James of Serug (Sarug)

JAMES OF SERUG (Sarug). - Monophysite bishop of Baṭnā near Edessa, b. ca. 451 at Kürtām on the Euphrates, and d. at Baṭnā in 520-21. Although he had been a student in the Nestorianizing school of Edessa, G. always defended Monophysitism. He was a monk and from 518 a bishop. The Jacobites and the Maronites venerate him as a saint.

He was a prolific and elegant writer, the author, it was said, of 763 homilies; the Jacobites called him "lyre of the Holy Spirit." In the Vatican Library alone 231 metrical homilies of G. are preserved; P. Bedjan published 195 of them (Homeliae selectae Mar Iacobi Sarugensis, 5 vols., Paris-Leipzig 1905-10); for the most part they treat exegetical themes on the Old but especially on the New Testament. Other homilies in prose were 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 series, XLV, Paris 1937), among them one to the monks of Mār Bassos which confirms G.'s adherence to Monophysitism, previously denied by G. Assemani but today 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.

An immense body of material attributed to G. is still unpublished.

Ignazio Ortiz de Urbina