Nestorianism

“ They moreover laid claim to a large proportion of the property then in the hands of the patriarchal family, as belonging by right to the conventual establishment. Mutual jealousies and recriminations followed, until the Monks and Latin missionaries sent a joint letter to the Propaganda, complaining that Mutran Hanna was opposed to their order,—that he instigated the Coords of Ismael Pasha against them,—that he was endeavouring to lead the Chaldean proselytes back to Nestorianism,—and that as his fidelity to Rome was very doubtful, he was utterly unworthy of the office which he filled. ”

“ And because he could not reply to what the Patriarch had written, he spread abroad the report that the Easterns were one with Nestorius, and therefore were to be called 'Nestorians.' And this name has been applied to them from that day up to the present time, and they find it difficult to cast it off, and cannot get rid of it, although they dislike it, because it takes its rise from a man who was not one of them, whom they never saw, one who was not of their language, neither their Patriarch, who was young and they old in the faith. ”

“ How many of the far-off eastern nations in Tartary, India, and China among whom they preached the Gospel, and among whom their efforts were sometime blessed, might this day have been numbered among the triumphs of the Cross? Placed in the van of Christianity, and where the baneful heresy of the False Prophet made its first conquests, the Nestorians, had they not been cut off from the Church Catholic, might through the Divine blessing, have driven back the impious Invader, and saved the Church from this devastating scourge. ”

“ The third sect which confesses two Natures and two Persons in Christ is called the sect of the Nestorians. As to the Easterns, however, because they never changed their faith, but kept it as they received it from the Apostles, they were unjustly styled "Nestorians," since Nestorius was not their Patriarch, neither did they understand his language; but when they heard that he taught the doctrine of the two Natures and two Persons, one Son of God, one Christ, and that he confessed the orthodox faith, they bore witness to him, because they themselves held the same faith. ”

“ The modern Nestorians have kept the faith of their fathers (since they first accepted their heresy) amid Moslems, Kurds, Yazīdīs loyally. For this they deserve all honour. We should wonder at it the more, were it not the common phenomenon among all these smaller Eastern Churches. Their conservatism, their fidelity to their traditions in all things, is their most remarkable characteristic.
Of the Nestorian faith, then, not much need be said. We have little against it, save the one point of their heresy as to our Lord's person. ”

“ They do not desire to become proselytes to our Church, to adopt our ritual, or to come under the jurisdiction of our Primate, nor have we sought to induce them to throw off any of those ecclesiastical customs and ceremonies peculiar to their Church and community, acting in this respect in accordance with the principle sanctioned in our Thirty-fourth Article; but what has been added to, or taken from the faith and discipline of their forefathers they wish to expunge and restore, the heresy of Nestorius always excepted. ”

“ Perhaps your coming may free us from the tyranny of the infidels, but as for ourselves we can do nothing; we have barely bread enough to eat, we cannot procure books, we hardly dare worship God in our churches, and what would the Coords say if we were to begin to instruct our children? They have already destroyed by their tyranny more than one-half of the Nestorian population of this district, and they will not be satisfied until they have entirely exterminated us. ”

“ This would be a comparatively easy task; for it is not so much because the Romanists receive the council of Ephesus and anathematize Nestorius that the Nestorians are backward to join their ranks, but because of the new and unheard-of doctrines which they are required to believe in order to become 'Catholics.' If, therefore, they saw a reformed church agreeing with them in doctrine and discipline, saving the heresy of Nestorius, there can be little doubt that a speedy union with their brethren would be effected. ”

“ Several influential Chaldeans have begged me to endeavour to enlist the sympathy of the Church at home in their behalf, and I can reckon upon two or three priests and a bishop who would at once form the nucleus of the reformed community. ... Such a plan as that which I have proposed would moreover in its workings be one of the most effectual measures that could be adopted for bringing the Nestorians in Buhtân and Bahdinân into communion with their brethren and the Catholic Church, and thus be the means of effecting another benevolent end which your Society had in view. ”

“ I have myself met with numerous instances of village churches belonging to the Jacobites and Nestorians, which were going to ruin, and the people obliged to worship in a private house, because the provincial authorities prevented their restoration unless the necessary firman was first obtained. To procure this a large sum is always demanded, which they were unable to pay; whilst the dissenters to Rome, by applying through their Bishop or Patriarch to the nearest French consul, or to the French ambassador at Constantinople, obtained the requisite sanction without any trouble or delay. ”

“ He is a somewhat eccentric but really good man, and has since been married by Mar Shimoon to a Nestorian girl with whom he lives at Telkèf, where he has braved much opposition, and maintains himself and wife by making sieves and packsaddles. I occasionally employed him during my residence at Mosul to collect MSS. and to visit the Nestorians in the villages near Akra. Though quite unsupported he occasionally forces his way into the presence of the patriarch, and reproves him for his worldliness and slavish subjection to Rome. ”

“ 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 present day maintain that Shimoon, (the nephew of the deceased patriarchy whose claims were set aside by the assembly of Bishops at Mosul, when they elected Sulâka in his room, a.d. 1552, as recorded by Mosheim,) was the rightful successor. ”

“ It is a necessary step which will gain for us more than any other measure the confidence of the people, and without which we shall make but little progress, especially at the outset.
"Our proposals to establish schools were well received by Mar Shimoon, who promised to open ten in as many of tbe largest mountain villages; but the Patriarch endeavoured to impress upon me, that unless something be done for the Nestorians in a political point of view, the establishment of schools, or any other kindred measures, in the present unsettled state of the mountains, will be very precarious. ”

