John of Ephesus

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

John of Ephesus (* around 507 in the Ingilene area near Amida [today Diyarbakır ], † around 589), also known as John of Asia , was a late antique bishop and Syrian-Roman church historian .

life and work

John, who rejected the resolutions of the Council of Chalcedon (451) and is therefore mostly considered a supporter of Monophysitism , was placed in a monastery as a young child and moved to Amida at a young age , where he was accepted into the monastic order of John. Since the Monophysites in the Eastern Roman Empire were often subjected to reprisals after 519, the monks avoided the nearby smaller town of Hazim in 521, but returned to Amida in 530 at the behest of Emperor Justinian (and perhaps because of the mediation of Empress Theodora ).

From 532 onwards, John undertook extensive journeys through the whole of the Roman Orient, collecting especially stories about famous saints, which he would write down decades later. In 540 he came to Constantinople , where he was under the protection of Theodoras and was also staying (after he had traveled to Egypt in 541 ) when the so-called Justinian plague raged in the spring of 542 . In that year, despite his Monophysite inclinations, he was commissioned by the emperor to devote himself to the pagan mission in the mountains of Asia Minor - the fact that he allegedly baptized over 70,000 people in three decades is an indication of how many non-Christians were still in the Lived Eastern Roman Empire. In 558 John was ordained bishop of Ephesus by the non-Chalcedonian Jakob Baradai , but he never seems to have stayed there. Instead, the main center of his work remained Constantinople. Under Emperor Justin II , persecutions of the Monophysites increased again from 570 onwards; Johannes, who had long been considered one of the most important representatives of this group, was imprisoned and died around 589, probably in Chalcedon.

Johannes wrote several works, which are only partially preserved. Particularly important are the still existing books of his church history , written in Syriac ( Aramaic ), which has been handed down in full for the years 571 to 585 and also provides information on the political history of this time; he reports about over the Persian war of Maurikios . For the Christianization of Nubia , which began at that time , nine chapters of his work represent the most important source. Studies have shown that anecdotal passages do appear in this report, but in connection with epigraphic and archaeological sources a relative chronology of missionary work emerges. The second part of church history (now lost) was used by Pseudo-Dionysius of Tell Mahre , among others . The lives of the Eastern saints , a collection of 58 biographies, mainly of Syrian and Egyptian monks and hermits, are also significant .

literature

  • Susan Ashbrook-Harvey: Asceticism and Society in Crisis: John of Ephesus and the "Lives of the Eastern Saints" . Berkeley 1990; here online .
  • Susan A. Harvey, Heinzgerd Brakmann : Johannes von Ephesus . In: Real Lexicon for Antiquity and Christianity . 18: 553-564 (1998).
  • Jan Jacob van Ginkel: John of Ephesus. A Monophysite Historian in Sixth-century Byzantium . Groningen 1995.
  • Norbert Nebes : John of Ephesus . In: Religion Past and Present . Vol. 4, Tübingen 2001, p. 536.
  • Michael Whitby : John of Ephesus and the Pagans. Pagan Survivals in the Sixth Century . In: Maciej Salamon (Ed.): Paganism in the Later Roman Empire and in Byzantium . Krakau 1991, pp. 111-131.

Web links

Wikisource: John of Ephesus  - Sources and full texts

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Siegfried G. Richter : Studies on the Christianization of Nubia. (= Languages ​​and Cultures of the Christian Orient , Volume 11) Reichert, Wiesbaden 2002, pp. 99–112, ISBN 3-89500-311-5