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Church of the East

January 21, 2023

"Nestorian Church" redirects here. For the church in Famagusta, Cyprus, see Nestorian Church (Famagusta).
For other uses, see Church of the East (disambiguation).

The Church of the East (Classical Syriac: ܥܕܬܐ ܕܡܕܢܚܐ, romanized: ʿĒḏtā d-Maḏenḥā) or the East Syriac Church,[14] also called the Church of Seleucia-Ctesiphon,[15] the Persian Church, the Assyrian Church, the Babylonian Church[13][16][17] or the Nestorian Church,[note 3] was an Eastern Christian church of the East Syriac Rite, based in Mesopotamia. It was one of three major branches of Eastern Christianity that arose from the Christological controversies of the 5th and 6th centuries, alongside the Oriental Orthodox Churches and the Chalcedonian Church. During the early modern period, a series of schisms gave rise to rival patriarchates, sometimes two, sometimes three.[18] Since the latter half of the 20th century, three churches in Iraq claim the heritage of the Church of the East. Meanwhile, the East Syriac churches in India claim the heritage of the Church of the East in India.[4]

Church of the East
ܥܕܬܐ ܕܡܕܢܚܐ‎
Ruins of the Monastery of Mar Eliya (Iraq) in 2005. It was destroyed by ISIS in 2014.
TypeEastern Christian
OrientationSyriac Christianity[1]
TheologyDyophysite doctrine of Theodore of Mopsuestia[2][note 1] (wrongly referred as Nestorianism)[2]
PolityEpiscopal
HeadCatholicos-Patriarch of the East
RegionMiddle East, Central Asia, Far East, India[4]
LiturgyEast Syriac Rite
(Liturgy of Addai and Mari)
HeadquartersSeleucia-Ctesiphon (410 – 775)[5]
Baghdad (775 - 1317)[6]
FounderJesus Christ by sacred tradition
Thomas the Apostle
OriginApostolic Age, by its tradition
Edessa,[7][8]
Mesopotamia[1][note 2]
SeparationsIts schism of 1552 divided it into two patriarchates, later four, but by 1830 again two, one of which is now the Chaldean Catholic Church, while the other split further in 1968 into the Assyrian Church of the East and the Ancient Church of the East.
Other name(s)Nestorian Church, Persian Church, East Syrian Church, Assyrian Church, Babylonian Church[13]

The Church of the East organized itself in 410 as the national church of the Sasanian Empire through the Council of Seleucia-Ctesiphon. In 424 it declared itself independent of the state church of the Roman Empire. The Church of the East was headed by the Catholicose of the East seated in Seleucia-Ctesiphon, continuing a line that, according to its tradition, stretched back to the Apostolic Age. According to its tradition, the Church of the East was established by Thomas the Apostle in the first century. Its liturgical rite was the East Syrian rite that employs the Divine Liturgy of Saints Addai and Mari.

The Church of the East, which was part of the Great Church, shared communion with those in the Roman Empire until the Council of Ephesus condemned Nestorius in 431.[1] Supporters of Nestorius took refuge in Sasanian Persia, where the Church refused to condemn Nestorius and became accused of Nestorianism, a heresy incorrectly attributed to Nestorius. It was therefore called the Nestorian Church by all the other Eastern churches, both Chalcedonian and non-Chalcedonian, and by the Western Church. Politically the Sassanian and Roman empires were at war with each other, which forced the Church of the East to distance itself from the churches within Roman territory.[19][20][21] More recently, the "Nestorian" appellation has been called "a lamentable misnomer",[22][23] and theologically incorrect by scholars.[17] However, the Church of the East started to call itself Nestorian, it anathematized the Council of Ephesus, and in its liturgy Nestorius was mentioned as a saint.[24][25] In 544, the general Council of the Church of the East approved the Council of Chalcedon at the Synod of Mar Aba I in 544.[26][7]

Continuing as a dhimmi community under the Sunni Caliphate after the Muslim conquest of Persia (633–654), the Church of the East played a major role in the history of Christianity in Asia. Between the 9th and 14th centuries, it represented the world's largest Christian denomination in terms of geographical extent. It established dioceses and communities stretching from the Mediterranean Sea and today's Iraq and Iran, to India (the Saint Thomas Syrian Christians of Kerala), the Mongol kingdoms in Central Asia, and China during the Tang dynasty (7th–9th centuries). In the 13th and 14th centuries, the church experienced a final period of expansion under the Mongol Empire, where influential Church of the East clergy sat in the Mongol court.

Even before the Church of the East underwent a rapid decline in its field of expansion in Central Asia in the 14th century, it had already lost ground in its home territory. The decline is indicated by the shrinking list of active dioceses. Around the year 1000, there were more than sixty dioceses throughout the Near East, but by the middle of the 13th century there were about twenty, and after Timur Leng the number was further reduced to seven only.[27] In the aftermath of the division of the Mongol Empire, the rising Chinese and Islamic Mongol leaderships pushed out and nearly eradicated the Church of the East and its followers. Thereafter, Church of the East dioceses remained largely confined to Upper Mesopotamia and to the Saint Thomas Syrian Christians in the Malabar Coast (modern-day Kerala, India).

Divisions occurred within the church itself, but by 1830 two unified patriarchates and distinct churches remained: the Assyrian Church of the East and the Chaldean Catholic Church (an Eastern Catholic Church in communion with the Holy See). The Ancient Church of the East split from the Assyrian Church of the East in 1968. In 2017, the Chaldean Catholic Church had approximately 628,405 members[28] and the Assyrian Church of the East had 323,300 to 380,000,[29][30] while the Ancient Church of the East had 100,000.

Background

The Church of the East's declaration in 424 of the independence of its head, the Patriarch of the East, preceded by seven years the 431 Council of Ephesus, which condemned Nestorius and declared that Mary, mother of Jesus, can be described as Mother of God. Two of the generally accepted ecumenical councils were held earlier: the First Council of Nicaea, in which a Persian bishop took part, in 325, and the First Council of Constantinople in 381. The Church of the East accepted the teaching of these two councils, but ignored the 431 Council and those that followed, seeing them as concerning only the patriarchates of the Roman Empire (Rome, Constantinople, Alexandria, Antioch, Jerusalem), all of which were for it "Western Christianity".[31]

Theologically, the Church of the East adopted dyophysite doctrine of Theodore of Mopsuestia[2] that emphasised the "distinctiveness" of the divine and the human natures of Jesus. But this doctrine was misleadingly labelled as 'Nestorian' by its theological opponents.[2]

In the 6th century and thereafter, the Church of the East expanded greatly, establishing communities in India (the Saint Thomas Syrian Christians), among the Mongols in Central Asia, and in China, which became home to a thriving community under the Tang dynasty from the 7th to the 9th century. At its height, between the 9th and 14th centuries, the Church of the East was the world's largest Christian church in geographical extent, with dioceses stretching from its heartland in Upper Mesopotamia to the Mediterranean Sea and as far afield as China, Mongolia, Central Asia, Anatolia, the Arabian Peninsula and India.

From its peak of geographical extent, the church entered a period of rapid decline that began in the 14th century, due largely to outside influences. The Chinese Ming dynasty overthrew the Mongols (1368) and ejected Christians and other foreign influences from China, and many Mongols in Central Asia converted to Islam. The Muslim Turco-Mongol leader Timur (1336–1405) nearly eradicated the remaining Christians in the Middle East. Nestorian Christianity remained largely confined to communities in Upper Mesopotamia and the Saint Thomas Syrian Christians of the Malabar Coast in the Indian subcontinent.

In the early modern period, the schism of 1552 led to a series of internal divisions and ultimately to its branching into three separate churches: the Chaldean Catholic Church, in full communion with the Holy See, and the independent Assyrian Church of the East and Ancient Church of the East.[32]

Description as Nestorian

 
Christological spectrum during the 5th–7th centuries showing the views of The Church of the East (light blue)
Main articles: Nestorianism and Nestorian Schism

Nestorianism is a Christological doctrine that emphasises the distinction between the human and divine natures of Jesus. It was attributed to Nestorius, Patriarch of Constantinople from 428 to 431, whose doctrine represented the culmination of a philosophical current developed by scholars at the School of Antioch, most notably Nestorius's mentor Theodore of Mopsuestia, and stirred controversy when Nestorius publicly challenged the use of the title Theotokos (literally, "Bearer of God") for Mary, mother of Jesus,[33] suggesting that the title denied Christ's full humanity. He argued that Jesus had two loosely joined natures, the divine Logos and the human Jesus, and proposed Christotokos (literally, "Bearer of the Christ") as a more suitable alternative title. His statements drew criticism from other prominent churchmen, particularly from Cyril, Patriarch of Alexandria, who had a leading part in the Council of Ephesus of 431, which condemned Nestorius for heresy and deposed him as Patriarch.[34]

After 431, the state authorities in the Roman Empire suppressed Nestorianism, a reason for Christians under Persian rule to favour it and so allay suspicion that their loyalty lay with the hostile Christian-ruled empire.[35][36]

It was in the aftermath of the slightly later Council of Chalcedon (451), that the Church of the East formulated a distinctive theology. The first such formulation was adopted at the Synod of Beth Lapat in 484. This was developed further in the early seventh century, when in an at first successful war against the Byzantine Empire the Sasanid Persian Empire incorporated broad territories populated by West Syrians, many of whom were supporters of the miaphysite theology of Oriental Orthodoxy which its opponents term "Monophysitism" (Eutychianism), the theological view most opposed to Nestorianism. They received support from Khosrow II, influenced by his wife Shirin. Shirin was a member of the Church of East, but later joined the miaphysite church of Antioch.[citation needed]

Drawing inspiration from Theodore of Mopsuestia, Babai the Great (551−628) expounded, especially in his Book of Union, what became the normative Christology of the Church of the East. He affirmed that the two qnome (a Syriac term, plural of qnoma, not corresponding precisely to Greek φύσις or οὐσία or ὑπόστασις)[37] of Christ are unmixed but eternally united in his single parsopa (from Greek πρόσωπον prosopon "mask, character, person"). As happened also with the Greek terms φύσις (physis) and ὐπόστασις (hypostasis), these Syriac words were sometimes taken to mean something other than what was intended; in particular "two qnome" was interpreted as "two individuals".[38][39][40][41] Previously, the Church of the East accepted a certain fluidity of expressions, always within a dyophysite theology, but with Babai's assembly of 612, which canonically sanctioned the "two qnome in Christ" formula, a final christological distinction was created between the Church of the East and the "western" Chalcedonian churches.[42][43][44]

The justice of imputing Nestorianism to Nestorius, whom the Church of the East venerated as a saint, is disputed.[45][22] David Wilmshurst states that for centuries "the word 'Nestorian' was used both as a term of abuse by those who disapproved of the traditional East Syrian theology, as a term of pride by many of its defenders [...] and as a neutral and convenient descriptive term by others. Nowadays it is generally felt that the term carries a stigma".[46] Sebastian P. Brock says: "The association between the Church of the East and Nestorius is of a very tenuous nature, and to continue to call that church 'Nestorian' is, from a historical point of view, totally misleading and incorrect – quite apart from being highly offensive and a breach of ecumenical good manners".[47]

Apart from its religious meaning, the word "Nestorian" has also been used in an ethnic sense, as shown by the phrase "Catholic Nestorians".[48][49][50]

In his 1996 article, "The 'Nestorian' Church: a lamentable misnomer", published in the Bulletin of the John Rylands Library, Sebastian Brock, a Fellow of the British Academy, lamented the fact that "the term 'Nestorian Church' has become the standard designation for the ancient oriental church which in the past called itself 'The Church of the East', but which today prefers a fuller title 'The Assyrian Church of the East'. Such a designation is not only discourteous to modern members of this venerable church, but also − as this paper aims to show − both inappropriate and misleading".[51]

Organisation and structure

At the Council of Seleucia-Ctesiphon in 410, the Church of the East was declared to have at its head the bishop of the Persian capital Seleucia-Ctesiphon, who in the acts of the council was referred to as the Grand or Major Metropolitan, and who soon afterward was called the Catholicos of the East. Later, the title of Patriarch was used.

The Church of the East had, like other churches, an ordained clergy in the three traditional orders of bishop, priest (or presbyter), and deacon. Also like other churches, it had an episcopal polity: organisation by dioceses, each headed by a bishop and made up of several individual parish communities overseen by priests. Dioceses were organised into provinces under the authority of a metropolitan bishop. The office of metropolitan bishop was an important one, coming with additional duties and powers; canonically, only metropolitans could consecrate a patriarch.[52] The Patriarch also has the charge of the Province of the Patriarch.

For most of its history the church had six or so Interior Provinces. In 410, these were listed in the hierarchical order of: Seleucia-Ctesiphon (central Iraq), Beth Lapat (western Iran), Nisibis (on the border between Turkey and Iraq), Prat de Maishan (Basra, southern Iraq), Arbela (Erbil, Kurdistan region of Iraq), and Karka de Beth Slokh (Kirkuk, northeastern Iraq). In addition it had an increasing number of Exterior Provinces further afield within the Sasanian Empire and soon also beyond the empire's borders. By the 10th century, the church had between 20[35] and 30 metropolitan provinces.[46] According to John Foster, in the 9th century there were 25 metropolitans[53] including those in China and India. The Chinese provinces were lost in the 11th century, and in the subsequent centuries other exterior provinces went into decline as well. However, in the 13th century, during the Mongol Empire, the church added two new metropolitan provinces in North China, one being Tangut, the other Katai and Ong.[46]

Scriptures

Main article: Peshitta

The Peshitta, in some cases lightly revised and with missing books added, is the standard Syriac Bible for churches in the Syriac tradition: the Syriac Orthodox Church, the Syrian Catholic Church, the Assyrian Church of the East, the Ancient Church of the East, the Chaldean Catholic Church, the Maronites, the Malankara Orthodox Syrian Church, the Syro-Malabar Catholic Church and the Syro-Malankara Catholic Church.

The Old Testament of the Peshitta was translated from Hebrew, although the date and circumstances of this are not entirely clear. The translators may have been Syriac-speaking Jews or early Jewish converts to Christianity. The translation may have been done separately for different texts, and the whole work was probably done by the second century. Most of the deuterocanonical books of the Old Testament are found in the Syriac, and the Wisdom of Sirach is held to have been translated from the Hebrew and not from the Septuagint.[54]

The New Testament of the Peshitta, which originally excluded certain disputed books (Second Epistle of Peter, Second Epistle of John, Third Epistle of John, Epistle of Jude, Book of Revelation), had become the standard by the early 5th century.

Iconography

It was often said in the 19th century that the Church of the East was opposed to religious images of any kind. The cult of the image was never as strong in the Syriac churches as it was in the Byzantine Church, but they were indeed present in the tradition of the Church of the East.[55] Opposition to religious images eventually became the norm due to the rise of Islam in the region, which forbade any type of depictions of Saints and biblical prophets.[56] As such, the Church was forced to get rid of icons.[56][57]

There is both literary and archaeological evidence for the presence of images in the church. Writing in 1248 from Samarkand, an Armenian official records visiting a local church and seeing an image of Christ and the Magi. John of Cora (Giovanni di Cori), Latin bishop of Sultaniya in Persia, writing about 1330 of the East Syrians in Khanbaliq says that they had 'very beautiful and orderly churches with crosses and images in honour of God and of the saints'.[55] Apart from the references, there is a painting of a Christian figure which was discovered by Aurel Stein at the Library Cave of the Mo-kao Caves in 1908, which is probably an image of Christ.[58]

An illustrated 13th-century Nestorian Peshitta Gospel book written in Estrangela from northern Mesopotamia or Tur Abdin, currently in the State Library of Berlin, proves that in the 13th century the Church of the East was not yet aniconic.[59] Another Nestorian Gospel manuscript preserved in the Bibliothèque nationale de France contains an illustration that depicts Jesus Christ in the circle of a ringed cross surrounded by four angels.[60] Three Syriac manuscripts from early 19th century or earlier—they were published in a compilation titled The Book of Protection by Hermann Gollancz in 1912—contain some illustrations of no great artistic worth that show that use of images continued.

