An Introduction to the History of the Assyrian Church

Front matter

AN INTRODUCTION

TO THE

HISTORY OF THE ASSYRIAN CHURCH

Synchronistic Table

SYNCHRONISTIC TABLE

|Date. | | Assyrian Patriarch. | | Persian King. | |Roman Emperor.

|309 | | Papa | Sapor II | Constantine

|328 | Shimun bar Saba'i

|337 | Constantius

|340 | | Shah-dost

|346 | | Bar B'ashmin

|347 | (vacancy)

|361 | | Julian

|363 | | Jovian

|364 | | Valens

|379 | | Ardashir II | Theodosius I

|383 | Tamuza | |Sapor II

|388 | Bahram IV

|395 | |Qaiuma | Arcadius

|399 | Isaac | Yezdegerd I

|408 | Theodosius II

|411 | | Akha

|415 | | Yahb-Alaha I

|420 | | M'ana | Bahram V

|421 | Dad-Ishu

|438 | Yezdegerd II

|451 | |Marcian

|457 | Babowai | Piroz | |Leo

|474 | Zeno

|485 | Acacius | |Balas

|488 | Kobad (1st reign)

|491 | Anastasius

|496 | Babai | |Zamasp

|498 | Kobad (2nd reign)

|505 | Silas

|518 | Justin I

|523 | ("duality")

|527 | Justinian

|531 | Chosroes I

|539 | |Paul

|540 | |Mar Aba

|552 | Joseph

|565 | Justin II

|570 | Ezekiel

|578 | Hormizd IV | |Tiberius

|582 | Ishu-yahb I | Maurice

|590 | Chosroes II

|596 | Sabr-Ishu

|602 | Phocas

|604 | |Gregory

|608 | (vacancy)

|610 | Heraclius

|628 | Ishu-yahb II | |(anarchy)

|632 | |Yezdegerd III

|640 | Khalifate | Constantine III

|644 | |Mar Imeh

Chapter 1 The Sassanid Empire—The Foundation of the Church

HISTORY OF THE ASSYRIAN CHURCH

CHAPTER I

§ 1. THE SASSANID EMPIRE

In the year a.d. 225, when a revolution in Mesopotamia substituted the Sassanids of Persia for the Arsacids of Parthia as the rulers of what Roman writers called "the East" (meaning thereby all the countries of which they had practical knowledge to the east of their own border), dwellers in the country concerned regarded it as simply the rise of one more in the series of empires that rose and passed away in those lands. All the difference that it made to them, at the moment, was that the local governor was called "Marzban" or Marquis, instead of "King." From long usage, they were accustomed to be regarded by their rulers much in the same light as they themselves regaled their bees; and they took so little interest in the matter that the wise men of the countryside could see in the same event a warning of the downfall of a kingdom, and of the production of a good crop of honey.

As a matter of fact, the revolution of 225 was not merely the exchange of one loose federation of kings, for another a little better organized; it was the revival of a nation that had a great history behind it, and the aspiration to make that history live again. The Persian Empire had indeed fallen before Alexander in 300 b.c., and had remained in more or less uneasy subjection to his Seleucid successors, or to the semi-Hellenized Arsacids, who took their place. Still, the national life of Persia had not passed away; and after 500 years the opportunity came, and it rose again. Its ambition, however, was not to form a new empire, but to revive an old one; and it claimed to be the lawful heir, not of the Arsacid kingdom of modern Mesopotamia and Persia, but of the Achæmenid Empire of Xerxes and Darius, stretching from the Hindu-Kush to the Mediterranean. It was the dream of the Sassanids to revive this empire; and the dream was so far a national aspiration also, that a warlike king could always rouse the enthusiasm of the nation by a challenge to the Roman Emperor to "withdraw from the inheritance of the ancestors of the King of kings."

The greatest of the Sassanid house, Chosroes II, actually realized that dream for a moment, when in his great war against Phocas and Heraclius he pushed back the limits of the Roman Empire till it hardly extended beyond the walls of Constantinople; and the ruins of the palace at Mashita, in the land of Moab, are a testimony that this king did not intend his occupation of Roman territory to be, as was the case on some other occasions, a mere raid. During the years that the watchers at Constantinople saw the lights of the Persian camp at Chalcedon, practically the whole of the elder Persian Empire was actually subject to the ruler of the newer one.

