BĀBAJ il GRANDE. – Nestorian patriarch. Born in 540 at Bēt 'Ajnātā, he was formed under the direction of Abramo di Kaškar (v.), founder of the monastery of Mount Izlā, and then under that of his successor Dādišō (v.), whom he succeeded in governing that “Great Monastery.” When the patriarch Gregory died in 607 and Khosrow II forbade the Nestorians to elect a successor, B. directed the affairs of that Church for 17 years—without being a bishop and at the bishops’ request. When Khosrow II died in 628, B. was elected patriarch, but preferred to return to the monastery. Ebediesu’s catalogue attributes 84 volumes to him.
His most important work is entitled by Ebediesu “On the Union,” while in the manuscripts it bears other titles. In it (ed. by A. Vaschalde in 1915, in Corp. Scrip. Christ. Orient.), B. presents an exposition of Nestorian doctrine concerning the Incarnation and the Eucharist. Among other works, he wrote commentaries on Evagrius’s Centuries and the 60 chapters that follow them, as well as an interesting history of the monk George, martyred in 612, which was published by Bedjan in Hist. de Mar Yabalaha, Paris–Leipzig 1896, pp. 416–571, and translated by O. Braun in Bibl. der Kirchenväter, 37, p. 221, 1922. A commentary on Scripture, many biographies of Nestorians, rules for novices, and canons for monks are also his work, as are many of the hymns included in the Chaldean Breviary.