ABRAMO, bishop of EFESO. - Perhaps the successor of Hypatios, still living in 542, or of Andrea, present at the Fifth Ecumenical Council (553). Initially a monk and founder of two monasteries, in Constantinople and Jerusalem according to Giovanni Mosco (Pratum Spirituale; PG 87, 2956), he became bishop of Efeso under Giustiniano. He left two homilies: one for the feast of the Hypopante, or Presentation of Our Lord in the Temple; the other for the feast of the Annunciation, or Evangelismos, on 25 March (published in PO 16, Paris 1922, pp. 442-54, by M. Jugie). The first contains a clear allusion to the Origenist controversy of Giustiniano’s time; the second shows that the feast of the Annunciation on 25 March, clearly distinct from the primitive feast of Maria, or Commemoration of s. Maria, was instituted only under the reign of that emperor, or at least after the beginning of the sixth century.
Abraham, Bishop of Ephesus
BIBL.: M. Jugie, Abraham d'Ephèse et ses écrits, in Byzantinische Zeitschrift, 22 (1913), pp. 37-59, and PO 16, 429-54, where the opinions concerning the period in which A. lived are set forth, a question settled by the very content of the homilies. This, however, did not prevent M. Krasceninikov from placing A. in the very midst of the fifth century. Sancti Abramiti, archiepiscopi Ephesii sermones duo: I. In Annuntiationem Disparae; II. In occursum Domini, adiecta interpretatione italica, Dorpat 1911 (actually published in 1913, simultaneously with M. Jugie’s edition in the Byzantinische Zeitschrift); S. Vailhé, s. V. Abraham d'Ephèse et Abramites, Consent des, in DHG, I, cols. 172-73, 188-90. Martino Jugie
Cite this article
“ABRAMO, VESCOVO DI EFESO.” Enciclopedia Cattolica, vol. I (1948), p. 98. Azione Romana digital edition, https://azioneromana.com/article/abramo-vescovo-di-efeso.