We are completely accustomed to look at this period from the Roman standpoint, and to think of these wars as unimportant episodes in a history of which the main interest lies elsewhere. But it may be useful to remember for a moment how they appeared to an empire which was by no means the barbarous power that we are accustomed to conceive.

It is obvious that, when such aspirations were entertained, the relations between the Empire of Rome and that of the East must have been normally hostile; and that only truces of more or less uncertainty could break a perennial state of war. Lest, however, the imperial aspirations of one of the two powers should be insufficient to provide a proper amount of fighting, fate had also seen to it that there should be two perpetually open questions, either of which could afford at any time a decent casus belli. These were, the control of Armenia, and the question of the frontier provinces. Armenia—that unhappy territory whose office in history it has been to be "a strife unto her neighbours" during such periods as she could claim some shadow of independence, and a problem to her rulers during the periods when she was avowedly subject to somebody—formed a "buffer state " between the Romans and Persians for most of their joint frontiers. The question, who was to control this kingdom, was one that constantly gave rise to friction; and the Armenians, as a general rule, seem to have employed themselves in intriguing against the suzerain of the moment with the emissaries of the rival power.

Where the two empires "marched," which was the case only in the north-west of Mesopotamia, another question was open. Here, a comparatively narrow belt of fertile territory intervenes between the mountains of modern Kurdistan and the desert of Arabia. The power that held this district, and with it the great fortress of Nisibis, was somewhat in the position of the holder of Alsace-Lorraine. It had control of a gate which might admit its armies into the territory of the enemy, or which might be effectively shut in the face of an invader. Hence both parties claimed the five small, and otherwise not very important, provinces into which this country was divided, and neither could be content to see them in the hands of the other.

With all these causes for war ready to hand, it is not surprising that only unusual combinations of circumstances, like the simultaneous accession of two peace-loving monarchs, or simultaneous invasion of both empires by the barbarians who threatened the northern frontiers of either, could keep their relations friendly.

It was not only as an empire that Persia thus rose from the dead in the third century; it rose also as a religion, of a definite and militant type. The Persia of Achæmenid days had accepted Zoroaster's reforms of the ancient fire-worship as a national faith; and that religion had been preserved by the nation as its heritage, and treasured as only a subject nation can treasure its national faith (if, indeed, it had not been, as is possible, the force that had kept the nation alive) during the 500 years of dependence. Now, when Persia rose to power once more, their religion rose with them; and the Sassanian Empire had a definitely established Magian Church, loyal membership of which was the test and condition of loyalty to the empire.

This religion had its system of theology and its Sacred books. It had its priestly caste, the Magians; who were at once one of the seven great clans of the nation, and an organized hierarchy under their "Mobeds" or prelates, with the "Mobed Mobedan" at the head of all. The fire-temple stood in every village; the shrine in every orthodox house. Education was in the hands of the priests, and considerable temporal power and large endowments. The Shah-in-Shah himself dared not offend them, lest mischief should befall him.

The Sassanian kingdom, then, was no mushroom growth, with much magnificence but no strength. It was an empire, organized in an efficient way; whose provincial governors (though, when of royal blood, they might bear the honorary title of King) were kept well under the control of the Shah-in-Shah.

The empire was inhabited by a tolerably homogeneous nation, as far as its central provinces went; though a fringe of sub-kings (Armenian, Arab, Turk) ruled districts round its borders. It had a national religion, with an organized hierarchy, and it could fight at least on even terms with the whole power of Rome. One Roman Emperor, Valerian, died a captive at the Persian Court. Another, Julian, fell in battle against it; and his successor could only purchase his release by an ignominious peace. It endured for 400 years, and when it fell, its organization and machinery were simply taken over by its successor, the Khalifate of Baghdad.

In the following pages we propose to trace, not the history of the kingdom, but the story of the Church of Christ within its borders; the Church of Assyria, of the "Chaldæan Patriarchate," or, as it was usually called by Greek, or even by Syriac writers, "The Church of the East." Broadly speaking, the Christian Church, as it existed to the east of the Eastern border of the Roman Empire.

