An Introduction to the History of the Assyrian Church/Chapter 2

by William Ainger Wigram

 

CHAPTER II

THE CHURCH UNDER ARSACID KINGS

The history of the Church from the time of Adai to that of Papa, or, roughly, from the year 100 to 300, is, on the whole, one of quiet progress, unmarked either by the quarrels or organized persecutions that were to chequer its later history; and unmarked, too, by the rise of any such striking personalities as we find, for instance, in the story of the African Church, or, in a less degree, in our own. Adai is too shadowy a person to have, for us at any rate, the charm of an Aidan; and not even the inventiveness of his chronicler can give to Mari's life the romance that encircles Columba's. The conditions of the life of a subject melet^[1] in an oriental empire do not tend to produce very striking characters in normal times.

At first, at any rate, the body was not formidable enough to excite the State to persecute; and the rule of the Parthian kings was always tolerant. They appear to have favoured a sort of religious eclecticism themselves, and to have recognized all creeds among their subjects; though there is some evidence that the political power of the Magian clan won for their religion a favoured position. Still, the Government was so far indifferent that about the year 160 Abraham, then Bishop of Adiabene, had good hopes of procuring a formal edict of toleration from the then King, Valges III; and apparently only failed in his object because the outbreak of war with the Romans put such a trifling circumstance out of the King's mind. As things turned out, the Church had much to suffer before obtaining her "Edict of Milan" from the Shah-in-Shah 250 years later.

The faith of the people which the Christian teaching had to combat (as far as it is shown by the chronicles of Syriac writers, and by the collections of magical formulæ and invocations which still survive) seems to have been the old idolatry of Assyria and Babylon, "run to seed" in a strange fashion, and sunk into the worship of sacred trees, and a star worship which was no higher than a very debased astrology.^[2]

Both in Mesopotamia and in Asia Minor, as probably in Egypt (though not in Persia), the old faiths were outworn. Hence it was that nations who, whatever their faults, do not lack the religious instinct, turned so readily to the new light that came to them from Judæa; and embraced it with a readiness that makes the progress of Christianity in these lands at once so startlingly rapid, and so undeniably sound.

Among the Zoroastrian fire-worshippers the advance of the Faith was far less rapid than among the pagans, and it was here that the Church found its most formidable opponents. Still, it could win converts here also; and (as is often the case) men won from this most obstinate of foes were the best worth winning, and included some of the Church's greatest and most saintly bishops and martyrs. In these early days, however, at least in the north, this Zoroastrian hostility was that of a powerful corporation, rather than of a national faith. Its stronghold was in Persia proper, not in Mesopotamia, and there it was not, as yet, directly attacked by Christianity. In its native land it has left abundant traces of its former supremacy, and has not even yet wholly passed away.

As a corporation, and one enjoying apparently a measure of royal favour, it had enough power to persecute; and was, of course, specially ready to seek as victims men who were converts from it to any other faith. Thus Samson,^[3] the successor of Pqida as Bishop of Arbela, died a martyr at the hands of Magians in 123—the first man to die for the Christian faith in a land that has supplied, probably, more members of candidatus exercitus than any other country. A little later, Isaac,^[4] his successor, converted a Zoroastrian of the name of Raqbokt, who was an "Agha" of some importance in Adiabene. The Mobeds at once sought to kill the "apostate," but when the men dispatched for the purpose of assassinating him arrived at the house of their victim they found him away from home, and had to turn their wrath on the bishop, whom they captured and confined for some time "in a dark pit." It would seem that this was a usual way of punishing apostates from the worship of the sun, for it was also employed in the case of Pqida by the family of that convert.

It is specially stated,^[5] too, that during the episcopate of Noah (163–179) many Christians fell away from the faith under pressure of a persecution of a singularly dastardly kind—the kidnapping or "capture" of their daughters. This consisted (and consists still in the same lands) in the carrying off of Christian girls from their families as either concubines or slaves. Then, once let some sort of confession of Zoroastrianism—or of Islam—be procured from the victim, and how can the "convert" be thereafter abandoned to "a false faith"? Few of such captives can find the strength for a life-long confession of their Lord—a confession none the less meritorious for being absolutely unknown. But some such hidden saints have existed, and do still exist.

