AN INTRODUCTION

TO THE

HISTORY OF THE

ASSYRIAN CHURCH

OR

THE CHURCH OF THE

SASSANID PERSIAN EMPIRE

100-640 A.D.

BY

W.A. WIGRAM, M.A., D.D.

Published 1909 A.D.

Assyrian International News Agency
Books Online
www.aina.org

TO

BENYAMIN MAR SHIMUN,

PRESENT "HOLDER OF THE THRONE OF MAR ADAI"

AND

PATRIARCH OF THE "ASSYRIAN^" CHURCH

I DEDICATE THIS

RECORD OF THE WORK OF HIS SPIRITUAL ANCESTORS

PREFACE

This essay is an attempt at the filling of what appeared to the writer to be a distinct void in English ecclesiastical histories; and to give some account of a branch of the Church unknown to all except a very few students, during the most critical and important period of its history.

No one can be more conscious than the writer how much his work has suffered and been handicapped from the circumstances of its composition. The book was necessarily written away from any libraries except what was contained in the author's study; at a place where the procuring of any pamphlet required might take any time from six to twelve weeks; and where on one occasion the consultation of an authority implied waiting till a chance offered of making a laborious and dangerous journey of fourteen days' duration.

If it gains anything in vividness, and in grasp of the difficulties of those of whom it treats, from the fact that it was written among their modern descendants, whose circumstances have changed but little during the course of ages--this may be one compensation among many disadvantages.

The writer has throughout used for the Church in question the name "Assyrian." There is no historical authority for this name; but the various appellations given to the body by various writers ("Easterns," Persians, Syrians, Chaldeans, Nestorians) are all, for various reasons, misleading to the English reader.

To the ordinary English Churchman of today "the Eastern Church" is the Church to the east of him-viz. the Greek Orthodox; the Church of the old "Eastern Roman Empire," of Constantinople, with her great daughter, the Russian Church. The name "Eastern," however, as applied by those Greeks, meant the Church to the east of them-beyond the oriental frontier of the Roman Empire.

To speak of "the Persian Church" is to do as much violence to ancient facts, as to speak to-day of "the Turkish Church" (meaning thereby some one Christian melet in the Ottoman Empire) is to disregard modern facts.

"Syrian," to an Englishman, does not mean "a Syriac-speaking man"; but a man of that district between Antioch and the Euphrates where Syriac was the vernacular once, but which is Arabic speaking to-day, and which was never the country of the "Assyrian" Church. "Chaldaean" would suit admirably; but it is put out of court by the fact that in modern use it means only those members of the Church in question who have abandoned their old fold for the Roman obedience: and "Nestorian" has a theological significance which is not justified. Thus it seemed better to discard all these, and to adopt a name which has at least the merit of familiarity to most friends of the Church to-day.

The representation of the Syriac problem of men and places in English, presents a problem almost as incapable of ideal solution as that of finding a name for the Church; and we make no claim to consistency in our practice. As a rule we have transliterated; marking compounds by a hyphen which has no existence in Syriac (e.g. Ishu-yahb). But where the name has a western version (Greek or biblical), which for any reason is familiar to the western reader, we have employed it.¹ Few English readers would recognize in "Khizgi'il" the familiar "Ezekiel"; and though most students of Church history have a bowing acquaintance with Ibas of Edessa, how many would understand who was meant by "Yahba"? Greek versions are usually barbarous etymologically; and their historians are not even consistent-who without special study can recognize Cyrus and Chosroes as the same name? But at least they are familiar and are more euphonious than most Syriac names in English letters.

Van,

Turkey in Asia, 1909.

SYNCHRONISTIC TABLE

Date	Assyrian Patriarch	Persian King	Roman Emperor
309	Papa	Sapor II	Constantine
328	Shimun bar Saba'i
337			Constantius
340	Shah-dolt
346	Bar B'ashmin
347	(vacancy)
361			Julian
363			Jovian
364			Valens
379		Ardashir II	Theodosius 1
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		Kubad (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

LIST OF AUTHORITIES

Among other books consulted, the following are the most important:

Labourt, Christianisme dans l'empire perse.
Chabot, kole de Nisibe, son hisloire et ses statuts.
Duval, Histoire d'Edesse.
Coussen, Martyrius-Sahdona: Leben and Werke.
Chabot, De S. Isaaco Ninevita.
Hoffmann, Syrische Martyrer.
Hefele, Councils.
Bethune-Baker, Nestorius and his Teaching.
Rawlinson, Seventh Oriental Monarchy.
Christiensen, L'Empire des Sassanides.
Bury, Later Roman Empire.
Gibbon.
Ceiseler, Ecclesiastical Hist.

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 regarded 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 Achaemenid 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,² 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 Achaemenid 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 5oo 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 "Chaldaean 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,"³ 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 Osrhoene 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.⁴ When the Edessene Church vas 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,"⁵ the traditional evangelist of India. Modern writers, and particularly Westphai 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-Hebraeus 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 3oo, 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 medieval historians⁶ 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 Al. Labourt laments. This is the History of the Bishops of Adiabene (Khaydab), 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.⁷

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. 104.⁸ 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 Ajar 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 io4.

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 "Aramaean 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 Adiabene, 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 Atari as its founders.⁹

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?¹⁰ 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,¹¹ 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.

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 l00 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, to 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 melet¹² 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 formulae 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.¹³

Both in Mesopotamia and in Asia Minor, as probably in Egypt (thou h not in Persia), the old faiths were outworn. Fence 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. Judaea; 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,¹⁴ 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,¹⁵ 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,¹⁶ 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 rayat. When the agent of persecution is specified at all, it is always the Mobeds, or members of the Magian clan.¹⁷ 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.¹⁸

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 ¹ (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,¹⁹ 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"²⁰ 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 today. 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.

A little later, about 190,²¹ a rebellion of Persians in Khorassan foreshadowed their return to power a generation later. The rebellion was put down by Valges IV, not without difficulty; and Narses, King of Adiabene, who was apparently a Persian sympathizer, paid the penalty of his treason by being drowned in the Zab. His country was plundered as punishment for the crime of its king, and all creeds suffered alike.

These, however, are but the ordinary troubles of an oriental kingdom; and on the whole it will be seen that under the Arsacids Christianity had a fair field, and came as near to complete toleration as was possible at the time. Hence it spread rapidly; particularly during the long and peaceful episcopate of Abd-Mshikha (190-225). Many churches were then built; and even we are told-monasteries founded, though this must surely be an anticipation of later events.²² Bishoprics must certainly have multiplied steadily, though Mshikha-Zca, our sole reliable authority for this period, gives only the history of Adiabene, and the succession only of the Bishops of Arbela. The date of the foundation of other sees outside the province does not concern him; and it is only when he reaches the year 225 that he informs us that the Church, after a century and a quarter of existence, had more than twenty bishops, and gives us a list of eighteen sees. As none of these are bishoprics which were afterwards included in the jurisdiction of Arbela, when the bishop of that see was recognized as Metropolitan at a council held in 410,²³ it is probable that Arbela was for these early centuries the only episcopal seat in Adiabene.

Thus the Church continued in peace, till, in the year 225,the rule of the Parthians gave way to that of the Persians; a fact that Mshikha-Zca mentions with somewhat less of interest than that shown by the ordinary English writer in a general election.

The advent of the Sassanians produced no very conspicuous change, at first, in the attitude of the governing body towards the Church. or local appeared by the side of the governors, and these might, on emergency, show themselves almost equal to the civil authority in power. Fire-temples sprang up generally,²⁴ perhaps in the place of idol fanes; but the fact that in Persia, for instance, the "Zoroastrian mounds" which marls the sites of fire-temples are conspicuous local features, while in Assyria they are unknown,²⁵ shows plainly enough where the cult was national, and where it was exotic.

