in the following year the prisoners appealed to Ephraim who paid their ransom. Non-Chalcedonians rioted in Antioch in 531 and attacked the patriarchal palace, but were driven off by the comes Orientis. Ephraim wrote to Anthimus, Archbishop of Trebizond, prior to his consecration as patriarch of Constantinople on the natures of Christ and the heresy of Eutychianism, and reminded him of the importance of the Council of Chalcedon. Later, Anthimus became patriarch in 535 and adopted non-Chalcedonianism, which led Ephraim to send Sergius of Reshaina with a letter to Rome to meet with Pope Agapetus I and warn him that non-Chalcedonians had secured control of the Churches of Alexandria and Constantinople. Agapetus consequently intervened and Anthimus was deposed in 536. After Emperor Justinian I issued an edict banning the writings of Severus of Antioch in August 536, the saint undertook a tour of Syria and Mesopotamia alongside a contingent of soldiers to enforce the Council of Chalcedon and persecute its opponents, and travelled to Chalcis, Beroea, Hierapolis, Batnae, Edessa, Sura, Callinicum, Theodosioupolis, Constantina, and Amida. Ephraim had non-Chalcedonian monks driven out from their monasteries in the middle of winter, imprisoned those who refused to accept the council, and erected pyres in some cases. According to his hagiography, Ephraim met with a non-Chalcedonian stylite near the city of Hierapolis or Heracleia and attempted to convert him, however, the stylite was unconvinced. The stylite built a bonfire and argued he and the saint should both enter the bonfire to test who was right, to which Ephraim put his omophorion in the fire. After three hours, the omophorion was removed from the bonfire unharmed and the stylite renounced his heresy. Ephraim sent his brother John, a satrap of an Armenian principality, to Amida to convince non-Chalcedonian monks to accept the Council of Chalcedon, however, they refused and John was forced to expel them from the city. At this time, according to Michael the Syrian, Ephraim was sent as an ambassador to Al-Harith ibn Jabalah, King of the Ghassanids by Emperor Justinian I, and unsuccessfully attempted to persuade the king to accept the Council of Chalcedon. In 537, Ephraim conspired to imprison the non-Chalcedonian clergyman John of Tella, who had taken refuge in the Sassanian Empire, and thus allegedly told the Sassanian government that John had committed simony and was a rebel. The Sasanian government captured John and transferred him to Ephraim, who subsequently