Chronicle of Edessa

Not to be confused with Chronicle of Matthew of Edessa.

Vatican Syr. 163 folio

The Chronicle of Edessa (Latin: Chronicon Edessenum) is an anonymous history of the city of Edessa written in the mid-6th century in the Syriac language. "Chronicle of Edessa" is a conventional title; in the manuscript it is titled Histories of Events in Brief (Syriac: ܬܫ̈ܥܝܬܐ ܕܣܘܥܪ̈ܢܐ ܐܝܟ ܕܒܦܣܝ̈ܩܬܐ, Tašʿyātā d-suʿrāne a(y)k da-b-pāsiqātā).[a]

The Chronicle of Edessa is generally agreed to have been written around 540–550 CE.[b] The Chronicle primarily used old Edessan royal archives as its source, as well as some more recent church records,[1] and accordingly is thought to be historically reliable.[2][3][4] It may make use of a lost history of Persia.[5]

It is extant only in an abbreviated version in a single manuscript, Vatican Syriac 163 (Vat. Syr. 163).[6][7] This manuscript, from the Syrian Convent of Our Lady in the Wadi El Natrun,[5] was acquired by Giuseppe Simone Assemani during a trip to the Near East from 1715 to 1717 taken at the request of Pope Clement XI.[6] Some excerpts of the lost full version of the text—sometimes called the Original Chronicle of Edessa—are preserved in other Syriac chronicles.[7]

The Chronicle covers the period from the founding of the kingdom of Osrhoene in 133/132 BCE until 540,[7] but few events are recorded before the 3rd century.[5] The Chronicle picks up with a record of a flood of the river Daysan during the reign of Abgar VIII in November 201, which damaged a Christian church building in Edessa.[8][9] This is the earliest mention of a building dedicated exclusively to Christian worship,[10] as well as one of few records of Christianity in Edessa at this time.[11][9] Unlike other Syriac literature, the Chronicle does not contain any legends of the Apostle Thaddeus.[3][4]


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  1. ^ Palmer 1999, p. 421.
  2. ^ Teixidor 2015, p. 148.
  3. ^ a b Baum & Winkler 2003, p. 13.
  4. ^ a b Yamauchi 1983, p. 85.
  5. ^ a b c Cross & Livingstone 2009.
  6. ^ a b Brigham Young University 2004.
  7. ^ a b c Witakowski 2018, p. 336.
  8. ^ Ferguson 1999, p. 267.
  9. ^ a b Schnabel 2004, p. 899.
  10. ^ Myers 2010, p. 35.
  11. ^ Frenschkowski 2015, p. 464.