These were the only formal changes^.; but in spirit things were considerably altered, though this would, of course, only show after the lapse of some years. Magianism, as a religion, now received all the prestige that "establishment" could give it; and while Christianity and paganism continued to be tolerated, proselytism from them to the State faith was encouraged and facilitated, while then, or soon after, it became recognized as a law of the State that to win a convert from Zoroastrianism to Christianity was a crime punishable with death for both teacher and disciple. Further, a Christian, though his right to continue in the faith of his fathers was recognized, took, as Christian, an inferior position; and every one knew that, under ordinary circumstances, the abandonment of his religion meant the greatest possible improvement in his worldly prospects. Christianity, in short, was made to take the position which it occupies still in those lands. It was recognized, but as the religion of an inferior race: and that influence was set to work which has ever since continued to act, in spite of many changes of rulers and of ruling faiths; and which has always tended to draw, not indeed the highest or the lowest, but, in a worldly sense, the most manly souls from the Church to another faith.

A saintly soul's service to his Master may be only the higher and purer for the humiliation that the service imposes on him. A man of inferior type may accept the position into which he has been born; and by striving "to do the best for himself" in it, may develop in a few generations into the supple and often cringing and deceitful person, whom we know as the Levantine of to-day-an instrument, that is, whom his soldier master of the ruling race uses for his convenience, and whom he despises. a youth of fire and ambition, with no more than the average young man's realization of things unseen and spiritual, is always tempted, under these circumstances, to find a career for himself where he will not be exposed to the constant fret of knowing himself undeservedly despised; and to find it either by abandoning the faith which for him spells humiliation, or the land whose laws impose it on the faith. Apostasy, indeed, except under actual stress of persecution, was and is a great rarity. Hereditary attachment to the faith of his fathers is an instinct rather than a habit with the oriental. And it is no mean testimony to her power that the Christian Church should, on the whole, be able to hold her own children under this constant temptation to leave her. All the same, through the ages the tendency of the dominant faith has been to draw away from Christianity, or from service to their own Church, those best worth perfecting. Islam has in this been only the heir of Zoroastrianism: both have taken throughout the centuries a "Janissary-tribute," not from the lives only, but also from the souls and characters of the Christian races subject to them.

CHAPTER III

THE EPISCOPATE OF PAPA

RAPID and strong. though the growth of the Church had been elsewhere, there was one conspicuous exception to the rule of progress. The capital city, Seleucia-Ctesiphon, for some reason difficult to explain, was a spot where Christianity did not take root in early centuries. The author of the Acta S. Maris shows that he was aware of this, by his declaration that his hero was so discouraged by the incurably vicious and frivolous character of the inhabitants of the place, that he actually demanded his recall from his superiors at Edessa; a statement that shows the saint as somewhat easily cast down by one check following on a series of magnificent successes, and which is probably more true to historic fact than the said successes.²⁶ It is true that he covers up Mari's defeat by assigning a whole series of miracles to the saint's later ministry in the neighbourhood; but in spite of this his account gives a general impression of agreement with the express statement of hlshikha-Zca,²⁷ that Christianity could not establish itself in any strength at the capital for some considerable time.

As late as 270 Shakhlupa of Arbela, visiting the place, found only "a few Christians" there, worshipping probably in the Church which Mari is represented as establishing in a ruined temple; and he ordained a priest for them, staying for a year ill the city. This example was followed, a few years later, by his successor, Akha d'abuh'.²⁸ It was probably a vague recollection of indebtedness to these two bishops that led to the inclusion of their names in the lists made by mediaeval chroniclers in later days, when it was judged necessary to discover predecessors to Papa, who should fill the gap between him and Mari.

Later historians made Akha d'abuh' the hero of an episode of which writers nearer the time are conspicuously ignorant. Mari Ibn Sulieman, for instance (Bar-Hebraeus giving the same story in a shorter form), states that when Jacob, fourth Catholicos, was dying in the year 190, he specially ordered the sending of two of his disciples, Akha d'abuh' and Qam-Ishu, to Antioch, in order that one of them might be consecrated Catholicos by the patriarch there. On arrival, however, the unlucky Qam-Ishu was seized as a Persian spy and crucified; Sliba, Bishop of Antioch, sharing his fate. His companion was smuggled out of the city and sent to Jerusalem for consecration, whence he returned to the East with a letter from all four Western patriarchs declaring that (to avoid a recurrence of such misfortune) the Church of the East should in future elect its own patriarch without reference to Antioch, and that that prelate should take rank with the other four great sees of Christendom. Once elected, he was to be superior to all judgment of his suffragans, or of any human power except the King, when God should grant a Christian King in the East. Even if he should fall into open vice no bishops could pass sentence on him, but "differatur judicium ejus ad adventum Christi Domini nostri."²⁹ The story is clearly fictitious, considered as evidence of the origin of the independence of the Eastern patriarchate. The absolute ignorance of it shown not only by the biographer of Akha d'abuh' and the contemporaries of Papa, but also by the bishops assembled in council at the time of Dad-Ishu³⁰ (when its production would have been eminently ad -rem), are enough to condemn it, even if the anachronisms³¹ of the Liber Turris did not betray a later hand. Of course it is possible that Akha d'abuh' may have had some personal adventures in Antioch., when he visited the place as a Persian soldier; but the whole Qam-Ishu episode belongs to the realm of romance, whither we unhesitatingly but regretfully dismiss it.

So far from Seleucia being recognized at this time as the seat of a patriarch equal in dignity to Rome or Antioch, it had not even a bishop of its own and was dependent on the ministrations of chance visitors. It was in no diocese, but was res nullius; and apparently any bishop available, or who happened to be in the capital on business of his own, performed any episcopal act that the small body of Christians there present required. We have record of such good offices being rendered by visiting prelates from Arbela and Susa--sees each of them at least ten days' journey away--and we may infer that similar visits were paid by bishops known to have been existing in the much nearer province of Garmistan.

Akha d'abuh' paid one of these visits during³² his episcopate of eighteen years, but was obliged to stay considerably longer than he had intended, as he seemingly felt bound in honour to remain in what became a post of considerable danger until the excitement produced by an episcopal indiscretion had fairly subsided. The Bishop of Arbela had been accompanied to Seleucia by two colleagues, Shabta of Bait Zabdai and Zca-Ishu of Kharbeth-Gelal. During their stay in the capital the former of these preached an unfortunately vivid sermon, which being reported to the Shah-in-shall by a non-Christian auditor very nearly produced a general persecution.

The worthy bishop, falling into the preacher's error of thinking that every one must take his statements in the sense that he intends, waxed eloquent over the victories--greater than any of those won by the "Great King"--that Christians could gain; and called on his hearers not to envy the Shah-in-Shah, seeing that in days to come he would be burning for ever with Satan while good Christians would be ruling in heaven. The sermon was no doubt stimulating for the congregation, but as reported to the King (probably Bahram III) it had a very different effect. He and his took it (to quote a modern parallel from a land where little changes, except the uniforms of the soldiers) much as Ottoman officials took an unfortunately literal translation of "Onward, Christian Soldiers," while the preacher on his part was as genuinely astonished at the misunderstanding, as were the American translators of the hymn.

It was no doubt startling for the "King_. of kings" to hear that his subjects were preparing great victories independently of him, and that a fiery furnace was in readiness to consume his own "divine" person! The only interpretation that suggested itself to him was that of a conspiracy of all Christians. And for a time it seemed more than likely that he would anticipate its outbreak by ordering a massacre of the "conspirators." The king was fairly frightened; and an oriental in such a case is apt to "take precautions" of a grim kind, for nobody can be so utterly merciless as an Eastern ruler in a panic. The danger could not be considered over for two years, and at the end of that time Akha d'abuh', naturally anxious to return to his own diocese, joined with the Bishop of Susa in giving a responsible head to the Church in the capital.³³ They chose and consecrated a man named Papa, who thus became the first bishop of Seleucia-Ctesiphon after the legendary Mari, and began a series of prelates whose representatives to this day continue to the same land.

It was in all probability this position of his, as first bishop after the traditional founder, that made the biographer of Mari assert³⁴--with a gay defiance of possible chronology-that the "Apostle" himself selected and consecrated Papa for Seleucia, and decreed that that see should ever hold the primacy in the Church of the East.

