Ignatius III David was Syrian Orthodox (Jacobite) patriarch of Antioch (1222-1252), renowned for his reform activities and generosity. He especially sponsored education and learning, as well as the construction of ecclesiastical buildings, notably in Frankish Antioch (mod. Antakya, Turkey).
Educated in the famous monastery of Mor Barsaumo near Melitene (mod. Malatya, Turkey), he was elected maphrian (primate) of the eastern part of the Syrian Orthodox Church in 1215, but resided in Cappadocia from 1219, and became the first maphrian to be elected patriarch (1222). Raids on Mesopotamia by the Mongols and encroachments on Christian territory by Muslim rulers explain why Ignatius spent his patriarchate largely in areas under Armenian and Frankish protection, particularly in Antioch.
Latin sources, among them letters of Pope Gregory IX, tell of Ignatius’s submission to papal authority. However, the Syriac chronicle by Gregory Bar Ebroyo (Bar Hebraeus) mentions nothing of the kind but describes Ignatius’s diplomatic maneuvers as calculated rather than straightforward, because of his delicate position. He was buried in the Armenian cathedral in Hromgla (mod. Rumkale, Turkey).
-Dorothea Weltecke
Bibliography
Teule, Herman, “It Is Not Right to Call Ourselves Orthodox and the Others Heretics. Ecumenical Attitudes in the Jacobite Church in the Time of the Crusades,” in East and West in the Crusader States, II: Cultural and Religious Crossroads, ed. Herman Teule and Krijnie Ciggaar (Leuven: Peeters, 1999), pp. 12-27.
World History
