The Church of the East - An Illustrated History of Assyrian Christianity

["The Patriarchate of Seleucia-Ctesiphon | 91 In 506 Emperor Anastasius I had the possess it until \u2018the day of resurrection\u2019.114 In fact, Shirin and the influential physician Gabriel city of Dara in southern Tur Abdin, Emperor Maurice of Byzantium (ruled 582 \u2013 602) became Miaphysites and harmed the Church of Turkey, built up into one of the received him benevolently, allegedly gave him the East however they could, and Chosrau made a strongest border fortresses of the Maria, one of his daughters, as a wife, and in 591, mortal enemy of the powerful, majority Christian Byzantine Empire. After the with a Byzantine-Armenian army, reconquered Arab tribes of the kingdom of the Lakhmids by Sassanians were defeated before the Sassanian Empire for his son-in-law.115 having their Christian king, No\u2019man III (ruled Dara in 530, 540 and 544, Chosrau 583 \u2013 602), poisoned. I succeeded in conquering it in 573. The next decade was for the Christians of The border city changed hands in Iran a brief golden age, as peace and friendship Patriarch Ishoyahb I had long since fallen 586, 604 and 628, before falling to reigned between the two empires. The young out of favour with the shah, since he had not the Arabs in 639. In 942 and 958 shah, influenced by his two Christian wives, supported him during the power struggle with the Byzantines plundered it without Maria and Shirin, had the churches rebuilt the usurper Vahram Chobin but had instead being able to hold onto it. and even gave the Nestorian Shirin one or two remained neutral. The catholicos went into exile monasteries. Again the horizon appeared full in the kingdom of the Lakhmids, a vassal state of of promise for the Christians, as Chosrau II Iran, where he died in 596. The king\u2019s sister, Hind actively promoted the Church of the East, and the Younger, buried him in a monastery she had the Nestorians could hope that he would become founded.116 a second Constantine and profess Christianity. A military alliance between Byzantium and the The Lakhmids, who originated in Yemen, possibly also Christian Iran could have mounted began to create a kingdom in the third century serious resistance to the Arab onslaught. But CE with its capital at al-Hira, which lay a few events unfolded quite differently. The murder of kilometres south of modern Kufa. Al-Hira\u2019s Emperor Maurice in 602 ended the Byzantine\u2013 wealth was based on its position as a crossroads, Sassanian friendship and began a 25-year war; since caravan routes led out from there to the south to Mecca and Yathrib (later Medina)","92 | The Church of the East and to Najran and Yemen. Presumably the al-Aqdam. She had this dedication inscribed on Christianization of al-Hira was a result of the the monastery\u2019s wall in the Arabic language and persecutions of Shapur II, when Christians fled script: \u2018This church was built by Hind, mother of to the tolerant Lakhmids. The first monastery King Amr and servant of Christ. May the God for of al-Hira was founded around 370\/380 by Mar whom she built this church forgive her sins and Odisho. A legend has grown up around the have mercy on her son.\u2019 King Amr later converted selection of its location. When Mar Odisho drove back to paganism.121 When one considers that out a demon while on an island in the Persian Arabic is for Muslims the language of the holy Gulf, the demon asked him where he should go. Koran, one cannot miss the irony that one of the The saint ordered him to pick up a stone and carry oldest documents written in Arabic is a Christian it into the desert. The demon obeyed, placed the inscription on a Nestorian monastery!122 stone near the city of al-Hira, and returned to the saint. But Mar Odisho had seen in a dream a Around 593 or 594 King No\u2019man III professed monastery in the place where the demon had put Nestorian Christianity and was baptized by the stone. He decided to go to al-Hira and build Bishop Shimun. His sister, Hind the Younger, a monastery there. However, he commanded the was also a Christian and founded the monastery demon to stay on the island, where he remains of Deir al-Lajja.123 Presumably Shah Chosrau II today.117 The East Syrian Christian community of regarded the conversion of the powerful king al-Hira grew quickly, and there is evidence of a No\u2019man to Christianity as a danger. The Lakhmid Bishop Osea before 410. The city and its environs also insulted Chosrau when he refused to give contained numerous churches and monasteries, him his daughter\u2019s hand with these words: \u2018I to which were added monastic cells in the nearby will not give my daughter to a man who marries mountains.118 The 1931 excavations carried out by like the animals [with blood relations and Talbot Rice brought to light two sixth-century polygamously].\u2019124 The shah then had his vassal churches, whose doorways were decorated with poisoned and No\u2019man\u2019s sons killed. He divided stucco rosettes and plant motifs and whose walls the kingdom into provinces. As soon became were painted in colours. Motifs included a variety clear, the destruction of the Lakhmid kingdom of crosses, as well as an \u2018orante\u2019, indicating that was a serious strategic mistake, for there emerged Nestorian churches used figurative works of art.119 on the south-western flank of Mesopotamia a power vacuum, which the Arabs were able to The majority Nestorian Arabs of the Lakhmids, enter unopposed from 634 onward. Moreover, together with the likewise Nestorian Banu Taghlib, the feared light cavalry of the Lakhmid Arabs formed a buffer state to Byzantium in the south- welcomed their brothers from central Arabia west Sassanian Empire. On the Syrian side of the and strengthened their positions. Interestingly, desert, however, lived the Miaphysite Ghassanids, Emperor Maurice had anticipated Chosrau\u2019s error whose king was a vassal of the Byzantine when, around 585, he destroyed the powerful emperor.120 While the Lakhmids were mainly vassal state of the Miaphysite Arab Ghassanids and Nestorian and also included a few Miaphysites, divided it into 15 small principalities. Beginning their rulers remained, until the last significant in 634 the Arabs entered this breach unhindered, king, pagan. The royal wives were different. The as well.125 Both the Sassanians and the Byzantines wife of Mundir III (ruled 506 \u2013 554) and mother destroyed the only forces that could have stopped of his successor Amr (ruled 554 \u2013 569), Hind the the Muslim tribes from the Hijaz. The city of Elder, was a devout Christian, who after 554 had a al-Hira also rapidly declined in importance, when monastery built which bore her name, Deir Hind the Arabs began construction of the neighbouring","The Patriarchate of Seleucia-Ctesiphon | 93 city of Kufa around 636\/638. won one victory after another, conquering the Patriarch Ishoyahb I was followed by the region of Tur Abdin around 605, Edessa in 607 or 609, Antioch in 611, Damascus in 613 and ascetic Bishop Sabrisho I (in office 596 \u2013 604), who Jerusalem in 614, with Egypt falling in 619. It was said to have encouraged King Chosrau II in appeared as if Chosrau might achieve the glory a vision to go to battle against his rebellious uncle and success of his Achaemenian forefathers. Bistam and prophesied his victory. According to Tabari, however, the Syrian stylite, whom the Tur Abdin, the \u2018Mountain of the Servants [of fleeing shah encountered in 590, had already God]\u2019, served as the \u2018Athos of the East\u2019, since it foretold that his uncle would rise up against numbered, in its heyday, about seventy mona- him.126 After the victorious battle, Chosrau steries. When the city of Nisibis, which lay to decided, against the recommendation of the the south of Tur Abdin, fell to the Sassanians in episcopal conference, to name as the new 363, the mountain region remained in Byzantine patriarch the bishop who had supported him. hands and was fortified accordingly. It jutted \u2018We appoint for you [Bishop Sabrisho], whom like a Byzantine peninsula into the Sassanian sea. you need and to whom we give authority over At the start of the seventh century a significant you.\u2019 The assembled bishops could do nothing minority of the monasteries were under East but burst into cheers.127 But the ascetic Sabrisho Syrian-Nestorian leadership; the majority was insufficiently flexible to survive in the belonged to the Melkite imperial Church, and jungle of palace intrigue. As a consequence of the Miaphysite Jacobites also slowly gained a his unwillingness to compromise regarding the foothold. Since the bishops and abbots of the powerful physician Gabriel of Singar, he forfeited Byzantine imperial Church were considered the favour of the Nestorian concubine Shirin suspect by the Persian conquerors, they were and thus also that of the king. Even on his death- deposed in favour of Nestorian bishops. The same bed, he refused to lift the excommunication of happened in Edessa. But, because the populace Gabriel. and the monks rejected these new prelates, the Sassanians replaced them with Miaphysite Astonishingly, Chosrau named as Sabrisho\u2019s dignitaries, since the Jacobite Church also had successor Gregory, the metropolitan of Nisibis, no connection with Byzantium.129 In this way, who was renowned for his rigorous discipline. the twenty-year occupation of Tur Abdin by the But the majority of bishops feared him, and Sassanians decidedly promoted the expansion they elected in his place the favourite of Shirin, of the Miaphysite Church there. Sometimes, Gregory of Prat (in office 605 \u2013 608). The tricked however, the association of a monastery with a shah confirmed the election, but with this threat: particular Church was unclear.130 Until the late \u2018Patriarch he is, and patriarch shall he be \u2013 but I Middle Ages, Tur Abdin, under Arab control will never allow another election.\u2019128 Chosrau kept since 639, remained a preferred meeting point his word, and upon the death of the unworthy and between the two wings of Syrian monasticism, greedy Patriarch Gregory he seized his possessions the Jacobite and Nestorian monks. The last East and forbade the election of a successor. Without Syrian monks finally left the south of Tur Abdin the interim leadership of Babai, the Church of after 1838. the East would probably have collapsed. In Jerusalem the Sassanians killed about The murder of Chosrau\u2019s Byzantine father- 90,000 Christians and stole the so-called True in-law Maurice in 602 offered the Sassanian Cross, on which Jesus had been crucified and ruler the opportunity to begin a new war against which Helena, mother of Emperor Constantine, Byzantium. At first the Sassanian troops rapidly","94 | The Church of the East (Above) The strongly fortified Syrian Orthodox Church of Mor Hadbeshabo in \u2018discovered\u2019 in 326.131 The Sassanians allegedly the village of Ainwardo, Tur Abdin, was found Jews to be willing helpers, who ransomed besieged by Turkish-Kurdish military the Christians imprisoned by the Persians and units in 1915 and attacked by Kurdish presented them with two alternatives: renounce terrorists in 1995. Even today bullets Christ or be killed. At the same time, they are remain in the walls. Tur Abdin was for said to have systematically destroyed the centuries a meeting point for the Church churches.132 For his part, Chosrau gave the cross of the East, the Syrian Orthodox and the to his beloved wife Shirin, who had it taken to Byzantine imperial Church. the palace of Ganzak in western Azerbaijan.133 Chosrau\u2019s armies immediately proceeded farther (Left) A silver-covered Gospel book in into Asia Minor and advanced as far as the the Syrian Orthodox Church of the Forty Bosporus; it seemed as though the shah would Martyrs in Mardin, Tur Abdin. finally conquer Byzantium. (Opposite bottom) The Feast of the A certainly unintended consequence of the Discovery of the Cross, which the Church Sassanian conquest of the Byzantine Middle of the East celebrates on 13 September. East was the fact that the Christians suddenly From a Nestorian Peshitta Gospel book, made up half the population not just within written in Estrangela, from the thirteenth Mesopotamia but within the whole empire, since century. This illustrated manuscript from the peoples of Syria, Asia Minor, Palestine and northern Mesopotamia or Tur Abdin southern Egypt were all Christian \u2013 majority proves that in the thirteenth century the Jacobite and minority Melkite. Presumably it was Church of the East was not yet aniconic.26 this complex situation that motivated Chosrau The upper picture shows the vision of to pursue a more or less pragmatic, balanced Constantine, and the lower the search for policy towards the Nestorians and Jacobites. The the True Cross. shah was undoubtedly aware that none of the (State Library of Berlin, Prussian cultural Christian Roman and later Byzantine emperors property; Sachau 304, parchment had succeeded in imposing a uniform Christian manuscript 195 Bl., Folio 162.) faith \u2013 how could he, a \u2018pagan\u2019 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 \u2013 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","The Monastery of Gabriel, which The Patriarchate of Seleucia-Ctesiphon | 95 was originally called Qartmin, is the see of the Syrian Orthodox treasury Yazdin, murdered in order to confiscate archbishop Timothy Samuel Atkas. his great wealth. Shamta and Shiroi \u2013 who had The monastery was founded by the allegedly secretly converted to Christianity134 \u2013 two hermits Samuel (\u2020406) and had Chosrau and his 16 other sons murdered Simeon (\u2020433) before 396\/397, in 628; Shiroi took the throne under the name perhaps as early as around 350.27 In Kavad II. If Shamta had hoped that the patricide 397 Emperor Arcadius supported the Shiroi would show appreciation for his leading first renovation, after which Emperor role in the plot against the deposed shah, he Theodosius II (ruled 408 \u2013 450) made was bitterly disappointed. Shiroi ordered that a generous donation to the monastery Shamta\u2019s right hand, which had struck down after Simeon cured him of an eye his father, Chosrau II, be cut off, and he then disease. In the eighth century the had him crucified in the capital in front of the monastery was suspected of Beit Narkos Church.135 Kavad II died after a few Nestorian sympathies. Over the months of rule. Since he had, by murdering his course of its more than 1600-year brothers, eliminated all possible male successors history it was attacked several times, to the throne, the country fell into civil war. including, for instance, in 830 and Within the space of just four years, until the 1140 by Kurds, in 1260 by Mongols, accession of Yazdgerd III (632 \u2013 651), there were in 1395 by Tamerlane, and in 1490, ten different rulers, including two queens and a 1915 and 1926 again by Kurds. In usurping general. 1970 it was plundered by Kurdish bandits. 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 \u2013 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, \u2018Since you have excused yourself from the office of patriarch, and another stands therein, grant me permission to follow him. I\u2019m 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.\u2019 Babai sighed and replied, \u2018If I had known that you were with me, I would have accepted this great work. But now go in","96 | The Church of the East peace and pray for me.