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Category:Saint Ephrem of Syria
From The Work of God's Children
(born about 306, died in 373, Optional Memorial on June 9)[1]
- Ephrem[2] was born about the year 306 in Nisibis, Mesopotamia,[3] while it was still part of the Roman Empire. He was the son of a pagan priest. Through the influence of St. James of Nisibis,[4] the city's first bishop,[5], he was baptised as a Christian when he was eighteen[6]. He became a deacon, and apparently was influential in the repulse of the Persian armies of the pagan Shapur II who besieged the city in 338, 346, and 350. One biographer relates that on one occasion he brought a cloud of flies and mosquitoes on the army and forced it to withdraw, and he is also attributed with relieving the city in the 350 by his prayers,[7] when an attempt of the Persian engineers to flood the city backfired and the inhabitants of the city drove them away. In 363 the Emperor Jovian ceded Nisibis, Singara, and the four satrapies east of the Tigris to Shapur II in exchange for an unmolested retreat of the Roman army[8], and the majority of the city's Christian population abandoned the city before the arrival of the Persians, who were severely persecuting Christians in their empire. Ephrem and most of the Christian populace eventually settled at Edessa, where Ephrem spent the rest of his life as a hermit. He died on June 9, 373, at Edessa, and is buried at the Der Serkis monastery to the west of Edessa. He was declared a Doctor of the Church on October 5, 1920 by Pope Benedict XV[9].
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