A life-size male stucco figure discovered in a late-6th-century church in Seleucia-Ctesiphon, beneath which were found the remains of an earlier church, also shows that the Church of the East used figurative representations.[59]

Early history

See also: Nestorian Schism and Nestorianism
 
The Monastery of St. Isho in Hakkari.

Although the Nestorian community traced their history to the 1st century AD, the Church of the East first achieved official state recognition from the Sasanian Empire in the 4th century with the accession of Yazdegerd I (reigned 399–420) to the throne of the Sasanian Empire. In 410 the Synod of Seleucia-Ctesiphon, held at the Sasanian capital, allowed the church's leading bishops to elect a formal Catholicos (leader). Catholicos Isaac was required both to lead the Assyrian Christian community and to answer on its behalf to the Sasanian emperor.[61][62]

Under pressure from the Sasanian Emperor, the Church of the East sought to increasingly distance itself from the Pentarchy (at the time being known as the church of the Eastern Roman Empire). Therefore, in 424, the bishops of the Sasanian Empire met in council under the leadership of Catholicos Dadishoʿ (421–456) and determined that they would not, henceforth, refer disciplinary or theological problems to any external power, and especially not to any bishop or church council in the Roman Empire.[63]

Thus, the Mesopotamian churches did not send representatives to the various church councils attended by representatives of the "Western Church". Accordingly, the leaders of the Church of the East did not feel bound by any decisions of what came to be regarded as Roman Imperial Councils. Despite this, the Creed and Canons of the First Council of Nicaea of 325, affirming the full divinity of Christ, were formally accepted at the Council of Seleucia-Ctesiphon in 410.[64] The church's understanding of the term hypostasis differs from the definition of the term offered at the Council of Chalcedon of 451. For this reason, the Assyrian Church has never approved the Chalcedonian definition.[64]

The theological controversy that followed the Council of Ephesus in 431 proved a turning point in the Christian Church's history. The Council condemned as heretical the Christology of Nestorius, whose reluctance to accord the Virgin Mary the title Theotokos "God-bearer, Mother of God" was taken as evidence that he believed two separate persons (as opposed to two united natures) to be present within Christ.

The Sasanian Emperor, hostile to the Byzantines, saw the opportunity to ensure the loyalty of his Christian subjects and lent support to the Nestorian Schism. The Emperor took steps to cement the primacy of the Nestorian party within the Assyrian Church of the East, granting its members his protection,[65] and executing the pro-Roman Catholicos Babowai in 484, replacing him with the Nestorian Bishop of Nisibis, Barsauma. The Catholicos-Patriarch Babai (497–503) confirmed the association of the Assyrian Church with Nestorianism.

Parthian and Sasanian periods

 
Saint Mary Church: an ancient Assyrian church located in the city of Urmia, West Azerbaijan Province, Iran.

Christians were already forming communities in Mesopotamia as early as the 1st century under the Parthian Empire. In 266, the area was annexed by the Sasanian Empire (becoming the province of Asōristān), and there were significant Christian communities in Upper Mesopotamia, Elam, and Fars.[66] The Church of the East traced its origins ultimately to the evangelical activity of Thaddeus of Edessa, Mari and Thomas the Apostle. Leadership and structure remained disorganised until 315 when Papa bar Aggai (310–329), bishop of Seleucia-Ctesiphon, imposed the primacy of his see over the other Mesopotamian and Persian bishoprics which were grouped together under the Catholicate of Seleucia-Ctesiphon; Papa took the title of Catholicos, or universal leader.[67] This position received an additional title in 410, becoming Catholicos and Patriarch of the East.[68][69]

These early Christian communities in Mesopotamia, Elam, and Fars were reinforced in the 4th and 5th centuries by large-scale deportations of Christians from the eastern Roman Empire.[70] However, the Persian Church faced several severe persecutions, notably during the reign of Shapur II (339–79), from the Zoroastrian majority who accused it of Roman leanings.[71] Shapur II attempted to dismantle the catholicate's structure and put to death some of the clergy including the catholicoi Simeon bar Sabba'e (341),[72] Shahdost (342), and Barba'shmin (346).[73] Afterward, the office of Catholicos lay vacant nearly 20 years (346–363).[74] In 363, under the terms of a peace treaty, Nisibis was ceded to the Persians, causing Ephrem the Syrian, accompanied by a number of teachers, to leave the School of Nisibis for Edessa still in Roman territory.[75] The church grew considerably during the Sasanian period,[35] but the pressure of persecution led the Catholicos Dadisho I in 424 to convene the Synod of Markabta at Seleucia and declare the Catholicate independent from "the western Fathers".[76]

 
Assyrian Mar Toma church in Urmia, Iran.

Meanwhile, in the Roman Empire, the Nestorian Schism had led many of Nestorius' supporters to relocate to the Sasanian Empire, mainly around the theological School of Nisibis. The Persian Church increasingly aligned itself with the Dyophisites, a measure encouraged by the Zoroastrian ruling class. The church became increasingly Dyophisite in doctrine over the next decades, furthering the divide between Roman and Persian Christianity. In 484 the Metropolitan of Nisibis, Barsauma, convened the Synod of Beth Lapat where he publicly accepted Nestorius' mentor, Theodore of Mopsuestia, as a spiritual authority.[43] In 489, when the School of Edessa in Mesopotamia was closed by Byzantine Emperor Zeno for its Nestorian teachings, the school relocated to its original home of Nisibis, becoming again the School of Nisibis, leading to a wave of Nestorian immigration into the Sasanian Empire.[77][78] The Patriarch of the East Mar Babai I (497–502) reiterated and expanded upon his predecessors' esteem for Theodore, solidifying the church's adoption of Dyophisitism.[35]

 
A 6th century Nestorian church, St. John the Arab, in the Assyrian village of Geramon.

Now firmly established in the Persian Empire, with centres in Nisibis, Ctesiphon, and Gundeshapur, and several metropolitan sees, the Church of the East began to branch out beyond the Sasanian Empire. However, through the 6th century the church was frequently beset with internal strife and persecution from the Zoroastrians. The infighting led to a schism, which lasted from 521 until around 539, when the issues were resolved. However, immediately afterward Byzantine-Persian conflict led to a renewed persecution of the church by the Sasanian emperor Khosrau I; this ended in 545. The church survived these trials under the guidance of Patriarch Aba I, who had converted to Christianity from Zoroastrianism.[35]

By the end of the 5th century and the middle of the 6th, the area occupied by the Church of the East included "all the countries to the east and those immediately to the west of the Euphrates", including the Sasanian Empire, the Arabian Peninsula, Socotra, Mesopotamia, Media, Bactria, Hyrcania, and India; and possibly also to places called Calliana, Male, and Sielediva (Ceylon).[79] Beneath the Patriarch in the hierarchy were nine metropolitans, and clergy were recorded among the Huns, in Persarmenia, Media, and the island of Dioscoris in the Indian Ocean.[80]

The Church of the East also flourished in the kingdom of the Lakhmids until the Islamic conquest, particularly after the ruler al-Nu'man III ibn al-Mundhir officially converted in c. 592.

Islamic rule

 
Ecclesiastical provinces of the Church of the East in 10th century
 
A 9th-century mural of a cleric of the Church of the East from the palace of al-Mukhtar in Samarra, Iraq.

After the Sasanian Empire was conquered by Muslim Arabs in 644, the newly established Rashidun Caliphate designated the Church of the East as an official dhimmi minority group headed by the Patriarch of the East. As with all other Christian and Jewish groups given the same status, the church was restricted within the Caliphate, but also given a degree of protection. In order to resist the growing competition from Muslim courts, patriarchs and bishops of the Church of the East developed canon law and adapted the procedures used in the episcopal courts.[81] Nestorians were not permitted to proselytise or attempt to convert Muslims, but their missionaries were otherwise given a free hand, and they increased missionary efforts farther afield. Missionaries established dioceses in India (the Saint Thomas Christians). They made some advances in Egypt, despite the strong Monophysite presence there, and they entered Central Asia, where they had significant success converting local Tartars. Nestorian missionaries were firmly established in China during the early part of the Tang dynasty (618–907); the Chinese source known as the Nestorian Stele describes a mission under a proselyte named Alopen as introducing Nestorian Christianity to China in 635. In the 7th century, the church had grown to have two Nestorian archbishops, and over 20 bishops east of the Iranian border of the Oxus River.[82]

Patriarch Timothy I (780–823), a contemporary of the Caliph Harun al-Rashid, took a particularly keen interest in the missionary expansion of the Church of the East. He is known to have consecrated metropolitans for Damascus, for Armenia, for Dailam and Gilan in Azerbaijan, for Rai in Tabaristan, for Sarbaz in Segestan, for the Turks of Central Asia, for China, and possibly also for Tibet. He also detached India from the metropolitan province of Fars and made it a separate metropolitan province, known as India.[83] By the 10th century the Church of the East had a number of dioceses stretching from across the Caliphate's territories to India and China.[35]

Nestorian Christians made substantial contributions to the Islamic Umayyad and Abbasid Caliphates, particularly in translating the works of the ancient Greek philosophers to Syriac and Arabic.[84][85] Nestorians made their own contributions to philosophy, science (such as Hunayn ibn Ishaq, Qusta ibn Luqa, Masawaiyh, Patriarch Eutychius, Jabril ibn Bukhtishu) and theology (such as Tatian, Bar Daisan, Babai the Great, Nestorius, Toma bar Yacoub). The personal physicians of the Abbasid Caliphs were often Assyrian Christians such as the long serving Bukhtishu dynasty.[86][87]

Expansion

 
Church of the East at its largest extent during the Middle Ages.

After the split with the Western World and synthesis with Nestorianism, the Church of the East expanded rapidly due to missionary works during the medieval period. During the period between 500 and 1400 the geographical horizon of the Church of the East extended well beyond its heartland in present-day northern Iraq, north eastern Syria and south eastern Turkey. Communities sprang up throughout Central Asia, and missionaries from Assyria and Mesopotamia took the Christian faith as far as China, with a primary indicator of their missionary work being the Nestorian Stele, a Christian tablet written in Chinese script found in China dating to 781 AD. Their most important conversion, however, was of the Saint Thomas Christians of the Malabar Coast in India, who alone escaped the destruction of the church by Timur at the end of the 14th century, and the majority of whom today constitute the largest group who now use the liturgy of the Church of the East, with around 4 million followers in their homeland, in spite of the 17th-century defection to the West Syriac Rite of the Syriac Orthodox Church.[88] The St Thomas Christians were believed by tradition to have been converted by St Thomas, and were in communion with the Church of the East until the end of the medieval period.[89]

India

Main articles: Saint Thomas Christians and India (East Syriac ecclesiastical province)

The Saint Thomas Christian community of Kerala, India, who according to tradition trace their origins to the evangelizing efforts of Thomas the Apostle, had a long association with the Church of the East. The earliest known organised Christian presence in Kerala dates to 295/300 when Christian settlers and missionaries from Persia headed by Bishop David of Basra settled in the region.[90] The Saint Thomas Christians traditionally credit the mission of Thomas of Cana, a Nestorian from the Middle East, with the further expansion of their community.[91] From at least the early 4th century, the Patriarch of the Church of the East provided the Saint Thomas Christians with clergy, holy texts, and ecclesiastical infrastructure. And around 650 Patriarch Ishoyahb III solidified the church's jurisdiction in India.[92] In the 8th century Patriarch Timothy I organised the community as the Ecclesiastical Province of India, one of the church's Provinces of the Exterior. After this point the Province of India was headed by a metropolitan bishop, provided from Persia, who oversaw a varying number of bishops as well as a native Archdeacon, who had authority over the clergy and also wielded a great amount of secular power. The metropolitan see was probably in Cranganore, or (perhaps nominally) in Mylapore, where the Shrine of Thomas was located.[91]

In the 12th century Indian Nestorianism engaged the Western imagination in the figure of Prester John, supposedly a Nestorian ruler of India who held the offices of both king and priest. The geographically remote Malabar Church survived the decay of the Nestorian hierarchy elsewhere, enduring until the 16th century when the Portuguese arrived in India. With the establishment of Portuguese power in parts of India, the clergy of that empire, in particular members of the Society of Jesus (Jesuits), determined to actively bring the Saint Thomas Christians into full communion with Rome under the Latin Rite. After the Synod of Diamper in 1599, they installed Padroado Portuguese bishops over the local sees and made liturgical changes to accord with the Latin practice and this led to a revolt among the Saint Thomas Christians.[93] The majority of them broke with the Catholic Church and vowed never to submit to the Portuguese in the Coonan Cross Oath of 1653. In 1661, Pope Alexander VII responded by sending a delegations of Carmelites headed by two Italians, one Fleming and one German priests to reconcile the Saint Thomas Christians to Catholic fold.[94] These priests had two advantages – they were not Portuguese and they were not Jesuits.[94] By the next year, 84 of the 116 Saint Thomas Christian churches had returned, forming the Syrian Catholic Church (modern day Syro-Malabar Catholic Church). The rest, which became known as the Malankara Church, soon entered into communion with the Syriac Orthodox Church. The Malankara Church also produced the Syro-Malankara Catholic Church.

Sri Lanka

Nestorian Christianity is said to have thrived in Sri Lanka with the patronage of King Dathusena during the 5th century. There are mentions of involvement of Persian Christians with the Sri Lankan royal family during the Sigiriya Period. Over seventy-five ships carrying Murundi soldiers from Mangalore are said to have arrived in the Sri Lankan town of Chilaw most of whom were Christians. King Dathusena's daughter was married to his nephew Migara who is also said to have been a Nestorian Christian, and a commander of the Sinhalese army. Maga Brahmana, a Christian priest of Persian origin is said to have provided advice to King Dathusena on establishing his palace on the Sigiriya Rock.[95]

The Anuradhapura Cross discovered in 1912 is also considered to be an indication of a strong Nestorian Christian presence in Sri Lanka between the 3rd and 10th century in the then capitol of Anuradhapura of Sri Lanka.[95][96][97][98]

China

 
The Nestorian Stele, created in 781, describes the introduction of Nestorian Christianity to China
Main articles: Church of the East in China and Christianity in China

Christianity reached China by 635, and its relics can still be seen in Chinese cities such as Xi'an. The Nestorian Stele, set up on 7 January 781 at the then-capital of Chang'an, attributes the introduction of Christianity to a mission under a Persian cleric named Alopen in 635, in the reign of Emperor Taizong of Tang during the Tang dynasty.[99][100] The inscription on the Nestorian Stele, whose dating formula mentions the patriarch Hnanishoʿ II (773–80), gives the names of several prominent Christians in China, including Metropolitan Adam, Bishop Yohannan, 'country-bishops' Yazdbuzid and Sargis and Archdeacons Gigoi of Khumdan (Chang'an) and Gabriel of Sarag (Loyang). The names of around seventy monks are also listed.[101]

Nestorian Christianity thrived in China for approximately 200 years, but then faced persecution from Emperor Wuzong of Tang (reigned 840–846). He suppressed all foreign religions, including Buddhism and Christianity, causing the church to decline sharply in China. A Syrian monk visiting China a few decades later described many churches in ruin. The church disappeared from China in the early 10th century, coinciding with the collapse of the Tang dynasty and the tumult of the next years (the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms period).[102]

Christianity in China experienced a significant revival during the Mongol-created Yuan dynasty, established after the Mongols had conquered China in the 13th century. Marco Polo in the 13th century and other medieval Western writers described many Nestorian communities remaining in China and Mongolia; however, they clearly were not as vibrant as they had been during Tang times.

