobites, but this is not correct: he never attained any higher dignity than that of bishop of Edessa; the error has probably arisen from his great influence in his party, and from his having given name to them. Both Jacobites and Nestorians have the most aburd and exaggerated stories respecting him: the Jacobites affirm that he ordained two patriarchs, one archbishop, twenty bishops, and a hundred thousand priests and deacons: the Nestorians that he ordained eighty thousand priests and deacons. He has a place in the calendar of the Jacobites. He composed an Anaphora or Liturgy, of which a Latin version is given in the Liturgiae Orientales of Renaudot, vol. ii. p. 333. Cave and others ascribe to him the Catechesis of the Jacobites, which is one of their symbolic books; but Assemani has shown that it is of later date. (Niceph. Callist. H. E. 18.52; Assemani, Bibl. Orient. vol. ii. p. 62, &c.; Cave, Hist. Litt. vol. i. p. 524; Renaudot, l.c. and notes on p. 342.)