The date of the consecration of Papa was probably about 280.³⁵ Accordingly, we can hardly conclude that a picturesque incident related by Mari Ibn Sulieman actually happened in his day, though it is by no means an impossible thing in itself. The writer states that Demetrius, Bishop of Antioch, formed one of the immense horde of captives carried off by Sapor I when he raided Roman Asia in 258-259, after his capture of the Emperor Valerian. The bishop, with the other captives, was settled in Gondisapor; the great cite into which Sapor transformed the little village of Bait Lapat in Khuzistan. Here, refusing the office of Catholicos, which the chronicler declares that Papa offered to yield to him, he remained as pastor and bishop of his fellows of the captivity; and in compliment to the rank that he had held in the West, his new see was granted the position of first among the Metropolitans subject to Seleucia.

As Seleucia had no bishop at the time of the raid, and the metropolitical provinces of the East were not organized for 150 years after this date, the tradition must not be taken au pied de la lettre. Antioch, however, was almost depopulated by Sapor,³⁶ and thus it is likely enough that the bishop was among the captives; while the presence of many Christians among them, and the fact that they became an important element in the Church of the East, is amply attested by the Acta Sanctorum. Demetrius, however (if the name given in the Liber Turris be correct), must have been comfortably established as bishop in his new see, long before Papa was even consecrated.

One effect of the presence of this "captivity" must, of course, have been a strengthening of the bonds that united the Church of Persia to that of the Roman Empire: and some time after, and within Papa's episcopate (297), another political event repeated the process. After the defeat of parses by Galerius, the "Caesar" of the Emperor Diocletian, five "trans-Tigrene" provinces, of which Cordyene, Zabdicene and Arzenene were the chief,³⁷ were ceded to Rome by Persia; and the frontier of the empire was thus pushed forward, till it rested on both of the rivers called Khabor. These provinces contained many Christians, and at least two bishops (B. Zabdai and Arzun), who were thus made Roman subjects and brought more or less under the control of the patriarch of Antioch. On the retrocession of these provinces sixty-five years later, the returning bishops brought with them knowledge of such events as the council of Nicaea, of which (startling as the statement is) the Church of Persia seems to have been, in great measure, ignorant.

By the same peace Armenia was recognized as within the Roman "sphere of influence." This fact must have had important effects on the coming national conversion of that kingdom, which was brought about soon after the peace by that same Tiridates, King of Armenia, who had been the comrade of Galerius (afterwards the persecutor) in the war with Persia.

Papa was in many ways a remarkable character. A man of considerable learning both in Persian and Syriac literature, and of some power of statesmanship,³⁸ he was able to see that it was time for the unorganized episcopacy^, that had hitherto been the government of the Church of the East, to give place to an ordered subordination of all the bishops to one archbishop or catholicos; and he apparently bent all his energies to securing the acceptance of this change by his colleagues. Though temporarily defeated, he succeeded in his aim. The catholicate was established. The man who did most to hinder it in Papa's day succeeded unchallenged to the primacy whose establishment he had endeavoured to defeat; and the fact that Papa's work has existed ever since in Papa's Church, shows how thoroughly lie gauged the disposition and needs of his people.

If, however, his aims were lofty and statesmanlike, it appears that he lacked tact in executing them. The facts of history show him to have been ambitious, if not personally, at least for his see; probably overbearing and oppressive as a ruler, and certainly of a passionate and hot-tempered disposition.

All the circumstances in his day, in the West as well as in the East, were promoting the growth of metropolitical and patriarchal jurisdictions. Rome, Antioch, Alexandria, were each of them drawing the provinces round them under their sway; and the "customs," growing up thus informally, were to be regularized at Nima. A little later, Constantinople was also to show that the bishop of the capital of an empire must inevitably develop into a chief of bishops, if only from his position as the standing host of a stream of episcopal visitors. No historical insignificance in his see, no memories of apostolic preaching or residence in other centres, could prevent their mutual relations becoming those of patriarch and suffragan. Ecclesiastical convenience is apt to be stronger than ecclesiastical tradition.

All the facts that produced patriarchal jurisdiction elsewhere, tended to produce it also in the Church of the East; and another important fact, peculiar to its position, probably did as much as any one cause to elevate the Bishop of Seleucia into a Catholicos.

As bishop of the capital, in touch with the King, and (an even more important thing in the East) with the King's ministers, Papa was almost bound to become chief of those bishops who came to him for assistance in their business. They "had need of him, ad externa" as the chronicler puts it.³⁹ The patriarchal jurisdiction, here as at Constantinople, was a frank development, and could never claim apostolic origin or sanction with any seriousness.⁴⁰ If thus one throne acquired supremacy over others, it was simply because that arrangement was found to work best practically.

Further, Christians in Persia were a subject melet in an oriental empire; and such a melet always develops some one head. The ruler is usually willing enough to recognize a division, or several divisions, of his subjects; but he always demands some one responsible melet-bashi through whom he can deal with them, and they with him. The phenomenon is universal in both the Arab and Ottoman Empires. In the Sassanian Sapor II deals with the Bishop of Seleucia as the responsible head of his melet; and Isaac is put by Yezdegerd I in a position exactly parallel to that of the patriarch of any one of the many Christian Churches of today. We have no positive evidence that Papa had any dealings with the kings of his time; but it is at least probable that the influence that did so much to confirm the position of the Catholicos, helped also to establish it.⁴¹

Had Papa then held his hand, and allowed circumstances to work for him, it is probable that before the end of his life-especially as that life was destined to be a long one--he would have seen himself Catholicos, in fact if not in name, without friction. This, however, he could not do; on the contrary, he claimed supremacy, apparently in right of his position as bishop of the capital, and by so doing naturally roused odium.⁴² Further, as Catholicos, lie claimed to use discipline on certain bishops, who may or may not have deserved it,⁴³ and so made them ^-his enemies. He was also accused of oppression and tyranny in his own diocese; and the truth of this charge is rendered probable by the fact that his own clergy, under his Archdeacon Shimun bar Saba'i,⁴⁴ were among the principal opponents both of him and of his policy.⁴⁵ One suspects that there must have been good reason for opposition on their part to a line of action that tended so directly to their own exaltation in the Church. Charges of personal misconduct were also made, but these are simply "common form." One remembers how easily such charges were trumped up against an Athanastus; and in the East they are an ordinary feature of controversy. The opposition soon found episcopal leaders, and the first council in the history of the Church of the East met at Seleucia about 315⁴⁶ to investigate the matter.

The two leaders of the accusers in the council were Aqib-Alaha, Bishop of Karka d'Baith Slok, and Miles, the non-resident Bishop of Susa. Of the former we know little, save that on conversion he showed such zeal that he gave all his father's goods to feed the poor (a socialistic form of charity, of which there is more than one instance in the history of Eastern ascetics, and which always seems to have been regarded as an indubitable act of virtue); and that later he was a zealous and successful evangelist. The career of Miles is sufficiently characteristic to be worth sketching. Born in the land of Raziqai, the modern Teheran, lie was apparently a Zoroastrian by birth; but was converted while staying in Khuzistan, and was "led by the Spirit to the ascetic life." He became Bishop of Susa, and there began to show that combination of devotion, zeal, quarrelsomeness and restlessness, which make him so typical a son of his nation.

It did not take him long to quarrel with his diocese--"because they were utterly. given to idolatry and Magianism," says his biographer, though one would like to hear their side of the case also. Whatever the cause, he was stoned in the streets, and left the city in a rage, solemnly cursing it as he did so. The biographer is at some pains to tell us how destruction fell on the city, in accordance with the word of the holy man. After this, lie went wandering "to countries," much in the fashion that men of his race still do, equipped with the clothes he stood up in and a copy of the Gospels in a satchel. Neither traveller nor beggar ever starves in the East, and Miles arrived safely in Jerusalem; whence, "drawn by the fame of Ammonius,"⁴⁷ he descended to Egypt. Here a hermit, unnamed, received the wanderer; but very soon found, as his flock had done before, that the saint was no comfortable man to live with. In this case the casus belli was a tame snake of huge size that lived with the hermit (who apparently had not warned his guest of the fact), and that came in and disturbed the saint at prayers. Miles promptly destroyed it-miraculously, says his biographer and when the hermit not unnaturally protested at this treatment of his dumb friend, rebuked him severely for un-Christian conduct in making a pet of a creature between which and mankind Heaven had established enmity. The hermit left his rather difficult guest in sole possession of the cell, and went to seek another. Miles, however, soon abandoned it, and returned to the East by way of Nisibis; where he scented the quarrel with Papa from afar, and hastened to join in the fray. Though he had abandoned his own diocese he had this much of sympathy with it-that he would not see it made subordinate to another see that had once been more or less under its authority.

