Church of the East

Overview

The Church of the East is the ancient Christian church of Mesopotamia and Persia, which prays in Syriac, a literary form of Aramaic. Growing up outside the Roman Empire, it governed itself from 424 and took no part in the imperial councils; the label "Nestorian" its rivals gave it is now widely judged misleading. In the first millennium its missions followed the trade routes to Central Asia and Tang China, and it sent bishops to south India. From the 14th century plague, war and persecution shrank it to the mountains of Kurdistan, and First World War massacres scattered its people. Its heirs are the Assyrian Church of the East, the Ancient Church of the East and, in communion with Rome, the Chaldean Catholic Church, with members in Iraq, Iran, Syria and far beyond.^{[2, 7–8, 10–15]}

History

Edessa, Persia and the first synod c. 100–410

By the church's tradition, the apostle Thomas sent Addai to Edessa, where King Abgar was healed and converted, and Addai's disciple Mari preached in Mesopotamia. Historians see later legend here: the story first appears in Eusebius in the early 4th century, the Syriac Teaching of Addai dates from about 420, and no Abgarid king is known to have been Christian. Still, Christians lived east of the Roman frontier by about 200, and an organised church in Persia by the 330s. Once Rome turned Christian, Persia suspected its Christians, and Shapur II persecuted them from 339 for some forty years. In 410 bishops at the royal capital, Seleucia-Ctesiphon, accepted the Nicene Creed with King Yazdegerd I's approval.^[16–20]

A church of its own 424–628

A synod of 424 declared that the catholicos answered to no other patriarch, so the Persian bishops had no part in the Council of Ephesus, which deposed Nestorius of Constantinople in 431. Their theologians followed Theodore of Mopsuestia, who kept Christ's divinity and humanity firmly distinct, and a synod in 486 adopted a two-nature statement of faith. When Emperor Zeno closed the Edessa school that trained Persian clergy in 489, teachers such as the poet Narsai moved to Nisibis, whose new school formed the church's leaders. In the early 7th century the monk Babai the Great gave its teaching on Christ a lasting form.^[21–24]

Along the Silk Road 5th–10th centuries

Bishops sat at Merv and Herat by 424, and Merv was probably the springboard for missions into Central Asia. After the Arab conquest of Persia in the 630s, the patriarchs moved to the new capital, Baghdad. Timothy I (780–823) consecrated metropolitans for the Turks and Tibet, and the church's scholars translated Greek learning for the caliphs. According to a stele set up in 781, the monk Aluoben reached the Tang capital Chang'an in 635 and won the emperor's favour; the mission withered after Emperor Wuzong outlawed foreign religions in 845. In south India the Thomas Christians took their bishops from Persia and Mesopotamia.^[25–30]

Khans, plague and Timur c. 1000–1400

By the 12th century the faith had spread among steppe peoples such as the Keraits and Öngüts, and Mongol rulers married into their Christian families: Kublai and Hülegü were sons of Sorghaghtani Beki, a Kerait Christian. In 1281 Markos, a monk from near Beijing, became catholicos as Yahballaha III, and his teacher Rabban Ṣawma went to Rome and Paris in 1287–88 as an envoy of the Mongol ruler of Persia. After the Ilkhan Ghazan became a Muslim in 1295, Christians faced persecution, including a massacre at Erbil in 1310. Plague, the end of Mongol rule in China in 1368 and Timur's campaigns left the church a fraction of its former size.^[31–34]

Mountains and a divided church 1400–1914

Survivors held on in the Hakkari mountains of today's south-east Turkey, around Mosul and on the Urmia plain in Iran. From the mid-15th century the patriarchate passed from uncle to nephew within one family. In 1552 bishops opposed to this chose Yoḥannan Sullaqa, abbot of the Rabban Hormizd monastery, as patriarch; Pope Julius III consecrated him in 1553, starting the line from which the Chaldean Catholic Church descends. In India the Portuguese-backed Synod of Diamper (1599) cut the Thomas Christians off from Mesopotamia and burned Syriac books. In the 19th century Western missionaries arrived, and Anglicans popularised the name "Assyrian" for the church's people.^[35–39]

