Metropolitan Gurgis of Basibrina
(d. 1495)
Gurgis became a monk at the Qartamin Monastery. In 1450 he was ordained a metropolitan with the name Yuhanna. He was the most prominent among the bishops of his time. Twice he performed the pilgrimage to Jerusalem and bought a house for two hundred golden dinars and made it an endowment of our St. Mark’s Monastery in Jerusalem.563 He died at Mar Hananya Monastery in 1495. In 1462 he compiled a liturgy from nine liturgies by doctors of the church, all of which share the common name Yuhanna, including his own name. To this compilation he contributed five pieces. The compiled liturgy begins thus: “O Lord the giver of safety and the Lord of peace.” It contains four prayers by a bishop named Yuhanna bar Butahi, who may be a fourteenth-century bishop from Tur Abdin. The composition of the two Yuhannas is good.564 Yuhanna also compiled a liturgy from seven liturgies written by seven fathers of the church, all of them named Jacob.565