GIACOMO di 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, reputedly the author of 763 homilies; the Jacobites called him the “harp 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 deal with exegetical themes concerning the Old, but especially 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 by 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 that confirms G.’s adherence to Monophysitism, previously denied by G. Assemani but now generally accepted. G. is also the author of anaphoras preserved in Ethiopic. He taught the Immaculate Conception of Mary, Eucharistic Transubstantiation, the procession of the Holy Spirit from the Father and the Son, and the primacy of St. Peter.
An immense amount of material attributed to G. remains unpublished.