Sayfo, exile and a worldwide church 1914–today

During the First World War Ottoman troops and Kurdish irregulars drove the church's people from Hakkari, and many more died after they fled to Urmia; Assyrians call these massacres Sayfo, "the sword". Survivors reached Iraq, but in 1933 the Iraqi army killed Assyrian civilians at Simele and the patriarch, Mar Eshai Shimun, was expelled, later settling in the United States. Disputes over his adoption of the Gregorian calendar in 1964 and over hereditary succession produced a rival patriarch in Baghdad in 1968: the Ancient Church of the East. In 1994 Pope John Paul II and Mar Dinkha IV jointly affirmed a shared faith in Christ. The Assyrian Church's patriarchate returned to Erbil in 2015, where Mar Awa III was elected in 2021.^[40–44]

Key moments

1. 431 CECouncil of Ephesus · Ephesus (Selçuk, Türkiye)
2. 635 CEThe Church of the East reaches China · Chang'an (Xi'an), China

Beliefs

Two natures, two qnome · ܩܢܘܡܐ

qnoma: "defining characteristic"

The church confesses Christ as one person (parṣopā) in two natures, divine and human, each with its own qnoma. For East Syriac writers qnoma meant a nature's concrete characteristics, not a second "person"; because the word also translated Greek hypostasis, outsiders heard two Christs. Babai the Great's Book of the Union remains its classic statement.^[45]

Mother of Christ

Mary is honoured in prayer and hymn, but the church calls her Mother of Christ rather than Mother of God, to keep Christ's divinity and the humanity he took from her distinct in thought. In the 1994 declaration the Catholic Church and the Assyrian Church accepted each other's titles for Mary as expressions of one faith.^[46]

The Interpreter

mpaššqānā, the exegete

Theodore of Mopsuestia (d. 428), called simply the Interpreter, is the church's chief guide to scripture and theology; synods made his works required reading. Nestorius is honoured as a defender of two-nature teaching, but his own writings had little influence; he is remembered mainly as the named author of one of the three anaphoras.^[47]

The Nicene faith

The church professes the Nicene Creed, which Persian bishops formally received in 410. It accepts the first two ecumenical councils, Nicaea and Constantinople, but not Ephesus or Chalcedon: those were imperial councils of the Roman Empire, and their rulings did not, in its view, bind a church beyond the frontier.^[48]

Practice

The Qurbana · ܩܘܪܒܢܐ

The Eucharist is celebrated in Syriac with one of three anaphoras, named after the apostles Addai and Mari, Theodore and Nestorius. The Anaphora of Addai and Mari, among the oldest still in use, has no account of the Last Supper's words of institution; in 2001 the Catholic Church nonetheless recognised it as valid. Communion is given in both bread and wine.^[49]

The Holy Leaven · ܡܠܟܐ

Every loaf baked for the Eucharist contains a little of the Holy Leaven (Malka), which tradition traces to the bread of the Last Supper. The church counts it among its sacred mysteries. Each year on Holy Thursday a remnant of the old Leaven is mixed into the new, which then serves for the year ahead.^[50–51]

The daily office and the year

Clergy and monks keep evening, night and morning prayer from the Qdām w-Bāthar, a weekday book named for its two alternating choirs, while the Ḥudrā gives the texts for Sundays and feasts through the church's year. Much of its poetry dates from the 6th to the 13th centuries.^[52]

Married priests, monk bishops

Synods of 486 and 497 allowed clergy to marry even after ordination, and for a time this included bishops and the catholicos. From the 6th century bishops were chosen from celibate monks, a rule that still holds, while priests remain free to marry, even after ordination.^[53]

Holy days

Yaldā (Nativity) · ܝܠܕܐ

25 December; the Ancient Church keeps the older calendar

Christmas follows the Sundays of Subbārā, the season of the Annunciation, and is kept apart from Denḥā (Epiphany) on 6 January. Since 1964 the Assyrian Church has used the Gregorian calendar, while the Ancient Church kept the older one, so its feasts fall later.^[54]

Rogation of the Ninevites · ܒܥܘܬܐ ܕܢܝܢܘܝܐ

Monday–Wednesday, about three weeks before Lent (January–February)

A three-day fast recalling Nineveh's repentance in the Book of Jonah. It became a fixed observance between the late 6th and mid-7th centuries, after a plague ended, and is still kept with great intensity, with a special service for each day.^[55]

People

Scripture

The Peshitta · ܦܫܝܛܬܐ

OT c. 2nd century; NT c. 400

The Syriac Bible. Its Old Testament was translated from Hebrew, probably at Edessa; its New Testament, revised from older Syriac versions, became standard around 400. That New Testament has 22 books, leaving out 2 Peter, 2–3 John, Jude and Revelation.^[60]

