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Christians in Asia and their Lords from the west

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> Great Church
> 
> Byzantium
> 
> Parthian Empire
> 
> Ottoman Empire
> 
> The term "Great Church" (Latin: ecclesia magna) is
> used in the historiography of early Christianity
> to mean the period of about 180 to 313, between
> that of primitive Christianity and that of the
> legalization of the Christian religion in the
> Roman Empire, corresponding closely to what is
> called the Ante-Nicene Period. "It has rightly
> been called the period of the Great Church, in
> view of its numerical growth, its constitutional
> development and its intense theological
> activity."[1]
> 
> It has been defined also as meaning "the Church as
> defended by such as Ignatius of Antioch, Irenaeus
> of Lyons, Cyprian of Carthage, and Origen of
> Alexandria and characterized as possessing a
> single teaching and communion over and against the
> division of the sects, e.g., gnosticism, and the
> heresies".[2]
> 
> By the beginning of the fourth century, the Great
> Church or, as it was also called, the catholic
> (i.e., universal) Church,[3] already formed about
> 15% of the population of the Roman Empire and was
> ready, both numerically and structurally, for its
> role as the church of the empire, becoming the
> state church of the Roman Empire in 380.[4]
> However, it would be wrong "to over-emphasize the
> new externals of the Church at the expense of
> historical continuity".[5] It was still the same
> Church.
> 
> Roger F. Olson says: "According to the Roman
> Catholic account of the history of Christian
> theology, the Great Church catholic and orthodox
> lived on from the apostles to today in the West
> and all bishops that remained in fellowship with
> the bishop of Rome have constituted its
> hierarchy";[6] or, as the Catholic Church itself
> has expressed it, "This Church constituted and
> organized in the world as a society, subsists in
> the Catholic Church, which is governed by the
> successor of Peter and by the Bishops in communion
> with him, although many elements of sanctification
> and of truth are found outside of its visible
> structure."[7]
> 
> The unbroken continuity of the Great Church is
> affirmed also by the Eastern Orthodox Church:
> "Orthodoxy regards the Great Church in antiquity
> (for most of the first millennium) as comprising,
> on one side, the Eastern Orthodox world (the
> Byzantine patriarchates presided over by the
> hierarch of the Church of Constantinople together
> with the Slavic Orthodox churches); and, on the
> other side, the Western Catholic Church, presided
> over by the hierarch of the Church of Rome."[8]
> 
> At the beginning of the 3rd century the Great
> Church that Irenaeus and Celsus had referred to
> had spread across a significant portion of the
> world, with most of its members living in cities
> (see early centers of Christianity).[11] The
> growth was less than uniform across the world. The
> Chronicle of Arbela stated that in 225 AD, there
> were 20 bishops in all of Persia, while at
> approximately the same time, surrounding areas of
> Rome had over 60 bishops.[11] But the Great Church
> of the 3rd century was not monolithic, consisting
> of a network of churches connected across cultural
> zones by lines of communication which at times
> included personal relationships.[11]
> 
> The Great Church grew in the 2nd century and
> entered the 3rd century mainly in two empires: the
> Roman and the Persian, with the network of bishops
> usually acting as the cohesive element across
> cultural zones.[12] In 313, the Edict of Milan
> ended the persecution of Christians, and by 380
> the Great Church had gathered enough followers to
> become the State church of the Roman Empire by
> virtue of the Edict of Thessalonica.[1]
> 
> The Assyrian Church of the East
> 
> The Assyrian Church of the East considers itself
> as the continuation of the Church of the East, a
> church that originally developed among the
> Assyrians during the first century AD in Assyria,
> Upper Mesopotamia and northwestern Persia, east of
> the Byzantine Empire. It is an apostolic church
> established by Thomas the Apostle, Thaddeus of
> Edessa, and Bartholomew the Apostle. Saint Peter,
> chief of the Apostles, added his blessing to the
> Church of the East at the time of his visit to the
> See at Babylon in the earliest days of the church
> when stating, "The elect church which is in
> Babylon, salutes you; and Mark, my son." (1 Peter
> 5:13).[25]
> 
> The historical distinctiveness of the Assyrian
> Church of the East resulted from the series of
> complex processes and events that occurred within
> the Church of the East during the transitional
> period that started in the middle of the 16th
> century, and lasted until the beginning of the
> 19th century.[26] That turbulent period was marked
> by several consequent splits and mergers,
> resulting in the creation of separate branches and
> rival patriarchal lines. During the entire period,
> one of the main questions of dispute was the union
> with the Catholic Church. Ultimately, the
> pro-Catholic branches were consolidated as the
> Chaldean Catholic Church, while the traditional
> branches were consolidated as the Assyrian Church
> of the East.[27]
> 
> The Church of the East
> 
> 
> The Church of the East (Classical Syriac: ܥܕܬܐ
> ܕܡܕܢܚܐ‎, romanized: ʿĒḏtā
> d-Maḏenḥā), also called the Persian
> Church[10][11] or the Nestorian Church, was an
> Eastern Christian church of the East Syriac Rite,
> based in Mesopotamia. It was one of three major
> branches of Eastern Christianity that arose from
> the Christological controversies of the 5th and
> 6th centuries, alongside the Oriental Orthodox
> Churches and the Chalcedonian Church. During the
> early modern period, a series of schisms gave rise
> to rival patriarchates, sometimes two, sometimes
> three.[12] Since the latter half of the 20th
> century, three churches in Iraq claim the heritage
> of the Church of the East. Meanwhile, the East
> Syriac churches in India claim the heritage of the
> Church of the East in India.
