Page:Lesser Eastern Churches.djvu/348

326 consider their sect, as a separate organized body, to be founded by the James after whom they are called Jacobites.

From the foundation of the sect till modern times there are not many events of importance to chronicle. Through all the vicissitudes of Syrian history, for thirteen centuries, we must conceive this Church as existing obscurely by the side of the Orthodox and the Nestorians. Its first general note is that it has always been a small and scattered body. It never became the national Church of the whole country, as did the Copts in Egypt. The reason of this lies in the different state of the two countries. Egypt is practically an island, surrounded by desert and sea, peopled by one race with one language. For centuries it had been one mighty kingdom under Pharaoh. It was also at some distance by sea from the centre of the empire at Constantinople. So Egypt was always one isolated, compact whole. All Egypt moved together. When it became part of the Roman Empire it was still one land, inhabited by one non-Roman race, much as it is now under British control. The Roman, then Greek functionaries were a small minority of foreigners, as the English are now. So it was natural that a national movement, as was Monophysism, should become the cause of the whole land. Nothing of this applies to Syria. Syria (with Palestine) has no natural frontiers. It has always been the home of several races, keeping their own languages. It is in no sense one, neither physically nor in population. It is also quite near and most accessible from Greece and Constantinople. From the time of Alexander it has had a large and powerful Greek population, which had become as much one of its constituent races as the others. Greek influence, Greek language, which in Egypt were foreign, became in Syria almost as much native as Syriac; and the Emperor could fill Syria with his soldiers, could impose his will on it much more easily than in distant Egypt. So Monophysism, imported into Syria from