Eliya I Of Seleucia-Ctesiphon

Eliya I ( syr, ܐܠܝܐ) was Patriarch of the Church of the East from 1028 to 1049. He is also known as the author of an early grammar of Syriac written around the year 1000.

Sources

Brief accounts of Eliya's patriarchate are given in the ''Ecclesiastical Chronicle'' of the Jacobite writer Bar Hebraeus () and in the ecclesiastical histories of the Nestorian writers Mari (twelfth-century), and (fourteenth-century). A modern assessment of his reign can be found in David Wilmshurst's ''The Martyred Church''.

Eliya's patriarchate

The following account of Eliya's patriarchate is given by Bar Hebraeus:

He shoyahb IVwas succeeded by Eliya I, formerly bishop of Tirhan, a man of advanced age and a learned doctor. He introduced the rite of genuflection on the holy Sunday of Pentecost, which the Nestorians previously did not observe. At the end of his life he was afflicted by a paralysis of his limbs and was confined to bed. He was consecrated on the third Sunday of the Apostles, on the seventh day of the third month of the Arabs in the year 419 D 1028/9in the Greek Palace in Baghdad. His election was conducted by the drawing of lots. He died after fulfilling his office for twenty-one years, and was buried in the Greek Palace on the Sunday after Ascension, on the seventh day of ''iyyar'' ayin the year 440 of the Arabs D 1048/9Bar Hebraeus, ''Ecclesiastical Chronicle'' (ed. Abeloos and Lamy), ii. 286–8

His secretary was the famous polymath Ibn al-Tayyib.

See also

* List of patriarchs of the Church of the East

References

Bibliography

* Abbeloos, J. B., and Lamy, T. J., ''Bar Hebraeus, Chronicon Ecclesiasticum'' (3 vols, Paris, 1877)
* Assemani, J. A., ''De Catholicis seu Patriarchis Chaldaeorum et Nestorianorum'' (Rome, 1775)
* Brooks, E. W., ''Eliae Metropolitae Nisibeni Opus Chronologicum'' (Rome, 1910)
* Gismondi, H., ''Maris, Amri, et Salibae: De Patriarchis Nestorianorum Commentaria I: Amri et Salibae Textus'' (Rome, 1896)
* Gismondi, H., ''Maris, Amri, et Salibae: De Patriarchis Nestorianorum Commentaria II: Maris textus arabicus et versio Latina'' (Rome, 1899)
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{{DEFAULTSORT:Eliya 01
Patriarchs of the Church of the East
11th-century bishops of the Church of the East
Nestorians in the Abbasid Caliphate
1049 deaths