Page:The Nestorians and their rituals, volume 1.djvu/214

160 sent another to me full of respect. A serious disturbance now broke out betwixt Padre Mansoor and the congregation at Mosul, in which the latter were in the right: nevertheless, I wrote and entreated both parties to be reconciled. Padre Fulgenzio left Diarbekir for Mosul, and took part with Padre Mansoor, who afterwards came to Baghdad. On the 14th of April, 1795, I again received letters from the Sacred Society, the contents of which I made known to all my people. Padre Mansoor now called upon us to prove his false reports, which we declined to do, and merely put it to him whether Padre Fulgenzio had acted rightly in absolving the heretical Metropolitan. He replied in the negative; whereupon I asked him why he had wrought such confusion among the Meshihayé." Here the original fragment ends.

Trivial as many of these details are, they serve to convey a sad but apparently true picture of the state of religion among the Nestorians of the plains towards the end of the last century. From the above record we may learn, that the hereditary succession to the patriarchate which had already split this people into two rival communities under separate primates, and widely corrupted the primitive discipline as sanctioned by their own recognised canons, had well-nigh led to the extinction of the episcopate among those who inhabited the level country east of the Tigris. It appears, that on the death of Mar Elîa in 1778, there were only two Nestorian Bishops in this extensive district which formerly had been divided into so many dioceses, and that had it not been for the unruly temper of one of them, Yeshua-yau, who was at first destined to succeed his uncle, the other nephew, Mutran Hanna, would not have been raised to the episcopal office and dignity. There can be no doubt but that ambition and covetousness, as well as the growing wants of the collateral branches of the Beit-ool-Ab, or patriarchal family, (now amounting to several hundred souls through the nepotism which had been introduced in the order of succession,) instigated the late incumbents of the primacy over the Nestorians to centre in themselves the functions of their suffragans, in order thereby to lay claim to their influence and temporalities. The synodal decrees requiring that the Patriarch's consent should be obtained in the case of every new appoint-