Page:The Nestorians and their rituals, volume 1.djvu/197

Rh Antioch, and the successors to the patriarchal office and dignity were elected by the Metropolitans and Bishops of the eastern dioceses. The ninth Patriarch after Mar Papa, (who were all consecrated at Ctesiphon,) was Mar Dad-Yeshua, in whose time the dispute arose between Cyril and Nestorius. Babai, who died a martyr at Heerta, (the Hîra of the Arabs) succeeded Dad-Yeshua, who in his turn gave place to Mar Acac and Mar Babai. During the patriarchate of the latter the Easterns were called upon to receive the twelve anathemas of Cyril, but, refusing to obey, and choosing rather to espouse the cause of Nestorius, they were cut off from the communion of the Catholic Church, by the decree of the general council of Ephesus, 431, and thenceforward acquired the epithet of "Nestorians." The charge of heresy preferred against them, their defence of their doctrines, and the manner in which the Easterns conducted themselves on that occasion, will be fully discussed in the succeeding volume.

Up to this period the pure faith of the Church was widely scattered throughout the Persian empire by the zeal of the eastern missionaries, and Christianity triumphed over all the obstacles which the jealousy of sovereigns and the malice of heathen priests opposed to its onward progress. Persian historians go so far as to affirm, that Artaxerxes Babegan, the founder of the Sassanian dynasty, was in heart a Christian, and during his reign the Church enjoyed a season of comparative rest and freedom. Towards the middle of the third century, however, the flames of persecution were again kindled by Shapoor, who after having ravaged Syria, Cilicia, Cappadocia, and Mesopotamia, attacked the unresisting Christians with the barbarity of a Nero.

Such were the fortunes of the infant Church in these parts during the reigns of the successive Sassanian rulers; sometimes tolerated, but more frequently doomed to suffer the most unheard of cruelties, the Christians nevertheless survived the fury of their oppressors and flourished and multiplied in spite of every attempt made to exterminate them.

Instead of going into any details of the after history of the Nestorians, I shall lay before my readers the summary of their missions and successes in the far east as drawn up by Gibbon,