Michael the Syrian

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Michael the Syrian (also known as Michael the Great; or Michael Syrus) (d. 1199 AD) was an Assyrian[1] patriarch of the Syrian Orthodox Church from 1166-1199. He is best known today as the author of the largest medieval Chronicle, which he composed in Aramaic. Various other materials written in his own hand have survived.

Contents

[edit] Life

He was born ca. 1126 in Melitene (today Malatya), the son of the Priest Eliya (Elias), of the Qindasi family. He died at the monastery of Bar Sauma on 7th Nov. 1199.

[edit] The Chronicle

This work ran from Creation up to his own times. It is also a source of many documents not otherwise preserved. He made use of earlier Ecclesiastical Histories now lost. It includes a version of the so-called Testimonium Flavianum.

His work has been used by NASA scientists because of his record of climatic changes, now known to be linked to volcano eruptions. He records that in 536 AD:

"The sun became dark and its darkness lasted for 18 months. Each day it shone for about 4 hours, and still this light was only a feeble shadow. Everyone declared that the sun would never recover its full light. The fruits did not ripen and the wine tasted like sour grapes."

and in 626 AD:

"In the year A.D. 626, the light of half the sphere of the sun disappeared, and there was darkness from October to June. As a result people said that the sphere of the sun would never be restored to its original state."

He is a contemporary source for the Latin crusader states, and records the tolerance and liberalism of the Catholic Franks towards the miaphysites:

"The pontiffs of our Jacobite church lived in the middle of them without being persecuted or molested. In Palestine, as in Syria, they never raised any difficulty on account of their faith, nor insisted on a single formula for all the peoples and all the languages of the Christians. But they considered as Christian everyone who venerated the cross without enquiry or cross-examination."[2]

He also praises the Templars and Hospitallers to his own people:

"When the Templars or Hospitallers have to occupy a military post, and hold it to the death, they die doing so. When a brother dies, they feed the poor on his behalf for forty days, and give lodgings to forty people. They consider those who die in combat as martyrs. They distribute to the poor a tenth part of their food and drink. Every time they bake bread in one of their houses, they reserve a tenth part for the poor. In spite of their great riches, they are charitable to all who venerate the cross. They founded everywhere hospitals, serving and helping strangers who had fallen sick." [3]

The work is extant in a single manuscript written in Syriac in a Serto hand. It is today held in a locked box in a church in Aleppo and not accessible to scholarship. However the French scholar J.B. Chabot arranged for a copy to be made by hand and published it, with a French translation, for which he was accused of 'stealing' the text.

An Armenian translation also exists, from which Victor Langlois published a French translation in 1868.

[edit] Notes

  1. ^ History of Mikhael The Great Chabot Edition p. 748, 750, quoted after Addai Scher, Hestorie De La Chaldee Et De "Assyrie"[1]
  2. ^ "http://www.templiers.net/saladin/pdf/fpdf_2.php"
  3. ^ "http://www.templiers.net/saladin/pdf/fpdf_2.php"

[edit] References

  • Sebastian Brock, A brief outline of Syriac literature. Moran Etho 9. Kottayam, India: SEERI (1997)
  • Jean-Baptiste Chabot, Chronique de Michel le Syrien, Patriarche Jacobite d'Antiche (1166-1199). Éditée pour la première fois et traduite en francais I-V (1899;1901;1905;1910;1924 Repr.1963). In 5 volumes.
  • F[rancois] Nau, Sur quelques autographes de Michel le Syrien, in: Revue de l'Orient Chrétien 19 (1914) 378-397.

[edit] External links