HARMONISTS. See Communism,II., 6; Rapp, Georg.

HARMONIUS: Syrian hymn-writer of the first half of the third century. He was a son of the Gnostic Bardesanes (q.v.), whose heretical views he shared. According to- Sozomen, he received a Greek education (Hist. eccl., iii. 16; cf.. Theodoret, Hist. eccl., iv. 29, and Hwr., i. 22). He originated the Syrian hymnology, and his hymns were long popular. In the fourth century Ephraem Syrus sought to crowd them out by writing orthodox hymns in the same meters and to the same airs. Ephraem (" Sermons against Heretics," liii., Opera Syr., ii. 554 B) regarded Bardesanes as the composer of the objectionable hymns; but the hymnal attrib uted by him to Bardesanes was probably com posed by Harmonius.

G. Krüger.

Bibliography: Consult, besides the literature under Bardesanes, DOB, ii. 845-848; Ceillier Auteurs sacrés, i. 455, 488; Harnack, Litteratur, i. 174, 184, 187. -

HARMONY OF THE GOSPELS.

I. Harmonies as Interwoven Gospels.

No Harmonies before Tatian (§ 1).

Tatian's Diatessaron and its History (§ 2).

The Diatessaron Originally Greek (§ 3).

Reconstruction of the Diatessaron through the Versions (§ 4).

Modern Works of the Kind (§ 5).

II. Harmonies in Parallel Arrangement.

Ammonius and Augustine (§ 1).

Clericus and the Griesbach School (§ 2).

Rushbrooke and Later Harmonists (§ 3).

[Under the name of "harmony of the Gospels" as commonly applied in English are embraced two classes of works: (1) those which combine into a continuous narrative more or less completely the accounts of the four Evangelists or of the Synoptists, the different accounts being interwoven (to these is sometimes given the name " Diatessaron "); (2) those in which the text of the Gospels is arranged in parallel columns, the sections which deal with the same episodes being placed together. In the usage of German and some other scholars a distinction is made between " harmony " and " synopsis," the former name being used for the interwoven narrative, the latter for the parallel arrangement. A few works unite the two forms. See Gospel and the Gospels]

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