Feeling ran very high when the council met. Papa absolutely refused to submit to its authority, "exalting himself above the bishops who were assembled to judge him," though it is not clear on what he based this claim to supremacy. Perhaps he simply "would not receive" the council; much as a modern Assyrian often will declare, when angry, "I do not receive X. as my patriarch," and considers himself thereby freed from all obligation or obedience to the man named. Old Syrian writers reveal a state of mind, if not of circumstance, so exactly similar to that of their modern descendants, that one is often tempted to "fill up gaps" from modern knowledge.

Miles called the angry bishop to order. "Is it not written, lie that is chief among you, let him be a servant?" "You fool, don't I know that?" replied the Catholicos. "Then be judged by the Gospel, if you will not be judged by man," retorted Miles, and drawing his copy of the Gospel from his satchel lie placed it on a cushion in the midst. Papa, who was obviously in a furious rage, struck the book with his hand, exclaiming, "Then speak, Gospel, speak !"⁴⁸ This sacrilege roused the horror of friends and foes alike; but the fury of the old man then overcame him-struck with paralysis or apoplexy, he fell senseless in the council chamber, and we cannot wonder that all present felt that they had seen judgment fall on him from Heaven for his impiety. After such a portent the condemnation of the Catholicos followed as a matter of course. He was deposed from his rank; and his archdeacon, Shimun, consecrated in his room, unwilling though he apparently was to accept the honour. All accusations against Papa were taken as proved, and published as such. The supremacy of Seleucia over the Church of Persia seemed to have been strangled at birth. Papa, however, though defeated, was by no means a broken man. His stroke, whatever its nature, must have passed soon, at least as far as his mental powers were concerned, though apparently he never recovered the use of one arm.⁴⁹ He was resolved to recover his position, and with that object he laid his case before the "Western bishops." An Assyrian's ordinary course in such a case is to appeal to the Government, St. Paul's dictum about going to law with unbelievers being held in scant respect practically among them; and it is to Papa's credit that he refrained from this, and took a course more ecclesiastically correct. Possibly, too, the appeal to secular authority was barred to him, on account of the fact that the family interest of his archdeacon and rival, Shimun, stood very high with the guardian of the boy king, Sapor II.⁵⁰

The appeal of the Catholicos to the Western bishops was made, not to the Patriarch of Antioch, but to the Bishop of Edessa, S'ada.⁵¹ Neither then nor at any other time did the Church of the East regard Antioch as its mother or superior. Later tradition asserted, and in this case probably with truth, that the appeal went also to the famous James of Nisibis.⁵² It appears that the matter was put before the nearest Western bishops of eminence. The answer, whoever gave it, was definite enough, at least as quoted in a council held a century later. All the proceedings against Papa were annulled, the accusers were deposed from their orders, and only such members of the council as had acted in "their simplicity" were allowed to retain their rank. Shimun, as having been consecrated against his will, was to remain as archdeacon, "cum jure successionis."

According to another historian, however, the judgment of the Western fathers was not nearly so trenchant, and simply recommended a general reconciliation, on the ground that- submission to a patriarch was for the common advantage.⁵³ Certainly the decision, even if given as quoted, was not carried out. The only protagonists in the dispute of whom we know anything were not degraded. Miles and Aqib-Alaha retained their rank; and the only reason why the former did not resume his see was that lie preferred the work of wandering evangelist to that of diocesan bishop. Shimun was specially marked for promotion as a result of what he had done. The most probable explanation is, that all parties were a little ashamed of themselves and their actions, and were glad of a reconciliation on any, and preferably on indefinite, terms. It is with some regret that we find that the one man who resisted the reconciliation was Shimun. He refused to accept the advice of the Western bishops; was anxious to appeal to the Regent of the kingdom; and was only withheld from doing so by the flat refusal of his father, on whom his political power depended, to stir in the matter.

Ultimately all consented to let the matter drop, without attempting to reach too formal a settlement. Possibly it was expected that tension would soon be eased automatically, by the death of Papa; though, as a matter of fact, he seems to have lived for twelve years after this time. Shimun was reconciled by the prospect of the succession, and what else we know of his story gives us ground for hoping that higher motives also may have influenced him. Practically, the victory rested with Papa, who regained his see, and whose primacy among the bishops came to be accepted as a thing too practically useful to resist. All recognized that it was useless to argue against the law of gravitation, which had decreed that Seleucia should be the primary, round which all the planets of the system must revolve. Papa's ambition, says Mshikha-Zca, worked out to the advantage of the Church.

What remained of his long episcopate was peaceful, and about 327 he died,⁵⁴ having held his office for hard on fifty years-a length sufficient to be remarkable, even if it be less than the seventy or eighty which later historians assigned him. Shimun bar Saba'i took his place peacefully. B_y the irony of fate the man who had strained every nerve to prevent the establishment of the Catholicate of Seleucia, was destined, by his glorious death, to establish its prestige on an unshakable foundation.

CHAPTER IV

THE GREAT PERSECUTION OF SAPOR II

PAPA died about 328; and Shimun bar Saba'i succeeded him peacefully, and ruled, at all events for some years, with the prosperity that came from the royal favour. He was a persona grata at Court, and the young King Sapor (whose coming of age had approximately coincided with the accession of Shimun) apparently had a real personal liking for the bishop.⁵⁵

The great ecclesiastical events that were passing in the West no doubt excited interest in the Church of the East, as far as they were known; but though destined to affect its history most profoundly in time, they had little effect at the moment. The news of the conversion of the Roman Emperor, and of the Edict at Milan, would reach the East, probably, about the time of the council held against Papa. During his later years, and the earlier portion of his successor's episcopate, rumours of the gradual establishment of Christianity as the State religion, of the rise of the Arian heresy, and the assembly^, of the Great Council of Nicaea, must gradually have filtered through to the Christians of Persia.

That portion of the Church, however, had this piece of exceptional good fortune allowed it-that it (and it only, of all portions of the Church Catholic of the day) was absolutely untroubled by the Arian controversy. None of its bishops were present at Nicaea; and the doctrine of Arius was known to it only as an accursed thing to be repudiated.

This fact, the ignorance of a not unimportant Church of the greatest of all Church controversies, will bear some examination. First, the fact must be admitted, explain it as we may, that the "Assyrian" Church did know nothing officially of the Nicene Council at the time of its assembling. Not only is there no reference to it in any of the nearly contemporary documents that remain to us (for they, with one important exception, are acta martyrum where such reference might naturally not be found); but the one work of theology (properly so called) that remains to us from the period, is obviously the work of a man who had no knowledge of the council, or what was debated therein. The author in question, of course, is Afraat, the "Sage of Persia." Writing about fifteen years after the council (337-346) he uses expressions, and formulates a creed⁵⁶ in a fashion that one may fairly say would have been impossible to a man who had heard of the rights and wrongs of the great controversy that was then agitating "the West," no matter which side he took in it.

The Church of "the East" was not asked to accept Nicaea, or its doctrines, until eighty-five years later, when it frankly and fully accepted both the council and its creed. Individual bishops may have (must have)⁵⁷ known of the fact, but not the auto-cephalous Church as such.

The most probable explanation of the phenomenon is as follows. Constantine regarded the council as an "imperial affair." In the whole controversy, it was the peace of the Empire that he saw endangered, not the vital truth of Christianity; and the council was summoned to guard the first, by determining the second. Under these circumstances, it was natural that he should not summon bishops from outside the empire to settle a domestic matter. The Emperor was, of course, aware of the existence of the Church in Persia, and took an interest (too much interest, perhaps) in its fortunes; but in the matter of the council he seems to have regarded it as outside his purview. So the synod met, and the "Easterns" were not represented to it.