§ 2. THE FOUNDATION OF THE CHURCH

The Christian Church was a thing that the Sassanids found existing when they established themselves in the country, and one that was already widely spread, and organized on apostolic lines. This fact was of considerable importance for the future relations of the two, for the struggle would have been very hard before the Church could have established herself, de novo, in a Zoroastrian kingdom. The difficulty would have been comparable to that found in the spreading of Christianity in Fez or Morocco at the present time. As it existed, however, prior to the rise of the dynasty, it was, so to speak, taken over by it, as a part of the new empire; and when the relations between the two came to be formalized, it was on the assumption that Christianity had as much a legal right to exist in the Sassanid Empire, as it has in a Moslem kingdom like the Ottoman Empire of to-day. In each case, this qualified toleration was accorded to it on the same ground, viz. that the Christian religion was one that the dominant faith found existing at the time when it conquered the country.

The Church was widely spread; it extended from the Mountains of Kurdistan (for this last refuge of the descendants of these Christians was apparently not then evangelized) to the Persian Gulf, and was governed by "more than twenty bishops," whose sees were distributed over all the country named. It is to be noted, however, that though the bishoprics were thus widely scattered, there was as yet no bishop in the capital city, Seleucia-Ctesiphon, a fact that was to have some importance in the history of the body. Nisibis, too (at this time a Roman city still), had no bishop, a fact due probably to the circumstance that it was a purely military station. It is, however, a curious coincidence that the two most important thrones in the later history of "the East" should both have been founded late in its development.

The question now arises, how and when did this Church come into being?

It has long been an admitted fact that the lands of Mesopotamia and Adiabene, and in fact the whole of what we may call by anticipation the Sassanid Persian Empire, received the gospel from teachers whose head-quarters were at Edessa. The little kingdom of Osrhöene had but a precarious independence during the brief period of its existence; still that independence was sufficient to give, for as long as it lasted, a distinctive character to the Christianity that existed in its capital, and made it an appropriate "nursing mother" to the two national Churches founded by teachers who came from thence, those, namely, of Armenia and Persia. When the Edessene Church was merged in that ecclesiastical circle that developed into the Patriarchate of Antioch, one at least of these "daughters" was strong enough to stand alone; and the circumstances of its infancy probably contributed to give it that instinct of independence that was always so marked a feature of its life.

The "Church of the Easterns" was the daughter, not of Antioch, but of Edessa, and was never included in the Patriarchate of the former city.

While, however, the Edessene origin of the Church of the East is admitted (and indeed the laws of geography postulate it, for it is hard to get from Antioch to Mesopotamia without passing through Edessa), the date is a matter more open to dispute. Syriac tradition is clear enough on the point, of course. According to this, Mar Adai (who is variously described as either the Apostle Thaddeus, or as one of "the seventy") came during the first century to Edessa and planted Christianity there. His disciple, Mari, starting from thence, became the true evangelist of Persia; descending even into Fars, until he "smelt the smell of the Apostle Thomas," the traditional evangelist of India. Modern writers, and particularly Westphal and M. Labourt (to whom all students of Persian Church history owe much for his painstaking work), treat these traditions very cavalierly. While admitting the possibility of the real existence of Adai and Mari, as evangelists of wholly uncertain date, they refuse to admit the presence of any organized Christianity in Persia before Sassanid days. They sweep out of existence the older Catholici (whose names and biographies occur in the Chronicles of Bar-Hebræus and Mari Ibn Sulieman, of the thirteenth and twelfth centuries respectively), and date the origin of the Church in the latter half of the third century; making Papa, Bishop of Seleucia about the year 300, its first figure of any reality and weight.

