ABRAMO, bishop of EPHESUS. — He may have succeeded Hypatios, who was still alive in 542, or Andrew, who attended the Fifth Ecumenical Council (553). Originally a monk and founder of two monasteries, in Constantinople and Jerusalem according to John Moschus (*Pratum Spirituale*: PG 87, 2956), he became bishop of Ephesus under Justinian. He left two homilies: one for the feast of the Hypapante or Presentation of Our Lord in the Temple, and the other for the feast of the Annunciation or Evangelismos on March 25 (published in PO 16, Paris 1922, pp. 442-54, by M. Jugie). The first contains a clear allusion to the contemporary controversy of Justinian’s time; the second asserts that the feast of the Annunciation on March 25, distinct from the earlier feast of Mary or the Memory of St. Mary, was instituted only during the reign of the emperor himself or at least after the beginning of the 6th century.
ABRAMO, VESCOVO DI EFESO
BIBL.: M. Jugie, Abraham d’Éphèse et ses écrits, in Byzantinische Zeitschrift, 22 (1913), pp. 37-59; and PO 16, 429-54, where the opinions on the period in which A. lived are set forth — a discussion closed by the content of the homilies themselves. Nevertheless, this has not prevented M. Krasceninikov from placing A. in the full 5th century. Sancti Abramii, archiepiscopi Ephesii sermones duo: I. In Annuntiationem Deiparae; II. In occursum Domini, adiecta interpretatione slavica, Dorpat 1911 (actually published in 1913, simultaneously with M. Jugie’s edition in Byzantinische Zeitschrift); S. Vailhé, s. V. Abraham d’Éphèse Abrahamites, Couvent des, in DHG, I, cols. 172-73, 188-90.