Mongolia and Central Asia

Main article: Christianity among the Mongols
 
Mongol tribes that adopted Syriac Christianity ca. 600 – 1400

The Church of the East enjoyed a final period of expansion under the Mongols. Several Mongol tribes had already been converted by Nestorian missionaries in the 7th century, and Christianity was therefore a major influence in the Mongol Empire.[103] Genghis Khan was a shamanist, but his sons took Christian wives from the powerful Kerait clan, as did their sons in turn. During the rule of Genghis's grandson, the Great Khan Mongke, Nestorian Christianity was the primary religious influence in the Empire, and this also carried over to Mongol-controlled China, during the Yuan dynasty. It was at this point, in the late 13th century, that the Church of the East reached its greatest geographical reach. But Mongol power was already waning as the Empire dissolved into civil war; and it reached a turning point in 1295, when Ghazan, the Mongol ruler of the Ilkhanate, made a formal conversion to Islam when he took the throne.

Jerusalem and Cyprus

Rabban Bar Sauma had initially conceived of his journey to the West as a pilgrimage to Jerusalem, so it is possible that there was a Nestorian presence in the city ca.1300. There was certainly a recognisable Nestorian presence at the Holy Sepulchre from the years 1348 through 1575, as contemporary Franciscan accounts indicate.[104] At Famagusta, Cyprus, a Nestorian community was established just before 1300, and a church was built for them c. 1339.[105][106]

Decline

The expansion was followed by a decline. There were 68 cities with resident Church of the East bishops in the year 1000; in 1238 there were only 24, and at the death of Timur in 1405, only seven. The result of some 20 years under Öljaitü, ruler of the Ilkhanate from 1304 to 1316, and to a lesser extent under his predecessor, was that the overall number of the dioceses and parishes was further reduced.[107]

When Timur, the Turco-Mongol leader of the Timurid Empire, known also as Tamerlane, came to power in 1370, he set out to cleanse his dominions of non-Muslims. He annihilated Christianity in central Asia.[108] The Church of the East "lived on only in the mountains of Kurdistan and in India".[109] Thus, except for the Saint Thomas Christians on the Malabar Coast, the Church of the East was confined to the area in and around the rough triangle formed by Mosul and Lakes Van and Urmia, including Amid (modern Diyarbakır), Mêrdîn (modern Mardin) and Edessa to the west, Salmas to the east, Hakkari and Harran to the north, and Mosul, Kirkuk, and Arbela (modern Erbil) to the south - a region comprising, in modern maps, northern Iraq, southeast Turkey, northeast Syria and the northwestern fringe of Iran. Small Nestorian communities were located further west, notably in Jerusalem and Cyprus, but the Malabar Christians of India represented the only significant survival of the once-thriving exterior provinces of the Church of the East.[110]

 
The Monastery of Mar 'Avd-Isho in Hakkari.

The complete disappearance of the Nestorian dioceses in Central Asia probably stemmed from a combination of persecution, disease, and isolation: "what survived the Mongols did not survive the Black Death of the fourteenth century."[108] In many parts of Central Asia, Christianity had died out decades before Timur's campaigns. The surviving evidence from Central Asia, including a large number of dated graves, indicates that the crisis for the Church of the East occurred in the 1340s rather than the 1390s. Several contemporary observers, including the Papal Envoy Giovanni de' Marignolli, mention the murder of a Latin bishop in 1339 or 1340 by a Muslim mob in Almaliq, the chief city of Tangut, and the forcible conversion of the city's Christians to Islam. Tombstones in two East Syriac cemeteries in Mongolia have been dated from 1342, some commemorating deaths during a Black Death outbreak in 1338. In China, the last references to Nestorian and Latin Christians date from the 1350s, shortly before the replacement in 1368 of the Mongol Yuan dynasty with the xenophobic Ming dynasty and the consequential self-imposed isolation of China from foreign influence including Christianity.[111]

Schisms

 
The Monastery of Mar Shallita in Hakkari.

From the middle of the 16th century, and throughout following two centuries, the Church of the East was affected by several internal schisms. Some of those schisms were caused by individuals or groups who chose to accept union with the Catholic Church. Other schisms were provoked by rivalry between various fractions within the Church of the East. Lack of internal unity and frequent change of allegiances led to the creation and continuation of separate patriarchal lines. In spite of many internal challenges, and external difficulties (political oppression by Ottoman authorities and frequent persecutions by local non-Christians), the traditional branches of the Church of the East managed to survive that tumultuous period and eventually consolidate during the 19th century in the form of the Assyrian Church of the East. At the same time, after many similar difficulties, groups united with the Catholic Church were finally consolidated into the Chaldean Catholic Church

Schism of 1552

Main article: Schism of 1552

Around the middle of the fifteenth century Patriarch Shemʿon IV Basidi made the patriarchal succession hereditary – normally from uncle to nephew. This practice, which resulted in a shortage of eligible heirs, eventually led to a schism in the Church of the East, creating a temporarily Catholic offshoot known as the Shimun line.[112] The Patriarch Shemʿon VII Ishoʿyahb (1539–58) caused great turmoil at the beginning of his reign by designating his twelve-year-old nephew Khnanishoʿ as his successor, presumably because no older relatives were available.[113] Several years later, probably because Khnanishoʿ had died in the interim, he designated as successor his fifteen-year-old brother Eliya, the future Patriarch Eliya VI (1558–1591).[52] These appointments, combined with other accusations of impropriety, caused discontent throughout the church, and by 1552 Shemʿon VII Ishoʿyahb had become so unpopular that a group of bishops, principally from the Amid, Sirt and Salmas districts in northern Mesopotamia, chose a new patriarch. They elected a monk named Yohannan Sulaqa, the former superior of Rabban Hormizd Monastery near Alqosh, which was the seat of the incumbent patriarchs;[114] however, no bishop of metropolitan rank was available to consecrate him, as canonically required. Franciscan missionaries were already at work among the Nestorians,[115] and, using them as intermediaries,[116] Sulaqa's supporters sought to legitimise their position by seeking their candidate's consecration by Pope Julius III (1550–5).[117][52]

Sulaqa went to Rome, arriving on 18 November 1552, and presented a letter, drafted by his supporters in Mosul, setting out his claim and asking that the Pope consecrate him as Patriarch. On 15 February 1553 he made a twice-revised profession of faith judged to be satisfactory, and by the bull Divina Disponente Clementia of 20 February 1553 was appointed "Patriarch of Mosul in Eastern Syria"[118] or "Patriarch of the Church of the Chaldeans of Mosul" (Chaldaeorum ecclesiae Musal Patriarcha).[119] He was consecrated bishop in St. Peter's Basilica on 9 April. On 28 April Pope Julius III gave him the pallium conferring patriarchal rank, confirmed with the bull Cum Nos Nuper. These events, in which Rome was led to believe that Shemʿon VII Ishoʿyahb was dead, created within the Church of the East a lasting schism between the Eliya line of Patriarchs at Alqosh and the new line originating from Sulaqa. The latter was for half a century recognised by Rome as being in communion, but that reverted to both hereditary succession and Nestorianism and has continued in the Patriarchs of the Assyrian Church of the East.[117][120]

Sulaqa left Rome in early July and in Constantinople applied for civil recognition. After his return to Mesopotamia, he received from the Ottoman authorities in December 1553 recognition as head of "the Chaldean nation after the example of all the Patriarchs". In the following year, during a five-month stay in Amid (Diyarbakır), he consecrated two metropolitans and three other bishops[116] (for Gazarta, Hesna d'Kifa, Amid, Mardin and Seert). For his part, Shemʿon VII Ishoʿyahb of the Alqosh line consecrated two more underage members of his patriarchal family as metropolitans (for Nisibis and Gazarta). He also won over the governor of ʿAmadiya, who invited Sulaqa to ʿAmadiya, imprisoned him for four months, and put him to death in January 1555.[114][120]

The Eliya and Shimun lines

This new Catholic line founded by Sulaqa maintained its seat at Amid and is known as the "Shimun" line. Wilmshurst suggests that their adoption of the name Shimun (after Simon Peter) was meant to point to the legitimacy of their Catholic line.[121] Sulaqa's successor, Abdisho IV Maron (1555–1570) visited Rome and his Patriarchal title was confirmed by the Pope in 1562.[122] At some point, he moved to Seert.

The Eliya-line Patriarch Shemon VII Ishoyahb (1539–1558), who resided in the Rabban Hormizd Monastery near Alqosh, continued to actively oppose union with Rome, and was succeeded by his nephew Eliya (designated as Eliya "VII" in older historiography,[123][124] but renumbered as Eliya "VI" in recent scholarly works).[125][126][127] During his Patriarchal tenure, from 1558 to 1591, the Church of the East preserved its traditional christology and full ecclesiastical independence.[128]

The next Shimun Patriarch was likely Yahballaha IV, who was elected in 1577 or 1578 and died within two years before seeking or obtaining confirmation from Rome.[121] According to Tisserant, problems posed by the "Nestorian" traditionalists and the Ottoman authorities prevented any earlier election of a successor to Abdisho.[129] David Wilmshurst and Heleen Murre believe that, in the period between 1570 and the patriarchal election of Yahballaha, he or another of the same name was looked on as Patriarch.[130] Yahballaha's successor, Shimun IX Dinkha (1580-1600), who moved away from Turkish rule to Salmas on Lake Urmia in Persia,[131] was officially confirmed by the Pope in 1584.[132] There are theories that he appointed his nephew, Shimun X Eliyah (1600–1638) as his successor, but others argue that his election was independent of any such designation.[130] Regardless, from then until the 21st century the Shimun line employed a hereditary system of succession – the rejection of which was part of the reason for the creation of that line in the first place.

Two Nestorian patriarchs

 
The ancient Rabban Hormizd Monastery, former residence of the Patriarchs of the Church of the East.

The next Eliya Patriarch, Eliya VII (VIII) (1591–1617), negotiated on several occasions with the Catholic Church, in 1605, 1610 and 1615–1616, but without final resolution.[133] This likely alarmed Shimun X, who in 1616 sent to Rome a profession of faith that Rome found unsatisfactory, and another in 1619, which also failed to win him official recognition.[133] Wilmshurst says it was this Shimun Patriarch who reverted to the "old faith" of Nestorianism,[130][134] leading to a shift in allegiances that won for the Eliya line control of the lowlands and of the highlands for the Shimun line. Further negotiations between the Eliya line and the Catholic Church were cancelled during the Patriarchal tenure of Eliya VIII (IX) (1617–1660).[135]

The next two Shimun Patriarchs, Shimun XI Eshuyow (1638–1656) and Shimun XII Yoalaha (1656–1662), wrote to the Pope in 1653 and 1658, according to Wilmshurst, while Heleen Murre speaks only of 1648 and 1653. Wilmshurst says Shimun XI was sent the pallium, though Heleen Murre argues official recognition was given to neither. A letter suggests that one of the two was removed from office (presumably by Nestorian traditionalists) for pro-Catholic leanings: Shimun XI according to Heleen Murre, probably Shimun XII according to Wilmshurst.[136][130]

Eliya IX (X) (1660–1700) was a "vigorous defender of the traditional [Nestorian] faith",[136] and simultaneously the next Shimun Patriarch, Shimun XIII Dinkha (1662–1700), definitively broke with the Catholic Church. In 1670, he gave a traditionalist reply to an approach that was made from Rome, and by 1672 all connections with the Pope were ended.[137][138] There were then two traditionalist Patriarchal lines, the senior Eliya line in Alqosh, and the junior Shimun line in Qochanis.[139]

The Josephite line

As the Shimun line "gradually returned to the traditional worship of the Church of the East, thereby losing the allegiance of the western regions",[140] it moved from Turkish-controlled territory to Urmia in Persia. The bishopric of Amid (Diyarbakır), the original headquarters of Shimun Sulaqa, became subject to the Alqosh Patriarch. In 1667 or 1668, Bishop Joseph of that see converted to the Catholic faith. In 1677, he obtained from the Turkish authorities recognition as holding independent power in Amid and Mardin, and in 1681 he was recognised by Rome as "Patriarch of the Chaldean nation deprived of its Patriarch" (Amid patriarchate). Thus was instituted the Josephite line, a third line of Patriarchs and the sole Catholic one at the time.[141] All Joseph I's successors took the name "Joseph". The life of this Patriarchate was difficult: the leadership was continually vexed by traditionalists, while the community struggled under the tax burden imposed by the Ottoman authorities.

In 1771, Eliya XI (XII) and his designated successor (the future Eliya XII (XIII) Ishoʿyahb) made a profession of faith that was accepted by Rome, thus establishing communion. By then, acceptance of the Catholic position was general in the Mosul area. When Eliya XI (XII) died in 1778, Eliya XII (XIII) made a renewed profession of Catholic faith and was recognised by Rome as Patriarch of Mosul, but in May 1779 renounced that profession in favor of the traditional faith. His younger cousin Yohannan Hormizd was locally elected to replace him in 1780, but for various reasons was recognised by Rome only as Metropolitan of Mosul and Administrator of the Catholics of the Alqosh party, having the powers of a Patriarch but not the title or insignia. When Joseph IV of the Amid Patriarchate resigned in 1780, Rome likewise made his nephew, Augustine Hindi, whom he wished to be his successor, not Patriarch but Administrator. No one held the title of Chaldean Catholic patriarch for the next 47 years.

Consolidation of patriarchal lines

Main articles: Chaldean Catholic Church and Assyrian Church of the East
 
The Patriarchal Church of Mar Shalital (Assyrian Church of the East) in Qudshanis village in Hakkâri Province (1692–1918).

When Eliya XII (XIII) died in 1804, the Nestorian branch of the Eliya line died with him.[142][127] With most of his subjects won over to union with Rome by Hormizd, they did not elect a new traditionalist Patriarch. In 1830, Hormizd was finally recognized as the Chaldean Catholic Patriarch of Babylon, marking the last remnant of the hereditary system within the Chaldean Catholic Church.

This also ended the rivalry between the senior Eliya line and the junior Shimun line, as Shimun XVI Yohannan (1780–1820) became the sole primate of the traditionalist Church of the East, "the legal successor of the initially Uniate patriarchate of the [Shimun] line".[143][144] In 1976, it adopted the name Assyrian Church of the East,[145][17][146] and its patriarchate remained hereditary until the death in 1975 of Shimun XXI Eshai.

Accordingly, Joachim Jakob remarks that the original Patriarchate of the Church of the East (the Eliya line) entered into union with Rome and continues down to today in the form of the Chaldean [Catholic] Church,[147] while the original Patriarchate of the Chaldean Catholic Church (the Shimun line) continues today in the Assyrian Church of the East.

See also

References

Informational notes

  1. ^ Distinguished from Chalcedonian Dyophysitism.[3]
  2. ^ Traditional Western historiography of the Church dated its foundation to the Council of Ephesus of 431 and the ensuing "Nestorian Schism". However, the Church of the East already existed as a separate organisation in 431, and the name of Nestorius is not mentioned in any of the acts of the Church's synods up to the 7th century.[9] Christian communities isolated from the church in the Roman Empire likely already existed in Persia from the 2nd century.[10] The independent ecclesiastical hierarchy of the Church developed over the course of the 4th century,[11] and it attained its full institutional identity with its establishment as the officially recognized Christian church in Persia by Shah Yazdegerd I in 410.[12]
  3. ^ The "Nestorian" label is popular, but it has been contentious, derogatory and considered a misnomer. See the § Description as Nestorian section for the naming issue and alternate designations for the church.

