The Orthodox were allowed to keep the line of Jerusalem unchallenged. We hear incidentally of a Jacobite bishop of Jerusalem, Severus, who ordained Athanasius I of Antioch (595-631),[1] but after of no other till the time of the Crusades. Then they made Ignatius I Metropolitan of Jerusalem, to save their people from the Latin Patriarchs. He reigned from about 1140 for forty-five years.[2] With him begins a regular line of Jacobite Bishops of Jerusalem. These were sometimes (rarely) called Patriarchs.[3] Now the title of Jerusalem is merged in that of the Mafrian (see p. 340). The one Patriarch whom they all obey is he of Antioch, successor of Sergius of Tella whom Baradai ordained (p. 325). Another curious point is that their Church shifted gradually towards the East. At first the situation was simple: East Syria was Nestorian, West Syria Jacobite. This old distinction is still kept in their liturgical language and characters. Jacobite liturgies are in the West Syrian dialect, written in West Syrian letters, different from those of the Nestorians (p. 18, n. 1). But in the West and in Palestine, the Orthodox were strong. So the Jacobites moved eastward and soon came into contact with their great adversaries — the Nestorians. They even got a footing in Persia. Here they became the rival body to Nestorians. Each was the heretical body to the other. We have noted how they agreed in one thing, that their respective theories were the only alternative; neither took into account a third possibility — that a man might be neither a Nestorian nor a Monophysite (p. 54).[4] A result of the smallness and poverty of the Jacobites is that their Patriarch has never been able to live in his titular city — Antioch. Antioch itself was held as a stronghold by the Orthodox. The Jacobite claimant[5] wandered about Syria, chiefly to the East, as that became the centre of gravity of his sect. He resided often at Amida, which is now Diyārbakr,
- ↑ Barhebræus, i. 262.
- ↑ Ib. i. 496, 596. Assemani: Bibl. Orient. ii. (Diss. de Mon.), § viii. (sic for vii.).
- ↑ Lequien, ii. 1443.
- ↑ There is also always the curious position that a man who accepts Chalcedon is called a Nestorian by Monophysites, and a Monophysite by Nestorians.
- ↑ A list of Jacobite Patriarchs will be found in Lequien: Orient. Christ. ii. 724-776, and Barhebræus: Chron. Eccl. (ed. cit. vol. i.).
