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Urfa in classical days was known by the name of Edessa, and was the capital city of that king Abgarus of Osroëne, whose Epistle to our Lord is included among the Apocryphal Gospels. This tale is something more than a legend, for it dates from the beginning of the fourth century; and is related by the historians Eusebius and Moses of Khorene, who both profess to have derived their authority from contemporary documents which they had themselves inspected among the royal archives at Edessa. They tell us how the king was afflicted with leprosy, and how he sought in vain to be cured by the physicians and sorcerers of his own land. How at length he heard report of the miracles that were being wrought in Judaea by Jesus the{19} Prophet of Galilee; and how he dispatched ambassadors to Him, entreating Him to come and heal his disease and to instruct his people, offering Him at the same time a secure asylum from the hatred of the unbelieving Jews. These ambassadors were the “certain Greeks”[12] who are mentioned in St. John’s Gospel as having been introduced to our Lord by Philip on the day of His triumphant entry into Jerusalem; and they brought back to Abgarus a verbal message (or some say an actual letter dictated by our Lord to Thomas) promising that one of His Apostles should be sent to Edessa in due time.

Accordingly soon after the Ascension the Apostle Thaddeus was sent by Thomas to preach the Word in Osroëne. He came and healed Abgarus of his leprosy; and the king and all his people thereupon embraced the Faith.[13] Thaddeus himself passed onwards to Armenia and Eastern Mesopotamia, where he founded the Parthian or Assyrian, now called the “Nestorian,” Church.

We may at least say of this legend that it is nearly as well authenticated as that which attributes the foundation of the Church of Rome to Peter; and far better than those which claim Spain for James the Great, or Britain for Joseph of Arimathea. The stories have this much in their favour—that at all events they are not mutually contradictory. Peter and James are conceded to the West; while Eastern tradition contents itself with Thomas and Thaddeus and Bartholomew. One would expect only the illustrious names in any mere fabricated tales.

At least it is historically certain that the Gospel was brought to Edessa almost within the Apostolic ages; and that Edessa formed the main distributing centre for the preachers who evangelized the East.

Osroëne in Abgarus’ days formed a sort of buffer state{20} between the Parthian and Roman Empires; and a little later it experienced the usual fate of buffer states, and was absorbed by the Empire of Rome. Under its new suzerains Edessa took rank as an important frontier fortress, and stood many a siege in the long-drawn wars between the kings of the Sassanid Persians and the Emperors of Byzantine Rome. Moreover it was a great educational centre, the seat of a famous university, which was eventually suppressed by the Byzantine Emperor Zeno in the year 489 on the ground that it was tainted by the heresy of Nestorianism.