Citations

  1. ^ a b c Wilken, Robert Louis (2013). "Syriac-Speaking Christians: The Church of the East". The First Thousand Years: A Global History of Christianity. New Haven and London: Yale University Press. pp. 222–228. ISBN 978-0-300-11884-1. JSTOR j.ctt32bd7m.28. LCCN 2012021755. S2CID 160590164.
  2. ^ a b c d Brock, Sebastian P; Coakley, James F. "Church of the East". e-GEDSH:Gorgias Encyclopedic Dictionary of the Syriac Heritage. Retrieved 27 June 2022. The Church of the East follows the strictly dyophysite ('two-nature') christology of Theodore of Mopsuestia, as a result of which it was misleadingly labelled as 'Nestorian' by its theological opponents.
  3. ^ Michael Philip Penn; Scott Fitzgerald Johnson; Christine Shepardson; Charles M. Stang, eds. (22 February 2022). Invitation to Syriac Christianity: An Anthology (22-Feb-2022 ed.). Univ of California Press. p. 409. ISBN 9780520299191. DYOPHYSITE Broadly, a Christological viewpoint that holds that Christ has two natures, one human and one divine. The East Syrian Church subscribed to a type of dyophysitism attributed to Nestorius and held in attenuated ways by both Greek and Syriac theologians. In the end, this association led the church to be labeled, erroneously, as Nestorian. This view held that Christ has both two natures and two persons. A moderated form of dyophysitism, according to which Christ has two natures and one person, was adopted by Chalcedonian Christians. EAST SYRIAN Dyophysite Syriac Church that has historically been centered in Persia, with missionary activity in Greater Iran, Arabia, Central Asia, China, and India. The East Syrian Church developed into the modern Church of the East. Polemical writings and older scholarship sometimes called the East Syrian Church "Nestorian," but this is now recognized as pejorative.
  4. ^ a b Baum & Winkler 2003, p. 2.
  5. ^ Stewart 1928, p. 15.
  6. ^ Vine, Aubrey R. (1937). The Nestorian Churches. London: Independent Press. p. 104.
  7. ^ a b Meyendorff 1989, p. 287-289.
  8. ^ Broadhead, Edwin K. (2010). Jewish Ways of Following Jesus: Redrawing the Religious Map of Antiquity. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck. p. 123. ISBN 9783161503047.
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  11. ^ Lange 2012, pp. 477–9.
  12. ^ Payne 2015, p. 13.
  13. ^ a b Paul, J.; Pallath, P. (1996). Pope John Paul II and the Catholic Church in India. Mar Thoma Yogam publications. Centre for Indian Christian Archaeological Research. p. 5. Retrieved 2022-06-17. Authors are using different names to designate the same Church : the Church of Seleucia - Ctesiphon, the Church of the East, the Babylonian Church , the Assyrian Church, or the Persian Church.
  14. ^ Baum & Winkler 2003, p. 3,4.
  15. ^ Orientalia Christiana Analecta. Orientalia Christiana Analecta. Pont. institutum studiorum orientalium. 1971. p. 2. Retrieved 2022-06-17. The Church of Seleucia - Ctesiphon was called the East Syrian Church or the Church of the East .
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  18. ^ Baum & Winkler 2003, p. 112-123.
  19. ^ Procopius, Wars, I.7.1–2
    * Greatrex–Lieu (2002), II, 62
  20. ^ Joshua the Stylite, Chronicle, XLIII
    * Greatrex–Lieu (2002), II, 62
  21. ^ Procopius, Wars, I.9.24
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  25. ^ Wood 2013, p. 140.
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  104. ^ Luke 1924, p. 46–56.
  105. ^ Fiey 1993, p. 71.
  106. ^ Wilmshurst 2000, p. 66.
  107. ^ Wilmshurst 2000, p. 16-19.
  108. ^ a b Peter C. Phan, Christianities in Asia (John Wiley & Sons 2011), p. 243
  109. ^ Baum & Winkler 2003, p. 105.
  110. ^ Wilmshurst 2000, p. 345-347.
  111. ^ Baum & Winkler 2003, p. 104.
  112. ^ Wilmshurst 2000, p. 19.
  113. ^ Wilmshurst 2000, p. 21.
  114. ^ a b Wilmshurst 2000, p. 22.
  115. ^ Lemmens 1926, p. 17-28.
  116. ^ a b Fernando Filoni, The Church in Iraq CUA Press 2017), pp. 35−36
  117. ^ a b Habbi 1966, p. 99-132.
  118. ^ Patriarcha de Mozal in Syria orientali (Anton Baumstark (editor), Oriens Christianus, IV:1, Rome and Leipzig 2004, p. 277)
  119. ^ Assemani 1725, p. 661.
  120. ^ a b Wilkinson 2007, p. 86−88.
  121. ^ a b Wilmshurst 2000, p. 23.
  122. ^ Wilmshurst 2000, p. 22-23.
  123. ^ Tisserant 1931, p. 261-263.
  124. ^ Fiey 1993, p. 37.
  125. ^ Murre van den Berg 1999, p. 243-244.
  126. ^ Baum & Winkler 2003, p. 116, 174.
  127. ^ a b Hage 2007, p. 473.
  128. ^ Wilmshurst 2000, p. 22, 42 194, 260, 355.
  129. ^ Tisserant 1931, p. 230.
  130. ^ a b c d Murre van den Berg 1999, p. 252-253.
  131. ^ Baum & Winkler 2003, p. 114.
  132. ^ Wilmshurst 2000, p. 23-24.
  133. ^ a b Wilmshurst 2000, p. 24.
  134. ^ Wilmshurst 2000, p. 352.
  135. ^ Wilmshurst 2000, p. 24-25.
  136. ^ a b Wilmshurst 2000, p. 25.
  137. ^ Wilmshurst 2000, p. 25, 316.
  138. ^ Baum & Winkler 2003, p. 114, 118, 174-175.
  139. ^ Murre van den Berg 1999, p. 235-264.
  140. ^ Wilmshurst 2000, p. 24, 352.
  141. ^ Baum & Winkler 2003, p. 119, 174.
  142. ^ Wilmshurst 2000, p. 263.
  143. ^ Baum & Winkler 2003, p. 118, 120, 175.
  144. ^ Wilmshurst 2000, p. 316-319, 356.
  145. ^ Joseph 2000, p. 1.
  146. ^ Fred Aprim, "Assyria and Assyrians Since the 2003 US Occupation of Iraq"
  147. ^ Jakob 2014, p. 100-101.

