Page:The Nestorians and their rituals, volume 1.djvu/235

Rh that it was never before used by the Nestorians in any such acceptation. It is true, indeed, that the present Mar Shimoon styles himself in his official documents "Patriarch of the East," and "Patriarch of the Chaldeans;" but this latter title he or his immediate predecessors most probably assumed to put themselves on an equality with the Patriarchs of the plains, after they had joined the Church of Rome and taken that appellation, and as a stratagem to repel the name of "Nestorian," which then more especially began to be regarded as a reproachful epithet through the aspersions cast upon it by the Latin missionaries. The Nestorians, generally, as we have seen, disavowed the title, nor is there the shadow of a proof that the Eastern Patriarchs ever used it. I have before me the impression of a seal belonging to one of the late Elîas of Alkôsh, which bears the following motto: "The undeserving Elîa; by grace Patriarch and Occupant of the throne of Addai and Mari." This was the title by which the Nestorian Primates designated themselves before their submission to Rome, and the same is inscribed on all the tombs of the deceased Patriarchs whose remains were buried in the convent of Rabban Hormuzd; so that when Mr. Layard writes: "In the chapel [of Rabban Hormuzd] are the tombs of several Patriarchs of the Chaldean Church,20 buried here long before its divisions, and whose titles, carved upon the monuments, are always 'Patriarch of the Chaldeans of the East, he makes a serious mistake. I have examined with care all the epitaphs, and could not discover therein any such phraseology.

The language of the Nestorians I have called Syriac, since it is precisely the same as that used by the Jacobite Syrians, the only difference being in the form of the character and the vowel-points, which were altered by Gregory Bar Hebræus, the Monophysite doctor, in the 13th century. For distinction's sake, however, it is sometimes styled "Syro-Chaldaic," a term not indeed strictly correct, but for want of a better by no means inapplicable.