ARAM, 11-12 (1999-2000), 467-474M. VAN ESBROECK 467

PETER THE FULLER AND CYRUS OF EDESSA

MICHEL VAN ESBROECK

The aim of this communication is to focus on the liturgical activities of two bishops who were at the same time responsible for the religious life of both and Edessa. The main point is to observe the similarity of two sentences, which have been transmitted first among the fragments of John Diacrinomenos in Greek,1 and second by the Chronicle of Zuqnîn in Syriac.2 The parallel expressions of both reports seem to describe a unique initiative of the famous bishop of Antioch, which was immediately accepted in Edessa. There is, however, a difficulty for which we first have to analyse the wording quite closely. At first sight, taking the words of the Syriac chronicle in an al- most literal sense, the liturgical reform of Bishop Cyrus could appear as being having been by his successor, Peter. This is the reason why a closer analysis of the text is first required. This problem solved, the consequences of the liturgi- cal reform can be traced upon various liturgical features in the early middle East, where the precise date which clearly arise in both Greek and Syriac sources gives a new way to understand the development of some traditions even in the Caucasus. This is just the reason why the general theme of this conference, namely Antioch and Edessa, is the right place for developing that point of the history of liturgy.

The Greek wording of John Diakrinomenos is the following: Pétron fjsì tòn Knaféa êpino±sai tò múron ên t±Ç êkkljsíaç êpì pantòv toÕ laoÕ ägiáhesqai, kaì t®n êpì t¬n üdátwn ên to⁄v qeofa- níoiv êpíkljsin ên t±Ç ëspéraç gínesqai, kaì ên ëkástjÇ eûx±Ç t®n qeotókon ônomáhesqai, kaì ên pásjÇ sunázei tò súmbolon légesqai. He says that the Peter the Fuller invented the rite that the Myron should be sanctified in the church in the presence of all the people, that the invocation (of the Spirit) on the water in the Theophaneia should occur in the evening, that in every prayer the Theotokos should be named and that the Symbol should be read in every liturgical meeting.

1 Theodoros Anagnostes, Kirchengeschichte, ed. G.C. Hansen (Berlin 1971), p. 155, no 547. (= Theodore Anagnostes). 2 Incerti Auctoris chronicon pseudo-dionysianum vulgo dictum, ed. J.B. Chabot, (Louvain 1927), p. 258, lines 13-19. 468 PETER THE FULLER AND CYRUS OF EDESSA

In the Chronicle of Zuqnin or of Joshua the Stylite,3 at the end of the year 809 of the Seleucid era, we read the following sentence. “In that same year in the month of Îaziran on the fifth day the Bishop Mar Qura left this world and instead of him there was Peter. He added to the annual feasts the feast of the Hosannas, he started the rite to sanctify the water in the night in the early twilight of the feast of Epiphany, and that the oil of anointing should be consecrated in the presence of all the people on Maundy Thursday with the remaining feasts”.

When both reports are read together, it becomes difficult to think that they describe independent liturgical reforms. Especially striking is the mention “in the presence of all the people” on both sides, and the mention of the night or the evening for the blessing of the waters. But, of course, the reports are inde- pendent, and complete one another. If this reform is the same, and if we take into account the wording of the Syriac chronicle, we find an astounding occurrence. First at Antioch in the time of Peter the Fuller, who died in the year 488, the reform is presented as a new initiative. Then, when Kuros died on the 5th or the 6th of June of the year 809 of the Seleucid era, that is in the year 498, Peter of Edessa becomes Bishop and is supposed to have introduced exactly the same liturgical novel- ties. The logical reflex is to consider that the mention of the successor Peter in Edessa is a mere marginal observation. Cyrus became Bishop of Edessa in the year 782, succeeding Nonus, that is in the year 471. Now, two years before, Peter the Fuller came for the first time to Antioch and took the place of Bishop Martyrius, enjoying the aid of the Apollinarist circles of Antioch.4 He was promptly removed by emperor in 471. When the anti-emperor Basiliskos took the power against , Peter the Fuller was a second time Bishop of Antioch from 475 to 477. He was then banished to north Caucasus for some years, but came back a third time in Antioch from 485 to 488. The reason for his return is that his predecessor, Bishop Callandion, accepted the anti-em-

