This eminent saint, and glorious doctor of the Syriac church, was a
native of Nisibis, in Mesopotamia, which country was then subject
to the eastern empire.[94] He had a genius rich by nature, which he
cultivated with indefatigable application; though after laying a
foundation of the sciences, he confined himself to sacred studies. In
his youth entering the world, he became soon apprised of its dangers.
He saw that in it only ambition, vanity, and voluptuousness reign;
that men here usually live in a hurry and a crowd, without finding
leisure to look into themselves, or to study that great science which
ought to be their only affair. He trembled at the sight of its vices,
and the slippery path of its pleasures, which, though they seem
agreeable at first, yet when tasted are nothing but bitterness and
mortal poison, and whilst they flatter the senses, destroy the soul;
and he thought it the safer part to conquer by flight, or at least,
with the Baptist, to prepare and strengthen himself in retirement,
that he might afterward be the better able to stand his ground in
the field. He accordingly chose the highest mountains for his abode,
sheltering himself in a cave in the winter, and the rest of the year
living in the woods, continually exposed to the open air; and knowing
that our greatest conquest is to subdue ourselves, in order to
facilitate this important victory, he joined to assiduous prayer the
practice of great austerities. He lived only on wild roots and herbs,
which he ate raw, and had no other garments than a tunic and cloak,
both made of goat’s hair very coarse. Notwithstanding his desire to
live unknown to men, yet he was discovered, and many were not afraid
to climb the rugged rocks that they might recommend themselves to
his prayers, and receive the comfort of his spiritual advice. He
was favored with the gifts of prophecy and miracles in an uncommon
measure, of which he gave several proofs in a journey he took into
Persia to visit the new churches that were planting there, and
strengthen the young converts laboring under grievous persecutions.
His presence fortified them in their good resolutions, and inspired
them with that spirit of martyrdom which afterwards showed itself in
their glorious triumphs. He converted many idolaters, and wrought
several miracles in that country. He suffered torments for the faith
in the persecution continued by Maximinus II. for Gennadius places
him in the number of confessors under that tyrant; and Nicephorus
names him among the holy bishops in the council of Nice, who bore the
glorious marks of their sufferings for Christ. His personal merit and
great reputation occasioned his promotion to the see of Nisibis; but
here he still followed the same course of life he had inured himself
to on the mountains, to his fasts and austerities adding the care
of the poor, the correction of sinners, and all the other toils and
hardships of episcopacy. Such was his charity for the poor, that he
seemed to possess nothing but for their relief. In the acts of St.
Miles and his companions, Persian martyrs, it is related that St.
James built at Nisibis a very stately church. St. Miles coming to
that city was astonished at the majesty of the edifice, and having
made some stay there with St. James, returned to Adiab, whence he
sent the holy bishop a present of a great quantity of silk for the
ornaments of his church.
Theodoret relates[95] of him that one day as he was travelling, he
was accosted by a gang of beggars who had concerted a plot whereby
to impose upon the servant of God, with the view of extorting money
from him on pretence to bury their companion, who lay stretched on
the ground as if he had been dead. The holy man gave them what they
asked, and “offering up supplications to God as for a soul departed,
he prayed that his divine majesty would pardon him the sins he had
committed whilst he lived, and that he would admit him into the
company of the saints,” says Theodoret. As soon as the saint was gone
by, his companions calling upon him to rise and take his share of the
booty, were strangely surprised to find him really dead. Seized with
sudden fear and grief, they shrieked in the utmost consternation,
and immediately ran after the man of God, cast themselves at his
