Gregory of Seleucia-Ctesiphon

This article uses shallow references to the home page or some other high level page of a website that contains the cited document. Please edit the article so that the hyperlink points to the cited document. (March 2024)

Gregory of Prat was patriarch of the Church of the East from 605 to 609. His name is included in the traditional list of patriarchs of the Church of the East.

Before he was patriarch, he was a teacher of biblical interpretation at the School of Seleucia-Ctesiphon.^[1]

Brief accounts of Gregory's patriarchate are given in the Ecclesiastical Chronicle of the Jacobite writer Bar Hebraeus (floruit 1280) and in the ecclesiastical histories of the Nestorian writers Mari (twelfth-century), [ʿ] Error: {{Transliteration}}: transliteration text not Latin script (pos 1) (help)Amr (fourteenth-century) and Sliba (fourteenth-century). A lengthier and more circumstantial account is given in the Chronicle of Seert, an anonymous ninth-century Nestorian history.

The following account of Gregory's patriarchate is given by Bar Hebraeus:

In the year 915 [AD 604], after hearing that his father-in-law Maurice had been killed by the Greeks, Khusro Abroes broke the peace, and setting out against Dara besieged it for nine months and captured it. The catholicus Sabrisho[ʿ] Error: {{Transliteration}}: transliteration text not Latin script (pos 1) (help) accompanied him, and died there after sitting for eight years. He was succeeded by Gregory of Kashkar, a doctor of the church of Seleucia, who was given over to avarice and luxury. He had a number of disciples of poor repute, on account of whom he was held in contempt not only by his own people but also by the Persian nobles. After he had fulfilled his office for four years, he died and was buried at Seleucia. Then the Persians put his disciples to the question until they handed back all the money that had been amassed by their master. At that time there flourished the orthodox Christian Gabriel, a doctor of the king Khusro Abroes, who was a native of the town of Shigar, who was called Airir Astabad on account of the great honour he enjoyed with the king. He was a bitter enemy of the Nestorians, and accused and overthrew their leaders. After Gregory the Nestorians remained for the space of eighteen years without a leader.^[2]

• List of patriarchs of the Church of the East

• Abbeloos, J. B., and Lamy, T. J., Bar Hebraeus, Chronicon Ecclesiasticum (3 vols, Paris, 1877)
• Assemani, J. A., De Catholicis seu Patriarchis Chaldaeorum et Nestorianorum (Rome, 1775)
• Brooks, E. W., Eliae Metropolitae Nisibeni Opus Chronologicum (Rome, 1910)
• Chabot, Jean-Baptiste (1902). Synodicon orientale ou recueil de synodes nestoriens (PDF). Paris: Imprimerie Nationale.
• Gismondi, H., Maris, Amri, et Salibae: De Patriarchis Nestorianorum Commentaria I: Amri et Salibae Textus (Rome, 1896)
• Gismondi, H., Maris, Amri, et Salibae: De Patriarchis Nestorianorum Commentaria II: Maris textus arabicus et versio Latina (Rome, 1899)
• Van Rompay, Lucas (2011). "Grigor I". In Sebastian P. Brock; Aaron M. Butts; George A. Kiraz; Lucas Van Rompay (eds.). Gorgias Encyclopedic Dictionary of the Syriac Heritage: Electronic Edition. Gorgias Press.