This, however, was not a State persecution, such as the Church in the West had to endure repeatedly during the same period; it arose from the weakness, not from the malevolence, of the Government, which would not take trouble or run a risk for the sake of doing right by so unimportant a person as a mere ray at. When the agent of persecution is specified at all, it is always the Mobeds, or members of the Magian clan.^[6] Persecution ordered by the Government, and carried out by its agents, is not encountered till the days of the Sassanids; and even then, not until the conversion of Constantine—and the adoption of Christianity as the official faith of the Roman Empire—had made all Christians in the rival kingdom politically suspect. Syrian historians state emphatically that there was no formal persecution in the East until its day was over in the West.^[7]

Thus Adiabene became a haven of comparative safety for Christians during persecutions over the border, and many took refuge there and made it their home. The presence of these immigrants, and in later days of large "captivities" brought from Western Syria by the Sassanid kings, formed an important element in the life of the Church, breaking its isolation, and keeping its thought more or less in touch with the growth of theology in the West; though, as we shall see, this touch was by no means always a close one.

Easterns, too, went westwards at times, for there was, of course, a good deal of commercial intercourse between the two empires. One man in particular, Noah, by birth a Jew of Anbar^[8] (Piroz-Sapor), was converted to Christianity while on a pilgrimage to Jerusalem with his parents, and became the disciple and successor of the Bishop Abraham. Abd-Mshikha,^[8] too (Bishop of Arbela 190–225), embraced Christianity when at Antioch for purposes of education; and came back a Christian to his own country, where his new faith apparently roused no resentment among his own family.

Persecution being thus local and sporadic, and partly personal at times in its origin (arising out of such incidents as Magian resentment at the "apostasy" of the Agha Raqbokt), it could often be checked by personal influence. In at least one instance the reverence felt by all creeds for the personality of the Bishop Abraham brought about a cessation of persecution locally about the year 160; and another bishop, Abel, was particularly famous as a reconciler of disputes between heathens and Christians.

Occasionally Christians had to suffer, in common with all inhabitants of the country, from wars and tumults. The Arsacid Empire had never, it would seem, the strength. and organization of the Sassanid, and a weak central power meant, of course, a disturbed kingdom. Roman invasions made apparently little mark, or perhaps are regarded by our historians as part of the course of nature, like an occasional flood; and are therefore received as sign-posts by which to date a chronicle, rather than as causes for astonishment or complaint. Less regular invasions, however, are noted. Thus, during the second century, the descent of hordes of robbers "from the mountains of Kardu"^[9] is recorded, as if to show us that the Kurd of the period was still the turbulent fellow that Xenophon found him to be, and that he is to-day. A royal army had to be sent to put a stop to the inroad; and it was the good service rendered during the campaign by the Christian, Agha Raqbokt, that rendered it impossible for the Magians to proceed against him at the moment. It was his local knowledge that enabled the royalist general to extricate his army with credit from an awkward situation. Possibly the Magi might not have forgotten their quarrel, but the Agha was killed in action before the conclusion of the campaign.

A little later, about 190,^[10] a rebellion of Persians in Khorassan foreshadowed their return to power a generation later. The rebellion was put down by Valges IV, not without difficulty; and Narses, King of Adiabene, who was apparently a Persian sympathizer, paid the penalty of his treason by being drowned in the Zab. His country was plundered as punishment for the crime of its king, and all creeds suffered alike.

These, however, are but the ordinary troubles of an oriental kingdom; and on the whole it will be seen that under the Arsacids Christianity had a fair field, and came as near to complete toleration as was possible at the time. Hence it spread rapidly; particularly during the long and peaceful episcopate of Abd-Mshikha (190–225). Many churches were then built; and even—we are told—monasteries founded, though this must surely be an anticipation of later events.^[11] Bishoprics must certainly have multiplied steadily, though Mshikha-Zca, our sole reliable authority for this period, gives only the history of Adiabene, and the succession only of the Bishops of Arbela. The date of the foundation of other sees outside the province does not concern him; and it is only when he reaches the year 225 that he informs us that the Church, after a century and a quarter of existence, had more than twenty bishops, and gives us a list of eighteen sees. As none of these are bishoprics which were afterwards included in the jurisdiction of Arbela, when the bishop of that see was recognized as Metropolitan at a council held in 410,^[12] it is probable that Arbela was for these early centuries the only episcopal seat in Adiabene.

