Page:The Nestorians and their rituals, volume 1.djvu/201

Rh flock reside in the city of Amida or Diarbekir, and all assume the denomination of Yoosef."

I shall now add a few remarks explanatory of some of the facts recorded in the above quotation. It has already been stated that after the east had been formed into a See independent of Antioch, the patriarchs were chosen to their office by the common consent of the Church, through the Metropolitans and Bishops of the principal dioceses. This order appears to have prevailed up to the middle of the 15th century, when the gradual decay of ecclesiastical tradition and discipline led to an entire change in the mode of appointment,—a change not only opposed to the spirit of the gospel, and the universal practice of the Church, but contrary to the opinions of the best Nestorian divines most clearly and repeatedly expressed. About this time, the accession to the highest office in the hierarchy was assimilated to those hereditary temporal dignities which are transmitted by right of blood, and in 1450, the patriarch Mar Shimoon enacted a law, that his successors should be chosen from his nearest relatives. This ordinance, which still exists in full force among the Nestorians, and which is likewise acted upon in most appointments to the episcopate, soon became a fruitful source of dissension among them.14 Marriage, which in former ages had been permitted to all Bishops and even to the patriarch of the community, had long ceased to be regarded as suitable or even lawful to those dignitaries, and the consequent celibacy of the patriarch rendered the execution of the new law more difficult. A number of claimants frequently disputed the possession of the highest dignity in the church, and the whole body was vexed and agitated by the intrigues and disorders which this rivalry engendered. A century had scarcely elapsed when these quarrels resulted in an open schism, and the Nestorians were divided into three separate parties, each headed by a patriarch who laid claim to all the prerogatives of that dignity over the entire community. The mountain Nestorians of the