Page:Introduction to the Assyrian church.djvu/236

230 HISTORY OF THE ASSYRIAN CHURCH the office, to the exclusion of any higher one. People want a bishop to be — and come to think he ought to be — a good ruler and manager, rather than a right reverend father in God.

It is probable that the growing habit of episcopal celibacy (for after Mar Aba's day, married bishops became few and far between1) was a useful means of checking this secularization of the bishop's office. So much worldly work came to him of necessity, that if he was not too immersed in it, he must be one of those who had markedly drawn themselves apart from the world. Socially, the state of Christians was then, apparently, pretty much what it is still. The mercantile and artisan classes were largely of the faith; the villagers, the agricultural class, were so to a very considerable extent; the 'squire class, the feudal seigneur and his family, very seldom; and soldiers, hardly ever. Men of the civil service were Christians pretty frequently; while law was an ecclesiastical matter for all faiths, and its votaries were divided accordingly. Christians had almost a monopoly of the medical profession.

Thus, at B. Lapat, in 540, the chief of the artisans, the president of the merchants, and the head of the guild of silversmiths, all sign the condemnation of Abraham bar Audmihr.2 While on another occasion, we see that the "Keeper of all the Queen's camels"3 was a Christian; and in the time of Chosroes, the chief financial officer of the empire was so too.4

That Christians had to wear some distinctive dress, appears not only from the story of Mar Aba, quoted above, but also from the life of Mar

1 That they existed still, appears from Canons XI and XVII of Josephus.

2 S. O., 79, 331.

3 S. O., 87, 342.

4 Thomas of Marga, i. xxxv.