Saint ’Afrâm as-Suryâni
Today in the Orthodox Church is also the feast-day of Mâr ’Afrâm as-Sûryâni – Saint Ephraim the Syrian. Indisputably the single most important, and also the most sublime and inspired, hymnodist of the early Syriac tradition, Mâr ’Afrâm was also a teacher in the Church and a defender of Nicene Orthodoxy in an area of the world where hæresy and syncretic beliefs were often far more popular. His poetic and figurative interpretations of Scripture set the standard for all subsequent Syriac Scriptural hermeneutics. And of course, his well-known prayer of self-reflection and repentance is used throughout the Orthodox Church, particularly during Great Lent.
Mâr ’Afrâm was born in Nisibis – modern-day Nusaybin in southeastern Turkey, right on the border with Syria, in 306. His parents were Christians. At the time Mâr ’Afrâm lived it was an important commercial centre and had been so for a full millennium before. As a hub of trade situated between two large empires – Rome and Persia – it was at once cosmopolitan and vibrant, and vulnerable to wars and political upheavals. It was home to Arabs, Armenians, Jews, Persians, Kurds, Greeks and Romans; and its religious landscape was equally variegated. The Christian community there, to which Mâr ’Afrâm belonged, was probably quite small. Its character was probably close to the Gnostics or the more Judaïsing elements of early Christendom. At the time of ’Afrâm’s birth, the Christian community of Nisibis was still recovering from the persecutions it had suffered under Diocletian.
In ’Afrâm’s infancy, the bishop who had been appointed to the see of the Christians in Nisibis was a westerner and a Roman subject – Mâr Ya‘qûb. It was no doubt Mâr Ya‘qûb’s efforts that strengthened the Christian community in Nisibis in terms of the steadfastness of their doctrine, as ’Afrâm singles him out for praise for his paternal wisdom and the ‘tough love’ he gave to his flock. However, it was also the case that Emperor Saint Constantine at this time ended the persecutions of Christians in the Empire, affording Mâr Ya‘qûb the opportunity to safely build a church, which he did around 320. Mâr Ya‘qûb also attended the Council of Nicæa five years later at Emperor Constantine’s invitation, and is listed among the holy signatories of the Council.
Mâr Ya‘qûb was also the spiritual father of ’Afrâm, who was baptised as a youth or a young adult. Quick to recognise ’Afrâm’s raw untrained intellect and poetic talents, after his return from Nicæa Ya‘qûb ordained the neophyte ’Afrâm as a deacon and also appointed him as a malfâna ملفان or ‘teacher’ – a position which accorded him significant social respect among the community. He did not, however, preach only to the educated. His songs and verse are remarkably careful and exact in their language particularly with regard to their doctrinal import – ’Afrâm, a loyal student of Ya‘qûb, is scrupulously and vocally Nicene in his Christology. But his works are not inaccessible to the layman. He writes in a popular, folk language that even the unlettered can understand. His songs were set to the folk tunes of his day. It’s important to remember that hymnody was still at this time a fairly new art form, and Christianity was adopting and transfiguring the cultures that surrounded it. It’s worth bearing in mind that Mâr ’Afrâm was as much a folk artist – a Ralph McTell or a Woody Guthrie – as he was a creator of holy art.
Mâr ’Afrâm, serving as deacon to Mâr Ya‘qûb in 338, was present and assisting when Mâr Ya‘qûb ascended the city walls of Nisibis during the first siege of the city by the Persian šâh Šâpur II, when Persia and Rome fell to war once again: what started as a proxy war in Armenia. Mâr Ya‘qûb did not pick sides, but he prayed that his city might be delivered from the siege – and as it turned out, the siege was lifted by a plague of gnats that broke out among the Persian cavalry. Unfortunately, the Christians in Persia were treated as a potential Roman fifth column by Šâpur and his descendants. As a result, Christian populations along the Roman border with Persia began to suffer the effects of a new persecution from the east.
On the other hand, Šâpur II and his heirs in the Persian Empire had no particular problems with Jews, and were even friendly toward Jewish interests. Naturally, the political climate as long as Persia and Rome remained at war created a dramatic rift between the Christian and the rabbinical Jewish communities. Polemics on both sides tended to ramp up, as did increasingly-sophisticated apologetics and proofs. Mâr ’Afrâm was drawn into many of these polemical disputes, and many of his hymns include imprecations of Jews and refutations of the unresolved Jewish messianism in favour of Jesus as Christ.
