It is difficult at this distance of time, and amidst so many jarring testimonies, to decide which of the two claimants above referred to was the rightful successor to the supreme spiritual authority over the whole Nestorian community. I mean, of course, according to the law of succession which had obtained among them for a century, and which was acted upon afterwards by both parties, until it was abrogated in 1842 by the appointment of a stranger to the Chaldean patriarchate in succession to Mar Elîa the last of that name. Ecclesiastically speaking, such appointments were only valid on either side in so far as they were recognized by the concurrence of the bishops and clergy; and in this respect both were placed on an equal footing, although the advantage of numbers was and is still on the side of the mountain patriarchs and their successor Mar Shimoon. The Nestorian patriarchs of the plains, however, enjoyed great political superiority over their rivals, inasmuch as they were recognized by the Sublime Porte, and each successive occupant of the see received an imperial firman, (the substance of which is said to have been originally conceded by Mohammed to Yeshua-yau, the then Patriarch of the East residing at Baghdad,) acknowledging him in his dignity and confirming his spiritual authority over the Nestorians of the empire.[1] The predecessors of Mar Shimoon, who had taken up their abode among the wild and really independent tribes of Coordistan, were not thus recognized by the Turkish government, and exercised their jurisdiction with the concurrence of their own people, being tolerated and protected therein by the Coordish Emeers.
The frequent attempts made by Romish missionaries to induce these two Nestorian patriarchs, one of whom held his seat at Mosul or Alkôsh, and the other at Kochânes in central Coordistan, to acknowledge the supremacy of the Pope, are fully recorded in the above quotations. The partial success of these machinations was ever and anon thwarted and destroyed by the attachment of the Nestorians to their own rituals and discipline.
- ↑ I have seen two of these firmans, dated about a century and a half ago, which invest the patriarch with authority over the Nestorians in and about Mosul, also in Jerusalem, Tyre, and Cyprus. It is clear from the tenour of these documents that they were copied from an ancient exemplar, as at that time there were no Nestorians beyond the limits of Mesopotamia.
