鲍默《东方教会：亚述基督教图史》第五章：塞琉西亚—泰西封宗主教区（中英文对照版）

The Patriarchate

of Seleucia-Ctesiphon V

The political and religious situation under the early Sassanians for the elevation of Zoroastrianism to the state religion of the Sassanians.

In 227, after the conquest of Seleucia- Ctesiphon, Ardashir turned eastward and conquered, one after the other, Seistan (south- eastern Iran), Merv and Bactria (western Afghanistan), and defeated the empire of the Kushan, which extended from the Indus basin to Turkistan in the north. The task of putting Rome in its place fell to his son, Shapur I (ruled 240/241–272), who humiliated the Roman Empire three times in quick succession. First he defeated Emperor Gordinaus III (ruled 228–244), after which he captured emperors Philip the Arab (ruled 244–249) and Valerian (ruled 253–260) in battle. Shapur’s empire stretched from Edessa on the Euphrates in the west to the Indus delta in the east and from Oman in the south to Sogdia (Uzbekistan) in the north. In the years 244, 256 and 259 /260 Shapur entered Syria, Cilicia and Cappadocia, deporting hundreds of thousands of prisoners to Iran and settling them in new cities. The most famous was Gondeshapur, site of a Nestorian School, which was converted in 529 into a laicized national university of the Sassanians. Paradoxically, it was Shapur I, who used his authority to promote the renaissance of Zoroastrianism, who, by means of his deportations, planted Christianity in the Iranian heartland of Fars, Elam and Khuzistan.

The Christian missionaries understood how to exploit the liberal climate under the hellenophile Parthians, not just spreading the Good News among the Jewish Diaspora and the local Aramaic populations but also carrying it to the other side of Persia into Central Asia. As already mentioned, between 196 and 222 Bardaisan reported about Christian communities in Transoxania.1 At the start of the third century Christianity reached from the Euphrates to the foot of the Hindu Kush mountains.

This situation conducive to the spread of Christianity changed with the overthrow of the increasingly weak Parthians by the Sassanians around 224 / 226. The founder of the dynasty was Ardashir (ruled 224 / 226–240 / 241), grandson of a Zoroastrian high priest of Persepolis. The national rebellion of the Sassanians was also a religious revolt, and the objectives of the two complemented each other perfectly. On the political plane it was necessary to ward off the Roman threat on the western border and to re-establish the former military strength and splendour of the Iranian empire of the Achaemenians, and in the realm of religion the ancient Persian religion of Zoroastrianism had to be revived and the invasion of foreign religions such as Christianity, Judaism and Buddhism checked. The conditions created the foundation

But the Romans did not concede defeat, and Emperor Carus (ruled 282–283) rapidly advanced as far as Ctesiphon, where he was

struck by lightning and died. Ten years later the Sassanian Narses (ruled 293–302) found himself forced to make peace and cede Armenia and north-western Mesopotamia to Rome. Prior to this time the Christians of Iran had been unaffected by the Roman-Sassanian war, since Rome was still pagan. Two factors changed the situation of Sassanian Christians for the worse. First, Shapur and his successors gradually elevated Zoroastrianism to the state religion, and second, in 312 / 13 the Roman emperor Constantine professed Christianity, making it into a state-supported religion. From the Sassanian perspective, the religion of the Christian minority was from then on the statereligion of the arch-enemy Rome – a disastrous development for the Christians of Iran, as now they were encumbered by the suspicion that they were a ‘fifth column’ of Rome. The political history of the Sassanians from the fourth century to the invasion of the Arabs, which will be surveyed in the section after next, demonstrates that every Roman-Sassanian war brought with it the persecution of Christians, which always eased after peace treaties were concluded. as the 12,000-year-long struggle between the god of goodness and light, Ahura Mazda, and the god of evil and darkness, Ahriman, whom one can consider a kind of precursor to the Christian devil. Within the framework of the Zoroastrian cosmology, the omnipotence of Ahura Mazda is limited only temporally, and he needs the help of humanity to win it back. In order to defeat Ahriman, Ahura Mazda first creates the universe as the battlefield for a titanic war of the gods.

Stone relief in Naqsh-e Rostam, Iran, mid-third century CE. Kneeling before the victorious Shah Shapur I is the vanquished Roman emperor Philip the Arab; behind him stands Emperor Valerian, taken prisoner in 260. Gordianus III, likewise defeated in 244, is missing.

Zoroastrianism in the

Sassanian Empire

As a consequence of the free will given to human beings, they must, within the context of the cosmic battle, take a position and decide in favour of good or evil. As the microcosmic image of the macrocosmic universe, the human being is both the stage for and a participant in the struggle of Ahura Mazda against Ahriman. The way of the good demands the proper attitude, truthful speech, and good and just actions. Zarathustra especially detested lying. For this reason, Zarathustra ordered the worship of the eternal fire, as a symbol of pure truth. In contrast to Augustinian Christianity and Manichaeism, the opposition between good and

The pre-Zoroastrian Iranians were, like the related Aryans of India, polytheists, who worshipped some of the same gods. At that time the three chief gods were Ahura Mazda, the ‘wise god’; the god of the sun and truth, Mithra; and the goddess of love and war, Anahita. The eastern Iranian prophet Zarathustra, called Zoroaster in Greek, was active in the early first millennium BCE.2 He was an ethical prophet with a basically monotheistic vision, which was embedded in a relative dualism. This dualism was understood not as an absolute and eternal opposition of two antagonistic powers but rather

evil is not identical with that between spirit and matter. The Zoroastrian anthropology, like its cosmology, is fundamentally optimistic, teaching the perfection of creation and of the human being, who is sinless in himself, as well as the triumph of good over evil at the conclusion of the eschatological process. Since matter can be just as perfect as spirit – indeed, it can even be interpreted as its salvific fulfilment – the human being supports the good with his spirit, his soul and his body, and not, as in Syrian monasticism and Manichaeism, against his body. Because the struggle for the good also requires the strength- ening of creation, positive in its nature, which is continually attacked and damaged by Ahriman, the human being is obligated not only to have the correct attitude, correct speech and correct acts, but also to sustain life though agriculture, the breeding of livestock and, above all, the begetting of offspring. of the most frequent accusations made by the Zoroastrian clergy against Christian monks and nuns concerned their vows of celibacy. In times of persecution, Zoroastrian priests presented captured Christian clerics, monks and nuns with the choice between worshipping the sacred fire and the sun and marrying or suffering an agonizing death.3

In addition to disrespect for the sacred fire and celibacy, the third accusation made against Christians concerned their burials. Because Zarathustra not only affirmed the enjoyment of earthly pleasures but also prohibited the besmirching of the earth, the four foundational elements of fire, water, earth and air were considered sacred, so they could under no circumstances be defiled by the burial of impure corpses. Only the offering of corpses to birds of prey in designated places was permitted. Accordingly, the official complaint against the Christians from the year 376 reads: ‘The Christians destroy our teachings and teach not to worship the sun and not to honour the fires, to pollute the water through nasty ablutions, not to marry, not to produce sons and daughters, not to enter into war [against Christian Byzantium] alongside the king, not to slaughter and eat animals without pangs of conscience, [and] to bury the dead in the earth.’ 4 Compromise was hardly possible between religions based on fundamentally opposed anthropologies.

Farawahar of the king in the hall of a hundred pillars, Persepolis, Iran. The symbol represents the eternal spirit of humanity. The three parts of the wings symbolize the moral mandates of pure thoughts, pure words and pure deeds; the ring in the middle the immortality of the spirit; and the two nooses falling from it, as well as the alignment of the head, the turning away from evil and the turning towards good. The raised right hand gestures towards the invisible Ahura Mazda, and the left holds the ring of fidelity.

This moral obligation of labour and marriage to produce children is diametrically opposed to the monastic ideal of an abstinence from bodily labour in favour of prayer, vegetarianism, strict fasting and celibacy. As we will see below, one

The fundamental importance of marriage to Zoroastrians can also be seen in the conversation between King Vahram III (ruled 293) and Bishop Papa of Seleucia-Ctesiphon. Since both theManichaean clergy and the East Syrian bishops lived celibately, they were to the king equivalent heretics, hostile to the state and deserving of death. ‘Since the king saw that the bishops abstained from marriage, in accordance with the School of the Manichees, he commanded the execution of the Manichees and the Christians.’

The two Zoroastrian towers of silence in Yazd, Iran. In such funeral towers the Zoroastrians left their dead to be eaten by vultures, after which they placed the bare bones in ossuaries or stone niches. This traditional type of funeral has been outlawed in Iran since 1970 for hygienic reasons. if the bad had predominated, the deceased fell from the bridge into hell, likewise for a limited time. In the chaos of the cosmic final battle the final saviour appears to resurrect all the dead and determine a second, final judgement. Once again, the good are assigned to paradise and the evil to hell.6 After the final victory of good over evil and after serving their sentences, the former inhabitants of hell, now purified, also reach the paradise of God. Ahura Mazda has now regained his omnipotence, and humanity enjoys eternal life. The gates of hell remain closed for ever.

In this crisis, Bishop Papa approached the king and explained, ‘The Manichees believe in two gods, that the earth has life, that souls can move from one body to another, and that marriage is abominable. The Christians acknowledge one God, condone marriage, and this is forbidden only to its leaders, in order that they might persist in prayer.’ 5 Papa’s clarification helped lead to a short-lived and limited cessation of persecution. To refute this accusation, the synod of 486 determined to require marriage of all clergy.

According to Zoroastrian ideas, after death the dead must cross the Bridge of Judgement. In the case that the good outweighed the bad in the life in question, the deceased found on the other side of the bridge a temporary paradise;

There is little doubt that Zoroastrian thought found its way into both Jewish and Christian ideas. These ideas include the juxtaposition of the opposites of good/evil and light/darkness,7 an ultimate saviour, the resurrection of the dead

and their sentencing on Judgement Day, as well as the belief, widespread among Nestorians, that the period in hell for purposes of atonement is for a limited time.8 confronted ‘for eternity’ by an equal god of nothingness, an anti-god. In order to overcome this strict dualism and re-establish the mono- theistic vision of Zarathustra, the heresy of Zurvanism arose. In this teaching, time, Zurvan, becomes the father of the estranged twin spirits. Although Zurvanism further diminished the status of Ahura Mazda and the absolute nature of time implied the predestination of all events, abolishing Zarathustrian free will, it appears to have been popular with the Sassanian kings. However, Zurvanism remained merely an intellectual trend within official Zoroastrianism, and it commanded neither its own clergy nor an exclusive cult. Perhaps the monotheistic character of Zurvanism accounts for the occasional affinity of individual kings for Christianity.13 However, the hopes of the Christians, that a Sassanian king would convert to Christianity, were never fulfilled, as political pressure and, above all, the influence of the Zoroastrian clergy was too powerful.

Zoroastrianism was able to develop to a certain degree under the Achaemenians

(559–330 BCE) but had to tolerate the cults of Mithra and Anahita. Under the Parthians it was at first more and more forgotten, but, as a result of the anti-Hellenistic reaction, the gathering of Zoroastrian texts into the sacred book of the Avesta began under King Vologases (ruled

51–78 CE).9 The first two Sassanian kings, Ardashir and Shapur I, systematically continued the written compilation of Zoroastrian doctrine. While in the time of the Parthians the Arsacid, north-western Pahlavi script was used for this, Sassanian scholars developed their own script from the Sassanian, south-western Pahlavi for the writing of the Avesta, as evidenced by a consequent use of vowels in the text. While Arsacidian script, derived from Aramaic, numbers 20 letters, and the Sassanian 19, the Avesta alphabet, called Pazand, consists of 54 symbols, of which 14 are vowels. All three scripts of Pahlavi run right to left.10 The Sassanian Avesta represented a blend of Zarathustra’s teachings and ideas from popular religion, as ancient Persian gods, such as Mithra, Anahita and the victory god Verethraghna, who had been ignored by Zarathustra, reappear in the Avesta.

This clergy actually formed a caste, since their functions were hereditary. It consisted at its base of the Herpad, the so-called magicians, who tended the sacred fire in the local temples. Above them served the hierarchically structured Magupat, also called Mobed, the actual priests. At the peak of the hierarchical pyramid stood the Magupatan Magupat (Mobedan Mobed). This last functioned not only as the authority over all the magicians and priests but also had wide-ranging juridical competence and played a decisive role in determining a successor to the royal throne.

It seems that the dualism between good and evil is radicalized in the Sassanian Avesta. ‘There are two original spirits, twins, who are known for being in opposition to one another. In thought, word and deed they are two, the good and the bad.’11 The following verse from the Yasna, a part of the Avesta, maintains, ‘When these two spirits, Ahura Mazda and Ahriman, encountered each other, one created existence and the other non-existence. This situation will last for eternity.’12 In this interpretation of dualism, Ahura Mazda sees himself as

The architect of the Zoroastrian clergy was the Zoroastrian high priest Kartir, who elevated Zoroastrianism to the Sassanian state religion and fought against all ‘foreign’ religions. Four great stone inscriptions in the province of Fars provide information about the life and work of Kartir.14 The mere fact that Kartir was able to put up his own self-glorifying inscriptions in

such sacred places as Naqsh-e Rajab and Naqsh-e Rostam – the Sassanian valley of the kings, where four of the most important Achaemenids found their final resting place – indicates that he occupied a position in the nation equal to the king’s. In Sassanian Iran, state and Church formed an inseparable pair. [^15]

The career of the Herpad Kartir as Magupatan Magupat and ‘judge of all the empire’ was unusual, with regard to both its duration and its power. Over a period of more than half a century, from c. [^240] to 293, Kartir served six kings. First he served as priest under Ardashir (†240/241), after which he worked under Shapur I for the spread of Zoroastrian doctrine and its recording in writing. His real rise to the inner circle of power took place with his being named highest Magupat of Ahura Mazda by Hormizd I (ruled 272–273). In this capacity he organized the hierarchy of the Zoroastrian clergy, oversaw the orthodoxy of doctrine and announced the foundations of the new state religion in over 700 stone inscriptions. [^16]

Vahram I (ruled 273–276) confirmed him in this leading role, allowing him to destroy his archrival Mani (216–272 or 276), who had enjoyed the favour of Shapur I. Vahram had recognized that the pessimistic asceticism of Mani, who condemned everything earthly and material as evil, could threaten the social order and the state. So Kartir ordered the systematic persecution of the Manichees, which he extended to the Christians around 287 for the reasons mentioned above. [^17] Kartir reached the zenith of his power under Vahram II (ruled 276–293), who elevated him to the nobility and granted him the highest jurisdiction in the empire. As leader of all the clergy, guardian of orthodoxy and ‘judge of all judges’, he anticipated the later office of Mobedan Mobed and rose to become a kind of omnipotent Grand Inquisitor. During the time of Vahram II Kartir had his four inscriptions chiselled, and he continued to serve under

Varham III (ruled 293) and at the beginning of the reign of Narses (ruled 293–302), when his name appeared for the last time in the inscription proclaiming the new king’s accession to the throne. [^18] Since no inscription reports his death, it may be assumed that he rapidly lost influence under Narses.

