Saint Jacob Baradaeus

The tireless Bishop of Edessa whose clandestine missionary work kept the Syriac Orthodox Church alive under imperial persecution. Raised from infancy in the Monastery of Fsilta, he gave away his inheritance, and was consecrated bishop by Pope Theodosius of Alexandria after being summoned to Constantinople by Empress Theodora. Wearing simple, ragged clothes that earned him the sobriquet “Baradaeus” (“rag-clad”), he crisscrossed Mesopotamia, Syria, Palestine, Egypt, and Anatolia, moving from village to village to ordain bishops, priests, and deacons, even establishing patriarchs. Falling ill en route to Egypt, he died at the Monastery of St. Romanus in Maiuma. Remembered less for courtly power than for stealth, courage, and ceaseless ordinations, he became the eponym of a church that endured.

Diese Ikone ist nicht mehr verfügbar.