Joshua the
Stylite (also spelled Yeshu Stylite and Ieshu Stylite) is the attributed author of a
chronicle which narrates the history of the
war
War is an intense armed conflict between states, governments, societies, or paramilitary groups such as mercenaries, insurgents, and militias. It is generally characterized by extreme violence, destruction, and mortality, using regular o ...
between the
Byzantine Empire
The Byzantine Empire, also referred to as the Eastern Roman Empire or Byzantium, was the continuation of the Roman Empire primarily in its eastern provinces during Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages, when its capital city was Constantinopl ...
and
Persians
The Persians are an Iranian ethnic group who comprise over half of the population of Iran. They share a common cultural system and are native speakers of the Persian language as well as of the languages that are closely related to Persian.
...
between 502 and 506, and which is generally considered to be one of the earliest and most reliable historical documents to be preserved in
Syriac Syriac may refer to:
*Syriac language, an ancient dialect of Middle Aramaic
*Sureth, one of the modern dialects of Syriac spoken in the Nineveh Plains region
* Syriac alphabet
** Syriac (Unicode block)
** Syriac Supplement
* Neo-Aramaic languages a ...
.
The work owes its preservation to having been incorporated in the third part of the ''
Chronicle of Zuqnin'', and may probably have had a place in the second part of the ''Ecclesiastical History'' of
John of Ephesus
John of Ephesus (or of Asia) ( Greek: Ίωάννης ό Έφέσιος, c. 507 – c. 588) was a leader of the early Syriac Orthodox Church in the sixth century and one of the earliest and the most important historians to write in Syriac. John of ...
, from whom (as
François Nau
François Nau (13 May 1864 at Thil – 2 September 1931 at Paris) was a French Catholic priest, mathematician, Syriacist, and specialist in oriental languages. He published a great number of eastern Christian texts and translations for the firs ...
has shown) Pseudo-Dionysius copied all or most of the matter contained in his third part. The chronicle in question is anonymous, and Nau has shown that the note of a
copyist, which was thought to assign it to the monk Joshua of Zuqnin near Amida (
Diyarbakir), more probably refers to the compiler of the whole work in which it was incorporated. In any case, the author was an eyewitness of many of the events which he describes, and must have been living at
Edessa during the years when it suffered so severely during the
Roman–Persian Wars
The Roman–Persian Wars, also known as the Roman–Iranian Wars, were a series of conflicts between states of the Greco-Roman world and two successive Iranian empires: the Parthian and the Sasanian. Battles between the Parthian Empire and the ...
. He has a more complex approach to
historical causation than many of his contemporaries, which takes into account human motivations, economic interests, tribal versus imperial politics, as well as the force of divine providence. For this, he has been called by some the Syriac
Thucydides
Thucydides (; grc, , }; BC) was an Athenian historian and general. His '' History of the Peloponnesian War'' recounts the fifth-century BC war between Sparta and Athens until the year 411 BC. Thucydides has been dubbed the father of " scienti ...
.
[J. W. Watt, “Greek historiography and the Chronicle of Joshua the Stylite”, in After Bardaisan: studies on continuity and change in Syriac Christianity in honour of Professor Han J.W. Drijvers, G. J. Reinink and Klugkist, A. C., Eds. Leuven: Uitgeverij Peeters en dép.oosterse Studies, 1999, pp. 317-327.] His praise of
Flavian II, the
Chalcedon
Chalcedon ( or ; , sometimes transliterated as ''Chalkedon'') was an ancient maritime town of Bithynia, in Asia Minor. It was located almost directly opposite Byzantium, south of Scutari (modern Üsküdar) and it is now a district of the cit ...
ian
patriarch of Antioch
Patriarch of Antioch is a traditional title held by the bishop of Antioch (modern-day Antakya, Turkey). As the traditional "overseer" (ἐπίσκοπος, ''episkopos'', from which the word ''bishop'' is derived) of the first gentile Christian c ...
, in warmer terms than those in which he talk about his great Monophysite contemporaries,
Jacob of Serugh
Jacob of Sarug ( syr, ܝܥܩܘܒ ܣܪܘܓܝܐ, ''Yaʿquḇ Sruḡāyâ'', ; his toponym is also spelled ''Serug'' or ''Serugh''; la, Iacobus Sarugiensis; 451 – 29 November 521), also called Mar Jacob, was one of the foremost Syriac poet-the ...
and
Philoxenus of Mabbog Philoxenus of Mabbug (Syriac: , ') (died 523), also known as Xenaias and Philoxenus of Hierapolis, was one of the most notable Syriac prose writers and a vehement champion of Miaphysitism.
Early life
He was born, probably in the third quarter of ...
, has led some to think that he was an orthodox
Catholic
The Catholic Church, also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the largest Christian church, with 1.3 billion baptized Catholics worldwide . It is among the world's oldest and largest international institutions, and has played a ...
. But his exact religious orientation is far from being clear, since he praises the emperor
Anastasius for his religious policies, which predominantly favoured the Monophysites.
The chronicle was first made known in
Assemani's abridged Latin version (B O i. 260–83) and was edited in 1876 by
Paulin Martin and (with an English translation) by
William Wright in 1882. After an elaborate dedication to a friend the priest and abbot Sergius, a brief recapitulation of events from the death of
Julian in 363 and a fuller account of the reigns of the Persian kings
Peroz I
Peroz I ( pal, 𐭯𐭩𐭫𐭥𐭰, Pērōz) was the Sasanian King of Kings () of Iran from 459 to 484. A son of Yazdegerd II (), he disputed the rule of his elder brother and incumbent king Hormizd III (), eventually seizing the throne after ...
(457-484) and
Balash (484-488), the writer enters upon his main theme: the history of the disturbed relations between the Persian and Roman Empires from the beginning of the reign of
Kavadh I
Kavad I ( pal, 𐭪𐭥𐭠𐭲 ; 473 – 13 September 531) was the Sasanian King of Kings of Iran from 488 to 531, with a two or three-year interruption. A son of Peroz I (), he was crowned by the nobles to replace his deposed and unpopular un ...
(489–531), which culminated in the great war of 502–6.
From October 494 to the conclusion of peace near the end of 506, the author gives an annalistic account, with careful specification of dates, of the main events in
Mesopotamia
Mesopotamia ''Mesopotamíā''; ar, بِلَاد ٱلرَّافِدَيْن or ; syc, ܐܪܡ ܢܗܪ̈ܝܢ, or , ) is a historical region of Western Asia situated within the Tigris–Euphrates river system, in the northern part of the ...
, the theatre of conflict such as the siege and capture of Amid by the Persians (502–3), their unsuccessful siege of Edessa (503), and the abortive attempt of the Romans to recover Amida (504–5). The work was probably written a few years after the conclusion of the war. The style is graphic and straightforward, and the author was evidently a man of good education and of a simple, honest mind.
A modern German translation with an extensive historical commentary was published 1997.
References
* John W. Watt, "Greek historiography and the 'Chronicle of Joshua the Stylite'," in Idem, ''Rhetoric and Philosophy from Greek into Syriac'' (Aldershot, Ashgate Variorum, 2010) (Variorum Collected Studies, CS960),
*
External links
English translation by William WrightThe chronicle of Joshua the Stylite (Original text with English translation)
{{DEFAULTSORT:Joshua The Stylite
Chroniclers
6th-century Byzantine historians
Stylites
Syriac writers
6th-century Christian saints