still annually observed, was either instituted or remodelled by the patriarch Ezekiel, during an outbreak of plague.
The anomalous relation of the church in Persia with other parts of the Catholic church cannot be fitted into any defined theory. Several Christological confessions were issued by these so-called "Nestorians" which are certainly not unorthodox, and individual patriarchs were readily received to communion when they happened to visit Constantinople (e.g. Ishu-yahb, 585). Nevertheless, there was a growing estrangement, and a conviction on either side that the other was somehow wrong, which was strengthened as the church in Persia slowly realized that the man whom they called "the interpreter" par excellence, Theodore of Mopsuestia, had been condemned at Constantinople.
In Persia the church was a stationary melet, though beyond the frontier it was a missionary force among Arabs, Turks, and Chinese. It was numerous enough to make the king anxious not to offend it, the mercantile and agricultural classes being largely of the faith. On the other hand, the feudal seigneurs were very seldom of it, and soldiers practically never. In "the professions" doctors were generally Christian, and indeed are largely so to this day, while each faith had its own law and lawyers.
The clergy were usually married, but there was a growing feeling in favour of celibate bishops, though the law passed by Bar-soma was never repealed.
Monophysite Controversy.—The bulk of Persian Christians were Dyophysite in creed, but there was a Monophysite minority, organized under bishops (or a bishop) of their own, and including many monks. This body was recruited by the enormous "captivities" brought from Syria in 540 and 570. In 612 they were strong enough to make a daring and nearly successful attempt to capture the church hierarchy. The patriarchate was then vacant (Chosroes had been so annoyed by the substitution of another Gregory for the Gregory whom he had nominated to that office, that he had refused to allow any election when that man died in 608), and when petition was made for the granting of a patriarch, the Monophysites, whose interest at court was powerful, petitioned for the nomination of a man of their own. They had formidable supporters, for Shirin, the king's Christian wife, and Gabriel, his doctor, were both of that confession.
A deputation of Dyophysites came to court to endeavour to secure a patriarch of their own colour, and a most unedifying wrangle over the theological point followed, Chosroes sitting as umpire. Of course, neither side converted the other, but the occasion was important, for from it dates the employment of the Christological formula now used by this church, viz. "two Natures, two 'Qnumi,' and one Person in Christ," the repudiation of the term "Mother of God" as applied to the B.V.M., and the acceptance of the nickname "Nestorian" now given them by the Monophysites. Ultimately the Dyophysites saved themselves from the imposition of a Monophysite patriarch, at the cost of remaining without a leader till the death of Chosroes, and the Monophysites organized a hierarchy of their own.
During the long wars between Chosroes and Heraclius, and the anarchy that followed in Persia, the " Nestorian" church has naturally no recorded history, yet at their conclusion it was once more to have formal relations with the patriarchate and church of Constantinople.
Drift into Separation.— In the year 628 its patriarch, Ishu-yahb II., was sent as ambassador to Constantinople, and he was there asked to explain its faith, and was admitted as orthodox. He was, however, attacked on his return home, on suspicion of having made unlawful concessions, and not all the efforts of men like Khenana and Sahdona could shake the general conviction on each side that "those others" were somehow wrong. The two men named laboured to shew the essential identity, under a verbal difference, of the doctrines of the two churches, but the only visible result was the excommunication of both peacemakers.
Then the flood of Moslem conquest drifted the two churches apart, and the bulk of organized Monophysitism between them hid each from the other.
The separation of "Nestorians" from "orthodox" was a gradual process, commenced before 424, and hardly complete before 640. In that period, however, it was completed, and the "church of the East" commenced her marvellous medieval career in avowed schism from her sister of Constantinople. Whether her doctrine, then or at any time, was what the word "Nestorian" means to us, and what is the theological status of a church which accepts Nicaea, Constantinople, and Chalcedon, but rejects Ephesus, are separate and difficult questions. [MONOPHYSITISM; NESTORIUS (3).]
Authorities for the History of the Church.—History of Mshikha-zca. (ed. Mingana); Acta Sanct. Syr. (ed. Bedjan, 6 vols.); Hist. de Jabalaha et de trois patriarches nestoriens (Bedjan); Synodicon Orientale (ed. Chabot); Bar-hebraeus, Chron. Eccles. pt. ii.; John of Ephesus, Eccl. Hist. pt. iii. (Cureton); Amr and Sliba, Liber Turris; the Guidi Chronicle (ed. Noldeke); Zachariah of Mitylene (ed. Brooks); Socr., Soz., Theod., Evagr., Eccles. Histories; Book of Governors (Thomas of Marga, ed. Budge); Babai, de Unione (MS. only); Ishu-yahb III., Letters (ed. Duval); Tabari, Gesch. der Sassaniden (ed. Noldeke); Assemani, Bibl. Orient. iii.
Books and Pamphlets.— Labourt, Christianisme dens la Perse; Chabot, Ecole de Nisibe; De S. Isaaci vita; Duval, Histoire d’Edesse; Goussen, Martyrius-Sahdona; Hoffmann, Aussuge aus Syrische Martyrer; Bethune Baker, Nestorius and his Teaching; Wigram, Doctrinal Position of Assyrian Church; Introd. to Hist. of Assyrian Church; Rawlinson, Seventh Oriental Empire; Christiansen, L’Empire des Sassanides.
[W.A.W.]
Nestorius (1), St. (Nestor), the first known bp. of Side in Pamphylia Prima (Le Quien, i. 997), a martyr in the Decian persecution, a.d. 250. He was arrested by the local Irenarch, required to sacrifice, and on refusing dispatched in charge of two lictors to the court
