Jacob Baradaeus - Problems

Problems

However, Jacobus failed miserably when he attempted to govern the vast and heterogeneous body he had created and organized. The simplicity and innocence of his character, as chronicled by his contemporary John of Ephesus, disqualified him for rule, and put him in the power of "crafty and designing men about him, who turned him every way they chose, and used him as a means of establishing their own powers." His troubles with the bishops he had ordained clouded the closing years of Jacobus' long life. John of Ephesus records the blows, fighting, murders and other deeds "so insensate and unrestrained that Satan and his herds of demons alone could rejoice in them, wrought on both sides by the two factions with which the believers — so unworthy of the name — were rent", provoking "the contempt and ridicule of heathens, Jews, and heretics".

One of these factional squabbles was between Jacobus and the bishops Conon and Eugenius, whom he had ordained at Alexandria — the former for the Isaurian Seleucia, the latter for Tarsus — who became the founders of the obscure and short-lived sect of the "Cononites", or, from the monastery at Constantinople to which a section of them belonged, "Condobandites". Each anathematized the other, James denouncing Conon and his companion as "Tritheists", and they retaliated by the stigma of "Sabellian".

A still longer and more wide-spreading difference arose between Jacobus and Paul the Black, whom he had ordained patriarch of Antioch. Paul and the other three leading bishops of the Syriac Orthodox Church had been summoned to Constantinople, allegedly to restore unity to the imperial church, but remaining stalwart in the adherence to their own creed, were thrown into prison for a considerable time and subjected to the harshest treatment. This broke their spirit, and one by one they all yielded, accepting the communion of John Scholasticus, the patriarch of Constantinople, and the "Synodites", as the adherents of the Chalcedonian decrees were contemptuously termed by their opponents, "lapsing miserably into the communion of the two natures". Paul escaped into Arabia, taking refuge with al-Mundhir, son and successor of al-Harith. On hearing of his defection, Jacobus at once excommunicated Paul, but at the end of three years, Jacobus presented Paul's penitence before the synod of the Syriac Orthodox Church, and he was duly and canonically restored to communion. Paul's rehabilitation caused great indignation among the Copts at Alexandria, who clamoured for his deposition, which was carried into effect by Peter, the intruded patriarch, in violation of all canonical order; the patriarch of Antioch (Paul's position in the Monophysite communion) owning no allegiance to the patriarch of Alexandria.

Jacobus was persuaded that if he were to visit Alexandria the veneration felt for his age and services would bring to an end the rift between the churches of Syria and Egypt, and though he had denounced Peter, at arrival in Alexandria he was convinced not only to hold communion with Peter but to draw up papers documenting his formal assent to the deposition of Paul, only stipulating that it should not be accompanied by any excommunication. This compromise was unfavorably received in Syria on Jacobus' return. The schism which resulted between the adherents of James and Paul, AD 576, "spread like an ulcer" through the whole of the East, especially in Constantinople. Both Paul and the phylarch al-Mundhir vainly attempted to seek a resolution with Jacobus, but Jacobus shrank from investigation, and refused all overtures of accommodation.