A few years elapsed, and the rise of the great persecution protected them (at a frightful cost) from the weary controversy that followed.

It is a fact, however, that one of the greatest of "Assyrian" saints, and the holder of one of the most important metropolitical sees of later "Assyrian" history, was undoubtedly present at Nicaea. James of Nisibis certainly, and Ephraim Syrus his deacon probably, were at the council; but they were there as representatives, not of a see in the Persian Empire, but of one in the Roman. It was not until 363 that Nisibis, hitherto the bulwark of the Roman frontier, was abandoned by Jovian to Persia, and a throne that had hitherto been (if in any patriarchate) in that of Antioch, fell naturally under that of Seleucia-Ctesiphon.⁵⁸

Incidentally we may_. note that it is a matter for profound thankfulness that so obstinate a heresy as Arianism should not have been allowed to find a national point d'appui in such a Church as that of the Persian Empire. Had it done so, the struggle in the eastern half of the Empire might have been prolonged indefinitely, and Teutonic Arianism have found that support for lack of which it sank and passed away.

In Persia, Sapor II, who had begun his life and reign together in 309, had come to his kingdom and won his spurs in his earlier wars against the Arabs, where he had shown both the vigour and the cruelty that marked his whole career. Now, lie was preparing to renew the long quarrel with Rome, and to demand, if not the whole Achaemenid Empire, at least the retrocession of the five lost frontier provinces ceded by Narses to Diocletian. Probably, however, the Persian hesitated at the thought of challenging Constantine "the Victorious," old though he now was. He certainly waited until the great ^-Emperor had passed away (though had his life been prolonged a few months Constantine might not have stayed to be attacked) and left a divided empire to sons weaker than himself. Then Sapor straightway attacked the weakest and nearest of the three.

During the twenty years previous to the war the fact of the definite Christianization of Rome had sunk into Persian consciousness; and this had a natural, but disastrous, "repercussion" on the position of the Church in Persia. While the Empire was pagan and persecuting, Christianity was regarded with no suspicion by the Government of the Shah-in-Shah. It was not the true faith, of course; and its adherents were regarded probably with some contempt; such. contempt as was the lot, for instance, of a Jew in Moorish Spain. Persecution existed, no doubt, but was sporadic at worst; being stirred up usually by some enthusiastic Mobed, and started by some act of "apostasy." But with the conversion of the Roman Emperor, all this was changed. Christians were thereafter -politically suspect, and from the Persian point of view naturally and properly suspect, as co-religionists and presumably sympathizers with Persia's enemy. It was inevitable that this should be so. The State establishment of Christianity was a good, if, not an unmixed good, for the Church in the empire; but the Church outside it had to pay the bill. In lands where religion and politics were, and still are, inextricably mingled, it was simply impossible that the Government official (whether Sassanid Persian or modern Ottoman) should not suspect those whose faith cut them off from the body politic, and linked them with its enemies. Whether the suspicion was just or not, is beside the point; to ask that it should not be entertained, was to ask too much of oriental human nature. In the collision of these two activities, political and religious-a disaster as inevitable and as hopeless as that brought on by "Nemesis" in a Greek tragedy-we have the key to much (perhaps one half) of the sadness of the history of Christianity in what we now call "the middle East." The natural suspicion of the governing class produces what one side calls "precautions"; and what the other calls "persecutions," if the date be 340, and "massacres" if the year be 1896. It produces, too, on the side of the Christians, constant efforts to hold fast their faith, and yet avoid persecution. The efforts may take the shape of the corporate adoption of a form of Christianity different from that in favour over the border⁵⁹ (an act which people in safety over that border complacently call "falling into heresy"); or the means of defence may be deceitfulness and slipperiness, which again those who have never been similarly tried loathe and despise. The problem has changed its form a little during the centuries, but it still remains essentially the same. Given a State professing a certain form of militant religion (it matters nothing whether its prophet be Zoroaster or Diahommed) how can loyalty to that State be reconciled with the profession of the religion of its rivals? How will those prosper, who are now making the latest, and not the least noble effort, at the solution of this secular problem?

Suspicion of the Christians who were Persian subjects was thus inevitable; and the Mobeds, at least, if no one else was available, were always ready to fan that suspicion into persecution, even if Christians on both sides of the frontier were careful to avoid giving cause for offence. Unhappily, this was not the case. Those in Persia undoubtedly gave cause for suspicion; they were restless under Magian rule when they saw Christianity triumphant in the West; and looked to the Roman Emperor as their deliverer, as naturally as, for instance, the Armenians under Turkish rule looked, at one time, to Russia.⁶⁰ Constantine, too, was no more averse to the post of general protector of all Christians than were some Czars. Theodoret quotes his letter to Sapor, and applauds him for his care for those of the true faith in Persia.⁶¹ The good bishop, safe in Cyrrhus, saw in the proceeding only a proof of the wonderful virtue of the Emperor. Perhaps it was so, but how did it look to Sapor? The interest of their would-be friends has not always been an unmixed blessing for the Christians of the "Oriental Empire," either in politics or in religion.

Mons. Labourt, noting these facts in his book,⁶² observes that "precautions" would have been justifiable enough, but "only the barbarity of the time can explain, not excuse, the pitiless repression that the King ordered." "Repressions" of the kind Sapor adopted are not of one age only; but are the "precautions" adopted by most oriental rulers under such circumstances, from Sapor's time to our own. Which side is most to blame? The writer has seen the problem from close at hand, and dare not judge the excesses of either side too harshly.

Thus, when once Sapor had started a war with Rome, it would have been almost a miracle if he had not also started a persecution of Christians; and when he returned to his palace after the first campaign, sore and angry at a humiliating repulse from Nisibis,⁶³ it was natural to turn furiously upon them and declare, "at least we will make these Roman sympathizers pay!" That Jews, Manichaeans, and Mobeds should have urged him to this course (as the biographer of Mar Shimun believed) is probable enough; but their influence was hardly necessary.⁶⁴

Thus the first "Firman" of persecution was issued, ordering all Christians to pay double taxes, expressly as a contribution to the cost of a war in which they were taking no share, the Catholicos being ordered to collect the same. The special order may have been a kind of test for Afar Shimun, but there was nothing unusual in the Government thus dealing with the melet through its recognized head. In any case Shimun refused to obey the order, on the double ground that his people were too poor, and that tax-collecting was no part of a bishop's business. On this it was easy to raise the cry, "he is a traitor and wishes to rebel"; and a second Firman was issued, ordering his arrest and the general destruction of all the Christian churches. Shimun was arrested at Seleucia, the Court being then at Karka d'Lidan (i.e. Susa), and in the leisurely fashion characteristic of Eastern justice, was allowed to collect his flock and to take a last farewell of them, before being conducted, with several colleagues, to what all foresaw would be his death. All gathered to receive the solemn blessing which a contemporary writer has preserved for us: "Alay the Cross of our Lord be the protection of the people of Jesus; the peace of God be with the servants of God, and stablish your hearts in the faith of Christ, in tribulation and in ease, in life and in death, now and for evermore."⁶⁵

The story of his martyrdom has been told by abler writers,⁶⁶ to whom we may refer for the moving tale of Shimun's interviews with the King; of the fall, penitence and triumph of Gusht-azad the eunuch; of the offer of freedom, both for himself and his melet, made to the Catholicos, if he would consent to adore the sun but once; and of the personal appeal of the King to him to yield, by the memory of their personal friendship. The last scene toot place outside Susa, on ,the morning of Good Friday, 339; when the Catholicos, five bishops, and about one hundred clergy sealed their testimony together, Shimun being the last to die. To him it AN-as given to die for both of the two noblest causes for which a man may lay down his life-for his faith in God, and for his duty to his people.

It is impossible to give any general account of the persecution which, thus inaugurated, raged over all Persia for fully forty years. The "Acts of Martyrs" indeed are abundant, and many of them are of the highest historic value, but they give on the whole a very confused impression.

