In the East Christianity had spread to Persia from Edessa.[1] The Parthians seem to have put no obstacle in its way, but when the Persians came into conflict with the Roman Empire, now Christian, there was long and bitter persecution. At last toleration was reached, after Sapor II., and from the beginning of the fourth century the Church in Persia was organised, and governed by many bishops; the primate took the title of Catholicos and had his see at Seleucia, and had suffragans on both sides of the Persian Gulf. In Assyria and Chaldaea the mass of the population became Christians, and Christians were spread, less thickly, over Media, Khorassan, and Persia itself. The dignity of the Persian catholicos was considerable; he might be compared with the Byzantine patriarchs, and the Church almost occupied the position of an established religion, related to the civil power. But the distance, and the constant wars between the Empire and Persia, tended inevitably to separate the Churches. From the end of the fifth century the Church in Persia, surrendered to {94} Nestorianism, had begun visibly to decay. It was controlled by the Persian kings, it was a prey to endless controversy and intrigue, and when the Persian kingdom was at war with the Empire it was in grave danger. It held councils furtively; it passed canons, and, itself heretical, condemned other and more recent heresies than its own. But often its catholicos engaged in the dynastic politics of the Persian dynasties, and Christianity, regarded as one among many religions, and tainted with the same materialism as the rest, sank into impotence and was torn by schism. Meanwhile, in the neighbourhood of the Persian realm, Christianity was spreading.
[Sidenote: Growth of the Church under Justinian.]
Many barbarous tribes during Justinian's reign were admitted to the Christian faith and fellowship. The Tzani dwelling on the border of Armenia and Pontus, "separated from the sea by precipitous mountains and vast solitudes, impassable torrent beds and yawning chasms," [2]—in a land where, Procopius tells us,[3] "it is not possible to irrigate the ground, to reap a crop, or to find a meadow anywhere; and even the trees bear no fruit, because for the most part there is no regular succession of seasons, and the land is not at one time subjected to cold and wet, and at another made fertile by the warmth of the sun, but is desolated by perpetual winter and covered by eternal snows. They changed their religion to the true faith, became Christians, and embraced a more civilised mode of life." The king of those Heruls who served in the Roman army, and a Hunnish king, Gordas, {95} became Christians. The Abasgi (or Albagrians) of the Caucasus were converted, and for the most part remained associated with the Armenians and the Iberians of Georgia,[4] "when they were compelled by the Persian king to worship idols," put themselves under the imperial protection, and they remained closely in connection with the Armenian Church till 608 when they accepted the decisions of Chalcedon. They remained independent and orthodox till their union, a century ago, with the Russian Church.
[Sidenote: Separation from the Church.]
In Armenia, similarly, had grown up a national Church, which had a catholicos, a hierarchy, a vernacular liturgy of its own. When in the middle of the fifth century the ancient kingdom was split up between the Empire and the Persians, the Armenian Church still remained apart. Its national features were strongly marked even before dogmatic differences arose. With the Nestorian and Monophysite heresies new divisions took place. The Persians gradually, between 435 and 480, accepted Nestorianism, and in 483 definitely separated from the Catholic Church, and Nisibis became a school of Nestorian theology. The Armenians survived this danger but were led into Monophysitism, and in 505 they pronounced against the Council of Chalcedon. Their theology became tainted with further heresy in the sixth century, and they are still separate from the orthodox Church of the East. Thus, at the time with which we have to deal, as we have said, Christianity east of Antioch and on the borders of Persia was under Nestorian influence. After 431 Nestorianism became gradually established {96} as the dominant creed. The Church of the East, as it was officially called, rejected the Third General Council, and was cut off from the Catholic Church. It long remained a strong body. The great schools of Nisibis, Edessa, and Baghdad were centres of religion, learning, and civilisation.
[Sidenote: The Nestorians.]
The Nestorians[5] also sent out missionaries northward among the wandering Tartar tribes and along the shores of the Caspian; southward to Persia, India and Ceylon; and eastward across the steppes of Central Asia into China. The bilingual inscription of Singanfu, in Chinese and Syriac, relates that Nestorian missionaries laboured in China as far back as A.D. 636.[6] In the sixth and seventh centuries the Church of the East could count its twenty-five metropolitans or archbishops; and the number and remoteness of their sees, stretching from Jerusalem to China, testifies to her missionary zeal. Those who dwelt nearest to Baghdad met the catholicos in yearly synod; those farthest off sent their confession of faith to him every sixth year.
[Sidenote: Prester John and his conversion.]
By the Middle Ages the Church of the East had spread over the whole of Central Asia. The curious legends of the powerful kingdom of Prester John, somewhere in the heart of Asia, grew out of the conversion, by Nestorian merchants in the eleventh century, of a certain King of Kerait, a kingdom of Tartary to the north of China. This king is said to have requested that missionaries might be sent to him from the Church {97} of his converters; and, when they were come, these missionaries baptized him, naming him John,[7] and he was ordained priest (Presbyter or Prester). Two hundred thousand people of the nation embraced Christianity; the successors to the kingdom bore the dynastic name of John, and were ordained priests. However uncertain this story is, the fact of the conversion of the princes of Kerait in Tartary is sufficiently well established. [Sidenote: Height of prosperity.] The prosperity of the Church of the East culminated in the eleventh century. The khalifs of Baghdad protected their Christian subjects, and important offices of state were often filled by them.
The Indian Church, which was believed to date back to the time of S. Thomas the Apostle, had probably its origin in Nestorian missions, and accepted Monophysite opinions.