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January 21, 2023
church, east, nestorian, church, redirects, here, church, famagusta, cyprus, nestorian, church, famagusta, other, uses, disambiguation, classical, syriac, ܥܕܬܐ, ܕܡܕܢܚܐ, romanized, ʿĒḏtā, maḏenḥā, east, syriac, church, also, called, church, seleucia, ctesiphon,. Nestorian Church redirects here For the church in Famagusta Cyprus see Nestorian Church Famagusta For other uses see Church of the East disambiguation The Church of the East Classical Syriac ܥܕܬܐ ܕܡܕܢܚܐ romanized ʿEḏta d Maḏenḥa or the East Syriac Church 14 also called the Church of Seleucia Ctesiphon 15 the Persian Church the Assyrian Church the Babylonian Church 13 16 17 or the Nestorian Church note 3 was an Eastern Christian church of the East Syriac Rite based in Mesopotamia It was one of three major branches of Eastern Christianity that arose from the Christological controversies of the 5th and 6th centuries alongside the Oriental Orthodox Churches and the Chalcedonian Church During the early modern period a series of schisms gave rise to rival patriarchates sometimes two sometimes three 18 Since the latter half of the 20th century three churches in Iraq claim the heritage of the Church of the East Meanwhile the East Syriac churches in India claim the heritage of the Church of the East in India 4 Church of the Eastܥܕܬܐ ܕܡܕܢܚܐ Ruins of the Monastery of Mar Eliya Iraq in 2005 It was destroyed by ISIS in 2014 TypeEastern ChristianOrientationSyriac Christianity 1 TheologyDyophysite doctrine of Theodore of Mopsuestia 2 note 1 wrongly referred as Nestorianism 2 PolityEpiscopalHeadCatholicos Patriarch of the EastRegionMiddle East Central Asia Far East India 4 LiturgyEast Syriac Rite Liturgy of Addai and Mari HeadquartersSeleucia Ctesiphon 410 775 5 Baghdad 775 1317 6 FounderJesus Christ by sacred traditionThomas the ApostleOriginApostolic Age by its tradition Edessa 7 8 Mesopotamia 1 note 2 SeparationsIts schism of 1552 divided it into two patriarchates later four but by 1830 again two one of which is now the Chaldean Catholic Church while the other split further in 1968 into the Assyrian Church of the East and the Ancient Church of the East Other name s Nestorian Church Persian Church East Syrian Church Assyrian Church Babylonian Church 13 The Church of the East organized itself in 410 as the national church of the Sasanian Empire through the Council of Seleucia Ctesiphon In 424 it declared itself independent of the state church of the Roman Empire The Church of the East was headed by the Catholicose of the East seated in Seleucia Ctesiphon continuing a line that according to its tradition stretched back to the Apostolic Age According to its tradition the Church of the East was established by Thomas the Apostle in the first century Its liturgical rite was the East Syrian rite that employs the Divine Liturgy of Saints Addai and Mari The Church of the East which was part of the Great Church shared communion with those in the Roman Empire until the Council of Ephesus condemned Nestorius in 431 1 Supporters of Nestorius took refuge in Sasanian Persia where the Church refused to condemn Nestorius and became accused of Nestorianism a heresy incorrectly attributed to Nestorius It was therefore called the Nestorian Church by all the other Eastern churches both Chalcedonian and non Chalcedonian and by the Western Church Politically the Sassanian and Roman empires were at war with each other which forced the Church of the East to distance itself from the churches within Roman territory 19 20 21 More recently the Nestorian appellation has been called a lamentable misnomer 22 23 and theologically incorrect by scholars 17 However the Church of the East started to call itself Nestorian it anathematized the Council of Ephesus and in its liturgy Nestorius was mentioned as a saint 24 25 In 544 the general Council of the Church of the East approved the Council of Chalcedon at the Synod of Mar Aba I in 544 26 7 Continuing as a dhimmi community under the Sunni Caliphate after the Muslim conquest of Persia 633 654 the Church of the East played a major role in the history of Christianity in Asia Between the 9th and 14th centuries it represented the world s largest Christian denomination in terms of geographical extent It established dioceses and communities stretching from the Mediterranean Sea and today s Iraq and Iran to India the Saint Thomas Syrian Christians of Kerala the Mongol kingdoms in Central Asia and China during the Tang dynasty 7th 9th centuries In the 13th and 14th centuries the church experienced a final period of expansion under the Mongol Empire where influential Church of the East clergy sat in the Mongol court Even before the Church of the East underwent a rapid decline in its field of expansion in Central Asia in the 14th century it had already lost ground in its home territory The decline is indicated by the shrinking list of active dioceses Around the year 1000 there were more than sixty dioceses throughout the Near East but by the middle of the 13th century there were about twenty and after Timur Leng the number was further reduced to seven only 27 In the aftermath of the division of the Mongol Empire the rising Chinese and Islamic Mongol leaderships pushed out and nearly eradicated the Church of the East and its followers Thereafter Church of the East dioceses remained largely confined to Upper Mesopotamia and to the Saint Thomas Syrian Christians in the Malabar Coast modern day Kerala India Divisions occurred within the church itself but by 1830 two unified patriarchates and distinct churches remained the Assyrian Church of the East and the Chaldean Catholic Church an Eastern Catholic Church in communion with the Holy See The Ancient Church of the East split from the Assyrian Church of the East in 1968 In 2017 the Chaldean Catholic Church had approximately 628 405 members 28 and the Assyrian Church of the East had 323 300 to 380 000 29 30 while the Ancient Church of the East had 100 000 Contents 1 Background 1 1 Description as Nestorian 2 Organisation and structure 3 Scriptures 4 Iconography 5 Early history 5 1 Parthian and Sasanian periods 5 2 Islamic rule 6 Expansion 6 1 India 6 2 Sri Lanka 6 3 China 6 4 Mongolia and Central Asia 6 5 Jerusalem and Cyprus 6 6 Decline 7 Schisms 7 1 Schism of 1552 7 2 The Eliya and Shimun lines 7 3 Two Nestorian patriarchs 7 4 The Josephite line 7 5 Consolidation of patriarchal lines 8 See also 9 References 10 External linksBackground Edit Major denominational families in Christianity This box viewtalkedit Western Christianity Eastern Christianity Protestantism Anabaptism Anglicanism Calvinism Lutheranism Latin Church Catholic Church Eastern Catholic Churches Eastern Orthodox Church Oriental Orthodox Churches Church of the East Schism 1552 Assyrian Church of the East Ancient Church of the East Protestant Reformation 16th century Great Schism 11th century Council of Ephesus 431 Council of Chalcedon 451 Early Christianity Great Church Full communion Not shown are non Nicene nontrinitarian and some restorationist denominations The Church of the East s declaration in 424 of the independence of its head the Patriarch of the East preceded by seven years the 431 Council of Ephesus which condemned Nestorius and declared that Mary mother of Jesus can be described as Mother of God Two of the generally accepted ecumenical councils were held earlier the First Council of Nicaea in which a Persian bishop took part in 325 and the First Council of Constantinople in 381 The Church of the East accepted the teaching of these two councils but ignored the 431 Council and those that followed seeing them as concerning only the patriarchates of the Roman Empire Rome Constantinople Alexandria Antioch Jerusalem all of which were for it Western Christianity 31 Theologically the Church of the East adopted dyophysite doctrine of Theodore of Mopsuestia 2 that emphasised the distinctiveness of the divine and the human natures of Jesus But this doctrine was misleadingly labelled as Nestorian by its theological opponents 2 In the 6th century and thereafter the Church of the East expanded greatly establishing communities in India the Saint Thomas Syrian Christians among the Mongols in Central Asia and in China which became home to a thriving community under the Tang dynasty from the 7th to the 9th century At its height between the 9th and 14th centuries the Church of the East was the world s largest Christian church in geographical extent with dioceses stretching from its heartland in Upper Mesopotamia to the Mediterranean Sea and as far afield as China Mongolia Central Asia Anatolia the Arabian Peninsula and India From its peak of geographical extent the church entered a period of rapid decline that began in the 14th century due largely to outside influences The Chinese Ming dynasty overthrew the Mongols 1368 and ejected Christians and other foreign influences from China and many Mongols in Central Asia converted to Islam The Muslim Turco Mongol leader Timur 1336 1405 nearly eradicated the remaining Christians in the Middle East Nestorian Christianity remained largely confined to communities in Upper Mesopotamia and the Saint Thomas Syrian Christians of the Malabar Coast in the Indian subcontinent In the early modern period the schism of 1552 led to a series of internal divisions and ultimately to its branching into three separate churches the Chaldean Catholic Church in full communion with the Holy See and the independent Assyrian Church of the East and Ancient Church of the East 32 Description as Nestorian Edit Christological spectrum during the 5th 7th centuries showing the views of The Church of the East light blue Main articles Nestorianism and Nestorian Schism Nestorianism is a Christological doctrine that emphasises the distinction between the human and divine natures of Jesus It was attributed to Nestorius Patriarch of Constantinople from 428 to 431 whose doctrine represented the culmination of a philosophical current developed by scholars at the School of Antioch most notably Nestorius s mentor Theodore of Mopsuestia and stirred controversy when Nestorius publicly challenged the use of the title Theotokos literally Bearer of God for Mary mother of Jesus 33 suggesting that the title denied Christ s full humanity He argued that Jesus had two loosely joined natures the divine Logos and the human Jesus and proposed Christotokos literally Bearer of the Christ as a more suitable alternative title His statements drew criticism from other prominent churchmen particularly from Cyril Patriarch of Alexandria who had a leading part in the Council of Ephesus of 431 which condemned Nestorius for heresy and deposed him as Patriarch 34 After 431 the state authorities in the Roman Empire suppressed Nestorianism a reason for Christians under Persian rule to favour it and so allay suspicion that their loyalty lay with the hostile Christian ruled empire 35 36 It was in the aftermath of the slightly later Council of Chalcedon 451 that the Church of the East formulated a distinctive theology The first such formulation was adopted at the Synod of Beth Lapat in 484 This was developed further in the early seventh century when in an at first successful war against the Byzantine Empire the Sasanid Persian Empire incorporated broad territories populated by West Syrians many of whom were supporters of the miaphysite theology of Oriental Orthodoxy which its opponents term Monophysitism Eutychianism the theological view most opposed to Nestorianism They received support from Khosrow II influenced by his wife Shirin Shirin was a member of the Church of East but later joined the miaphysite church of Antioch citation needed Drawing inspiration from Theodore of Mopsuestia Babai the Great 551 628 expounded especially in his Book of Union what became the normative Christology of the Church of the East He affirmed that the two qnome a Syriac term plural of qnoma not corresponding precisely to Greek fysis or oὐsia or ὑpostasis 37 of Christ are unmixed but eternally united in his single parsopa from Greek proswpon prosopon mask character person As happened also with the Greek terms fysis physis and ὐpostasis hypostasis these Syriac words were sometimes taken to mean something other than what was intended in particular two qnome was interpreted as two individuals 38 39 40 41 Previously the Church of the East accepted a certain fluidity of expressions always within a dyophysite theology but with Babai s assembly of 612 which canonically sanctioned the two qnome in Christ formula a final christological distinction was created between the Church of the East and the western Chalcedonian churches 42 43 44 The justice of imputing Nestorianism to Nestorius whom the Church of the East venerated as a saint is disputed 45 22 David Wilmshurst states that for centuries the word Nestorian was used both as a term of abuse by those who disapproved of the traditional East Syrian theology as a term of pride by many of its defenders and as a neutral and convenient descriptive term by others Nowadays it is generally felt that the term carries a stigma 46 Sebastian P Brock says The association between the Church of the East and Nestorius is of a very tenuous nature and to continue to call that church Nestorian is from a historical point of view totally misleading and incorrect quite apart from being highly offensive and a breach of ecumenical good manners 47 Apart from its religious meaning the word Nestorian has also been used in an ethnic sense as shown by the phrase Catholic Nestorians 48 49 50 In his 1996 article The Nestorian Church a lamentable misnomer published in the Bulletin of the John Rylands Library Sebastian Brock a Fellow of the British Academy lamented the fact that the term Nestorian Church has become the standard designation for the ancient oriental church which in the past called itself The Church of the East but which today prefers a fuller title The Assyrian Church of the East Such a designation is not only discourteous to modern members of this venerable church but also as this paper aims to show both inappropriate and misleading 51 Organisation and structure EditAt the Council of Seleucia Ctesiphon in 410 the Church of the East was declared to have at its head the bishop of the Persian capital Seleucia Ctesiphon who in the acts of the council was referred to as the Grand or Major Metropolitan and who soon afterward was called the Catholicos of the East Later the title of Patriarch was used The Church of the East had like other churches an ordained clergy in the three traditional orders of bishop priest or presbyter and deacon Also like other churches it had an episcopal polity organisation by dioceses each headed by a bishop and made up of several individual parish communities overseen by priests Dioceses were organised into provinces under the authority of a metropolitan bishop The office of metropolitan bishop was an important one coming with additional duties and powers canonically only metropolitans could consecrate a patriarch 52 The Patriarch also has the charge of the Province of the Patriarch For most of its history the church had six or so Interior Provinces In 410 these were listed in the hierarchical order of Seleucia Ctesiphon central Iraq Beth Lapat western Iran Nisibis on the border between Turkey and Iraq Prat de Maishan Basra southern Iraq Arbela Erbil Kurdistan region of Iraq and Karka de Beth Slokh Kirkuk northeastern Iraq In addition it had an increasing number of Exterior Provinces further afield within the Sasanian Empire and soon also beyond the empire s borders By the 10th century the church had between 20 35 and 30 metropolitan provinces 46 According to John Foster in the 9th century there were 25 metropolitans 53 including those in China and India The Chinese provinces were lost in the 11th century and in the subsequent centuries other exterior provinces went into decline as well However in the 13th century during the Mongol Empire the church added two new metropolitan provinces in North China one being Tangut the other Katai and Ong 46 Scriptures EditMain article Peshitta The Peshitta in some cases lightly revised and with missing books added is the standard Syriac Bible for churches in the Syriac tradition the Syriac Orthodox Church the Syrian Catholic Church the Assyrian Church of the East the Ancient Church of the East the Chaldean Catholic Church the Maronites the Malankara Orthodox Syrian Church the Syro Malabar Catholic Church and the Syro Malankara Catholic Church The Old Testament of the Peshitta was translated from Hebrew although the date and circumstances of this are not entirely clear The translators may have been Syriac speaking Jews or early Jewish converts to Christianity The translation may have been done separately for different texts and the whole work was probably done by the second century Most of the deuterocanonical books of the Old Testament are found in the Syriac and the Wisdom of Sirach is held to have been translated from the Hebrew and not from the Septuagint 54 The New Testament of the Peshitta which originally excluded certain disputed books Second Epistle of Peter Second Epistle of John Third Epistle of John Epistle of Jude Book of Revelation had become the standard by the early 5th century Iconography EditIt was often said in the 19th century that the Church of the East was opposed to religious images of any kind The cult of the image was never as strong in the Syriac churches as it was in the Byzantine Church but they were indeed present in the tradition of the Church of the East 55 Opposition to religious images eventually became the norm due to the rise of Islam in the region which forbade any type of depictions of Saints and biblical prophets 56 As such the Church was forced to get rid of icons 56 57 There is both literary and archaeological evidence for the presence of images in the church Writing in 1248 from Samarkand an Armenian official records visiting a local church and seeing an image of Christ and the Magi John of Cora Giovanni di Cori Latin bishop of Sultaniya in Persia writing about 1330 of the East Syrians in Khanbaliq says that they had very beautiful and orderly churches with crosses and images in honour of God and of the saints 55 Apart from the references there is a painting of a Christian figure which was discovered by Aurel Stein at the Library Cave of the Mo kao Caves in 1908 which is probably an image of Christ 58 An illustrated 13th century Nestorian Peshitta Gospel book written in Estrangela from northern Mesopotamia or Tur Abdin currently in the State Library of Berlin proves that in the 13th century the Church of the East was not yet aniconic 59 Another Nestorian Gospel manuscript preserved in the Bibliotheque nationale de France contains an illustration that depicts Jesus Christ in the circle of a ringed cross surrounded by four angels 60 Three Syriac manuscripts from early 19th century or earlier they were published in a compilation titled The Book of Protection by Hermann Gollancz in 1912 contain some illustrations of no great artistic worth that show that use of images continued A life size male stucco figure discovered in a late 6th century church in Seleucia Ctesiphon beneath