3 For the succession of the Syriac Chronicles, and the place of the Zuqnin Chronicle, the most easy description will be found in S.P. Brock, ‘Syriac historical writing: a survey of the main sources', in Journal of the Iraqi Academy V, (Baghdad 1979/80), p. 316 (reprinted in Studies in Syriac Christianity, Variorum 1992, I, p.11). 4 M. van Esbroeck, The Memra on the Parrot by Isaac of Antioch, in The Journal of Theo- logical Studies, 47 (1996), p. 465-466. M. VAN ESBROECK 469 peror Leontios in Antioch.5 Each time he had been able to function as a bishop in Antioch, Peter the Fuller made himself known by several liturgical novel- ties, many of which are more famous than those mentioned by Diacrinomenos. Peter the Fuller was bishop for no more than seven years in Antioch, and per- haps only for five years. During all that time, Cyrus was quite normally bishop from 471 to 498, 27 years without a gap, and he died ten years after Peter the Fuller. The only reasonable way to read the Greek and Syriac reports is to at- tribute a series of liturgical reforms to Peter the Fuller, and to register that they were fully accepted by the bishop of Edessa just at the time they began to work. The liturgical innovations of Peter the Fuller in Antioch never occurred without pronounced opposition. Internal discrepancies between different chronicles make it difficult to reconstruct an accurate chronology for his many new ritual innovations. Theodore Anagnostes says about his first appearance in Antioch: “ When Martyrios had been forced to retire, the Fuller seized the see in a tyrannical manner”.6 But soon, in the year 471, Peter the Fuller was sent back for penance into original convent of the Akoimetes near Constanti- nople. When Basiliskos chose a strong anti-chalcedonical polity, he set Peter up again in Antioch in the year 475; Theodore Anagnostes writes: “Julianos the bishop of Antioch after Martyrios, died from the bitterness of the agitation, The Fuller invaded the See and devoted himself to anathematizings and trou- bles, during which murders and robberies took place because of the addition to the Trishagion.”7 This is less accurately written down by the Chronicle for the year 846: “In the , when Peter the Fuller remained on the See for two years, Johannes (that is Julianos) succeeded him for two years, and after him Stephanus, and after him too another Stephanus, who was perforated by reeds and thrown down into the Orontes. And after him Callandion, and af- ter him Peter five years, and Palladios seven years.”8 The five years for Peter until the year 488 are most probably calculated from the time when Callandion was no more capable of retaining on the See of Antioch. The same Chronicle devotes another paragraph to Mar Isaac, the poet of Edessa, who dedicated his poem on the Parrot who was able to sing the trishagion with the addition “Qui crucifixus pro nobis”. The chronicle adds: “In the time of Petrus the Fuller, that formula ö staurwqeív was confirmed in all the churches from the Ori- ent.”9 Using that little sentence, it is possible to assert that Cyrus of Edessa did agree with Peter the Fuller. One should observe that the so-called chronicle of

5 Ibid., p. 467. 6 Theodore Anagnostes, p. 109, no 392. 7 Id., p. 114, no 410. 8 Chronica Minora II, ed. E.-W-Brooks, (Louvain 1904), Text, p. 218. Latin translation, id., (Louvain 1955), p. 166. 9 Id., Text, p. 217, Translation p. 165. 470 PETER THE FULLER AND CYRUS OF EDESSA

