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The Church
of the East (Syriac: ܥܕܬܐ ܕܡܕܢܚܐ ʿĒ(d)tāʾ d-Maḏn(ə)ḥāʾ),
also known as the Nestorian Church,[note 1]
is a Christian
church within the Syriac tradition of Eastern Christianity. It was the Christian
church of the Sasanian Empire, and quickly spread widely through Asia. Between the 9th
and 14th centuries it was the world's largest Christian church in terms of
geographical extent, with dioceses stretching from
the Mediterranean Sea to China and India. Several
modern churches claim continuity with the historical Church of the East.
Christ
pantocrator mosaic, Hagia Sophia , 12th century
The
Church of the East was founded in Parthian- and Sasanian-ruled Assyria (Athura/Assuristan)
between the 1st and 3rd centuries AD, and its original members in Upper
Mesopotamia, the north eastern Levant and south
eastern Anatolia
are regarded as ethnic Assyrians, descendant from the people of ancient
Assyria[1][2][3][4]
however the church itself did not specifically use the prefix Assyrian until
later times.
The
Church of the East was headed by the Patriarch of the East,
continuing a line that, according to tradition, stretched back to the Apostolic
Age. Liturgically, the church adhered to the East
Syrian Rite, and theologically, it adopted the doctrine of Nestorianism,
which emphasizes the distinctness of the divine
and human natures of Jesus. This doctrine and its namesake, Nestorius
(386–451), were condemned by the Council of Ephesus in 431, leading to the Nestorian
Schism and a subsequent exodus of Nestorius' supporters to Sasanian Persia.
The existing Christians in Persia welcomed these refugees and gradually adopted
Nestorian doctrine by the 5th century, leading the Church of Persia to be known
alternately as the Nestorian Church.
Nestorian
priests in a procession on Palm Sunday, in a 7th- or 8th-century wall painting
from a Nestorian church in Tang China
The
church grew rapidly under the Sasanians, and following the Muslim conquest of Persia (633-654) it
was designated as a protected dhimmi community under Arab Muslim rule. From the 6th century
it expanded greatly, establishing communities in India (the Saint Thomas 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. In the 13th and 14th centuries the
church experienced a final period of expansion under the Mongol
Empire, where influential Nestorian Christians sat in the Mongol court.
From
its peak of geographical extent, the church experienced a rapid period of decline
starting in the 14th century, due in large part to outside influences. The
Mongol Empire dissolved into civil war, 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
Mongol leader Timur
(1336–1405) nearly eradicated the remaining Christians in Mesopotamia;
thereafter, Nestorian Christianity remained largely confined to the Eastern
Aramaic speaking Assyrian homeland in Upper
Mesopotamia, and to the Malabar
Coast of India. In the 16th century, the Church of the East underwent a
schism from which three distinct churches eventually emerged: the modern Assyrian Church of the East a direct
continuation of the Church of the East,, the Ancient Church of the East (which split
from the former over reforms such as the use of the Gregorian Calendar), and
the Chaldean Catholic Church, an Eastern Catholic Church in communion with
the Holy See
which split from the Assyrian church between the late 16th and late 17th
centuries AD.
Christological
spectrum during the 5th–7th centuries showing the views of The Church of the
East (light blue)
Organization
and structure
The
Church of the East was headed by the Patriarch of the East, an office that
traces its origin to the Apostolic Age. The head of the church also bears the
title "Catholicos". Like the churches from which it
developed, the Church of the East has an ordained clergy
divided into the three traditional orders of deacon, priest (or presbyter),
and bishop.
