Quriaqos of Tagrit

Quriaqos of Tagrit
Syriac Orthodox Patriarch of Antioch and All the East
Church	Syriac Orthodox Church
See	Antioch
Installed	793
Term ended	817
Predecessor	Joseph
Successor	Dionysius I Telmaharoyo
Personal details
Born	Tagrit, Abbasid Caliphate
Died	16 August 817 Mosul, Abbasid Caliphate

Quriaqos of Tagrit (Greek: Kyriakos, Latin: Cyriacus) was the Patriarch of Antioch, and head of the Syriac Orthodox Church from 793 until his death in 817.

Biography

Quriaqos was born in the 8th century in the city of Tagrit. He studied and became a monk at the Monastery of the Pillar near Raqqa. He became a scholar of theological science at this monastery.^[1] Quriaqos was elected and consecrated as patriarch by the Holy Synod at Hellenopolis in 793.

The following year, he held a synod at Beth Batin where he issued forty cannons. In 797, Quriaqos held a synod at the Monastery of Nawawis in an attempt to reconcile the phantasiast Julianists but was blocked by other bishops.

The reign of Quriaqos was troubled by a dispute about the use of the phrase 'heavenly bread' in connection with the Eucharist. In 808, at a synod at Beth Gabrin, Quriaqos tried to prevent the use of the phrase and excommunicated the monks of Gubba Baraya; his opponents responded by electing an anti-patriarch, Abraham (or Abarim) of Qartmin. Abraham consecrated several metropolitans, who championed the use of the phrase 'heavenly bread' despite its condemnation by Quriaqos and many of his own metropolitans and bishops.^[2]

Quriaqos would hold two more synods, one in Harran and the second in Mosul, during which he died in August 817. His body was moved to Tagrit for burial. During his tenureship Quriaqos consecrated a total of 86 metropolitans and bishops, of whom Michael the Syrian lists the names of.^[3]

The principal source for the life of the patriarch Quriaqos is the Chronicle of the twelfth-century Jacobite patriarch Michael the Syrian (1166–99). Michael's account was followed with little change a century later by the Jacobite polymath Bar Hebraeus, who abridged it in his Chronicon Ecclesiasticum.

Notes

1. Barsoum, Ignatius A. The Scattered Pearls. 2nd ed. Piscataway: Georgias P, 2003.
2. Bar Hebraeus, Chronicon Ecclesiasticum, i. 342
3. Michael the Syrian, Chronicle, iii. 450–3

References

• Abbeloos, Jean Baptiste; Lamy, Thomas Joseph, eds. (1877). Bar Hebraeus, Chronicon Ecclesiasticum (3 vols). Paris.
• Jean-Baptiste Chabot, Chronique de Michel le Syrien, Patriarche Jacobite d'Antioche (1166-1199). Éditée pour la première fois et traduite en francais I-IV (1899;1901;1905;1910; a supplement to volume I containing an introduction to Michael and his work, corrections, and an index, was published in 1924. Reprinted in four volumes 1963, 2010).

External links