Page:Introduction to the Assyrian church.djvu/182

176 authority in the Assyrian Church, and compiled from them "the Book of the Sunhadus" which is the present manual of canon law, he passed over the point of episcopal marriage in discreet silence. It had long ceased to be the custom (a fact brought about largely by the force of the example of Mar Aba), but there was no canon to forbid it. Still it had become so unheard of that he did not venture to transcribe the canon that expressly authorized it. However, there still survives some recollection of the fact that a few at least of their patriarchs were married men; and with it a certain amount of feeling that it might possibly be well to revive the custom.

After passing a second canon annulling all the anathemas discharged at one another by Bar-soma and Acacius—and doing all that was possible to "whitewash" both deceased prelates—the Council had to discuss the case of a man who had been concerned in their quarrels, Papa of B. Lapat. This old representative of the Monophysite party in the Church had refused to attend the Council, and was now threatened with anathema if he did not subscribe to its decisions within one year. He had, it will be remembered, been always believed to be a Monophysite; and though he had attended, and subscribed to the confession passed by the Council of Acacius in 486, he was still believed to be so at heart. If Papa were an Assyrian of the twentieth century, one would suspect that he had swallowed some theological prejudices in order to be able to strike efficiently at his enemy, Bar-soma; and had reproduced the prejudice as soon as the overpowering necessity had passed with Bar-soma's death!

Papa's own death probably followed soon (for he must have been a very aged man in 498), and pre-