GIACOMO of SÉRUG (SARUG). - Monophysite bishop of Baṭnā near Edessa, born ca. 451 at Kürtām on the Euphrates, and died at Baṭnā in 520-21. Although he had been a student at the Nestorianizing school of Edessa, G. always defended Monophysitism. He was a monk and from 518 a bishop. The Jacobites and Maronites venerate him as a saint.
He was a prolific and elegant writer, credited with 763 homilies; the Jacobites called him “the cithara of the Holy Spirit.” In the Vatican Library alone 231 metrical homilies by G. are preserved; P. Bedjan published 195 of them (Homeliae selectae Mar Iacobi Sarugensis, 5 vols., Paris-Leipzig 1905-10); most of these develop themes drawn from the Old but especially from the New Testament. Other prose homilies have been published by P. Zingerle (Monumenta Syriaca ex Romanis codicibus collecta, I, Innsbruck 1896, pp. 91-106). Numerous letters of G. have been discovered (ed. G. Olinder in Corpus script. christ. orientalium, 2nd ser., XLV, Paris 1937), among them one to the monks of Mār Bassos that confirms G.’s adherence to Monophysitism, long denied by G. Assemani but now generally admitted. G. is also the author of anaphoras preserved in Ethiopic. He taught the Immaculate Conception of Mary, the Eucharistic transubstantiation, the procession of the Holy Spirit from the Father and the Son, and the primacy of St Peter.
