Ecclesiastical Chronicle, Volume 1

Ep?iscopus of Guba;

Lac?abena,

A?leppo.

The age was so cruel with its terrors and slaughters that scarcely any region had ever experienced the like. Therefore, wishing to provide for himself and his own, the father of Gregory departed with his family to Antioch in the year 1243. There, the young man lived for some time as an anchorite in a cave near the city, where he was visited by Ignatius Saba, or David, the patriarch of his sect. Later, in Tripoli, a maritime city of Phoenicia, he devoted himself to rhetoric and medicine under the discipline of a certain Jacob, a Nestorian man, together with Saliba Vagius Bar-Jacob, a Jacobite from Edessa. From here, Patriarch Ignatius, judging both to be worthy of episcopal dignity, summoned them to Antioch. Barhebræus, at twenty years of age, was appointed prefect of the church of Guba, adjacent to the territory of Melitene, and was consecrated bishop on the feast of the life-giving Cross, the 14th of September, in the year 1246. Scarcely a year having passed, he was transferred from Guba by the same patriarch to the see of the neighboring city of Lacabena, which he held for about seven years. Meanwhile, the patriarch died, and as two men aspired to the highest dignity, a schism arose among the Jacobites. Opposing John Bar-Maadani, Bar-Hebræus embraced the party of Dionysius Angur, and by him, after he was exalted to the patriarchal throne in the year 1253, he was transferred to the episcopal chair of the city of Berrhœa, or Aleppo, a very famous emporium in Syria situated between Antioch and Hierapolis. He could not, however, rule this church peacefully at the beginning; for since the primate of the Jacobites in the East, a former fellow student of our Gregory in the city of Tripoli, had obtained a decree from the Sultan of Damascus by paying a large sum of money by which the church of Aleppo was conceded to him, Barhebræus was forced to leave it. He lived for some time in the house of his father, who had recently moved his residence from Melitene to Aleppo; but later he withdrew to the monastery of Barsuma near Melitene to be with his patriarch. Then, after a year or two had passed, he himself set out for Damascus, and soon, with the tides of fortune turning, he found the Sultan so reconciled to his cause that Dionysius was proclaimed patriarch in all of Syria as well as in the territory of the Sultan of Iconium, while he himself was restored to the episcopal office in Aleppo.

In the year 1258, the city of Bagdad was captured by the Mongols, whom Hulagu, the grandson of Genghis Khan, commanded, and with the Caliph killed, the Abassid dynasty came to an end.