> 
> The Church of the East organized itself in 410 as
> the national church of the Sasanian Empire through
> the Council of Seleucia-Ctesiphon. In 424 it
> declared itself independent of the church
> structure of the Roman Empire. The Church of the
> East was headed by the Patriarch of the East
> seated in Seleucia-Ctesiphon, continuing a line
> that, according to its tradition, stretched back
> to the Apostolic Age. According to its tradition,
> the Church of the East was established by Thomas
> the Apostle in the first century. Its liturgical
> rite was the East Syrian rite that employs the
> Divine Liturgy of Saints Addai and Mari.
> 
> The Church of the East, which was part of the
> Great Church, shared communion with those in the
> Roman Empire until the Council of Ephesus
> condemned Nestorius in 431.[1] Supporters of
> Nestorius took refuge in Sasanian Persia, where
> the Church refused to condemn Nestorius and became
> accused of Nestorianism, a heresy attributed to
> Nestorius. It was therefore called the Nestorian
> Church by all the other Eastern churches, both
> Chalcedonian and non-Chalcedonian, and by the
> Western Church. Politically the Persian and Roman
> empires were at war with each other, which forced
> the Church of the East to distance itself from the
> churches within Roman territory.[13][14][15] More
> recently, the "Nestorian" appellation has been
> called "a lamentable misnomer",[16][17] and
> theologically incorrect by scholars.[11] The
> Church of the East itself started to call itself
> Nestorian, it anathematized the Council of
> Ephesus, and in its liturgy Nestorius was
> mentioned as a saint.[18][19] However, the
> christology of the Church of the East did finally
> gather to ratify the Council of Chalcedon at the
> Synod of Mar Aba I in 544.[20][2]
> 
> Continuing as a dhimmi community under the Sunni
> Caliphate after the Muslim conquest of Persia
> (633–654), the Church of the East played a major
> role in the history of Christianity in Asia.
> Between the 9th and 14th centuries, it represented
> the world's largest Christian denomination in
> terms of geographical extent. It established
> dioceses and communities stretching from the
> Mediterranean Sea and today's Iraq and Iran, to
> India (the Saint Thomas Syrian Christians of
> Kerala), the Mongol kingdoms in Central Asia, and
> China during the Tang dynasty (7th–9th
> centuries). In the 13th and 14th centuries, the
> church experienced a final period of expansion
> under the Mongol Empire, where influential Church
> of the East clergy sat in the Mongol court.
> 
> Even before the Church of the East underwent a
> rapid decline in its field of expansion in central
> Asia in the 14th century, it had already lost
> ground in its home territory. The decline is
> indicated by the shrinking list of active
> dioceses. Around the year 1000, there were more
> than sixty dioceses throughout the Near East, but
> by the middle of the 13th century there were about
> twenty, and after Timur Leng the number was
> further reduced to seven only.[21] In the
> aftermath of the fragmentation of the Mongol
> Empire, the rising Chinese and Islamic Mongol
> leaderships pushed out and nearly eradicated the
> Church of the East and its followers. Thereafter,
> Church of the East dioceses remained largely
> confined to Upper Mesopotamia and to the Saint
> Thomas Syrian Christians in the Malabar Coast
> (modern-day Kerala, India).