\u2019136 Eucharist according to the East Syrian rite, The Zoroastrian shrine and The election of Ishoyahb II was a stroke of with the participation of the emperor and the Sassanian palace of Ganzak, also Byzantine bishops. The only drop of bitterness called Takht-e Suleiman. A tradition luck not only for the Church of the East but also was the conversion of his bishop Sahdona to states that Chosrau II gave the True for the whole country. First he reorganized the the Byzantine, Chalcedonian Church.138 Upon Cross, which had been taken from theological schools, in order to better prepare Ishoyahb\u2019s return to the capital, he was accused Jerusalem in 614, to his wife Shirin, the clergy for debates with the expanding of breaking with orthodox belief because of his who kept it in the palace of Ganzak.28 Miaphysite presence. In 630 Queen Boran ecumenical worship with the Byzantine bishops The city of Ganzak was from 486 (630 \u2013 631), a daughter of Chosrau II, asked and the emperor. But the patriarch was an adroit at the latest the see of a Nestorian him to lead a peace delegation to the Byzantine diplomat, who refuted the hateful attacks with bishop.29 The Sassanian palace was emperor, in order to secure the desperately modesty and kindness.139 restored and enlarged six centuries needed peace. She also asked him to return the later by the Mongol Il-Khan Abaqa True Cross, as a sign of goodwill.137 The high- No sooner had the patriarch given his country (ruled 1265 \u2013 1282). ranking delegation consisted of the patriarch, peace with Byzantium than internal power three metropolitans and other bishops; they met struggles broke out again, and Queen Boran, Emperor Heraclius in Aleppo. The patriarch beloved by the people, was murdered by an army was successful and established a long-lasting general. After further tumult the last Sassanian, peace. At the same time, he celebrated the Yazdgerd III, took the throne. But the empire","The Patriarchate of Seleucia-Ctesiphon | 97 Around 630 the Nestorian monk had been so weakened by the two-decade-long an honorary post in the office in the imperial Hormizd founded the Monastery war with Byzantium and the subsequent civil administration of the Tang Dynasty (618 \u2013 907) in of Rabban Hormizd, north-east of war that it could not resist the onslaught of the 661 and was granted permission in 677 to build Alqosh, northern Iraq. From 1504 Arabs. They first defeated the likewise war- a second Nestorian monastery in the imperial to 1804 this leading monastery of weary Byzantium in 636 at the River Yarmuk capital of Chang\u2019an. His son Narses, who took the Church of the East was, with and conquered Palestine and Syria, after which the name Piroz III, later tried in vain to persuade interruptions and alternately with they destroyed the Sassanian army a few months the Chinese emperor to reconquer Iran. He died neighbouring Alqosh, the see of the later at al-Hira and desecrated the churches in 707 in exile in China.142 It is one of the many patriarchs from the Abuna family. and monasteries.140 In 637 the capital Seleucia- ironies of history that the last of the Sassanian It is home to the graves of nine Ctesiphon fell to the Arabs, who largely shahs, who had persecuted the Christians all too patriarchs. The monastery was plundered it. Patriarch Ishoyahb, however, had often, owed his final resting place to a bishop, plundered countless times by the earlier retreated to Kirkuk. The further defeat of and that his son founded a Nestorian monastery Kurds, which led to the loss of the 642 at Nehavand in the province of Hamedan while in exile! large collection of manuscripts in broke the final Sassanian resistance. Yazdgerd 1850. Today it belongs to the fled to Merv, where he was murdered in 651 and Catholicos Ishoyahb II also made himself buried by a Nestorian bishop.141 Yazdgerd\u2019s son, commendable to the Church and Christians Chaldean Church.30 In summer Piroz II (\u2020679), fled to China, where he received in two further regards. First, he imparted new 2014, Kurdish peshmerga and local momentum to the mission to the East and fighters successfully defended Alqosh and the monastery against the \u2018Islamic State\u2019.","98 | The Church of the East commissioned a missionary delegation to the independence of a sort often unknown by the Chinese imperial court, which reached its Roman-Byzantine Church. The former, over destination of Chang\u2019an in 635 and was received the course of its early history, repeatedly had to there with great honour by Emperor Taizong. make serious compromises with the political Second, the Chronicle of Seert attributes to him leadership, which damaged the Church\u2019s own the initiative to quickly establish relations with credibility. Among these compromises were prophet Mohammed and the second caliph, Omar not only all the creeds imposed upon it by the (ruled 634 \u2013 644), and to give them monetary gifts, Byzantine emperor out of political considerations in order to set up a peaceful arrangement with but also the betrayal of the pacifistic vision of the anticipated conquerors.143 Even if the wording Christ. As long as the Christians in the Roman of the so-called Edict of Tolerance of Omar given Empire were tolerated or persecuted, they to Christians is apocryphal, there is little doubt maintained the ban on killing. Christian faith that during these turbulent times the patriarch and military service were really incompatible, placed a protective hand over the Christians of even if officers converted to Christianity relatively Iran. In Ishoyahb\u2019s day, approximately half of often. Jesus tolerated the profession of soldier, the collapsing Sassanian Empire was Christian, with strict limitations, but certainly not the of whom about 75 per cent were Nestorians, 20 active waging of war.144 But, just a year after the per cent Miaphysites and 5 per cent Melkites. The conversion of Constantine, official Christianity hierarchy of the Church of the East at that time made a radical about-face: in 314 the episcopal included a patriarch, nine archbishops and 96 synod of Arles broke with pacifism and bishops \u2013 that is, a total of 106 bishops. threatened those who refused military service with excommunication.145 Compared with Although the Church of the East never such humiliations, the ethical compromises achieved the status of a state Church and was the Church of the East had to make, such as subjected to arbitrary persecutions by the civil relaxation of the requirement of celibacy, were 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.","The Patriarchate of Seleucia-Ctesiphon | 99 An East Syrian from northern Iraq, insignificant. living in Khabur, north-eastern Syria, whose family fled from The emergence of the Syrian Hakkari to northern Iraq in 1915. Orthodox, Jacobite Church As has already been discussed, Emperor Justin\u2019s soldier. According to Miaphysite sources, he re-established ecumene with Rome in 519 and is said to have consecrated or ordained two the new Chalcedonian creed of Justinian of 536 patriarchs, 27 bishops and thousands of priests. pushed the Miaphysite movement into opposition However, the unity of the Miaphysites collapsed to the imperial Church. In 519 its leading in 575 with a dispute between the patriarchs of exponent, Patriarch Severus of Antioch (\u2020538), Antioch and Alexandria, which finally led to the had to flee to Alexandria, and its bishops were establishment of two independent Miaphysite gradually deposed. Thus no other choice remained Churches, the Coptic of Egypt and the Syrian for the Miaphysites but to establish a hierarchy Orthodox.147 Since the Miaphysite position independent from the state, so beginning around proceeds from the belief that the incarnation of 530 Severus authorized Bishop John of Tella to Christ occurred out of two natures into a single ordain deacons, priests and bishops. Seven years nature, the polemical demarcation of Jacob from later John of Tella also fell victim to the state-led the East Syrians is clear: \u2018The holy, omnipotent, persecution. and immortal God was crucified and died for us. Interestingly, it was Empress Theodora (co- reigned 527 \u2013 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 \u2013 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 \u2018Jacobite\u2019 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","100 | The Church of the East TURKEY Christian community the hand of the Byzantines!\u2019149 The Syrian Christian places and monasteries of Metropolitan see Orthodox patriarch resided from 1166 to 1923, Northern Iraq. Mt. Djudi with some interruptions, in the Deir az-Zafaran YRIA monastery near Mardin, then in Homs, Syria, Zakho Challik and since 1959 in Damascus. S Deir Abun Duri In the Sassanian Empire the Jacobite Church Peshabur met with bitter opposition from the Church of the East, but, on the other hand, was welcomed B Araden by the hundreds of thousands of prisoners of war who had been deported from Syria by both NUHADRA Beth Bedeh Chosraus between 540 and 614. In addition, A beginning around 605 the Jacobites enjoyed Dehuk Amadiah the protection of the powerful court physician B E I T AR ABAYE Gabriel of Singar and Queen Shirin. In the years Hazaneh Bidial 558\/559 Jacob Baradaeus came to the Sassanian Empire, where he consecrated Ahudemmeh Lalish (c. 530 \u2013 575) as bishop and metropolitan of Takrit. On the occasion of the election of Bishop Alqosh Rabban Hormizd Aqra Maruta, the Syrian Orthodox metropolitan residing in Takrit received the title of Maphrian Notre Dame Khinnis Zab of the East. The maphrian was named by the de Semences Diana patriarch; he had authority over all the dioceses of Mesopotamia and Asia, reaching as far as Niniveh Up per Central Asia and Afghanistan.150 Until 1156 the Jacobite maphrian resided primarily in Takrit, Mosul birthplace of Salah al-Din (Saladin) and Saddam Hussein, but later also in Mosul or in the Karakosh Ravanduz Monastery of Mar Mattai. The most famous Mar Shaqlawa maphrian was Bar Hebraeus (1226 \u2013 1286), Behnam who worked throughout his life to overcome the mistrust that had grown up between the Arbela two Syrian sister Churches and wrote a world- renowned chronography of the world and the Tigris ADIABENE Eastern Churches. He found his final resting place in the Monastery of Mar Mattai, 35 Lo we r Z a b kilometres east of Mosul. Kirkuk According to tradition, at the time of the heretical, then Arian, emperor Valens (ruled N 0 10 20 30 40 50km 364 \u2013 378), a few ascetics fled Amida, today\u2019s Diyarbakir, for northern Mesopotamia and there We do not believe, as do the Nestorians, these founded the monastery at Mattai. The monastery, man-worshippers (sic), that a mortal man died which originally belonged to the Church of the for us.\u2019148 East, came under Miaphysitic influence as early 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, \u2018God, 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","The Patriarchate of Seleucia-Ctesiphon | 101 The Monastery of Mar Mattai, as circa 484 and around 540 became a bastion of light of this miracle, the brother and sister were founded around 370, originally the Jacobites.151 Closely allied with the Monastery baptized. The enraged king then had both his belonged to the Church of the East of Mar Mattai is the Monastery of Mar Behnam, children beheaded, whereupon, overcome with and is located 35 kilometres east of which stands a few kilometres south-east of regret, he likewise converted.152 Mosul in northern Iraq. As early as Mosul on the road to Kirkuk. The first chapel was around 484 the monastery converted founded towards the end of the fourth century, This legend provided the foundation for the to the Syrian Orthodox Church, and presumably by monks of Mar Mattai, to honour development of the martyr\u2019s tomb \u2013 originally was then won back by the Church of the siblings Behnam and Sara, executed during Nestorian, from 540 Jacobite \u2013 into a pilgrimage the East, but it developed beginning the persecutions of Christians by Shapur II. In destination for miracle cures, to which both in 540 into a stronghold of the the corresponding legend, the event is moved Christians and Muslims came. To the latter, the Jacobites. It was entirely restored back about a whole millennium. Mar Mattai, monastery of Mar Behnam is known as al-Khidr, in 1795 and 1845. The monastery founder of the monastery of the same name, is the \u2018place of the power to make green\u2019 \u2013 that is, of forms its own diocese of the Syrian said to have appeared in a dream to the son of the hope. The pilgrimage site grew in importance as Orthodox Church. Since June 2014 Assyrian King Sannacherib (ruled 705 \u2013 681BCE), Mar Behnam became associated with St George, the monastery shelters Christian Behnam. Afterwards the prince, together with who was very popular in the East.153 The two refugees from Mosul fleeing the his sister Sara, who suffered from leprosy, went saints are depicted symmetrically on the lintels \u2018Islamic State\u2019 IS and is protected to the saint, who cured her of her affliction. In of the shrine; George is defeating the dragon and by fighters from the Assyrian Behnam the devil. Thanks to these attributes of organisation Dwekh Nawsha and by Kurdish peshmerga.","102 | The Church of the East (Top) The Monastery of St Ananias \u2013 also called, on account of the colour of its walls, Deir az-Zafaran, the Yellow Monastery \u2013 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: \u2018May the peace of Khidr [the healer] Elias, the friend of God, come to the khan, his barons and his wife, and remain with them.\u2019 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 \u2018Islamic State\u2019 IS blew up the tomb of Behnam and Sara in March 2015 with explosives.","The Patriarchate of Seleucia-Ctesiphon | 103 (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.","104 | The Church of the East healing and victory over evil, the martyr\u2019s tomb morning, on account of the healing powers became a favoured site for incubation. As has of the saint\u2019s tomb or the relics in the walls or been observed by the author in several East and perhaps from shock, the afflicted individuals are West Syrian churches, there is in the martyrium again healthy. This method of healing is said to or crypt a chain fastened to the wall, to which be equally effective for Christians and Muslims.154 mentally ill people or epileptics are chained and left alone in the dark for the night. The next","VI Aspects of East Syrian Theology and Spirituality The dispute with Zoroastrianism Buddhism to China)2 it was so severely repressed and Manichaeism by the sanctions of Kartir that it played only a marginal role during the spread of the Church Within the Sassanian Empire, Christianity had into the eastern province of Khorassan. Never- relationships and rivalries with several religions. theless, Buddhism was known to Christian In Mesopotamia it first built on the basis of theologians such as Bardaisan, Origen, Clement the Jewish communities, which logically led to and Cyril of Alexandria.3 As far as the \u2018pagans\u2019 tensions between the two religious communities. living south of the Caspian Sea were concerned, In contrast to Marcion, who fundamentally the Church had an easy time of it in terms of rejected the Jewish Old Testament heritage, the theology but not in terms of practice, as the early leading East Syrians, such as Aphrahat people of Dailam and Gilan surrendered their (\u2020c. 350), tried to argue that Christianity nature deities and idols only reluctantly and after represented the logical continuation, perfection the demonstration of miracles. and finally supercession of the Jewish religion. Without striking anti-Semitic tones, Aphrahat, The real theological opponents and, simultan- following in the wake of his predecessors, eously, missionary fields of the Church of the criticized Jewish formalism and legalism \u2013 that is, East were the dualistic religions of Zoroastrianism the maintenance of the Mosaic laws of conduct, and Manichaeism. The strategies for each, as well as the disregard of Christ as the messiah however, had to be different. Beginning in 273 promised in the Old Testament. Aphrahat\u2019s Manichaeism was absolutely suppressed by the Demonstrationes interpret the Old Testament in Sassanian civil authority, which, despite severe such a way that Christianity is the apotheosis of persecutions, did not apply to Christianity. Thus Judaism, which has now lost its right to exist. Christian missionaries were permitted to convert Additionally, the Mosaic religion applies only to Manichaeans. Conversion of Zoroastrians, the Jews, while the Good News is relevant to all however, brought the death penalty. people.1 The Acts of the Martyrs also suggest that, during the time of the persecutions under Shapur One of the basic themes of religious thought II, certain groups of Jews denounced Christians concerns the frightening and omnipresent to the authorities. question of the origin and nature of evil. In the Jewish-Christian tradition, evil appears as the With regard to Buddhism, which had expanded result of the disobedience of the creature towards into Iran (it was Parthians who brought its creator. A dualistic world-view, on the other hand, proceeds from an unbridgeable opposition","106 | The Church of the East between good and evil; God, understood as unintelligent beings such as the sun instead good, cannot be the creator of evil. The origin of the one God. They also condemned the of evil lies not in God but, rather, outside God, Zoroastrian moral code, insofar as it allowed whether in dark matter in Manichaeism or in polygamy and the marriage of blood relatives, the \u2018anti-God\u2019 Ahriman in Zoroastrianism. It in addition to permitting animal sacrifice. For is the relative value each attributes to matter Christians, however, the drinking of blood and that radically separates Manichaeism from the eating of the flesh of sacrificed animals was Zoroastrianism. According to the teachings of expressly forbidden. Conversely, the Zoroastrians Zarathustra, Ahura Mazda, in his omniscience, disapproved of the Christian marriage knew of the existence of Ahriman and foresaw regulations, celibacy and monastic asceticism, his destructive attack, so he brought forth as these limited the preservation and generation creation and human beings. As has already of life. Seen from the Zoroastrian perspective, been discussed,4 Ahura Mazda created both the Christian monks and the Manichaean elect, spirit and the body of the human being; unlike with their ascetic removal from the world, each in Manichaeism and, in part, Christianity, the hindered the struggle of Ahura Mazda in equal conceptual pairing of good and evil in no way measure; asceticism amounted to an insult corresponds to that of spirit and matter, but to Zoroastrian ideals. The Zoroastrian clergy rather to that of existence and non-existence. accused the Christians of failing to worship the The material world, with the exception of the Zoroastrian symbol of divinity \u2013 fire \u2013 and of works of certain demons such as serpents or disregarding the laws of purity regarding the vermin, is of divine origin. In Manichaeism, elements by burying their dead. however, all material creation and the corporeal human being are the product of the powers of While these Zoroastrian accusations concern darkness, and only the immaterial light-soul can the ethos of \u2018right action\u2019, a polemical work free itself from the clutches of evil matter. In tested the \u2018right thought\u2019 of Christianity. The Manichaeism the body is the tomb of the soul, work in question was the Skand-Gumanik in Zoroastrianism its vehicle to perfection. On Vicar, a ninth-century Zoroastrian apology account of these contrasting starting points, written in Pahlavi, whose author, Mardan different disputes arose between Christianity Farrukh, criticized the monotheism of Judaism, and Zoroastrianism and between Christianity Christianity and Islam, as well as Manichaeism. and Manichaeism. In the first chapter Mardan described the principles of the Zoroastrian religion: \u2018Ahura A Zoroastrian apology Mazda created the omniscient religion like a great tree, with a trunk, two main limbs, three No genuine dialogue was able to develop branches, four twigs and five shoots. The trunk between Christianity and Zoroastrianism \u2013 it is the measure [truth], the two main limbs are was a con-versation between doves. As we can action and renunciation, the three branches are gather from the Acts of the Martyrs, Christian good thought, good speech and good behaviour, apologists accused the Zoroastrians of failing the four twigs are the four natural classes of to understand the transcendence of Christ and priest, warrior, farmer and craftsman [note the his all-encompassing salvific power, as well as resemblance to the Indian castes], and the five of worshipping mortal entities such as fire and shoots are the five religious superiors.