Chronicle of Edessa

In the year 724, in that same year, the walls of Edessa were breached by water for the third time, in the days of the Emperors Honorius and Arcadius.

1 LII. In the year 724, under the invincible Emperors Honorius and Arcadius, the walls of Edessa fell to the waters for the third time.

In the year 732, the famous Eutyches, who denied the truth of the body, became known.

2 LIII. In the year 732, Eutyches the monk became known, who denied the truth of the Incarnation.

At this time, the blessed Jacob Intercisus the Cut-in-pieces was martyred.

3 LIV. During the same time, the blessed Jacob Intercisus was crowned by martyrdom.

In the year 739, the heresy of those who say that sin is not written into nature emerged.

4 LV. In the year 739, the heresy emerged of those who assert that sin is inherent to nature.

...as it happened in reality, he migrated to heaven.

1 Year 724, namely 413 of Christ, in which the third day of the week and the eighteenth day of March, noted at the end of this Chronicle, fell. But that year was the sixth from the death of Arcadius. Therefore, the name "Arcadius" was placed in this passage by the negligence of the scribe; which error the same scribe corrected at the end of the Chronicle by substituting the name "Theodosius." Dionysius writes at length about this flooding of Edessa at the aforementioned year of the Greeks, though he reports that it happened not in the month of March, but in April.

2 Eutyches. The beginning of the Eutychian heresy is commonly assigned by authors to the year of Christ 441 or 442, as Anastasius Sinaita says in Lupus’s Notes to Chapter 44 of the Synodicon against the Tragedy of Irenaeus: "About ten years after (the Council of Ephesus), a certain Archimandrite Eutyches arose at Constantinople, who said that all of Christ is a single nature." For it is not likely that he began to be deluded concerning the Incarnation in the year of the Greeks 732, of Christ 421; otherwise, he would have been explicitly condemned in the Council of Ephesus, which was celebrated in the year 431 against Nestorius. Therefore, the words of our Chronicle must be interpreted charitably, not as the beginning of that heresy, but as the time when Eutyches was considered illustrious in faith and virtues before he fell into heresy. And thus Dionysius, who writes that he flourished in the year of the Greeks 731, is also to be understood.

3 Jacobus Intercisus. Regarding the time of his martyrdom, see above, page 181.

4 Heresy. Theodore of Mopsuestia, the parent of Pelagians just as much as Nestorians, published a volume divided into five books under this title: against those who assert that men sin by nature, not by will, as Photius testifies in his Bibliotheca, Codex 177. In it, attacking the Dialogues of Jerome and the books of Augustine on the merits and remission of sins, and his letter to Hilary of Syracuse, he strove to show with deceptive arguments that there is no original or "natural" sin, as the most eminent Norisius correctly observed in his Pelagian History. That this occurred in the year of the Greeks 739, of Christ 428, is deduced from this passage of our Chronicle, by which it is also confirmed that we affirmed above for the year 714 from the letter of Theodulus concerning Theodore, namely that he was still alive in the year of Christ 428. But the fact that our author calls those who assert "sin is inherent to nature" heretics makes one strongly suspect that he favored Theodore and Pelagius in this matter; especially when Marius Mercator, in his Commonitorium against the heresy of Pelagius and Caelestius, testifies that some of the Syrians were infected with the same error at that time, in these words: "The question against the Catholic faith, having been raised some time ago by some of the Syrians, and especially in Cilicia by Theodore, once bishop of the town of Mopsuestia, is now being brought forth among a few of them, etc. Namely, that the progenitors of the human race, Adam and Eve, were created mortal by God, etc." But since the Ephesian Synod, which our author explicitly embraces, condemned both the Nestorian and Pelagian errors, there appears to be some defect in the Syriac text, and the genuine reading ought to be restored thus: Emerfit haeresis afferentium, Peccatum nequaquam naturae insitum esse The heresy emerged of those asserting that sin is by no means inherent to nature, instead of: Emerfit haeresis afferentium, Peccatum naturae insitum esse The heresy emerged of those asserting that sin is inherent to nature. This conjecture is made probable because Marius Mercator, in the cited place, asserts that the Pelagian heresy also...