Also like other churches, it has an episcopal
polity: organization by dioceses, each headed by a bishop and made up of several
individual parish
communities overseen by priests. Dioceses are organized into provinces under the authority of a metropolitan bishop. The office of metropolitan
bishop is an important one, and comes with additional duties and powers;
canonically, only metropolitans can consecrate
a patriarch.[5]
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 its Eastern
Aramaic - speaking heartland in Assyria and Upper
Mesopotamia, southeastern Anatolia, and northwestern Iran and an increasing
number of Exterior Provinces elsewhere. Most of these latter were located
farther afield within the territory of the Sasanian Empire (and later the
Caliphate), but very early on, provinces formed beyond the empire's borders as
well. By the 10th century, the church had between 20[6]
and 30 metropolitan provinces[7][8]
including in China and India.[6]
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, Tangut and Katai and Ong.[7]
Ecclesiastical
provinces of the Church of the East in 10th century
Nestorianism
The
Church of the East became associated with Nestorianism,
a Christological
doctrine attributed to Nestorius, Patriarch of Constantinople from 428 –
431 AD, which emphasizes the disunion between the human and divine natures of Jesus.[9]
Nestorius's
doctrine represented the culmination of a philosophical current developed by
scholars at the School of Antioch, most notably Nestorius's
mentor Theodore of Mopsuestia. This became a source
of controversy when Nestorius publicly challenged usage of the title Theotokos
(literally, "Bearer of God") for the Virgin
Mary.[10]
He suggested that the title denied Christ's full humanity, arguing instead 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. These statements drew
criticism from other prominent churchmen, particularly from Cyril, Patriarch of Alexandria, leading to the First Council of Ephesus in 431, which
condemned Nestorius for heresy and deposed him as patriarch.[11]
Nestorianism was officially anathematized, a ruling reiterated at the Council of Chalcedon in 451. However, a number
of churches, particularly those associated with the School
of Edessa in Assyria and northern Mesopotamia, supported Nestorius—though
not necessarily the doctrine ascribed to him—and broke with the churches of the
Roman and Byzantine Empires. Many of Nestorius' supporters relocated to
Sasanian Persia.[6][12]
These events are known as the Nestorian
Schism.
Church
of the East and its largest extent during the Middle Ages.
Although
the "Nestorian" label was initially a theological one, applied to
followers of the Nestorian doctrine, it was soon applied to all associated East
Syrian Rite churches with little regard for theological consideration.
While often used disparagingly in the West to emphasize the Church of the
East's connections to a heretical doctrine, many writers of the Middle Ages and
since have simply used the label descriptively, as a neutral and conventional
term for the church.[7]
Other names for the church include "Persian Church",
"Syriac" or "Syrian" (often distinguished as East Syriac/Syrian),[7]
and "Assyrian".[7]
In
modern times some scholars have sought to avoid the Nestorian label, preferring
"Church of the East" or one of the other alternatives. This is due
both to the term's derogatory connotations, and because it implies a stronger
connection to Nestorian doctrine than may have historically existed. As Wilhelm
Baum and Dietmar W. Winkler said, "Nestorius himself was no
Nestorian" in terms of doctrine.[13]
Even from the beginning, not all churches called "Nestorian" adhered
to the Nestorian doctrine; in China, it has been noted that none of the various
sources for the local Nestorian church refer to Christ as having two natures.
As such, in 2006 an academic conference changed its name from "Research on
Nestorianism in China", explaining in the Preface, "...it was decided
not to keep the term "Nestorianism" in the title of the future
conferences and the present book, but to use the term Church of the East, which
is correct and wide enough to cover the whole field of the research."[14]
The Nestorian
Stele, created in 781, describes the introduction of Nestorian Christianity
to China
The
2000 work, The Ecclesiastical Organisation of the Church of the East, 1318–1913,
offers an explanation in the first chapter:
The
terminology used in this study deserves a word of explanation. Until recently
the Church of the East was usually called the 'Nestorian' church, and East
Syrian Christians were either 'Nestorians' or (after the schism of 1552) by the
ethnic and geographic misnomer 'Chaldeans'. During the period covered in this
study, 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 (including Abdisho of Nisibis in 1318, the Mosul patriarch Eliya X Yohannan Marogin
in 1672, and the Qudshanis patriarch Shem'on XVII Abraham in
1842), and as a neutral and convenient descriptive term by others. Nowadays it
is generally felt that the term carries a stigma, and students of the Church of
the East are advised to avoid its use. In this thesis the theologically neutral
adjective 'East Syrian' has been used wherever possible, and the term
'traditionalist' to distinguish the non-Catholic branch of the Church of the
East after the schism of 1552. The modern term 'Assyrian', often used in the
same sense, was unknown in a theological sense for most of the period covered
in this study, and has been avoided.[7]
The
church was formed in Parthian- and Sasanian-ruled Assyria (Athura/Assuristan)
and many of its original members in Upper
Mesopotamia and south eastern Anatolia had
since ancient times been described by both themselves and neighbouring peoples
as Assyrians,[15][16] however
the church itself did not specifically use the prefix Assyrian until later
times.
