Annunziata Di Rienzo

La Sapienza Roma – Marquette University

“The Second Elijah, Mar Papa the Patriarch“. Some pseudo-epigraphic letters and how they turned a controversial bishop into a Prophet

A number of manuscripts – the oldest dating from around the 13th century – preserve the epistolary correspondence that Papa Bar Aggai, bishop of Seleucia in the early 4th century, exchanged with a number of important figures in Christianity. Prominent among them is the name of Ephrem, the first great author of Syriac literature, presented as the author of one of the letters addressed to Papa. The letter, undoubtedly pseudo-epigraphic like the entire epistolary, is presented as having been written in the aftermath of a clash that the bishop of Seleucia had with some bishops of the dioceses of Persia who did not recognize his authority and challenged his authoritarian conduct. Papa is presented in the letter as a saint, as a confessor for the faith during the persecutions, as a writer superior to Ephrem, and above all as a prophet. A portrait of Papa that contrasts profoundly with what other sources say. I will analyse the reasons and ways in which Pope becomes a saint, while also trying to understand the reasons for the claimed relationship with the city of Nisibis.