Nothing, in the Last, goes in orderly legal fashion, according to Western ideas; and persecutions were not carried out in the regular Roman fashion. Further, a Firman is not so much a decree as a permission (the standing order being, "thou shalt do nothing at all"); and the result of the Firmans of persecution issued by Sapor was not the setting of the machinery of lacy in motion against a religio illicita, in Roman wise, but something that resembled much more closely the Armenian massacres of our own day, viz. the releasing of a race hatred and fanaticism normally held in check, to do its will upon its objects. The slaughter that followed was assisted frequently rather than regularly by the Government officials.

The grounds of this feeling are stated, and probably with fair correctness, to one of the series of Acta, as follows: "The Christians destroy our holy teaching, and teach men to serve one God, and not to honour the sun or fire. They teach them, too, to defile water by their ablutions; to refrain from marriage and the procreation of children; and to refuse to go out to war with the Shah-in-Shah. They have no scruple about the slaughter and eating of animals; they bury the corpses of men in the earth; and attribute the origin of snakes and creeping things to a good God. They despise many servants of the King, and teach witchcraft."⁶⁷

Summed up, these causes of offence amount to this. The Christians were men of different habit to the Zoroastrian, and therefore were hateful and despicable as the foreigner is to the Chinese to-day. Some of their customs (particularly the burial of the dead, and the growing habit of thinking celibacy the higher life) were specially abhorrent to 1llagians, to whose thinking it was man's primary duty to produce fresh servants for Hormizd, and to refrain from profaning Hormizd's earth. As usual, it was the accidents of the presentation of the Faith that made it hateful to men whose religious philosophy was by no means low; and "whose views of God, of the world, and of man, approach more nearly to the fulness of truth than anything else that heathen literature can show."⁶⁸

The correct Christian conception of celibacy, as a thing higher per se than marriage, needed correction; and Pauline theology might have taught its disciples that no one way of disposing of the bodies of the departed was in itself more reverent than another, or to be insisted on if it "made a brother to stumble."⁶⁹ Thus prejudice born of outraged habit, and prejudice born of offended religion, joined with the bitterer prejudice bred of patriotism to produce a race-hatred between the holders of the two faiths. The Christians were Roman sympathizers, and friends of the enemies of the land. As a matter of fact the last charge was only half true. Christian unwillingness to serve in the royal armies was not nearly so marked as the distrust of them which made the King unwilling to accept their service as a rule.⁷⁰ Still a consideration of that kind was not likely to do much towards abating a popular antipathy.

Thus that race-hatred, so unintelligible to us Europeans, grew up between Christians and Zoroastrians; and according to the law of the East, that religion is the determinant of nationality, they rapidly became separate nations, for all that they dwelt to the same land. Such race-hatred can, as we see in India, be kept under control for generations by a Government resolved to keep the peace; but it blazes up like the fires from a long dormant volcano if it be given opportunity or permission for its indulgence. In Europe, Highland may despise Lowland, or one nation another. But put them to live together in one country (in Canada, for instance), and to a generation or so the hatreds die out, the races mingle, and a new, possibly a finer type of humanity is produced. It is only in the East that races (Kurd and Armenian, or Kurd and Assyrian) will live side by side for generations, each in villages of their own; doing life's business together fairly amicably, and obeying the orders of the Government (if any) to keep the peace--but mixing no more than oil and water, and abating no jot of mutual and bitter hatred.

The persecution in this case began with an indiscriminate massacre of Christians round Susa,⁷¹ continuing for about a fortnight, and reproduced, in all probability, in most of the Christian centres of the kingdom. Later, indeed, some method was introduced into the proceeding; for Sapor discovered that a favourite of his had met with a voluntary martyrdom,⁷² donning the "dress of a Rabban" (monk or rather celibate) and mixing with the crowd of confessors. Then a decree was issued, to the effect that all arrested for Christianity were to be examined by some one in authority, and a register of executions kept; further, that before any person was ordered for execution, he or she was first to be put to the torture⁷³ (and Sassanid executioners were adepts at that art) and only executed on proving obstinate. It will be understood that this order was genuinely meant to be on the side of mercy, but how far it was carried out is doubtful. Any man of position⁷⁴ apparently-certainly any provincial governor or Mobed-could examine a Christian, and sentence him to death; or might put him to death without examination--for who was going to inquire with any strictness as to what was done by way of executing the King's decree in remoter districts? The death of a Christian 7ayat was not a more important thing in the fourth century than in the twentieth.

This looseness of organization, however, had its advantages. If any governor could persecute, any could protect. For instance, the Marquis (Marzban) of Adiabene, Pigrasp, simply refrained from persecuting,⁷⁵ during the four years for which he held office after the decree was published--"except just during vintage time," when for some obscure reason, fanaticism could not, apparently, be held in check. What one merciful man could do on a large scale, others no doubt could do on a smaller; just as in a later age, a generous Kurdish Agha could protect and shelter occasional Armenian villages. In fact, though the persecution lasted its full forty years (and indeed there were numerous isolated cases of persecution, both before and after that period), yet it was unsystematic in character, and did not and could not press on all equally for that time. Often, no doubt, when a merciful marquis or "Rad" died, the Mobeds of the district could procure the appointment of a zealot in his place. We know, for instance, that this took place on the death of Pigrasp in Adiabene.⁷⁶

It was only to be expected that the clergy, and more specially the bishops, and also the converts from Magianism, should be specially aimed at by the persecutors. Two successors of Mar Shimun, Shah-dost and Bar-b'ashmin, followed their former chief within six years; the former of them being warned of his fate by a vision of his predecessor in glory,⁷⁷ calling on his follower (and nephew) to come up to him without fear. After the death of Bar-b'ashmin the throne remained vacant for more than twenty years, as to fill it was to secure the death of a devoted man. Other bishops, however, must have been consecrated, and the succession was secured.

Among other bishops, Miles of Karka d'Lidan, who was still alive and vigorous when the persecution began, was far too conspicuous a man to be out of danger, and was too fearless to shun it. Hence, he was soon arrested. On examination, the violence of temper that had marred a fine character blazed out once more. He taunted the Agha who was judging him, till the official cut him down with his own sabre, and this somewhat pugnacious martyr died proclaiming vengeance on his murderers, "whose bodies the fowls of the air shall eat." The doom could hardly have sounded very terrible to a Zoroastrian; but as a matter of fact, the man was soon after_. killed in a hunting accident.⁷⁸

Aqib-shima, the venerable Bishop of Khanitha near Arbela-an ascetic known and revered by all for his labours in converting the heathen⁷⁹ of the hill country round the modern Rowanduz (where the Christian villages that are his monument still remain)-was one of the later victims of the time of trial. Like many of the more notable prisoners, he was finally sent for execution to the "door of the King," but an incident that occurred at one of his many examinations is worth recording.

The martyr was before his judges, when a Manichaean was brought in, and ordered to abjure his peculiar version of Christianity.⁸⁰ This he readily agreed to do (as indeed was the practice of this sect, when they were not asked to abjure the secret doctrine known to initiates alone), and lie killed an ant, which either was, or was thought to be, the sacred symbol of life according to his creed. One notes, with some regret, that the confessor had no feeling but joy and triumph at the fall of the heretic.⁸¹

Aqib-shima was finally executed by the personal order of Sapor; while Joseph the Qasha, who had been his companion in suffering, was stoned by renegade Christians as the price of their lives. This, it may be mentioned, was a common practice throughout the persecution; any one who fell away from the faith being compelled to earn his pardon by acting as executioner to his more staunch companions.

Monks and nuns were naturally as much the object of persecution as were the clergy-partly as Christian leaders, partly on account of the horror with which all Zoroastrians regarded the profession of the celibate life. Nuns were commonly offered their lives if they would consent to marry;⁸² renunciation of Christianity not being always insisted on in that case. The frequency with which martyrdoms of these ascetics occur in the Acta, is evidence of the firm hold which the ascetic and monastic principle was taking (naturally) on the oriental mind. But less than a generation had elapsed since its first introduction; and the institution was as yet in a somewhat primitive and unorganized condition, a "Daira" being simply the gathering of a group of devotees, male or female, round some one leader.