> 
> Divisions occurred within the church itself, but
> by 1830 two unified patriarchates and distinct
> churches remained: the Assyrian Church of the East
> and the Chaldean Catholic Church (an Eastern
> Catholic Church in communion with the Holy See).
> The Ancient Church of the East split from the
> Assyrian Church of the East in 1968. In 2017, the
> Chaldean Catholic Church had approximately 628,405
> members[22] and the Assyrian Church of the East
> had 323,300 to 380,000,[23][24] while the Ancient
> Church of the East had 100,000. This does not
> consider the Saint Thomas Syrian Christians, who
> have also fragmented into several different
> denominations, including two Syrian Catholic
> (Syro-Malabar with East Syriac rite heritage and
> Syro-Malankara with West Syriac rite heritage) and
> several other Syrian Orthodox branches.
> 
> 
> 
> Chaldean Church of the East
> 
> 
> For many centuries, from at least the time of
> Jerome (c. 347 – 420),[13] the term "Chaldean"
> indicated the Chaldean (Neo-Aramaic) language[14]
> and was still the normal name in the nineteenth
> century.[15][16][17] Only in 1445 did it begin to
> be used to mean Aramaic speakers in communion with
> the Catholic Church, on the basis of a decree of
> the Council of Florence,[18] which accepted the
> profession of faith that Timothy, metropolitan of
> the Aramaic speakers in Cyprus, made in Aramaic,
> and which decreed that "nobody shall in future
> dare to call [...] Chaldeans,
> Nestorians".[19][20][21] Previously, when there
> were as yet no Catholic Aramaic speakers of
> Mesopotamian origin, the term "Chaldean" was
> applied with explicit reference to their
> "Nestorian" religion. Thus Jacques de Vitry wrote
> of them in 1220/1 that "they denied that Mary was
> the Mother of God and claimed that Christ existed
> in two persons. They consecrated leavened bread
> and used the 'Chaldean' (Syriac) language".[22]
> The decree of the Council of Florence was directed
> against use of "Chaldean" to signify
> "non-Catholic."
> 
> Outside of Catholic Church usage, the term
> "Chaldean" continued to apply to all associated
> with the Church of the East tradition, whether
> they were in communion with Rome or not. It
> indicated not race or nationality, but only
> language or religion. Throughout the 19th century,
> it continued to be used of East Syriac Christians,
> whether "Nestorian" or
> Catholic,[23][24][25][26][27] and this usage
> continued into the 20th century.[28] In 1852
> George Percy Badger distinguished those whom he
> called Chaldeans from those whom he called
> Nestorians, but by religion alone, never by
> language, race or nationality.[29]
> 
> Patriarch Raphael I Bidawid of the Chaldean
> Catholic Church (1989–2003), who accepted the
> term Assyrian as descriptive of his nationality,
> commented: "When a portion of the Church of the
> East became Catholic in the 17th Century, the name
> given to the church was 'Chaldean' based on the
> Magi kings who were believed by some to have come
> from what once had been the land of the Chaldean,
> to Bethlehem. The name 'Chaldean' does not
> represent an ethnicity, just a church [...] We
> have to separate what is ethnicity and what is
> religion [...] I myself, my sect is Chaldean, but
> ethnically, I am Assyrian."[30] Earlier, he said:
> "Before I became a priest I was an Assyrian,
> before I became a bishop I was an Assyrian, I am
> an Assyrian today, tomorrow, forever, and I am
> proud of it."[31]
> 
> History
> The Church of the East
> Main article: Church of the East
> The Chaldean Catholic Church traces its beginnings
> to the Church of the East, which was founded in
> the Parthian Empire. The Acts of the Apostles
> mentions Parthians as among those to whom the
> apostles preached on the day of Pentecost (Acts
> 2:9). Thomas the Apostle, Thaddeus of Edessa, and
> Bartholomew the Apostle are reputed to be its
> founders. One of the modern Churches that boast
> descent from it says it is "the Church in Babylon"
> spoken of in 1 Peter 5:13 and that he visited
> it.[32]
> 
> Under the rule of the Sasanian Empire, which
> overthrew the Parthians in 224, the Church of the
> East continued to develop its distinctive identity
> by use of the Syriac language and Syriac script.