The Zoroastrianism shaped into the state religion by Kartir was neither tolerant nor pacifist. Since its prophet had demanded from all people the promotion of the good and the fight against evil, this obligation for Church and state was equated with promotion of the Zoroastrian religion and its morality and the destruction of all other, ‘false’ religions. As a consequence of the close connection between Church and state, rejection of Zoroastrianism in favour of another

The Zoroastrian high priest Kartir (in office c.240–293CE) had engraved on this Achaemenian tower-like shrine in Naqsh-e Rostam, Iran, his own inscription, in which he boasted of his achievements. He counted among these the promotion of Zoroastrianism and the persecution of all other religions found in Iran. To the left of the shrine, called the Kaaba-ye Zardosht, can be seen the grave of Darius II (ruled 423–404BCE), and to the right that of Darius I (ruled 522–486BCE).

religion meant treason, which brought the death penalty. But, since there were only a few native Zoroastrians in Mesopotamia and south-western Iran, Christianity could spread there even under the Sassanians, while in the Zoroastrian heartland of the province of Fars it could attract only a minority. It should be noted that the pattern of varying attitudes of the state-supported religion and the government it legitimated towards Christianity, which swung between poles of benevolent tolerance and brutal repression, has remained the same in Mesopotamia and Iran to this day. The study of the history of Christianity under the Sassanians helps us understand the situation of the Christians there in modern times. his life’s work by listing his various tasks and titles: ‘In province after province, place after place, worship of Ormazd [Ahura Mazda] and the gods predominates. The Mazdan religion [Zoroastrianism] and the magicians enjoy the greatest respect in the empire, the teachings of Ahriman and the demons have been expelled and destroyed: the Jews, the shamans [Buddhists], the [Indian] Brahmans, the Nazarenes [Aramaic- and Middle-Persian-speaking East Syrians], the Christians [kristiyân, the Greek-speaking Christian refugees from the Roman Empire and Christian prisoners of war], the Maktaks [the Baptist sects of the Mandeans] and the Zandik [Manichees] have all been destroyed in the empire. Their idols were smashed and the homes of the demons [the foreign temples] destroyed.’19

In the great inscription on the Zoroastrian tower of Naqsh-e Rostam Kartir boasted of

Half-length portrait of the high priest Kartir in Naqsh-e Rajab, Iran, from the time of Vahram II (ruled 276– 293CE). In the Pahlavi inscription Kartir promises paradise to the good and hell to the evil. The two crooked fingers are a sign of respect.

In the final section of the inscription Kartir enumerated additional acts in promotion of religion: ‘With the help of the gods, the king and my labour, countless fire temples were founded in the empire, many marriages between blood relatives took place and many unbelievers came to believe.’20 The marriage of blood relatives desired by Zoroastrianism – kings often wedded their sisters and daughters – was another unavoid-able bone of contention between Christians and Zoroastrians. And so, for instance, the ban forbidding Christians from entering into Persian marriages between blood relatives, issued by Catholicos Mar Aba, led to the persecutions of 544.21 family, as is shown by the example of the Christian Candida, of Roman origin, who was one of the wives of Vahram II. She refused to accord to the wishes of the king and convert to Zoroastrianism and was for this reason cruelly tortured and then executed.24 The first persecution of Christians, which subsided under Narses, was nonetheless merely a harmless prelude when compared to those of the following two centuries.

A century-long martyrdom from 340 to 457 and the first creation of an ecclesiastical hierarchy

In the last 19 lines Kartir summarized the heart of Zoroastrian anthropology, which is formulated in greater detail in the nearby inscription of Naqsh-e Rajab: ‘He who sees and reads this inscription should be generous and faithful to the gods, the kings and his own soul, as I was. He who does good will attain paradise, he who does evil will be thrown into hell. He who does good and behaves properly, to him will be granted glory and prosperity for his physical body, and his corporeal soul preserves upright- ness, as was granted to me, Kartir.’ 22 In contrast to the teachings of Mani, in which the human body represents the work of the evil principle and only the particles of light in the soul can be redeemed, the doctrine of Kartir emphasized that the body of the human being, along with his spirit and soul, were all three created by the good god Ahura Mazda and thus have a divine nature. For this reason, the whole person – body, spirit and soul – reaches paradise. Since the Manichees condemned the begetting of children as a further damaging and defiling of the divine light, and Christian monks, nuns and the ascetic ‘brothers and sisters of the covenant’23 lived celibately, they were declared enemies of the good creator god Ahura Mazda and persecuted accordingly. The persecution of Christians did not spare the royal

‘If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake, and for the sake of the gospel, will save it.’25

At the beginning of the fourth century two events decisive for the Church of the East occurred. One was the development of an ecclesiastical hierarchy, and the other the elevation of Christianity to state church in the Roman Empire. As a consequence of the latter the systematic persecution of Christians began inthe Sassanian Empire at the same time that such persecutions ceased in Rome. In that moment in which the emperor of Rome, who had to that point been hostile to Christians, accepted Christianity, the Sassanian Empire, which had before been more or less neutral, became suspicious of or hostile towards its Christian population.

As with the question of the first missionary activity in Mesopotamia, with regard to the creation of an ecclesiastical hierarchy we move in a fluid, grey area between legend and historical fact. It is certain that in the third century the East Syrian congregations were familiar with the five-part hierarchical structure of bishop, archdeacon, chorepiscopus, presbyter and

deacon. The bishop stands at the apex of the offices within a given province of the Church, which bears the name of its capital city; he celebrates the ordination of new clerics and is responsible for obedience to orthodox doctrine. Unlike in Byzantium and Rome, the archdeacon holds the next highest clerical rank below bishop, and he has charge over the administration of the diocese, guides and controls the priests and deacons under his authority with full powers of instruction and punishment, and oversees the maintenance of Church doctrine. The arch- deacon can be characterized as the bishop’s representative, since he can take on the bishop’s functions on an interim basis in the case of an episcopal vacancy. Below the archdeacon is the chorepiscopus, whose task is the visiting of churches and monasteries. Later the periodeutai (visitors), ranked below the chorepiscopi, took over this duty. The presbyter leads the congre- gations in worship and is supported in his work by the deacons and subdeacons, who are also active in the area of instruction.26 Only the ecclesiastical office of deacon was open to women, who participated in the baptism of adults and the instruction of women. In the case of a deaconess who was also an abbess, she could also distribute holy communion as the representative of the bishop or the assigned priest.27 as priest.’29 Presumably this priest was Papa bar-Aggai (†c.327), whom Shalupa’s successor Ahadabui (c.273–291), at the request of local Christians, consecrated as bishop between 285 and 291.30

Around 315 Papa undertook the first attempt to place all the bishops of the Sassanian Empire under the authority of the bishop of the capital and to end the duplication of offices in the ecclesiastical provinces. As a consequence of the settlement of Christians deported from Syria, there resided in several provinces, such as, e.g., Beit Lapat (Gondeshapur), two bishops – an East Syrian-Aramaic and a West Syrian-Greek. Papa’s vision was the creation of a tightly organized Iranian national Church under the primacy of the bishop of Seleucia-Ctesiphon. But Papa’s plan and claim to leadership met with bitter opposition from his fellow bishops, who deposed him at a stormy synod – at which he suffered a stroke – and appointed in his place his archdeacon Shimun bar Sabba’e, whose parents maintained an excellent relationship with the king. The deposed bishop then appealed to the bishop of Edessa – not the bishop of Antioch – and other Western bishops, who supported him in his plan. The nascent Church of the East found itself in a crucial test, but a compromise saved the Church from the threat of schism. Seleucia-Ctesiphon’s claim to authority was recognized out of political considerations, Papa was returned to his office according to the proper form, and the demoted Shimun was assured that he would be Papa’s successor.31 The recognition of the primacy of Seleucia-Ctesiphon can be considered the moment of birth for the Church of the East. A century later, the 424 Synod of Dadisho rehabilitated Papa and condemned the rebellious bishops.32

Until the start of the fourth century the East Syrian dioceses were largely autonomous. The centralization of the ecclesiastical hierarchy beginning in 204, asserted by Fiey, as well as the purported consecration of the bishop of Seleucia-Ctesiphon by the bishop of Antioch28 belong in the realm of later legend. The Chronicle of Arbela specifically reports that the small Christian community of the capital had no priest until the visit of Bishop Shalupa of Arbil (c.258–273), who looked after it. ‘Shalupa went to Ctesiphon, in order to visit the recently established small community of faith. There he laid hands upon a man and ordained him

Although the Church had overcome its first internal crisis, it was soon confronted with an external danger that threatened its very existence: forty years of ongoing persecution

Stone relief of Shapur II (ruled 309–379), who is leaning on his sword. Bishapur, Iran. The shah tried in vain by means of severe persecutions to impede the spread of Christianity. under Shapur II (ruled 309–379). The first cause of this is offered by the rash letter sent around 315 by Emperor Constantine, recently converted to Christianity, to the young shah: ‘I am pleased to hear that the most beautiful provinces of Persia are adorned with Christians. Since you are so powerful and pious, I entrust them to your care and place them under your protection.’ 33 By addressing Shapur in a rather patronizing tone, Constantine, as patron of all Christians, effected the opposite of his intention. Instead of aiding the Christians, he kindled in the shah a not unjustified suspicion that the Christians in his empire could, in the case of war with Rome, make up a dangerous fifth column. Constantine’s support of the Christians of Armenia reinforced this impression.

The change of heart of the once tolerant shah became clear around 339/340, after his military offensive to recapture the north-western provinces around Nisibis, which had been ceded to Rome in 297, failed miserably, as did his vain attempt to besiege Nisibis. The refusal of the Christians to take an active part in the war increased Shapur’s anger. In order to finance the war effort, he determined to impose a special tax on the Christians and to burden the bishop of Seleucia-Ctesiphon with its collection. He wrote in his edict to the prefects of the prosperous province of Beit Aramaye (the fertile region around and to the south of Ctesiphon), ‘Seize Shimun, leader of the Nazarenes, and do not set him free until he seals a document that he takes it upon himself to levy and pay doubled

head money and twice the taxes from the whole population of Nazarenes, who are staying in our land of the gods and live in our empire. For we, the gods, are in a state of war; they are in a state of joy and pleasure. They live in our land but are of like mind with the emperor, our enemy.’34 occasion of a disputation in 612, provided a more sophisticated answer than had the shah. He said, ‘We do not consider the fire God, but rather we worship God by means of the fire, just as you worship your God by means of the cross.’37

But Bishop Shimun I refused: ‘We will not agree to collect taxes, for our power is not worldly, so that we may murder our brothers.’35 This argument of Shimun was invalid, since the East Syrian Christians of Mesopotamia, like the Jews there, were organized into a semi- autonomous community – called ‘millets’ in the Ottoman period – whose ecclesiastical head had a political role, as well, and functioned as a link between his faithful and the civil administration. The Christians formed a kind of state within a state under the leadership of their religious head. Even when the king threatened Shimun with death, he remained steadfast, saying, ‘For it is better for me to be stripped of the skin of my body than to take the clothing of the poor.’36 The furious shah then ordered all churches and monasteries to be torn down and one hundred bishops, priests and deacons to be arrested.

Shimun: ‘Heaven forbid, sire, that God would suffer and die. He [Christ] certainly did die, came back to life and arose, but not God. And this sun, which you now command me to worship, went dark when he was crucified.’

Shapur II: ‘If you will not worship fire because it is mortal, then worship the immortal sun.’

Shimun: ‘How should I pray to something that, though immortal, has neither knowledge nor reason? I will not worship you, O king, although you are superior to the sun, since you possess intelligence and reason. The sun, how- ever, is unintelligent, and we do not know if it prefers you, who worship it, to me, who curse it.’

The king’s threat that he would have thousands of Christians executed if he continued to refuse to worship sun and fire even just once did not persuade him. He ordered that the one hundred imprisoned clerics be beheaded before Shimun’s eyes and that Shimun be executed last, which took place on 17 April or 14 September 341. On their way to the execution, the bishop encouraged his fellow sufferers in light of Shapur’s final demand to worship sun and fire with these words: ‘Why should we worship something that does not see our worshipping? And why pray to one who does not hear our prayers? And why praise something that knows nothing of its own light? Far be it from Christians to worship creatures as they should the Creator and confuse the Creator with his creation.’38

However, Shapur renounced the double taxation and now summoned Bishop Shimun to worship the sun and the fire. According to the acts of Persian martyrs, a revealing dispute started between the shah and the bishops which gave the pattern for futher inquisitorial interro- gations. For the Zoroastrian Mobeds usually first tried by argumentation to induce the arrested Christians to betray their religion.

Shimun: ‘Heaven forbid that I worship sun and moon, whose course is transitory, or fire, which daily dies and goes out.’

