Page:Lesser Eastern Churches.djvu/100

78 "Persian School" (the friends of Theodore and Nestorius) were expelled; Bar Ṣaumâ crossed the frontier, became Bishop of Nisibis, and was the chief agent in making the Church of Persia Nestorian (p. 80). This is almost the end of Nestorianism in the empire. The other party, the Monophysites, now became enormously powerful in Syria. The long story of the troubles caused by them and the various attempts of the Government to reconcile them begins. We come back to this in Chap. VI. One of these attempts was that the Emperor Zeno (474–491) in 489 finally closed the School of Edessa (still a hotbed of Nestorianism) and banished all Nestorians from the Empire. They then went to swell the ranks of the heresy in the country which had already become its home—Persia. From now the story of Nestorianism is that of the Church of Persia. Before leaving Edessa, we may note that it now became largely Monophysite (Jacobite) and was the see of a Jacobite bishop. But the Nestorians had at intervals bishops there too, especially after the Moslem conquest of all the land put an end to the Roman law of banishment against them. The old line of bishops, Chalcedonian and Catholic, lasted till the 11th century. According to a common confusion, these are called the Greek bishops by the natives, as sharing the views of the Emperor at Constantinople. And the Crusaders for a time set up a Latin bishop there too; so there was a Bishop of Edessa for every taste. This is the usual development in Syria and Egypt. At first the various sees were handed about between the parties, fought for by each, and we have alternate bishops of each side, depositions and banishments. Then the sects settle down as organized bodies, and, instead of a struggle between rivals for the one see, we have two or more lines going on at the same time, each, of course, claiming to be the only lawful pastor of the place. And it is often very difficult to say which is the old line.

We left the national Persian Church in 424, having proclaimed herself independent of Antioch, already schismatical, open to any heresy that might attack her (p. 51). The heresy that did so was Nestorianism. It was natural that a Church which had so long