feet, confessed the cheat, begged forgiveness, and by entreaties and
mournful looks pleaded for pity, and besought him by his prayers to
restore their unhappy companion to life, which the saint performed,
as this grave author assures us. When the heresy of Arius was set
abroach, and began to infect many churches, St. James strenuously
exerted himself in defending his church from the contagion, and
labored to crush the growing evil. He assisted at the council of Nice
in 325, as Theodoret and Gennadius testify; likewise at the council
of Antioch held under St. Eustathius, about the year 326. Being at
Constantinople in 336, when Constantine commanded St. Alexander, the
holy bishop of that city, to leave his see in case he persisted to
refuse admitting to communion Arius, who had imposed on that prince
by an hypocritical confession of faith; St. James exhorted the people
to have recourse to God by fasting and prayer during seven days; and
on the eighth day, which was the very Sunday on which Arius was to
have been admitted, the unhappy man was found dead in a privy into
which he had stepped to ease nature.[96]
The most famous miracle of our Thaumaturgus was that by which he
protected the city of Nisibis from the barbarians, as is related
by Theodoret both in his religious and ecclesiastical history; by
Theophanes, the Alexandrian Chronicle, and even by Philostorgius
himself,[97] who was a rank Arian, cannot be suspected of being too
favorable to St. James. Sapor II. the haughty king of Persia, twice
besieged Nisibis with the whole strength of his empire, whilst our
saint was bishop; and the city was every time miraculously protected
by the prayers of St. James. Of these sieges the first was laid
soon after the death of Constantine the Great, which happened on
the 22nd of May, in 337, after that prince had reigned thirty-nine
years, nine months, and twenty-seven days. His valor had kept the
barbarians in awe. But upon his demise Sapor came, and in 338
sat down before Nisibis with a prodigious army of foot, horse,
elephants, and all sorts of warlike engines. But after continuing
the siege sixty-three days, he was compelled shamefully to raise
it, and return into Persia; and his army, harassed by the enemy in
its march, and exhausted by fatigues, was at length destroyed by
famine and epidemical diseases.[98] The emperor Constantius, when
the Persians again invaded the territories of the Romans in 348, by
his pusillanimity and misconduct gave them a great superiority in
the field. And Cosroës, elated with success, and enriched by the
plunder of many provinces, ventured a second time with an army still
much stronger than before to lay siege to Nisibis in 350. His troops
having seized all the avenues, and made their approaches with a fury
beyond example, he first endeavored to make a breach in the walls by
battering rams and mines, but all to no purpose. At length, after
seventy days’ labor, he caused a dam to be raised at a considerable
distance from the city, thereby to stop the river Mygdon, which ran
through it; this he ordered to be broken down when the water was at
its full height; so that the violence with which it beat against
the wall of the city made a wide breach in it. At this the Persians
rent the air with loud shouts of joy, but deferred the assault till
the next day, that the waters might be first carried off, they not
being able to make their approaches by reason of the inundation.
When they came up to the breach they were strangely surprised to
find another wall which the inhabitants had raised behind the former
with an astonishing expedition, being encouraged by St. James, who
remained himself all the time in the church at his prayers, by which
he conquered, like Moses on the mountain. Sapor marching up to the
breach in person, fancied he saw a man in royal apparel on the wall,
whose purple and diadem cast an uncommon brightness. This person
he believed was the Roman emperor Constantius, and threatened to
put to death those who had told him the emperor was at Antioch. But
upon their giving him fresh assurances that Constantius was really
there, and convinced that heaven fought for the Romans, he threw up a
javelin into the air, out of impotent revenge because heaven seemed
to take part against him. Then St. Ephrem, deacon of Edessa and St.
