The Life as Expanded by Medieval Biographers, Part 2

The controversy against the disciples of this man gave Ephraim’s writing a push to which his fame is largely due. In the case just described, as we see, his attack took the form of a hymn, and his biographer tells us that it was in this controversy that he was first led to take up hymns as a way of teaching truth and refuting error. Some of his hymns we have can be confidently placed earlier: the first twenty-one of the Nisibis collection, which are the Nisibene Hymns proper, belong to the time of the third siege, in the year 350. But those are songs of triumph and thanksgiving, or of personal praise and exhortation, not of controversy. The idea of using hymns in controversy he borrowed, we are told, from his opponents. It seems that Harmonius, the son of Bardaisan, had spread his father’s false teaching among the people. That teaching was set out in a series of a hundred and fifty hymns, written in irreverent rivalry with the Psalms of David, and Harmonius set them to attractive tunes that caught the ear of the crowd and inclined them to accept his doctrines. Ephraim himself tells us so in his fifty-third metrical homily, “Against Heretics,” which is not included in our selection, though he credits the work to Bardaisan alone: “He shaped hymns and joined them to tunes. He composed psalms and brought in musical modes. By weights and measures he divided up his language. For the simple he mixed poison with sweetness, and the sick will not choose wholesome food. He looked to David, so that he might be adorned with David’s beauty and recommended by his likeness. He too composed a hundred and fifty psalms.” [a]

To refute the heresies spread in this way, Ephraim borrowed the tunes Harmonius had used. His hymns, set to those tunes, soon won the day for orthodoxy. This was partly by the force of their truth, partly by their greater literary power, and partly by the help of a choir he formed among the nuns, whom he had sing them morning and evening in the churches. So the rival hymns of heresy were pushed aside, and Ephraim’s hymns won the place they have held in the church ever since, wherever Syriac is the language of the church, even though it is no longer the language people speak. He celebrated this victory with the following song of triumphant cursing:

To this is added a verse, the response of Balai, or Balaeus, one of his disciples:

Another display of Ephraim’s zeal against heresy, which the compiler of the History wisely leaves out, is vouched for, unhappily for the good name of both, and with plain approval, by Gregory of Nyssa. Apollinaris, who lived at the same time and whose false teaching Ephraim detested, had written down his heresies in two volumes, which he gave into the keeping of a woman who belonged to his sect. Ephraim went to this woman and persuaded her to lend him the books, pretending that he agreed with their author’s teaching and wanted to use them in arguing against its opponents. At her request he returned them a short time later. But before doing so, he treated them with fish glue in such a way that the pages of each stuck together into a solid block, while on the outside they looked unharmed. Soon afterward he challenged Apollinaris to meet him in a public debate on the articles of faith that the heretic had attacked. Apollinaris tried to decline the contest, pleading his old age and his weakness. But he agreed to it on one condition: that he be allowed to read from these volumes the statement and defense of his teaching that he had written in them. On these terms the two men met. Apollinaris was called on to defend his position, and his writings were placed in his hands. But when he went to open the books, it was no use. No part of either volume would give way under his fingers. He had to give up and withdraw, baffled and ashamed, and so dismayed that it brought on an illness that nearly killed him.

Another incident of this period told in the History is a miracle, a real one this time, if the story is true, that Ephraim worked on a paralyzed man. Seeing him as he sat begging at the door of a church in Edessa, the holy man asked him, “Do you want to be made well?” “Yes, my lord. Lay your hand on me,” was the reply. With the words “In the name of Christ, get up and walk,” he was healed at once, and he went away glorifying God.

At the end of four years, messengers came to him from Basil, summoning him to come and be consecrated bishop of some city that is not named. Sozomen tells us, in his Church History, Book 3, chapter 16, that he had been elected to it. When Ephraim learned what they had come for, he pretended to be mad. He went up and down the streets in an unseemly way, dressed in clothes of many colors, eating bread as he went and letting his spit run down. In this way he managed to escape the promotion he did not want. The messengers, shocked at his behavior, went back without him and reported that they had found a madman. Basil cried out, “O hidden pearl of price, whom the world does not know! You are the madmen, and he is the sane one.”

In these days the city and the Mount of Edessa suffered an invasion by the Huns, who plundered, murdered and raped without mercy, not even sparing the monks’ cells and the convents. Ephraim is said to have recorded this disaster in writings that have not come down to us.

From another danger the people of Edessa were saved by their faith and their steadfastness. In the days of their bishop Barses, who held the see from 361 to 378, the Arian emperor Valens, who reigned from 364 to 378, came near the city in the course of his persecution of the orthodox. He summoned the inhabitants to come out to him in his camp and hear his wishes there. They ignored the command and gathered in the great Church of Saint Thomas, where they and their bishop kept on praying without stopping. The historian Socrates, a trustworthy and early authority of the fifth century, confirms our History here. He explains that Valens had ordered their church to be handed over to the Arians, and was enraged with them for resisting his decree, and with his prefect Modestus for failing to carry it out. Then Valens, finding them defiant, ordered one of his generals to enter the city and put the people to the sword. According to Sozomen, who also tells the story, this was the same Modestus. Modestus, who was a humane man, was trying to persuade them to give way when he met a woman leading her two sons to the church. He tried to stop her, warning her of the danger she was running into. But she replied, “I hear that those who fear God are to be killed, and I am hurrying to win the crown with the rest.” “But what about these boys?” he asked. “Are they your sons?” “They are,” she answered, “and we pray, both I and they, that we may be made an offering to the Lord.” Amazed at her determination, he reported the matter to Valens, to convince him that the people of Edessa were ready to die rather than submit. The emperor was moved to give way. The people came out with their bishop and priests. He heard their plea, was ashamed of his cruel plan, pardoned their disobedience, and went away. This well-attested incident belongs to the year 371, or the year before or after it. Ephraim celebrated this victory of faith in the following verses:

After peace and orthodoxy had been restored in this way, Ephraim went back to his retreat on the Mount. He is not recorded as ever leaving it again, except on one occasion, which will be told shortly.

