Page:Catholic Encyclopedia, volume 5.djvu/278

 EASTERN

234

EASTERN

tion. SjTia never held together, was never so com- pact a unity as Egj'pt. We have seen that the East- ern SjTians expressed their national, anti-Imperial feeling by adopting the extreme opposite heresy, Nes- torianism, which, however, had the same advantage of not being the religion of Caesar and his court. Among the Western Syrians, too, there has always been a lack of cohesion. They had in Monophysite times two patriarchates (Antioch and Jerusalem) in- stead of one. In all quarrels, whether political or theo- logical, whereas the Copts move like one man for the cause of Egypt and the "Christian Pharaoh", the SjTians are divided amongst themselves. So there have always been many more Melkites in Sj-ria, and the Jacobites were never an overwhelming majority. Now they are a small minority (about 80,000) dwelling in Syria, Mesopotamia, Kurdistan. Their head is the Jacobite Patriarch of "Antioch and all the East". He always takes the name Ignatius and dwells either at Diarbekir or Mardin in Mesopotamia. Under him, as first of the metropolitans, is the Maphrian, a prelate who was originally set up to rule the Eastern Jacobites as a rival of the Nestorian catholicos. Originally the maphrian had a number of special rights and privileges that made him almost intlependent of his patriarch. Now he has only precedence of other metropolitans, a few rights in connexion with the patriarch's election and consecration (when the patriarch dies he is genei - ally succeeded by the maphrian) and the title " Maph • rian and Catholicos of the East ". Besides these two , the Jacobites have seven metropolitans and three other bishops. As in all Eastern Churches, there ar^ many monks, from whom the bishops are always taken The Syrian Jacobites are in communion with the Copts. They name the Coptic patriarch in the Litur gy, and the rule is that each Syrian patriarch should send an official letter to his brother of Alexandria to announce his succession. This implies a recognition of superior rank which is consistent with the old pre- cedence of Alexandria over Antioch. At Mardin stiL linger the remains of an old pagan community of Sim- worshippers who in 1762 (when the Turks finally de- cided to apply to them, too, the extermination that the Koran prescribes for pagans) preferred to hide under the outward appearance of Jacoliite Christian- ity. They were, therefore, all nominally converted, and they conform to the laws of the Jacobite Church, baptize, fast, receive all sacraments and Christian burial. But they only marry among themselves and every one knows that they still practise their old pagan rites in secret. There are about one hundred families of these people, still called Shamsiyeh (people of the Sun).

6. The Malabar Christians in India have had the strangest history of all these Eastern Churches. For, having been Nestorians, they have now veered round to the other extreme and have become Monophysites. We hear of Christian communities along the Malabar coast (in Southern India from Goa to Cape Comorin) as early as the sixth century (Silbernagl, op. cit., 317; see also Germann, "Die Kirche der Thomaschristen ", quoted below). They claim the Apostle St. Thomas as their founder (hence their name "Thomas-Chris- tians", or "Christians of St. Thomas"). In the first period they depended on the Catholicos of Seleucia- C'tesiphon, and were Nestorians like him. They are really one of the many missionary Churches founded by the Nestorians in Asia. In the sixteenth century the Portuguese succeedeti in converting a part of this Church to reunion with Rome. A further schism among these Uniats led to a complicated situation, of which the Jacobite patriarch took advantage by send- ing a bishop to form a Jacobite Malaliar Church. There were then three parties among them: Nesto- rians, Jacobites, and Uniats. The line of Nestorian metropolitans died out (it has been revived lately) and nearly all the non-Uniat Thomas-Christians may

be counted as Monophysites since the eighteenth century. But the Jacobite patriarch seems to have forgotten them, so that after 1751 they chose their own hierarcliy and were an independent Church. In the nineteenth century, after they had been prac- tically rediscovered by the English, the Jacobites in SjTia tried to reassert authority over Malabar by sending out a metropolitan named Athanasius. Atha- nasius made a considerable disturliance, excommuni- cated the hierarchy he found, ami tried to reorganize this Church in communion with the SjTian patriarch. But the Rajah of Travancore took the side of the na- tional Church and forced Athanasius to leave the coim- try. Since then the Thomas-Christians have been a quite independent Church whose communion with the Jacobites of SjTia is at most only theoretic. There are about 70.000 of them under a metropolitan who calls himself " Bishop and Gate of all India". He is always named bj' his predecessor, i. e. each metropoli- tan chooses a coadjutor with the right of succession. The Thomas-Christians use Syriac liturgically and describe themselves generally as "Sj-rians".

7. The Armenian Church is the last and the most important of these Monophysite bodies. Although it agrees in faith with the Copts and Jacobites it is not in communion with them (a union arranged by a synod in 720 came to nothing) nor with any other Church in the world. This is a national Church in the strictest sense of all: except for the large Armenian Uniat body that forms the usual pendant, and for a very small number of Protestants, every Armenian belongs to it, and it has no members who are not Armenians. So in this case the name of the nation and of the religion are really the same. Only, since there are the Uniats, it is necessary to distinguish whether an Armenian belongs to them or to the schismatical (Monophysite) Church. Because of this distinction it is usual to call the others Gregorian Armenians — after St. Gregory the Illumina- tor — another polite concession of form on our part akin to that of "Orthodox" etc. Quite lately the Gregorian Armenians have begun to call themselves Orthodox. This has no meaning and only confuses the issue. Of course each Chiuch thinks itself really Orthodox, and Catholic and Apostolic and Holy too. But one must keep technical names clear, or we shall always talk at cross purposes. The polite convention throughout the Levant is that we are Catholics, that people in commimion with the " fficimienical Patri- arch "are Orthodox, and that Monophysite Armenians are Gregorian. They should be content with what is an honourable title to which we and the Orthodox do not of course think that they have really anj' right. They have no real right to it, because the Apostle of Armenia, St. Gregory the Illuminator (295), was no Monophysite, but a Catholic in union with Rome. The .\rmenian Church was in the first period subject to the Metropolitan of Csesarea; he ordained its bish- ops. It suffered persecution from the Persians and was an honoured branch of the great Catholic Church till the sixth century. Then Monophysitism spread throughout Armenia from Syria, and in 527 the Armenian primate, Nerses, in the Synod of Duin. for- mally rejected the Council of Chalcedon. The schism became quite manifest in 552, when the primate, Abraham I, excommunicated the Church of Georgia and all others who accepted the decrees of Chalcedon. From that time the national Armenian Church has been isolated from the rest of Christendom; the continual attempts at reunion made by Catholic missionaries, however, have established a considerable body of Armenian I^niats. The Armenians are a pro- lific and widespread race. They are found not only in Armenia, but scattered all over the Levant and in many cit ies of Europe and .\merica. As they always bring their Church with them, it is a large and impor- tant conununity, second only to the Orthodo.x in size among Eastern Churches. There are about three mil-