Shapur II: ‘If you will not worship fire because it is mortal, you may also not worship your god. For he died, as well, when the Jews crucified him. The mortality of fire means as much as the mortality of your god.’ Regarding this claim of fire worship, a Zoroastrian Mobed, on the

After this martyrdom there began an unmitigated hounding of the Christians, which was fomented, according to various sources, not only by the Zoroastrian priests but also by the Jews, as the latter actively participated in the

denunciation of Christians. The Jews were said to have convinced the ailing queen, who had recently converted to Judaism, that Shimun’s two ascetic sisters had cast a spell on her to avenge their brother’s death. They were then arrested and each sawed in half.39 The state-mandated persecution rapidly deteriorated into wild, uncontrolled massacres, to which Zoroastrians also mistakenly fell victim. For example, in what is today Kirkuk, criminals had to help the overworked executioners. ‘Many murderers were led from the prisons of Karkâ to kill [the Christians]. In the end, there were not enough murderers or swords for murdering.’40 Not just the executioners but also the martyrs worked themselves into a frenzy of death, as many Christians condemned themselves and proceeded willingly to the places of execution to be awarded the crown of martyrdom. ‘Many Christians, who came from various places, joined the confessors and said, “We belong to these Christians”, and so were killed. The disorder increased, and one no longer knew whom one was killing.’41

The oval-shaped building, made up of 43 rooms, in the north-eastern corner of Gyaur Kala in Merv, Turkmenistan, has been interpreted as a Christian mona- stery by the Russian archaeologist G.A. Dreswanskaya. She found a cross in the plaster on one wall, and another on a tile, both of which she dates to the fifth/ sixth centuries. In the background of the picture may be seen the older citadel of Erk Kala, which was mentioned in writing for the first time in the sixth century BCE by the Achaemenians. In the 1960s Dreswanskaya discovered to the north-east of the presumed monastery a necropolis, where she found ossuaries marked with crosses and even Jewish inscriptions, analogous to those from Mizdachkhan. However, Burchard Brentjes believed that the presumed monastery with oval floorplan belonged to the Melkites.19

In light of these uncontrolled pogroms and the flight of Christian farmers and merchants into the mountains, Shapur feared for the inner stability and prosperity of the empire. For this reason, he ordered that the persecutions be limited to the clergy and Christians who had converted from Zoroastrianism, which led to the destruction of the leading clergy and the organization put in place by Papa. Both Shimun’s secretly elected successors were condemned after only a few months in office and executed along with hundreds of clerics –

Bishop Shahdost in 341 and Bishop Barbashmin around 345/346.42 Since appointment as bishop of Seleucia-Ctesiphon was tantamount to a death sentence, this see remained vacant for more than half a century until the election of Isaac I (in office 399–410).43

Even though there were many cases of apostasy, the great number of confessing Christians, who for the sake of their faith joyfully accepted martyrdom, is astonishing. The confessors drew the necessary inner strength from the ideal of taking up the cross of Christ. As the first martyr, Christ had willingly accepted death, and now the martyrs, as alter Christus (second Christ) followed him. Their death was, so to speak, a re-enactment of the passion of Christ. This image makes clear that during the Sassanian persecution a genuine desire for martyrdom emerged.48

The Sassanian persecutions were notable for both the nearly unlimited willingness of the Christians to make sacrifices and the extra- ordinarily cruel, indeed sadistic, performance of the executions. The confessors of faith were not just beheaded, stoned or crucified, they were murdered in clever ways that caused the greatest amount of pain. For instance, the executioner slit the victim’s throat in such a way that he could tear out his tongue through the gaping wound. Others ripped off the skin of the face down to the neck or subjected them to the torture of the ‘iron combs’: ‘[The victim] was thrown to the ground with limbs outstretched, nails were driven into his hands and feet, and his body was combed over with iron combs until the flesh was torn from his bones.’44 In other instances, victims were bound hand and foot and tossed into a pit filled with countless hungry rats and other vermin, where they were eaten alive by these creatures. In special cases, martyrs suffered the ‘ninefold death’, in which the executioner, over the course of six successive days, slowly cut off the limbs: first the fingers, then the toes, wrist, ankles, forearms and lower legs, upper arms and thighs, ears, nose, and finally the head. In order to forestall a premature death from blood loss, the fresh wounds were cauterized.45 In the countryside, the Mobeds often forced the faithful laity to stone their own priests and deacons, which led many farm families to flee their villages for the mountains of Kurdistan.46 Finally, mass executions were carried out by cramming Christians together into a tight space and using as many as three hundred elephants to trample them to death.47

In the political-military realm, Shapur II again took up the war against the Eastern Roman Empire, after he had defeated the White Huns, who had advanced into eastern Iran, in a five-year campaign. First he conquered the city of Amida, today’s Diyarbakir, after which he destroyed the attacking Emperor Julian (ruled 361–363) at Seleucia-Ctesiphon. Shapur forced his successor Jovian (ruled 363–364) to accept a humiliating peace agreement, requiring him to return to Iran the provinces conquered in 297, including Nisibis. Since Shapur granted the Christians of Nisibis safe conduct, most of them, including the biblical exegete and poet Ephrem the Great, fled to Edessa. At the same time, Shapur annexed the eastern regions of Armenia and Georgia, which had to that point been Byzantine protectorates. In the following centuries, this territorial expansion of Iran to the north-east offered the Church of the East the opportunity to engage in missionary activity in Armenia and Georgia. In Armenia it was Gregory the Illuminator who, around 314, converted King Tiridates III, whereupon the king declared Christianity the state religion; the analogous development occurred in Georgia around 337. While Georgia recognized the Council of Chalcedon around 600/608, the Armenian Church rejected it around 506 and in 555 explicitly confessed its adherence to the

Ruins of a church north-west of the city of Merv, Turkmenistan, which was a diocese of the Church of the East from the end of the fourth century. The church, presently called Khoruba Koshuk, was in use, probably with disruptions, till the eleventh century. Merv was an archdiocese from 544 until around the middle of the fourteenth century. In 1951 the Russian archaeologist G.A. Pugachenkova investigated the well-preserved structure and identified it as an early church from the period of the Sassanians.20 The rectangular room measures 41x11.4 metres and is divided into four larger and two smaller chambers. The framework of the vault, which was at that time still partially extant, was in the form of a slightly pointed arch. The series of rooms culminated in a three-part apse, which was oriented with deviation of almost 5° to the east. Unfortunately, not only have the arches that were still standing in 1966 been destroyed but in comparison to 1966 not even 20 per cent of the structure then extant remains. The surrounding region is used for agriculture, and rain has ruined some of the stonework. Discoveries of Sassanian pottery and coins from the time of Kavad I (ruled 488–531) and Hormizd IV (ruled 579–590) substantiate Pugachenkova’s dating. Much later, during the Seljuk seizure of power in the eleventh century, the church was converted into secular living quarters, as the presence of Seljuk pottery attests.21

Miaphysite creed.49 Beginning no later than 424, as a result of its successful missionary work, the Church of the East had a diocese in Armenia, which Timothy I (ruled 780–823) elevated to a metropolitan see.50 Starting in 363, eastern Georgia was for a century another target of East Syrian missionaries.51

One of the few bishops to escape the massacres was Bar Shaba. The Chronicle of Seert reports that around 363 Bar Shaba allegedly cured Shapur’s sister and wife Shirahan of a mental illness, whereupon she had herself baptized. Although the conversion from Zoroastrianism to Christianity brought the death penalty, the shah spared his sister and kept her from the fate of his Christian concubine Estassa, who suffered a martyr’s death. He married Shirahan to the governor of the eastern Iranian city of Merv and sent her there for her protection. She took Bar Shaba, who had been named bishop, with her to Merv, where she undertook the building of several churches. Since his name appears in the list of participants in the episcopal synod of 424, there existed such a bishop around 420. Missionaries fanned out from Merv through the province of Khorassan and farther to the east to the White Huns. It appears that the province of Khorassan, far from the capital, largely escaped the persecutions. The Russian archaeologists G.A. Pugachenkova and G.A. Dreswanskaya discovered in Merv

Although the persecutions of Christians, which were concentrated in Mesopotamia, subsided somewhat with the establishment of peace with Byzantium, they came to an end only with the death of Ardashir II (379–383), Shapur II’s successor, in 383. Nevertheless, local pogroms continued to flare up, fuelled by fanatical Mobeds or greedy officials who wanted to appropriate the confiscated possessions of the martyrs. It is unknown how many victims they claimed. Some sources speak of 16,000 martyrs, whose names are recorded; others name as many as 190,000 dead.52 Given the initially unchecked murder, it may be assumed that many victims were not known by name, so the truth may lie closer to the higher estimate.

the remains of a church, a presumed Christian monastery, and of Christian sepultures.53 planets, mountains, trees, fish and wooden idols. Missionary activity among the Manichees and Marcionites was likewise allowed. In order to create a lasting counterweight to the Zoroastrian clergy, the shah encouraged the Christian bishops to convene a synod, under the leadership of the Byzantine envoy Bishop Maruta, in the capital for the purpose of establishing a new hierarchy.

The Nestorian Church called Khoruba Koshuk, north of Merv, after its restoration in 2012.

The accession to the throne of Shapur III (ruled 383–388) marked a positive change for the Christians, as he renewed diplomatic contact with Byzantium. When the White Huns threatened the northern borders of both empires around 395, the one-time enemies moved closer together. The successor of Vahram IV (ruled 388–399), Yazdgerd I (ruled 399–420), also continued the policy of détente pursued by his two predecessors. His pro-Christian position grew out of political considerations, since in times of peace with Byzantium the Christians represented valuable allies, who enabled the shah to extricate himself somewhat from the clutches of the nobility and the Mobeds. In 410 Yazdgerd issued an edict of toleration, which granted the Christians freedom of worship;54 as before, however, apostate Zoroastrians faced the death penalty. Nevertheless, Christian missionaries were now free to convert the pagans, living mainly in northern Iran, who worshipped

For the Zoroastrian magicians and Mobeds, however, the rapid growth of the Church, which met with approval even in the highest levels of the nobility, was a thorn in the side. At the same time, they tried without success to convert the Christian Armenians to the doctrine of Zarathustra by means of crude violence, leading to serious tensions with Byzantium. Yazdgerd thus came under pressure from the jealous clergy, the power-hungry nobility and the frustrated military. Rebellion against the king threatened. The aggressive and thoughtless behaviour of a few Christian clerics, such as the priest Hashu and the ascetic Narsai, both of whom desecrated and destroyed a fire temple, provided the pretext

for renewed pogroms. The refusal of the guilty parties to atone for their crimes by rebuilding the temple resulted in a persecution of incredible force.55 ‘The city squares echoed with people who were being tortured in prison with violence and cunning. The decorated churches were destroyed, their mortar strewn about; from the roofs, once so glorious to behold, bridges were made. No church remained standing.’56 Yazdgerd’s successor, Vahram V (ruled 421–438), further intensified the extensive persecutions and had the Christian cemeteries desecrated.57 Christians fled in massive numbers to the Byzantine Empire. But, when the shah demanded the handing over of the refugees from Emperor Theodosius II, the latter entered Mesopotamia in 422 and imposed a peace agreement on the shah that explicitly maintained freedom of religion for the Christians in the Sassanian Empire and the Zoroastrians in Byzantium.

The general pogroms ended with Piroz; later martyrs were individuals who, in most cases, were apostate converts from the state religion.

It is truly astounding that the Christians accepted their martyrdom practically without resistance, and no rebellion arose. Presumably the inner fire of faith and the ideal of following Christ absorbed all the vital energies of the victims, so that armed opposition was not an option. However, around 542 Shah Chosrau I (ruled 531–579) did not dare to carry out a death sentence against Patriarch Mar Aba, out of fear of a Christian revolt, and sent him instead into exile in Azerbaijan.59 Presumably at that time Christians constituted the majority in individual provinces of Mesopotamia.

The organization of the Church of the East

The Christians were granted only a brief respite, for with the ascension of Yazdgerd II (ruled 438–457) the throne was occupied by a king fundamentally hostile to Christianity, who wanted to cleanse his empire of all non-Zoroastrian religions. From 445 to 457 persecutions raged in Mesopotamia and Armenia, where the patriarch was also numbered among the victims. The worst massacre took place in 446/447 in the metropolitan see of Karka of Beit Selok, modern Kirkuk, where ten bishops and the enormous number of 153,000 faithful were allegedly slaughtered. At the end of the massacre, the leading Mobed, Tahmyezgard, professed Christianity, whereupon the king had him crucified upside down.58 Yazdgerd’s death in 457 brought an end to the pogroms, since Hormizd III (ruled 457–459) and Piroz I (ruled 459–484) were well disposed towards the Christians. However, in the final year of his reign Piroz forbade Christianity, resulting in another wave of persecution. Piroz’s death in a battle against the White Huns soon saved the Christians.

The clergy of the Church of the East, terribly decimated by the persecutions under Shapur II, took advantage of the liberal climate under Yazdgerd I to rebuild their organization and eliminate the hierarchical redundancies between the East Syrians and the West Syrians who had been deported from Rome. This occurred with the express approval of the shah at the synod of 410, which was led by the Byzantine envoy Maruta. This Bishop Maruta, whose diocese of Maipherkat lay to the north-east of Edessa on the Byzantine–Sassanian border, was in three regards the saviour of the Church of the East. First, in 399 he negotiated a lasting peace between Byzantium and Rome. Second, around 406 he gained from the king the release from prison of the archbishop of Seleucia-Ctesiphon, Isaac (ruled 399–410), who had been slandered by his own bishops. Third, he wrested approval from Yazdgerd for an episcopal synod and guided this synod to a successful conclusion.

