Birth name Ephrem Rahmani Term ended 7 May 1929 | Installed 9 October 1898 Name Ignatius II Ordination April 1873 | |
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Successor Ignatius Gabriel I Tappouni Books Acta Sanctorum Confessorum Guriae Et Shamonae Exarata Syriaca Lingua a Theophilo Edesseno: The Acts of Guria and Shmona in Syriac, With Latin Translation | ||
Mar Ignatius Dionysius Ephrem II Rahmani (21 November 1848 – 7 May 1929) was Patriarch of the Syriac Catholic Church from 1898 to 1929 and a Syriac scholar.
Contents
Life
Ephrem Rahmani was born on 21 November 1848 (or on 9 November 1849 according other sources) in Mosul. He studied by the Dominican friars in Mosul and later in the College of the Propaganda in Rome and was ordained priest in April 1873.
Rahmani was appointed vicar of the bishop of Mosul with the titular title of bishop of Edessa and consecrated bishop on 2 October 1887 by Patriarch Ignatius George V Shelhot. On 1 May 1894 Rahmani was appointed bishop of Aleppo. After the death of Ignatius Behnam II Benni (13 September 1897) he was elected Patriarch on 9 October 1898 and confirmed by Pope Leo XIII on 28 November 1898.
As patriarch Rahmani was particularly interested in the instruction of the clergy. The early 20th-century was a period of expansion for the Syriac Catholic Church who received many Syriac Orthodox converts. In 1910 he moved the Patriarchal See from Mardin to Beirut.
With the World War I arrived the catastrophe: the Armenian Genocide brought destruction also to the Christian Syrians who lived in the same areas of the Armenians, and the Syriac Catholic Church had the number of its members cut by half with five dioceses (on ten) and fifteen missions destroyed.
Ephrem Rahmani died in Cairo on 7 May 1929.
Works
Ephrem Rahmani was a liturgical scholar of international repute. In 1899 he discovered and published the first edition of the 4th-century text Testamentum Domini. His main contribution on the history of the liturgy is his book Les Liturgies Orientales et Occidentales, Beyrouth, 1929