\u20195 Mardan then presented the argument that the finite nature of creation presupposes the","Aspects of East Syrian Theology and Spirituality | 107 involvement of a principle opposed to the The Zoroastrian apology focused primarily creator God. For him, the concept of salvation on the impossibility of considering the problem necessarily implied a deviation \u2013 undesired by of evil within a monotheistic position without the creator god and caused by another power \u2013 encountering contradictions. Another attack from the course of a full development, which he concerned the incomprehensibility of a virgin must again balance out. Thus Mardan concluded conception and suggested that Mary kept that only a dualistic model could separate evil dubious company.7 Then Mardan tried to play from the good creator god, while Christian out the idea of a trinity ad absurdum. If three monotheism mixed evil with God, making was equal to one, then nine was equal to three, impossible any delimitation of good from evil. etc. And if the Son was not less than the Father, From this premise, Mardan argued polemically then the Father is not more than the Son, which against the sacrifice of God\u2019s son with the is impossible if the Son is said to have been approval of God the Father: \u2018[As the omnipotent begotten by the Father.8 Here Mardan reiterated and only God] he brought forth all creation, the argument of Arius, according to which there including even his own opponent, out of nothing must be a substantive and hierarchical distinction and led his son\u2019s executioners into error. But, between begetter and begotten. Finally, Mardan insofar as God himself created each executioner asked rhetorically how it was possible \u2018that this and his adversary, without reason or motive, great God, who rules and sustains both worlds, and must have foreseen their deeds, one cannot handed over his body to be beaten and crucified\u2019.9 disagree that he himself was the executioner The author was also aware of the various of his son.\u2019 Using the same argument, Mardan understandings of the death of God: \u2018The talk of continued \u2018that the Jews killed the messiah by the the Christians about their Messiah Jesus, whom will of the Father\u2019, or, playing on the image of the they consider God\u2019s Son but also equal to God Good Shepherd, \u2018It is also the will of the Father and therefore God himself, [is] inconsistent. that the wolves kill the sheep, for he created the One sect [Jacobites and Melkites] says that wolves as well.\u2019 this messiah died, the other [Nestorians] that he did not.\u201910 In contrast to Islam, which shares To the anticipated response that God granted important fundamental assumptions with human beings free will, our author replied, \u2018If Christianity and was able to develop a meaningful sin is the result of free will and God gave human dialogue with East Syrian Christianity in the beings this free will, then God is also a sinner, eighth and ninth centuries,11 the conceptual insofar as he made sin possible in the first place.\u2019 premises of Zoroastrianism and Christianity were Jesus\u2019s temptation by the devil also offered too different. Mardan the opportunity to demonstrate that there are, in fact, two antagonistic principles or that the Mani \u2013 the self-proclaimed Paraclete Christian God must of necessity be both good and evil: \u2018If there is only one principle, without an The dispute between Christianity and adversary, how can Ahriman be powerful enough Manichaeism, a world religion which has since to tempt the son of God? And, if God created vanished, developed along entirely different this evildoer, then it is God himself who tempted lines. It took place over a period of more than a his son.\u2019 Then he asked rhetorically, \u2018And why millennium, not only in Iran but also in Egypt, did he not redeem the adversary like the rest of North Africa, Rome, Syria, Central Asia and, creation?\u20196 Marcion certainly would have agreed especially, China. The range of this dialogue ran with Mardan\u2019s argument!","108 | The Church of the East from curt disapproval to the extraordinary Manichaean manuscript on paper coexistence of a Nestorian community with a from the early tenth to mid-eleventh Manichaean group under the leadership of a century, Kocho, ruin \u03b1. Kocho single shared bishop in south-eastern China in (Gaochang), which lies in the the early fourteenth century.12 During the period province of Xinjiang in north-western of the second Uigur empire (c.850 \u2013 1209), as China, was from c.844CE the well, Buddhists, Manichaeans and Nestorians capital of the empire of the Uigurs, lived together in peace. The last bastions of whose \u00e9lite were from 761 to the late Manichaeism collapsed in the sixteenth\/ tenth- or early eleventh- century seventeenth centuries in China.13 Manichaean. The miniature presents a lesson. Above, two electi sit on a Born in 216 not far from Seleucia-Ctesiphon, lotus throne, with the one on the Mani descended on his mother\u2019s side from the right speaking and the one on the left Parthian royal house of the Arsacids, while his holding a book. Below them sit six father was a member of the Jewish-Christian hearers, three women on the left and Baptist sect of the Elkesaites, who led strictly three men on the right. The headdress ascetic lives with numerous purifying and of the four people behind, two on baptismal rituals. According to his hagiography, each side, marks them as members his calling was revealed to him in his first vision of the royal family.33 (Museum when he was twelve years old. Later, when he was of Indian Art, Prussian cultural 24, he experienced his second revelation and left property. Fragment MIK III 8259, the Baptist sect because it was concerned only fol.1r.) with corporeal \u2013 i.e. material \u2013 purity rites and paid no attention to the spiritual purification I to spread his teachings. Presumably it was of the soul. In contrast to the Baptists, who the syncretistic character of the new doctrine, considered the body necessary for and capable of which brought together the various religions salvation, for Mani the material body represented of the empire, that attracted a shah who ruled an impediment to be cast off, an obstacle to the over a multitude of peoples. But the pacifistic, salvation of the light-soul. Thus Mani joined the ascetic and world-renouncing Manichaeism tradition of Jesus, \u2018who promoted the purity of naturally could not accord with the ideology the soul instead of the purity of the body and of an aggressive power. Around 274\/276, at food\u2019.14 Mani understood himself as the Paraclete Kartir\u2019s instigation, Vahram I had him arrested, proclaimed by John, as the twin of Jesus,15 who after which he died in prison. At the same would teach the world the way to end suffering. time, a systematic persecution began, which In this regard Mani made use of the Acts of forced Mani\u2019s followers to emigrate to either Thomas and the Christian Gnostic Song of Central Asia or the Roman Empire, where they the Pearl to support his claim to embody the encountered the edicts of Diocletian in 297 and Paraclete.16 Constantine in 326.17 Mani developed a new universal religion, The story spread by his disciples that he which he taught first in the south-eastern suffered crucifixion is a myth and served to Sassanian Empire and in the empire of the Kushan in northern India, where he also encountered Buddhism. Around the year 242 or 243 Mani returned and received permission from Shapur","Aspects of East Syrian Theology and Spirituality | 109 associate Mani as closely as possible with Jesus.18 Zarathustra, Buddha and Christ, it was Since he considered himself the fulfilment of legitimate for him to hearken back to their Jesus\u2019s promise, he and his students sought partial revelations and systematically meld them identification with him in external symbols as into the ultimate universal religion, relevant well. Thus a few of his earliest disciples were to all people. In his view, his doctrine was not called Addai, Mari and Thomas (the names of plagiarism but rather the crystallization of truths the East Syrian apostles)19 he was said to have that had been distorted by time, accompanied by gathered twelve disciples around him, and his the simultaneous rejection of the accumulated church organization included 72 bishops.20 errors. In contrast to his predecessors, Mani did Nevertheless, even though the resemblance not place his trust in unreliable oral tradition, of Manichaean text fragments to Christian but instead preserved his revelations in writing. documents is often confusing and Manichaeism He wrote texts for the literate and painted is rightfully characterized as a chameleon,21 he pictures for the illiterate.24 As the crowning remained true to his two basic principles of the apostle of light, Mani claimed absolute truth. two antagonistic principles and the three ages. Mani\u2019s disciples went still further with regard to The principles are good and evil; the ages are syncretism, in that they presented Manichaeism those of the original separation of the principles, as perfected Christianity when in a Christian their present intermixing and their future environment, as perfected Zoroastrianism when separation. In short, Manichaeism is a kind of among Zoroastrians, and as perfected Buddhism Christian Zoroastrianism, which incorporated when among Buddhists. a Gnostic doctrine of knowledge and in Central Asia and China was enriched with Buddhist and In contrast to Christianity, Manichaeism Taoist elements.22 proceeded from a fundamental, irreconcilable and unbridgeable dualism between good and For Christians, especially Nestorians, this evil. Both are unbegotten and eternal. But, while alignment of Mani with Jesus was of course Zoroastrian dualism runs right through the disagreeable. As the example mentioned above of material and spiritual world, Manichaean dualism the discussion between Bishop Papa and Vahram equates good with the light, the spirit and soul, III shows, there was a danger that outsiders and evil with darkness and matter. According would confuse the two, as happened in China in to a complicated cosmology that is difficult to the seventh\/eighth centuries, since both religions understand, the two principles were originally from Iran spoke of Jesus Christ. In order to separate, but then the powers of evil succeeded explain this proximity and simultaneously to in capturing bits of the good light and binding discredit Mani, the Chronicle of Seert reported them to matter. From this perspective, the that, in his youth, Mani pretended to convert to cosmos and humanity are, on account of their Christianity and even had himself ordained as a materiality, works of evil. The cosmic process of priest by the bishop of Susiana (Khuzistan). After salvation has as its goal the freeing of the light a time, he declared himself Paraclete, gathered particles imprisoned in matter and the separation twelve disciples and proclaimed his own \u2018sinful\u2019 of them from the evil matter. Within this cosmic doctrine. The report concluded with the alleged struggle of the powers of light with the powers of crucifixion of Mani and \u2018so did God condemn darkness, human beings are obliged to take sides. him and give him what he deserved\u2019.23 The apostles of light show the path to salvation by teaching humans the gnosis, (that is, the Because Mani declared himself the seal of the saving knowledge), which awakens the memory prophets, of whom he expressly acknowledged","110 | The Church of the East of their own trapped particles of light and teaches milk, possession of private property, physical them how to free the light from matter. Since labour, the use of medicine and washing oneself matter is evil in itself, the way of salvation does or changing one\u2019s clothes more than once a not follow the Zoroastrian model of an active life year.27 Worship consisted of purely verbal of right thought, right speech and right action, activities, such as collective reading and singing but rather requires the fundamental denial of of hymns, since sacraments, bound up as they all that is corporeal and the renunciation of were with matter, were of the devil. reproduction. Since the people striving for perfection were Text analyses have shown that Mani\u2019s Christian not capable of supporting themselves, and the sources included Tatian\u2019s Diatessaron but also vast majority of people could not meet these influences from the heretics Marcion and excessive demands, Mani divided the faithful Bardaisan. Like Mani, Bardaisan believed that into two categories: the chosen, the electi, and creation arose from a mixing of good with evil the catechumens, the auditores, the hearers. If and that the soul could redeem itself by keeping the electi were able to follow all the laws, they God\u2019s laws.25 Still greater was Mani\u2019s proximity could save their light-soul; the hearers, on the to Marcion, who juxtaposed the evil creator other hand, had to serve the chosen, feeding and God of matter of the Old Testament against clothing them. They could hope over a period of the good God and his saving Son of the New many rebirths to accumulate enough merit that Testament. Like the later Mani, Marcion denied they would finally be reborn as potential electi.28 the corporeal birth of Jesus and his baptism; However, anyone who was neither an elect nor a he thus represented, as did Bardaisan, a Docetic hearer was threatened with eternal damnation at position, according to which the humanity and the Last Judgement, for not all the light trapped sufferings of Christ were only apparent. The in matter can be freed.29 one-time Manichaean Augustine reported, \u2018They [the Manichaeans] deny that Christ was born of The Marcionite position of Mani, which a virgin. They profess that his body was not real presents creation as the work not of God but only but rather feigned, and thus his sufferings were of evil, fundamentally differentiated him from also feigned. They also believe that the resur- Christianity and positioned his doctrine in the rection did not happen.\u201926 In this regard it was corner of radical and \u00e9lite world-renunciation, appropriate that the Manichaeans commemorated as Jewish-Christian Gnosticism also taught. For the death of their prophet but did not attribute them, as well, the body represented the dark and any salvific power to him. narrow prison of the soul and had been created by a careless demiurge. The soul required secret Because the personal work of salvation knowledge in order to find its way back to its lost included the separation of the light particles and forgotten homeland. Since \u2018true\u2019 Christians from matter, the Manichaean ideal promoted a of the gnosis, who know the gateway to perfect consistent abstinence from activities that bound knowledge, could forgo the mediation of the the soul to matter. This led to a catalogue of Church, this \u00e9litist position called into question forbidden actions, which went well beyond the the universal validity of the Good News. While purity laws of the Baptists Mani had scorned. Christianity also offered world-renouncing They forbade killing, the eating of meat, sexual options, open to only a few (of which East reproduction (leading to self-mutilation), Syrian asceticism represents an extreme form) farming, the harvesting of vegetables (only fruits it likewise provided possibilities for living in were considered pure), the drinking of wine and the world and embracing existence, which were","Aspects of East Syrian Theology and Spirituality | 111 The Church Father Ephrem the open to all the faithful.30 A further important Syrian (306 \u2013 373) is recognized by difference between the two religions concerned both East and West Syrians, as well the idea of the resurrection of the body, which as since 1920 by the Catholic Church, was significant for the Nestorian missionaries as a Doctor of the Church. The to Central Asia, while for Manichaeans \u2013 and, deacon Ephrem led an ascetic life and incidentally, Buddhists \u2013 the body represented taught at the ecclesiastical schools the greatest hindrance to salvation. For the of Nisibis (until 363) and Edessa. Manichaeans the body will not be enlightened He attained fame for his hymns, as or transfigured into a spiritual body, but instead well as on account of his untiring it must, because it is burdened with negative opposition to the heretical adherents energies, be left behind or even destroyed. of Mani, Bardaisan and Arius. In this miniature from the twelfth For Christian orthodoxy, represented by, for century Ephrem holds a scroll in instance, Bishop Rabbula of Edessa (\u2020435), the his left hand. (Library of the Syrian Manichaeans were terrible heretics, since they Orthodox Patriarchate, Damascus.) taught the absolute nature of the two principles, denied the salvific work of Christ and rejected the Old Testament, yet nevertheless declared their writings apostolic and canonical. East Syrian monasticism and the Manichaean electi Although Manichaeism and East Syrian first monastery on the upper Nile around 320, Christianity proceeded from very different Tatian initiated the movement of the Encratites premises and basic beliefs, their goals and in Adiabene in northern Iraq over a century practice of the highest religious ideals were earlier. These early Christian ascetics rejected confusingly similar. This unintended resemblance marriage, as well as the consumption of meat was known, for instance, to Ephrem the Syrian: and alcohol. The first orthodox ascetic hermits \u2018Their [the Manichaeans\u2019] works are similar to were found in the region around Nisibis and our works, as their fasting is similar to our fasting, Edessa; among them was Bishop Jacob of Nisibis but their faith is not similar to our faith.