The Assyrian Church of the East has shunned
the "Nestorian" label in recent times. The church's former head,
Catholicos-Patriarch Mar Dinkha IV, explicitly rejected the term on the
occasion of his consecration in 1976.[17]
Mongol
tribes that adopted Syriac Christianity ca. 600 - 1400
Scriptures
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 could have been done separately for different texts, and the
whole work was probably done by the second century.
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.
Mar
Elias (Eliya), the Nestorian bishop of the Urmia plain village of Geogtapa,
c.1831 .The image comes from Justin Perkins, 'A Residence of Eight Years in
Persia among the Nestorians, with Notes of the Mohammedans' (Andover, 1843)
Early
history
Parthian
and Sasanian periods
Christians
were already forming communities in Assyria (Athura) as early
as the first century, when it was part of the Parthian
Empire, a period which saw the Assyrians gain much autonomy and even
independence in the form of a number of Neo-Assyrian
states, such as Adiabene, Osroene, Assur, Beth Garmai and Beth
Nuhadra[18].
By the late third century, the area and its patchwork of states had been
conquered by the Persian Sasanian Empire (becoming the province of Assuristan),
and there were significant Christian communities in northern Mesopotamia, Elam, and Fars.[19]
The Church of the East traced its origins ultimately to the evangelical activity
of the apostles Addai,
Mari
and Thomas, but leadership and structure was
disorganized until the establishment of the diocese of Seleucia-Ctesiphon, the
bishop of which came to be recognized as Catholicos,
or universal leader, of the church. This position received an additional title
later, Patriarch of the East.[20]
These
early Christian communities in Assyria, Elam and Fars were reinforced in the
fourth and fifth centuries by large-scale deportations of eastern Christians
from the eastern Roman Empire.[21]
However, the Church faced several severe persecutions, notably during the reign
of Shapur
II (339–79), from the ethnically Persian Zoroastrian
majority who accused it of Roman leanings.[22]
The church grew considerably during the Sasanian period, but the pressure of
persecution led to the Persian Church declaring itself independent of all other
Christian churches in 424.[6]
Meanwhile,
in the Roman Empire, the Nestorian
Schism had led many of Nestorius' supporters to relocate to the Persian
Empire. The Persian Church increasingly aligned itself with the Nestorian
schismatics, a measure encouraged by the Zoroastrian ruling class. The church
became increasingly Nestorian in doctrine over the next decades, furthering the
divide between Roman and Eastern Christianity. In 486 the Metropolitan of Nisibis, Barsauma,
publicly accepted Nestorius' mentor, Theodore of Mopsuestia, as a spiritual authority.
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 Persian
Empire. The Church of the East patriarch Mar Babai
I (497–502) reiterated and expanded upon his predecessors' esteem for
Theodore, solidifying the church's adoption of Nestorianism.[6]
Epitaph
of a Nestorian, unearthed at Chifeng, Inner
Mongolia
Now
firmly established in the Persian Empire, with centers in Nisibis, Ctesiphon,
and Gundeshapur,
and several metropolitan sees, the Church of the East began to
branch out beyond the Persian 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 Roman-Persian conflict led to a
renewed persecution of the church by the Sasanid King Khosrau I;
this ended in 545. The church survived these trials under the guidance of
Patriarch Mar
Abba I, who had converted to Christianity from Zoroastrianism.[6]
By
the end of the 5th century and the middle of the 6th, the area occupied by
Nestorians included "all the countries to the east and those immediately
to the west of the Euphrates", including Persia, Egypt, Syria, Arabia, Socotra, Mesopotamia
(Assyria and Babylonia), Media, Bactria, Hyrcania, and India; and possibly
also to places called Calliana, Male, and Sielediva (Ceylon).[23]
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.[23]
Nestorian
Christianity 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
After
the Sasanian Empire was conquered by Muslim Arabs in 644,
Assuristan was dissolved, and 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.
Nestorians were not permitted to proselytize
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 Tartar tribes.
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.[24]
The
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.[25]
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.[6]
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.[26]
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.[27][28]
Expansion
The
Church of the East had a vigorous corps of missionaries, who proceeded eastward
from their base in Persia, having particular success in India, among the
Mongols, and reaching as far as China and Korea.
