IBAS OF EDESSA

IBAS OF EDESSA, bishop (?–457). Ibas of Edessa wrote a number of letters, the only surviving one, his Epistle to Bishop Mari (433), was highly critical of Cyril of Alexandria (q.v.). He was one of Theodoret of Cyrrhus’s party who felt that Nestorius had been wronged at the Ecumenical Council of Ephesus in 431, and that Cyril’s Christology (qq.v.) was dangerously one-sided. Excommunicated by the council at Ephesus in 449 headed by Cyril’s successor, Dioscurus, Ibas was readmitted to communion by the (Fourth Ecumenical) Council of Chalcedon (q.v.) in 451. His restoration constituted a bone of contention for the monophysite party in the aftermath of Chalcedon. One of the tasks that the Emperor Justinian (q.v.) set for the Fifth Ecumenical Council at Constantinople in 553 was therefore the condemnation of Ibas’s letters, together with other works of Theodoret and the entire works of Theodore of Mopsuestia (qq.v.), the so-called “Three Chapters”. Ibas’s own chief contributions to posterity were his translations from Greek into Syriac, including Theodore of Mopsuestia’s commentaries, together with works by Diodore of Tarsus and Aristotle.