“ And although their reputed followers do not scruple to confess themselves Nestorians, still if the term is applied to them by way of reproach, as if they had left Christ to follow a mere man, they are ever ready to resent the imputation, and to vindicate themselves by denying that they are Nestorians in any such acceptation of the term. ”

“ Alkôsh, however, is not under his jurisdiction, but together with Mosul and the surrounding villages forms a part of the episcopal diocese of the patriarch.
In 1850 when we again spent a day here, I took up my lodgings in the old residence of the Nestorian patriarchs, where a few of their Chaldean descendants still find a miserable shelter. Though once a rather sumptuous abode, it is now nothing better than a heap of ruins; indeed the entire village is in a very dilapidated condition and the people looked sickly and miserable. ”

“ But if the influences of climate and soil, combined with the peculiarities of position with regard to neighbouring races of men, on the moral and intellectual development of the Nestorians, are modified in one direction by religion, it is much to be regretted that in another they have exercised full sway, allowing the passions too frequently to obtain the ascendant over morality and religion. ”

“ His ideal, so far as I can make out, is to have an aristocracy that behaves kindly and charitably to a deserving working-class—which, after all, is Nietzsche's ideal.
I believe in few of these things. I detest charity of that kind; I hate the type of youth that our Public Schools and Oxfords turn out. I want to see the land belong to the people, I want to see every unit of the State working for the delight that work, as opposed to toil, can bring. The aristocracy has merits that I appreciate. Along with the poor they cheerfully die for their country ... ”

“ Polemics such as these could only spring from men of vigorous minds, who possessed intellect equal to the task which they undertook, and sufficient moral courage to abide the probable consequences of their temerity in so good a cause.
But if the Nestorian authors acquired great distinction in these foreign languages, they did not neglect their own native Syriac, but cultivated it with the most assiduous care. Many of their writings which have been preserved to us display great originality, acuteness, and erudition. ”

“ Grant remarks: "There appears to be no propriety in applying this name to the Nestorians as a Christian sect; and its casual employment among them is a circumstance of little importance, except as it may lead to wrong conclusions respecting their origin. If its occasional use proves any thing regarding their origin, it indicates their relation to the Father of the Faithful, agreeably to their own explanations." [23] When the Latin missionaries had succeeded in forming a schism among the Nestorians of Diarbekir, they wanted a name whereby to designate the proselytes. ”

“ Babuæus, a man of bad character, and one of the principal introducers of the Nestorian heresy, who sat from 466 to 486, innovated on the more ancient customs, and permitted marriage to Bishops, and even to the Patriarch: and the innovation remained in force some little time.
15 Nevertheless, I fear that there is too much truth in Boré's account: though of course it would be denied by Nestorians.
16 New Sunday, in the Nestorian, as in the orthodox Eastern Church, is the First after Easter. ”

“ Let one think of a Greek polis, or of a primitive Germanic tribe, or of a people arising, as Nietzsche dreams, out of the welter of modern Europe [23] in obedience to a great longing and a great idea and under the leadership of a great man or set of men—in none of these was or will there be anarchy, in the sense of individuals following each his own way regardless of the social whole. Only to the few can it be given to follow their own way—and even so within limits. ”

“ Each of his social classes has its own sphere of life and activity, and its own type of mastery. The third class is not as strong as the upper classes, but it is not weak in any such sense as would make its elimination desirable. Again and again does Nietzsche distinguish between the mass, the average, as such, and the failures, the decadents. [85] Indeed, decadence is not something peculiar to the lower strata of society; the decadence of old-time aristocracies is one of the conspicuous facts of modern times. ”

“ During the day I visited the little oratory of the Nestorians not far from Kasha Mendu's dwelling. It is a small room in a private house, the Christians never having as yet been permitted to build a church within the town of Amedia. The room was dark and dirty, and every thing which it contained bespoke the poverty and wretchedness of the few remaining Nestorians of the place. ”

“ Although science of every kind, among the Nestorians of the present day, is at its lowest ebb, yet the monuments still extant of the learning of their fathers from the earliest ages of Christianity down to the thirteenth century, display a wonderful ability of writing combined with a vast amount of intellectual energy. The famous schools of Edessa and Nisibis, whilst they lasted, sent forth giants in literature, who, so far back as five hundred years after Christ, had scattered the seeds of their own acquirements from the vast plains of Mesopotamia to the uttermost limits of ancient Persia. ”

“ But though such possibilities cannot be denied, Nietzsche's ordinary thought of an aristocracy is of something cohering—indeed, something which makes a principle of coherence and organization for the society to which it belongs: the same men, who, in one aspect of their being, are individuals proper, are, in another, functionaries of (if only to the extent of giving legislative thought to) the society. If then they push their individualistic instincts so far, that they go to fighting one another and jeopardizing the life of the society, they must be restrained. ”

“ The churches of this country ought to be accurately informed as to the number of the Nestorians, their places of residence, their doctrines, rites, morals, education, etc. Whether you will be able at present, with a due regard for personal safety, to penetrate the Koordish mountains, and visit the Nestorian Patriarch, is very doubtful. But the journey should be performed as soon as may be, lest interested and perverse men should prejudice his mind against you. ”