> One "Persian" bishop was at the First Council of
> Nicaea (325).[33] There is no mention of Persian
> participation in the First Council of
> Constantinople (381), in which also the Western
> part of the Roman Empire was not involved.
> 
> The Council of Seleucia-Ctesiphon of 410, held in
> the Sasanian capital, recognized the city's bishop
> Isaac as Catholicos, with authority throughout the
> Church of the East. The persistent military
> conflicts between the Sasanians and the by then
> Christianized Roman Empire made the Persians
> suspect the Church of the East of sympathizing
> with the enemy. This in turn induced the Church of
> the East to distance itself increasingly from that
> in the Roman Empire. Although in a time of peace
> their 420 council explicitly accepted the decrees
> of some "western" councils, including that of
> Nicaea, in 424 they determined that thenceforth
> they would refer disciplinary or theological
> problems to no external power, especially not to
> any "western" bishop or council.[34][35]
> 
> The theological controversy that followed the
> Council of Ephesus in 431 was a turning point in
> the history of the Church of the East. The Council
> condemned as heretical the Christology of
> Nestorius, whose reluctance to accord the Virgin
> Mary the title Theotokos "God-bearer, Mother of
> God" was taken as evidence that he believed two
> separate persons (as opposed to two united
> natures) to be present within Christ. The Sasanian
> Emperor provided refuge for those who in the
> Nestorian Schism rejected the decrees of the
> Council of Ephesus enforced in the Byzantine
> Empire.[36] In 484 he executed the pro-Roman
> Catholicos Babowai. Under the influence of
> Barsauma, Bishop of Nisibis, the Church of the
> East officially accepted as normative the teaching
> not of Nestorius himself, but of his teacher
> Theodore of Mopsuestia, whose writings the 553
> Second Council of Constantinople condemned as
> Nestorian but some modern scholars view them as
> orthodox.[37] The position thus assigned to
> Theodore in the Church of the East was reinforced
> in several subsequent synods in spite of the
> opposing teaching of Henana of Adiabeme.[38]
> 
> After its split with the West and its adoption of
> a theology that some called Nestorianism, the
> Church of the East expanded rapidly in the
> medieval period due to missionary work. Between
> 500 and 1400, its geographical horizon extended
> well beyond its heartland in present-day northern
> Iraq, northeastern Syria and southeastern Turkey,
> setting up communities throughout Central Asia and
> as far as China as witnessed by the Nestorian
> Stele, a Tang dynasty tablet in Chinese script
> dating to 781 that documented 150 years of
> Christian history in China.[39] Their most lasting
> addition was of the Saint Thomas Christians of the
> Malabar Coast in India, where they had around 10
> million followers.[40]
> 
> However, a decline had already set in at the time
> of Yahballaha III (1281–1317), when the Church
> of the East reached its greatest geographical
> extent, it had in south and central Iraq and in
> south, central and east Persia only four dioceses,
> where at the end of the ninth century it had at
> least 54,[41] and Yahballaha himself died at the
> hands of a Muslim mob.
> 
> Around 1400, the Turco-Mongol nomadic conqueror
> Timur arose out of the Eurasian Steppe to lead
> military campaigns across Western, Southern and
> Central Asia, ultimately seizing much of the
> Muslim world after defeating the Mamluks of Egypt
> and Syria, the emerging Ottoman Empire, and the
> declining Delhi Sultanate. Timur's conquests
> devastated most Assyrian bishoprics and destroyed
> the 4000-year-old cultural and religious capital
> of Assur. After the destruction brought on by
> Timur, the massive and organized Nestorian Church
> structure was largely reduced to its region of
> origin, with the exception of the Saint Thomas
> Christians in India.
> 
> 1552 schism
> Main articles: Shimun VIII Yohannan Sulaqa and
> Schism of 1552
> The Church of the East has seen many disputes
> about the position of Catholicos. A synod in 539
> decided that neither of the two claimants, Elisha
> and Narsai, who had been elected by rival groups
> of bishops in 524, was legitimate.[42] Similar
> conflicts occurred between Barsauma and Acacius of
> Seleucia-Ctesiphon and between Hnanisho I and
> Yohannan the Leper. The 1552 conflict was not
> merely between two individuals but extended to two
> rival lines of patriarchs, like the 1964 schism
> between what are now called the Assyrian and the
> Ancient Church of the East.