which were found the remains of an earlier church also shows that the Church of the East used figurative representations 59 Palm Sunday procession of Nestorian clergy in a 7th or 8th century wall painting from a church in Tang China Fragment of a Christian figure a late 9th century silk painting preserved in the British Museum Feast of the Discovery of the Cross from a 13th century Nestorian Peshitta Gospel book written in Estrangela preserved in the SBB An angel announces the resurrection of Christ to Mary and Mary Magdalene from the Nestorian Peshitta Gospel The twelve apostles are gathered around Peter at Pentecost from the Nestorian Peshitta Gospel Illustration from the Nestorian Evangelion a Syriac gospel manuscript preserved in the BnF Portraits of the Four Evangelists from a gospel lectionary according to the Nestorian use Mosul Iraq 1499 Drawing of a rider Entry into Jerusalem a lost wall painting from the Nestorian church at Khocho 9th century Nestorian Christian relic statuette from Imperial China Anikova Plate showing the Siege of Jericho It was probably made in and for a Sogdian Nestorian Christian community located in Semirechye Detail of the rubbing of the Nestorian pillar of Luoyang discovered in Luoyang 9th century Detail of the rubbing of the Nestorian pillar of Luoyang discovered in Luoyang 9th century Early history EditSee also Nestorian Schism and Nestorianism The Monastery of St Isho in Hakkari Although the Nestorian community traced their history to the 1st century AD the Church of the East first achieved official state recognition from the Sasanian Empire in the 4th century with the accession of Yazdegerd I reigned 399 420 to the throne of the Sasanian Empire In 410 the Synod of Seleucia Ctesiphon held at the Sasanian capital allowed the church s leading bishops to elect a formal Catholicos leader Catholicos Isaac was required both to lead the Assyrian Christian community and to answer on its behalf to the Sasanian emperor 61 62 Under pressure from the Sasanian Emperor the Church of the East sought to increasingly distance itself from the Pentarchy at the time being known as the church of the Eastern Roman Empire Therefore in 424 the bishops of the Sasanian Empire met in council under the leadership of Catholicos Dadishoʿ 421 456 and determined that they would not henceforth refer disciplinary or theological problems to any external power and especially not to any bishop or church council in the Roman Empire 63 Thus the Mesopotamian churches did not send representatives to the various church councils attended by representatives of the Western Church Accordingly the leaders of the Church of the East did not feel bound by any decisions of what came to be regarded as Roman Imperial Councils Despite this the Creed and Canons of the First Council of Nicaea of 325 affirming the full divinity of Christ were formally accepted at the Council of Seleucia Ctesiphon in 410 64 The church s understanding of the term hypostasis differs from the definition of the term offered at the Council of Chalcedon of 451 For this reason the Assyrian Church has never approved the Chalcedonian definition 64 The theological controversy that followed the Council of Ephesus in 431 proved a turning point in the Christian Church s history The Council condemned as heretical the Christology of Nestorius whose reluctance to accord the Virgin Mary the title Theotokos God bearer Mother of God was taken as evidence that he believed two separate persons as opposed to two united natures to be present within Christ The Sasanian Emperor hostile to the Byzantines saw the opportunity to ensure the loyalty of his Christian subjects and lent support to the Nestorian Schism The Emperor took steps to cement the primacy of the Nestorian party within the Assyrian Church of the East granting its members his protection 65 and executing the pro Roman Catholicos Babowai in 484 replacing him with the Nestorian Bishop of Nisibis Barsauma The Catholicos Patriarch Babai 497 503 confirmed the association of the Assyrian Church with Nestorianism Parthian and Sasanian periods Edit Saint Mary Church an ancient Assyrian church located in the city of Urmia West Azerbaijan Province Iran Christians were already forming communities in Mesopotamia as early as the 1st century under the Parthian Empire In 266 the area was annexed by the Sasanian Empire becoming the province of Asōristan and there were significant Christian communities in Upper Mesopotamia Elam and Fars 66 The Church of the East traced its origins ultimately to the evangelical activity of Thaddeus of Edessa Mari and Thomas the Apostle Leadership and structure remained disorganised until 315 when Papa bar Aggai 310 329 bishop of Seleucia Ctesiphon imposed the primacy of his see over the other Mesopotamian and Persian bishoprics which were grouped together under the Catholicate of Seleucia Ctesiphon Papa took the title of Catholicos or universal leader 67 This position received an additional title in 410 becoming Catholicos and Patriarch of the East 68 69 These early Christian communities in Mesopotamia Elam and Fars were reinforced in the 4th and 5th centuries by large scale deportations of Christians from the eastern Roman Empire 70 However the Persian Church faced several severe persecutions notably during the reign of Shapur II 339 79 from the Zoroastrian majority who accused it of Roman leanings 71 Shapur II attempted to dismantle the catholicate s structure and put to death some of the clergy including the catholicoi Simeon bar Sabba e 341 72 Shahdost 342 and Barba shmin 346 73 Afterward the office of Catholicos lay vacant nearly 20 years 346 363 74 In 363 under the terms of a peace treaty Nisibis was ceded to the Persians causing Ephrem the Syrian accompanied by a number of teachers to leave the School of Nisibis for Edessa still in Roman territory 75 The church grew considerably during the Sasanian period 35 but the pressure of persecution led the Catholicos Dadisho I in 424 to convene the Synod of Markabta at Seleucia and declare the Catholicate independent from the western Fathers 76 Assyrian Mar Toma church in Urmia Iran Meanwhile in the Roman Empire the Nestorian Schism had led many of Nestorius supporters to relocate to the Sasanian Empire mainly around the theological School of Nisibis The Persian Church increasingly aligned itself with the Dyophisites a measure encouraged by the Zoroastrian ruling class The church became increasingly Dyophisite in doctrine over the next decades furthering the divide between Roman and Persian Christianity In 484 the Metropolitan of Nisibis Barsauma convened the Synod of Beth Lapat where he publicly accepted Nestorius mentor Theodore of Mopsuestia as a spiritual authority 43 In 489 when the School of Edessa in Mesopotamia was closed by Byzantine Emperor Zeno for its Nestorian teachings the school relocated to its original home of Nisibis becoming again the School of Nisibis leading to a wave of Nestorian immigration into the Sasanian Empire 77 78 The Patriarch of the East Mar Babai I 497 502 reiterated and expanded upon his predecessors esteem for Theodore solidifying the church s adoption of Dyophisitism 35 A 6th century Nestorian church St John the Arab in the Assyrian village of Geramon Now firmly established in the Persian Empire with centres in Nisibis Ctesiphon and Gundeshapur and several metropolitan sees the Church of the East began to branch out beyond the Sasanian Empire However through the 6th century the church was frequently beset with internal strife and persecution from the Zoroastrians The infighting led to a schism which lasted from 521 until around 539 when the issues were resolved However immediately afterward Byzantine Persian conflict led to a renewed persecution of the church by the Sasanian emperor Khosrau I this ended in 545 The church survived these trials under the guidance of Patriarch Aba I who had converted to Christianity from Zoroastrianism 35 By the end of the 5th century and the middle of the 6th the area occupied by the Church of the East included all the countries to the east and those immediately to the west of the Euphrates including the Sasanian Empire the Arabian Peninsula Socotra Mesopotamia Media Bactria Hyrcania and India and possibly also to places called Calliana Male and Sielediva Ceylon 79 Beneath the Patriarch in the hierarchy were nine metropolitans and clergy were recorded among the Huns in Persarmenia Media and the island of Dioscoris in the Indian Ocean 80 The Church of the East also flourished in the kingdom of the Lakhmids until the Islamic conquest particularly after the ruler al Nu man III ibn al Mundhir officially converted in c 592 Islamic rule Edit Ecclesiastical provinces of the Church of the East in 10th century A 9th century mural of a cleric of the Church of the East from the palace of al Mukhtar in Samarra Iraq After the Sasanian Empire was conquered by Muslim Arabs in 644 the newly established Rashidun Caliphate designated the Church of the East as an official dhimmi minority group headed by the Patriarch of the East As with all other Christian and Jewish groups given the same status the church was restricted within the Caliphate but also given a degree of protection In order to resist the growing competition from Muslim courts patriarchs and bishops of the Church of the East developed canon law and adapted the procedures used in the episcopal courts 81 Nestorians were not permitted to proselytise or attempt to convert Muslims but their missionaries were otherwise given a free hand and they increased missionary efforts farther afield Missionaries established dioceses in India the Saint Thomas Christians They made some advances in Egypt despite the strong Monophysite presence there and they entered Central Asia where they had significant success converting local Tartars Nestorian missionaries were firmly established in China during the early part of the Tang dynasty 618 907 the Chinese source known as the Nestorian Stele describes a mission under a proselyte named Alopen as introducing Nestorian Christianity to China in 635 In the 7th century the church had grown to have two Nestorian archbishops and over 20 bishops east of the Iranian border of the Oxus River 82 Patriarch Timothy I 780 823 a contemporary of the Caliph Harun al Rashid took a particularly keen interest in the missionary expansion of the Church of the East He is known to have consecrated metropolitans for Damascus for Armenia for Dailam and Gilan in Azerbaijan for Rai in Tabaristan for Sarbaz in Segestan for the Turks of Central Asia for China and possibly also for Tibet He also detached India from the metropolitan province of Fars and made it a separate metropolitan province known as India 83 By the 10th century the Church of the East had a number of dioceses stretching from across the Caliphate s territories to India and China 35 Nestorian Christians made substantial contributions to the Islamic Umayyad and Abbasid Caliphates particularly in translating the works of the ancient Greek philosophers to Syriac and Arabic 84 85 Nestorians made their own contributions to philosophy science such as Hunayn ibn Ishaq Qusta ibn Luqa Masawaiyh Patriarch Eutychius Jabril ibn Bukhtishu and theology such as Tatian Bar Daisan Babai the Great Nestorius Toma bar Yacoub The personal physicians of the Abbasid Caliphs were often Assyrian Christians such as the long serving Bukhtishu dynasty 86 87 Expansion Edit Church of the East at its largest extent during the Middle Ages After the split with the Western World and synthesis with Nestorianism the Church of the East expanded rapidly due to missionary works during the medieval period During the period between 500 and 1400 the geographical horizon of the Church of the East extended well beyond its heartland in present day northern Iraq north eastern Syria and south eastern Turkey Communities sprang up throughout Central Asia and missionaries from Assyria and Mesopotamia took the Christian faith as far as China with a primary indicator of their missionary work being the Nestorian Stele a Christian tablet written in Chinese script found in China dating to 781 AD Their most important conversion however was of the Saint Thomas Christians of the Malabar Coast in India who alone escaped the destruction of the church by Timur at the end of the 14th century and the majority of whom today constitute the largest group who now use the liturgy of the Church of the East with around 4 million followers in their homeland in spite of the 17th century defection to the West Syriac Rite of the Syriac Orthodox Church 88 The St Thomas Christians were believed by tradition to have been converted by St Thomas and were in communion with the Church of the East until the end of the medieval period 89 India Edit Main articles Saint Thomas Christians and India East Syriac ecclesiastical province The Saint Thomas Christian community of Kerala India who according to tradition trace their origins to the evangelizing efforts of Thomas the Apostle had a long association with the Church of the East The earliest known organised Christian presence in Kerala dates to 295 300 when Christian settlers and missionaries from Persia headed by Bishop David of Basra settled in the region 90 The Saint Thomas Christians traditionally credit the mission of Thomas of Cana a Nestorian from the Middle East with the further expansion of their community 91 From at least the early 4th century the Patriarch of the Church of the East provided the Saint Thomas Christians with clergy holy texts and ecclesiastical infrastructure And around 650 Patriarch Ishoyahb III solidified the church s jurisdiction in India 92 In the 8th century Patriarch Timothy I organised the community as the Ecclesiastical Province of India one of the church s Provinces of the Exterior After this point the Province of India was headed by a metropolitan bishop provided from Persia who oversaw a varying number of bishops as well as a native Archdeacon who had authority over the clergy and also wielded a great amount of secular power The metropolitan see was probably in Cranganore or perhaps nominally in Mylapore where the Shrine of Thomas was located 91 In the 12th century Indian Nestorianism engaged the Western imagination in the figure of Prester John supposedly a Nestorian ruler of India who held the offices of both king and priest The geographically remote Malabar Church survived the decay of the Nestorian hierarchy elsewhere enduring until the 16th century when the Portuguese arrived in India With the establishment of Portuguese power in parts of India the clergy of that empire in particular members of the Society of Jesus Jesuits determined to actively bring the Saint Thomas Christians into full communion with Rome under the Latin Rite After the Synod of Diamper in 1599 they installed Padroado Portuguese bishops over the local sees and made liturgical changes to accord with the Latin practice and this led to a revolt among the Saint Thomas Christians 93 The majority of them broke with the Catholic Church and vowed never to submit to the Portuguese in the Coonan Cross Oath of 1653 In 1661 Pope Alexander VII responded by sending a delegations of Carmelites headed by two Italians one Fleming and one German priests to reconcile the Saint Thomas Christians to Catholic fold 94 These priests had two advantages they were not Portuguese and they were not Jesuits 94 By the next year 84 of the 116 Saint Thomas Christian churches had returned forming the Syrian Catholic Church modern day Syro Malabar Catholic Church The rest which became known as the Malankara Church soon entered into communion with the Syriac Orthodox Church The Malankara Church also produced the Syro Malankara Catholic Church Sri Lanka Edit Nestorian Christianity is said to have thrived in Sri Lanka with the patronage of King Dathusena during the 5th century There are mentions of involvement of Persian Christians with the Sri Lankan royal family during the Sigiriya Period Over seventy five ships carrying Murundi soldiers from Mangalore are said to have arrived in the Sri Lankan town of Chilaw most of whom were Christians King Dathusena s daughter was married to his nephew Migara who is also said to have been a Nestorian Christian and a commander of the Sinhalese army Maga Brahmana a Christian priest of Persian origin is said to have provided advice to King Dathusena on establishing his palace on the Sigiriya Rock 95 The Anuradhapura Cross discovered in 1912 is also considered to be an indication of a strong Nestorian Christian presence in Sri Lanka between the 3rd and 10th century in the then capitol of Anuradhapura of Sri Lanka 95 96 97 98 China Edit The Nestorian Stele created in 781 describes the introduction of Nestorian Christianity to China Main articles Church of the East in China and Christianity in China Christianity reached China by 635 and its relics can still be seen in Chinese cities such as Xi an The Nestorian Stele set up on 7 January 781 at the then capital of Chang an attributes the introduction of Christianity to a mission under a Persian cleric named Alopen in 635 in the reign of Emperor Taizong of Tang during the Tang dynasty 99 100 The inscription on the Nestorian Stele whose dating formula mentions the patriarch Hnanishoʿ II 773 80 gives the names of several prominent Christians in China including Metropolitan Adam Bishop Yohannan country bishops Yazdbuzid and Sargis and Archdeacons Gigoi of Khumdan Chang an and Gabriel of Sarag Loyang The names of around seventy monks are also listed 101 Nestorian Christianity thrived in China for approximately 200 years but then faced persecution from Emperor Wuzong of Tang reigned 840 846 He suppressed all foreign religions including Buddhism and Christianity causing the church to decline sharply in China A Syrian monk visiting China a few decades later described many churches in ruin The church disappeared from China in the early 10th century coinciding with the collapse of the Tang dynasty and the tumult of the next years the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms period 102 Christianity in China experienced a significant revival during the Mongol created Yuan dynasty established after the Mongols had conquered China in the 13th century Marco Polo in the 13th century and other medieval Western writers described many Nestorian communities remaining in China and Mongolia however they clearly were not as vibrant as they had been during Tang times Mongolia and Central Asia Edit Main article Christianity among the Mongols Mongol tribes that adopted Syriac Christianity ca 600 1400 The Church of the East enjoyed a final period of expansion under the Mongols Several Mongol tribes had already been converted by Nestorian missionaries in the 7th century and Christianity was therefore a major influence in the Mongol Empire 103 Genghis Khan was a shamanist but his sons took Christian wives from the powerful Kerait clan as did their sons in turn During the rule of Genghis s grandson the Great Khan Mongke Nestorian Christianity was the primary religious influence in the Empire and this also carried over to Mongol controlled China during the Yuan dynasty It was at this point in the late 13th century that