With much of this criticism the writer fully agrees; the episcopate of Papa is a definite and important turning-point in the history of the Church, though not the starting-point which they incline to make it. The portentous length of Episcopate assigned to him by both mediæval historians is a sign of confusion only, and most of his predecessors are as apocryphal as the copes with which Mari Ibn Sulieman carefully endues each one. Moreover such of them as had some real existence were not, as we shall see, Catholici (i.e. archbishops) of Seleucia. Still, tradition in the East has a way of justifying itself, at least as regards the main facts which it asserts, as evidence accumulates; and a work has recently come to light that goes far to combler la lacune between Mari and Papa, which M. Labourt laments. This is the History of the Bishops of Adiabenë (Khay-dab), a work composed in the sixth century by one Mshikha-Zca (Christ conquers), a scholar of the great college of Nisibis and a native of the province whose history he writes. The author frankly declares himself to be only a compiler, and refers to earlier and now lost authorities.

Mshikha-Zca plainly acknowledges Adai as the apostle of Adiabene and Assyria, and states that he ordained his disciple, Pqida, as first bishop of that district, in the year a.d. 104. Pqida was by birth the slave of a Magian, and was of that faith. He had apparently gained his personal freedom; and he had been converted by the sight of a miracle wrought by Mar Adai, who was then travelling and teaching in the land. He had to undergo some persecution from the family (not from his owner), for his "apostasy"; but escaping from them, remained the personal disciple of his master for five years; at the end of which time he was consecrated as stated, apparently just before the death of Mar Adai.

In the face of this record, there seems no reasonable ground for refusing to admit the absolutely historical character of Adai; or the rank which ancient tradition accords to him of founder of the Church "of the East," and possibly of that of Edessa and Armenia also. If, however, our author establishes the existence of Mar Adai as a real fact and not as a figment only, he at the same time makes it almost impossible to identify him with Thaddeus, the Apostle of Christ. Traditionally, we regard the Twelve as all adult men, with one possible exception, during the period of their association with the Redeemer. A man full grown in the year 30 could hardly have travelled about, as Adai is represented as doing, in the years 100–104. That he should have been one of the "seventy" is less impossible; and a tradition that has justified itself in much has a right to a respectful hearing in its other statements. If we may regard Mar Adai as a youth of sixteen or seventeen when "sent out" as one of the seventy disciples, he would have been hard on ninety (no impossible age) when called to his rest in 104.

In the case of Mari the supposed disciple of Adai, and the evangelist, not so much of Adiabene as of Khuzistan, and in a less degree of Seleucia and the "Aramæan province," we are at present on less certain ground. The Acta S. Maris which we have to-day is certainly not the contemporary document it professes to be; it is not earlier than the sixth century, and possibly later still. Even if contemporary with the History of the Bishops of Adiabenë, it is far inferior to it as an authority, the one being a history, and the other a piece of hagiography.

Mshikha-Zca makes no reference whatever to Mari in his work, and his editor is inclined, on that ground, to regard the saint as purely legendary. This we consider too stern a judgment. Even if the Acta be ruled out of court altogether as an authority, we have to account for the fact that from the fifth century and before it (i.e. from before the time of the composition of the Acta) this Church has looked back to Adai and Mari as its founders.

How came they, on the legendary hypothesis, to select an absolutely unknown name as that of their founder, when such an one as St. Thomas, who traditionally passed through the country on his way to India, was ready to their hands? That the life contains much legend (even apart from some of the miraculous episodes) need not be doubted. But it also contains matter that a mere hagiographer would scarcely ascribe to his hero, unless he were following some older tradition or authority. The saint's discouragement, and request to his Edessene senders for his recall; his finding Christian traders in Khuzistan; his comparative failure in Seleucia itself, where, as we now know, Christianity gained no strength till late in the third century; and his peaceful death at the obscure shrine of Dor Koni;—all these have the ring of truth rather than of invention; and the most conspicuous "blunder" in the book, namely, the fact that Papa, the fourth-century bishop, is declared to have been the immediate successor of Mari as Bishop of Seleucia and Catholicos of the Church of the Persian Empire, admits, as we shall see, of a natural explanation.

We incline then to admit, not only the traditional founding of this Church by Mar Adai at the close of the first century, but also its extension from Adiabene southwards by the teaching of Mari and his companions, as well founded in fact, though embroidered by later traditions.

It remains to sketch the history of this Church as far as our authorities admit, for the first 200 years of its existence, until it emerges into clearer light at the beginning of the fourth century.

