Page:Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire vol 5 (1897).djvu/168

 146 THE DECLINE AXD FALL physites reconciled them with the Catholics in the conformity of passion^ of interest, and insensibly of belief; and their last reluctant sigh was breathed in the defence of the three chapters. Their dissenting brethren, less moderate, or more sincere, were crushed by the penal laws : and as early as the reign of Justinian it became ditticulk to find a church of Nestorians within the limits of the Roman empire. Beyond those limits they had discovered a new world, in which they might hope for liberty and aspire to conquest. In Persia, not- withstanding the resistance of the Magi, Christianity had struck a deep root, and the nations of the East reposed under its salutary shade. The catholic, or primate, resided in the capital ; in his synods, and in their dioceses, his metropolitans, bishops, and clergy represented the pomp and honour of a regular hierarchy ; they rejoiced in the increase of proselytes, who were converted from the Zendavesta to the Gospel, from the secular to the monastic life : and their zeal was stimulated by the presence of an artful and formidable enemy. The Persian church had been founded by the missionaries of Syria ; and their language, discipline, and doctrine were closely interwoven with its original frame. The catholics wei*e elected and ordained by their own suffragans ; but their filial depend- ence on the patriarchs of Antioch is attested by the canons of the Oriental church.^^" In the Persian school of Edessa,!^" the rising generations of the faithful imbibed their theological idiom ; they studied in the Syriac version the ten thousand volumes of Theodore of Mopsuestia ; and they revered the apostolic faith and holy martyrdom of his disciple Nestorius, whose person and language were equally unknown to the '^^ See the Arabic canons of Nice, in the translation of Abraham Ecchellensis, ^'o. 37, 38, 39, 40. Concil. torn. ii. p. 335, 336, edit. Venet. These vulgar titles, Nicene and Arabic, are both apocryphal. The council of Nice enacted no more than twenty canons (Theodoret, Hist. Eccles. 1. i. c. 8), and the remainder, seventy or eighty, were collected from the synods of the Greek church. The Syriac edition of Maruthas is no longer extant (Asseman. Bibliot. Oriental, torn. i. p. 195, torn, iii. p. 74), and the Arabic version is marked with many recent interpolations. Yet this code contains many curious relics of ecclesiastical discipline ; and, since it is equally revered by all the eastern communions, it was probably finished before the schism of the Nestorians and Jacobites (Fabric. Bibliot. Graec. torn. xi. p. 363- 367). [A German translation (by E. Nestle) of the statutes of the Nestorian school of Nisibis will be found in Ztsch. f. Kirchengesch., 18, p. 211 sqq.. 1897.] "" Theodore the Reader (1. ii. c. 5. 49, ad calcem Hist. Eccles.) has noticed this Persian school of Edessa. Its ancient splendour and the two aeras of its down- fall (a. D. 431 and 489) are clearly discussed by Assemanni (Biblioth. Orient, tom. ii. p. 402, iii. p. 376, 378, i v. p. 70, 924). [R. Duval, Hist. pol. , relig., et litt. d'Edesse, 1892.]