Page:The Nestorians and their rituals, volume 2.djvu/36

12 The cause just noticed has doubtless operated largely in bringing about that lack of knowledge and dearth of ancient literature which exist at the present day. But, added to this, there have been other measures at work equally deplorable and destructive. It is still witnessed by the descendants of their first proselytes that the Latin missionaries, after they had succeeded in obtaining a footing in these parts, made use of every possible artifice to destroy whatever relics of Nestorianism, in the shape of books, were to be found within the circuit of their newly acquired influence. The circumstances under which they had secured this power and the natural zeal of their first converts conspired in a high degree to favour this project, and it is a common tradition among the people of the town, that the extensive library of Mosul, consisting of many thousand volumes, was at the instigation of the Latin monks carried in baskets to the Tigris by the new proselytes and by them thrown into that river.

Nor has this same influence been confined to acts of such summary vandalism, but has been extended to the patrimonial relics in the guise of books, to be found occasionally in the dwellings of the poorest villagers. And not satisfied with erasing the names of Nestorius and Theodorus, and whatever had any reference to their persons or heresy from the Church rituals, the abettors of this expurgation caused it to be deemed a virtue to blot out the memory of these two individuals wherever they were found; and thus many manuscripts are now to be met with sadly mutilated at their beginning and end, where the authors' names and Nestorianism were generally recorded. With such fanaticism did they carry on this literary crusade, especially with regard to the much disputed title of "Theotokos," that many valuable books are known to have been destroyed, simply because in them the Blessed Virgin was styled " Mother of ," and such as were not destroyed were in most instances mutilated or defaced. I have before me, at this moment, an old MS., one page of which has been well nigh obliterated, evidently because it contained the phrase, "Holy Mary, Mother of our ," an approximation to the title sanctioned by the council of Ephesus, which one might have thought would have been suffered to remain uninjured.