India
Main
articles: Saint Thomas Christians and India (East Syrian
Ecclesiastical Province)
The Saint Thomas Christian community of Kerala, India, who
trace their origins to the evangelism of Thomas the Apostle, had a long connection with
the Church of the East. The earliest known organized Christian presence in
Kerala dates to the 3rd century, when Nestorian Christian settlers and
missionaries from Persia settled in the region.[29]
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.[30]
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.[31]
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.[30]
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. The Portuguese at first
accepted the Nestorian sect, but by the end of the century they had determined
to actively bring the Saint Thomas Christians into full communion with Rome
under the Latin
Rite. They installed Portuguese bishops over the local sees and made
liturgical changes to accord with the Latin practice. In 1599 the Synod
of Diamper, overseen by Aleixo
de Menezes, Archbishop of Goa, led to a revolt among the
Saint Thomas Christians; 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
delegation of Carmelites headed by Chaldean
Catholics to re-establish the East Syrian rites under an Eastern Catholic hierarchy; by the next
year, 84 of the 116 communities returned, forming the Syro-Malabar Catholic Church. The
rest, which became known as the Malankara
Church, soon entered into communion with the Syriac Orthodox Church; from the Malankara
Church has also come the Syro-Malankara Catholic Church.
(Assyrian
Church of the East site found in China), A niche in a stone wall with a
cross carved above it has now been verified by experts as a repository for the
ashes and bones of Christians. The experts also confirmed that this is the
earliest Nestorian burial place discovered so far in China. Wednesday, February 5, 2014. http://byztex.blogspot.com
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.[32][33]
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 the metropolitan Adam, the bishop Yohannan, the 'country-bishops'
Yazdbuzid and Sargis and the archdeacons Gigoi of Khumdan (Chang'an)
and Gabriel of Sarag (Loyang). The names of around seventy monks are also
listed.[34]
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 it 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).[35]
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
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.[36] 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-conquered 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 extent. 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 recognizable Nestorian
presence at the Holy Sepulchre from the 1348 through 1575, as
contemporary Franciscan accounts indicate.[37]
At Famagusta,
Cyprus, a Nestorian community was established just before 1300, and a church
was built for them ca.1339.[38]
Schism
and later history
Collapse
of the exterior provinces
The
'exterior provinces' of the Church of the East, with the important exception of
India, collapsed during the second half of the fourteenth century. Although
little is known of the circumstances of the demise of the Nestorian dioceses in
Central Asia (which may never have fully recovered from the destruction caused
by the Mongols a century earlier), it was probably due to a combination of
persecution, disease, and isolation.
The
blame for the destruction of the Nestorian communities east of northern Iraq
has often been thrown upon the Turco-Mongol leader Tamerlane,
whose campaigns during the 1390s spread havoc throughout Persia and Central
Asia, but in many parts of Central Asia, Christianity had died out decades
before Tamerlane'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.
At
the end of the 19th century, tombstones in two East Syrian cemeteries were
discovered and dated in Mongolia. They dated from 1342, and several
commemorated deaths during a Black Death in 1338. In China, the last references to
Nestorian and Latin Christians date from the 1350s. It is likely that all
foreign Christians were expelled from China soon after the revolution of 1368,
which replaced the Mongol Yuan dynasty with the xenophobic Ming dynasty.
