JACOBITES

JACOBITES. This name is traditionally given to the Syriac-speaking, non-Chalcedonian (or Oriental Orthodox) church of Antioch (qq.v.), at present confined chiefly to the border regions where Syria, Turkey, and Iraq intersect. The name comes from Jacob Baradeus (ca. 500–578), an itinerant bishop whose life of constant travel was occasioned by the Emperor Justinian’s (q.v.) persecution of the non-Chalcedonian-or monophysite (q.v.)-leaders. Baradeus was consecrated ca. 542/3 at the insistence of Empress Theodora (q.v.), and was continually on the authorities’ wanted list for his activities. He traveled in disguise-hence his sobriquet, “the man in rags”-and succeeded in escaping detection for the thirty-five years of his ministry throughout the northeast. His secret consecrations of monophysite monks established a Syrian hierarchy paralleling that of the imperial church. A major decline affected them in the Mongol invasions of the 13th c. and 14th c.