Page:Introduction to the Assyrian church.djvu/109



Council of Seleucia dispersed. Marutha returned home from what was, as it turned out, his last visit to the East, laden with the relics and histories of martyrs, his work well and thoroughly done. The Church of the East settled in its new security to a period of quiet and rapid growth.

As is usual in Church history, periods of peace and spiritual work have no history; and it is only from the names in the episcopal lists of the two councils, held during the next fifteen years, that we can see how rapid that growth was. Forty bishoprics are enumerated as existing in 410, at Isaac's Council, and that gathering was at all events intended to be complete. But in the next two councils no fewer than twenty-six additional sees are mentioned, which do not appear in the former list. It is possible, of course, that some of those existed before Yezdegerd issued his firman, and were vacant then; but most are probably evidence of increase.

And this increase, so rapid and so sure (for most of the sees named are known to have been still existing centuries later), took place either in lands where Christian missions do not exist to-day, or where they find their work least promising and most difficult. Bishops sign for the sees of Segestan, Teheran, Ispahan, Herat, Khorassan.