\u201931 When (\u2020338). When he took office, around 301 or 308, one moves away from the frequently encountered he had the reputation of a long-time ascetic. view that Christian monasticism first emerged Nearly contemporary with Jacob was Julian Saba in Egypt and spread from there to Syria and (\u2020367), who retreated to a cave to the north of Mesopotamia, the question arises of how the Edessa around 317. Thus, around 300, there was striking similarities between East Syrian and in Mesopotamia an independent monastic Manichaean asceticism came about. movement of anchoritism \u2013 that is, living as hermits; the Egyptian influence of a cenobitic In fact, the roots of Christian monasticism monasticism, in which life was lived in appear to lie within the sphere of activity of the Church of the East. While St Anthony (251 \u2013 356) first retreated to the Egyptian desert around 270 or 285, and St Pachomius (290 \u2013 346) founded his","112 | The Church of the East community, first reached Syria and Mesopotamia Way up to the former Nestorian towards the end of the fourth century.32 mountain monastery of Rabban Booya near Shaqlawa, northern Iraq. The Nestorian Thomas of Marga expressed The founder Rabban Booya is said to the vision of East Syrian anchoritism: the saints have lived in the fifth\/sixth century; \u2018become gods among men\u2019.33 This vision is based today more than 2000 Assyrian on the goal of a monastic life that imitates the Christians, live in Shaqlawa. angels, who allegedly abstain from sleep, food and corporeal love, in order to praise God unceasingly. with iron chains to a rock or the top of a tree, The great exegete of the Church of the East, living in a leaky wooden box, or having oneself Ephrem the Syrian (\u2020373), maintained that walled into a tomblike cave for the rest of one\u2019s corporeal self-denial transforms physical being life. This practice, which included the anchorite\u2019s into an angelic existence.34 For him, the conscious receiving the necessary food and water through \u2018destruction and annihilation of the body\u2019 a small hole and the breaking down of the wall represented the most perfect practice of anchor- only after the hermit had not touched his food itism.35 The renowned Nestorian mystic John of for a month, was also widespread among the Dalyatha (\u2020 before 786) lauded the readiness for Buddhist hermits of Tibet. Several of these martyrdom with these words: \u2018O what can your ascetic practices appear to be of Indian origin love achieve, O God! Because they [the martyrs] and to have reached Mesopotamia through the have nothing more they can give you, they have mediation of Manichaeism. Instead of walling joyfully handed over their bodies to death.\u201936 themselves up, a few monks \u2013 mostly West Syrian but occasionally East Syrian \u2013 opted to stand The monastic life manifested itself in strict upon stone pillars as tall as 21 metres and there to celibacy, which sometimes led to self-castration;37 wait, exposed to the vagaries of weather and the lack of personal property; severe fasting; admiration of pilgrims, until their death. abstention from alcohol, meat and agricultural products and the consumption of wild plants, fruit and even grass; the simplest possible clothing, made from wool, animal skins or straw, or sometimes complete nakedness; and as little sleep as possible. \u2018One hour of sleep suffices for a healthy monk,\u2019 opined the ascetic Arsenius.38 A few slept not lying on the ground but rather standing against a wall or tied to a post, or they tied a rope hanging from the ceiling around their upper body. Like the Manichaeans, the anchorites renounced all care of the body and followed Ephrem\u2019s instruction never to wash themselves.39 This clear \u2018care\u2019 for one\u2019s own filth inspired St Jerome (342 \u2013 420) to remark sarcastically that the East Syrian monks were just as concerned with the dirtiness of their bodies as with the cleanliness of their hearts.40 Other examples of self-castigation included being constantly in motion, chaining oneself","Aspects of East Syrian Theology and Spirituality | 113 Beginning in the late third century Syrian anchorites, encratites and Manichaean the soul\u2019.43 John of Dalyatha, for his part, wrote, East Syrian anchorites lived in such electi shared not only an abhorrence of the \u2018Force yourself always to maintain sorrow, in caves and sometimes had themselves material world and a genuine hatred of the body imitation of Christ.\u201944 Insofar as the object of walled in permanently, in which \u2013 which the Egyptians, incidentally, condemned sorrow is the passion of Christ, there is a parallel case water and bread were passed as an egoistic end in itself and a distraction from to the sometimes excessive sorrow of the Muslim to them through a hole. Kitayewo the work of spiritual purification41 \u2013 but also the Shiites over the death of their imam Hussein hermit\u2019s cave from the period of the condemnation of all expressions of emotional (\u2020680). That this life-denying attitude was not Golden Horde (1227 \u2013 1502), near joie de vivre. In the Meditatio mortis, electi and exceptional is shown by excerpts from a Syrian Kiev, Ukraine. anchorites meditated on their own sinfulness rule for hermits: and on death. The corresponding state is also expressed emotionally. And so a Manichaean Canon 9: \u2018Every satisfaction from eating or text states, \u2018Keep in mind the trembling, the sleeping is forbidden for a solitary.\u2019 crying and the sadness\u2019.42 We find exactly the same exhortation in Ephrem, who praised grief, Canon 10: \u2018A solitary shall always be in sadness, sorrow and distress as signs of Christian mourning, sorrowful, suffering and grieving.\u2019 perfection. Since Jesus never laughed but did cry, \u2018laughter is the beginning of the destruction of Canon 11: \u2018A solititary shall never be glad, laugh and be in a gay mood.\u201945 For another monk from the early fourth century, named Uda, who Theodoret believed","114 | The Church of the East had been influenced by Mani, laughter was and are married, in emulation of Adam and Eve, sufficient cause for excommunication.46 As whom God \u2018in anger\u2019 gave work, tribulation and Patriarch Ishoyahb II experienced, the path marriage, since they succumbed to the temptation from world-denying, life- and soul-castigating of the flesh offered by Satan.50 The perfect, by asceticism to ignorance was short. When, around contrast, follow Christ, the second Adam, and 630, he sought to open a theological school in take up his cross in the form of asceticism. Like the important monastery of Beit Abhe north-east the other writings, the Book of Degrees appeals to of the city of Mosul, the monks rebelled: \u2018We are the uncompromising words of Jesus: \u2018Whoever destined for weeping and mourning while we loves father and mother more than me is not dwell in our cells. If you build a school here, we worthy of me; and whoever loves son or daughter shall depart.\u2019 The patriarch had to give in.47 more than me is not worthy of me; and whoever does not take up the cross and follow me is not Since the monastic life apparently embodied worthy of me\u2019 (Matt 10:37 \u2013 38). In the imitation the best fulfilment of the Christian ideal, the of Christ, the cross, which in the Church of the question arose of the status of the laity. In light East was generally venerated as a symbol of the of the radical nature of Syrian monasticism, it resurrection, took on a different meaning, namely is no surprise that its leading representatives in that of the mystical crucifixion of the saint in the the fourth century divided the rapidly growing epitome of suffering. Ephrem declared that the Christian communion into two categories or monk should bind himself to the cross in such two Churches: the outer Church of the laity and a way that his ascetic practices become the nails the lower clergy and the inner, true Church of and his obedience to the monastic rules becomes the monks, nuns and the higher, celibate clergy. the crown of thorns.51 Thus did the ascetics The real litmus test was the life of celibacy. Early become martyrs. writings, such as the Gnostic-influenced Acts of Thomas, make it unmistakably clear that there is After the perfect renounced the world, they no Christian life outside virginity.48 This meant become \u2018aliens\u2019 in this world and received the that married couples had to dissolve their paraclete.52 In this regard as well, John of Dalyatha marital bond if they wanted to receive baptism. made his views clear: \u2018Do you want the pleasure In his seventh sermon, the Syrian Aphrahat (\u2020350) of Christ to remain inflamed in your heart? Then addressed the candidates for baptism as follows: dispel the pleasure of the world. Christ will enter \u2018Anyone who has betrothed a wife and wills to into your heart and reside there, if you have take her let him retreat. Anyone who has set his first emptied it of all that is worldly.\u201953 Between heart to the state of marriage let him marry before the two worlds, the material and the spiritual of baptism, otherwise he will fall in the struggle Christ, there was neither compromise nor bridge. [against temptation] and will be killed; let him Although the Book of Degrees acknowledged the retreat [from baptism].\u201949 Anyone who did not inseparability of the two Churches, it maintained want to live celibately remained a catechumen. that only external baptism is accessible to the righteous, while the inner baptism was reserved Still more informative is the anonymous for the perfect. Correspondingly, the external Ketaba demasqata, the Book of Degrees, which Church represented the protective cloak over all appeared in Adiabene in the second half of the people, but the inner Church is the true Church fourth century. It divides Christians into the of the ascetics. righteous and the perfect. The righteous hear the teaching, but they remain enslaved to the How closely this separation of the Church material world. They labour, possess property resembled the Manichaean dichotomy is made","Aspects of East Syrian Theology and Spirituality | 115 clear by the ban on labour for the perfect. \u2018The Another development counter to Manichaeism Lord does not allow one who is a helper to all was the so-called \u2018sons and daughters of the humanity to perform work on earth.\u2019 Physical covenant\u2019. They were not monks but individuals labour done out of mercy for the good of one\u2019s who took on the obligation of chastity and lived fellow human beings was also forbidden to the communally. In contrast to monks and nuns, they perfect. Physical labour, done for the benefit of devoted themselves to the community by teaching the perfect, is reserved as the good work of the the Gospel, supporting deacons and performing righteous. \u2018Do not be concerned [you perfect], acts of charity, such as running hospitals and for I appeal to the righteous, who work the land, houses for lepers. These exceptional groups did in order that they might feed and clothe you.\u201954 not shy away from physical labour. Quite the The distinction between the righteous and the opposite: they served the lay community with their perfect corresponds to that in Manichaeism physical labour. between the auditores and the electi. However, the Book of Degrees warns the perfect against As a by-product, so to speak, of the religious arrogance and a one-sided spiritualization: exchange of the time, the monastic story of anyone who believes that he, as perfect, stands Barlaam and Josaphaat, attributed to John of above the world of the corporeal and thus is able Damascus (c.670 \u2013 c. 749), reached the West. to neglect the physical asceticism will fall quickly This devotional book, circulated in numerous back to the level of the righteous.55 languages, was, however, nothing more than the adaptation of the biography of the historical These parallels between Manichaeism and Buddha Shakyamuni to Christian circumstances. Syrian monasticism suggest some form of Here, too, an Indian prince wants to prevent his influence. With regard to certain practices, the son, Josaphaat, from converting to Christianity. origin is to be sought among the Hindu ascetics He tries to protect him, but Josaphaat encounters and Buddhist hermits. Since the movement a blind man, a leper, a frail old man and a corpse. of the encratites of Mesopotamia preceded Then the uncertain prince meets the hermit Manichaeism, the hypothesis might be advanced Barlaam, whereupon he leaves his family and that the Manichaean vision revived the archaic palace and from then on lives as a hermit. This powers of Christian communities, which had legend was so popular in Europe that Pope lost importance as a consequence of the rapid Sixtus V (in office 1585 \u2013 1590) canonized Barlaam growth of the Church. They felt strengthened and Josaphaat and declared 27 November their in their belief that only the ascetic \u00e9lite truly day of commemoration. The truth came to light embodied the spirit of Christianity. only in the nineteenth century. The story was first adopted by the Manichaeans of Central Asia, There were, however, other developments as who later passed it on to Islam, which handed it well. The remaining sermons of Aphrahat and the on to Christianity.57 writings of Ephrem suggest the conclusion that for them the sacraments were accessible to all people, The goodness of human nature which would prevent the establishment of a \u2018two- and the question of original sin class Church\u2019. Married people were also allowed to receive baptism.56 Because of the sacrament of A further, more lasting influence of Manichaean penance, the Christian community could further thought appears regarding the question of develop into a Church of the masses without original sin, not in the East Syrian realm but in losing its identity and avoid the narrow boundaries of a community of supposedly sinless saints.","116 | The Church of the East the Roman-Latin Church; the Church of the Transmission of original sin takes place by East, however, rejected this idea. The starting means of sexual reproduction, fed by animalistic point is found in the sermons of the Rome-based covetousness.59 Although Pelagius\u2019s doctrine lay theologian and ascetic Pelagius (c.354 \u2013 after found wide acceptance among the faithful and 418), in which he castigated the slipshod Christian was confirmed as orthodox by Pope Zosimus (in morality. Here he attacked the doctrine of office 417 \u2013 418), Augustine\u2019s intrigues succeeded original sin of the influential Bishop Augustine in winning the support of Emperor Honorius. (354 \u2013 430) of Hippo (in modern Algeria), since Zosimus had to acquiesce and confirm the the latter\u2019s belief in a natural sinfulness of condemnation of Pelagius that had been declared humanity and the indispensable necessity of in 418 at the regional council of Carthage. the grace of God served the weak-willed human being as an excuse for loose morals. Against Then Bishop Julian of Aeclanum (380 \u2013 c.450) the doctrine of a sin inherited from Adam, objected, lost his diocese around 421 and found which led to immorality, and a predestination refuge with Nestorius in 428. Julian attacked of who would receive God\u2019s grace, he placed the Augustinian link between original sin and the conviction of human free will. For him, human sexuality \u2013 which, eo ipso, condemned sin represented a deliberate act, which was the corporeal dimension of the human being \u2013 forbidden by divine law, but the choice to and upheld the moral neutrality of the bodily obey or disregard this law remained within instinct for reproduction. For Julian, the the discretionary powers of the individual. condemnation of the corporeal as fundamentally For Pelagius, as for Theodore of Mopsuestia, bad was a relapse into Manichaean dualism. the original sin of Adam did not result in any Julian\u2019s accusation was comprehensible not only universal negative marking of all human beings, factually but also biographically, since Augustine but rather in the loss of the original paradisiacal had been a Manichaean auditor for at least nine condition. The after-effect of the original sin years prior to his entry into the Church in 386. It is not an automatic inheritance but a tendency was the lectures of Cicero in the Hortensius that towards imitation, which the grace of God and confirmed the young Augustine in his pessimistic the institutions of the Church counteract.58 The view of the world. \u2018The interpreters of the spirit conviction that the human being can, of free are not at all wrong [if] they assert that we are will, do good and reject evil, forms the basis of born to atone for offences we committed in an an optimistic anthropology, which attributes to earlier life.\u2019 And as \u2018Etruscan pirates chained the human person a fundamentally good nature, the bodies [of their prisoners] to corpses, each which can, nevertheless, be led into error because turned towards the other, so are our souls of its weaknesses. connected to our bodies, as these living were chained to the dead\u2019.60 In fact, the statements This view contradicts Augustine\u2019s belief, of Cicero, the Manichaean belief in the funda- according to which God is the absolute granter mental reprehensibility of the material body, and of goodness. Consequently, all the good that we the Augustinian doctrine of original sin express do can come only from God, and we can call the same ideas in different terms. only our sins our own. For the Doctor of the Church Augustine, the original sin of Adam and Theodore of Mopsuestia and with him the concomitant fault are passed on to the now the Church of the East represent a different mortal humanity, who, apart from the community position, which is quite close to that of Pelagius. of the chosen, are condemned for eternity. In his work Against those who claim that human beings sin of nature and not with will,","Aspects of East Syrian Theology and Spirituality | 117 Theodore presents the opinion that there is no mystic] directs all his efforts towards cleaning sin bequeathed by Adam to all his descendants. and polishing the mirror of his soul.\u201965 It was The phenomenon of sin is not a function of these aspects of an optimistic anthropology that the inherently good but mortal human nature, the Church of the East emphasized during its but rather the result of free will. If the human missionary work in China, in order to engage in a being was born a sinner, he could not be held fascinating dialogue with Taoism.66 responsible by God. Sin is not inherited but rather represents the wilful disregard of divine The renowned Jacobite maphrian Bar law, which results from human weaknesses in Hebraeus also rejected original sin and light of their limitations and mortality. The emphasized the free will of the human person. In human person has a tendency towards but no his arguments, he objected to both the acceptance compulsion for sin. \u2018Death weakened human of original sin and the Christian and Islamic ideas nature and generated in it a great inclination of predestination. For him, the human being can towards sin.\u201961 Theodore also emphasized, do both good and evil, since evil is a function not however, that the weak human being needs the of nature but of law. \u2018Otherwise there would be sacraments of the church and the grace of God only two categories \u2013 that which is necessary and they grant. \u2018Being first judged worthy of grace that which is impossible \u2013 and there would be no (by God), [men] are then able to make their room left over for that which is possible.\u201967 own contribution with him, showing their own choices to be proportioned to grace.\u201962 An analogy From the perspective of Nestorian thought, popular among the Nestorians of Central Asia the course of history is not the salvation from and China says that sin is an illness, of which sinfulness but, rather, a progressive revelation Christ cured the faithful with his message and of God and transfiguration of creation. In this example. context, Adam is not the cause of original sin and earthly misery but stands instead as the first One of Theodore\u2019s contemporaries, Patriarch instance of the then unanswerable question of the John Chrysostom, was likewise convinced that difference between good and evil. The Book of the human free will must actively support grace: Tower states, \u2018God, the king of history, wanted \u2018The willingness of the individual is insufficient to reveal the glorification of humanity and reply if he is not also granted supernatural assistance, to Adam\u2019s desire for the knowledge of good and and supernatural help is of no avail when it evil. He took substance from him [Adam], in lacks good will. Thus I ask you, do not sleep and order that the messiah would appear in honour leave everything to God\u2019.63\u2008The East Syrian Isaac and glory in this body. He raised him to heaven of Nineveh also stressed the genuine goodness and gave him power and royal glory forever. of human nature, which regained its original Through the incarnation [of Christ], which led to perfection through the death and resurrection the apotheosis, he gave [humanity] that goodness of Christ.64 The Nestorian mystic Rabban Yussuf and grace he had granted him [Adam] from the (869 \u2013 979) expressed a similar view: \u2018The soul is beginning.\u201968 by nature rational, mental and spiritual, like a polished and flawless mirror. Through the first sin it was externally polluted, but not in its nature. For the [original] sin was not so severe as to corrupt the nature of the soul; it could only effect an external, inessential staining. [The","118 | The Church of the East Jesus Christ as the Second Adam, [Adam and Eve \u2013 that is, human beings], on a the Tree of Life and the Cross of the Friday they were redeemed from its authority.\u2019 Resurrection \u2018On a Friday the door to paradise was closed, and on a Friday it was opened.\u2019 \u2018The Messiah The necessary premise for the idea, outstanding became like Adam in all things.\u201975 Because the in East Syrian theology, of a return to the original cross of the Messiah \u2013 which, according to state of Adam before the original sin is the role another tradition, was fashioned from the tree of Christ as Second Adam, which Paul brings of knowledge76 \u2013 was erected over the cruciform out. \u2018The first man, Adam, became a living being; grave of Adam, he received baptism from the the last Adam became a life-giving spirit.\u201969 This Saviour.77 In his Hymns of Paradise, Ephrem theme and the related idea of the cross as the wrote concisely and conclusively, \u2018By means of tree of life was worked out in literary form by a the tree of the cross, Adam again found the key student of Ephrem in the \u2018Cave of Treasures\u2019, a to paradise.\u201978 The Church, however, as Moses genealogy from Adam to Christ. It begins with had announced, became paradise on Earth.79 The the creation of Adam and his entry into paradise transformation of the paired ideas of Adam and and tells of the \u2018tree of the violation of the law the tree of knowledge into Christ, the tree of life [tree of knowledge], in which killing death lay\u2019.70 and the cross corresponds to that of Eve into As its twin, so to speak, stood \u2018the tree of life in the mother of God and the Church. In another the middle of paradise, [which] is a model for hymn Ephrem maintained, \u2018A man, a virgin and the cross of salvation, the true tree of life\u2019.71 At a tree were at the source of death. But another the time of the expulsion from paradise, God man, virgin and tree defeated death.\u201980 And so revealed to Adam that Christ would suffer in the pairing of Adam and Eve was superseded by his place. After the children of Seth, the \u2018perfect\u2019 another pairing, of Christ and the Church. son of Adam, \u2018went down\u2019 from the treasure cave to the dark world of the evil descendants The cross is an ancient, pre-Christian symbol of Cain and there joined with them \u2013 one can of humanity, which, as the two-part linking of see the motif, reminiscent of Manichaeism, of opposed points, symbolizes the unity of opposites. the unfortunate mixing of the perfect light with The Nestorian missionaries explained the evil matter \u2013 God carried out a first Judgement sign of the cross in this way to their Chinese Day in the form of the flood. But Noah placed catechumens.81 In the Indian and Buddhist Adam\u2019s corpse in the middle of the Ark, as a cultural sphere, the cross, in the form of the saving precursor of Christ. Then Noah\u2019s son swastika, symbolized the primeval whirlwind Shem went to Golgotha, the \u2018centre of the Earth\u2019, or the sun. In Egypt the handled cross, adopted and placed Adam\u2019s body there. \u2018Then four parts by the Christian Copts, represented life and split from each other, and the Earth opened fertility. The Antonius cross, familiar in Assur, up into the shape of a cross.\u201972 Later the author symbolized the axis of the world, and the Maltese interpreted Abraham\u2019s sacrifice of his son Isaac cross, surrounded by a circle, represented the at Golgotha as a \u2018representation of the messiah\u2019s sun. The over 6000-year-old crosses on ceramic death on the cross\u2019.73 Jacob\u2019s ladder to heaven also containers from Elam in south-western Iran are \u2018represents the cross of the Saviour\u2019.74 presumably likewise sun symbols. Because in the Mediterranean region crucifixion was an In conclusion, the passion of Christ is especially shameful form of execution, reserved presented as parallel to the fall of Adam and Eve. in Rome for slaves and non-Romans, the early \u2018On a Friday, death gained power over them Christian avoided pictorial depictions of the","Aspects of East Syrian Theology and Spirituality | 119 passion. The first symbols for the saviour Church of the East the cross enjoys the greatest appeared towards the end of the second century in respect, for it is the only Church that numbers the catacombs. Typically these grave decorations the sign of the cross among its holy sacraments. showed not a symbol of death but rather one of No sacrament can be given and no form of salvation, in the form of an anchor or a fish.82 devotion or worship can be carried out without the sign of the cross, since it is \u2018the emblem of The vision of Emperor Constantine, which our salvation\u2019.88 The cross also has a prominent revealed to him the monogram of Christ with the eschatological significance, since at the end of the words \u2018In this sign you will conquer\u2019, first made time it will, as the cross of light of the parousia, possible the transfiguration of the scandal of a announce the return of Christ.89 crucified God.83 The widespread depiction of a laurel wreath over Christ\u2019s monogram or other Insofar as the tree of life symbolizes the representations of the cross without the crucified importance of Christ as the Second Adam, it is figure were clearly symbols of the victory of not surprising that among the East Syrians the Christ and the hope of the faithful. From the leaved cross and the pearl cross predominate, as same spirit emerged those images in which examples from Mesopotamia and Iran attest.90 Christ sits upon a throne decorated with precious In both cases the crosses appearing at the ends gems, an attribute of the Roman emperors and or the three pearls symbolize both the tree Zeus-Jupiter.84 The first depiction of a crucifix of life and the Trinity. In China there finally is, significantly, a pagan caricature from the emerged a peculiar interreligious synthesis, as early third century, which shows the crucified the two forms of the cross were enriched with figure with the head of an ass.85 The first cautious symbolic elements from Buddhism, Taoism and approximations of a portrayal of the crucified Zoroastrianism.91 Christ are an ivory tablet from c.420 and the wooden door of the Church of St Sabina in The sacraments in the Church of Rome from c.431. In both cases Jesus appears to the East be without pain and has a relaxed expression on his face; on the door, the cross is barely visible. In the Church of the East, \u2018sacrament\u2019 is character- The first depictions of the crucifixion date to the ized as raza, whose etymological roots lie closer late sixth century 86 \u2013 that is, from a time when to the Greek mysterion than to the Latin the Church of the East had long been separated sacramentum. Theodore of Mopsuestia wrote, from the Western Churches. \u2018Every sacrament consists in [its] representation of unseen and unspeakable things through signs The Church of the East venerates only the and emblems.\u201992 Its premise is the act of faith in original, bare cross of the resurrection; the divine grace. In the liturgical symbolic action crucifix is rejected as a sign of the heretical belief an aspect of the divine mystery of salvation is in the suffering of God. In this spirit, Catholicos concretely mediated, in that it re-enacts the Mar Shimun XVII (in office 1820 \u2013 1861) declared salvific work of Christ and simultaneously to a British geologist and Chaldean missionary in points towards the coming resurrection. In the 1840, \u2018Christ suffered once and then entered into sacrament, Christ is the real actor, \u2018our eternal glory. He will suffer no more and die no more. High Priest\u2019, whose \u2018sacrifice replaces the cultic Such images are the work of unbelievers, who rituals of the Old Testament\u2019s Aaronic priest- like depictions of the suffering of Christ, and not hood\u2019.93 In the sacrament, mediated by a bishop of Christians, who rejoice that Christ defeated death through his suffering and death.\u201987 In the","120 | The Church of the East The most important sacraments of the Long before sunrise at the start of the Church of the East are baptism and Eucharist, Easter Mass, the Syrian Orthodox with priestly ordination representing the archbishop Timothy Samuel Atkas precondition for the conferring of sacraments displays the cross of the resurrection. upon the faithful and the sign of the cross On Good Friday the cross was sealing them.95 Mar Odisho defined the office solemnly laid in a coffin, which was of priest as the \u2018mediation between God and placed over the entrance to the church man in those things which impart forgiveness at the end of a procession. All the of sins, convey blessing, and put away wrath [of faithful walked under the laid-out God]\u2019.96 The candidate must be older than 30 cross and drank a bitter drink in and married and have an exceptional reputation memory of the bitter cup of the and high moral standards. The value of the crucified one. After the Good Friday priestly office lies in its apostolically founded worship service the coffin was placed mediating function between God and the in a niche in the altar and sealed. On faithful.97 Baptism, occurring in Aphrahat\u2019s day Easter Sunday the cross is taken from only at Easter and as adult baptism, symbolized the coffin, washed with rosewater the second birth in the communion of the and wrapped in a red cloth. This is Church. Since baptism freed one from all sins, related to the proclamation of the at first many people of all Churches tended Last Judgement by the Prophet Isaiah to be baptized only on their deathbeds \u2013 that (Is 63:1 \u2013 6). The cross is installed is, at the point when there would be no more by the altar and ceremoniously opportunities to sin. In the Church of the East carried through the church before it was preferred to grant baptism to young the Eucharist. It remains with its red adults, but the uncertain external circumstances cloth by the altar until Ascension often made the public baptism of adults Day. Mar Shmuni Cathedral in impossible, so it was replaced beginning in the Midyat, Tur Abdin. twelfth century with infant baptism.98 or priest, the believer receives an expression of divine grace through the power of the Holy Spirit. Just as human existence begins with birth and is sustained by eating, the Christian life begins Like the other Churches, the Church of the with baptism and is fed by the Eucharist. Since East began first to use those sacraments that Eucharist is the logical continuation of baptism, could be traced back to Christ, without regard in the Church of the East first communion for their number. So, for instance, John of follows immediately after baptism, which is also Damascus acknowledged two sacraments, directly linked with confirmation.99 In the Church Bernard of Clairvaux (\u20201153) eleven, and Hugh of the East today, as the author has observed of St Victor (\u20201142) 30. Bishop Peter Lombard several times, baptism takes place in three steps. (\u20201160) was the first to name the seven After the reading of various texts, hymns and sacraments that the Council of Trent finally the Nicene Creed, the bishop or a priest asks for confirmed in 1547. In the early fourteenth century the presence of the Holy Spirit in the anointing this scholastic debate prompted the Nestorian oil, after which the infant is anointed for the theologians Mar Odisho of Nisibis (\u20201318) and first time. This purifying anointing is the first Patriarch Timothy II (in office 1318\u20131332) to step from the human being of Adam to the new define the number of sacraments, with Odisho\u2019s human being of Christ. In the second step the list prevailing.94","Aspects of East Syrian Theology and Spirituality | 121 Comparison of the recognized sacraments \t Council of Trent\t Mar Odisho\t Patriarch Timothy II \t Baptism\t Baptism, followed by anointing (2)\t Baptism, followed by anointing (3) \tConfirmation\t \t Eucharist\t Eucharist (4)\t Eucharist (4) \t Penance\t Absolution (5)\t \t Extreme Unction\t cp Oil of Unction (3)\t cp Burial (6) \t Orders\t Priesthood (1)\t Priesthood (1) \t Matrimony\t Matrimony (7b)\t Matrimony (7) \t\t Holy Leaven (malka) (6)\t Monasticism (5) \t\t Sign of Cross (7a)\t Consecration of Church (2) priest uses the holy oil to make the sign of the entrance to a church and painting small crosses cross, symbolizing the Trinity, on the baptismal on the lintel with its blood.102 In contrast to the candidate\u2019s breast, calls the Holy Spirit down Western Churches, which use unleavened bread on the baptismal waters of the baptistery and for communion, the Syrian Churches use bread immerses the baby completely three times. leavened with yeast. The holy sourdough bread, There follows another anointing with holy called malka, is consecrated by the bishop on chrism at the beginning of the worship service, Maundy Thursday, and each church of the which is held in the nave of the church;100 this diocese receives a piece. A part of this piece must is confirmation, the culmination of baptism. be used to produce the Eucharistic bread, since Finally, the newly baptized infant receives the malka represents the unbroken connection first communion. In the Church of the East to the bread Christ blessed at the Last Supper. communion is received in both kinds, bread The forgiveness of sins takes place in the form of and wine. In the celebration of the sacraments public penance, followed by general absolution, mentioned and in the exclusive veneration of the not as personal confession. Finally, the sign of cross of the resurrection, we see that the Church the cross, because of its power in symbolizing the of the East has preserved several ancient Christian resurrection and the Trinity, seals all the other traditions almost two millennia old. sacraments. Its status is also apparent in the Book of the Tower, which characterizes the Gospel, the According to Mar Odisho, Holy Communion, sign of the cross, baptism and Eucharist as the symbolizing the sacrifice of Christ, replaces four pillars of Christianity.103 \u2018the old oblations of irrational animals and the blood of their bodies\u2019. For Christ \u2018offered His In the Church of the East, neither extreme own body [as] a sacrifice to His Father for the unction nor marriage is a sacrament. In place of life of the world, and hence he is called by John the former, they have the use of hanana, which [the Baptist] the Lamb of God who takes away consists of a mixture of oil, water and dust the sins of the world\u2019.101 This replacement and from the grave of a saint or martyr. Hanana is overcoming of the Jewish scapegoat by the Lamb administered not only to the dying but also to of God is recalled today in the custom, practised the sick and to barren women. Even though in some remote regions on certain occasions Mar Odisho did not include marriage among such as funerals, of sacrificing a ram before the the sacraments, he called it a \u2018holy estate\u2019. It is","122 | The Church of the East The metropolitan of the Church of the East of India, Mar Aprem, baptizes a little girl in the vestry of the Church of Mar Addai in Trichur, Kerala. Boys are baptized 40 days after birth and girls 56 days after. Confirmation and first communion follow immediately after baptism. Distribution of holy communion in the Church of Mar Narsai, Trichur, Kerala. indissoluble except in cases of infidelity, insanity, the liturgy is called qurbana, sacrificial offering, murder or apostasy.104 Today marriage is blessed because it recalls the sacrifice of Christ and his by a priest within the context of a Eucharistic work of salvation. Insofar as the faithful form celebration. the Mystical Body of Christ, they are, during the qurbana, both participants in the sacrificial event Church architecture and liturgy \u2013 and themselves part of the sacrifice; they sacrifice symbols in space and time themselves. The ancient symbolism of the division of space The Nestorian church is traditionally a in a church and of the course of time in liturgical rectangular building, with one or three naves, worship is still alive in the Church of the East. built of stone or fired clay. Its ground plan has Church architecture reflects the cosmic axis from striking similarities with Sassanian pillar-halls earth to paradise; along the axis of time, the such as those in the palace of Ganzak.105 The choir liturgy brings to life chronologically the whole of is oriented towards the east, where the sun rises salvation history, from creation to incarnation to and whence Christ will appear on Judgement Day baptism, crucifixion and resurrection. In Syriac, (Matt 24:27). In the Old Testament the prophet Ezekiel stated that the glory of God entered the Temple through the \u2018gate facing east\u2019 (43:1 \u2013 4).","Aspects of East Syrian Theology and Spirituality | 123 The metropolitan of the Ancient The entrance doors for the people are found to sometimes borders on the cemetery.106 Church of the East from Mosul, the side on the southern wall; sometimes there The interior is divided into three parts along Mar Thoma Giwargis, celebrates a are two doors, one for each sex. The entrance wedding in the Church of St George almost always leads over a high threshold, both axes. To the east and in the centre is found in Hazaneh, northern Iraq. and the lintel is low, so that everyone enters the holy of holies, the choir, which symbolizes the house of God with a bowed and humble heaven and can only be entered by clergy of bearing. Additionally, the really small entryways the rank of deacon or above. Here the altar prevented hostile Muslims from forcing their signifies the tomb of Christ. Over the altar rises a way inside the church on horseback or misusing structure similar to a baldachin, symbolizing the it as a stable. Some fortified mountain churches Ark of the Covenant of Moses or again heaven. In can only be reached by means of a ladder, which comparison to the rest of the church, the holy of leads to an entrance about five metres above the holies is raised on three levels. The baptistery lies ground. Immediately beyond the entrance is an to the south of the choir, and the sacristy, where anteroom, in which the faithful leave their shoes the malka is kept and the sacred bread prepared, and weapons. In some churches, the thrice-daily lies to the north. To the west of the choir is the prayers take place during the week in an open-air nave, where the faithful gather; it symbolizes forecourt, which has a simple apse to the east and the earth. While in earlier times the men stood in the front of the nave, which symbolized the","124 | The Church of the East East Floorplan of a typical East Syrian church of Mesopotamia. North South (After Fiey: Mossoul chr\u00e9tienne, West 1959. Plate II) Garden of Eden, and the women in the rear, remained.107 During the week the curtain stays 1\t Outer door which represented the praised Land of Canaan, closed because the sin of Adam and Eve broke 2\t Forecourt, cemetery today both sexes intermingle in the nave. This is the immediate connection between heaven and 3\tWell in contrast to the Syrian Orthodox, among whom earth; it is also closed during the liturgy, when the 4\t Beth Slutho the women gather to the north and the men to crucifixion of Christ is being commemorated. 5\tBaptistery the south. Sometimes an iron grille separates the Otherwise the curtain is open during the liturgy, 6\t Outer door to the baptistery two groups. Holy relics have been placed in the as a sign of the presence of Christ, as he had 7 \t Entrance door for men northern wall of the church, and occasionally proclaimed, \u2018Where two or three are gathered 8 \t Entrance door for women there is also a martyrium, in which lie the bones in my name, I will be there among them\u2019 (Matt 9 \t Inner door to the baptistery of martyrs or bishops. 18:20). The opening of the curtain is a symbol 10 \t Credenzas of the opening of heaven and the arrival of 11 \t Font A stone or wooden choir screen, with one to Christ, for the church\u2019s liturgy is an earthly 12 \t Window three arches, divides the nave from the choir; representation of the eternal divine liturgy in 13 \t Choir it corresponds to the iconostasis of Orthodox heaven. Thus, during the worship service the 14 \t Altar churches. A curtain stretched just behind the ontological unity of heaven and earth is re- 15 \t Beth Razzeh arches of the choir screen conceals the view of the established. 16 \t Sacristy choir; today the choir screen is rarely seen, but 17 \t Reserve of anointing oil the curtain, as in Syrian Orthodox churches, has Between the nave and the choir is the and malka 18 \t Curtain, choir screen 19 \t Side door 20 \t Qostroma, vestibule 21 \t Shqaqona, straight way 22 \t Bema 23 \t Golgotha, credenza 24 \t Reading desks 25 \t Martyrium 26 \t Walled-in relics 27 \t Part of men, sometimes at the right 28 \t Part of women, sometimes at the left","Aspects of East Syrian Theology and Spirituality | 125 This Gospel lectern, made of stone, qostroma, which means vestibule. From the stood on the bema and was used perspective of the nave, the qostroma is found during the Liturgy of the Word. The on this side of the curtain, but, like the choir, it Syriac inscription reads: \u2018Keep a good is raised up in three steps. It represents paradise, memory of the priest Abraham and the bridge between heaven and earth, which John and his mother, who donated is entered by the readers of Scripture, who this.\u2019 From the Church of Bennawi symbolize the lower-ranking angels, functioning near Aleppo, today in the National as heavenly messengers between humanity and Museum in Damascus, Syria.34 God. In earlier times in the centre of the nave there was a rectangular or horseshoe-shaped platform, the bema, which symbolized Jerusalem in a church. The Nestorian rite and the rite of as the centre of Jesus\u2019s life.108 As in the synagogue, its sister Church, the Chaldean Church, which readings and the beginning of the worship is united with Rome, are the oldest Oriental service \u2013 that is, the liturgy of the word \u2013 were rites still in use today. They date in their essence carried out on the bema. The liturgy of the from the fifth century and thus are closest to the mysteries, however, took place in the holy of Jewish-Christian origins. The worship service holies. The procession of the celebrating clergy consists of three main parts. First the celebrant to the bema symbolized the preaching and prepares in the sacristy with a piece of malka, the prophesying of Christ, and their return to the sacred bread. Then, in earlier days, the mass of choir, his sacrifice and resurrection. The lay the catechumens began, during which the priest choir who in the case of most sung prayers and deacons remained on the bema. This liturgy responded to the angelic choir of the priests and on the bema thus took place in the nave. While deacons, also took their place on the bema. The the faithful sing psalms and hymns, the altar bema corresponds to the early medieval ambo, in the choir is censed \u2013 the incense symbolizes the pulpit jutting out into the nave, which was both our prayers rising to God and the invisible linked to the choir with a small, slightly raised presence of the Holy Spirit. There follow readings passageway. In the early Church of the East this from Holy Scripture, the sermon, litanies and passage was called shqaqona, the straight way. The the preparation of the bread. The covering of shqaqona, which no longer exists, was small, for the wine-filled chalice with a white linen cloth it symbolized the narrow path leading between the abyss of fleshly sin and the pride of the spirit to the heavenly realm. In the centre of the bema stands a credenza, called Golgotha, which represents the tomb of Adam, and beside this is the bishop\u2019s throne. The old Nestorian churches had no bell towers, since there were at that time no bells. The faithful were called to worship by someone hitting with a stick one or more wooden planks, called simandron, which were hung from ropes.109 The Nestorians also called their worship raze, the mysteries, since it celebrated the revelation with all its mysteries. It can only be celebrated","126 | The Church of the East symbolizes the placing of Christ in the tomb, and then all the faithful. The anamnesis recalls and its removal the rolling away of the stone that the crucifixion and resurrection of Christ and had sealed the tomb\u2019s entrance. At this point, in is followed by the most important part of the earlier times, those who were not yet baptized Eucharistic prayer. This is the epiclesis, in which were asked to leave the church; today the entire God the Father is called upon to send the Holy liturgy is celebrated in the qostroma and choir, Spirit to consecrate the Eucharistic gifts of and the bema no longer exists. Since the words bread and wine. A hymn to the honour of God for the departure of the catechumens are still concludes the anaphora. The communion of sung today, this break remains. bread and wine concludes the worship service. It is in keeping with the law of hospitality, so The liturgy of the holy of holies follows, important in the Orient, that after worship the beginning with the creed. Earlier, the lay choir bishop invites to dinner select guests and friends remained on the bema, the subdeacons processed \u2013 and, on the occasion of special feasts, the only to the qostroma and the deacons to the altar, entire congregation. As the author has observed and only the priest or bishop celebrated alone at several times, for such meals to have hundreds the altar. This hierarchical advance towards the of participants is not unusual. In this way, the altar granted the start of the most important part aspects of the sacred and the social shared meal of the liturgy an especially solemn character. reunite, after having been separated in the The priest is turned towards the altar, not second century. towards the faithful. As primer inter pares he leads the prayers of the congregation, and in this The Church of the East also has a highly way takes on a role similar to that of the imam in symbolic form of the liturgy for the dead. The Islam. Because today there is no longer a bema, mass is not celebrated on the day of the burial, the altar represents not only the tomb of Christ which normally occurs on the same day or the but also Golgotha. The creed is followed by a day after the death and for which just a prayer litany, and then the anaphora, the Eucharistic is sung in the church. The funeral mass takes prayer, begins. The Church of the East uses three place on the third day. As Christ rose on the third different but related anaphoras. The first is that day, the deceased, on the third day after his or of the apostles Addai and Mari, which is used her death, participates through the Eucharistic from Easter to Advent. It is followed by the celebration in the resurrection of Christ. The anaphora attributed to Theodore of Mopsuestia, extent to which they are marked by a rich and which is used until Palm Sunday. The third vital symbolism, is always notable in the East Eucharistic prayer, which is said to go back to Syrian liturgies. Nestorius, is used only on special feasts, such as Epiphany.110 It should be noted here that on Monasticism and asceticism 6 January the Church of the East celebrates, as originally, the baptism of Jesus, the Epiphany; The motivation towards ascetic monasticism lay the celebration of the appearance of Jesus to the in the ideal of the imitation of Christ and in the heathen, embodied by the Three Kings, began to necessity, proclaimed by Paul, of conquering supersede the commemoration of the baptism in the flesh (Rom 8:1 \u2013 18). Additionally, the rapid the Western Churches in the fifth century.111 growth of the early Christian community diluted the depth of its religiosity, which increased the The anaphoras begin with various prayers, need for a special way of being Christian. Before which lead to the kiss of peace, which is passed from the priest to the deacons, subdeacons,","Aspects of East Syrian Theology and Spirituality | 127 Summer church called Beth Slutho Syrian monasticism began to flourish around counsel of Ephrem, these anchorites not only in the Syrian Orthodox Mor the turn from the third to the fourth century, \u2018prefer the company of animals to the sight Hadbeshabo Church of Ainwardo, the Essenes and the Encratites had already of humans\u2019113 but also lived like wild animals Tur Abdin. The summer churches developed an ascetic, world-renouncing and under the open sky or in mountain caves. were furnished with stone lecterns, God-embracing lifestyle. The transition from Ephrem described their lifestyle: \u2018Caverns where psalms were sung and masses lay to monastic status was akin to crossing a are their palaces, rocks their sleeping rooms, for the dead were read.35 sharply defined, endlessly deep border, over heights their balconies, ledges their habitations; which there was no return without suffering the herb of the mountains is as their dinner eternal damnation. Anyone who desired table.