Barses of Edessa

Saint Barses (Barsas, Vars) was bishop of Edessa, a confessor of the right faith in the time of the Arians, and died in exile, in 378. Until 361 he was bishop of Harran, then of Edessa. He is remembered by the Orthodox Church on 25 August and 15 October, by the Syrian Jacobite Church on 12 January and by the Catholic Church on 30 January.

The bishop

According to Sozomen, he was only a titular bishop, ordained "for honour and, so to speak, as a reward for his life", for his own monastery. It seems that, like Eulogius of Edessa, he first received the rank of bishop and only afterwards came to the government of the see. According to the Chronicle of Edessa, in 370, with Barses's help, a great baptistery was built at Edessa. His correspondence with Saint Basil the Great survives in two letters of Basil to him.

Exile

In the time of the Arian disputes, Barses defended the faith of Nicaea. According to Theodoret, he was known not only at Edessa but also "in Phoenicia, in Egypt and in the Thebaid, since he went through all these lands with the lamp of his virtue". For this reason, in September 373 the emperor Valens sent him into exile on the island of Arad. There he became renowned as a man full of apostolic grace, who healed diseases by his word. According to Theodoret, on Arad "his bed is preserved and held in the greatest honour there, for many of the sick, being laid on it, receive health through faith". Since crowds began to gather to him, Valens sent Barses into exile at Oxyrhynchus, in Egypt, then to the border fortress of Phenon. He died in exile, in 378.

A Ukrainian source says that he was first exiled to the island of Arad, off the coast of Phoenicia, but his venerators often came there, then he was taken to Egypt, first to Oxyrhynchus, and then further. Theodoret stresses that people went to Barses as to a healer and that, after his death, many sick went or were taken to Arad, where his bed was kept, lay on it and were healed. Saint Barses is also named in the Roman Martyrology.