Tomarsa

Tomarsa (or Tamuza) was bishop of Seleucia-Ctesiphon and primate of the Church of the East from 363 to 371. He took office at the end of the great persecution of Shapur II. Like several other early bishops of Seleucia-Ctesiphon, he is included in the traditional list of patriarchs of the Church of the East.

Sources

Brief accounts of Tomarsa's episcopate are given in the Ecclesiastical Chronicle of the Jacobite writer Bar Hebraeus (floruit 1280) and in the ecclesiastical histories of the Nestorian writers Mari (twelfth-century), ʿAmr (fourteenth-century) and Sliba (fourteenth-century). His life is also covered in the Chronicle of Seert. In all these accounts he is anachronistically called 'catholicus', a term that was only applied to the primates of the Church of the East in the fifth century.

Modern assessments of his reign can be found in Wigram's Introduction to the History of the Assyrian Church and David Wilmshurst's The Martyred Church.

Tomarsa's episcopate

The following account of Tomarsa's episcopate and martyrdom is given by Bar Hebraeus: