Youhana Bar Andrews

Youhana Bar Andrews 

A proficient writer and poet, he was born at Farzman in the vicinity of Ra'ban. He mastered both the Syriac and the Armenian languages. He became a monk, was ordained a priest and joined the service of Patriarch Athanasius VI who ordained him a metropolitan for Mabug around 1124. He was an eloquent and a very efficient disputant who had retorted to many opponents and envious men. However, he was arrogant and bragged about his knowledge. He thought little of the Patriarch, who dismissed him from his diocese for his arrogance and treated him harshly. After three lonely years of estrangement he realized that eminence in knowledge is no substitute for obedience to the head of the church. He then humbled himself and returned to the fold and was welcomed by the Patriarch, who treated him kindly and restored him to his diocese. Afterwards, he was transferred to Kharshana and finally to Tur 'Abdin in 1155. He died at the beginning of the following year, 1156.

Of his writings are the following:

• An excellent dodecasyllabic poem consisting of five hundred and five lines in seventy pages. He composed it in 1155 and addressed it to his friend the monk Michael in Acre. He began it with the aphorism, "There is a time to speak and a time to be silent." Each distich of its lines begins with letters of another poem in the pentasyllable meter. It begins thus: "To our brother Michael in Palestine" and ends with a letter of a third poem of the same meter beginning thus: "John, residing in parts of Syria." In this poem, he criticized acrimoniously the policy of the clergy in his time, namely those priests and deacons who rebelled against their bishops. He rebuked the monks who violated their monastic rules by spending their time making money rather than by laboring in vineyards and olive groves. He particularly rebuked the monks of the Monastery of St. Barsoum for their high-handedness and greed in collecting taxes in the name of the saint, their disobedience to their superiors and simony practiced by some of them. He also composed and addressed to the same monk a symbolic poem in the pentasyllable meter covering five pages beginning thus: "In reply to your quest not your expectation." He then goes on to say that his right hand has become tired because of the many letters he has written and sent in vain to Palestine. Moreover, he reprimanded a friend who turned against him and described love most beautifully, demonstrating that he is a powerful and efficient poet who has the ability to manipulate both form and content. 

• A testimony of Bar Andrews' natural and beautiful poetry is his madrosho (metrical song) entitled, "Eulogies composed and chanted about himself in repentance." This madrosho is sung in the melody: "Grant us, Lord, to see our departed ones in the kingdom of Heaven on the day of resurrection." It begins thus: "How great my need is, my son John, for an eloquent tongue and clear thoughts to cry and bewail myself bitterly." One hundred and twenty-seven lines of this madrosho have been preserved and entered in his lifetime in the book for the burial of priests and church dignitaries. It was spread throughout the countries where there were Syrian churches, as we read in a vellum manuscript in the Boston library. One finds in it smooth words and profound and inventive themes. Indeed, it is a poem of tears and compassionate sentiment exquisitely composed. 

• Ten lines of a madrosho in the melody of Qum Vhawlos on repentance. It is the most tender and touching religious poetry. It begins thus: "I have contemplated deeply on this world." Two of them entered the Beth Gazo.  These poems, which demonstrate that their composer is an able, natural and imaginative poet, consist of one hundred pages. 

• A lost book in which he refuted John, metropolitan of Mardin, for his claim that calamities do not afflict men by the order of God. 

• A polemical treatise in which he disputed with learned men of the Armenians for blaming some customs of our church. It consists of nine chapters of fifty-one pages.

• He translated from the Armenian into Syriac those portions which he was able to obtain from the treatise of Gregory II the Armenian Catholicos, which he wrote in reply to the Patriarch John X Bar Shushan. He gave this translation to Bar Salibi, who wrote a refutation of the same. 

• He wrote a memre in Armenian in refutation of the Armenian Catholicos Gregory III. This Gregory apparently criticized some customs of the Syriacs and when he read his refutation he burned the two memre, It is likely that the pen of this learned man yielded more poems and fragments of prose which have been lost to us.

Sources: 

• Patriarch Ignatius Aphram I Barsoum (2003), The Scattered Pearls, A History of Syriac Literature and Sciences, Translated and Edited by Matti Moosa, New Jersey