Selected Verse Homilies (Memre)
For For readers of Syriac and students of the Syriac church: Jacob's verse homilies retelling Scripture, in Bedjan's five volumes. Others can start with the German selections, or the two martyr homilies in English.
Homiliae selectae Mar-Jacobi Sarugensis is the title under which Paul Bedjan's five-volume Syriac edition (Paris and Leipzig, 1905–1910) gathered a large selection of the verse homilies of Jacob of Serugh. Jacob lived from roughly 451 to 521, and the sermons belong to the decades in which he was a priest and then bishop in the Euphrates region around Serugh, after an education at Edessa. He composed in Syriac, in the twelve-syllable metre associated with Ephrem's successors, and the tradition credits him with a vast output of these memre, metrical homilies written to be preached and heard in church. They were produced in the years of acute controversy over the Council of Chalcedon, though most of the homilies are not controversial pieces at all: they are expositions of Scripture and feast, composed for congregations.
The homilies work by retelling. Jacob takes a biblical scene, whether the annunciation, Abraham's binding of Isaac, the sinful woman at Jesus' feet, or the crucifixion, and slows it down, giving the characters speech and interior motion, and lingering over the moment of encounter. Mary questions Gabriel; Isaac speaks to his father; the cross becomes a place where creation is seen to be addressed. This dramatic dialogue is the signature of his method, and it carries his theology, which is thoroughly christological. Again and again he reads Old Testament figures as types that find their meaning in Christ, and he presents the incarnation as God's humbling of himself to meet fallen humanity. The sermons are poems before they are arguments. Doctrine arrives through image, paradox and sustained attention to the text rather than through definition, so the reader is meant to be drawn into the story rather than handed a conclusion.
Jacob has continued to matter because he stands with Ephrem as one of the two great poets of the Syriac Christian tradition, and he remains in liturgical and devotional use among Syriac churches, where he is honoured as a saint. For readers formed by Greek and Latin sources, he offers a different register of patristic thought: Scripture as drama, theology as praise, the preacher as someone who sings the story back to the people. His homilies remain a rich resource for anyone interested in how early Christians preached the gospel imaginatively.
Who should read this: Readers drawn to patristic preaching, typological reading of Scripture, and the Syriac poetic tradition will find in Jacob a deep and neglected voice, and those who want Lent, Holy Week or the Nativity to feel newly strange and vivid will profit most. It is not for readers looking for systematic argument or concise doctrinal summary, nor for anyone who wants the history of the Chalcedonian dispute, since the homilies are largely devotional and exegetical. Note too that Bedjan's volumes are in Syriac, so this is a work to approach through translation unless you read the language.
Editions
External off-site sources
Free downloads
- PDF Homiliae selectae Mar-Jacobi Sarugensis (Internet Archive (Bedjan, Harrassowitz, 1905, vol. 1)) PD SyriacEd. Paul Bedjan · 1905Volume 1 (1905) of Paul Bedjan's Homiliae selectae Mar-Jacobi Sarugensis (Paris and Leipzig: Harrassowitz), the standard printed text of Jacob's verse homilies. Syriac only, with no translation. A page scan on the Internet Archive.Harder than the work: Syriac text with no translation.
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E.KTN9MM.PReport - PDF Homiliae selectae Mar-Jacobi Sarugensis (Internet Archive (Bedjan, Harrassowitz, 1906, vol. 2)) PD SyriacEd. Paul Bedjan · 1906Volume 2 (1906) of Paul Bedjan's Homiliae selectae Mar-Jacobi Sarugensis (Paris and Leipzig: Harrassowitz), the standard printed text of Jacob's verse homilies. Syriac only, with no translation. A page scan on the Internet Archive.Harder than the work: Syriac text with no translation.
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E.B6RN3B.6Report - PDF Homiliae selectae Mar-Jacobi Sarugensis (Internet Archive (Bedjan, Harrassowitz, 1907, vol. 3)) PD SyriacEd. Paul Bedjan · 1907Volume 3 (1907) of Paul Bedjan's Homiliae selectae Mar-Jacobi Sarugensis (Paris and Leipzig: Harrassowitz), the standard printed text of Jacob's verse homilies. Syriac only, with no translation. A page scan on the Internet Archive.Harder than the work: Syriac text with no translation.
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E.DSAS0K.DReport - PDF Homiliae selectae Mar-Jacobi Sarugensis (Internet Archive (Bedjan, Harrassowitz, 1908, vol. 4)) PD SyriacEd. Paul Bedjan · 1908Volume 4 (1908) of Paul Bedjan's Homiliae selectae Mar-Jacobi Sarugensis (Paris and Leipzig: Harrassowitz), the standard printed text of Jacob's verse homilies. Syriac only, with no translation. A page scan on the Internet Archive.Harder than the work: Syriac text with no translation.
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E.R1VXQC.SReport - PDF Homiliae selectae Mar-Jacobi Sarugensis (Internet Archive (Bedjan, Harrassowitz, 1910, vol. 5)) PD SyriacEd. Paul Bedjan · 1910Volume 5 (1910) of Paul Bedjan's Homiliae selectae Mar-Jacobi Sarugensis (Paris and Leipzig: Harrassowitz), the standard printed text of Jacob's verse homilies. Syriac only, with no translation. A page scan on the Internet Archive.Harder than the work: Syriac text with no translation.
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E.XBMYXN.GReport - PDF Homiliae selectae Mar-Jacobi Sarugensis (Internet Archive (Landersdorfer, BKV 6, Kösel, 1912)) PD GermanTrans. Placidus Landersdorfer · 1912Placidus Landersdorfer's German translation in the Bibliothek der Kirchenväter, vol. 6 (Kempten: Kösel, 1912), Ausgewählte Schriften der syrischen Dichter Cyrillonas, Baläus, Isaak von Antiochien und Jakob von Sarug. Jacob's share opens with an introduction on his life and gives ten poems, among them Pentecost, the Virgin, the Mass for the dead, Matthew 16:16, Jacob at Bethel, the veil of Moses, and Guria and Shamuna. A selection, not the whole collection. A page scan on the Internet Archive.Easier than the work: A German translation of a selection, easier than the Syriac.
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E.D4CXKR.HReport - PDF Homiliae selectae Mar-Jacobi Sarugensis (Internet Archive (Bickell, BKV, Kösel, 1872)) PD GermanTrans. Gustav Bickell · 1872Gustav Bickell's German translation in Ausgewählte Gedichte der syrischen Kirchenväter Cyrillonas, Baläus, Isaak v. Antiochien und Jakob v. Sarug (Kempten: Kösel, 1872), the older companion of Landersdorfer's volume. According to Wright's history of Syriac literature, Bickell's Jacob pieces are the first homily on the Virgin, Jacob at Bethel, the veil of Moses, and Guria and Shamuna. A selection. A page scan on the Internet Archive.Easier than the work: A German translation of a selection, easier than the Syriac.
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E.H1MBFM.SReport - PDF Homiliae selectae Mar-Jacobi Sarugensis (Internet Archive (Abbeloos, Louvain, 1867)) PD Syriac-LatinEd. Jean-Baptiste Abbeloos · 1867Jean-Baptiste Abbeloos's De vita et scriptis Sancti Jacobi Batnarum Sarugi in Mesopotamia episcopi (Louvain: Vanlinthout, 1867), a Latin study of Jacob's life and writings. It prints two of his homilies on the Virgin Mary in Syriac with a Latin translation, about pp. 203-301. Only those two homilies; the rest is Latin scholarship. A page scan on the Internet Archive.
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E.B6559H.DReport
Catalog IDW.GR2XXV.M