and it continued to be a nursery of Theodore's theology till suppressed by Zeno, a.d. 489. At Nisibis Barsumas, a devoted adherent of the party, was bp. from 435 to 489. Upon the suppression of the school of Edessa, Nisibis became the seat of the Antiochene exegesis and theology. The Persian kings favoured a movement distasteful to the empire; and Persia was henceforth the headquarters of Nestorianism. Among the Nestorians of Persia the writings of Theodore were regarded as the standard both of doctrine and of interpretation, and the Persian church returned the censures of the orthodox by pronouncing an anathema on all who opposed or rejected them (cf. Assem. iii. i. 84; and for a full account of the spread of Theodore's opinions at Edessa and Nisibis see Kihn, Theodor u. Junilius, pp. 198–209, 333–336). At a later period the school of Nisibis reacted on the West, and the influence, though not the name, of Theodore appears in the Instituta Regularia of Junilius Africanus, and in the de Institutione Divinarum Literarum of Cassiodorus (Kihn, pp. 209 seq.).
The 6th cent. witnessed another and final outbreak of bitter hatred against Theodore. The fifth general council (553), under the influence of the emperor Justinian, pronounced the anathema which Theodosius II. had refused to sanction and which even Cyril shrank from uttering. This condemnation of Theodore and his two supporters shook the fabric of the Catholic church. This is not the place to enter upon the history of the "Three Chapters," but we may point out one result of Justinian's policy. The West, Africa especially, rebelled against a decree which seemed to set at nought the authority of the councils of Ephesus and Chalcedon, and also violated the sanctity of the dead. It was from no particular interest in Theodore's doctrine or method of interpretation that the African bishops espoused his cause. Bp. Pontian plainly told the emperor that he had asked them to condemn men of whose writings they knew nothing (Migne, Patr. Lat. lxvii. 997). But the stir about Theodore led to inquiry; his works, or portions of them, were translated and circulated in the West. It is almost certainly to this cause that we owe the preservation in a Latin dress of at least one-half of Theodore's commentaries on St. Paul. Published under the name of St. Ambrose, the work of Theodore passed from Africa into the monastic libraries of the West, was copied into the compilations of Rabanus Maurus and others, and in its fuller and its abridged form supplied the Middle Ages with an accepted interpretation of an important part of Holy Scripture. The name of Theodore, however, disappears almost entirely from Western church literature after the 6th cent. It was scarcely before the 19th cent. that justice was done by Western writers to the importance of the great Antiochene as a theologian, an expositor, and a precursor of later thought.
III. Literary Remains.—Facundus (x. 4) speaks of Theodore's "innumerable books"; John of Antioch, in a letter quoted by Facundus (ii. 2), describes his polemical works as alone numbering "decem millia" (i.e. μυρία), an exaggeration of course, but based on fact. A catalogue of such of his writings as were once extant in Syriac translations is given by Ebedjesu, Nestorian metropolitan of Soba, a.d. 1318 (J. S. Assem. Bibl. Orient. iii. i. pp. 30 seq.). These Syriac translations filled 41 tomes. Only one whole work remains.
(A) EXEGETICAL WRITINGS.—(i) Old Testament. (a) Historical Books.—A commentary on Genesis is cited by Cosmas Indicopleustes, John Philoponus, and Photius (Cod. 3, 8). Fragments of the Greek original survive in the catena of Nicephorus (Lips. 1772). Latin fragments are found in the Acts of the second council of Constantinople, and an important collection of Syriac fragments from the Nitrian. MSS. of the British Museum was pub. by Dr. E. Sachau (Th. Mops. Fragm. Syriaca, Lips. 1869, pp. 1–21). Photius, criticizing the style of this work in words more or less applicable to all the remains of Theodore, notices the writer's opposition to the allegorical method of interpretation. Ebedjesu was struck by the care and elaboration bestowed upon the work. The catenae contain fragments attributed to Theodore upon the remaining books of the Pentateuch and of Joshua, Judges, Ruth, Samuel, and Kings (Mai, Scr. Vet. Nov. Coll. i. praef. p. xxi.). Theodore is stated by Leontius (Migne, Patr. Gk. lxxxvi. 1368) to have rejected the two books of Chronicles, and there is no trace of any comments upon them bearing his name.
(b) Poetical Books.—Theodore's commentary on Job was dedicated to St. Cyril of Alexandria. Of all his works it seems to have been the least worthy of this dedication. Only four fragments survive (Mansi, ix. pp. 223 seq.), but they are sufficient to justify the censure pronounced upon the work by the Fifth council. Theodore regards Job as an historical character, but considers him as traduced by the author of the book, whom he considers to have been a pagan Edomite.
The Psalms were the earliest field of Theodore's hermeneutical labours. The printed fragments, Greek and Latin, fill 25 columns in Migne. More recently attention has been called to a Syriac version (Baethgen), and new fragments of a Latin version and of the original Greek have been printed. That his first literary adventure was hasty and premature was frankly acknowledged by Theodore himself (Facund. l.c.). His zeal for the historical method of interpretation led him to deny the application to Christ of all but 3 or 4 of the Psalms usually regarded as Messianic.
No fragments have hitherto been discovered of the commentary of Ecclesiastes, which Ebedjesu counts among the Syriac translations. From the remains of the commentary on Job it appears that Theodore expressly denied the higher inspiration of both the sapiential books of Solomon. Of the Canticles he writes in terms of positive contempt (Mansi, ix. 225). He repudiates imputations of immodesty on it, but denies its spiritual character. It is merely the epithalamium of Pharaoh's daughter, a relic of Solomon's lighter poetry, affording an insight into his domestic life. For this reason, he adds, it had never been read in synagogue or church.
(c) Prophetical Books.—A commentary on the four greater prophets is in Ebedjesu's list;