James’s disciple, being present, entreated him to go upon the walls
to take a view of the Persians, and pray to God that he would defeat
the infidel army. The bishop would not pray for the destruction of
any one, but he implored the divine mercy that the city might be
delivered from the calamities of so long a siege. Afterwards, going
to the top of a high tower, and turning his face towards the enemy,
and seeing the prodigious multitude of men and beasts which covered
the whole country, he said: “Lord, thou art able by the weakest means
to humble the pride of thy enemies; defeat these multitudes by an
army of gnats.” God heard the humble prayers of his servant, as he
had done that of Moses against the Egyptians, and as he had by the
like means vanquished the enemies of his people when he conducted
them out of Egypt.[99] For scarce had the saint spoken these words,
when whole clouds of gnats and flies came pouring down upon the
Persians, got into the elephants’ trunks, and the horses’ ears and
nostrils, which made them chafe and foam, throw their riders, and
put the whole army into confusion and disorder.[100] A famine and
pestilence which followed, carried off a great part of the army; and
Sapor, after lying above three months before the place, set fire to
all his own engines of war, and was forced to abandon the siege and
return home with the loss of twenty thousand men. Sapor received a
third foil under the walls of Nisibis, in 359, upon which he turned
his arms against Amidus, took that strong city, and put the garrison
and the greatest part of the inhabitants to the sword.[101] The
citizens of Nisibis attributed their preservation to the intercession
of their glorious patron, St. James, though he seems to have been
translated to glory before this last siege. Gennadius says he died
in the reign of Constantius, whose death happened in 361.[102]
That of St. James is placed by most moderns in 350, soon after the
second siege of Nisibis. Gennadius informs us, that out of a pious
confidence that the saint’s earthly remains would be a pledge of
his intercession with God for the protection of the city against
the barbarians, by an order of the emperor Constantius, though an
Arian, pursuant to an express injunction of his father Constantine
the Great, notwithstanding the severe laws to the contrary then in
force, the body of St. James was buried within the walls of the city.
Julian, the Apostate, in 361, envying the saint this distinguished
privilege, commanded these sacred remains to be removed without
the city. Soon after, upon his death the emperor Jovian, in 363,
in order to purchase peace of the Persians, was obliged to yield
up to them Nisibis, with the five Roman provinces situated on the
Tigris, and great part of Mesopotamia. But the inhabitants of Nisibis
who were compelled by Jovian to remove before he delivered up the
city, carried with them the sacred relics of this saint, which,
according to the Menology of the Armenians at Venice, were brought
to Constantinople about the year 970. His name is famous both in the
Eastern and Western Martyrologies. His festival is kept by the Latins
on the 15th of July, by the Greeks on the 13th of January and the
31st of October, by the Syrians on the 18th of January, and by the
Armenians on a Saturday in the month of December. The last honor him
with no less solemnity than the Assyrians, and observe before his
feast a fast of five days with the same severity with that of Lent.
In his office they sing the long devout Armenian hymns, which were
compiled in his honor by Saint Nierses, patriarch of Armenia, the
fourth of that name, surnamed of Ghelaia, who strenuously defended
the union with the Latin church against the Greek emperor, Michael
Commenus, in the twelfth century, and is honored by the orthodox
Armenians among the saints.[104]
St. James’s learning and writings have procured him a rank next to
St. Ephrem among the doctors of the Syriac church; and the Armenians
honor him as one of the principal doctors of their national church.
For though St. James was a Syrian, he wrote excellent treatises in
the Armenian language for their instruction,[105] at the request of
a holy bishop of that nation called Gregory, whose letter to our
saint is still extant. In it he promises himself the happiness of
paying St. James a visit, and passing some time with him, in order
to improve himself more perfectly by his lessons in the knowledge
and practice of true virtue: in the mean time he earnestly conjures
him to favor him with some short instructions, and teach him what
is the true foundation of a spiritual life of faith, by what means
the edifice is to be raised in our souls, and by what good works,
by what virtue it is to be finished and brought to perfection. St.
James complied with his desire in eighteen excellent discourses still
extant.[106] They are published at Rome in one volume, folio, in
1756, in Armenian and Latin, by M. Nicholas Antonelli, canon of the
Lateran basilic.
* * * * *
The visible protection with which God watches over his servants ought
to excite our confidence in him. He assures us that his tenderness
for them surpasses the bowels of the most affectionate mother, and he
styles himself their protector and their safeguard.[107] This made
St. Chrysostom cry out,[108] “Behold, I testify and proclaim to all
men with a loud voice, and would raise it, were it possible, louder
than any trumpet, that no man on earth can hurt a good Christian, nor
even the tyrant the devil. _If God be for us, who is against us?_
says the apostle.” How far otherwise is it with the wicked! They are
cast off by their God; they are not his people; not fed or watched
over by that special tender providence which he affords his servants:
they are a forsaken, abandoned vineyard.[109] He is their enemy, and
hath set his eyes upon them for evil, not for good.[110] What rest
or comfort can the sinner enjoy who knows he hath an almighty arm
continually stretched out against him?