Jacobites

Jacobites is the name by which the different communities in Syria, Mesopotamia, and Babylonia, who hold to the Monophysite doctrine, have been known since their union, about the. middle of the 6th century. See EUTYCHIANIS; see MONOPHYTES. The most prominent party in accomplishing the union of these Monophysites, who, near the middle of the 6th century, were very weak, and threatened with extermination, was Jacob (or James) Albardai, or Baradseus (or Zanzalus), a zealous disciple of Severus, a monk and presbyter of the convent of Phasilta, near Nisibis, and it is after this Jacob that the united Monophysites were named after their union, and not, as some have supposed, after James, the brother of Christ, or Jacob the patriarch, or after Dioscorus, who was called Jacob before his ordination. It is true, however, that these communities are sometimes designated as the Severians, Dioscorians, Eutychians, and even as the Theodosians (for the Egyptian Monophysites, see COPTS; for the Armenian, see ARMENIAN CHURCH: and for the Abyssinian, see ABYSSIAN CHURCH). The surnames of Jacob who united the Monophysites, however, have no bearing on his relation to the sects, but are strictly personal. Thus the coarseness of the dress in which he traveled through the East for the benefit of his party (says D'Herbelot, Bibliothéque Orientale, p. 435) gained him the name of Baradai (i.e. a coarse horse- blanket; compare Assemani, 2, 66, 414; Makrizi, Geschichte der Kopten, edited by Wtistenfeld; Eutychius, Annales, ed. Pococke, 2, 144, 147).

Jacob was made bishop of Edessa in 541, and then, says Dr. Schaff (Ch. History, 3:775), "this remarkable man devoted himself for seven and thirty years with unwearied zeal to the interests of the persecuted Monophysites. 'Light footed as Asahel' (2Sa 2:18), and in the garb of a beggar, he journeyed hither and thither amid the greatest dangers and privations; revived the patriarchate of Antioch; ordained bishops, priests, and deacons; organized churches; healed divisions; and thus saved the Monophysite body from impending extinction." He died in 578.

"The Jacobites have always protested against being considered followers of Eutyches; but, while they profess to anathematize that-heresiarch, they merely reject some minor opinions of his, and hold fast his great distinguishing error of the absorption of the humanity of our Savior in his divine nature. They think that in the incarnation, from two natures there resulted one. In other words, they believe that the Redeemer does not possess two natures, but one composed of two, illustrating their dogma in this way: 'Glass is made of sand; but the whole is only glass, no longer sand: thus the divine nature of Christ has absorbed the human, so that the two have become one.'"A middle way between Eutychianism and orthodoxy was chosen by Xenayas (q.v.) and his school, who on the incarnation maintain "the existence in Christ of one nature, composed of the divinity and humanity, but without conversion, confusion, or commixture. He teaches that the Son, one of the Trinity, united himself with a human body and a rational soul in the womb of the Virgin. His body had no being before this union. In this he was born, in it he was nourished, in it he suffered and died. Yet the divine nature of the Son did not suffer or die. Nor was his human nature, or his agency, or death, merely visionary, as the Phantasmists taught, but actual and real. Moreover, the divine nature was not changed or transmuted into the human, or commixed or confused therewith; neither was the human nature converted into the divine, nor commixed or confused with it; but an adunation of the two natures took place, of a mode equivalent to that which, by the union of body and soul, makes a human being; for as the soul and body are united in one human nature, so, from the union of the Godhead and manhood of our Lord Jesus Christ, there has arisen a nature peculiar to itself, not simple, but complex; 'one double nature."' Here is evidently maintained a distinction from the Eutychians that the flesh of Christ taken from the Virgin was actual and real, and united with the divine in Christ, "without confusion, change, or division;" and from the orthodox, in holding that, after the union, the two natures united in one, losing their distinctiveness. This view of Xenayas, says Etheridge (Syrian Churches, p. 143), seems to be at present the doctrine of the Jacobites; but, as the laity is very moderately educated, this remark applies only to the clergy. As an indication that they have only an imperfect idea on this point, Etheridge cites their usage of "making the sign of the cross with only the middle finger of their hand, holding the others so as to render them invisible," evincing thereby that the whole subject is to them an unsolved mystery.