was contemporary with most of the characters described; he writes of what he himself saw and heard and of doings in which he was personally concerned. For 30 years he was a trusted servant of Justinian; and Gibbon would probably have recognized in the second part of his history a valuable gauge of the servility and the malice of Procopius. Had Gibbon possessed the third part of John's work, he would hardly have surmised that "the sentiments of Justin II. were pure and benevolent," or believed that the four last years of that emperor "were passed in tranquil obscurity" (cf. iii. 1–6); had he read what John has to say of the worthless stepson of Belisarius he might have rated "the gallant Photius" less highly; and he would have learned that it was the thoughtless improvidence of Tiberius which forced the unhappy Maurice to appear a grasping niggard (cf. iii. 11; v. 20). As regards chronology, Assemani, who did not love a Monophysite, accuses John of inaccuracy, asserting that he used a peculiar Greek era, making almost all Justinian's acts and his death ten years later than the dates assigned by Evagrius, Theophanes, and Cedrenus. But in pt. iii. (v. 13) John gives the usual date for Justinian's death—Nov. 14, 876 [565]. Of Theophanes Gibbon has said that he is "full of strange blunders" and "his chronology is loose and inaccurate"; his verdict in regard to John of Ephesus would have been very different.
His attitude to the great controversy of his day is that of one thoroughly convinced that his own party holds exclusive possession of the truth. The Monophysites are "the orthodox," "the faithful"; their opponents "Synodites," "Nestorians," or at least "half-Nestorians"; the synod of Chalcedon is "the stumbling-block and source of confusion of the whole church"; "it sunders Christ our God into two natures after the Union, and teaches a Quaternity instead of the holy Trinity" (i. 10, 18); the four bishops taunt the patriarch with "the heresy of the two natures, and the blasphemies of the synod, and of the tome of Leo" (i. 18). Yet John does not labour to blacken the memory of his adversaries; the strong terms in which he speaks of the pride of power and savage tyranny of John Scholasticus are warranted or at least excused by facts (i. 5, 12, 37); and Baronius denounces John of Sirmin in language equally decided (H. E. ad ann. 564). In regard to Eutychius, John protests his adherence to truth: "Although we declare ourselves opposed to the excellent patriarch Eutychius, yet from the truth we have not swerved in one thing out of a hundred; nor was it from eagerness to revile and ridicule that we committed these things to writing" (iii. 22). His impartiality is manifest in his description of the great schism which rent asunder his own communion; unsparing in his censure of both factions, he refers their wicked and worse than heathenish rancour to the instigation of devils (iv. 19, 22, 39). Credulous John was, but credulity was a common attribute of his age. More serious objection might be taken to his approval of the cruelties connected with the suppression of heathenism (iii. 34) and his intolerance of "heresy" other than his own. In 550 he dug up and burnt the bones of Montanus, Maximilla, and Priscilla, the false prophets of Montanism (Extr. ap. Dionys.). Herein also he shared the temper of his contemporaries. The spirit of persecution is not the peculiar mark of any age, church, or sect. Apart from these blemishes we may recognize in him an historian who sincerely loved truth; a bishop who was upright and devoted; and a man whose piety rested upon a thorough knowledge of Scripture.
His style, like that of most Syriac writers, is verbose and somewhat unwieldy, but has the eloquence of simple truth and homely pathos.
The Third Part of the Ecclesiastical History of John of Ephesus was first edited from the unique MS. in the Brit. Mus. by Dr. Cureton (Oxf. 1853)—a splendid reproduction of the original—and translated into English by Dr. Payne Smith (Oxf. 1860) and into German by Schönfelder (München, 1862). These versions are of great assistance, many chapters being defective in the original.
[C.J.B.]
Joannes (216) II., bp. of Jerusalem, 386–417, in succession to Cyril; a prelate known to us chiefly through the invectives of Jerome, and hence particularly difficult to estimate. Imbued with that tendency of Eastern church teachers which formed their chief difference from those of the Western church, he with difficulty brought himself to acquiesce in the condemnation of Origenism or to take any steps against Pelagius, with whom he was brought in contact at the close of his episcopacy, and the presence of Jerome and other immigrants from Italy, and the anti-Origenistic vehemence of Epiphanius of Salamis and Theophilus of Alexandria, made it impossible for him to escape the reproach of laxity and even at times of heresy.
Born between 350 and 356 (Hieron. Ep. lxxxii. 8, ed. Vall.), he passed as a young man some time among the monks of Nitria in Egypt. There he, no doubt, imbibed his affection for Origen's teaching, and probably became acquainted with two persons who had much to do with his own subsequent history and with that of the Origenistic controversy—the monk Isidore (one of the Long Monks) and Rufinus. During the troublous times before the accession of Theodosius, when Arianism was in the ascendant, he declined, teste Jerome (cont. Joan. Jerus. 4), to communicate with the orthodox bishops exiled by Valens. But no imputation of Arianism rests upon him. He was evidently esteemed very highly, and of great eloquence (ib. 41) and subtlety of mind. His flatterers compared him with Chrysippus, Plato, and Demosthenes (ib. 4). He was little more than 30 years old (Hieron. Ep. lxxxii. 8, ed. Vall.) when chosen to succeed Cyril as bp. of Jerusalem. It was a see of great importance, subject in certain respects to the metropolitan at Caesarea, but acting at times independently; of great wealth (cont. Joan. Jerus. 14), and of great interest for its holy places, which were visited by pilgrims from all parts. It had also a special interest from the settlements of distinguished persons from the West, which made it during his episcopate a focus of Christian and literary activity, and with two of which, that of Rufinus and Melania on the Mount of Olives,