Mâr ’Afrâm also had a good relationship, it seems, with Ya‘qûb’s successor in office as bishop, Babu. Mâr Babu was apparently also a generous patron of the poor and needy; but he was primarily called upon to be the city’s chaplain in time of war. Much of his energy was spent ransoming captives, comforting the bereaved, repairing buildings and giving moral strength to a beleaguered and often-besieged populace. Nisibis was indeed besieged again in 346, and for a third time in 350. This time Šâpur attempted to divert the Nahr Jaghjagh from its course in an attempt to flood the city, but the residents of Nisibis quickly built up an emergency rampart to keep the floodwaters out – turning them back on the besiegers. The Persian war elephants in particular were not fond of the resulting mire and once again Šâpur was forced to withdraw. Mâr ’Afrâm wrote about this siege, likening the flood to the Great Flood, and the salvation of Nisibis to the promise God made to Noah.
The reign of Constantius in Rome was unfortunately followed by that of Julian the Apostate in 361, who made a point not only of venerating the local pagan deities but also of humiliating the Christians of the Middle East whenever opportunity allowed. Mâr ’Afrâm turned his hymnographer’s pen against the idol-worshipping Roman Emperor, and exhorted the Christians of Nisibis to remain steadfast in response to the persecutions of Julian. After Julian’s death at the hands of Šâpur on the twenty-sixth of June, 363, following an ill-advised offensive against Ctesiphon, Rome was forced to seek a peace with Persia. This peace included the cession of the long-suffering Nisibis.
Mâr ’Afrâm, for all his old enemies had taken control of the city he lived in and loved, was insistent that the Persians had treated the Christians fairly when they took Nisibis. Only Julian was responsible, in his eyes, for having lost Nisibis to the Persians, and that on account of his embrace of paganism and idolatry. In fact, the Persians had only destroyed the pagan temples of the Romans as a rebuke to Julian – they left the Christians well alone. Even so, Mâr ’Afrâm and the rest of the Christian community there could not stay in Nisibis. ’Afrâm accompanied a group of Nisibean Christians first to Âmida (now Diyirbakır in Turkey), and then to Edessa, or ar-Ruhâ (now Urfa), where he settled and spent the rest of his earthly days. In Edessa as in Nisibis, Mâr ’Afrâm found a cosmopolitan city which was home to a great panoply of religious beliefs ranging from the various cults of Roman and Semitic paganism to neo-Platonism, Gnosticism, Mazdaism, Judaism, Arianism, Marcionism and Orthodox Christianity.
Indeed, in order to distinguish them from the other sects in Edessa, Nicene Christians in Edessa were called ‘Palutians’, probably after Mâr Mâri, whose given name prior to his consecration was ‘Palut’. This state-of-affairs pleased Mâr ’Afrâm not at all, for it contravened the Holy Apostle Paul’s admonition to the Corinthians in the very first chapter of his first letter to them. He encouraged the Christians of Edessa to call themselves so, and to insist that they were true followers of Christ and not of any earthly self-proclaimed teacher or hæresiarch. Mâr ’Afrâm continued to write verse apologetics, with varying degrees of polemical edge, against Arianism and against Gnosticism while he remained in Edessa. Mâr ’Afrâm founded a school in Edessa as his master had in Nisibis, and continued to teach there as a malfâna. He also taught music not only to men but also to choirs of women in the Church. As a deacon of the Church and as a good student of Mâr Ya‘qûb, ’Afrâm spent much time caring for the poor and the sick in his Edessan exile. The blessed hymnodist reposed in the Lord in 373 after succumbing to an outbreak of pestilential disease, whose victims he was comforting and treating. In the Orthodox Church, Saint ’Afrâm is remembered together with Saint ’Ishâq of Nineveh on the twenty-eighth of January.
Mâr ’Afrâm is well remembered in the Church as a teacher of profound and holy things – the right glory due to Christ and the veneration of the Theotokos; prayer; abstinence; almsgiving; repentance – to ordinary people, through just such hymns as our Lenten one. As a malfâna he took a sæcular art form, that of folk music, and placed it at the service of God for the edification and strengthening of the young and unlearnt Nisibeans in his care. Yet he did not neglect the prosaic aspects of the faith either; as we can see, he took up his master’s emphasis on care for the poor and suffering among his fellow-exiles, and in the end he shared in their death and thus earned the heavenly crown. Holy Mâr ’Afrâm, righteous deacon and sweet hymnodist, pray unto Christ our God that we too may see our own faults and not judge our brothers and sisters.
By a flood of tears you made the desert fertile,
And your longing for God brought forth fruits in abundance.
By the radiance of miracles you illumined the whole universe!
Our Father ’Afrâm, pray to Christ God to save our souls!
Ancient church in ar-Ruhâ
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