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Cover JCSSS 6 ________________________________________________________________________________________________________ THE ECCLESIASTICAL CHRONICLE OF GREGORY BAR‘EBROYO* WITOLD WITAKOWSKI UNIVERSITY OF UPPSALA t does not seem that Gregory arly output that the period of the twelfth and Bar‘Ebroyo1 (Grēghōrīyos Bar- thirteenth centuries called ‘Syriac Renais- ‛Ebhrāyā;2 hereafter: BE) requires any sance’ becomes really momentous. He may introduction,3 since he is one of the not have been a very original thinker, as is Imost famous authors who wrote in Syriac, sometimes pointed out, but he was certainly perhaps second in this respect only to able to encompass most of whatever the Ephrem. BE was a scholar, a genuine intel- Syrians had produced over the centuries of lectual, and a prolific and versatile author. the development of their intellectual tradi- His erudition, encompassing the whole sci- tion. entific gamut of the epoch, is most impres- Within his intellectual activities historiog- sive. The range of the topics of his works raphy occupied not a marginal part. BE is stretches from theology and other ecclesiasti- known to have written two large histo- cal disciplines to science, including medicine riographical works: one in Syriac and one in and astronomy, as well as philosophy and Arabic. The latter was, as it appears, the very literary humoristic composition. He wrote first work of his ever printed in Europe, as it mostly in Syriac, but sometimes in Arabic. was published as early as 1663 in Oxford by Living in the 13th century (1225/6-86), he the English Arabist Edward Pococke. Its title was able to profit from the long tradition of Al-mukhtasar ta’rīkh al-duwal (An Abbrevi- Syriac scholarship, but he also enriched this ated History of the Dynasties) suggests that it intellectual tradition by introducing into it was an abridgement of his earlier and larger material from Greek and Muslim scholar- work, the Chronography, the secular part, ship. In the range of his interests and the vol- written in Syriac. However this is not a sim- ume of his intellectual-literary output (he left ple abbreviation of his Syriac work, but one over thirty works) he surpassed both Jacob of that has been adjusted to Muslim readers, Edessa (7th century) and Job of Edessa (the inter alia, by using material from Arabic East Syrian author of scientific encyclopae- Muslim sources, such as the Chronicle of dia, the 9th century). These achievements ‛Izz al-Dīn ibn al-Athīr of Mosul (d. 1223), place BE in a unique class—a class reserved which partly replaced material of Syriac 4 for him alone. It is mainly due to his schol- sources (Michael the Elder). ______________________________________________________________________________________________________ Journal of the Canadian Society for Syriac Studies 6 (2006) - Page 61 The Ecclesiastical Chronicle of Gregory of Bar‘Ebroyo _______________________________________________________________________________________________________ The Syriac work is entitled translated into Latin as early as 1789 by Makhtəbhānūth (or: Makhtəbhūth) zabhnē, Paul Jakob Bruns and Georg Wilhelm literally ‘writing of times’, which is a calque Kirsch,6 but neither the edition nor the trans- of the Greek Χρονογραφία. Gregory was lation was satisfactory. In 1890 a better edi- not the inventor of this term; it was used tion of the Syriac text was published by Paul already before him, for instance by Michael Bedjan, but anonymously.7 E.A.W. Budge’s the Elder (Mīkhā’ēl Rabbā; henceforth ME). publication of 19328 provides a facsimile BE’s work is a universal chronicle. It is edition of a manuscript in the Bodleian the last work of Syriac classical historiogra- Library, Oxford, but his English translation phy, after which the Syrians did not venture is based on the text edited by P. Bedjan, the to write universal history any more. Bodleian Library manuscript being As the material that BE collected for this imperfect. work was quite bulky, he did not consider it The secular part is well known and often any longer expedient to put it in one volume used by historians of the mediaeval Near as his predecessors did, but rather divided it East. Although it has often been referred to into two parts, secular and ecclesiastical. in various studies, it has never been the ob- Moreover, abandoning the arrangement of ject of a historiographical analysis.9 the other two chronicles of the late classical Unfortunately the same must be said epoch, that by Michael the Elder and the about the ecclesiastical part, to which we anonymous Chronicle to the year 1234, he shall refer as the Ecclesiastical Chronicle may have published the two parts separately.5 (furthermore: EX). Although published over The secular part, known from its first 130 years ago (1872-77), and thus known to edition as the Chronicon Syriacum, or from scholars for quite a long time and often used the title of its English translation as Chrono- as