Jaco'bus
8. Of EDESSA, the younger, known also by the designations of DOCTOR, and COMMENTATOR, and INTERPRES LIBRORUM. He appears to have been appointed to the bishopric of Edessa A. D. 651.
The date and place of his birth are not mentioned, but he must have been comparatively young at the time of his elevation to his bishopric, for he held it nearly sixty years, dying A. D. 710.
He was perhaps present at a synod convened by the patriarch of the Jacobites A. D. 706; but the passage in which this is recorded is obscure and ambiguous. His memory is highly reverenced, and he has a place in the calendar both of the Maronite and Jacobite churches, and his opinions are cited with great regard by subsequent Syriac writers.
He wrote
Commentaries on the Scriptures, and a
Commentary on the Isagoge of Porphyry; also a work called
Chronicon, or
Annales, which is not known to be extant; a
Liturgy; a
Baptismal Service; Ecclesiastical Canons, and
Letters. He was the author of a
Syriac Grammar, and to him is ascribed the restoration of the purity of the Syriac tongue, which had begun to degenerate.
He translated the
Praedicamenta, Analytica, and
De Elocutione Oratoria of Aristotle, and the
Homiliae Epithroniae of Severus of Antioch; and, perhaps, the works of some other of the Greek fathers. Several of his works are extant: a Latin version of his
Liturgy is given in the
Liturgiae Orientales (vol. ii. p. 371) of Renaudot, who has impugned the orthodoxy of Jacobus, but he is vindicated by Assemani. (Re naudot,
Liturgiae Orientales, 1. c., and notes on pp. 380, &c.; Assemani,
Bibl. Orient. vol. i. p. 468, &c.; Cave,
Hist. Litt. vol. i. p. 524.)