Note.—Labourt (p. 14) and Duval (Littérature syraque, p. 118) both criticize the Acta S. Maris, on the ground that they represent the hero as contending with the worship of sacred trees and springs; not with Magianism or starworship, as ought to nave been the case had they given a reliable picture of Mesopotamian life at their supposed date. This is true; but it should be noted that the author represents the nature-worship as existing in provinces like Adiabene and Garmistan, where, according to Mshikha-Zca, it was very strong at the time, and where fire-worship was never a national cult. There are no references to it in the chapters that deal with Seleucia and Khuzistan. As in the district named the worship of trees and springs is not extinct to this day, centuries of Christian and Mussulman teaching notwithstanding (the writer knows two sacred springs, and sacred trees by the dozen, in the country in question), it is reasonable to conclude that it was more conspicuous in early centuries.

The almost total absence of any mention of fire-worship is a difficulty that cuts both ways. That a sixth-century writer in Persia should not have known of the cult is inponceivable—as well could a Hindu Christian be ignorant of the existence of Brahmanism—so the omission must be designed. Possibly, the writer did not care to speak of a campaign against the State faith, for fear of consequences. A Syriac biographer of to-day, for instance, would hardly venture to boast of his hero as making converts from Islam.

Chapter 2 The Church under Arsacid Kings

CHAPTER II

THE CHURCH UNDER ARSACID KINGS

The history of the Church from the time of Adai to that of Papa, or, roughly, from the year 100 to 300, is, on the whole, one of quiet progress, unmarked either by the quarrels or organized persecutions that were to chequer its later history; and unmarked, too, by the rise of any such striking personalities as we find, for instance, in the story of the African Church, or, in a less degree, in our own. Adai is too shadowy a person to have, for us at any rate, the charm of an Aidan; and not even the inventiveness of his chronicler can give to Mari's life the romance that encircles Columba's. The conditions of the life of a subject melet in an oriental empire do not tend to produce very striking characters in normal times.

At first, at any rate, the body was not formidable enough to excite the State to persecute; and the rule of the Parthian kings was always tolerant. They appear to have favoured a sort of religious eclecticism themselves, and to have recognized all creeds among their subjects; though there is some evidence that the political power of the Magian clan won for their religion a favoured position. Still, the Government was so far indifferent that about the year 160 Abraham, then Bishop of Adiabene, had good hopes of procuring a formal edict of toleration from the then King, Valges III; and apparently only failed in his object because the outbreak of war with the Romans put such a trifling circumstance out of the King's mind. As things turned out, the Church had much to suffer before obtaining her "Edict of Milan" from the Shah-in-Shah 250 years later.

The faith of the people which the Christian teaching had to combat (as far as it is shown by the chronicles of Syriac writers, and by the collections of magical formulæ and invocations which still survive) seems to have been the old idolatry of Assyria and Babylon, "run to seed" in a strange fashion, and sunk into the worship of sacred trees, and a star worship which was no higher than a very debased astrology.

Both in Mesopotamia and in Asia Minor, as probably in Egypt (though not in Persia), the old faiths were outworn. Hence it was that nations who, whatever their faults, do not lack the religious instinct, turned so readily to the new light that came to them from Judæa; and embraced it with a readiness that makes the progress of Christianity in these lands at once so startlingly rapid, and so undeniably sound.

Among the Zoroastrian fire-worshippers the advance of the Faith was far less rapid than among the pagans, and it was here that the Church found its most formidable opponents. Still, it could win converts here also; and (as is often the case) men won from this most obstinate of foes were the best worth winning, and included some of the Church's greatest and most saintly bishops and martyrs. In these early days, however, at least in the north, this Zoroastrian hostility was that of a powerful corporation, rather than of a national faith. Its stronghold was in Persia proper, not in Mesopotamia, and there it was not, as yet, directly attacked by Christianity. In its native land it has left abundant traces of its former supremacy, and has not even yet wholly passed away.