By
the 15th century, Nestorian Christianity was largely confined to the Eastern
Aramaic speaking Assyrian communities of northern Mesopotamia, in
and around the rough triangle formed by Mosul and Lakes Van
and Urmia,
the same general region where the Church of the East had first emerged between
the 1st and 3rd centuries AD.[39]
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.[40]
Schism
of 1552
Around
the middle of the fifteenth century the 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.[41]
The patriarch Shemʿon VII Ishoʿyahb (1539–58) caused great
offense at the beginning of his reign by designating his twelve-year-old nephew
Khnanishoʿ as his successor, presumably because no older relatives were
available.[42]
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 VII (1558–91).[43]
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, electing a monk named Yohannan Sulaqa, the superior of Rabban Hormizd Monastery near the Assyrian
town of Alqosh.[44]
However, no bishop of metropolitan rank was available to consecrate him, as
canonically required. Franciscan missionaries were already at work among the
Nestorians, and they persuaded Sulaqa's supporters to legitimize their position
by seeking their candidate's consecration by Pope
Julius III (1550–5).[45]
Sulaqa
went to Rome to put his case in person. At Rome he made a satisfactory Catholic
profession of faith and presented a letter, drafted by his supporters in Mosul, which set out
his claims to be recognized as patriarch. On April 9, having satisfied the
Vatican that he was a good Catholic, Sulaqa was consecrated bishop and
archbishop in the basilica of Saint Peter. On April 28 he was recognized as
"patriarch of Athura and Mosul" by pope Julius III in the bull Divina
disponente clementia and received the pallium from the pope's hands at a secret
consistory in the Vatican. These events, which marked the birth of the Chaldean Catholic Church, created a
permanent schism in the Church of the East.[45]
Sulaqa
was consecrated "patriarch of Athura and Mosul" in Rome in April 1553
and returned to northern Mesopotamia towards the end of the same year.[44]
In December 1553 he obtained documents from the Ottoman authorities recognizing
him as an independent "Chaldean" patriarch, and in 1554, during a
stay of five months in Amid, consecrated five metropolitan bishops (for the
dioceses of Gazarta,
Hesna d'Kifa, Amid, Mardin and Seert). Shemʿon VII
Ishoʿyahb responded by consecrating two more underage members of the
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.[44]
Photograph
of the residence of Mar Shimon (Simon) in Qudshanis in the mountainous remote
region of Hakkari in S.E. Turkey, taken by a British Missionary in 1904.
Sees
in Qochanis, Amid, and Alqosh
The
connections with Rome loosened up under Shimun VIII Sulaqa's successors, who
all used the patriarchal name Shimun. The last patriarch to be formally
recognized by the Pope died in the 1600, and the heredity of the office was
reintroduced, and thus by 1660 the Church of the East had become divided into
two patriarchates, the Eliya line in Alqosh (which
comprised those who had not entered into Communion with Rome) and the Shimun
line. In 1672 the Patriarch of the Shimun line, Mar Shimun XIII Denha, moved
his seat to the Assyrian village of Qochanis in
the mountains of Hakkari.[46]
In 1692 he formally broke communion with Rome and he allegedly resumed
relations with the line at Alqosh.
In
the Western regions, a new start for the so-called Chaldean Patriarchate began
in 1672 when Mar Joseph I, then the metropolitan of Amid, entered in communion
with Rome, separating from the Patriarchal see of Alqosh. In 1681 the Holy See
granted him the title of "Patriarch of the
Chaldeans deprived of its patriarch" as leader of the Assyrian people
who stayed in communion with Rome, and thus forming the third patriarchate of
the Church of the East.
Josephite
line of Amid
All
Joseph I's successors took the name of 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. Nevertheless, its influence expanded from the original towns of Amid and Mardin toward the
area of Mosul,
where they relocated the see.
Yohannan
Hormizd, the last in the Eliya hereditary line in Alqosh, made a Catholic
profession of faith in 1780. He entered full
communion with the Roman see in 1804, but he was recognized as Patriarch by
the Pope only in 1830. This merged the majority of the Patriarchate of Alqosh with
the Josephite line of Amid, thus forming the modern Chaldean Catholic Church.
The Shimun
line of patriarchs at Qochanis, which extended mainly in the Northern
mountains, remained independent of the Chaldean Church, and the patriarchate of
the present-day Assyrian Church of the East, now
located in Chicago,
Illinois,
forms the continuation of this line.[46]
20th
century
The Assyrian Church of the East faced a
further split in 1898, when a bishop and a number of followers from the Urmia area in Iran
entered communion with the Russian Orthodox Church, and again in 1964 when
some traditionalists responded to ecclesiastical reforms brought on by
Patriarch Mar Eshai Shimun XXIII (1908–1975) by
forming the independent Ancient Church of the East.
Today
the Assyrian Church has about 170,000 members, mostly living in Iran, Iraq, and Syria.[6]
The Patriarchate of the Assyrian Church of the East is in exile in Chicago, and
that of the Ancient Church of the East is in Baghdad.
In
the Common
Christological Declaration between the Catholic Church and the Assyrian Church
of the East in 1994, the two churches recognized the legitimacy and
rightness of each other's titles for Mary.[47]
In
2015, Chaldean Catholic Patriarch Louis Raphael I Sako proposed unifying the
three modern Patriarchates into a re-established Church of the East.[48]