The Known Facts of His Life

All that is known of Ephraim’s person and life on early and trustworthy evidence can be summed up briefly. He was born inside the Roman frontier, in the ancient and famous city of Nisibis in Mesopotamia, in or before the earliest days of the reign of Constantine the Great, who reigned from 306 to 337. He was a disciple of Saint Jacob, bishop of that city, who died in the year 338. He lived in Nisibis under Jacob and the three bishops who followed him one after another, through three unsuccessful sieges laid against it by Sapor, king of Persia, until its final surrender. That came under the terms of the shameful peace that the emperor Jovian made with Sapor after the defeat and death of Julian, who reigned before him, in the year 363. Nisibis was then abandoned by its Christian inhabitants. Ephraim finally settled at Edessa and made his home as a “Solitary” in a cell on the “Mount of Edessa,” a rocky hill close to the city, where many anchorites went to live in retreat. Here he grew famous as a teacher and a champion against heresy, and no less as an ascetic and a saint. The fame of Saint Basil, metropolitan of Caesarea in Cappadocia from 370 to 379, drew him from his solitude to visit that great bishop and teacher of the church, and from him he received the office of deacon. Some say that he was raised to the priesthood, but it is agreed that he never became a bishop. He died at an advanced age in his retreat, in the year 373 according to most authorities, though some suppose that he lived until 378. He was a very prolific writer, and left an immense quantity of writings, a large part of which survives: sermons, commentaries and hymns. Together these make up such a body of instruction in the substance of Scripture and the faith of the church that they have rightly earned him the title malpono, or teacher. Not only have his hymns done much to shape the worship of the Syrian churches, which have taken large portions of them into their services, but his sermons are paid this unusual honor: readings chosen from them were appointed, and are still read, in the regular course of public worship. [a]