\u2019114 These extreme ascetics and penitents earthly pleasures and left the monastic life was called themselves, like the martyrs, \u2018athletes of threatened with the fate of Lot\u2019s wife: he would the faith\u2019 and \u2018fighters and warriors of Christ\u2019, be turned into a pillar of salt.112 whom they praised as their \u2018Holy General\u2019.115 Early Syrian monasticism had an anchoritic Beginning around 340, presumably under the character. It was a conscious rejection of the influence of Byzantine and Egyptian monks, contemporary civilization and its attributes, there emerged in Mesopotamia a concerted effort such as social contact, education, housing, to return the hermits to the Christian community clothing and the use of fire. To paraphrase a and integrate them into cenobitic monastic","128 | The Church of the East communities. In the ideal case, hermits were execution of martyrs or the caves of famous The famous Nestorian cave prepared to place their seemingly inexhaustible hermits, or mountain slopes and earlier pagan monastery of Khinnis in northern inner strength in the service of missionary work, shrines were chosen. Iraq, which was described by Thomas to which the rapid expansion of the Church of Marga in 840. Today one may of the East to the east and south attests. While The leading lights of Greek-Byzantine and still see 15 cells, which the monks anchoritism was a purely personal matter, Egyptian cenobitic monasticism condemned intentionally created out of the stone cenobitic monasticism is a social institution. Syrian eremitism for both its aims and its wall that had been decorated with old This slow reversal is also apparent in the growing practices. While John Chrysostom emphasized Assyrian reliefs and cuneiform texts criticism of wandering monks and the so-called that it was not the body that should be fought from the time of King Sennacharib Messalians. The latter qualified the salvific power but rather its harmful desires, Basil the Great (ruled 705 \u2013 681BCE). They wanted of sacraments, meditation and penance, and (330 \u2013 379) rejected every expression of extreme in this way to reconsecrate the believed that only continual prayer could defeat self-castigation. Seen from a distance, Syrian \u2018heathen\u2019 sacred site.36 The king the inner demon and thus lead to salvation. The anchoritism appears to be, in fact, a mutilation stands on a winged lion as the second clergy branded them as lazy parasites, who lived of God\u2019s creation \u2013 indeed, a blasphemy of the figure from the left. only from begging.116 Monasteries, which were divine work. In light of the alternative between located principally in northern Mesopotamia, anchoritism and the cenobitic way of life, Basil were founded on sites associated with the argued that only the latter could accord with the sacred law of brotherly love; the hermit","Aspects of East Syrian Theology and Spirituality | 129 loved only himself and disregarded his fellows. Although a flourishing monastic life rapidly St Jerome (342 \u2013 420) added that the eremitic developed within the Church of the East, the life led not only to pride and vanity but also to turmoil that shook the Church towards the error, since no one is able to be simultaneously end of the fifth century led to a relaxation of student and his own teacher117 \u2013 an insight also monastic discipline. The study of Scripture was emphasized by the Tibetan Buddhist school of neglected, and monks left monasteries without Kagy\u00fcpa. No one besides Buddha Shakyamuni permission to pursue private interests in the could be his own spiritual teacher and leader. cities, or even took women into their cells. The founder of the Great Monastery on Mount Izla, For its part, Egyptian monasticism Abraham of Kashkar (491 \u2013 586\/588), brought emphasized that the external practices of self- an end to these undignified activities with his castigation and the infliction of pain mattered reforms. The most important of the rules put less than inner attitude. Asceticism must also into place in 571 were the following: be guided by the principle of moderation, since \u2018everything of excessive measure is of Canon 1: \u2018Monks live peacefully in their cells demons\u2019.118 The father of Egyptian cenobitism, and devote themselves to prayer and study or Pachomius (290 \u2013 346), wrote that only the meditation and handicraft. As the fish dies if it balanced middle way could distinguish between is taken from the water, so does the monk who the \u2018divine and the demonic asceticism\u2019.119 The stays outside his cell.\u2019 goal of achieving a state equal to that of the angels through extreme, even self-destructive, Canon 4: \u2018Monks practise silence and gentleness.\u2019 asceticism is nothing other than a sign of a misguided over-estimation of one\u2019s one abilities. Canon 6: \u2018No brother may move from monastery In the cenobitic life, by contrast, there was no to monastery or from place to place or enter the room for individ-ualistic excesses; common city [Nisibis] except in an emergency and with prayer and work took priority. In this regard, the permission of the community.\u2019 a noteworthy tradition tells of a monk called John Colobos, who sought to lead an angelic Canon 10: \u2018New brothers shall be tested for a life and thus rejected all participation in the given period.\u2019121 common life of the monastery. When, after a long fast, he returned hungry from the desert to In 588 Abraham\u2019s successor, Abbot Dadisho, the monastery, he found the doors closed. To added the following rules: his desperate cry that he was Brother John, he received the reply that Brother John had become Canon 1: \u2018[He who] does not accept the an angel and no longer lived among men. Later Orthodox fathers Mar Diodore [of Tarsus], Mar he was granted entrance, and it was explained Theodore [of Mopsuestia] and Mar Nestorius to him that he was not an angel but an ordinary shall be unknown to our community.\u2019 man, who, like all other human monks, had to take part in the communal life.120 Although Canon 6: \u2018To travel into the cities or along some at first a chasm yawned between the moderate pathway is not allowed without the permission position of Greek-Byzantine monasticism and of the abbot. He who nonetheless dares to go the extreme Syrian ideal, with regard to both shall wear sackcloth and stand on ashes for three aims and practices, the former had a beneficial Sundays. If a monk broke this rule three times, and mitigating effect on the latter. the community discussed his expulsion.\u2019 (The once popular wandering life was thus strictly forbidden.)","130 | The Church of the East build themselves cells. If they behave otherwise, View looking out from a one-time they shall leave in peace.\u2019123 Nestorian hermit\u2019s cell near Challick, northern Iraq. Canon 7: \u2018Every brother who comes to the This canon is significant, as it makes clear that, community to stay shall not be accepted unless among the Nestorians, the cenobitic communal he can read the Scriptures.\u2019 life served merely as preparation and selection process for suitable candidates for the higher Canon 17: \u2018Children shall not be accepted into the eremitic life. Nonetheless, the hermits no longer community.\u2019 lived in remote mountains but, rather, in cells or caves near the monastery complex. They These requirements raised the educational level remained subject to the authority of their abbot of the monks and laid the groundwork for the and were required to participate in certain feasts eventual work of translating classical philoso- in the monastery church. In the monastery itself phical and scientific texts. Rabban Yussuf lived only the candidates, ailing and incapacitated Busnaya also emphasized the necessity to begin monks, and those with admini-strative duties. monastic life with the study of Scripture and Rabban Yussuf Busnaya instituted another the Church Fathers. \u2018Study is both the way to hurdle in the selection process by requiring and the teacher of the next step, solitude in the that novices, before they were admitted to the cell. Without scholarship, there is no complete cenobitic life, had meekly to perform hard monastic life.\u2019 But study was only the first step. physical labour for 50 days. Then he ordered that, \u2018In study the individual purifies his bodily senses when a monk entered the eremitic life, the cell of until they are perfect. In meditative solitude the the new hermit should be closed with a stone in spiritual person purifies his inner senses, his memory of the stone before the tomb of Christ, intellect.\u2019122 for the cell was the tomb of the monk with regard to the world.124 On the other hand, Rabban Canon 13: \u2018That the brothers shall be tested in the Yussuf offered one who had completed the monastery for three years following their arrival. three-year novitiate three options, according to If they behave well, they shall be permitted to his preferences: he could decide on the spiritual eremitic life, be intellectually active as a copyist of manuscripts, translator and preacher, or carry out manual labour in the fields and vineyard and look after the pilgrims in the monastery guest quarters.125 These three forms of monastic life correspond to the Neo-Platonic view, then current, that the human person consists of corporeal, emotional-intellectual and spiritual dimensions. Nevertheless, the great Nestorian monasteries were not immune from excesses in the form of vanity, wealth, spiritual sloth, exertion of political influence, or even willingness to use violence \u2013 developments seen in monasteries of other confessions and religions as well. So","Aspects of East Syrian Theology and Spirituality | 131 Four-metre-high remains of the stylite\u2019s column in the Syrian Orthodox Monastery of Mor Loozor (Lazarus) in Habsus, Tur Abdin, which was, according to the inscription, erected in 792 \/ 793 for the stylite Daniel. Early documents confirm that Nestorian monks also practised this extreme form of asceticism.37 Isaac of Antioch warned cenobitic monks of was said not only to have healed the sick and great institutions that they were not to reduce raised the dead but also, \u2018at the command of the themselves to farmers. He also warned against angel of God\u2019, to have destroyed the villages of the fatal involvement in politics and against sinful Christians with earthquakes and confla- those abbots who intentionally selected big and grations.127 This tradition is also very similar strong monks, in order to turn them into gangs to earlier reports from Tibetan monasticism.128 of thugs.126 The distressing events at the Council Another unwholesome development concerned of Ephesus and the Robber Synod of 449, as well the motivations for founding monasteries. Not as many other incidents, in which questions of only monks called to the spiritual life founded dogma were \u2018resolved\u2019 with fists, demonstrate monasteries but also prosperous laypeople, that brutal and primitive instincts can lurk even acting for the benefit of their salvation or out under the habit of a monk. The monastic gangs of vanity. Since such monasteries were often recall the feared Dob Dob of Tibetan monasteries, endowed with large landholdings, they had at who, as trained fighting monks, attacked other their disposal considerable financial means and monasteries and even set them on fire. In both accordingly accepted many novices. As in ancient cases, the aggression and brutality that presum- Tibet, in certain regions of northern Mesopotamia ably feeds and maintains all extreme asceticism as many as a quarter of Christian men may have is no longer directed inward towards one\u2019s own been monks.129 When a similar development body and its needs but, rather, outward against threatened the civil authority in Byzantium, others who think differently. Emperor Nikiphoros Phocas outlawed all new foundations in 964.130 If the reports of Bishop Thomas of Marga are given credence, there were also monks who In the region of the Church of the East, had magical powers. For instance, a certain Mar however, no imperial permission was needed Maran\u2019anmeh (second half of the eighth century) to limit the number of monks. The continually","132 | The Church of the East advancing Islamization of the land, the seizure of power by the fanatical Turkish Seljuks in the eleventh century and the systematic destruction by the Kurds reduced the number of monasteries in Mesopotamia, with the exception of Tur Abdin, from several hundred to five by 1960 \u2013 three Chaldean, one Jacobite and one Syrian Catholic. There are also still a few monastic buildings, which are preserved but no longer have any monks.131 The last Nestorian monk, Rabban Werda, died before the First World War.132 East Syrian mysticism, exemplified Like Jerome, John was convinced that an The Syrian Orthodox monk Yacub by John of Dalyatha experienced teacher must accompany the returned from exile to his Monastery mystic on his perilous path, along which lurked of Mor Dimet in Zaz, Tur Abdin, in In comparison with the fathers of Syrian demons of madness, arrogance and pride.134 In early 2001, after the last Christians mysticism, Aphrahat and Ephrem, mature describing the mystical process, most Nestorian had to leave the village in 1993. Nestorian mysticism departed from the ideals authors adopted Origen\u2019s scheme of the three His headdress bears 13 crosses; they of strict asceticism. One branch opted for the levels of the human being\u2019s relationship to God. symbolize Jesus Christ and the twelve path of love mysticism, and its most prominent The first, physical, level occurs in the form of apostles. Unlike the Syrian Orthodox representative is Isaac of Nineveh; the other corporeal asceticism; the second, psychological, Church, the Church of the East has followed a spiritual-intellectual path. In this way, as purification of the soul, which then leads to had no monks since the start of the knowledge led to an ecstatic vision of the glory spiritual development, culminating in the vision twentieth century. of God, in which every distinction between the of Christ as formless light. For John, however, knower and the known \u2013 that is, every duality \u2013 physical purification is not a one-time step was abolished and the soul, in its transfiguration, but rather, a continual process that ends only experienced God \u2013 an approach comparable to with death. In his experience, the purification the Indian way of Advaita. of the soul is the first step; the enlightenment and blessing of the soul, in which the mystic The best-known exponent of this branch is experiences the revelation of the divine John of Dalyatha, who was born around 690 in mysteries, the second; and the vision of God, Adiabene and died before 786. The writings of which overcomes all dualism, the third and John were risky and not uncontroversial; they crowning step. were condemned on three points at the synod of Patriarch Timothy I in 786\/787. First, John was condemned as a modalist, who, with regard to the Trinity, did not acknowledge three hypostases but rather just one, which expressed itself in three different ways. Second, he valued the mystical vision more than prayer; and, third, he made the blasphemous claim of having had a vision of God. No creature could recognize his creator. Timothy\u2019s successor, Isho Bar Nun (in office 823 \u2013 828), rehabilitated the mystic.133","Aspects of East Syrian Theology and Spirituality | 133 Despite its strongly fortified walls, Bodily and spiritual penance forms \u2018the gateway since he believed that the purified body could the Syrian Orthodox Mor Dimet to the realm of light that lives within each of us\u2019. participate in the mystical refreshment of the Monastery in Zaz, Tur Abdin, where However, it not only establishes the original purity soul. \u2018The individual gains union with himself the Christian population of the of human nature but also grants the necessary and with the one who unites him. For the village had sought refuge, also fell to zest for God; it is \u2018the mother of the heavenly powers and sense of the body shall be united attacking bands of Kurds in 1915. eagles who soar to the heavens on wings of with the abilities of the soul and this with the flame\u2019.135 For this reason, John considered the spirit. But the spirit sees in the soul the glory way of the mystic incompatible with the life of of God.\u2019137 On Dalyatha\u2019s mystical path there a layperson; the true Christian life required the sound no discordant notes of the mutilation death of earthly passions. From this perspective, of the creature but rather the harmony of his those who had not passed through the gate into holistic purification. John warned, however, that the monastic life remained \u2018still among the dead\u2019. humility and modesty should always accompany Love of God and love of the world were mutually the process of purification. \u2018But to those who exclusive: \u2018Christ will enter into your soul and deem themselves holy, the Holy One [Christ] live there if you first empty yourself of all that says, \u201cYou no longer need me, remain there is worldly.\u2019136 Corporeal asceticism and fasting in your holiness.\u2019\u2019\u2019138 To encourage humility, should be strict but also moderate, for it is not John recommended prostration on the ground enough to weaken or even destroy the body; during prayer \u2013 an established practice in Tibetan rather, one must tame and purify the passions. Buddhism as well. Now the mystic stood on the threshold of the inner vision, the vision of God in On this point John distinguished himself the mirror of the soul. \u2018O Christ, grant that we, radically from the ideas of earlier asceticism, through You, might enter the temple of our soul and see You there. O hidden [within us] treasure of life. My brothers, he who has enclosed the view of his spirit within himself will see in the interior of his heart the stars of light shining in ineffable splendour. It will be the vision of the glory of the Eternal One.\u2019139 In the second step of the blessing of the soul the mystic experiences, through the grace of God, three degrees of illumination. First, mental illumination in the form of conceptual insights that still have intellectual components. In the next step, there follow contemplations of the divine presence in one\u2019s own soul and in all creatures, during which the duality between the knower and the known is not yet resolved. In this moment, deep dismay grips the mystic. Finally, he experiences the divine as pure, formless light, beyond any intellectual perception. There follow next such states of grace, in which the soul sees itself in its original goodness and simultaneously experiences the presence","134 | The Church of the East spirit, without existing and without perception. Way up to the earlier Nestorian cave No vision, no hearing, only con-sternation monastery of St Qayyoma near Duri, [stupor] and deep silence, without any stirring from the ninth century. It was rebuilt [of the spirit] and without any consciousness. in 2000 after being destroyed by For in the one who knows, knowledge has Saddam Hussein\u2019s Anfal campaign forgotten itself, [it is] outside knowing.