| Saint Hormizd | |
|---|---|
| Rabban (monk) | |
| Born | 6th or early 7th century Beth Lapat (Persia) |
| Died | mid 7th century Rabban Hormizd Monastery, (Modern-day Iraq) |
| Honored in | Chaldean Catholic Church, Assyrian Church of the East |
| Feast | 2nd Sunday after Easter |
Saint Rabban Hormizd, or Rabban Hormizd the Persian, (rabban is the Syriac for monk) was a monk of the Nestorian tradition who lived in the seventh century Iraq. He founded the Rabban Hormizd Monastery, named after him, which has been the main monastery of the Church of the East and later of the Chaldean Catholic Church. In the Chaldean Church, Rabban Hormizd is commemorated on the second Sunday after Easter.[1]
According to The histories of Rabban Hormizd the Persian and Rabban Bar-Idta, a text written by his disciple Simon[2] before the 12th century,[3] Hormizd was born at the end of the sixth or beginning the seventh century at Beth Lapat (Persia) from a rich Christian family, and at the age of eighteen he started to travel towards Scetes to became a monk there. On the way he met three monks of the monastery of Bar Idta who urged him to became an inmate of their monastery, and he did so. He lived a hard, stern life and performed many miracles, as to have raised a dead youth to life, and to have turned water into oil. Hormizd lived in and near the Monastery of Bar Idta for thirty-nine years and in the monastery of Abba Abraham of Risha for six or seven years.
When Hormizd was sixty-five or sixty-six, he left the monastery and passing out of the country of Marga went and settled down in the mountain of Beth 'Edhrai near Alqosh. When he had been there some little time the people in the neighbourhood offered to build him a monastery, the present Rabban Hormizd Monastery. The following part of the life of Rabban Hormizd is marked by episodes in which the saint opposed the monks of the Mar Mattai Monastery (which belonged to the rival Syrian Orthodox Church), charged of immoral life and of idolatry.