The Synodicon Orientale, written in the ninth

Life-size male stucco figure with traces of paintings from a church of Seleucia-Ctesiphon from the late sixth century. Beneath this church are found the remains of an earlier church. Although it cannot be determined which Nestorian church was involved, the discovery nevertheless proves that the Church of the East also used figurative representations.22 century, informs us about the course of the synod and its 21 canons, which 36 East Syrian bishops signed.60 After the bishops had ratified the decisions of the Council of Nicea, they were summoned before the grand vizier and the military commander of the capital.61 The two Sassanian dignitaries confirmed Isaac as bishop of the imperial capital and his authority over the other dioceses of the empire. ‘Since Isaac, the catholicos, went in and out before the shah, he made him head of all the Christians of the East, according to his pleasure. If, however, anyone rises up against him and opposes his will, we should be told, [so that he] will be condemned.’62 None of the bishops dared to oppose the royal order; rather, they confirmed it in Canon XII: ‘We all collectively accept that we bishops of all part of the Orient and our successors are subject in all that is rightfully commanded to the bishop-catholicos, the master of the bishops, the metropolitan of Seleucia-Ctesiphon, until the arrival of Christ.’ The above proclamation and the synodal decision were of great consequence, since they affirmed the shah’s right to appoint the catholicos – that is, the head of the Church of the East. Not only the East Syrians but all the Christians of the empire were later under his authority, and he could impose his will with the help of the civil judiciary. Since the synodal acts mention no Western patriarch as authority, it is clear that the Church of the East understood itself to be an autonomous and autocephalous self-determining communion. confirms his ordination. Every two – later every four – years a synod convened by the catholicos took place, which the bishops were required to attend. Above the ordinary bishops stands the metropolitan-bishop, whose responsi-bilities extend over an entire province. In 410 six of these were established, listed here in hierarchical order: the great metropolitan see of the capital, the metropolitan sees of Beit Lapat (Gondeshapur), Nisibis, Prat de Maishan (Basra), Arbela and Karka of Beit Selok (Kirkuk). However, the metropolitan, who oversaw six to twelve dioceses, had no authority to issue instructions: ‘he is a help and an encouragement to them [the bishops] in all that is proper. If discord occurs among them, he establishes peace with the counsel of love, not with the force of power. If an issue cannot

In order to overcome the hierarchal duplication between the Aramaic-Persian Christians and the Greek Christians deported from the Roman Empire, the synod defined the means of election and the duties of each level of the clergy. Only one bishop could reside in each city and region, and he had to be ordained by at least three bishops after the hearing of the faithful. Then the designated bishop must travel to the metropolitan of the capital, who ‘completes’ him – that is,

The ruins of the Nestorian Church of Mar Shmuni in Beth Bedeh, northern Iraq, which was destroyed by dynamite in 1988. be resolved amicably, he writes of it to the great metropolitan [catholicos], who is entitled to give orders and decide’ (Canon XVIII). The metropolitan organizes an annual provincial synod with his bishops. Upon the death of a metropolitan, the bishops and the faithful of the province choose his successor, whom the catholicos confirms in his office through ordination. mutilated eunuchs – a practice found among ascetics – are not permitted into the clergy (Canon II). Bishops and priests may celebrate the Eucharist only in church on Sundays; private masses in homes are forbidden. To each bishop is permitted a maximum of one chorepiscopus as visitor and one archdeacon. The latter should ‘be the bishop’s arm, tongue and honorer, whose hidden will is made manifest through him’ (Canon XIV). Under the priest figure the deacon and the hypodeacon, who support him and who also function as exorcists and drive demons out of the possessed. The important office of bailiff is open only to the laity; he oversees the income and expenses of the dioceses, as well as their property. Thus the Church of the East was supported by nine hierarchical levels:

Within his diocese, the bishop is given wide-ranging authority: he can ordain priests and deacons, teach and build churches; the monasteries are also under his jurisdiction. Priests must be at least thirty years old and be able to recite the Psalms in Syriac, ‘so that the servants of Christ do not resemble the laity as idiots in word and doctrine’ (Canon XVI). Self-

The once Nestorian, later Chaldean, Church of Mar Abraham in Deir Aboun, which means Monastery of our Father, northern Iraq. The original monastery enjoyed exemption from taxation under Patriarch Mar Aba I (540–552) and was linked with the grave of Noah by Arab authors in the thirteenth century. Fiey believes, however, that these are the ruins of the monastery of Mar Awa, of which nothing else is known.23 patriarch, metropolitan, bishop, archdeacon, chorepiscopus, priest, deacon, hypodeacon and reader. As a layman, the bailiff did not belong to the clergy. was the most severe ecclesiastical sanction. Less dramatic was the revocation of an ecclesiastical office, which meant a return to the lay state; milder still was a temporary suspension, from which the offender could be returned to his office after sufficient atonement.

The synod then ordered that the feast of Epiphany, the 40 days of Lent and the Resurrection had to be celebrated in common and everywhere on the same day (Canon XII). Finally, punishment for possible disobedience was laid out: ‘Whoever dares to disobey these orders, the fire of God will descend upon him, the wrath of God will remain over him, and he will be anathematized by the entire Church of Christ in the four regions of the world. The anathema and the punishment of the shah will remain over him’ (Canon XVII). Anathema, expulsion from the community of believers,

With these regulations, the Church of the East constituted itself as a clearly structured hierarchical pyramid, at whose apex was the catholicos, endowed with nearly unlimited executive authority, whose decisions were as far as necessary imposed by the civil judiciary. However, his instrument of power was blunted if the civil judiciary refused to emphasize the decisions of the catholicos, so temporary schisms often arose. Only the biennial, later quadrennial, synods, comparable to a parliament, checked

his omnipotence. The inner cohesion of the Church rested on the unconditional adoption of Antiochene dogma and the corresponding two-nature doctrine, which was taught at such great educational institutions as those in Nisibis and Seleucia-Ctesiphon. The majority of bishops and abbots of the Church of the East came out of these forgings of cadres. It was only thanks to this strict organization that the Church of the East, which never enjoyed the support of the state, was able to hold its own in an often hostile environment.

Patriarch Acacius (in office 485–496) declared in 486 that ‘from now on, no bishop may ordain anyone to the diaconate [which was the entryway to a career in the clergy] unless he lives in a legal union and begets children’.64 This canon imposed marriage upon candidates for a clerical career. The driving force behind this decision was the controversial metropolitan of Nisibis, Bar Sauma (†496), who was powerful because of his friend- ship with Shah Piroz and who had a relationship with a concubine, a nun.65 Celibacy was permitted only for monks. Since many bishops were appointed from the monastic community, bishops lived celibately despite the synod’s declaration. The 497 synod of Catholicos Babai (497–502) confirmed not only the decisions of the synod of 486 but also ordered that all clergy in the Church of the East, ‘from the patriarch to the lowest-ranking, enter into a public bond of matrimony with a woman and produce children’.66 Given the scandals involving child abuse and the illegitimate children of priests and bishops that have shocked the modern Catholic Church,67 the argument of Catholicos Acacius that ‘it is much better to take a wife than to burn with desire’68 seems sensible. In this regard, Acacius could appeal to the First Letter to the Corinthians: ‘For it is better to marry than to be aflame with passion’ (1 Cor 7:9). In 544, however, Mar Aba I annulled the marriage requirement for patriarchs and declared that they had to remain celibate.69 For bishops, on the other hand, marriage was permitted until the twelfth century.

Astonishingly, the synod refrained from determining the means of selecting the catholicos. This was settled by Catholicos Mar Abba in 544 as follows: the bishop of Kashkar informs the metropolitans of Beit Lapat, Prat of Maishan, Arbil and Beit Selok, who come to the city accompanied by three bishops each. They nominate the patriarch, who must be confirmed by the notables and faithful of Ctesiphon. Later Patriarch Joseph widened the circle of archbishops who could participate in the election process to include all the metropolitan sees of the interior, and in 585 Patriarch Ishoyahb I added that in times of crisis, such as persecutions, a minimum of three metropolitans would suffice.63 Practice showed, however, that a candidate could hardly succeed without the consent of the shah. Notable among the criteria for election is the fact that the faithful of each diocese had the right to participate in the selection of the bishop and could success- fully boycott bishops imposed upon them from the outside. In light of the lack of interest in their Church on the part of many West European Christians today, the question arises of whether such direct democracy in the selection of clergy might not help reduce the obvious distance between clergy and faithful.

As a consequence of the rapid expansion of the Church of the East, it became necessary to adapt the duties and rights of outlying metropolitan sees to their geographical circumstances and to create two categories of archbishops. First were those entitled to elect the catholicos, the metropolitan sees of the interior, who covered the heartland of the Church of the East. These were, in hierarchical order, the metropolitan see of the patriarch, as well as the provinces of 1, Beit

The celibacy of East Syrian clerics was a thorn in the side of the Zoroastrians and offered them a perpetual target. In order to take the wind out of the Mobeds’ sails in this regard, the synod of

(Right) The old Nestorian Church of Mar Giwargis in Bidial, northern Iraq. The name Bidial is derived from the Syriac Beit El, which means House of God. The church, which dates from the sixth century, was destroyed by Saddam Hussein’s troops during the so-called Anfal campaign in 1988 and rebuilt shortly thereafter.

(Bottom) Iraqi Christians in Khabur, north-eastern Syria.

The Patriarchate of Seleucia-Ctesiphon | 79

Lapat; 2, Nisibis; 3, Prat de Maishan (Basra); 4, Mosul; 5, Arbela; 6, Beit Selok (Kirkuk); and 7, at times Halwan in western Iran. Second were the metropolitan sees of the outer regions, which were farther away from the capital and thus not entitled to vote for the catholicos. According to a fourteenth-century history these allegedly included the following archdioceses: 8, Jerusalem; 9, Edessa; 10, Rew Ardashir in Fars (southern Iran); 11, Merv in Khorassan (Turkmenistan); 12, Herat (Afghanistan); 13, Fatraba (Qatar); 14, China (possibly today’s Beijing); 15, India; 16, Barda (in today’s Azerbaijan); 17, Damascus; 18, Ray near Teheran; 19, Tabaristan (northern Iran); 20, Dailam on the Caspian Sea; 21, Samarqand; 22, Turkistan (Southern Kazakhstan?); 23, Halih (location unsure); 24, Sigistan (Seistan in south-western Afghanistan); 25, Khan Baliq (today’s Beijing) or much more probable Jan Baliq (Beshbaliq north-east of Turfan in Xinjiang) and Alfaliq (Almalik in north-western Xinjiang, China); 26, Tangut (the provinces of Gansu and Ningxia, as well as the Ordos region of China); and 27, Kashgar and Nawakat (in western Xinjiang and in Kyrgyzstan).70 In addition, there had long been the metropolitan see of Atropatene in Azerbaijan. Around the tenth century Cairo and Alexandria were also metropolitan sees. Towards the end of the eighth century there may have been a metropolitan see of Tibet, as well.71 At that time, the Church of the East extended from west to east over more than eighty degrees of latitude, from the Euphrates to Manchuria and the Yellow Sea, a distance corresponding to over 7000 kilometres.

In contrast to the archbishops of the interior, who were elected by the clergy and their laity, the patriarch himself nominated the metropolitans of the outer regions, with the exception of the sees of Rew Ardashir in Fars and, at times, Ray near Teheran. The nominees were almost always monastic missionaries from the Mesopotamian heartland. The archbishops of the outer regions

The 3620-metre-high mountain range of Dare Rosh in Azerbaijan, Iran, divides the plains of Urmiah from the Kurdish mountain region. Today Urmiah is, besides Teheran, the most important stronghold of the Church of the East in Iran. possessed greater autonomy than did their colleagues in the interior, since they did not have to participate in the patriarch’s synods. It sufficed for them to send the patriarch a written report, including a creed and a description of the current state of affairs, once every six years. Furthermore, the metropolitans could themselves consecrate their bishops, without these having to go to the patriarch for confirmation. Most of the dioceses of Asia had their see in a city, but there were also bishops assigned to nomadic peoples, who adapted their residence to the migration patterns of their charges. Because of the huge expanse of certain archdioceses in the outer regions, the metropolitans and bishops had at their disposal several archdeacons and chorepiscopi.72

Syriac was used as the liturgical language in all provinces and dioceses. However, during worship the hymns were sung and the Scripture read in the vernacular language, and the same was true of the sermons. In contrast to Islam, which forbids the translation of the Koran, conveyed to the prophet Mohammed by God in Arabic, the Nestorians translated missals, hymns and psalms, as well as excerpts from the New Testament, into local languages. So there have been discovered in Central Asia ancient documents in Middle Persian (Pahlavi), Arabic, Old Turkish, Sogdian, Uigur, Mongolian and Chinese.

In order to strengthen the unity of the Church,

The final declaration of independence of the Church of the East

‘The Oriental bishops may no longer appeal to the Western patriarchs against their [own] patriarch. Rather every judgement that does not find its resolution before him shall be preserved for the judgement of Christ. [The patriarch] shall judge all his subjects; judgement over him, however, shall be reserved for Christ, who chose him, elevated him, and placed him at the head of his Church’ (Synodal statement of 424).73

The synod of 424 was, after that of 410, the most important episcopal conference of the Church of the East. In the background of this synod stood renewed intra-ecclesiastical disputes and turmoil during the persecutions of 420–422. First, Yazdgerd I deposed Patriarch Ma’na (in office 420) – who was supported by a military leader – because he would not carry out the reconstruction of destroyed fire temples. He was followed by Patriarch Dadisho (in office 421–456), who was legitimately elected, but jealous bishops slandered him as a Roman spy before Shah Vahram V, who threw him in prison. The rebellious bishops did not shy away from getting help from Zoroastrians and another leader of the army and appointing an anti-patriarch, Faraboht (in office 421), whom the majority of bishops rejected.74 After the establishment of Byzantine–Sassanian peace in 422, Dadisho was released, whereupon he returned embittered to his Monastery of Noah’s Ark on Mount Djudi. Only when, at the synod, all six metropolitans and 30 additional bishops tearfully implored him to return to his office did he agree.75 to him. This declaration of independence did not imply a schism, since the creed of Nicea provided a common foundation with the Western patriarchates. However, the patriarch of the Church of the East is on an equal footing with the Western patriarchs and is as such fully autonomous in his actions. In this vision, the universal Church consists not in a single, global hierarchy but rather in an ecumenical com- munion of independent Churches.

The Church of Mar Giwargis in Khosrow Abad near Delemon (Salmas), Azerbaijan, Iran, whose bishop, according to tradition, participated in the Council of Nicea in 325. The inscription in the stone above the portal reports that the first structure was erected in 520. The church, which dates from the eleventh century and was restored by Catholic missionaries in 1845, was destroyed by an earthquake in 1930.