Syriac historians, as a rule, have not much of an eye for the artistic in narrative; and are so busy in proving to us (by the recounting of miracles generally) the surpassing sanctity of their hero, that they leave little room for the personal touches which, to us, are much more illuminating. The author of the earlier Acta of the martvrs of the persecution, is a gratifying exception to the rule; and has recorded for us, not only the moving story of the martyrdom of Mar Shimun and his companions, but several other picturesque and pathetic incidents of the time. Thus it is to him that we owe the story of Yazdun-docht,⁸³ the noble lady who cared for the 120 confessors of Seleucia, during their imprisonment; and only revealed to them the fact that the day of their "release" had come, by the final gift of white raiment that she made to each of them, and the prayer that they would intercede for her before the Throne. The bodies of martyrs were as a rule surrendered to their friends (though in some cases attempts were made to prevent this⁸⁴), and the lady was allowed to complete her pious task by the burial of these bodies in one great martyrium.

On another occasion, when the right of burial was refused and the bodies left by the roadside, panic was spread among the Magi, and triumph among the Christians, by a mysterious light that hovered above the corpses.⁸⁵ It was, of course, some kind of phosphorescence, but was universally regarded as a proof that these were indeed holy men that had been done to death; and the bodies were interred with all honour. It is an indication of the absolute changelessness of the East, that the phenomenon and the effect should have been exactly repeated during the Armenian massacres of 1896.

Persecution must have Ragged at times, for the blood-thirst, even of an oriental fanatic, is not insatiable. It is probable, too, that the great Roman invasion of Julian gave some respite to Christians (a fact that would hardly have pleased the author of it), by giving King and nobles something else to do. This is not, however, directly referred to in the Acta. Certainly after its conclusion the storm burst out again with fresh violence, for there was fresh material to work on. Sapor, it will be remembered, insisted on a "rectification of frontier" as the price of peace; and five provinces, with six bishoprics and a population largely Christian, found themselves handed over by a Christian Emperor to Sapor. Jovian has a good name in ecclesiastical history, owing mainly to his Nicene Orthodoxy, and to the high opinion St. Athanasius entertained of him. Something, however, must be entered on the other side when we remember that, in making peace, he not only incurred the military shame of handing over to Persia the maiden fortress that his enemy had never been able to win in fight; but also made absolutely no effort, as far as we know, to secure decent treatment for the inhabitants of those provinces which he was handing over to a notorious persecutor. As a result, not only were those inhabitants deported into distant provinces of Persia (that was perhaps a necessary measure of precaution), but instructions were given to mark their leaders, and to arrest and "deal with" all who would not abandon "the religion of Caesar."⁸⁶ There was unintentional irony in the order, when the only Caesar they had known of late had been Julian; but that fact did not save the victims. The historians tell us of one of the detachments of captives (the men of B. Zabdai), among whom were found the Bishop Heliodorus, and several of the clergy. These were given the choice between apostasy and death, and were massacred to the number of nearly 300; only twenty-five of the band accepting their lives at the price offered. Other detachments suffered in the same way.

The cession of territory was important ecclesiastically, as by taking Nisibis and "the five provinces" out of the Roman into the Persian Empire, it also took them, as stated above, out of the Antiochene Patriarchate, and into that of Seleucia. When peace was restored to the Church this position was accepted without a murmur. It may seem strange to a purist, that ecclesiastical boundaries should thus, as a matter of course, follow civil; but convenience in such a matter is apt to be stronger than correctitude. No King of Persia could tolerate such an anomaly as the subjection of some of his subjects, even quoad ecclesiastica, to an Archbishop outside his boundary; nor would any Persian Christian, when the persecution was over, go out of his way to invite its renewal by starting such an idea.

It must be remembered, too, that in the fourth century the idea that ecclesiastical divisions followed civil was already familiar--as we see in the life of St. Basil; and that patriarchates were still inchoate. The greater sees, like Antioch, Rome and Alexandria, were gathering round them the bishoprics that lay within their sphere of attraction, just as Seleucia was doing in the Persian sphere. We shall see that (owing probably to the conditions of the life of a subject melet) the dependence of the metropolitan and diocesan bishops on the Catholicos was even more defined in Persia than inside the Roman Empire. Still, patriarchal boundaries were so far from being defined, that a new Patriarchate was actually in process of formation round Constantinople; and we can trace its first beginnings under Chrysostom in the next generation.

Up to the very end of his life Sapor continued to persecute relentlessly; and it is only^, natural that, as the persecution goes on, a bitter and resentful tone should creep into the minds of the sufferers, and should find expression in the Acta. Sayings like "Your accursed King,"⁸⁷ or "I will not worship fire, but you will be burning for ever in it some day," are to be regretted; though one cannot wonder that a generation of suffering should have produced them. Still it is saddening to note the contrast between them, and the stately dignity of Mar Shimun, the unswerving loyalty of Gushtazad, and the genuine cheerfulness and even "chaff" of Martha the nun.⁸⁸

Even during the persecution, the Church did not lose her power of drawing men to her. More than one chronicler tells with pride of the conversion, when persecution was hottest, of men like Ait-Alaha of Arbela,⁸⁹ the priest of the goddess Sharbil. He was subject to some complaint resembling dysentery; and was told by a Christian, who succoured him in one of his paroxysms, to go to the Bishop of Arbela, who would cure him. The Magian, being cured as promised, professed himself a Christian; and the bishop, after some natural hesitation, admitted him to baptism, and subsequently to ordination.

Naturally, a price was put upon the head of the "renegade," and also on that of the Bishop Maran-zca. Ait-Alaha, though preserved for some time, was arrested at last; and as he remained steadfast tinder torture, was sent with a fellow-prisoner to the King at Bait Lapat, or Gondi-Sapor. On the journey, the two were apparently on parole, being allowed personal freedom by their guards, and even permitted to go in and out of a city (Shehrgard in B. Garmai) where they were delayed for some days. One is glad to see that the trust was not abused, and that both Christians loyally delivered themselves up to execution rather than break their plighted word.

Maran-zca--the name means "our Lord conquers" or "has conquered," and is one of many that have a curiously Puritanic ring to the English reader--always evaded arrest; being able to retire into the mountains to the north of his diocese, where the "King's writ" does not run to this day. Though both of his predecessors, John and Abraham, were martyred, he died in peace after an episcopate of twenty-nine years.

Sapor, "the long-lived," also died, at last, in 79; and the persecution practically died with him. Not that there was safety from local outbreaks of zeal, or Mobed fanaticism; that could not be secured, till a royal Firman of toleration had been issued, and neither of Sapor's three feeble successors could take so decisive a step. The worst of the storm, however, was past; and the Church which had endured as severe a trial as ever national Church was called upon to face--and which had endured it so nobly--could rest a while, recoup her energies, and repair her organization; and count up the total of those 16,000 martyrs whose names were known and recorded,⁹⁰ who had "enriched the Church with their deaths" during those terrible forty years.

CHAPTER V

REORGANIZATION OF THE CHURCH--COUNCIL OF MAR ISAAC (410)

THREE great conflicts, or rather a stage in each of three great conflicts, came to an end when Sapor the long-lived died, and one of the lengthiest reigns in history was closed. In Persia the first great attempt of the Magian hierarchy to destroy Christianity by force lead been made, and failed.

