Page:Introduction to the Assyrian church.djvu/149

Rh tion and forced to capitulate; as the price of life the "King of kings" had to do homage, and to swear never again to lead an army past the boundary stone of his empire.

At home he was even more unfortunate; for a terrible drought of seven years brought, of course, famine and pestilence in its train. Even the snow-fed Tigris had no water in its bed, and all other streams failed completely. Nevertheless, either the King or his advisers managed the great relief works that were instituted so well that not a single man, or, according to another account, one only, died of starvation.

At the beginning of this reign Babowai became patriarch of the Assyrian Church—a man who was a learned philosopher, according to one historian, and mediocriter doctus according to the other. More important, however, than his learning, or lack of it, was the fact that he was a convert from Magianism—an "apostate" Zoroastrians would say—and therefore always liable to death, though many reasons might make it impossible to carry out the sentence. Still, as convert, he had much to suffer. He was imprisoned for seven years and tortured repeatedly, though it is not clear whether this was before or after his consecration made him conspicuous to his enemies. As it was in his days that the Church of the East was disturbed by the impact of those disputes that for the last half century or more had been agitating the West, we must here say a word on the stage that the Christological controversy had reached when it did at last arrive in Assyrian Church territory.