After the closing of the School in Nisibis in 363 it resumed its teaching around 457, thanks to the initiative of Bishop Barsauma (†496). In 449, while still a student, Barsauma had to flee Edessa when Monophysite agitators deposed the Dyophysite bishop of Edessa, Ibas (in office 435–457), for a short time. In 457 a second exodus of adherents of the Antiochene-Dyophysite theology began with the death of Ibas, who had been restored to his office. Then, in 471, when the renowned theologian and poet Narsai (†503) left Edessa in great haste on account of renewed unrest, Bishop Barsauma persuaded him to take over leadership of the School of Nisibis. When Emperor Zeno closed the School of the Persians in Edessa in 489 he finally drove the Antiochene-

The synod of 424 confirmed the autocephaly of the Church of the East and the absolute primacy of its patriarch-catholicos. It is Christ himself who appoints the patriarch, as he once had Peter, as his vicar on Earth. Only he can judge him, not the bishops subordinate

Dyophysite theology out of the Byzantine Empire. With the establishment of the School of Nisibis within the Sassanian Empire, an end was brought to the anachronism that the East Syrian patriarchal see was in the Sassanian capital, but the educational centre for the higher clergy was in the hostile Eastern Roman Empire. Nisibis now became the theological élite school of the Church of the East. Thanks to Narsai, nicknamed ‘the harp of the Holy Spirit’, the theology of Theodore of Mopsuestia, whose work he helped translate from Greek into Syriac, became the standard for East Syrian orthodoxy.76 The study of the works of Aristotle and his students supplemented the instruction in biblical exegesis. And so in Nisibis, Greek ideas and Syrian culture came into contact with one another; the School became the gate through which Greek culture captured the mind of Mesopotamia.

The nave of the Church of St Sergius in Bos Vatch. Beneath the church is an incubation room still used today by both Christians and Muslims, in which mentally ill people are healed overnight by relics encased in the walls.

In its heyday the School of Nisibis had about 1000 students, whose lives were governed by monastic principles. At least for the duration of their studies, they had to forgo worldly pleasures, take a vow of chastity and, presumably, also place their personal possessions at the disposal of the community. The curriculum was divided into two cycles. In the first, students learned correctly to read, write and recite from memory the Psalms. The second cycle included philosophy, rhetoric and, above all, exegesis, which, in accordance with the Antiochene historical understanding of the Bible, interpreted Scripture in its literal sense. Geography, astronomy, secular history, and as a separate course of study, medicine came later.

The confession of Dyophysite Christology and the dispute with the Miaphysite Jacobites

The theological alienation between West and East began not with the Church of the East but, rather, with the Roman-Byzantine state Church. It was the Council of Chalcedon – in which, for political reasons, no representatives of Seleucia-Ctesiphon participated – that accepted a moderate Antiochene Christology yet failed to rehabilitate its most prominent exponent, Nestorius, leading to the first rift in the ecumene. The Henoticon of 482, which was close to the Miaphysite position, deepened the cleft, which, on the occasion of the condemnation of the Three Chapters in 553, grew into an unbridgeable chasm. All the synodal

creeds of the Church of the East remained, from the standpoint of Antiochene theology, orthodox. The Church of the East always emphatically defended itself against the Western charge of making Christ into ‘two Sons’ and thus turning the Trinity into a quaternity.

Jacobites off against each other by forcing them to hold public disputations. Since both of the rival Churches depended on the favour of the shah, they had to give in to the undignified spectacle of facing off against one another before a Zoroastrian ruler. In the debate, the ‘pagan’ shah served as judge of the truth of either the Miaphysite one-nature doctrine of Christ or the two-nature doctrine of the Church of the East. The feared Miaphysite debater Simeon of Beit Arsham, for instance, humiliated Patriarch Babai before King Kavad I. He polemically accused the Nestorians of denying the divinity of Jesus, as did the Jews (sic), and expanding the Trinity into a quaternity, since they worshipped God the Father, God the Son, the man Jesus and the Holy Spirit.81 After his rhetorical triumph, Simeon was named bishop-at-large for Mesopotamia.82 He succeeded in gaining the support of the likewise Miaphysite patriarch of Armenia. Around the year 521 he travelled to al-Hira, the Arab vassal state in south-eastern Mesopotamia, to convert the East Syrians there. But the intervention of Nestorian bishops compelled Kavad to throw him in prison for seven years.83 The royal favour lay still with the Nestorians.

In 486 the synod of Patriarch Acacius (in office 485–496) responded to the Henoticon in its first canon: ‘Regarding Christ, our faith consists in the confession of the two natures of divinity and humanity, and none of us dares to introduce into the distinction between these two natures a blending, mixing or confusion. But anyone who thinks or teaches that suffering and change adhere to the divinity of our Lord, let him be anathema.’77 This confession preserves both the ontological unity of Christ and the wholeness of each nature, and thus opposes Theopaschism, the doctrine of the suffering of God. The second canon regulated the status of monasteries and the lives of the monks. ‘They [monks] are not allowed to enter cities and villages in order to live there. In addition, they should not hold any gatherings there, whether to celebrate the sacrifice [Eucharist] or perform baptisms, but rather they should enter the monasteries and places that have renounced civilization and there be voluntary for the bishops, priests and periodeutai, who have the power and are the superiors of their monasteries and cells.’78

The Nestorians suffered a second blow when, before 559, the Miaphysite bishop Ahudemmeh so impressed Shah Chosrau I (ruled 531–579) that he allowed him to build churches and monasteries. Thanks to this success, the Miaphysites enjoyed significantly greater freedom in the Zoroastrian Empire than in the Christian-Byzantine realm. But, when Ahudemmeh dared to baptize one of Chosrau’s sons with the name George, he was arrested and died in prison in 575. A few years later an internal split threatened the Church of the East when, beginning around 572, Hanana (†c.610), head of the School at Nisibis, promulgated the one-nature doctrine of Christ and the ability of his divinity to suffer, and also taught the existence of original sin.84 East Syrian orthodoxy

The rapid expansion of the Miaphysite Church of the Jacobites to the east of the Euphrates forced the Church of the East to state its position.79 In this spirit, in 497 the synod of Catholicos Babai (in office 497–502) presented the metropolitan of Beit Lapat, the second-highest dignitary of the Church, who was inclined towards Miaphysitism, with an ultimatum: either ‘agree to the true faith of the church with signature and seal’ or be excommunicated.80 The Church of the East found itself again forced to be on the defensive when the shah began to play Nestorians and

then opposed him as a traitor to the doctrine of the Church Father Theodore of Mopsuestia. Without referring to Hanana by name, the 585 synod of Ishoyahb I (in office 582–596) clearly condemned him: ‘In their foolishness, the heretics [meaning Hanana and his followers] dare to attribute to the nature and person of his [Christ’s] divinity the qualities and suffering of the humanity’ (Canon I). The second canon unmistakably defends the normative orthodoxy of Theodore’s teaching: ‘No one from any of the ecclesiastical orders may defame this church teacher, whether secretly or publicly, nor reject his holy writings. If one dares [nonetheless], let him be anathema.’85 Hanana’s position of power quickly eroded, as soon thereafter hundreds of students left Nisibis to attend other educational institutions. Among these were the Great Monastery on Mount Izla; the School of Beth Sahdeh, founded before 580 and also in Nisibis; the School founded by Patriarch Mar Aba I (in office 540–552) in Seleucia-Ctesiphon; and the school in Beit Lapat (Gondeshapur). To these were added the episcopal schools of Balad, Arbil, Kashkar, Merv and Hira, as well as the monastery school of Deir Qunna, south-east of Seleucia. in Edessa in 489 had already produced an influx of East Syrian theologians.

It speaks to the relatively relaxed situation between the Sassanian state and its Christian minority that Chosrau had the Nestorian School in Gondeshapur converted into a ‘laicized’ state university. Indian medicine and philosophy, Greek and Indian astronomy and astrology, mathematics, logic and agricultural science were added as new subjects. In addition, Zoroastrian ethics and theology were taught, as well as jurisprudence, finance and civil administration. Chosrau also ordered the acquisition and collection of Greek manuscripts and sent the famous physician Burzoe to India to bring scholarly books to Gondeshapur. Allegedly, Burzoe also introduced chess into Iran. In order to unite theory and practice, the School also had a hospital and an observatory. With the exception of the Zoroastrian subjects, the language of instruction was Syriac, even during the first two centuries of Arab rule. The significance of the medical faculty of Gondeshapur is evident in the fact that practically all the doctors of the Abbasid caliphs were Nestorians who had been trained there. Only the state library and university founded by Caliph Al-Ma’mun (ruled 813–833), the ‘House of Knowledge’, superseded Gondeshapur as the state university of the Abbasids.87

The city of Gondeshapur was founded by Shapur I around 260 and constructed by Roman Christian prisoners of war. The School, headed by East Syrians, distinguished itself by teaching an encyclopedic variety of academic subjects. In 529 the earlier disciplines of biblical exegesis, theology and Greek medicine were joined by Greek philosophy, after the Byzantine emperor closed the Neo-Platonic School of Athens and Shah Chosrau I invited the expelled instructors to come to his empire. Thus the far-sighted shah, who used his power to promote cultural endeavours, laid the cornerstone for the future work of translating Greek philosophy, medicine and astronomy into Syriac and then into Arabic.86 The earlier closing of the Persian school

But soon a still greater danger threatened the Church of the East through the intrigues of the Christian physician Gabriel of Singar, who exercised great influence over Shah Chosrau II (ruled 590–628). Gabriel’s power came from the fact that Chosrau’s favourite wife, the Nestorian Shirin (who had been childless to that point) bore a healthy son, the prince Merdenshah, shortly after a bleeding performed by Gabriel. At that time Gabriel was a Jacobite convert – that is, a Nestorian – who promoted matters of concern to the Church before the shah. But, when Gabriel renounced his Christian wife

The biography of the martyr Giwargis (George), composed by the East Syrian theologian Mar Babai (551–628), provides information about this dramatic period for both Churches. In 612, convinced of the victory of Hanana’s party, Gabriel arranged for another public disputation between Nestorians and Jacobites before the shah. The leader of the Nestorian delegation was the monk Giwargis, son of a Zoroastrian commanding officer of the strategically important border region of Nisibis. Before he converted to Christianity, he was educated as a Zoroastrian magician. The Christological creed George presented at the disputation bore the mark of Babai, since he had studied with him. ‘The holy fathers, namely Nestorius and his followers, declared: “two natures and two hypostases, their qualities preserved in the one person of Christ.” The blessed Theodore also clearly declared two natures and two hypostases in the one person of Christ.’ After attacks on Hanana, George affirmed the normative authority of the three Church Fathers: ‘Anyone who defames or criticizes these three blessed, holy, ecumenical teachers, the pillars of the Church, and their apostolic doctrine, which has illuminated the whole Church, namely, the blessed Diodore, the blessed Theodore and the blessed Nestorius, may not receive communion in this Church.’90 The creed of the Nestorian bishops, composed at the same time, likewise followed the ideas of Babai: ‘We acknowledge our Lord Jesus Christ as a prosopon, the Son of God, born in the nature of his divinity of the Father before time, without beginning, born in the end in the nature of his humanity of the blessed Virgin.’91 These complementary confessions of faith brought a conclusion to the traditional development of East Syrian dogma. and married two Zoroastrian women, Patriarch Sabrisho I (in office 596–604) excommunicated him, whereupon the infuriated favourite converted back to the Jacobite Church and, at the same time, induced Shirin to convert too. By his severity, the patriarch made unyielding enemies of the two most powerful people in the empire after the shah.88 After the death of Catholicos Gregory I (in office 605–608) Gabriel knew how to prevent the election of a successor; moreover, he attempted to place Hanana or one of his students on the throne.89 Both Shirin and Gabriel advanced their ‘Church policy’ not according to theological criteria but, rather, out of their personal interests. It is conceivable that Chosrau, for his part, was contemplating combining all Christians into a Sassanian imperial Church.

The Nestorian Shirin looking at the picture of Chosrau II. Manuscript of Sultan Husayn ben Sultan Ali, 1485. Regarding her fate after Chosrau’s death in the spring of 628, little is clear: Firdowsi’s Shahnameh of 1009 reports that she committed suicide when Kavad II desired her as a wife.24 The Chronicle of Seert, however, accuses Shirin of poisoning King Shiroi – who took the name Kavad II and presumably was secretly Nestorian – out of revenge for having had her Miaphysite son Merdenshah murdered upon taking the throne.25 (State Library of Berlin, Prussian cultural property. Ms.or.quart 1665, fol.40v.)

Although the disputation could have served as the basis for the shah to choose a new catholicos, Chosrau made no selection; the patriarchal see remained vacant until his death in 628. Babai

orthodoxy’, in a manner of speaking. So Barsauma persuaded King Piroz that it would be most favourable for his empire if all Christians belonged to the Church of the East, which had nothing in common with Byzantium.94 the Great, together with the archdeacon of the capital, filled the leadership vacuum, acting, so to speak, as the unappointed patriarch. The disputation was a success for the Nestorians inasmuch as they avoided the appointment of a Miaphysite patriarch. For the Jacobites, on the other hand, it ended as a defeat, as they missed the opportunity to take over leadership of the Church of the East. The vanquished Gabriel of Singar sought revenge by denouncing the powerfully eloquent Mar Giwargis before the king as an apostate from the state religion. The king had him arrested and crucified.92 This denunciation of a Christian by another Christian before the ‘pagan’ king indicates how poisonous the relationship between the two Churches had become. An official reconciliation, reached by the Nestorian patriarch Abdisho III (1138–1148) and the Jacobite patriarch Dionysius, occurred only in 1142, when each Church recognized the other as legitimate.93

But Barsauma was also an unscrupulous power player, who fought with his patriarchs over the abolition of celibacy. Barsauma lived with a nun, which offered Byzantine bishops a welcome reason to charge the second-highest- ranking East Syrian dignitary with fornication. The patriarch, however, who maintained belief in celibacy for bishops, could not succeed because Barsauma was certain of royal support, and he himself, as an apostate from the state religion, was vulnerable. Then Patriarch Babowei turned to the Byzantine bishops and asked them to persuade Emperor Zeno to intervene with Shah Piroz in favour of the patriarchal authority. Since Babowei was aware that a letter addressed indirectly to the Byzantine emperor could be interpreted as treason, his messenger concealed his message in a hollow walking stick. Nevertheless, it fell into the hands of his arch-enemy, Barsauma, who passed it on to the king. As was to be expected, the arrested patriarch was charged with apostasy and treason and was executed in 484.95 But Barsauma could not reap the fruits of his denunciation – the patriarchal throne – because a few months later Shah Piroz died in battle against the White Huns, who were allied with Byzantium. His successor Balash (ruled 484–488) sought peace with Byzantium and for that reason passed over the pugnacious Barsauma in favour of Acacius. In the meantime, right after the death of Babowei, Barsauma, acting entirely on his own authority, called a synod in Beit Lapat, but the new patriarch, in his first official act, forced Barsauma to denounce his own synod, whose acts were not included in the Synodicon Orientale. At the important synod of 486 the Dyophysite creed mentioned above was declared binding.

