Michael the Syrian

[1][3] At that period Melitene was part of the kingdom of the Turkoman Danishmend dynasty, and, when that realm was divided in two in 1142, it became the capital of one principality.

The Jacobite monastery of Mor Bar Sauma was close to the town, and had been the patriarchal seat since the 11th century.

Returning to the monastery of Mar Bar Sauma in the summer of 1169, he held a synod and attempted to reform the church, then tainted with simony.

[5] In 1180, his former pupil Theodore bar Wahbun had himself elected patriarch at Amida under the name of John by certain malcontent bishops, beginning a schism which lasted for thirteen years.

Michael took energetic action, got hold of the anti-patriarch and locked him up at Bar Sauma and formally deposed him.

[6] In 1182, Michael received the sultan Kilij Arslan II at Melitene, and held cordial talks with him.

He died at the monastery of Bar Sauma on 7 November 1199 at the age of seventy-two, having been patriarch for thirty-three years.

[7] His nephew, Michael the Younger, known as Yeshti' Sephethana [Syriac ܝܸܫܬ݂' ܣܸܦܗܸܬܗܲܢܲ] or "Big-lips", became anti-patriarch at Melitene from 1199 to 1215, in opposition to Athanasius IX and then John XIV.

It uses earlier ecclesiastical histories, some of them now lost; for instance, its coverage of the Late Antique period relies mainly upon Dionysius of Tel Mahre.

In 2009, the facsimile of Edessan-Aleppo codex was published by Gorgias Press in the first volume (edited by Mor Gregorios Yuhanna Ibrahim) of a series on the Chronicle of Michael the Great.

[15] As secondary witnesses: Bar Hebraeus, pseudo-Jacob, and Maribas the Chaldean all rely upon Michael's work.

The fruits did not ripen and the wine tasted like sour grapes.And in AD 626: In the year A.D. 626, the light of half the sphere of the sun disappeared, and there was darkness from October to June.

As a result people said that the sphere of the sun would never be restored to its original state.He is a contemporary source for the Latin crusader states, and records the tolerance and liberalism of the Catholic Franks towards the miaphysites:[17] The pontiffs of our Jacobite church lived in the middle of them without being persecuted or molested.

In Palestine, as in Syria, they never raised any difficulty on account of their faith, nor insisted on a single formula for all the peoples and all the languages of the Christians.

They founded everywhere hospitals, serving and helping strangers who had fallen sick.According to Patriarch Ephrem I Barsoum "Michael's style is smooth but his verse is mediocre and lacks creativeness.