Abraham of Carrhae
Our Father among the Saints Abraham the Hermit, Bishop of Carrhae
Venerable · Bishop · b. 4th century, in the region of Cyrrhus — d. c. 422, at Constantinople
Commemorated 14 February — Repose of Abraham, bishop of Carrhae
Abraham (fourth century – c. 422), called the Hermit and afterwards bishop of Carrhae, was a Syrian ascetic of the region of Cyrrhus whose life is told by his younger contemporary and fellow-countryman Theodoret of Cyrrhus. Beginning as a solitary, he undertook a bold missionary labour: entering a wholly pagan village of Lebanon in the guise of a travelling merchant, he endured beatings, secretly discharged the villagers' crushing tax-debt, and by patience and charity won the whole place to Christ, building a church before he withdrew. His fame carried him to the episcopate of Carrhae (Harran) in Mesopotamia — a byword for stubborn paganism — which he tamed by the same union of asceticism and gentleness. Summoned at last to Constantinople by the emperor Theodosius the Younger, he was honoured there and reposed in the capital about the year 422. He is kept on February 14, with the hermits Maron and Auxentius.
The witness of Theodoret
Abraham, like Maron, belongs to the great company of Syrian ascetics whose lives Theodoret, bishop of Cyrrhus, gathered in his Religious History — Abraham is the subject of its seventeenth chapter — and here again the source is early, local, and close to its subject. Theodoret knew the region of Cyrrhus from which Abraham came and the memory of his deeds, and he sets Abraham apart from the pure solitaries as one whose asceticism overflowed into apostolic action: a hermit who became a missionary and a bishop without ever ceasing to be a monk.
The conversion of a village of Lebanon
Abraham first embraced the solitary life, but was moved to a work of evangelism that Theodoret recounts with delight. Learning of a village on Mount Lebanon sunk wholly in paganism, "enslaved to the error of the demons," Abraham resolved to win it. He went not as a preacher — who would have been driven out at once — but in disguise, as a merchant dealing in walnuts, and quietly took up residence among them. When at length he gathered courage to pray aloud and to speak of Christ, the villagers fell upon him and beat him and cast him out. But Abraham did not depart. It happened that the tax-collectors came down upon the village for a great sum it could not pay, seizing and imprisoning its men; and Abraham, having means from friends, secretly paid the whole debt and delivered them. Astonished that the stranger they had beaten should be their rescuer, the villagers came to him in gratitude and begged him to be their patron and protector. He answered that he asked only one thing: that they build a church. This they did; Abraham gathered them into it, taught them the faith, and after three years — having established them, ordained a priest, and set the village firmly in Christ — he handed the flock to another and withdrew again to solitude, as had been his intention from the first.
Bishop of Carrhae
The renown of this and other labours reached the hierarchy, and Abraham was drawn, against his own desire for the hidden life, to the episcopate of Carrhae — Harran, the ancient Mesopotamian city notorious even in the fifth century for its tenacious paganism and the worship of the moon, and for the harshness of its people. It was a hard charge, and Abraham governed it as he had won the Lebanese village: not by force but by ascetic example and patient gentleness, keeping the strict monastic regimen of fasting and prayer upon the episcopal throne, spending himself on the poor, and softening by kindness a city that severity had never moved. Under his care the paganism of Carrhae was pressed back and the church there strengthened.
Summons to Constantinople and repose
Abraham's holiness became known even at the imperial court, and the emperor Theodosius II, desiring to see so celebrated a bishop, summoned him to Constantinople. There he was received with the highest honour — the emperor and the great men of the city sought his blessing — and there, worn with age and labour, he reposed, about the year 422, far from his Mesopotamian see. His body was afterwards carried back with honour. Theodoret, writing not long after, holds him up as the model of the bishop who is first a monk: austere to himself, tender to his flock, and fruitful in souls.
Feast and commemoration
Abraham is kept on February 14 (church date; Old Calendar civil February 27), one of the three ascetic fathers whom the Greek Menaion joins on this day — Auxentius of Bithynia, Maron of Syria, and Abraham of Carrhae. The Menaion gives him a synaxarion notice and commemorative verses but no proper hymnody, appointing the common office of a holy hierarch.
Hymns
Troparion — Tone 4
O God of our fathers, who dealest ever with us according to Thy forbearance: take not Thy mercy from us, but by the intercessions of Thy hierarch Abraham govern our life in peace.
Original translation from the Greek
Iconography
Abraham is depicted as a bishop — vested in the phelonion or the cross-figured polystavrion, wearing the omophorion, and holding or blessing over the Gospel — in the settled type of the ascetic hierarch: grey-bearded and spare of feature, marking his monastic austerity beneath the episcopal vesture. No storable pre-modern image identified specifically as Abraham of Carrhae has been found; the entry is without a stored icon, and the want is noted here rather than in the shared index.
Disputed questions
- Carrhae and Cyrrhus. Abraham came from the district of Cyrrhus (whence Theodoret's shared knowledge of him) but was bishop of Carrhae/Harran — two distinct Mesopotamian places whose similar names have sometimes been confused; his see is Carrhae. Some Western notices place his commemoration in mid-March; the Byzantine calendar keeps him February 14.
- Not to be confused with the several other saints named Abraham/Abramius: Abraham the Recluse and his niece Mary (a different Syrian ascetic), Abramius of Arbela (the Persian hieromartyr-bishop), or the Patriarch Abraham of the Forefathers. This Abraham is the hermit-bishop of Carrhae of Theodoret's history.