---
title: "Gregory the Great, Ephrem Syrus and Aphrahat"
author: "Gregory the Great, Ephrem the Syrian and Aphrahat"
translator: "Philip Schaff (ed.)"
languages: [en]
shelf: "Church Fathers"
section: 50 of 134
url: https://scriptura.si/works/gregory-the-great-ephrem-syrus-aphrahat/50/
cite: "Gregory the Great, Ephrem the Syrian and Aphrahat, tr. Philip Schaff (ed.), Gregory the Great, Ephrem Syrus and Aphrahat, section 50. Scriptura (scriptura.si), https://scriptura.si/works/gregory-the-great-ephrem-syrus-aphrahat/50/"
---

# Gregory the Great, Ephrem Syrus and Aphrahat

*Gregory the Great, Ephrem the Syrian and Aphrahat, tr. Philip Schaff (ed.)*

Gregory the Great's letters, with Ephrem Syrus and Aphrahat the Persian Sage.

## 50. The Life, as Amplified by Mediaeval Biographers · 5 of 5

Source: https://scriptura.si/works/gregory-the-great-ephrem-syrus-aphrahat/50/ · cite a paragraph as https://scriptura.si/works/gregory-the-great-ephrem-syrus-aphrahat/50/#p-N

[¶0] Give ye incense to God: and over me send up hymns.

[¶1] Instead of perfumes of spices: in prayer make remembrance of me.

[¶2] What can goodly odour profit: to the dead who cannot perceive it?

[¶3] Bring them in and burn them in the Holy Place: that they which enter in may smell the savour.

[¶4] Wrap thou not the fetid dung: in silk that profits it not.

[¶5] Cast it down upon the dunghill: for it cannot perceive honour [done to it].

[¶6] “Lay me not in your sepulchres: for your magnificence profits me not;

[¶7] For I have a covenant with God: that I shall be buried with strangers.

[¶8] I am a stranger, as they were: with them, O my brethren, lay me!

[¶9] For every bird loves its kind: and man loves him that is like himself.

[¶10] In the cemetery lay me: where are the broken of heart,

[¶11] That when the Son of God comes: He may embrace me and raise me among them.”

[¶12] [After blessing by name the five faithful disciples above mentioned (page 126), he leaves an anathema on the two, Paulinus and Urit, who had erred from the faith; and against]

[¶13] “Arians and Anomœans: Cathari and those of the Serpent,

[¶14] Marcionites and Manichœans: Bardesanites and Kukites,

[¶15] Paulites and Vitalianites: Sabbatarians and Borborites,

[¶16] With all the other doctrines: of superstitious that are unseemly.”

[¶17] [The dying Saint recalls in the following lines the vision of his childhood, and praises God for its fulfilment.]

[¶18] “I swear by your lives I lie not: in this thing that I tell.

[¶19] For when I was a little child: and lay in my mother’s bosom,

[¶20] I saw (I was as in a dream): a thing which has come to pass in truth.

[¶21] There grew a vine-shoot on my tongue: and increased and reached unto heaven,

[¶22] And it yielded fruit without measure: leaves likewise without number.

[¶23] It spread, it stretched wide, it bore fruit: all creation drew near,

[¶24] And the more they were that gathered: the more its clusters abounded.

[¶25] These clusters were the Homilies; and these leaves the Hymns.

[¶26] God was the giver of them: glory to Him for His grace!

[¶27] For He gave to me of His good pleasure: from the storehouse of His treasures.”

[¶28] This farewell strain has no doubt suffered interpolation, but the main part of what is above translated is confirmed as genuine by the references to it of Gregory, who had undoubtedly read it in a Greek version. As it has reached us, it ends with a narrative, which at most can only claim to be an appendix added by a disciple, of the lamentations uttered at his deathbed by a maiden named Lamprotate, daughter of a man of rank in Edessa, who entreated permission to make a tomb for him and another at his feet for herself. The narrative concludes with his consent to this petition, his parting commands to her, and her promise of obedience.

[¶29] His body was followed to the grave by all the people of the city and neighborhood, and by the Bishops, priests, and deacons of the province, with the monks, whether “anchorites, stylites, or cœnobites”—solitary, or living in communities. It was laid (as he had desired) in the strangers’ burial-ground; but not long after, the citizens removed it thence, and made a grave for him, deacon as he was, among those of their Bishops,—probably in the monastery (now belonging to the Armenians) of St. Sergius on the Mount of Edessa, where his tomb is shown to this day, as we learn from the Reise in Syr. u Mesopot. of Dr. Sachau (p. 202).

[¶30] 13. Death and Burial.—His death occurred in Haziran (June), on the 15th according to our History (Vat.), but other authorities differ, assigning it to the 9th, 18th, or 19th. The shorter Syriac Life gives the year as 372,—thus contradicting the History which represents him as living in the year of Basil’s death (378).

[¶31] Even in the time of Gregory of Nyssa, an annual commemoration of Ephraim had become customary in the Church, which gave occasion for the Encomium above referred to. In the East, it was held on the 28th of January; but in the Roman Martyrology his name is recorded on the 1st of February.