> 
> 
> Credentials of Abdisho IV Maron, Sulaqa's
> successor, to the Council of Trent in 1562
> Dissent over the practice of hereditary succession
> to the Patriarchate (usually from uncle to nephew)
> led to the action in 1552 by a group of bishops
> from the northern regions of Amid and Salmas who
> elected as a rival Patriarch the abbot of Rabban
> Hormizd Monastery (which was the Patriarch's
> residence) Yohannan Sulaqa. "To strengthen the
> position of their candidate the bishops sent him
> to Rome to negotiate a new union".[43] By
> tradition, a patriarch could be ordained only by
> someone of archiepiscopal (metropolitan) rank, a
> rank to which only members of that one family were
> promoted. So Sulaqa travelled to Rome, where,
> presented as the new patriarch elect, he entered
> communion with the Catholic Church and was
> ordained by the Pope and recognized as patriarch.
> The title or description under which he was
> recognized as patriarch is given variously as
> "Patriarch of Mosul in Eastern Syria";[44]
> "Patriarch of the Church of the Chaldeans of
> Mosul";[45] "Patriarch of the
> Chaldeans";[43][46][47] "patriarch of
> Mosul";[48][49][50] or "patriarch of the Eastern
> Assyrians", this last being the version given by
> Pietro Strozzi on the second-last unnumbered page
> before page 1 of his De Dogmatibus
> Chaldaeorum,[51] of which an English translation
> is given in Adrian Fortescue's Lesser Eastern
> Churches.[52][53] The "Eastern Assyrians", who, if
> not Catholic, were presumed to be Nestorians, were
> distinguished from the "Western Assyrians" (those
> west of the Tigris River), who were looked on as
> Jacobites.[54][55][56] It was as Patriarch of the
> "Eastern Assyrians" that Sulaqa's successor,
> Abdisho IV Maron, was accredited for participation
> in the Council of Trent.[57]
> 
> The names already in use (except that of
> "Nestorian") were thus applied to the existing
> church (not a new one) for which the request to
> consecrate its patriarch was made by emissaries
> who gave the impression that the patriarchal see
> was vacant.[49][47][58]
> 
> Shimun VIII Yohannan Sulaqa returned home in the
> same year and, unable to take possession of the
> traditional patriarchal seat near Alqosh, resided
> in Amid. Before being put to death at the
> instigation of the partisans of the Patriarch from
> whom he had broken away,[48] he ordained two
> metropolitans and three other bishops,[47][49]
> thus initiating a new ecclesiastical hierarchy
> under what is known as the "Shimun line" of
> patriarchs, who soon moved from Amid eastward,
> settling, after many intervening places, in the
> isolated village of Qochanis under Persian rule.
> 
> Successive leaders of those in communion with
> Rome
> Sulaqa's earliest successors entered into
> communion with the Catholic Church, but in the
> course of over a century, their link with Rome
> grew weak. The last to request and obtain formal
> papal recognition died in 1600. They adopted
> hereditary succession to the patriarchate,
> opposition to which had caused the 1552 schism. In
> 1672, Shimun XIII Dinkha formally broke communion
> with Rome, adopting a profession of faith that
> contradicted that of Rome, while he maintained his
> independence from the Alqosh-based "Eliya line" of
> patriarchs. The "Shimun line" eventually became
> the patriarchal line of what since 1976 is
> officially called the Assyrian Church of the
> East.[9][10][11][59]
> 
> Leadership of those who wished to be in communion
> with Rome then passed to Archbishop Joseph of
> Amid. In 1677 his leadership was recognized first
> by the Turkish civil authorities, and then in 1681
> by Rome. (Until then, the authority of the Alqosh
> patriarch over Amid, which had been Sulaqa's
> residence but which his successors abandoned on
> having to move eastward into Safavid Iran, had
> been accepted by the Turkish authorities.)
> 
> All the (non-hereditary) successors in Amid of
> Joseph I, who in 1696 resigned for health reasons
> and lived on in Rome until 1707, took the name
> Joseph: Joseph II (1696–1713), Joseph III
> (1713–1757), Joseph IV (1757–1781). For that
> reason, they are known as the "Josephite line".
> Joseph IV presented his resignation in 1780 and it
> was accepted in 1781, after which he handed over
> the administration of the patriarchate to his
> nephew, not yet a bishop, and retired to Rome,
> where he lived until 1791.[60]