Edessa, which is less interested in the orthodoxy of that formula, gives an ac- count under the year 763, that is 452: “Then Mar Isaac the writer and the archimandrit became famous”.10 This Mar Isaac could possibly be the same poet. In that poem, there are of some expressions which may fit the addition to that sort of Trishagion which was proposed by Callandion before Peter came back for the third time allegedly between 477 and 483: the Bishop proposed to add Xristòv Basileúv to the “Crucified”.11 But Callandion accepted the en- trance of the anti-emperor Leontios on 27th July 484. This is surely the reason why emperor Zeno put Peter the Walker a third time in Antioch in the year 485, where the old bishop proclaimed the Henoticon according to the desire of the monarch. It is probable that he began the blessing of the waters in his last period, for we still have his communion letter to Peter Mongos in Alexan- dria,12 where it is clearly affirmed that the Council of did not add any new concepts to the council of Nicea. The blessing of the Nile was a much more ancient feature. The first and most famous liturgical novelty of Peter the Fuller was surely that of the addition to the Trishagion, and this must have been admitted and promoted by Cyrus of Antioch. We should now observe what can be said about the several other items which can be isolated in both notices of John Diacrinomenos and the chronicle of Zuqnin. One can distinguish six supplementary reforms: (1) The Myron is sanctified before all the people on Maundy Thursday; (2) The Myron has to be put into the water at the Epiphany; (3) There will be a feast of the Hosannas; (4) There will be a recitation of the Nicene Creed at the divine Liturgy; (5) The prayer will get Theotokia (6) Other feasts were renewed. Two of these items are still to be found even in the west. The Credo is still an obligation in the Sunday liturgy from West and East. The Theotokia belong to the oldest witnesses for psalmody in the eastern liturgy. For the Sunday of the Hosannas, that is Palm Sunday, it is interesting to record that the original series of the homilies of Meletios of Antioch for Holy Week was initially com- posed as one very long commentary on the Passion. It has been independently cut in shorter homilies in Armenian and Georgian.13 The denomination “Sun- day of the Hosannas” still appears in the document of Nerses Ashtaraketsi in the year 555, in the Greek transliteration with Armenian characters: Sunday “evlogimeni”.14

10 Chronica Minora I, ed. I. Guidi, (Louvain 19602) p. 7-8. Latin translation, id., (Louvain 1907), p. 7. 11 Theodoros Anagnostes, p. 118, no 427. 12 Zacharia the Scholastic, Historia Ecclesiastica, ed. E.W. Brooks (Louvcain 1919), p. 233- 235. 13 M. van Esbroeck, Les plus anciens homéliaires géorgiens, (Louvain 1975), p. 308-312. 14 G. Garitte, La Narratio de rebus Armeniae, (Louvain 1952), p. 157. M. VAN ESBROECK 471

For the Myron in the water, the reform is more confined to the Church of Antioch and Edessa, but can be traced among many testimonies, which have principally been studied by Sebastian Brock in the early Eighties. On the basis of the anonymous Syriac Baptismal Ordo from the Ms. Add. 14158, which he edited and commented on, he observed that the parallel texts are not at all lim- ited to Syrian orthodox materials.15 Maronites and Melkites had similar Ordos.16 A much more exhaustive work was dedicated to that theme in the Syrian tradition by B. Vargheese in 1989. There every old source where there is some allusion to oil before or after the baptismal water has been accurately mentioned, starting with the Acts of Thomas.17 A similar parallel has been in- dicated by G. Winkler in the Armenian Agathangelos, when Gregory the Illu- minator baptised Tiridates in the Euphrates.18 When we read this passage as a result of the initiative of Peter the Fuller, the context seems not only baptismal but also simply festal. The §833 of the Armenian Agathangelos is indicated in order to underline the genuine character of the ceremony.19 However, the last Armenian redaction of Agathangelos is not so old. Bishop Komitas surely worked on it at the beginning of the seventh century.20 The oldest testimony for the Agathangelos is the Greek Version which was published by G. Garitte: it effectively writes the following sentence: Kaì labÑn múron kaì ∂laion êpì tò potamòn katéxeen, stauroÕ túpon êktélesav. “He took Myron and oil and shed it on the river tracing the sign of the Cross.”21 One must notice that both Myron and oil are present in that short text. Such a presentation, even before Tiridates and his people were baptised, seems diffi- cult to imagine before the reform of Peter the Fuller, whose influence in Arme- nia was very strong. It gives a good starting-point for situating many points of that Epos after 488. The next innovation of Peter the Fuller is the consecration of the Myron on Maundy Thursday. Here some observations may be made from the point of view of the dependence of the Georgian church from in Antioch. Callandion, who had to restore the unity of his church, found a useful aid in bringing back from Macedonia the relics of Eustathios of Antioch, the bishop who was present at the council of Nicea in 325. Theodore Anagnostes relates how the

