leading to mutual concessions softened the antagonism here also. Perhaps under the influence of Zoroastrianism, which recognised only good in nature and considered the source of evil to be a spiritual power, the Nestorians abandoned the rigour of Catholic asceticism. At a synod held in the year 499, presided over by Babæus, the metropolitan of Seleucia and Ctesiphon, they abolished all clerical celibacy, even permitting bishops to marry. It was reported of them by the orthodox as a great scandal that some of them married repeatedly. Second marriages were always looked upon with disfavour in the orthodox Church; though permitted to the laity, they were absolutely forbidden to the clergy. In the Greek Church the bishops were celibate, while the parish popes were required to be married, but only once. But now among the Nestorians not only were the bishops permitted to marry, but if they lost a first wife, to marry again, and thus to have a licence in the matter not even permitted to the lower clergy in the main body of the Eastern Church. The situation was regarded with professional horror among the orthodox bishops. The arrangement seems to have worked well in the Persian Church, for that Church continued to flourish and expand. It was virtually identical with the Syrian Church at Edessa, although not always under the same civil government. Now we saw that Aphraates advocated celibacy as a condition of baptism.[1] How far this view had been adopted by the main body of the Eastern Syrian Christians cannot be determined from the scanty information at our disposal. But at all events it seems clear that a great change must have come over that church when under Nestorian influences for it to have acquiesced in, and apparently adopted, the daring innovation of the complete abolition not only of baptismal celibacy, but even of clerical celibacy.[2] This liberty has since been abolished in the Nestorian Church, which has assimilated its custom to that of the Greek Church, in requiring its bishops to be
- ↑ See p. 472.
- ↑ See Lea, Clerical Celibacy, vol. i. pp. 98, 99.
