Edessa School

The Edessa School was the temporary location of the Nisibis School from 363 to 489 . In Edessa it was also referred to as the school of the Persians or Persian school. Edessa was then the capital of the Roman border province Osrhoene and had a large Christian community.

The school was founded when Nisibis fell to the Persian Sassanids in 363 , who carried out the persecution of Christians at that time . Therefore, the Christian teachers moved to Edessa, which is still Roman. The main subjects at this school were Christian theology and medicine . Her most important teacher was Ephrem the Syrians (306–373). Ibas von Edessa was the head of the school.

The theologian Theodor von Mopsuestia († 428) from Antioch was the most important authority at the school. In Edessa, his works were translated from Greek into Syriac . They formed a basis for the theology of the "Church of the East" . The school was closed in 489 on the orders of Emperor Zenos due to its Nestorian tendencies . It was then relocated back to Nisibis , where it regained importance and size, since the Sassanids had meanwhile stopped persecuting Christians.

literature

• Gerrit J. Reinink: Edessa Grew Dim and Nisibis Shone Forth. The School of Nisibis at the Transition of the Sixth-Seventh Century . In: Jan-Willem Drijvers, Alasdair A. MacDonald (eds.): Centers of Learning. Learning and Location in Pre-Modern Europe and the Near East (Brill's Studies in intellectual history; Vol. 61). Brill, Leiden 1995, pp. 77-89, ISBN 90-04-10193-4 .