Crisis and renewal in the Church of the East between 450 and 650

In the second half of the fifth century the outstanding figure in the Church of the East was not Patriarch Babowei (in office 457–484) but, rather, the power-hungry metropolitan of Nisibis, Barsauma (c.415–496). Barsauma’s power rested on his friendship with the Sassanian King Piroz (ruled 459–484), which he had gained by his work as an intermediary in the establishment of a lasting Sassanian-Byzantine peace. In gratitude, Piroz appointed him as commanding officer for the border region of Nisibis. Since Barsauma had suffered the brunt of the anti-Nestorian persecutions by the Miaphysites of Edessa, he was an uncompromising opponent of the infiltration of Miaphysite preachers and monks into Mesopotamia and a devout supporter of Antiochene Christology, an ‘apostle of Nestorian

The catholicates of Acacius (in office 485–496) and Babai (in office 497–502) proceeded in

regained power in 499 ‘he had a few magicians killed and many locked up. He was benevolent towards the Christians because a company of them rendered service to him on his way to the king of the Turks’, that is the Hephtalites.97 Towards the end of his reign, Kavad and Crown Prince Chosrau I had the aged Mazdak and his closest students impaled or buried alive; their followers were persecuted mercilessly.98

Later, around 550, the Hephtalites asked Patriarch Mar Aba for a bishop.99 At the same time, some of the neighbouring Western Turks accepted Christianity. When, a few years later, Byzantine troops waged war against the western Turks, they were greatly astonished to see that the Turkish prisoners of war had crosses tattooed on their foreheads as talismans.100

Unfortunately, the Church of the East did not know how to take advantage of the favourable circumstances of religious tolerance under Kavad I; instead, it fell into discord, which led to schism. Babai’s archdeacon, Silas (in office 503– 523), succeeded him, but the new catholicos ‘was married and had a daughter. He was vain, concerned himself with worldly affairs, and loved money very much.’101 All the same, he cultivated good relations with the shah. Shortly before his death, he disregarded the synodal canons and appointed his nephew, the physician Elisha (in office 524–539), as successor. Three metropolitans rejected Elisha as unsuitable and consecrated the scribe Narses (in office 524–535) as their patriarch. Since Elisha clung to his office and would not surrender, a shameful 15-year schism occurred. ‘Each of the two patriarchs appointed bishops and sent them everywhere. In each church two altars were erected, and the faithful went to church not to pray but to engage in fistfights and sometimes even to kill.’102 At the same time, each patriarch excommunicated the other. Kavad, well disposed towards the Nestorians, managed to avoid involvement; if he had considered promoting relative peace, not least because Shah Kavad I (ruled 488–496 and 499–531) was well disposed towards the Christians, and the Zoroastrian clergy were preoccupied with the heretical reform movement of Mazdak. This movement cleverly exploited the resentment that had built up in the people against the wealth of the hereditary nobility and the capriciousness of the Mobeds. Within a dualistic worldview, it proclaimed the equality of all people, brotherhood and the inviolability of life, and thus it declared the common ownership of all possessions and women and promoted a pacifistic, vegetarian lifestyle. The young King Kavad joined the brotherhood and enacted numerous social reforms; presumably he hoped to break the power of the nobility and clergy. But these groups retaliated and deposed him in 496, whereupon he fled to Iran’s traditional arch-enemy, the White Huns, also called the Hephtalites. 96 When Kavad

Deir-e Gachin, the so-called

Monastery of Chalk, Iran. Next to the Sassanian caravansary, which lay on the Silk Road linking Merv and Seleucia-Ctesiphon, stand the ruins of a complex of buildings, surrounded by a 250x100-metre clay wall. To the east stand three arches made of fired bricks, which lead to a 12x10- metre room, whose apse is oriented to the east and whose long walls are marked by niches and pilasters. As its name suggests, Deir-e Gachin may have been originally a Christian monastery.

the Church as a possible counterweight to the Zoroastrian clergy, this disheartening spectacle must have stopped him from doing so. marriage of blood relatives and polygamy, which were found among Christians, as well. If these rules were disregarded, denial of a church burial was threatened. ‘They shall receive the burial of an ass, like the animals they resembled in life.’105 As soon as Mar Aba returned to the capital, he founded a theological university there.

In 539 the bishops ended the schism. They deposed Elisha and elected the metropolitan designate of Beit Lapat, Paul I, who enjoyed the friendship of Shah Chosrau I (ruled 531–579); but he died after only two months in office. The next election, of Mar Aba I (in office 540–552), was unanimous and fortunate, although, as a Zoroastrian apostate like Babowei before him, he was in danger of being condemned. Aba was an extraordinarily learned man, who had made a pilgrimage to Jerusalem, Alexandria, Corinth, Athens and Constantinople and then taught at the School in Nisibis and translated Greek texts into Syriac. His new task was threefold: he had to end the schism, raise the level of theological education and re-establish the flagging monastic discipline. In this last project, Abraham of Kashkar (491–586), founder of the ‘Great Monastery’ on Mount Izla, stood energetically by his side.

Mar Aba’s work was further hindered by renewed war with Byzantium, during which the Sassanians plundered Antioch in 540 and deported over a hundred thousand prisoners of war into the empire. Every war with Byzantium increased the old suspicions of their own Christian population. Around 542 the Mobedan Mobed took advantage of the opportunity and charged the patriarch with apostasy, the forbidden conversion of Zoroastrians and the condemnation of marriage between blood relatives, as well as attempting to undermine civil justice with his own rulings.106 The Zoroastrian inquisition sentenced him to death, but the shah reduced his punishment to exile in Azerbaijan, since he feared open revolt by the Christians. For a total of seven years, the catholicos had to lead his Church from prison or exile.

The newly elected patriarch went to work immediately, mucking out the Augean stables of the Church. Introducing his visitation trip, during which he sought to visit all metropolitans and dioceses with duplicate hierarchies, he asserted, ‘The patriarchal schism [is] condemned before God and absurd before humanity, like a woman with two husbands or a body with two heads.’103 He straightened out the Church according to the following criteria: ‘If there is in a diocese a bishop who was consecrated before the schism, he will remain in office. If there are two more recent bishops, the more virtuous one will be confirmed, and the other will serve as a priest. If both are equally virtuous, the younger will become the successor of the elder, who will be confirmed. But if both are unworthy, they were both be deposed and a new bishop consecrated.’104 He then updated the rule for election to episcopal office of 410 and forbade the

In 551 the patriarch and with him all the faithful found themselves in immense danger. The son of Chosrau and a Christian concubine, named Nushizad, decided to convert to Christianity and was subsequently placed under house arrest. While the shah was waging war against Byzantium in the north-east, Nushizad raised the banner of rebellion against his father, seized power and declared himself the new shah in Khuzistan, where he had the support of many Christians. The Christians were threatened by a massacre even more severe than that of Shapur II or Yazdgerd II, as the Zoroastrian clergy accused not just the patriarch but all Christians of treason. Chosrau first ordered that the patriarch be blinded and then killed, but he succeeded in proving his innocence. The shah then instructed him to use his authority to forbid the Christians

of Khuzistan from supporting the rebellion. Mar Aba excommunicated the Christian ringleaders and forbade Christians from taking part in any revolt, so that the conspiracy collapsed.107 The patriarch thus spared the Christians the bitterest cup of their history. Exhausted by his difficult life, Mar Aba died in the capital a few weeks after his return from Khuzistan. strict discipline, elected instead another, weaker Gregory, Gregory of Prat. Only in 628 with Ishoyahb II (in office 628–646) did a patriarch endowed with the skills of a statesman ascend to the see of Seleucia-Ctesiphon. Seen from a distance, Ishoyahb II preserved the integrity of the Church in the turbulent period of the five-year-long civil war from 628 to 633 and the subsequent Arab conquest. However, the Church of the East missed the opportunity to use its numerical strength – at the time of the Arab invasion, almost half the imperial population was Christian – to become the state religion. The history of the Middle East would have taken a different course had a united Christian,

The fortified oasis city of Bam in the heart of the Lut Desert belonged to the diocese of Kerman, which existed until the thirteenth century. An earthquake destroyed Bam on 26 December 2003. (Photograph from November 2001.)

Unfortunately, Mar Aba was an exception as a patriarch, and he was succeeded by mediocre to incompetent patriarchs. To blame for this were, in part, the patriarchs, who nominated their favourites, and also the bishops themselves, who in the case of Metropolitan Gregory of Nisibis, nominated by Chosrau II and well known for his

Byzantine–Sassanian front opposed the attacking Arabs. But both the Byzantines and the Sassanians oppressed their minorities, so the Miaphysites of Syria and Egypt, as well as the Christians of Iran, greeted the Arabs as liberators.

Chosrau I named as Mar Aba’s successor his personal physician Joseph (in office 552–567), who revealed himself as a greedy tyrant and had rebellious bishops arrested on the spot. Although an episcopal conference deposed him in 567, Joseph held onto his office for another three years, thanks to royal support. Only a parable first told by the physician Moses of Nisibis enabled the shah to change his mind. ‘A generous king once gave a poor man an elephant. Arriving at home, the man noticed that the door was too small for the elephant and, unless he tore down the wall, the house was also too small for the animal. And, incidentally, he would be unable to feed it. The poor man returned to the king and implored him to take back the elephant. The king agreed and took it back.’ Chosrau understood the suggestion and asked Moses what he wanted from him. ‘We are poor and would be very grateful to the king if he would take back his elephant.’ The shah agreed to Joseph’s removal, whereupon the bishops chose Ezekiel (in office 570–582) as their head.108 In order to prove his loyalty to the king, Ezekiel accompanied him in 576 on his renewed campaign against Byzantium, during which the fortified border city of Dara was conquered and the nearby Qartmin Monastery in Tur Abdin went up in flames.109 other minorities.’110 When upon Ezekiel’s death the bishops could not decide between the two candidates, the scholar Job and Bishop Ishoyahb of Arzun, the shah chose Ishoyahb I (in office 582–596), since Ishoyahb had regularly informed him about Byzantine troop movements from his border city of Arzoun.111

Statue carved from stone of possibly Shah Chosrau II (ruled 590–628), at Taq-e Bostan, Iran. This last important pre-Islamic ruler of Iran pursued an ambivalent policy with regard to the Church of the East. Caught between pressure from the Zoroastrian clergy and the religious conversion of his Christian favourite wife Shirin, he wavered between a Nestorian-friendly and an anti-Christian policy. There is sufficient room for speculation that a Christian-friendly policy on the part of Chosrau might have motivated the Christian population a few years later to mount an active resistance to the Muslim conquerors.

Unfortunately, this just and tolerant ruler suffered several defeats by the Western Turks and the Byzantines, which led to a palace revolt. With the approval of his son Chosrau II (ruled 590–628), Hormizd was deposed, blinded and executed.112 Almost forty years later the patricide Chosrau II suffered the same fate at the hands of his son Shiroi. At the same time, the army mutinied under General Vahram Chobin (ruled 590–591), who declared himself the new shah.113 No escape route was open to Chosrau, save that to the arch-enemy, Byzantium. According to the chronicle of the Muslim theologian and historian at-Tabari (839–923), a Syrian stylite prophesied to the royal refugee the successful reconquest of his empire and its fall to the Arabs, who would

Chosrau was succeeded by Shah Hormizd IV (ruled 579–590), who was very kindly disposed towards the Christians. When the leading Mobeds protested his balanced policy towards religious minorities, the shah replied with an analogy: ‘As our royal throne has four legs and cannot stand on only the front two without also supporting itself on the two in the rear, so also must our religion rest not only on the Zoroastrians but also on the Christians, Jews and

possess it until ‘the day of resurrection’.114 In fact, Emperor Maurice of Byzantium (ruled 582–602) received him benevolently, allegedly gave him Maria, one of his daughters, as a wife, and in 591, with a Byzantine-Armenian army, reconquered the Sassanian Empire for his son-in-law.115

Shirin and the influential physician Gabriel became Miaphysites and harmed the Church of the East however they could, and Chosrau made a mortal enemy of the powerful, majority Christian Arab tribes of the kingdom of the Lakhmids by having their Christian king, No’man III (ruled 583–602), poisoned.

In 506 Emperor Anastasius I had the city of Dara in southern Tur Abdin, Turkey, built up into one of the strongest border fortresses of the

Byzantine Empire. After the

Sassanians were defeated before Dara in 530, 540 and 544, Chosrau I succeeded in conquering it in 573. The border city changed hands in 586, 604 and 628, before falling to the Arabs in 639. In 942 and 958 the Byzantines plundered it without being able to hold onto it.

