School of Nisibis

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The school of Nisibis was the spiritual center of the Syrian Church of Antioch in late antiquity . It existed from the 4th to the 8th centuries.

Foundation and location

The school was founded in Nisibis around the year 350 , according to later tradition by Mar Jakob , based on the model of the Antiochian school . The location of the school was chosen with care, as the city was both in the center of the Aramaic language area and within the Roman Empire , where Christians were allowed to practice their religion freely by the Milan Agreement (313) and Constantine the Great and his sons were allowed to practice Christianity increasingly privileged. The greater part of Mesopotamia, on the other hand, was under Sassanid (Persian) rule, where Zoroastrianism played an important role; in particular King Shapur II (309 to 379) had Christians persecuted in his kingdom .

After Nisibis fell to the Sassanids in the peace of 363 and was evacuated by its Roman inhabitants, the school was moved to Edessa , which is still Roman . It was then known as the " School of Edessa " or "School of the Persians" and became famous in particular through Ephraem the Syrian . Theodor von Mopsuestia continued the school. Theodor's works, a basis of Assyrian theology, were soon translated from the Greek original into the Aramaic (Syrian) language , and gradually replaced the works of Ephraem.

During the Nestorian Quarrel , the Aramaeans (Assyrians) granted protection to the followers of Nestorius . In 489 the Eastern Roman Emperor Zeno ordered the school to be closed because of its Nestorian tendencies. The school was therefore moved back to Nisibis. Political changes in Persia made this possible: Christianity was officially tolerated in the Sassanid Empire at least since 484.

Center of Syrian Theology

After moving back to Nisibis, the school's prestige and influence continued to grow. It attracted numerous students from the Syrian Church, many of whom later held important church offices. The school also enjoyed an excellent reputation in the Roman Empire and was often seen as a role model, regardless of theological differences. The exegetical methods of the school followed the tradition of the Antiochian school ; H. the interpretation was strictly literal and controlled by grammatical and historical analysis. The works of Theodor von Mopsuestia continued to be central in the theological instruction of the school. People like Abraham of Beth Rabban , who headed the school in the mid-6th century, went to great lengths to spread Theodor's work. The writings of Nestorius himself, however, were not added to the curriculum until after 540.

At the end of the 6th century the school went through a theological crisis when its director Henana von Adiabene tried to replace the teachings of Theodor with his own, based on Origen's . At the same time, Babai the Great (551–628) was the unofficial head of the school. He rejected his rival Henana and, as part of this dispute, wrote a trend-setting work on Christology based on the works of Theodor von Mopsuestia: The Book of Unity is the most important work on Christology produced by the Edessa School. In it, Babai explained that Christ had two beings ( qnome ), God and man, who were unmixed and united in just one person ( parsopa ) for eternity .

reception

A great admirer of the school was Junillus Africanus, the quaestor sacri palatii of Emperor Justinian . Among other things, through his writings (for example the Instituta regularia divinae legis ), which, according to many researchers, were strongly influenced by Paulus Persa ( Paulus the Persian ), a teacher at the school, the reputation of the school of Nisibis also spread in the Latin West . Its fame as a theological seminary there was soon so great that Pope Agapitus I wanted to found a similar institution in Rome based on its example. The Senator Cassiodorus seems to have drafted a plan coordinated with the papal wish around 535. The problems of the time (see Gothic War ) and the death of the Pope in 536 prevented the early implementation of this project. Around 555, however, the Vivarium monastery academy was established on the initiative of its founder Cassiodor, who after 540 in Byzantium had taken note of the Nisibis study regulations.

During the Islamic expansion (from 632) Nisibis soon came under the rule of the Muslim Arabs; The school seems to have played an important mediating role in the following decades: Since its foundation, numerous Greek works had been translated into the Syrian or Aramaic language, which is closely related to Arabic, so Nisibis was important for the acquisition of some of the knowledge of Greek - Roman antiquity by the Arabs. However, a severe earthquake in the 8th century ended the heyday of the Nisibis School.

In memory of her work and influence, the NISIBIN - Research Center for Aramaic Studies at the University of Konstanz was named after her.

Famous people at the school

swell

literature

  • Adam H. Becker: Fear of God and the Beginning of Wisdom. The School of Nisibis and Christian Scholastic Culture in Late Antique Mesopotamia . Philadelphia 2006.
  • Arthur Vööbus : The School of Nisibis . Louvain 1965.
  • GJ Reinink: "Edessa Grew Dim and Nisisbis Shone Forth": the School of Nisibis at the Transition of the Sixth-Seventh Century . In: JW Drijvers, AA MacDonald (Ed.): Centers of Learning (Brill's Studies in Intellectual History 61) . Leiden 1995, pp. 77-89.

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Günter Ludwig : Cassiodor. About the origin of the occidental school , Frankfurt a. M. 1967, pp. 6, 13f, 16