15 S. Brock, ‘The Anonymous Syriac Baptismal Ordo in Add. 14518', in Parole de l'Orient 8 (1977-1978), p. 311-346 and Id. 16 Id., ‘Some Early Syriac Baptismal Commentaries' in Orientalia Christiana Periodica 46 (1980), 20-61. 17 B. Varghese, Les onctions baptismales dans la tradition Syrienne, (Lovanii 1989). 18 G. Winkler, ‘Our Present Knowledge of The History of Agathangelos', in Revue des Études Arméniennes 14 (1980), 125-141, especially 136-137. 19 Id., p. 137, note 79. 20 M. van Esbroeck, ‘Le “De Fide” géorgien attribué à Hippolyte et ses rapports avec la “Didascalie” de Grégoire l'Illuninateur dans l'Agathange', in Analecta Bollandiana, 102 (1984), 321-328. 21 G. Garitte, ‘Documents pour l'étude du livre d'Agathange', Vaticano (1946), p. 100, no 167. 472 PETER THE FULLER AND CYRUS OF EDESSA inhabitants of the town went eighteen miles outside the town in order to re- ceive the relics of their great bishop.22 Emperor Zeno was quite satisfied to avoid in this manner the divisions which arose from the time of Peter the Fuller onwards. More picturesque is this event in the short life of Eustathios in the Menologe of Basile: “One hundred years and more passed away after the death of Eustathios, and in the time of Emperor Zeno, who therefore published a decree in response to the demands of the people of Antioch, they forcedly put the bishop again in his See, and one can scarcely describe how joyfully he has been accepted” .23 These testimonies point to a text which is attributed to Eustathios of Antioch, and is presented in both Greek and Georgian language. It is a homily on Martha, Mary and Lazarus, and its main theme is the anoint- ing of the feet of Jesus.24 The genuineness of that homily is most improbable. But the theme and the authorship suggests a link to the second episcopate of Peter the Fuller. There is little to doubt that Palladios, the successor of the Fuller in 488, should not have acted in another way, for the opposition which arose against Peter the Fuller was always heavy. At the end of the eleventh century, the Georgian monk Ephrem Mtsire composed a short tractate on the conversion of the Georgians to Christianity.25 He said that the name of the bishop who went to Georgia in answer to the prayers of Nino was none an- other than Eusthatios the himself. “He founded the church which was built up by Mirian in Mtskhetha and he anointed the Catholicos as a archbishop”.26 One need not mention the various anachronisms of such a report. More important is the fact that the oil of anointing is brought into connection with the dependence of the Church of Georgia on Antioch. Ephrem Mtsire writes, “in the time of the there were ru- mours about the very high price to buy that oil. Therefore, the Fathers pre- scribed that the oil need no more be consecrated at Antioch, nor in other churches”.27 Under this affirmation, one can easily read the damnatio memo- riae of Peter the Fuller, which was excessively hard in Georgia.28 For our pur- pose here, it will be sufficient to note that even in the 11th century the memo- ries of Eustathius, Maundy Thursday and the consecration of the oil still left some traces.

