retire, was excommunicated, and went into schism with a small party in 1876. He died, apparently without having ordained a successor. Meanwhile this party, in schism with both the Uniates and the Jacobites, for want of anyone else, turned to the Nestorians and joined in communion with them. In 1907 the Nestorian Katholikos ordained one of his archdeacons, Mâr Abīmlek (Abimelech), with the usual title Mâr Timotheus, and sent him to rule this revived Nestorian Church.[1] Mâr Timotheus now rules a small body of about eight thousand people at Trichur in the Cochin State. They conform in all things (except, apparently, in vestments) to the Nestorians of Ḳudshanis. In this way there is again a small body of Nestorians here. But they have no continuity from the old Nestorians of India. They are the modern schism of Mellus from the Uniates.
About the same time appeared an ambiguous person, Julius Alvarez. He is a Portuguese priest from Goa, originally a Latin. After the Vatican Council he apostatized and got himself ordained bishop by the Reformed party in 1888. For a time he was one of them. He has a small following in Ceylon (with a cathedral at Colombo). He calls himself Mâr Julius I. His party is chiefly famous for the begging letters they write and the doubt they cause to people who receive these letters as to who, exactly, they may be. Lately, Alvarez and his following appear to have gone over to the Jacobites of the new "Metran's party" (p. 373).[2]
Lately there has occurred a fresh schism among the Jacobites. In 1909 the Patriarch (Ignatius 'Abdullah Sattūf) came to India, quarrelled with Mâr Dionysius V, and excommunicated him. In his place he ordained a certain Mâr Cyril (Ḳīrīlus). About half the Jacobites accept this, and are in communion with the Patriarch of Antioch. They have four bishops, Mâr Cyril, two suffragans, and a delegate of the Patriarch.[3]
- ↑ The portrait of this Mâr Timotheus, in Latin vestments, with an enormous Roman mitre and a portentous crozier, may be seen in Heazell and Margoliouth: Kurds and Christians (London, 1913), p. 196.
- ↑ In Dr. Richard's Indian Christians, Alvarez appears in a photograph with the bishops of the Metran's party (p. 63). It was this man who ordained the notorious Vilatte bishop. Vilatte (calling himself Mâr Timotheus) ordained Mr. Lyne ("Father Ignatius") priest at Llanthony.
- ↑ This Jacobite delegate in India appears sometimes to be called by their old title "Mafrian."