In the Roman Empire paganism had practically passed away as a religion; and the victory of Christianity over it had been proclaimed by the removal of the altar of Victory from the Senate House at Rome, and the destruction of the Serapeum at Alexandria. Furthermore, Arianism had been definitely conquered as an official creed. For some time past it had been beaten in the Church; but yet, while it was supported by imperial patronage it had remained formidable--at least in Asia Minor, and the other parts of the Empire which had found their natural centre in Constantinople. Now that support was withdrawn by Theodosius, and the faith passed out of practical importance within Roman territory. The Emperor held a council of the bishops of the Eastern Empire, to solemnly proclaim its burial, so to speak; and this gathering, almost accidentally, took rank as "oecumenical" in later years, though at the moment it passed almost unnoticed. One incident in the course of it, however, has some importance for our main subject, viz., that this council saw the commencement of that rivalry between Alexandria and Constantinople (the throne of the Evangelist, and the upstart city of yesterday) which was to cost three bishops of the capital their lives, and one his see. Now, Gregory Nazianzen, the duly appointed bishop⁹¹ of the capital, was practically cast Out of his diocese by the protest of the Egyptian bishops against the translated "intruder"; and the feud, for it was nothing less, between the two sees was to continue till communion between them had been finally broken off. In the course of it three bishops of Constantinople (Chrysostom, Nestorius and Flavian) were hounded to death by as many patriarchs of Alexandria, assisted by the emperors; and at least one patriarch of Alexandria, Proterius, was murdered to his own cathedral. This quarrel is an important factor in the ecclesiastical history of the next seventy years; for it was destined to^y have considerable influence in embittering the Christological controversy, and to have a "repercussion," of which the effects are felt to-day, on the history of the Persian Church.⁹²

Politically the question of the day for the Empire was the defence of the State against the barbarians. Theodosius was to effect this during his life; and thanks to his genius, the eastern portion of the empire, though raided from end to end, was destined ultimately to survive the flood before which the western half of it went down. This, however, was not so clear at the moment; and while the Ostro-Goths were riding at will over Asia Minor, and Athens and Antioch were in the act of being plundered by Visi-Goths and Huns respectively, it must have been difficult to believe that so overwhelming an attach was destined to pass away.

In Persia, as is often the case, a series of nonentities followed the death of a great king. Neither Ardashir 11, Sapor III, nor Bahram IV made any impression on their contemporaries; and the only important event of the twenty years that covered their three reigns was the practical extinction of the kingdom of Armenia.⁹³

During the Romo-Persian War, Arsaces, the ruler of that country, had endeavoured to keep himself safe by impartially betraying both sides, and then executing his own agents. There was this much of excuse for him-that he, like the dukes of Savoy, was forbidden by his geographical position to indulge in the luxury of a conscience. Naturally, when peace was made, his convenience was consulted by neither party, and Armenia was handed over to the mercies of Persia. Sapor requited treachery with treachery; and having secured the person of Arsaces by a safe-conduct, blinded him, and consigned him to the "Castle of Oblivion," the ominously-named "Loches" of the Sassanid kings.

The Shah-in-Shah then attempted to govern the turbulent province by the appointment of Armenian nobles as Persian satraps, or Marzbans; but the effort failed. This Poland of the East showed itself in the character it has borne ever since-a land that can neither govern itself, nor submit peaceably to the government of any foreigner.⁹⁴ As it is in the twentieth century, so it was in the fourth. A patriotic party existed which united a real care for their country with a good deal of personal ambition, and an absolute lack of scruple in their methods. They intrigued with Rome or Persia, and betrayed each to the other. They invited in a foreign garrison; and then,_ in panic at their own act, butchered them in a sort of "Sicilian vespers." None of these "patriots" would be loyal to the foreigner; though at any time any of them would betray his fellows and his country to whatever power was the enemy at the moment. But he would act thus, be it understood, to gain neither money nor power (though he would take both, if they came his way as reward), but the gratification of some petty personal spite. Probably, too, all were genuinely convinced that Armenia-civilized and Christian Armenia-was the true salt of the earth; and that these regrettable incidents were purely the result of oppression, and the fault of her oppressors.

Was it wonderful that the two great powers whose peace was endangered by such a neighbour should agree to partition the country; and resolve to govern somehow-however badly-those who were unable to govern themselves? Thus the Armenian kingdom ended, and the Armenian question began. It is a proof of the continuity of history, and the permanence of national characteristics, that this problem, started in the early fifth century, should still remain unsolved. During the persecution, the Christians of Armenia (that is to say, the nation, which Tiridates had brought to confess Christianity en masse by the most drastic of methods) were left undisturbed. Their independence protected them; and while their coreligionists to the south were undergoing their great trial, the Armenians--under their Catholicos Narses⁹⁵--were peaceably organizing their hierarchy, after the most approved Western model, that of Caesarea. Of course the Church had its troubles; but these arose either from the royal contempt of Church discipline, as not made for kings; or from the attempt of Narses to force all the ecclesiastical machinery of civilized Cappadocia on semi-barbarous Armenia-a blunder which the rulers of infant Churches have repeated more than once since. Once the Catholicos was exiled, only to return with fresh zeal from the mother-Church to carry out the precepts of St. Basil. The cause of this quarrel was the establishment by the King of a "city of refuge"-an institution in which Arsaces (probably gauging the needs of his people much more accurately than Narses) saw a means of abating the blood-feuds that devastated the country but which the archbishop called "a licensed Sodom." On his return from banishment, Narses was poisoned by the then King, Para or Bab; and the crime caused a breach with Caesarea, and the proclamation of Armenian ecclesiastical independence. This policy was no doubt welcome to the Persian King when in 3S4 he became the avowed suzerain of the bulk of the country; and a few generations later the Christological quarrel was destined-both in Armenia and Persia-to make a temporary breach permanent. Up to the close of the fourth century, however, there was no religious persecution in Armenia; or rather, all persecution had been of pagans by Christians, when the nation was forcibly converted. Massacres, and extensive ones, had taken place when the Persians occupied the country on the deposition of Arsaces; and here the sufferers were Christians, and the inflictors Zoroastrians; but these were acts of war, not of religion. The Church of Armenia, however, -%s*as to have her full share of persecution, properly so called, during future centuries.

In Persia, as the long persecution gradually flickered out (and there is evidence that it was not fully over till thirty years after the death of Sapor), it is not wonderful that the Church should be left in a most shattered and disorganized condition. The marvel is, indeed, that life remained in the body at all; and it is doubtful whether a Western Church would have survived such an ordeal. An Eastern melet, however, if it has not the vigorous and energetic (perhaps interfering) vitality of its Western counterpart; and if, like certain animals, it maintains itself by an external armour of custom and inherited habit, rather than by a strong principle of internal life; has this in common also with the crustacean--that it can endure an amount of cutting and slashing that would be fatal to a more highly organized body.

Thus, though crushed and maimed--with probably hardly any bishops remaining, and certainly a very scanty supply of priests--the Church began its reparative process almost as soon as the persecution was staved. Naturally it is difficult to trace the stages, for the confusion of the time is repeated in the confused and fragmentary statements of the historians.

It appears, however, from the statements of both the later writers who give us an account of this period⁹⁶ that a Catholicos, or, at all events, a bishop of Seleucia, was chosen soon after the death of Sapor; and probably in the time of his son, though not immediate successor, Sapor III. Bar-Hebraeus, indeed, declares that permission was given for the election by Sapor II, after the death of Julian had convinced him of the iniquity and folly of persecuting Christians.⁹⁷ As, however, we know from other sources that the event had no such effect, the statement of other writers that it was Sapor III who gave the necessary leave seems much more probable. We know from Persian history⁹⁸ that this King had the reputation of being "a just and merciful man"; and it was also during his reign that the Bishop of Arbela, Shubkha I'Ishu, ventured on what he had feared to do before, and commenced the ordination of clergy for his diocese.⁹⁹

Of the bishop chosen, whose name was Tamuza,¹⁰⁰ or Tumarsa, we know little; except that he was assisted in his organizing work by "Bokht-Ishu the martyr"¹⁰¹ (of whom nothing else is known), and by Mar Abda.

The name of Bokht-Ishu suggests the continuance of persecution in some cases; and Abda we know as a famous ascetic who founded a monastery in the little Arab state of Khirta or Kufa, whence came more than one Catholicos in later days.

As a rule, however, Tamuza was no great advocate of asceticism. Death and apostasy had so diminished the melet that he urged all young people to marry, and produce children to recoup its numbers.¹⁰² The advice was sound, under the circumstances; but it shows how thoroughly the "melet conception" was getting into the minds of the people. It was far more natural, in their eyes, that the Church should extend by growth rather than by conversions. The thought was taking root that a man born in the Church naturally belonged to it; but that it was out of the common for folk to join it from outside, or for men to work with the object of winning them.¹⁰³

In recommending marriage, however, Tamuza had to guard his people against marriages condemned by the Christian conscience, though ever. appl