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The saints

St. Ephrem

The Harp of the Holy Spirit, who taught theology through hymns.

Feast: 9 June · about 306 to 373 · The early Church · Nisibis and Edessa, Mesopotamia

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Mosaic of St. Ephrem, gray-bearded, holding a scroll with Greek writing.

AnonymousUnknown author. Wikimedia Commons, Public domain.

Home / The saints / St. Ephrem

Edessa, Mesopotamia, the 4th century

Ephrem was a deacon in Mesopotamia who wrote in Syriac, the language close to what Jesus spoke.1

When heretics spread their ideas through popular songs, Ephrem answered with better songs.1

He wrote hundreds of hymns and taught women’s choirs to sing them.

Patronage No official patronage we can cite yet. The Church honors him as the Harp of the Holy Spirit.

01St. Ephrem

The deacon of Edessa

During a famine he organized food for the poor of Edessa.1

He is the only Syriac Christian named a Doctor of the Church.1

Live it this week

Sing your prayer

Ephrem taught the faith in songs. Pick one hymn this week and learn the words by heart, then sing or hum it while you work.

Notes

How we know · 1 source for this page
  1. Franciscan Media, Saint of the Day: “Saint Ephrem”. franciscanmedia.org. franciscanmedia.org

The Catholic Encyclopedia (1913) is in the public domain; we quote the New Advent edition. Texts of the Holy See are quoted briefly from vatican.va. Scripture: World English Bible, Catholic edition (public domain); Verse numbers are modern, with Douay-Rheims numbers in brackets where they differ. Photographs: Wikimedia Commons, credited under each image; full list on the photo credits page.

Lines in the narrator’s voice, without a note, are our reflection, not a historical claim. Stone & Incense restates Church teaching in plain words; our wording is not an official Church text. Report an errorCorrections.