The Teaching of Addai

c. 400–420

A Syriac account of letters exchanged between Jesus and King Abgar and of Addai's mission to Edessa. It gave Syriac Christians a link reaching back to Jesus himself; historians read it as legend that grew from an older Edessene story.^[61]

The Xi'an Stele

781

A stone monument in Chinese and Syriac, composed by the monk Jingjing (Adam), telling of Aluoben's arrival and of the "luminous teaching" in Tang China, with a long list of clergy in Syriac. Probably buried in the 9th century, it was found in the 1620s.^[62]

Places

Ctesiphon (Ṭāq Kisrā), al-Madāʾin

IRQ

The Sasanian royal capital on the Tigris, seat of the catholicos and of the synod of 410. The palace's great vaulted hall, Ṭāq Kisrā, still stands; a cathedral stood in the twin city of Kokhe.^[63]

Church of Mar Yaʿqub, Nusaybin (Nisibis)

TUR

Nisibis was home to the church's great school from the 480s. The Church of St Jacob, with a baptistery of 359 and the tomb of the city's first known bishop, survives beside the Syrian border; it has been Syriac Orthodox since 1865.^[64]

Suyab (Ak-Beshim)

KGZ · UNESCO World Heritage, 2014

Ruins of a Silk Road city in the Chu valley, where archaeologists excavated a church of about the 8th century with Christian burials. The site is a component of the UNESCO-listed Silk Roads: Chang'an-Tianshan Corridor.^[65]

Where it spread

Numbers

Members of the Assyrian Church of the East

c. 250,000–400,000 (estimates)^[9]

Assyrian Church of the East only; the Ancient Church of the East and Chaldean Catholics are not counted. Low: GEDSH (c. 2011); high: CNEWA (2021); self-reported to the WCC: 323,300.

National censuses

Source: Australian Bureau of Statistics, Census of Population and Housing 2021, 'Religious affiliation in Australia' (Table 4), CC BY 4.0.

How we know

A history pieced together

No narrative history of the church's spread across Asia survives. Scholars rebuild it from the signatures of bishops on synod decrees, from often legendary stories in Syriac and Arabic, and from archaeology. Finds include crosses drawn on a building at old Merv, ossuaries marked with crosses near Samarkand, a church with burials at Ak-Beshim in Kyrgyzstan, and more than 500 Syriac and Turkic gravestones from the Chu valley, most from the 13th and 14th centuries.^[66–67]

Manuscripts and a stone

A monastery library near Turfan in Xinjiang held fragments mainly in Syriac and Sogdian, with others in Turkic and Persian, mostly of the 9th century or later. Chinese Christian texts came from the Dunhuang caves, though some are now thought to be modern forgeries. The Xi'an Stele was written to celebrate imperial favour: its claim of monasteries in every prefecture is an exaggeration, and its Chinese borrows Buddhist and Daoist terms.^[68–69]

Gravestones and the Black Death

Syriac tombstones from two Chu valley cemeteries record a spike in deaths in 1338–39, some put down to "pestilence". In 2022 geneticists recovered plague DNA from people buried there and argued that this strain was ancestral to the Black Death of the following decade.^[70]

Common misconceptions

Glossary

Catholicos · ܩܬܘܠܝܩܐ

Title of the church's head, ranked above a metropolitan; first the bishop of Seleucia-Ctesiphon, later resident in Baghdad. Today he is styled Catholicos-Patriarch.^[74]

Syriac · ܣܘܪܝܝܐ

The Aramaic dialect of Edessa, first written under its kings, which became the literary and liturgical language of the Syriac churches.^[75]

Jingjiao · 景教

"Luminous teaching", the name Christians in Tang China gave their faith.^[76]

Sayfo · ܣܝܦܐ

"Sword": the name Syriac Christians use for the massacres and deportations they suffered in the Ottoman Empire during and after the First World War.^[77]

Chaldean

Name for East Syriac Christians in communion with Rome since the 16th century; in India, confusingly, the Chaldean Syrian Church belongs to the Assyrian Church of the East.^[78]

Bnay qyāmā · ܒܢܝ ܩܝܡܐ

"Sons of the covenant": celibate men and women devoted to prayer and study in early Syriac Christianity, before formal monasteries.^[79]

Thomas Christians

The Christians of Kerala, who trace their church to the apostle Thomas and were part of the Church of the East before the Portuguese arrived.^[80]