Our author says that the death of Basil, at the end of 378, caused Ephraim great grief, and that he mourned him in hymns. But, as will be shown below, this is hardly possible, even if the latest date for Ephraim’s death is accepted.

Another miraculous incident connected with Ephraim’s life belongs to the year of Basil’s death. A woman of high rank but evil life in Caesarea was moved to repent. She wrote out a full confession of her sins on a sheet of paper and gave it to Basil, who at her pleading laid it before the Lord with prayer. Her repentance and his intercession had such power that the record of all her guilt vanished from the paper, except for one sin, more terrible than the rest. Disappointed in her hope of full pardon, she went back to Basil and begged him to have this sin wiped out too. He encouraged her to keep on praying, and advised her to go to the Mount of Edessa, to Ephraim, and to obtain what she wanted through him. So she made her way to Ephraim and cried out to him, “Have pity on me, you holy one of God.” When he heard Basil’s advice and her request, he denied having any such power to prevail with God as Basil had credited him with. He advised her instead to hurry back and obtain further intercession from her archbishop. So she returned to Caesarea, but, as it seemed, too late. Basil had died before she arrived, and she met his body as it was being carried to burial. In despair she threw herself down in the dust, told her story to everyone standing by, and reproached the dead saint: “Woe is me, servant of God! Why did you send me far away, so that I would come back too late and meet you being carried to the grave? May the Lord judge between me and you, for you sent me to another, when you yourself could have absolved me!” One of the clergy in the procession, wanting to learn what sin it was whose pardon was so hard to win, took the paper she was holding, opened it, and found it blank. The last and deadliest sin on her list had vanished like the rest. “And so, by the prayers of Basil and of Ephraim, and by the woman’s faith and perseverance, her sins were all of them blotted out.”

After this event the History places the following account of Ephraim’s last involvement in earthly affairs. It is also told by Palladius, who lived at the same time as Ephraim but was younger, and by Sozomen.

In a time of severe famine, he found out that grain was being hoarded in the storehouses of certain people who gave nothing to the starving poor. When he rebuked their inhumanity, they excused themselves by claiming that no one could be found honest enough to guarantee that relief would be handed out fairly and honestly. Ephraim at once offered his services, and they accepted him as their agent for the whole famine season, to hand out large sums as the treasurer and steward of their gifts. Among other things, he provided three hundred stretchers, some for taking the sick to places where they were properly cared for, and some for carrying the dead to burial. A team of helpers worked with him in giving out relief, and their care reached not only through the city but to the countryside and the villages nearby. When the year of shortage ended, a year of plenty followed, and Ephraim went back to his cell, this time never to leave it again. He died a month after the end of his charitable work. His biographer, for once following the better instinct that sees more worth in works of love than in ascetic practices or in claims of miracles, writes this about it: “God gave him this occasion so that by it he might win the crown at the close of his life.”

In his Testament, which claims to have been written when he knew his end was at hand, he solemnly charged his disciples to bury his body humbly, covered with no garment but his tunic. Gregory of Nyssa adds that a rich friend, though he had been told of this prohibition, had prepared a costly robe ahead of time for the purpose. He was punished by being possessed by an evil spirit, which tormented him until he confessed, and the dying saint freed him, driving out the demon by prayer and the laying on of hands. From the Syriac of this document that has come down to us, which is in verse, the following have been chosen as the most striking lines:

After blessing by name the five faithful disciples mentioned earlier in this book, he leaves an anathema on the two, Paulinus and Urit, who had strayed from the faith, and on these:

In the following lines the dying saint recalls the vision of his childhood, and praises God that it came true:

No doubt additions have been made to this farewell song. But the main part of what is translated above is confirmed as genuine by Gregory of Nyssa’s references to it, and he had certainly read it in a Greek version. As it has reached us, it ends with a narrative that at most can claim to be an appendix added by a disciple. It tells of the laments spoken at his deathbed by a young woman named Lamprotate, the daughter of a man of rank in Edessa, who begged permission to make a tomb for him, and another at his feet for herself. The narrative ends with his consent to her request, his parting instructions to her, and her promise to obey.

His body was followed to the grave by all the people of the city and the surrounding country, and by the bishops, priests and deacons of the province, with the monks, whether “anchorites, stylites or coenobites,” that is, living alone or in communities. It was laid, as he had wished, in the strangers’ burial ground. But not long afterward the citizens moved it from there, and made a grave for him, though he was only a deacon, among the graves of their bishops. This was probably in the monastery of Saint Sergius on the Mount of Edessa, which now belongs to the Armenians, where his tomb is still shown today, as we learn from Doctor Sachau’s account of his travels in Syria and Mesopotamia.

His death took place in Haziran, that is, June: on the 15th, according to our History in the Vatican copy, though other authorities differ and give the 9th, the 18th or the 19th. The shorter Syriac Life gives the year as 372, and so contradicts the History, which has him still living in the year of Basil’s death, 378. Even in the time of Gregory of Nyssa, a yearly commemoration of Ephraim had become customary in the church, and it was the occasion of the speech in his praise mentioned earlier. In the East it was held on the 28th of January, but in the Roman Martyrology his name is entered on the 1st of February.