Narsai

Narsai (c. 399 – c. 502/507) was the preeminent theologian and poet of the Church of the East, honored with the titles "Harp of the Holy Spirit" and "Tongue of the East." Orphaned in childhood, he was raised at a monastery near Beth Zabdai before spending years at the celebrated School of Edessa, where he eventually became its director. Around 471 he was driven out — due to christological conflict with Miaphysite opponents, chiefly Bishop Cyrus II of Edessa — and resettled in Persian-controlled Nisibis, where, with Bishop Barsauma, he refounded the School of Nisibis as the intellectual heart of East Syrian Christianity. He composed some 360 mēmrē (verse homilies) according to the later writer Abdisho bar Berika, of which roughly eighty survive, covering creation, the sacraments, dominical feasts, and biblical narrative; they established the theological and liturgical vocabulary of the Church of the East for generations.