The next decade was for the Christians of Iran a brief golden age, as peace and friendship reigned between the two empires. The young shah, influenced by his two Christian wives, Maria and Shirin, had the churches rebuilt and even gave the Nestorian Shirin one or two monasteries. Again the horizon appeared full of promise for the Christians, as Chosrau II actively promoted the Church of the East, and the Nestorians could hope that he would become a second Constantine and profess Christianity. A military alliance between Byzantium and the possibly also Christian Iran could have mounted serious resistance to the Arab onslaught. But events unfolded quite differently. The murder of Emperor Maurice in 602 ended the Byzantine– Sassanian friendship and began a 25-year war;

Patriarch Ishoyahb I had long since fallen out of favour with the shah, since he had not supported him during the power struggle with the usurper Vahram Chobin but had instead remained neutral. The catholicos went into exile in the kingdom of the Lakhmids, a vassal state of Iran, where he died in 596. The king’s sister, Hind the Younger, buried him in a monastery she had founded.116

The Lakhmids, who originated in Yemen, began to create a kingdom in the third century CE with its capital at al-Hira, which lay a few kilometres south of modern Kufa. Al-Hira’s wealth was based on its position as a crossroads, since caravan routes led out from there to the south to Mecca and Yathrib (later Medina)

and to Najran and Yemen. Presumably the Christianization of al-Hira was a result of the persecutions of Shapur II, when Christians fled to the tolerant Lakhmids. The first monastery of al-Hira was founded around 370/380 by Mar Odisho. A legend has grown up around the selection of its location. When Mar Odisho drove out a demon while on an island in the Persian Gulf, the demon asked him where he should go. The saint ordered him to pick up a stone and carry it into the desert. The demon obeyed, placed the stone near the city of al-Hira, and returned to the saint. But Mar Odisho had seen in a dream a monastery in the place where the demon had put the stone. He decided to go to al-Hira and build a monastery there. However, he commanded the demon to stay on the island, where he remains today.117 The East Syrian Christian community of al-Hira grew quickly, and there is evidence of a Bishop Osea before 410. The city and its environs contained numerous churches and monasteries, to which were added monastic cells in the nearby mountains.118 The 1931 excavations carried out by Talbot Rice brought to light two sixth-century churches, whose doorways were decorated with stucco rosettes and plant motifs and whose walls were painted in colours. Motifs included a variety of crosses, as well as an ‘orante’, indicating that Nestorian churches used figurative works of art.119 al-Aqdam. She had this dedication inscribed on the monastery’s wall in the Arabic language and script: ‘This church was built by Hind, mother of King Amr and servant of Christ. May the God for whom she built this church forgive her sins and have mercy on her son.’ King Amr later converted back to paganism.121 When one considers that Arabic is for Muslims the language of the holy Koran, one cannot miss the irony that one of the oldest documents written in Arabic is a Christian inscription on a Nestorian monastery!122

Around 593 or 594 King No’man III professed Nestorian Christianity and was baptized by Bishop Shimun. His sister, Hind the Younger, was also a Christian and founded the monastery of Deir al-Lajja.123 Presumably Shah Chosrau II regarded the conversion of the powerful king No’man to Christianity as a danger. The Lakhmid also insulted Chosrau when he refused to give him his daughter’s hand with these words: ‘I will not give my daughter to a man who marries like the animals [with blood relations and polygamously].’124 The shah then had his vassal poisoned and No’man’s sons killed. He divided the kingdom into provinces. As soon became clear, the destruction of the Lakhmid kingdom was a serious strategic mistake, for there emerged on the south-western flank of Mesopotamia a power vacuum, which the Arabs were able to enter unopposed from 634 onward. Moreover, the feared light cavalry of the Lakhmid Arabs welcomed their brothers from central Arabia and strengthened their positions. Interestingly, Emperor Maurice had anticipated Chosrau’s error when, around 585, he destroyed the powerful vassal state of the Miaphysite Arab Ghassanids and divided it into 15 small principalities. Beginning in 634 the Arabs entered this breach unhindered, as well.125 Both the Sassanians and the Byzantines destroyed the only forces that could have stopped the Muslim tribes from the Hijaz. The city of al-Hira also rapidly declined in importance, when the Arabs began construction of the neighbouring

The majority Nestorian Arabs of the Lakhmids, together with the likewise Nestorian Banu Taghlib, formed a buffer state to Byzantium in the south- west Sassanian Empire. On the Syrian side of the desert, however, lived the Miaphysite Ghassanids, whose king was a vassal of the Byzantine emperor.120 While the Lakhmids were mainly Nestorian and also included a few Miaphysites, their rulers remained, until the last significant king, pagan. The royal wives were different. The wife of Mundir III (ruled 506–554) and mother of his successor Amr (ruled 554–569), Hind the Elder, was a devout Christian, who after 554 had a monastery built which bore her name, Deir Hind

city of Kufa around 636/638. won one victory after another, conquering the region of Tur Abdin around 605, Edessa in 607 or 609, Antioch in 611, Damascus in 613 and Jerusalem in 614, with Egypt falling in 619. It appeared as if Chosrau might achieve the glory and success of his Achaemenian forefathers.

Patriarch Ishoyahb I was followed by the ascetic Bishop Sabrisho I (in office 596–604), who was said to have encouraged King Chosrau II in a vision to go to battle against his rebellious uncle Bistam and prophesied his victory. According to Tabari, however, the Syrian stylite, whom the fleeing shah encountered in 590, had already foretold that his uncle would rise up against him.126 After the victorious battle, Chosrau decided, against the recommendation of the episcopal conference, to name as the new patriarch the bishop who had supported him. ‘We appoint for you [Bishop Sabrisho], whom you need and to whom we give authority over you.’ The assembled bishops could do nothing but burst into cheers.127 But the ascetic Sabrisho was insufficiently flexible to survive in the jungle of palace intrigue. As a consequence of his unwillingness to compromise regarding the powerful physician Gabriel of Singar, he forfeited the favour of the Nestorian concubine Shirin and thus also that of the king. Even on his death- bed, he refused to lift the excommunication of Gabriel.

Tur Abdin, the ‘Mountain of the Servants [of God]’, served as the ‘Athos of the East’, since it numbered, in its heyday, about seventy mona- steries. When the city of Nisibis, which lay to the south of Tur Abdin, fell to the Sassanians in 363, the mountain region remained in Byzantine hands and was fortified accordingly. It jutted like a Byzantine peninsula into the Sassanian sea. At the start of the seventh century a significant minority of the monasteries were under East Syrian-Nestorian leadership; the majority belonged to the Melkite imperial Church, and the Miaphysite Jacobites also slowly gained a foothold. Since the bishops and abbots of the Byzantine imperial Church were considered suspect by the Persian conquerors, they were deposed in favour of Nestorian bishops. The same happened in Edessa. But, because the populace and the monks rejected these new prelates, the Sassanians replaced them with Miaphysite dignitaries, since the Jacobite Church also had no connection with Byzantium.129 In this way, the twenty-year occupation of Tur Abdin by the Sassanians decidedly promoted the expansion of the Miaphysite Church there. Sometimes, however, the association of a monastery with a particular Church was unclear.130 Until the late Middle Ages, Tur Abdin, under Arab control since 639, remained a preferred meeting point between the two wings of Syrian monasticism, the Jacobite and Nestorian monks. The last East Syrian monks finally left the south of Tur Abdin after 1838.

Astonishingly, Chosrau named as Sabrisho’s successor Gregory, the metropolitan of Nisibis, who was renowned for his rigorous discipline. But the majority of bishops feared him, and they elected in his place the favourite of Shirin, Gregory of Prat (in office 605–608). The tricked shah confirmed the election, but with this threat: ‘Patriarch he is, and patriarch shall he be – but I will never allow another election.’128 Chosrau kept his word, and upon the death of the unworthy and greedy Patriarch Gregory he seized his possessions and forbade the election of a successor. Without the interim leadership of Babai, the Church of the East would probably have collapsed.

The murder of Chosrau’s Byzantine father- in-law Maurice in 602 offered the Sassanian ruler the opportunity to begin a new war against Byzantium. At first the Sassanian troops rapidly

In Jerusalem the Sassanians killed about 90,000 Christians and stole the so-called True Cross, on which Jesus had been crucified and which Helena, mother of Emperor Constantine,

‘discovered’ in 326.131 The Sassanians allegedly found Jews to be willing helpers, who ransomed the Christians imprisoned by the Persians and presented them with two alternatives: renounce Christ or be killed. At the same time, they are said to have systematically destroyed the churches.132 For his part, Chosrau gave the cross to his beloved wife Shirin, who had it taken to the palace of Ganzak in western Azerbaijan.133 Chosrau’s armies immediately proceeded farther into Asia Minor and advanced as far as the Bosporus; it seemed as though the shah would finally conquer Byzantium.

A certainly unintended consequence of the Sassanian conquest of the Byzantine Middle East was the fact that the Christians suddenly made up half the population not just within Mesopotamia but within the whole empire, since the peoples of Syria, Asia Minor, Palestine and southern Egypt were all Christian – majority Jacobite and minority Melkite. Presumably it was this complex situation that motivated Chosrau to pursue a more or less pragmatic, balanced policy towards the Nestorians and Jacobites. The shah was undoubtedly aware that none of the Christian Roman and later Byzantine emperors had succeeded in imposing a uniform Christian faith – how could he, a ‘pagan’ ruler, succeed? If he had decided on a Sassanian imperial Church, this would have led to unrest and circumstances resembling civil war, as had happened in the Byzantine Empire in the fifth and sixth centuries.

The Byzantine emperor Heraclius (ruled 610–641) would not be put off; he made an attack from the rear on the Persians who were besieging Byzantium and entered Armenia, Azerbaijan and northern Mesopotamia in 624, returning at the end of 627 with massive spoils. Then a palace revolt broke out in Ctesiphon, organized by Crown Prince Shiroi and a few powerful Nestorian families. The driving force on the Nestorian side was Shamta, for Chosrau II had had his father, the master of the imperial

(Above) The strongly fortified Syrian Orthodox Church of Mor Hadbeshabo in the village of Ainwardo, Tur Abdin, was besieged by Turkish-Kurdish military units in 1915 and attacked by Kurdish terrorists in 1995. Even today bullets remain in the walls. Tur Abdin was for centuries a meeting point for the Church of the East, the Syrian Orthodox and the Byzantine imperial Church.

(Left) A silver-covered Gospel book in the Syrian Orthodox Church of the Forty Martyrs in Mardin, Tur Abdin.

(Opposite bottom) The Feast of the Discovery of the Cross, which the Church of the East celebrates on 13 September. From a Nestorian Peshitta Gospel book, written in Estrangela, from the thirteenth century. This illustrated manuscript from northern Mesopotamia or Tur Abdin proves that in the thirteenth century the Church of the East was not yet aniconic.26 The upper picture shows the vision of Constantine, and the lower the search for the True Cross.

(State Library of Berlin, Prussian cultural property; Sachau 304, parchment manuscript 195 Bl., Folio 162.)

The Monastery of Gabriel, which was originally called Qartmin, is the see of the Syrian Orthodox archbishop Timothy Samuel Atkas. The monastery was founded by the two hermits Samuel (†406) and Simeon (†433) before 396/397, perhaps as early as around 350.27 In 397 Emperor Arcadius supported the first renovation, after which Emperor Theodosius II (ruled 408–450) made a generous donation to the monastery after Simeon cured him of an eye disease. In the eighth century the monastery was suspected of

Nestorian sympathies. Over the course of its more than 1600-year history it was attacked several times, including, for instance, in 830 and 1140 by Kurds, in 1260 by Mongols, in 1395 by Tamerlane, and in 1490, 1915 and 1926 again by Kurds. In 1970 it was plundered by Kurdish bandits. treasury Yazdin, murdered in order to confiscate his great wealth. Shamta and Shiroi – who had allegedly secretly converted to Christianity134 – had Chosrau and his 16 other sons murdered in 628; Shiroi took the throne under the name Kavad II. If Shamta had hoped that the patricide Shiroi would show appreciation for his leading role in the plot against the deposed shah, he was bitterly disappointed. Shiroi ordered that Shamta’s right hand, which had struck down his father, Chosrau II, be cut off, and he then had him crucified in the capital in front of the Beit Narkos Church.135 Kavad II died after a few months of rule. Since he had, by murdering his brothers, eliminated all possible male successors to the throne, the country fell into civil war. Within the space of just four years, until the accession of Yazdgerd III (632–651), there were ten different rulers, including two queens and a usurping general.

Immediately after he took the throne, Kavad II demanded that the Nestorians name a new patriarch. Since Babai the Great, who had served as interim leader of the Church of the East for twenty years, refused official appointment, the election went to Ishoyahb II of Gedala (628–646). A legend told by Bishop Thomas of Marga, however, suggests that Babai later regretted his refusal of the election. After he returned to his monastic cell on Mount Izla, an angel of God appeared to him, riding a white horse and bearing a flaming sword. He said to Babai, ‘Since you have excused yourself from the office of patriarch, and another stands therein, grant me permission to follow him. I’m an angel commanded by God, the Lord of all, to minister unto the patriarchal throne. As long as you were the vicar of the catholicos, from the first day even until now, I never departed from your side; but now it is necessary for me to cleave to him that has received this office.’ Babai sighed and replied, ‘If I had known that you were with me, I would have accepted this great work. But now go in

The Zoroastrian shrine and

Sassanian palace of Ganzak, also called Takht-e Suleiman. A tradition states that Chosrau II gave the True Cross, which had been taken from Jerusalem in 614, to his wife Shirin, who kept it in the palace of Ganzak.28 The city of Ganzak was from 486 at the latest the see of a Nestorian bishop.29 The Sassanian palace was restored and enlarged six centuries later by the Mongol Il-Khan Abaqa (ruled 1265–1282). peace and pray for me.’136

Eucharist according to the East Syrian rite, with the participation of the emperor and the Byzantine bishops. The only drop of bitterness was the conversion of his bishop Sahdona to the Byzantine, Chalcedonian Church.138 Upon Ishoyahb’s return to the capital, he was accused of breaking with orthodox belief because of his ecumenical worship with the Byzantine bishops and the emperor. But the patriarch was an adroit diplomat, who refuted the hateful attacks with modesty and kindness.139

The election of Ishoyahb II was a stroke of luck not only for the Church of the East but also for the whole country. First he reorganized the theological schools, in order to better prepare the clergy for debates with the expanding Miaphysite presence. In 630 Queen Boran (630–631), a daughter of Chosrau II, asked him to lead a peace delegation to the Byzantine emperor, in order to secure the desperately needed peace. She also asked him to return the True Cross, as a sign of goodwill.137 The high- ranking delegation consisted of the patriarch, three metropolitans and other bishops; they met Emperor Heraclius in Aleppo. The patriarch was successful and established a long-lasting peace. At the same time, he celebrated the

No sooner had the patriarch given his country peace with Byzantium than internal power struggles broke out again, and Queen Boran, beloved by the people, was murdered by an army general. After further tumult the last Sassanian, Yazdgerd III, took the throne. But the empire

Around 630 the Nestorian monk Hormizd founded the Monastery of Rabban Hormizd, north-east of Alqosh, northern Iraq. From 1504 to 1804 this leading monastery of the Church of the East was, with interruptions and alternately with neighbouring Alqosh, the see of the patriarchs from the Abuna family.