a source for the history of the Syriac graphy (which is also used as the common speaking Christians, it has never been stud- title for both the secular and the ecclesiasti- ied in a systematic way. Such a study (or cal part), is a universal chronicle covering studies) remains an overdue desideratum, the period from the Creation until BE’s own and of course cannot be replaced by the pre- time. However, after his death it was contin- sent paper, which will only try to character- ued by an anonymous writer (probably his ize BE’s work and set it in the tradition of brother BarSawmo (BarSawmā) up to the Syriac ecclesiastical historiography. year 1297. It is divided into eleven parts called ‘successions’ or ‘dynasties’ (yubbālē) THE MANUSCRIPTS by which division BE encapsulates the idea of world empires originating from the prophecies of the Book of Daniel, but devel- As the last chronicle of this type BE’s work oped and brought up to date. In fact, he in- was often copied, and consequently— cludes the Mongols (whom he calls contrary to the case with all the other Syriac ‘Huns’)—which of course could not be historiographical works—it is preserved in known to the author of Daniel—as the elev- more than one manuscript. enth empire, contemporary with his lifetime. Anton Baumstark listed the manuscripts 10 The secular part was first edited and that were known to him. According to his ______________________________________________________________________________________________________ Journal of the Canadian Society for Syriac Studies 6 (2006) - Page 62 The Ecclesiastical Chronicle of Gregory of Bar‘Ebroyo _______________________________________________________________________________________________________ list the EX was preserved in manuscripts scholarly standards it is rather unsatisfac- that contain the text of the whole Chrono- tory, as it is based on one manuscript only, graphy, for instance Vatican Syr. 166, cop- namely that of the British Library, Rich ied before 1356/7, or Vatican Syr. 383/8, 7198, of the 16th century.17 Abbeloos copied which is a copy of the former, Berlin 237 it during his stay in London, and then de- (Sachau 210, before 1481/2),11 Oxford 122 cided to publish it with the help of Lamy. (Hunt 1, around 1499), Jerusalem, St Mark The text is not vocalised, except for some of Monastery 36 of the year 1570/71, Florence, the names. Palatino-Medicean Library, Or. 118 of The second edition appeared more re- 1578/9. There are, however, manuscripts cently, in Berlin in 1983, but it is not satis- that contain only the secular part,12 as well factory either. It is not a printed text, but one as those in which only the ecclesiastical part that was copied manually and then multi- can be found. In fact, this is the case of the plied anastatically. The Vorlage manuscript London manuscript, on the basis of which is unknown:18 it does not come from any the editio princeps was produced. European library, but seems to be from a It is, however, not difficult to find more private collection of an immigrant in manuscripts that Baumstark apparently did Europe. The scribe’s name is Gabriel Far- not know of, for instance Additional 2006 of zoyo. The age of the manuscript remains the 18th or 19th century preserved in the unknown. Cambridge University Library (only the ec- The third edition is of the same character clesiastical part). Such will have to be taken as the one just named, and was copied and into consideration for a future critical edi- published in 1987, in the monastery of the tion of the Syriac text. Syrian Orthodox Church at Hengelo, the Netherlands, by a monk, Yulius Yeshu‘, i.e. the late Bishop Çiçek.19 This edition has the THE EDITION same flaws as the previous. Also in this case AND STATE OF RESEARCH the Vorlage manuscript and its age remain unknown. There are three editions of this quite volumi- Consequently a scholarly critical edition nous work. However, before any of them of Bar‘Ebroyo’s EX, based on a reasonable appeared the London text was copied in the number of manuscripts, with an English or 1840’s13 by the Swedish scholar Otto any other modern language translation, re- Fredrik Tullberg.14 Although he copied the mains a rather urgent desideratum. Before text clearly with the purpose to publish it, such an edition appears, it is still Abbeloos Tullberg never brought his edition to an end, and Lamy’s text that should be used for while the copy is extant in the Uppsala Uni- scholarly purposes. versity Library (665 pp.).15 Let it be repeated here that although both The first edition, as was already men- parts of BE’s Chronography were often tioned, was published in the years 1872-77 used as sources of history of Near East and (in three volumes) by Belgian scholars Jean especially of the Syrian churches, it is sur- Baptiste Abbeloos and Thomas Joseph prising that no thorough study of either of Lamy.16 From the point of view of present them has been produced so far.
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