Oriental wit and wisdom, or, the "Laughable stories" / collected by Mar Gregory John Bar-Hebraeus ; translated from the Syriac by E. A. Wallis Budge.

  • Bar Hebraeus, 1226-1286.
Date:
1899
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Oriental wit and wisdom, or, the "Laughable stories" / collected by Mar Gregory John Bar-Hebraeus ; translated from the Syriac by E. A. Wallis Budge. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    26/286
    Lakabhin near Melitene left his flock and went to Je¬ rusalem, and Ignatius II. appointed Bar-Hebraeus to the vacant see. In 1253 he was transferred to Aleppo, and eleven years later he was raised to the dignity of Maphrian by the Patriarch Ignatius III., Abbot of Ge- wikhath near Mopsuestia. The principal events which Maphrilnoftook place in connection with his ecclesiastical rule are the Jacobite bv Bar-Hebraeus himself in his Ecclesiastical Chronicle^, to which work the reader is referred for information about the busy and most useful life which this eminent man lived; the following account of his death we owe to his brother Bar-Sauma. In the year 1286, when Bar-Hebraeus had arrived at the sixtieth Hisforebod- ^ beo^au to be afraid that his end mgs of death J ' ts and super--^^3 drawinpf nio^h, and he said, “I was born in the “year when Chronos and Zeus were in conjunction in “the sign of the Zodiac Aquarius; twenty years later “when the same planets were in conjunction in the sign “of the Balance kwas consecrated bishop; twenty years “later when the same planets were in conjunction in “the sign of the Twins I was held to be worthy of the “office of Maphrian^ and twenty years later, when the “same two planets shall again be in conjunction in the “sign of Aquarius, I believe that I shall depart from “this world.” And he said, “O net of the worlds, in “the year 1537 {i. e., A. D. 1226) thy mesh did catch “me; but I believe that in the year 1597 (f. e., A. D. 1286) “I shall no longer be in thee^.” Throughout that un- ^ Ed. Abbeloos and Lamy, pt. ii. col. 431 If. ^ In Syr., i. <?., “He who maketh [the Church] to flourish.” 3 The text of this curious passage runs:—^\xs)Q