As a corporation, and one enjoying apparently a measure of royal favour, it had enough power to persecute; and was, of course, specially ready to seek as victims men who were converts from it to any other faith. Thus Samson, the successor of Pqida as Bishop of Arbela, died a martyr at the hands of Magians in 123—the first man to die for the Christian faith in a land that has supplied, probably, more members of candidatus exercitus than any other country. A little later, Isaac, his successor, converted a Zoroastrian of the name of Raqbokt, who was an "Agha" of some importance in Adiabene. The Mobeds at once sought to kill the "apostate," but when the men dispatched for the purpose of assassinating him arrived at the house of their victim they found him away from home, and had to turn their wrath on the bishop, whom they captured and confined for some time "in a dark pit." It would seem that this was a usual way of punishing apostates from the worship of the sun, for it was also employed in the case of Pqida by the family of that convert.

It is specially stated, too, that during the episcopate of Noah (163–179) many Christians fell away from the faith under pressure of a persecution of a singularly dastardly kind—the kidnapping or "capture" of their daughters. This consisted (and consists still in the same lands) in the carrying off of Christian girls from their families as either concubines or slaves. Then, once let some sort of confession of Zoroastrianism—or of Islam—be procured from the victim, and how can the "convert" be thereafter abandoned to "a false faith"? Few of such captives can find the strength for a life-long confession of their Lord—a confession none the less meritorious for being absolutely unknown. But some such hidden saints have existed, and do still exist.

This, however, was not a State persecution, such as the Church in the West had to endure repeatedly during the same period; it arose from the weakness, not from the malevolence, of the Government, which would not take trouble or run a risk for the sake of doing right by so unimportant a person as a mere ray at. When the agent of persecution is specified at all, it is always the Mobeds, or members of the Magian clan. Persecution ordered by the Government, and carried out by its agents, is not encountered till the days of the Sassanids; and even then, not until the conversion of Constantine—and the adoption of Christianity as the official faith of the Roman Empire—had made all Christians in the rival kingdom politically suspect. Syrian historians state emphatically that there was no formal persecution in the East until its day was over in the West.

Thus Adiabene became a haven of comparative safety for Christians during persecutions over the border, and many took refuge there and made it their home. The presence of these immigrants, and in later days of large "captivities" brought from Western Syria by the Sassanid kings, formed an important element in the life of the Church, breaking its isolation, and keeping its thought more or less in touch with the growth of theology in the West; though, as we shall see, this touch was by no means always a close one.

Easterns, too, went westwards at times, for there was, of course, a good deal of commercial intercourse between the two empires. One man in particular, Noah, by birth a Jew of Anbar (Piroz-Sapor), was converted to Christianity while on a pilgrimage to Jerusalem with his parents, and became the disciple and successor of the Bishop Abraham. Abd-Mshikha, too (Bishop of Arbela 190–225), embraced Christianity when at Antioch for purposes of education; and came back a Christian to his own country, where his new faith apparently roused no resentment among his own family.

Persecution being thus local and sporadic, and partly personal at times in its origin (arising out of such incidents as Magian resentment at the "apostasy" of the Agha Raqbokt), it could often be checked by personal influence. In at least one instance the reverence felt by all creeds for the personality of the Bishop Abraham brought about a cessation of persecution locally about the year 160; and another bishop, Abel, was particularly famous as a reconciler of disputes between heathens and Christians.

Occasionally Christians had to suffer, in common with all inhabitants of the country, from wars and tumults. The Arsacid Empire had never, it would seem, the strength. and organization of the Sassanid, and a weak central power meant, of course, a disturbed kingdom. Roman invasions made apparently little mark, or perhaps are regarded by our historians as part of the course of nature, like an occasional flood; and are therefore received as sign-posts by which to date a chronicle, rather than as causes for astonishment or complaint. Less regular invasions, however, are noted. Thus, during the second century, the descent of hordes of robbers "from the mountains of Kardu" is recorded, as if to show us that the Kurd of the period was still the turbulent fellow that Xenophon found him to be, and that he is to-day. A royal army had to be sent to put a stop to the inroad; and it was the good service rendered during the campaign by the Christian, Agha Raqbokt, that rendered it impossible for the Magians to proceed against him at the moment. It was his local knowledge that enabled the royalist general to extricate his army with credit from an awkward situation. Possibly the Magi might not have forgotten their quarrel, but the Agha was killed in action before the conclusion of the campaign.