Page:Introduction to the Assyrian church.djvu/47

Rh years later, by his successor, Akha d'abuh'. It was probably a vague recollection of indebtedness to these two bishops that led to the inclusion of their names in the lists made by mediæval chroniclers in later days, when it was judged necessary to discover predecessors to Papa, who should fill the gap between him and Mari.

Later historians made Akha d'abuh' the hero of an episode of which writers nearer the time are conspicuously ignorant. Mari Ibn Sulieman, for instance (Bar-Hebræus giving the same story in a shorter form), states that when Jacob, fourth Catholicos, was dying in the year 190, he specially ordered the sending of two of his disciples, Akha d'abuh' and Qam-Ishu, to Antioch, in order that one of them might be consecrated Catholicos by the patriarch there. On arrival, however, the unlucky Qam-Ishu was seized as a Persian spy and crucified; Sliba, Bishop of Antioch, sharing his fate. His companion was smuggled out of the city and sent to Jerusalem for consecration, whence he returned to the East with a letter from all four Western patriarchs declaring that (to avoid a recurrence of such misfortune) the Church of the East should in future elect its own patriarch without reference to Antioch, and that that prelate should take rank with the other four great sees of Christendom. Once elected, he was to be superior to all judgment of his suffragans, or of any human power except the King, when God should grant