Yuḥanon of Ephesus John of Asia (ca. 507–589) [Syr. Orth.]
Monk, missionary, church leader, (titular) bp. of Ephesus, hagiographer, and historian. From the region of Amid, Yuḥanon entered the monastic life as a child. Exiled in the 520s during the Miaphysite persecutions under emperors Justin I and Justinian, Yuḥanon traveled throughout the eastern Roman provinces and Egypt, settling in Constantinople ca. 540 among the displaced Miaphysite community. In 542, Emperor Justinian chose Yuḥanon to lead a missionary campaign in Asia Minor during which Yuḥanon claims to have converted 80,000 pagans and schismatics, and founded 98 churches and 12 monasteries. Consecrated bp. of Ephesus ca. 558 by Yaʿqub Burdʿoyo, Yuḥanon seems never to have resided in his diocese. Yuḥanon served as archimandrite of a monastery and leader of the Constantinopolitan Miaphysites until his imprisonment under Justin II in the 570s, where he remained until his death. His hagiographical collection ‘Lives of the Eastern Saints’, written in the 560s, and his Ecclesiastical History, written in three parts and covering up through 588, provide some of our most important information about the 6th cent.
Sources
- E. W. Brooks, John of Ephesus. Lives of the Eastern Saints (PO 17–19; 1923–5).
- E. W. Brooks, Ioannis Ephesini historiae ecclesiasticae fragmenta quae e prima et secunda parte supersunt (CSCO 104; 1933), 402–20.
- E. W. Brooks, Ioannis Ephesini historiae ecclesiasticae pars tertia (CSCO 105–6; 1935–6).
- J. J. van Ginkel, John of Ephesus: A monophysite historian in sixth-century Byzantium (Ph.D. Diss., Groningen; 1995).
- Harvey, Asceticism and society in crisis.
- F. Nau, ‘Analyse de la seconde partie inédite de l’Histoire Ecclésiastique de Jean d’Asie, patriarche jacobite de Constantinople’, ROC 2 (1897), 455–93.