With the rise of a new dynasty there is a change. Justin and Justinian were Chalcedonian—orthodox—by conviction, and resolute to recover Italy and Africa politically. Hence the portion of the empire that really depends on Constantinople becomes orthodox once more, and continues so to be. As it becomes clear that it has definitely adopted this bias, the lapse of two or three generations sees the Monophysite portions surrender themselves to the Mussulman, rather than be conquered by him; while in another century or so, for different reasons, Rbme and the West are lost to the empire also. Fate decreed—or shall we say that the Devil contrived—that it was in the time of Monophysite supremacy in the empire that the Christological problem should first be presented to the Assyrian Church; and further, that when the Church of the empire had abandoned that inadequate conception, and settled to orthodoxy, knowledge of what "orthodoxy" is, and of what the "Greeks" held, should be hidden from the Assyrians by the bulk of interposed Monophysitism.
It ought to be clearly realized—for it is a fact of the last importance for the formation of a right judgment on the attitude taken by the Assyrian Church—that when the Christological controversy came before its members, the Church of the empire, so far as known to them, was Monophysite. The doctrine of "the one Nature" was not a heresy professed by a handful of Egyptian and Syrian nobodies, who were clearly and avowedly out of Catholic communion; but it was the doctrine that was dominant over all the empire of Constantinople held by every patriarch except only the Roman—and he was in any case beyond Assyrian ken.
We can now approach, with some possibility of just comprehension, the story of the great controversy as it affected the Assyrian Church.
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