Place · Syriac Christian city · Turkey
Edessa / Urfa
Also known as Urfa, Şanlıurfa, Sanliurfa, Orhay, ʾŪrhāy, Urhay, ar-Ruhā, Urha, Antiochia on the Callirhoe
The Syriac-speaking capital of the kingdom of Osroene in Upper Mesopotamia, now Urfa in south-eastern Turkey, and the place where the Thomas story was first written down: the Acts of Thomas were composed here, probably before 240. Its church claimed the apostle's bones, brought from India by a merchant in the words of Ephrem the Syrian, and Egeria prayed at his martyrium in 384. For the Kerala Christians it is also the source of their liturgical language, Syriac, which grew out of Edessa's Aramaic.
- Function
- Sacred site & pilgrimage
- Confidence
- Established / referenced
- Location
- 37.150, 38.782
Worth knowing
Eusebius records the Edessene legend that King Abgar was converted by Addai, sent by 'Judas, who is also called Thomas'. Gregory of Tours reported in the sixth century that a July fair, with customs duties eased, was held at the church of St Thomas in the saint's honour.
About the place
Coordinates are those Wikipedia gives for ancient Edessa, within modern Urfa (Şanlıurfa).
The date 232 for the arrival of the relics from India comes from later tradition; Ephrem, the fourth-century witness, says only that a merchant brought the bones from India.
Connections (5)
- Relic distributed toThomas the Apostle
Ephrem the Syrian, writing in the fourth century, said that Thomas was put to death in India and that a merchant brought his bones to Edessa; this is the earliest known record of his death. Egeria prayed at the apostle's church and memorial there in 384, Bishop Cyrus moved the bones from the martyrium outside the walls into a city church on 22 August 394, and a silver coffin followed in the 440s. The relic cult is documented; whose bones they were is tradition.
- Historical linkActs of Thomas
The Acts of Thomas were originally a work of Syriac literature, composed at Edessa before 240 according to István Czachesz, and an Edessene tradition held that they were written when the apostle's relics arrived from India in 232. Christianity is attested at Edessa in the second century, and the oldest dated Syriac manuscripts, of 411 and 462, come from the city. The surviving Syriac copies were later purged of Encratite passages, so the Greek versions keep the earlier text.
- TransmissionSaint Thomas Christians
Syriac, the liturgical language of the Saint Thomas Christians, developed from the Aramaic of the kingdom of Osroene, whose capital was Edessa, and the city's school made it a centre of Greek and Syriac Christian thought. The Indian church developed contacts with Church of the East authorities based at Edessa, and its Syriac Bible, the Peshitta, was among the books the Synod of Diamper ordered burnt in 1599. Edessa also kept the apostle's relics and produced the Acts of Thomas.
- Relic distributed toSan Thome, Mylapore
Tradition says that in 232 the greater part of Thomas's relics were sent by an Indian king from India to Edessa, and one account names Mylapore as their source. The king appears as Mazdai in Syriac and Misdeus in Latin, a name some connect with Bazdeo on the coins of the Kushan Vasudeva I. Mylapore kept the tomb and a few relics; Edessa raised a martyrium that drew pilgrims through the fourth century. Neither the date nor the route is documented.
- Relic distributed toOrtona — Basilica of St Thomas
Edessa's shrine of Thomas was destroyed when the Zengids took the city in 1144, and the reputed relics later surfaced on the Aegean island of Chios. From there in 1258 galleys of Ortona took them, with a chalcedony gravestone inscribed in Greek 'osios thomas' and carved in a manner that recalls Syro-Mesopotamian work. The stone, dated on palaeographic grounds to the third to fifth century, lies in Ortona's crypt and is the main physical link between the Italian relics and their Syrian past.
Sources
Wikipedia, "Edessa" and "Thomas the Apostle". Elif Keser-Kayaalp & Hendrik J. W. Drijvers, "Edessa", The Oxford Dictionary of Late Antiquity (2018); J. B. Segal, Edessa the Blessed City (2005).
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