Babaj the Great

BĀBAJ the GREAT. - Nestorian patriarch. Born in 540 in Bēt 'Ajnātā, he was formed under the direction of Abraham of Kaškar (v.), founder of the monastery of Mount Izlā, and then under his successor Dādišō (v.), whom he succeeded in the government of that "Great Monastery." When in 607 the patriarch Gregory died and Khosrow II forbade the Nestorians to elect a successor, B. directed — without being a bishop and at the request of the bishops — the fortunes of that Church for 17 years. When Khosrow II died in 628, B. was elected patriarch, but preferred to return to the monastery. The catalogue of Ebediesu attributes 84 volumes to him.

His most important work is the one entitled "on the union" in Ebediesu, while in the manuscripts it bears other titles. In it (ed. by A. Vaschalde in 1915, in Corp. Scrip. Christ. Orient.), B. gives an exposition of Nestorian doctrine concerning the Incarnation and the Eucharist. He wrote, among other things, commentaries on the Centuries of Evagrius 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 his work, and many hymns of his are inserted in the Chaldean Breviary.

Pietro Sfair