the Church of the East reached its greatest geographical reach But Mongol power was already waning as the Empire dissolved into civil war and it reached a turning point in 1295 when Ghazan the Mongol ruler of the Ilkhanate made a formal conversion to Islam when he took the throne Jerusalem and Cyprus Edit A Nestorian church 1350 in Famagusta Cyprus Rabban Bar Sauma had initially conceived of his journey to the West as a pilgrimage to Jerusalem so it is possible that there was a Nestorian presence in the city ca 1300 There was certainly a recognisable Nestorian presence at the Holy Sepulchre from the years 1348 through 1575 as contemporary Franciscan accounts indicate 104 At Famagusta Cyprus a Nestorian community was established just before 1300 and a church was built for them c 1339 105 106 Decline Edit The expansion was followed by a decline There were 68 cities with resident Church of the East bishops in the year 1000 in 1238 there were only 24 and at the death of Timur in 1405 only seven The result of some 20 years under Oljaitu ruler of the Ilkhanate from 1304 to 1316 and to a lesser extent under his predecessor was that the overall number of the dioceses and parishes was further reduced 107 When Timur the Turco Mongol leader of the Timurid Empire known also as Tamerlane came to power in 1370 he set out to cleanse his dominions of non Muslims He annihilated Christianity in central Asia 108 The Church of the East lived on only in the mountains of Kurdistan and in India 109 Thus except for the Saint Thomas Christians on the Malabar Coast the Church of the East was confined to the area in and around the rough triangle formed by Mosul and Lakes Van and Urmia including Amid modern Diyarbakir Merdin modern Mardin and Edessa to the west Salmas to the east Hakkari and Harran to the north and Mosul Kirkuk and Arbela modern Erbil to the south a region comprising in modern maps northern Iraq southeast Turkey northeast Syria and the northwestern fringe of Iran Small Nestorian communities were located further west notably in Jerusalem and Cyprus but the Malabar Christians of India represented the only significant survival of the once thriving exterior provinces of the Church of the East 110 The Monastery of Mar Avd Isho in Hakkari The complete disappearance of the Nestorian dioceses in Central Asia probably stemmed from a combination of persecution disease and isolation what survived the Mongols did not survive the Black Death of the fourteenth century 108 In many parts of Central Asia Christianity had died out decades before Timur s campaigns The surviving evidence from Central Asia including a large number of dated graves indicates that the crisis for the Church of the East occurred in the 1340s rather than the 1390s Several contemporary observers including the Papal Envoy Giovanni de Marignolli mention the murder of a Latin bishop in 1339 or 1340 by a Muslim mob in Almaliq the chief city of Tangut and the forcible conversion of the city s Christians to Islam Tombstones in two East Syriac cemeteries in Mongolia have been dated from 1342 some commemorating deaths during a Black Death outbreak in 1338 In China the last references to Nestorian and Latin Christians date from the 1350s shortly before the replacement in 1368 of the Mongol Yuan dynasty with the xenophobic Ming dynasty and the consequential self imposed isolation of China from foreign influence including Christianity 111 Schisms Edit The Monastery of Mar Shallita in Hakkari From the middle of the 16th century and throughout following two centuries the Church of the East was affected by several internal schisms Some of those schisms were caused by individuals or groups who chose to accept union with the Catholic Church Other schisms were provoked by rivalry between various fractions within the Church of the East Lack of internal unity and frequent change of allegiances led to the creation and continuation of separate patriarchal lines In spite of many internal challenges and external difficulties political oppression by Ottoman authorities and frequent persecutions by local non Christians the traditional branches of the Church of the East managed to survive that tumultuous period and eventually consolidate during the 19th century in the form of the Assyrian Church of the East At the same time after many similar difficulties groups united with the Catholic Church were finally consolidated into the Chaldean Catholic Church Schism of 1552 Edit Main article Schism of 1552 Around the middle of the fifteenth century Patriarch Shemʿ on IV Basidi made the patriarchal succession hereditary normally from uncle to nephew This practice which resulted in a shortage of eligible heirs eventually led to a schism in the Church of the East creating a temporarily Catholic offshoot known as the Shimun line 112 The Patriarch Shemʿ on VII Ishoʿ yahb 1539 58 caused great turmoil at the beginning of his reign by designating his twelve year old nephew Khnanishoʿ as his successor presumably because no older relatives were available 113 Several years later probably because Khnanishoʿ had died in the interim he designated as successor his fifteen year old brother Eliya the future Patriarch Eliya VI 1558 1591 52 These appointments combined with other accusations of impropriety caused discontent throughout the church and by 1552 Shemʿ on VII Ishoʿ yahb had become so unpopular that a group of bishops principally from the Amid Sirt and Salmas districts in northern Mesopotamia chose a new patriarch They elected a monk named Yohannan Sulaqa the former superior of Rabban Hormizd Monastery near Alqosh which was the seat of the incumbent patriarchs 114 however no bishop of metropolitan rank was available to consecrate him as canonically required Franciscan missionaries were already at work among the Nestorians 115 and using them as intermediaries 116 Sulaqa s supporters sought to legitimise their position by seeking their candidate s consecration by Pope Julius III 1550 5 117 52 Sulaqa went to Rome arriving on 18 November 1552 and presented a letter drafted by his supporters in Mosul setting out his claim and asking that the Pope consecrate him as Patriarch On 15 February 1553 he made a twice revised profession of faith judged to be satisfactory and by the bull Divina Disponente Clementia of 20 February 1553 was appointed Patriarch of Mosul in Eastern Syria 118 or Patriarch of the Church of the Chaldeans of Mosul Chaldaeorum ecclesiae Musal Patriarcha 119 He was consecrated bishop in St Peter s Basilica on 9 April On 28 April Pope Julius III gave him the pallium conferring patriarchal rank confirmed with the bull Cum Nos Nuper These events in which Rome was led to believe that Shemʿ on VII Ishoʿ yahb was dead created within the Church of the East a lasting schism between the Eliya line of Patriarchs at Alqosh and the new line originating from Sulaqa The latter was for half a century recognised by Rome as being in communion but that reverted to both hereditary succession and Nestorianism and has continued in the Patriarchs of the Assyrian Church of the East 117 120 Sulaqa left Rome in early July and in Constantinople applied for civil recognition After his return to Mesopotamia he received from the Ottoman authorities in December 1553 recognition as head of the Chaldean nation after the example of all the Patriarchs In the following year during a five month stay in Amid Diyarbakir he consecrated two metropolitans and three other bishops 116 for Gazarta Hesna d Kifa Amid Mardin and Seert For his part Shemʿ on VII Ishoʿ yahb of the Alqosh line consecrated two more underage members of his patriarchal family as metropolitans for Nisibis and Gazarta He also won over the governor of ʿ Amadiya who invited Sulaqa to ʿ Amadiya imprisoned him for four months and put him to death in January 1555 114 120 The Eliya and Shimun lines Edit This new Catholic line founded by Sulaqa maintained its seat at Amid and is known as the Shimun line Wilmshurst suggests that their adoption of the name Shimun after Simon Peter was meant to point to the legitimacy of their Catholic line 121 Sulaqa s successor Abdisho IV Maron 1555 1570 visited Rome and his Patriarchal title was confirmed by the Pope in 1562 122 At some point he moved to Seert The Eliya line Patriarch Shemon VII Ishoyahb 1539 1558 who resided in the Rabban Hormizd Monastery near Alqosh continued to actively oppose union with Rome and was succeeded by his nephew Eliya designated as Eliya VII in older historiography 123 124 but renumbered as Eliya VI in recent scholarly works 125 126 127 During his Patriarchal tenure from 1558 to 1591 the Church of the East preserved its traditional christology and full ecclesiastical independence 128 The next Shimun Patriarch was likely Yahballaha IV who was elected in 1577 or 1578 and died within two years before seeking or obtaining confirmation from Rome 121 According to Tisserant problems posed by the Nestorian traditionalists and the Ottoman authorities prevented any earlier election of a successor to Abdisho 129 David Wilmshurst and Heleen Murre believe that in the period between 1570 and the patriarchal election of Yahballaha he or another of the same name was looked on as Patriarch 130 Yahballaha s successor Shimun IX Dinkha 1580 1600 who moved away from Turkish rule to Salmas on Lake Urmia in Persia 131 was officially confirmed by the Pope in 1584 132 There are theories that he appointed his nephew Shimun X Eliyah 1600 1638 as his successor but others argue that his election was independent of any such designation 130 Regardless from then until the 21st century the Shimun line employed a hereditary system of succession the rejection of which was part of the reason for the creation of that line in the first place Two Nestorian patriarchs Edit The ancient Rabban Hormizd Monastery former residence of the Patriarchs of the Church of the East The next Eliya Patriarch Eliya VII VIII 1591 1617 negotiated on several occasions with the Catholic Church in 1605 1610 and 1615 1616 but without final resolution 133 This likely alarmed Shimun X who in 1616 sent to Rome a profession of faith that Rome found unsatisfactory and another in 1619 which also failed to win him official recognition 133 Wilmshurst says it was this Shimun Patriarch who reverted to the old faith of Nestorianism 130 134 leading to a shift in allegiances that won for the Eliya line control of the lowlands and of the highlands for the Shimun line Further negotiations between the Eliya line and the Catholic Church were cancelled during the Patriarchal tenure of Eliya VIII IX 1617 1660 135 The next two Shimun Patriarchs Shimun XI Eshuyow 1638 1656 and Shimun XII Yoalaha 1656 1662 wrote to the Pope in 1653 and 1658 according to Wilmshurst while Heleen Murre speaks only of 1648 and 1653 Wilmshurst says Shimun XI was sent the pallium though Heleen Murre argues official recognition was given to neither A letter suggests that one of the two was removed from office presumably by Nestorian traditionalists for pro Catholic leanings Shimun XI according to Heleen Murre probably Shimun XII according to Wilmshurst 136 130 Eliya IX X 1660 1700 was a vigorous defender of the traditional Nestorian faith 136 and simultaneously the next Shimun Patriarch Shimun XIII Dinkha 1662 1700 definitively broke with the Catholic Church In 1670 he gave a traditionalist reply to an approach that was made from Rome and by 1672 all connections with the Pope were ended 137 138 There were then two traditionalist Patriarchal lines the senior Eliya line in Alqosh and the junior Shimun line in Qochanis 139 The Josephite line Edit As the Shimun line gradually returned to the traditional worship of the Church of the East thereby losing the allegiance of the western regions 140 it moved from Turkish controlled territory to Urmia in Persia The bishopric of Amid Diyarbakir the original headquarters of Shimun Sulaqa became subject to the Alqosh Patriarch In 1667 or 1668 Bishop Joseph of that see converted to the Catholic faith In 1677 he obtained from the Turkish authorities recognition as holding independent power in Amid and Mardin and in 1681 he was recognised by Rome as Patriarch of the Chaldean nation deprived of its Patriarch Amid patriarchate Thus was instituted the Josephite line a third line of Patriarchs and the sole Catholic one at the time 141 All Joseph I s successors took the name Joseph The life of this Patriarchate was difficult the leadership was continually vexed by traditionalists while the community struggled under the tax burden imposed by the Ottoman authorities In 1771 Eliya XI XII and his designated successor the future Eliya XII XIII Ishoʿ yahb made a profession of faith that was accepted by Rome thus establishing communion By then acceptance of the Catholic position was general in the Mosul area When Eliya XI XII died in 1778 Eliya XII XIII made a renewed profession of Catholic faith and was recognised by Rome as Patriarch of Mosul but in May 1779 renounced that profession in favor of the traditional faith His younger cousin Yohannan Hormizd was locally elected to replace him in 1780 but for various reasons was recognised by Rome only as Metropolitan of Mosul and Administrator of the Catholics of the Alqosh party having the powers of a Patriarch but not the title or insignia When Joseph IV of the Amid Patriarchate resigned in 1780 Rome likewise made his nephew Augustine Hindi whom he wished to be his successor not Patriarch but Administrator No one held the title of Chaldean Catholic patriarch for the next 47 years Consolidation of patriarchal lines Edit Main articles Chaldean Catholic Church and Assyrian Church of the East The Patriarchal Church of Mar Shalital Assyrian Church of the East in Qudshanis village in Hakkari Province 1692 1918 When Eliya XII XIII died in 1804 the Nestorian branch of the Eliya line died with him 142 127 With most of his subjects won over to union with Rome by Hormizd they did not elect a new traditionalist Patriarch In 1830 Hormizd was finally recognized as the Chaldean Catholic Patriarch of Babylon marking the last remnant of the hereditary system within the Chaldean Catholic Church This also ended the rivalry between the senior Eliya line and the junior Shimun line as Shimun XVI Yohannan 1780 1820 became the sole primate of the traditionalist Church of the East the legal successor of the initially Uniate patriarchate of the Shimun line 143 144 In 1976 it adopted the name Assyrian Church of the East 145 17 146 and its patriarchate remained hereditary until the death in 1975 of Shimun XXI Eshai Accordingly Joachim Jakob remarks that the original Patriarchate of the Church of the East the Eliya line entered into union with Rome and continues down to today in the form of the Chaldean Catholic Church 147 while the original Patriarchate of the Chaldean Catholic Church the Shimun line continues today in the Assyrian Church of the East See also EditAncient Church of the East Assyrian Genocide Chaldean Catholic Church Dioceses of the Church of the East to 1318 Dioceses of the Church of the East 1318 1552 Dioceses of the Church of the East after 1552 Patriarchs of the Church of the East List of patriarchs of the Church of the East Council of Seleucia Ctesiphon 410 Synod of Beth Lapat Schism of the Three Chapters Syriac Orthodox Church Syriac Christianity Christianity in Eastern ArabiaReferences EditInformational notes Distinguished from Chalcedonian Dyophysitism 3 Traditional Western historiography of the Church dated its foundation to the Council of Ephesus of 431 and the ensuing Nestorian Schism However the Church of the East already existed as a separate organisation in 431 and the name of Nestorius is not mentioned in any of the acts of the Church s synods up to the 7th century 9 Christian communities isolated from the church in the Roman Empire likely already existed in Persia from the 2nd century 10 The independent ecclesiastical hierarchy of the Church developed over the course of the 4th century 11 and it attained its full institutional identity with its establishment as the officially recognized Christian church in Persia by Shah Yazdegerd I in 410 12 The Nestorian label is popular but it has been contentious derogatory and considered a misnomer See the Description as Nestorian section for the naming issue and alternate designations for the church Citations a b c Wilken Robert Louis 2013 Syriac Speaking Christians The Church of the East The First Thousand Years A Global History of Christianity New Haven and London Yale University Press pp 222 228 ISBN 978 0 300 11884 1 JSTOR j ctt32bd7m 28 LCCN 2012021755 S2CID 160590164 a b c d Brock Sebastian P Coakley James F Church of the East e GEDSH Gorgias Encyclopedic Dictionary of the Syriac Heritage Retrieved 27 June 2022 The Church of the East follows the strictly dyophysite two nature christology of Theodore of Mopsuestia as a result of which it was misleadingly labelled as Nestorian by its theological opponents Michael Philip Penn Scott Fitzgerald Johnson Christine Shepardson Charles M Stang eds 22 February 2022 Invitation to Syriac Christianity An Anthology 22 Feb 2022 ed Univ of California Press p 409 ISBN 9780520299191 DYOPHYSITE Broadly a Christological viewpoint that holds that Christ has two natures one human and one divine The East Syrian Church subscribed to a type of dyophysitism attributed to Nestorius and held in attenuated ways by both Greek and Syriac theologians In the end this association led the church to be labeled erroneously as Nestorian This view held that Christ has both two natures and two persons A moderated form of dyophysitism according to which Christ has two natures and one person was adopted by Chalcedonian Christians EAST SYRIAN Dyophysite Syriac Church that has historically been centered in Persia with missionary activity in Greater Iran Arabia Central Asia China and India The East Syrian Church developed into the modern Church of the East Polemical writings and older scholarship sometimes called the East Syrian Church Nestorian but this is now recognized as pejorative a b Baum amp Winkler 2003 p 2 Stewart 1928 p 15 Vine Aubrey R 1937 The Nestorian Churches London Independent Press p 104 a b Meyendorff 1989 p 287 289 Broadhead Edwin K 2010 Jewish Ways of Following Jesus Redrawing the Religious Map of Antiquity Tubingen Mohr Siebeck p 123 ISBN 9783161503047 Brock 2006 p 8 Brock 2006 p 11 Lange 2012 pp 477 9 Payne 2015 p 13 a b Paul J Pallath P 1996 Pope John Paul II and the Catholic Church in India Mar Thoma Yogam publications Centre for Indian Christian Archaeological Research p 5 Retrieved 2022 06 17 Authors are using different names to designate the same Church the Church of Seleucia Ctesiphon the Church of the East the Babylonian Church the Assyrian Church or the Persian Church Baum amp Winkler 2003 p 3 4 Orientalia Christiana Analecta Orientalia Christiana Analecta Pont institutum studiorum orientalium 1971 p 2 Retrieved 2022 06 17 The Church of Seleucia Ctesiphon was called the East Syrian Church or the Church of the East Fiey 1994 p 97 107 a b c Baum amp Winkler 2003 p 4 Baum amp Winkler 2003 p 112 123 Procopius Wars I 7 1 2 Greatrex Lieu 2002 II 62 Joshua the Stylite Chronicle XLIII Greatrex Lieu 2002 II 62 Procopius Wars I 9 