22 Theodoros Anagnostes, p. 121. 23 V.V. Latysev, Menologii anonymi byzantini saeculi X, t. 1 (Petropoli 1911), p. 122. 24 M. van Esbroeck, ‘L'homélie d'Eustathe d'Antioche en géorgien' (CPG 3394), in Oriens christianus 66 (1982), 189-214. 25 Th. Bregadze, Eprem Mcire. Ucqeba mizezsa Kartvelta mokcevisasa tu romelta cignta sina moiÌsenebis, (Tbilissi 1959). (= Report on the reason why Georgia converted and on the books where it is recorded) 26 Id., p. 8, lines 8-10. 27 Id., p. 10, 14-25. 28 On this topic, I have a paper ‘Vakhtang Gorgasali et l'évêque Mikael de Mtskheta', in E. Khintibidze, Proceedings of the 3rd International Symposium on Kartvelian Studies, (Tbilisi 1999), p. 9-23. M. VAN ESBROECK 473

Before closing these remarks, I should come back to the curious idea that one should add something to the Virgin in the prayer. The Greek word eûxß is so wide in its various meanings that it is difficult to know whether Theotokia is the right translation here. There is another possibility, which again can be confirmed by a lot of manuscripts in Georgian, Armenian, Syriac and even in Greek. If euchè could be applied to the whole liturgical year, the first readings in honour of the Theotokos in the old Georgian Mravalthavi certainly fits the report perfectly. Three of these homilies are attributed to Gregory the Thaumaturgus, whose cult was enhanced by Peter the Fuller when he was in exile in the Pontus.29 Then, this reform belongs to the third period from 485 to 488 onwards. Of course, in Syriac and Armenian, those homilies are reduced to fragments much more than in Georgia. This is not an objection. The Mravalthavi and the reforms of Peter the Fuller in that tradition surely pre- served the liturgical year better than it was in Antioch. A supplementary hint is given by the Homily on the Theotokos of Proclos of in its Georgian translation. Only there, the variant “Who is also God” has been added four times to the name of Jesus.30 Now, among the several Greek manu- scripts of that homily, only one copy has these four variants, namely the codex Vaticanus graecus 1431, a codex of the Acts of the Councils which ends with the text of the Henotikon, and about which E. Schwartz agreed to see the direct product of the politic of Zeno.31 Here too, the last period of Peter the Fuller in the See of Antioch is the easiest way to understand the note of John Dia- crinomenos. Right at the end of our reading of the two Chronicles, one might guess that the many other feasts which are alluded to at the end of the Syriac notice could really be a hint to the old Mravalthavi itself and its organisation. It is no won- der that the Georgians preserved the most original form. Armenians and Syr- ians went their own way after Justinian became emperor. The Georgians, how- ever, were quite close to the Armenians from the very period of the Henotikon. One should observe that they immediately adhered to the politics of Justinian in 519. Many documents from that period and the placing of the feast of Peter and Paul on 29th of June show that there is no need to await the personal dis- pute between Abraham Aghbatanetsi and Kwirion of Mtskhetha in the early 7th century to register the union with Constantinople. Only in the 11th century they began to modify the Mravalthavi itself according to the Byzantine reper-

29 M. van Esbroeck, Les plus anciens homéliaires géorgiens, Louvain-la-Neuve 1975, p. 326- 327 and ‘La passion géorgienne de Grégoire le Thaumaturge et sa date', in Le Muséon, 112 (1999), 128-185. 30 M. van Esbroeck, ‘Jalons pour l'histoire de la transmission manuscrite de l'homélie de Proclus sur la Vierge', in J. Dummer, Text und Kritik, (Berlin 1987), 149-160. 31 M. van Esbroeck, Les plus anciens homéliaires (cf note 29), p. 292-296, and E. Schwartz, ‘Codex Vaticanus gr.1431, Eine antichalkedonische Sammlung aus der Zeit Kaiser Zenos', (Mu- nich 1927). 474 PETER THE FULLER AND CYRUS OF EDESSA toire. The ten extant exemplars are all before the year 1000, and the Khaneti fragments could materially belong to the 6th century. Coming from various horizons, these observations confirm the truth of both Greek and Syriac notices. Peter the Fuller and Cyrus of Edessa made the same constructive reforms, whose traces have been scattered through the Caucasus more than in the Syrian tradition itself.