\u2019142 It in 1988. was these descriptions of the vision of God that of God. It is the return of the human being to prompted Patriarch Timothy to condemn John his original goodness. \u2018When the spirit begins of Dalyatha, since no creature can look upon to pray, he sees the radiance of his essence; the its creator. The accusation of the patriarch was beauty of the nature of the soul appears to him. not entirely accurate, insofar as John clearly The soul sees itself as it is; it sees the divine light distinguished between the nature of God and his appear and how it is transfigured into its [the glory. \u2018It is the glory of his nature, not his nature light\u2019s] likeness. And this likeness is removed itself, that He reveals to those who love him.\u2019143 from view, and it sees itself as the likeness of God, as it is united with the formless light.\u2019140 Rabban Yussuf Busnaya described the unio When the individual is entirely with himself, he mystica with similar words: \u2018In the previous state is entirely with God, and vice versa. The mystic of grace we encountered Christ in our soul and we experiences the unio mystica not only in his soul considered him our Lord and our God. In the final but also in all of creation: \u2018As I [John] thought to degree we find that the spirit itself becomes Christ; have found You [Christ] within myself, I saw that it is no longer servant and Christ is no longer You live in all things.\u2019141 At this point, all duality Lord, but rather it [the spirit] becomes Lord and between the subject and the object of knowledge Christ ceases to be Lord. It [the spirit] is no longer is abolished. \u2018He [Christ] holds me as if without human and God no longer God, but rather it becomes God and God is no longer God.\u2019144 One can speculate that Nestorian mysticism influenced the later Islamic mysticism of al-Hallaj (858 \u2013 922). He also questioned the absolute transcendence of God, in that he proclaimed his belief in a union of the human being with God beyond all duality. Like John, al-Hallaj described how, during such an experience, the mystic lost the consciousness of his own identity. Al-Hallaj was crucified in Baghdad in 922 after an eleven- year imprisonment. Likewise, with regard to the interim state of the soul from the moment of death to the resurrection, John\u2019s view differed from the official position. Proceeding from the indivisibility of body and soul and the universal resurrection, the Church of the East likens the state of the soul separated from the body to sleep. Righteous souls enter paradise, and evil souls remain outside, but in both places there is neither blessing nor","Aspects of East Syrian Theology and Spirituality | 135 punishment. John of Dalytha, by contrast, panton (Greek for \u2018the restoration of all\u2019), accepted a partial sleep of the soul: the souls according to which, in the context of the all- of the unrighteous experience punishment embracing reconciliation of the Creator with even before Judgement Day, while those of the his creation, all creation would be restored to righteous enjoy states of grace similar to those its original, perfect state. The most important of mystics, which nevertheless represent but a representative of apokatastasis was Origen foretaste of the state of eternal bliss. (\u2020253); he was vehemently opposed by the father of the doctrine of original sin, Augustine. Concerning life after death, the Nestorian \u2018Thanks\u2019 to Augustine, Christianity was marked mystic Isaac of Nineveh (second half of the by the frightening model of original sin- seventh century) represented a different predestination-salvation for the elect and hell for view. He believed that eternal punishment the rest. But Isaac\u2019s vision was entirely different. and damnation of even the worst sinners \u2018God did not abandon the devil and sinners in was irreconcilable with the all-encompassing the moment of their fall. Demons will not remain and unlimited love of God. He considered the demons, nor sinners sinners. For God intends to concept of original sin blasphemous. Building on lead them all to the same state of perfection in Diodore of Tarsus and Theodore of Mopsuestia, which the angels already exist.\u2019145 Isaac concluded that a loving God did not create rational human beings only later to abandon Perhaps a reconsideration of the early East them to eternal suffering, although he knew Syrian promoters of an optimistic Christian before their creation that they would sin and anthropology, unburdened by original sin, as created them anyway. God seeks our well-being well as an accessible Christology that inspires the and not a pretext for punishing us. For Isaac, imitatio Christi, could help address the current hell meant the consciousness that the sinner, out crisis in institutional Christianity. The Church of of egoism, was not receptive to God\u2019s love. The the East suggests how a Western Church might time in hell, while terrible and agonizing, was have appeared without Augustinian pessimism. nonetheless finite. Isaac\u2019s vision was of a religion of love, while that of Augustine was of one of fear. Isaac accepted the doctrine of apokatastasis","","VII Christians under Islamic Rule Christians in the Persian Gulf work in Arabia began on the northern coast region and in Arabia along the Persian Gulf. Presumably it was first ascetic hermits of the Church of the East who Even the earliest Christian sources refer to advanced from Basra into Arabia in the fourth missionary activity in Arabia. While the Acts of century. The first known name is Mar Odisho, the Apostles (2:11) report that at the Pentecost who, at the same time as the founding of the event the apostles also spoke in Arabic, Church monastery of al-Hira towards the end of the historians such as Eusebius, Rufinus and fourth century, established a hermitage on the Theodoret attribute the first missionary work in island of Bahrain or the island of Failaka. In southern Arabia to the apostle Bartholomew.1 Given that until the fifth\/sixth centuries most Place Church historians frequently confused the Arabian Peninsula with India or Ethiopia, their Damascus HLIBS Christian Community statements ought to be accepted only cautiously. Bostra Metropolitan see Despite this uncertainty, the Christian mission Baghda to the Arab region may be divided into three T A G d geographic areas: first, in the north, the coastal region of the Persian Gulf; second, the interior Yarmuk region, including the important area of Yemen Al-Hira and the oasis of Najran in the south of today\u2019s a kAhl-mKuisdures, n Saudi Arabia; and, third, the island of Socotra L in the Indian Ocean to the south of Yemen. It G h a s s a n ids Failaka Kharg is one of the fascinating aspects of Oriental Akkaz Rew-Ardashir Christianity that about 200 years before Mohammed it was able to gain a foothold in Al-Jubail Tarut (Darin) Hormuz the future cradle of Islam and there compete with Judaism. In Arabia today, aside from a few Medina KB ah rein R Katar dozen Yemeni Jews, there are no longer Jewish or Marawah Christian natives. A TA Sir Bani Yas As the legend of the founding of the first monastery of al-Hira suggests,2 the missionary OMAN Mecca Red Sea Najran M E N Sanaa Mocha Y E Marib Zafar Socotra N Aden Christian places and monasteries 0 150 300 450 600 750 km of Arabia.","138 | The Church of the East recent decades, archaeologists have uncovered linked the incense-producing province of Dhofar the ruins of several Nestorian monasteries. with Rome and Iran. However, by the start of the Among them on the Persian coast of the gulf are Common Era they had already lost the monopoly the monastery on the island of Kharg, and on the on maritime trade with India and the East opposite, Arabian, side the following structures: African coast, when Rome learned the secret of the monastery of al-Kusur on the Kuwaiti the monsoon winds. island of Failaka; the Church of Akkaz on the Kuwaiti mainland; a church, several hermitages In southern Arabia, until the fourth century and cemeteries near al-Jubail and Thaj in CE, a triad of gods enjoyed the greatest veneration: modern Saudi Arabia; the monastery on the the masculine god of the moon, Almaqah; the island of Tarut (Darin) in front of the eastern feminine goddess of the sun, Dh\u00e2t-Himyam; and Saudi coast; the monastery on the peninsula of their son Athar, the morning star. Late in the Qatar; the monastery of Marawah on an island third century a turn towards monotheism began belonging to the emirate of Abu Dhabi; and the in Marib, as expressed in its earliest stage in the great monastery and church of al-Khor on the numerous stone inscriptions, written in the neighbouring island of Sir Bani Yas. Here the Sabaean-Himyaritic script, which call exclusively triple-naved church, like the similar churches of upon the god Almaqah.4 In the second stage, after Marawah, Kharg and al-Kusur, was decorated 384, the god called upon remained nameless and with numerous Maltese crosses made of stucco. was called simply al-Rahmanan, the Merciful.5 The These monasteries and churches flourished corresponding Arabic word is al-Rahman between the fifth\/sixth centuries and the seventh\/ ( ) and is in the Koran the first attribute eighth centuries; a few were abandoned, and of God. The abandonment of the traditional others, like al-Kusur, were destroyed and used southern Arabian polytheism in favour of a as living quarters. It seems that many Christians neutral \u2013 that is, neither Jewish nor Christian were active in trading with pearls, since shah \u2013 monotheism, can be explained in part by the Chosrau I asked Patriarch Ezekiel I (in office political situation. When the Himyarite Empire 570 \u2013 582) to investigate the pearl business along united all southern Arabia under its rule towards the north Arabian Coast. Only the monastery the end of the third century, the need arose for a of Kharg was still in operation in the eleventh religion to transcend the tribal structure. While century.3 Although ecclesiastical documents refer the traditional deities of southern Arabia were to bishops in Bahrain and Oman, to date hardly connected to individual tribes, monotheism any corresponding archaeological discoveries created the possibility of a generally accessible have been made. point of contact between people and the only god, beyond tribal affiliations. Insofar as Christian communities existed in several monotheism is, by definition, both personally places within the Arabian Peninsula, with those accessible and universally valid, it has great of Najran, Mecca and Yemen ranking as the unitive power as a state religion. At that time, most significant. From 295 CE the Himyarite other rulers undertook similar measures: Shapur dynasty ruled what is today Yemen, which II declared Zoroastrianism the state religion, and they governed either from the capital of their Aurelian (ruled 270 \u2013 275) tried unsuccessfully to homeland Zafar, south of Sana\u2019a, or from the elevate the sun god Sol Invictus to universal deity. capital of the defeated Sabaeans, Marib, which Constantine then succeeded in his choice of lay east of Sana\u2019a. Their wealth was based on Christianity. The Himyarite kings did not choose their control of the incense trade route, which Christianity because it would have placed them,","Christians under Islamic Rule | 139 The Awwam Temple, which has like Ethiopia, under the influence of Rome, but of God in pre-Islamic stone inscriptions in existed since around the sixth century opted instead for a neutral monotheism, and BCE and is today called Mahram later Judaism. southern Arabia. A Sabaean-Himyarite Bilqis, in Marib, Yemen. The stone inscriptions from the late third A similar, if less clear and later, development inscription from Marib, dating to 499 or 505 CE, century CE found in the gallery of emerged in Mecca, the eventual birthplace of columns no longer invoke the usual the prophet Mohammed, where al-Lah, whose reports that a house was built with the help divine triad of moon, sun and Venus name means the God, was worshipped as the but exclusively the god Almaqah, highest god. Al-Lah\u2019s three daughters \u2013 the of Rahmanan (rhmnn), the compassionate which indicates monotheistic goddesses Manat, time; al-Lat, the sun; and tendencies. Photo: 1980. al-Uzza, the morning star \u2013 were very popular, (mthrmn), with Rahmanan being the name as well. The special status of al-Lah is also made evident by the fact that there was no figure of God and the description compassionate his of him in the Ka\u2019aba, although it contained 360 idols. This development recalls the proto- attribute.7 This double characterization of monotheism around the god Marilaha that earlier predominated in the region of Edessa.6 God corresponds precisely to the one that We can also find the second Islamic attribute opens the first sura of the Koran: In the name of God, the merciful (al-Rahman, ), the compassionate (al-Rahim, ). Thus, Mohammed did not invent the opening formula for each sura but used expressions familiar at that time. In it he united the god al-Lah, widely regarded in the central Arabian Hejaz as the highest god, with Rahmanan, worshipped as the","140 | The Church of the East only god in southern Arabia, with the latter Christianity merely as a matter of form, is transformed into the first attribute of al-Lah. But disputed; in any case, this first missionary effort the word \u2018rahmanan\u2019 is the southern Arabian in southern Arabia produced little lasting success. equivalent of the Aramaic \u2018rahmana\u2019, which we Malk\u00eekarib\u2019s son and successor, Abukarib Asad find in both the Jerusalem and Babylonian (ruled c. 385 \u2013 420), converted to Judaism after versions of the Jewish Talmud and in East Syrian visiting the central Arabian oasis city of Yathrib, writings such as those of Ephrem.8 Both terms later called Medina. Yathrib had been founded are still used today in both West Syrian and East by Jewish settlers in the pre-Christian period, Syrian literature. and its population swelled considerably after Emperor Hadrian\u2019s defeat of the second Jewish At that time, both Judaism and Christianity revolt in 135. Although non-Jewish Arabs also were present in southern Arabia. The first lived in the oasis, Yathrib, which was home documented Christian missionary activity to several synagogues, could be considered in southern Arabia goes back to Emperor a Jewish city. After his return to Yemen, Constantius II (ruled 337 \u2013 361), who had the King Abukarib ordered the first persecution deacon Theophilos, who had been born on the of Christians. The extent to which the rapid island of Socotra, consecrated as bishop, and expansion of the Mosaic religion in Himyar sent sometime before 356 as an official envoy pressured and stifled Christianity is evident from to southern Arabia and India. The purpose of King Sharabhi al-Yukk\u00fbf\u2019s conversion to Judaism the mission was mainly of an economic and around 470, after which he had the Christian political nature, as Theophilos was to establish missionary Azqir, who had come from Najran, friendly relations with the states bordering the executed because he \u2018was spreading a new Indian Ocean, in order to counter Shapur II\u2019s religion\u2019.10 It appears that Judaism was the leading policy of expansion and secure the profitable religion of Himyar from c.400 to 525. On account maritime trade with India. This mission was very of the supremacy of Judaism and the fact that important for Byzantium because the kingdom monotheistic inscriptions dating from before the of al-Hira, which was a vassal of the Sassanians end of the Himyar dynasty in 525 do not mention and bordered on Arabia, controlled the Hejaz to the Trinity, we conclude that they were of Jewish the borders of the Himyarite realm. At the same inspiration. time, Theophilos, who followed the theology of Arius, was supposed to strengthen diplomatic ties In the oasis city of Najran, by contrast, a with the ruler of Himyar by having him convert flourishing Christian community emerged in to Christianity and to have churches built for the the fifth century. Although Tabari attributed the local Byzantine trading settlements. undated conversion of the Arabs of Najran, who allegedly worshipped a sacred tree, to the Syrian It is unclear whether Theophilos ever reached Fimiun (Euphemion),11 the Chronicle of Seert is India, but he did meet the Himyarite king more informative. It reports that, at the time of Tha\u2019r\u00e2n Yuhanim and his co-regent and son, the Sassanian shah Yazdgerd I (ruled 399 \u2013 420), Malk\u00eekarib. Despite the opposition of the many a merchant from Najran named Hannan, Jews who lived at court, he received permission to returning from a business trip to Constantinople, build three churches in the capital city of Zafar, in stopped in al-Hira and there learned of East Sana\u2019a, and in Aden or Hormuz.9 However, they Syrian Christianity. Upon his return to Najran he were used only by Christian merchants. Whether baptized his family and many other occupants of the bishop actually succeeded in converting the his house, and even made a missionary journey Himyarite king or whether the king accepted"]