24 Greatrex Lieu 2002 II 77 a b Brock 1996 p 23 35 Brock 2006 p 1 14 Joseph 2000 p 42 Wood 2013 p 140 Moffett Samuel H 1992 A History of Christianity in Asia Volume I Beginnings to 1500 HarperCollins p 219 Baum amp Winkler 2003 p 84 89 The Eastern Catholic Churches 2017 Archived 2018 10 24 at the Wayback Machine Retrieved December 2010 Information sourced from Annuario Pontificio 2017 edition Holy Apostolic Catholic Assyrian Church of the East World Council of Churches www oikoumene org Rassam Suha 2005 Christianity in Iraq Its Origins and Development to the Present Day Greenwood Publishing Group p 166 ISBN 9780852446331 The number of the faithful at the beginning of the twenty first century belonging to the Assyrian Church of the East under Mar Dinkha was estimated to be around 385 000 and the number belonging to the Ancient Church of the East under Mar Addia to be 50 000 70 000 Baum amp Winkler 2003 p 3 30 Wilmshurst 2000 Foltz 1999 p 63 Seleznyov 2010 p 165 190 a b c d e f Nestorian Encyclopaedia Britannica Retrieved January 28 2010 Nestorius Encyclopaedia Britannica Retrieved 11 November 2018 Kuhn 2019 p 130 Brock 1999 p 286 287 Wood 2013 p 136 Hilarion Alfeyev The Spiritual World Of Isaac The Syrian Liturgical Press 2016 Brock 2006 p 174 Meyendorff 1989 a b Baum amp Winkler 2003 p 28 29 Payne 2009 p 398 399 Bethune Baker 1908 p 82 100 a b c Wilmshurst 2000 p 4 Brock 2006 p 14 Joost Jongerden Jelle Verheij Social Relations in Ottoman Diyarbekir 1870 1915 BRILL 2012 p 21 Gertrude Lowthian Bell Amurath to Amurath Heinemann 1911 p 281 Gabriel Oussani The Modern Chaldeans and Nestorians and the Study of Syriac among them in Journal of the American Oriental Society vol 22 1901 p 81 cf Albrecht Classen editor East Meets West in the Middle Ages and Early Modern Times Walter de Gruyter 2013 p 704 Brock 1996 p 23 35 a b c Wilmshurst 2000 p 21 22 Foster 1939 p 34 Syriac Versions of the Bible by Thomas Nicol a b Parry Ken 1996 Images in the Church of the East The Evidence from Central Asia and China PDF Bulletin of the John Rylands Library 78 3 143 162 doi 10 7227 BJRL 78 3 11 Retrieved 23 July 2018 a b Baumer 2006 p 168 The Shadow of Nestorius Kung Tien Min 1960 唐朝基督教之研究 Christianity in the T ang Dynasty PDF in Chinese Hong Kong Hong Kong The Council on Christian Literature for Overseas Chinese p 7 PDF page 佐伯博士主張此像乃景敎的耶穌像 a b Baumer 2006 p 75 94 Drege 1992 p 43 187 Fiey Jean Maurice 1970 Jalons pour une histoire de l Eglise en Iraq Louvain Secretariat du CSCO Chaumont 1988 Hill 1988 p 105 a b Cross amp Livingstone 2005 p 354 Outerbridge 1952 Baum amp Winkler 2003 p 1 Ilaria Ramelli Papa bar Aggai in Encyclopedia of Ancient Christianity 2nd edn 3 vols ed Angelo Di Berardino Downers Grove IL InterVarsity Press 2014 3 47 Fiey 1967 p 3 22 Roberson 1999 p 15 Daniel amp Mahdi 2006 p 61 Foster 1939 p 26 27 Burgess amp Mercier 1999 p 9 66 Donald Attwater amp Catherine Rachel John The Penguin Dictionary of Saints 3rd edn New York Penguin Books 1993 116 245 Tajadod 1993 p 110 133 Labourt 1909 Jugie 1935 p 5 25 Reinink 1995 p 77 89 Brock 2006 p 73 Stewart 1928 p 13 14 Stewart 1928 p 14 Tillier Mathieu 2019 11 08 Chapitre 5 La justice des non musulmans dans le Proche Orient islamique L invention du cadi La justice des musulmans des juifs et des chretiens aux premiers siecles de l Islam Bibliotheque historique des pays d Islam Paris Editions de la Sorbonne pp 455 533 ISBN 979 10 351 0102 2 Foster 1939 p 33 Fiey 1993 p 47 Armenia 72 Damascus 74 Dailam and Gilan 94 6 India 105 China 124 Rai 128 9 Sarbaz 128 Samarqand and Beth Turkaye 139 Tibet Hill 1993 p 4 5 12 Brague Remi 2009 The Legend of the Middle Ages Philosophical Explorations of Medieval Christianity Judaism and Islam University of Chicago Press p 164 ISBN 9780226070803 Neither were there any Muslims among the Ninth Century translators Amost all of them were Christians of various Eastern denominations Jacobites Melchites and above all Nestorians Remi Brague Assyrians contributions to the Islamic civilization Archived 2013 09 27 at the Wayback Machine Britannica Nestorian Ronald G Roberson The Syro Malabar Catholic Church NSC NETWORK Early references about the Apostolate of Saint Thomas in India Records about the Indian tradition Saint Thomas Christians amp Statements by Indian Statesmen Nasrani net 2007 02 16 Archived from the original on 3 April 2010 Retrieved 2010 03 31 Frykenberg 2008 p 102 107 115 a b Baum amp Winkler 2003 p 52 Baum amp Winkler 2003 p 53 Synod of Diamper britannica com Encyclopaedia Britannica Retrieved 11 July 2022 The local patriarch representing the Assyrian Church of the East to which ancient Christians in India had looked for ecclesiastical authority was then removed from jurisdiction in India and replaced by a Portuguese bishop the East Syrian liturgy of Addai and Mari was purified from error and Latin vestments rituals and customs were introduced to replace the ancient traditions a b Neil Stephen 1984 A History of Christianity in India The Beginnings to AD 1707 Cambridge University Press p 322 ISBN 0521243513 Then the pope decided to throw one more stone into the pool Apparently following a suggestion made by some among the cattanars he sent to India four discalced Carmelites two Italians one Fleming and one German These Fathers had two advantages they were not Portuguese and they were not Jesuits The head of the mission was given the title of apostolic commissary and was specially charged with the duty of restoring peace in the Serra a b Pinto Leonard July 14 2015 Being a Christian in Sri Lanka Historical Political Social and Religious Considerations Balboa Publishers pp 55 57 ISBN 978 1452528632 Mar Aprem Metropolitan Visits Ancient Anuradhapura Cross in Official Trip to Sri Lanka Assyrian Church News Archived from the original on 2015 02 26 Retrieved 6 August 2013 Weerakoon Rajitha June 26 2011 Did Christianity exist in ancient Sri Lanka Sunday Times Retrieved 2 August 2021 Main interest Daily News 22 April 2011 Archived from the original on 2015 03 29 Retrieved 2 August 2021 Ding 2006 p 149 162 Stewart 1928 p 169 Stewart 1928 p 183 Moffett 1999 p 14 15 Jackson 2014 p 97 Luke 1924 p 46 56 Fiey 1993 p 71 Wilmshurst 2000 p 66 Wilmshurst 2000 p 16 19 a b Peter C Phan Christianities in Asia John Wiley amp Sons 2011 p 243 Baum amp Winkler 2003 p 105 Wilmshurst 2000 p 345 347 Baum amp Winkler 2003 p 104 Wilmshurst 2000 p 19 Wilmshurst 2000 p 21 a b Wilmshurst 2000 p 22 Lemmens 1926 p 17 28 a b Fernando Filoni The Church in Iraq CUA Press 2017 pp 35 36 a b Habbi 1966 p 99 132 Patriarcha de Mozal in Syria orientali Anton Baumstark editor Oriens Christianus IV 1 Rome and Leipzig 2004 p 277 Assemani 1725 p 661 a b Wilkinson 2007 p 86 88 a b Wilmshurst 2000 p 23 Wilmshurst 2000 p 22 23 Tisserant 1931 p 261 263 Fiey 1993 p 37 Murre van den Berg 1999 p 243 244 Baum amp Winkler 2003 p 116 174 a b Hage 2007 p 473 Wilmshurst 2000 p 22 42 194 260 355 Tisserant 1931 p 230 a b c d Murre van den Berg 1999 p 252 253 Baum amp Winkler 2003 p 114 Wilmshurst 2000 p 23 24 a b Wilmshurst 2000 p 24 Wilmshurst 2000 p 352 Wilmshurst 2000 p 24 25 a b Wilmshurst 2000 p 25 Wilmshurst 2000 p 25 316 Baum amp Winkler 2003 p 114 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the Church of the East Mar Gewargis I His Synod and His Letter to Mina as a Polemic against Martyrius Sahdona Cristianesimo Nella Storia 38 3 729 784 Fiey Jean Maurice 1967 Les etapes de la prise de conscience de son identite patriarcale par l Eglise syrienne orientale L Orient Syrien 12 3 22 Fiey Jean Maurice 1970a Jalons pour une histoire de l Eglise en Iraq Louvain Secretariat du CSCO Fiey Jean Maurice 1970b L Elam la premiere des metropoles ecclesiastiques syriennes orientales PDF Parole de l Orient 1 1 123 153 Fiey Jean Maurice 1970c Medie chretienne PDF Parole de l Orient 1 2 357 384 Fiey Jean Maurice 1979 1963 Communautes syriaques en Iran et Irak des origines a 1552 London Variorum Reprints ISBN 9780860780519 Fiey Jean Maurice 1993 Pour un Oriens Christianus Novus Repertoire des dioceses syriaques orientaux et occidentaux Beirut Orient Institut ISBN 9783515057189 Fiey Jean Maurice 1994 The Spread of the Persian Church Syriac Dialogue First Non Official Consultation on Dialogue 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Oxford Oxford University Press ISBN 9780199212880 Gulik Wilhelm van 1904 Die Konsistorialakten uber die Begrundung des uniert chaldaischen Patriarchates von Mosul unter Papst Julius III PDF Oriens Christianus 4 261 277 Gumilyov Lev Nikolaevich 1970 Poiski vymyshlennogo carstva Legenda o gosudarstve presvitera Ioanna Searching for an Imaginary Kingdom The Legend of the Kingdom of Prester John in Russian Moskva Nauka Habbi Joseph 1966 Signification de l union chaldeenne de Mar Sulaqa avec Rome en 1553 L Orient Syrien 11 99 132 199 230 Habbi Joseph 1971a L unification de la hierarchie chaldeenne dans la premiere moitie du XIXe siecle PDF Parole de l Orient 2 1 121 143 Habbi Joseph 1971b L unification de la hierarchie chaldeenne dans la premiere moitie du XIXe siecle Suite PDF Parole de l Orient 2 2 305 327 Hage Wolfgang 2007 Das orientalische Christentum Stuttgart Kohlhammer Verlag ISBN 9783170176683 Harrak Amir 2003 Patriarchal Funerary Inscriptions in the Monastery of Rabban Hormizd Types Literary Origins and Purpose PDF Hugoye Journal of Syriac Studies 6 2 235 264 Hauser Stefan R 2019 The Church of the East until the Eighth Century The Oxford Handbook of Early Christian Archaeology New York Oxford University Press pp 431 450 ISBN 9780199369041 Herman Geoffrey 2019 The Syriac World in the Persian Empire The Syriac World London Routledge pp 134 145 Hill Donald 1993 Islamic Science and Engineering Edinburgh Edinburgh University Press ISBN 9780748604555 Hill Henry ed 1988 Light from the East A Symposium on the Oriental Orthodox and Assyrian Churches Toronto Anglican Book Centre ISBN 9780919891906 Hodgson Leonard Driver Godfrey R eds 1925 Nestorius The Bazaar of Heracleides Oxford Clarendon Press ISBN 9781725202399 Hunter Erica 1996 The church of the East in central Asia The Bulletin of the John Rylands Library 78 3 129 142 doi 10 7227 BJRL 78 3 10 Jackson Peter 2014 2005 The Mongols and the West 1221 1410 London New York Routledge ISBN 9781317878995 Jakob Joachim 2014 Ostsyrische Christen und Kurden im Osmanischen Reich des 19 und fruhen 20 Jahrhunderts Munster LIT Verlag ISBN 9783643506160 Jenkins Philip 2008 The Lost History of Christianity The Thousand Year Golden Age of the Church in the Middle East Africa and Asia and How It Died San Francisco HarperOne ISBN 9780061472800 Joseph John B 2000 The Modern Assyrians of the Middle East A History of Their Encounter with Western Christian Missions Archaeologists and Colonial Powers Leiden Brill ISBN 9004116419 Jugie Martin 1935 L ecclesiologie des Nestoriens Echos d Orient 34 177 5 25 doi 10 3406 rebyz 1935 2817 Kitchen Robert A 2012 The Syriac Tradition The Orthodox Christian World London New York Routledge pp 66 77 ISBN 9781136314841 Klein Wassilios 2000 Das nestorianische Christentum an den Handelswegen durch Kyrgyzstan bis zum 14 Jh Turnhout Brepols Publishers ISBN 9782503510354 Kuhn Michael F 2019 God is One A Christian Defence of Divine Unity in the Muslim Golden Age Carlisle Langham Publishing ISBN 9781783685776 Labourt Jerome 1908 Note sur les schismes de l Eglise nestorienne du XVIe au XIXe siecle Journal Asiatique 11 227 235 Labourt Jerome 1909 St Ephraem The Catholic Encyclopedia Vol 5 New York Robert Appleton Company Lampart Albert 1966 Ein Martyrer der Union mit Rom Joseph I 1681 1696 Patriarch der Chaldaer Einsiedeln Benziger Verlag Lange Christian 2012 Mia energeia Untersuchungen zur Einigungspolitik des Kaisers Heraclius und des Patriarchen Sergius von Constantinopel Mohr Siebeck ISBN 9783161509674 Lemmens Leonhard 1926 Relationes nationem Chaldaeorum inter et Custodiam Terrae Sanctae 1551 1629 Archivum Franciscanum Historicum 19 17 28 Luke Harry Charles 1924 The Christian Communities in the Holy Sepulchre PDF In Ashbee Charles Robert ed Jerusalem 1920 1922 Being the Records of the Pro Jerusalem Council during the First Two Years of the Civil Administratio London John Murray pp 46 56 Marthaler Berard L ed 2003 Chaldean Catholic Church Eastern Catholic The New Catholic Encyclopedia Vol 3 Thompson Gale pp 366 369 Menze Volker L 2019 The Establishment of the Syriac Churches The Syriac World London Routledge pp 105 118 ISBN 9781138899018 Meyendorff John 1989 Imperial unity and Christian divisions The Church 450 680 A D The Church in history Vol 2 Crestwood NY St Vladimir s Seminary Press ISBN 978 0 88 141056 3 Moffett Samuel Hugh 1999 Alopen Biographical Dictionary of Christian Missions William B Eerdmans Publishing Company pp 14 15 ISBN 9780802846808 Mooken Aprem 1976 The Nestorian Fathers Trichur Mar Narsai Press Mooken Aprem 1976 Nestorian Missions Trichur Mar Narsai Press Morgan David 1986 The Mongols Basil Blackwell ISBN 9780631135562 Moule Arthur C 1930 Christians in China before the year 1550 London Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge Murre van den Berg Heleen 1999 The Patriarchs of the Church of the East from the Fifteenth to Eighteenth Centuries PDF Hugoye Journal of Syriac Studies 2 2 235 264 doi 10 31826 hug 2010 020119 Murre van den Berg Heleen 2008 Classical Syriac Neo Aramaic and Arabic in the Church of the East and the Chaldean Church between 1500 and 1800 Aramaic in Its Historical and Linguistic Setting Wiesbaden Harrassowitz Verlag pp 335 352 ISBN 9783447057875 Murre van den Berg Heleen 2005 The Church of the East in the Sixteenth to the Eighteenth Century World Church or Ethnic Community Redefining Christian Identity Cultural Interaction in the Middle East since the Rise of Islam Leuven Peeters Publishers pp 301 320 ISBN 9789042914186 Nichols Aidan 2010 1992 Rome and the Eastern Churches A Study in Schism 2nd revised ed San Francisco Ignatius Press ISBN 9781586172824 O Mahony Anthony 2006 Syriac Christianity in the modern Middle East In Angold Michael ed The Cambridge History of Christianity Eastern Christianity Vol 5 Cambridge Cambridge University Press pp 511 536 ISBN 9780521811132 Outerbridge Leonard M 1952 The Lost Churches of China Philadelphia Westminster Press Payne Richard E 2009 Persecuting Heresy in Early Islamic Iraq The Catholicos Ishoyahb III and the Elites of Nisibis The Power of Religion in Late Antiquity Farnham Ashgate pp 397 409 ISBN 9780754667254 Payne Richard E 2015 A State of Mixture Christians Zoroastrians and Iranian Political Culture in Late Antiquity Oakland University of California Press ISBN 9780520292451 Penn Michael Philip 2019 Early Syriac Reactions to the Rise of Islam The Syriac World London Routledge pp 175 188 ISBN 9781138899018 Pirtea Adrian C 2019 The Mysticism of the Church of the East The Syriac World London Routledge pp 355 376 ISBN 9781138899018 Reinink Gerrit J 1995 Edessa Grew Dim and Nisibis Shone Forth The School of Nisibis at the Transition of the Sixth Seventh Century Centres of Learning Learning and Location in Pre modern Europe and the Near East Leiden Brill pp 77 89 ISBN 9004101934 Reinink Gerrit J 2009 Tradition and the Formation of the Nestorian Identity in Sixth to Seventh Century Iraq Church History and Religious Culture 89 1 3 217 250 doi 10 1163 187124109X407916 JSTOR 23932289 Roberson Ronald 1999 1986 The Eastern Christian Churches A Brief Survey 6th ed Roma Orientalia Christiana ISBN 9788872103210 Rossabi Morris 1992 Voyager from Xanadu Rabban Sauma and the First Journey from China to the West Kodansha International ISBN 9784770016508 Rucker Adolf 1920 Uber einige nestorianische Liederhandschriften vornehmlich der griech Patriarchatsbibliothek in Jerusalem PDF Oriens Christianus 9 107 123 Saeki Peter Yoshiro 1937 The Nestorian Documents and Relics in China Tokyo Academy of oriental culture Seleznyov Nikolai N 2008 The Church of the East amp Its Theology History of Studies Orientalia Christiana Periodica 74 1 115 131 Seleznyov Nikolai N 2010 Nestorius of Constantinople Condemnation Suppression Veneration With special reference to the role of his name in East Syriac Christianity Journal of Eastern Christian Studies 62 3 4 165 190 Silverberg Robert 1972 The Realm of Prester John Garden City NY Doubleday Spuler Bertold 1961 Die Nestorianische Kirche Religionsgeschichte des Orients in der Zeit der Weltreligionen Leiden Brill pp 120 169 ISBN 9789004293816 Stewart John 1928 Nestorian Missionary Enterprise A Church on Fire Edinburgh T amp T Clark Tajadod Nahal 1993 Les Porteurs de lumiere Peripeties de l Eglise chretienne de Perse IIIe VIIe siecle Paris Plon Taylor David G K 2019 The Coming of Christianity to Mesopotamia The Syriac World London Routledge pp 68 87 ISBN 9781138899018 Tfinkdji Joseph 1914 L eglise chaldeenne catholique autrefois et aujourd hui Annuaire Pontifical Catholique 17 449 525 Tisserant Eugene 1931 L Eglise nestorienne Dictionnaire de theologie catholique Vol 11 Paris Letouzey et Ane pp 157 323 Vine Aubrey R 1937 The Nestorian Churches London Independent Press ISBN 9780404161880 Voste Jacques Marie 1925 Missio duorum fratrum Melitensium O P in Orientem saec XVI et relatio nunc primum edita eorum quae in istis regionibus gesserunt Analecta Ordinis Praedicatorum 33 4 261 278 Voste Jacques Marie 1928 Catalogue de la bibliotheque syro chaldeenne du couvent de Notre Dame des Semences pres d Alqos Iraq Angelicum 5 3 36 161 194 325 358 481 498 Voste Jacques Marie 1930 Les inscriptions de Rabban Hormizd et de N D des Semences pres d Alqos Iraq Le Museon 43 263 316 Voste Jacques Marie 1931 Mar Iohannan Soulaqa premier Patriarche des Chaldeens martyr de l union avec Rome 1555 Angelicum 8 187 234 Wigram William Ainger 1910 An Introduction to the History of the Assyrian Church or The Church of the Sassanid Persian Empire 100 640 A D London Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge ISBN 9780837080789 Wigram William Ainger 1929 The Assyrians and Their Neighbours London G Bell amp Sons Williams Daniel H 2013 The Evolution of Pro Nicene Theology in the Church of the East From the Oxus River to the Chinese Shores Studies on East Syriac Christianity in China and Central Asia Munster LIT Verlag pp 387 395 ISBN 9783643903297 Wilkinson Robert J 2007 Orientalism Aramaic and Kabbalah in the Catholic Reformation The First Printing of the Syriac New Testament Leiden Boston Brill ISBN 9789004162501 Wilmshurst David 2000 The Ecclesiastical Organisation of the Church of the East 1318 1913 Louvain Peeters Publishers ISBN 9789042908765 Wilmshurst David 2011 The Martyred Church A History of the Church of the East London East amp West Publishing Limited ISBN 9781907318047 Wilmshurst David 2019a The Church of the East in the Abbasid Era The Syriac World London Routledge pp 189 201 ISBN 9781138899018 Wilmshurst David 2019b The patriarchs of the Church of the East The Syriac World London Routledge pp 799 805 ISBN 9781138899018 Wood Philip 2013 The Chronicle of Seert Christian Historical Imagination in Late Antique Iraq Oxford Oxford University Press ISBN 9780199670673 External links Edit Wikisource has original works on the topic Church of the East Retrieved from https en wikipedia org w index php title Church of the East amp oldid 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