It is home to the graves of nine patriarchs. The monastery was plundered countless times by the Kurds, which led to the loss of the large collection of manuscripts in 1850. Today it belongs to the

Chaldean Church.30 In summer 2014, Kurdish peshmerga and local fighters successfully defended Alqosh and the monastery against the ‘Islamic State’. had been so weakened by the two-decade-long war with Byzantium and the subsequent civil war that it could not resist the onslaught of the Arabs. They first defeated the likewise war- weary Byzantium in 636 at the River Yarmuk and conquered Palestine and Syria, after which they destroyed the Sassanian army a few months later at al-Hira and desecrated the churches and monasteries.140 In 637 the capital Seleucia- Ctesiphon fell to the Arabs, who largely plundered it. Patriarch Ishoyahb, however, had earlier retreated to Kirkuk. The further defeat of 642 at Nehavand in the province of Hamedan broke the final Sassanian resistance. Yazdgerd fled to Merv, where he was murdered in 651 and buried by a Nestorian bishop.141 Yazdgerd’s son, Piroz II (†679), fled to China, where he received an honorary post in the office in the imperial administration of the Tang Dynasty (618–907) in 661 and was granted permission in 677 to build a second Nestorian monastery in the imperial capital of Chang’an. His son Narses, who took the name Piroz III, later tried in vain to persuade the Chinese emperor to reconquer Iran. He died in 707 in exile in China.142 It is one of the many ironies of history that the last of the Sassanian shahs, who had persecuted the Christians all too often, owed his final resting place to a bishop, and that his son founded a Nestorian monastery while in exile!

Catholicos Ishoyahb II also made himself commendable to the Church and Christians in two further regards. First, he imparted new momentum to the mission to the East and

commissioned a missionary delegation to the Chinese imperial court, which reached its destination of Chang’an in 635 and was received there with great honour by Emperor Taizong. Second, the Chronicle of Seert attributes to him the initiative to quickly establish relations with prophet Mohammed and the second caliph, Omar (ruled 634–644), and to give them monetary gifts, in order to set up a peaceful arrangement with the anticipated conquerors.143 Even if the wording of the so-called Edict of Tolerance of Omar given to Christians is apocryphal, there is little doubt that during these turbulent times the patriarch placed a protective hand over the Christians of Iran. In Ishoyahb’s day, approximately half of the collapsing Sassanian Empire was Christian, of whom about 75 per cent were Nestorians, 20 per cent Miaphysites and 5 per cent Melkites. The hierarchy of the Church of the East at that time included a patriarch, nine archbishops and 96 bishops – that is, a total of 106 bishops. independence of a sort often unknown by the Roman-Byzantine Church. The former, over the course of its early history, repeatedly had to make serious compromises with the political leadership, which damaged the Church’s own credibility. Among these compromises were not only all the creeds imposed upon it by the Byzantine emperor out of political considerations but also the betrayal of the pacifistic vision of Christ. As long as the Christians in the Roman Empire were tolerated or persecuted, they maintained the ban on killing. Christian faith and military service were really incompatible, even if officers converted to Christianity relatively often. Jesus tolerated the profession of soldier, with strict limitations, but certainly not the active waging of war.144 But, just a year after the conversion of Constantine, official Christianity made a radical about-face: in 314 the episcopal synod of Arles broke with pacifism and threatened those who refused military service with excommunication.145 Compared with such humiliations, the ethical compromises the Church of the East had to make, such as relaxation of the requirement of celibacy, were

Although the Church of the East never achieved the status of a state Church and was subjected to arbitrary persecutions by the civil authorities, it was also able to preserve an ethical

Bishops of the Church of the East in the vault of the patriarchs in the Monastery of Rabban Hormizd. From left to right, Bishop Mar

Emmanuel, Canada; Metropolitan Mar Giwargis Sliwa, Iraq;

Metropolitan Mar Narsai de Baz, Lebanon; Bishop Mar Ishaq Khamis, Dehuk and Russia; Patriarch Mar Dinkha IV; Bishop Mar Aprem Nathaniel, Syria; Bishop Mar Yosip Sargis, Baghdad. October 2000.

An East Syrian from northern Iraq, living in Khabur, north-eastern

Syria, whose family fled from Hakkari to northern Iraq in 1915. insignificant.

The emergence of the Syrian Orthodox, Jacobite Church

As has already been discussed, Emperor Justin’s re-established ecumene with Rome in 519 and the new Chalcedonian creed of Justinian of 536 pushed the Miaphysite movement into opposition to the imperial Church. In 519 its leading exponent, Patriarch Severus of Antioch (†538), had to flee to Alexandria, and its bishops were gradually deposed. Thus no other choice remained for the Miaphysites but to establish a hierarchy independent from the state, so beginning around 530 Severus authorized Bishop John of Tella to ordain deacons, priests and bishops. Seven years later John of Tella also fell victim to the state-led persecution.

Interestingly, it was Empress Theodora (co- reigned 527–548), of all people, who threw a lifeline to the Miaphysites being persecuted by her husband. In 542 the powerful vassal king Harith ibn Jabdah from the Ghassanid tribe, who ruled over East Syria and represented a strategically important buffer state to the Sassanians, requested two bishops-at-large for his people. Empress Theodora arranged for the Miaphysite patriarch Theodosius of Alexandria, who was living in exile, to appoint two missionary bishops granted with special privileges of consecration. These were Theodore the Arab, who worked in the region under Ghassanid authority, and Jacob, called Baradaeus (505–578), who laboured both west and east of the Euphrates with unflagging enthusiasm and mostly in secret to build up a Miaphysite Church organization, which is also called ‘Jacobite’ after his name.146 Although Emperor Justinian ordered his arrest, he was able to elude official capture during his continual travels by disguising himself as a beggar, monk or even soldier. According to Miaphysite sources, he is said to have consecrated or ordained two patriarchs, 27 bishops and thousands of priests. However, the unity of the Miaphysites collapsed in 575 with a dispute between the patriarchs of Antioch and Alexandria, which finally led to the establishment of two independent Miaphysite Churches, the Coptic of Egypt and the Syrian Orthodox.147 Since the Miaphysite position proceeds from the belief that the incarnation of Christ occurred out of two natures into a single nature, the polemical demarcation of Jacob from the East Syrians is clear: ‘The holy, omnipotent, and immortal God was crucified and died for us.

the hand of the Byzantines!’149 The Syrian Orthodox patriarch resided from 1166 to 1923, with some interruptions, in the Deir az-Zafaran monastery near Mardin, then in Homs, Syria, and since 1959 in Damascus.

In the Sassanian Empire the Jacobite Church met with bitter opposition from the Church of the East, but, on the other hand, was welcomed by the hundreds of thousands of prisoners of war who had been deported from Syria by both Chosraus between 540 and 614. In addition, beginning around 605 the Jacobites enjoyed the protection of the powerful court physician Gabriel of Singar and Queen Shirin. In the years 558/559 Jacob Baradaeus came to the Sassanian Empire, where he consecrated Ahudemmeh (c.530–575) as bishop and metropolitan of Takrit. On the occasion of the election of Bishop Maruta, the Syrian Orthodox metropolitan residing in Takrit received the title of Maphrian of the East. The maphrian was named by the patriarch; he had authority over all the dioceses of Mesopotamia and Asia, reaching as far as Central Asia and Afghanistan.150 Until 1156 the Jacobite maphrian resided primarily in Takrit, birthplace of Salah al-Din (Saladin) and Saddam Hussein, but later also in Mosul or in the Monastery of Mar Mattai. The most famous maphrian was Bar Hebraeus (1226–1286), who worked throughout his life to overcome the mistrust that had grown up between the two Syrian sister Churches and wrote a world- renowned chronography of the world and the Eastern Churches. He found his final resting place in the Monastery of Mar Mattai, 35 kilometres east of Mosul.

We do not believe, as do the Nestorians, these man-worshippers (sic), that a mortal man died for us.’148

On account of persecution from the state, the Syrian Orthodox Church in Syria had to operate underground for a time. It developed primarily in the monasteries and in rural areas; for security reasons, its patriarchs often had to change their residences. These emergency circumstances help explain why the majority of Syrians welcomed first the Sassanian and then the Arab armies as liberators. In the words of a prayer from shortly after 630, ‘God, You see the malice of the Byzantines, who everywhere they rule cruelly plunder our churches and monasteries and mercilessly condemn us, lead the sons of Ishmael [the Arabs] to us from the south to free us from

According to tradition, at the time of the heretical, then Arian, emperor Valens (ruled 364–378), a few ascetics fled Amida, today’s Diyarbakir, for northern Mesopotamia and there founded the monastery at Mattai. The monastery, which originally belonged to the Church of the East, came under Miaphysitic influence as early

The Monastery of Mar Mattai, founded around 370, originally belonged to the Church of the East and is located 35 kilometres east of Mosul in northern Iraq. As early as around 484 the monastery converted to the Syrian Orthodox Church, and was then won back by the Church of the East, but it developed beginning in 540 into a stronghold of the Jacobites. It was entirely restored in 1795 and 1845. The monastery forms its own diocese of the Syrian Orthodox Church. Since June 2014 the monastery shelters Christian refugees from Mosul fleeing the ‘Islamic State’ IS and is protected by fighters from the Assyrian organisation Dwekh Nawsha and by Kurdish peshmerga. light of this miracle, the brother and sister were baptized. The enraged king then had both his children beheaded, whereupon, overcome with regret, he likewise converted.152 as circa 484 and around 540 became a bastion of the Jacobites.151 Closely allied with the Monastery of Mar Mattai is the Monastery of Mar Behnam, which stands a few kilometres south-east of Mosul on the road to Kirkuk. The first chapel was founded towards the end of the fourth century, presumably by monks of Mar Mattai, to honour the siblings Behnam and Sara, executed during the persecutions of Christians by Shapur II. In the corresponding legend, the event is moved back about a whole millennium. Mar Mattai, founder of the monastery of the same name, is said to have appeared in a dream to the son of the Assyrian King Sannacherib (ruled 705–681BCE), Behnam. Afterwards the prince, together with his sister Sara, who suffered from leprosy, went to the saint, who cured her of her affliction. In

This legend provided the foundation for the development of the martyr’s tomb – originally Nestorian, from 540 Jacobite – into a pilgrimage destination for miracle cures, to which both Christians and Muslims came. To the latter, the monastery of Mar Behnam is known as al-Khidr, the ‘place of the power to make green’ – that is, of hope. The pilgrimage site grew in importance as Mar Behnam became associated with St George, who was very popular in the East.153 The two saints are depicted symmetrically on the lintels of the shrine; George is defeating the dragon and Behnam the devil. Thanks to these attributes of

(Top) The Monastery of St Ananias – also called, on account of the colour of its walls, Deir az-Zafaran, the Yellow Monastery – lies a few kilometres east of Mardin, on the western border of Tur Abdin. The monastery, dating from the fifth century, was rebuilt by Bishop Ananias shortly after 793 and served from 1166 to 1923, with brief interruptions, as the residence of the Syrian Orthodox patriarchs.

(Bottom) The Monastery of Mar Behnam, located near Mosul, was first founded as a memorial to the sibling martyrs Behnam and Sara in the second half of the fourth century, perhaps by monks of Mar Mattai. It was thus originally a martyrion, which was expanded into a larger church in 1164. Its expansion into an actual monastery followed between 1248 and 1295.31 Also found in the monastery is the only inscription in the Turkish language and Uigur script in Mesopotamia: ‘May the peace of Khidr [the healer] Elias, the friend of God, come to the khan, his barons and his wife, and remain with them.’ The khan referred to is Il-Khan Baidu (ruled 1295), who regretted the plundering of the monastery and returned its stolen treasures, plus a personal donation.32 The monastery, which today belongs to the Syrian Catholic Church, was rebuilt in 1901 and restored in the 1990s. After having expelled the monks, the ‘Islamic State’ IS blew up the tomb of Behnam and Sara in March 2015 with explosives.

(Top) The Nestorian double church dedicated to St Sergius and St Bacchus stands in the village of Bos Vatch, eight kilometres south- west of the city of Urmiah in the province of Azerbaijan, Iran. The region of Urmiah remains to this day a stronghold of the Church of the East, where over 100 East Syrian and Chaldean churches and chapels are found. Many of them have been closed for security reasons due to widespread vandalism and are opened only once a year on the feast day of their patron saint. The ram on the right side of the picture was sacrificed on the occasion of a funeral, and its blood was used to make crosses on the lintel above the entrance door on the left of the church.

(Bottom) Lintel over the burial chamber of Mar Behnam in the monastery of the same name. On the left St Behnam defeats the devil, and on the right St George slays the dragon. The association of Behnam with St George contributed considerably to the popularity of the pilgrimage site.

The Patriarchate of Seleucia-Ctesiphon | 103

healing and victory over evil, the martyr’s tomb became a favoured site for incubation. As has been observed by the author in several East and West Syrian churches, there is in the martyrium or crypt a chain fastened to the wall, to which mentally ill people or epileptics are chained and left alone in the dark for the night. The next morning, on account of the healing powers of the saint’s tomb or the relics in the walls or perhaps from shock, the afflicted individuals are again healthy. This method of healing is said to be equally effective for Christians and Muslims.154