From Berlin to Bagdad and Babylon

by J. A. Zahm

But from this period, the Nestorian Church, which had then reached the zenith of its greatness and power, began rapidly to decline. Its downfall was hastened by the Moslem hordes of Timur which then swept over the greater part of middle and western Asia and subjected to the fiercest persecution all who did not profess the religion of Mohammed. In addition to the disasters which followed in the footsteps of the Tartars from Delhi to Damascus and from the Aral Sea to the Persian Gulf, the Nestorians suffered greatly from schisms and internal quarrels. These, coupled with the devastations of the Tartars, from which they never recovered, eventually reduced what was the greatest Christian organization in Asia to a poor and insignificant community in the bleak region of Kurdistan on the frontier between Persia and Turkey.

The Nestorian Patriarch now lives at Kochanes between Lake Van and Lake Urmia and always assumes the title Mar Shimum—Lord Simon.[323] A striking peculiarity of the Patriarchy is that it has been hereditary since 1450 and passes from uncle to nephew. Realizing their miserable condition in the spiritual as well as in the material order, many of the Patriarchs during the last two centuries have sought reunion with Rome. Thanks to the untiring missionary labors of the Dominicans of Mosul the majority of the Nestorians, after fourteen centuries of separation, have returned to the faith of their forefathers. Sometimes the inhabitants of several villages returned together. All those in and around Mosul who formerly professed the faith of Nestorians are now members of what is known as the Chaldean Church, which is in communion with Rome. And according to the latest reports from the Dominican missionaries of Mosul, there is reason to believe that all the remaining Nestorians will soon—if they have not already done so—accept the teaching of the Council of Ephesus; and the schism, which for more than fourteen centuries has kept countless myriads outside the pale of the Mother Church, will, like many other schisms, be but a matter of history.

Those who may still cling to Nestorianism—if there yet be any—have long practically forgotten the great questions that so distracted the Church in the East in the days of Nestorius, Diodore of Tarsus, and Theodore of Mopsuestia. Few of them know why they have ever been separated from the Church of Rome, and, when questioned about it, are able to give no better reason than “Because we have always been separated.” With the exception of the heresy of Nestorius which was condemned at Ephesus, the faith of the Nestorians is virtually the same as that taught by the Church of Rome. Like other Eastern Churches, the Nestorian has its peculiar liturgy, rites, laws, customs, but these are so far from affecting the truths of faith, that converts from Nestorianism are allowed by Rome to retain all its peculiarities of worship and religious observance, except in the rare cases in which they actually conflict with Catholic dogma. This is evidenced in the rites and liturgy of the Chaldeans—the Uniates, or converted Nestorians—which are exactly the same as the schismatic Nestorians have used from time immemorial.

When in 1750 the Dominican missionaries took up their abode in Mosul, they found there but one Catholic family and that was one of the Chaldean rite. But so fruitful was their work of conversion that the Patriarch of Mesopotamia and Lower Kurdistan soon afterwards resigned his position and his nephew and successor Mar Yohannan applied for admission into the Church of Rome. He was followed almost immediately by five of his bishops and by the greater part of his people in and around Mosul.

This rapid movement Romeward of the Nestorian pastors and their flocks is partly explained by the fact that they saw no valid reason for remaining separated from a Church which taught the same doctrines as they themselves had always believed and which, during long centuries of persecution, they had preserved intact. But their reunion with Rome was hastened by the tact and zeal of the learned and sympathetic Dominicans whom all soon learned to revere and love. For these devoted priests not only aided these poor but earnest people in becoming reconciled with the Mother Church on the most lenient terms, but they also established for them schools and asylums and hospitals where both souls and bodies could receive much needed care.

In Mosul an up-to-date printing establishment was installed in which were printed the Scriptures and other books in Arabic, Syriac, and other languages. A seminary was founded for the benefit of Chaldean students destined for the priesthood. The education of girls was entrusted to the highly cultured Dominican Sisters of the Presentation of Tours, France. Not only did they assume charge of preparatory and normal schools but they also opened industrial schools for girls, especially for the working girls of the city. They also took charge of dispensaries where thousands of poor and sick people received free of charge the medicine and treatment which their condition required and which, before the arrival of these ministering angels of mercy, were not available.

In view of all these facts is there anything surprising in the final return of the followers of Nestorius to communion with Rome?[324]

The history of the Jacobites, of whom Marco Polo found many in Mosul—“Christians indeed, but not in the fashion enjoined by the Pope of Rome”—differs but little, except in one point of doctrine, from that of the Nestorians. This point of doctrine is in one respect the very opposite of the distinguishing dogma of the Nestorians. For, whereas the Nestorians divided Christ into two persons against the Catholic doctrine which maintained His unity, the Jacobites, contrary to Catholic teaching, asserted that there is in Christ but one nature and not two, the human and the divine, as decreed in 451, by the Œcumenical Council of Chalcedon.[325] It is because this heresy teaches the fusion of Our Lord’s humanity and divinity that it is called Monophysitism. And because, in its early stages, it was so ardently championed by Eutyches, an archimandrite of a monastery outside the walls of Constantinople, it is also known as Eutychianism. The Syrian Monophysites are usually called Jacobites, after Jacob Zanzalos, who was an early and zealous propagator of the heresy.

So far as statistics are available the number of Jacobites is somewhat larger than was that of the Nestorians when the Dominicans began to lead them back to obedience to Rome. They are scattered throughout Syria and Mesopotamia and Malabar. Their Patriarch, who always takes the name Ignatius with the title of Antioch, resides at Mardin or Diarbekir on the Upper Tigris to the northwest of Mosul. Although they all talk Arabic, the Jacobites use the Syrian liturgy of St. James.

In consequence of the missionary labors of the Franciscans, Dominicans, and Capuchins the majority of the Jacobites are again in communion with Rome under the name of Melchites or Syrian Uniates. Their Patriarch with the title of Antioch usually resides at Beirut. He has eight suffragans, most of whom live in Mesopotamia. From present indications the day does not seem distant when the Jacobites, like the Nestorians, shall once more be reunited with the See of Peter, from which they have so long been separated.