Babai The Great - Biography

Biography

Babai the Great, not to be confused with Mar Babai I, the first autonomous leader of the Church of the East, was born in Beth Ainata in Beth Zabdai. Born to a wealthy family, he received a primary education in the Persian (Pahlavi) books. He continued his studies at the Christian School of Nisibis under the directorship of Abraham of Beth Rabban. Sometime around 571 A.D., when the Origenist Henana of Adiabene became the new headmaster, Babai's teacher, Abraham the Great of Kashkar, founded a new monastery on Mt. Izla above Nisibis. Babai taught for a while at the Xenodocheio of Nisibis. After that he joined the newly-founded monastery of Abraham on Mt. Izla. When Abraham died in 588, Babai left and founded a new monastery and school in his home country Beth Zabdai. In 604 Babai became the third head of Abraham's monastery on Mt. Izla.

Abraham the Great had started a monastic reform movement which Babai and other disciples carried through. Since Bar Sauma and the Synod of Beth Lapat, monks and nuns had been encouraged to marry. When Babai returned to Mt. Izla in 604, he expelled monks that lived with women and enforced strict discipline, emphasizing a deep life of prayer and solitude. The result was a mass exodus, not only of the married monks.

But the Church of the East was with Babai. In 604, the Catholicos Mar Sabrisho I died and a new Catholicos had to be elected. The choice fell between two men named Gregory: Bishop Gregory of Nisibis and Professor Gregory of Seleucia. King Khosrau II, the Sassanid emperor, stated only that his preferred candidate was Gregory, possibly meaning the bishop. The king's influential wife Shirin, however, disliked Gregory of Nisibis and preferred Gregory of Seleucia, who had once been her steward. The Synod (council) rejected the king's initial candidate, taking advantage of the ambiguity of name, and chose Gregory of Seleucia, who became Mar Gregorius I. The king was accordingly displeased, and reluctantly supported the elected candidate (after applying a hefty fine to him), and said, "Patriarch he is and patriarch he shall be -- but never again do I allow another election."

When the Catholicos Gregorius died a few years later in 608, the bishops made the usual request to the king to allow them to elect a new Catholicos, but Khosrau had not forgotten the events of the previous election and refused them leave to do so. The royal physician Gabriel of Shiggar, a staunch Monophysite, suggested to make Henana of Adiabene or one of his students Catholicos, and also used his influence with the king to prevent an election. The king successfully blocked an election in the church, preventing the church from having any figure who could allow new bishops and metropolitans to be consecrated.

During the decades of this vacancy, the Nestorian church required a sort of authority. Because the king remained staunch in his policy, the church chose to separate itself from the king's royal proscription. Two vekils (regents) were selected as a stop-gap measure: Archdeacon Mar Aba, who handled matters in the north. In the south, Babai the Great was chosen to lead, who at the time was abbot of a monastery on Mt. Izla. He was nominated inspector-general or visitor of the monasteries of the three northern provinces by the Metropolitans of Nisibis, B. Garmai, and Adiabene. Therefore Babai, even though not yet a bishop, acted as patriarch in all ecclesiastical matters, though he could not ordain or consecrate. He was appointed 'visitor of the monasteries' of the north, and administered the church in collaboration with Archdeacon Mar Aba. In particular, this new position allowed Babai to investigate the orthodoxy of the monasteries and monks of northern Mesopotamia, and to enforce discipline throughout the monasteries of northern Mesopotamia, even against occasional resistance.

Babai the Great and Mar Aba administered the Nestorian Church for 17 years. Attempts were made during that time to ask the king to change his mind and allow an election, but influences in the court, such as Gabriel of Shiggar, and the king's wife Shirin (who was under Gabriel's influence) blocked the requests. Gabriel was seeking to maneuver things such that the decision of Catholicos would have been in his own (monophysite) hands, an option completely unacceptable, in fact horrifying, to the existing bishops.

The king defended this policy until his death in 628. The situation, and vacancy, endured until Khosrau II was murdered in 628. After this, Babai was promptly, and unanimously, elected Catholicos, but he declined. Soon afterward, he died in the cell of his monastery on Mt. Izla, being 75 or 77 years old.