Thus the Church continued in peace, till, in the year 225, the rule of the Parthians gave way to that of the Persians; a fact that Mshikha-Zca mentions with somewhat less of interest than that shown by the ordinary English writer in a general election.

The advent of the Sassanians produced no very conspicuous change, at first, in the attitude of the governing body towards the Church. Mobeds appeared by the side of the "Marzbans," or local governors, and these might, on emergency, show themselves almost equal to the civil authority in power. Fire-temples sprang up generally,^[13] perhaps in the place of idol fanes; but the fact that in Persia, for instance, the "Zoroastrian mounds" which mark the sites of fire-temples are conspicuous local features, while in Assyria they are unknown,^[14] shows plainly enough where the cult was national, and where it was exotic.

These were the only formal changes; but in spirit things were considerably altered, though this would, of course, only show after the lapse of some years. Magianism, as a religion, now received all the prestige that "establishment" could give it; and while Christianity and paganism continued to be tolerated, proselytism from them to the State faith was encouraged and facilitated, while then, or soon after, it became recognized as a law of the State that to win a convert from Zoroastrianism to Christianity was a crime punishable with death for both teacher and disciple. Further, a Christian, though his right to continue in the faith of his fathers was recognized, took, as Christian, an inferior position; and every one knew that, under ordinary circumstances, the abandonment of his religion meant the greatest possible improvement in his worldly prospects. Christianity, in short, was made to take the position which it occupies still in those lands. It was recognized, but as the religion of an inferior race: and that influence was set to work which has ever since continued to act, in spite of many changes of rulers and of ruling faiths; and which has always tended to draw, not indeed the highest or the lowest, but, in a worldly sense, the most manly souls from the Church to another faith.

A saintly soul's service to his Master may be only the higher and purer for the humiliation that the service imposes on him. A man of inferior type may accept the position into which he has been born; and by striving "to do the best for himself" in it, may develop in a few generations into the supple and often cringing and deceitful person, whom we know as the Levantine of to-day—an instrument, that is, whom his soldier master of the ruling race uses for his convenience, and whom he despises. A youth of fire and ambition, with no more than the average young man's realization of things unseen and spiritual, is always tempted, under these circumstances, to find a career for himself where he will not be exposed to the constant fret of knowing himself undeservedly despised; and to find it either by abandoning the faith which for him spells humiliation, or the land whose laws impose it on the faith. Apostasy, indeed, except under actual stress of persecution, was and is a great rarity. Hereditary attachment to the faith of his fathers is an instinct rather than a habit with the oriental. And it is no mean testimony to her power that the Christian Church should, on the whole, be able to hold her own children under this constant temptation to leave her. All the same, through the ages the tendency of the dominant faith has been to draw away from Christianity, or from service to their own Church, those best worth perfecting. Islam has in this been only the heir of Zoroastrianism: both have taken throughout the centuries a "Janissary-tribute," not from the lives only, but also from the souls and characters of the Christian races subject to them.

 

1. Melet ("Millet"), is the technical word in Turkey for a Christian subject nation, organized, as they always are, in a Church, and dealing with the Government through its religious head. It suits the condition of the Church in Zoroastrian Persia so perfectly that we must use the word, particularly as no Western nation possesses the name or the thing. A rayat, or subject, is a member of such a melet.
2. Many of these magical formulæ are current among Assyrians of to-day, and these are often essentially the same as those on the most ancient Babylonian tablets. A substratum of the oldest faith of the country has survived the changes of 7000 years.
3. M.-Z., Life of Samson.
4. M.-Z., Life of Isaac.
5. M.-Z., Life of Noah.
6. M.-Z., Lives of Pqida, Isaac.
7. Bedjan, ii. 184.
8. M.-Z.
9. M.-Z., Life of Isaac.
10. M.-Z., Life of Abel.
11. Mar Augin of Egypt, the friend of James of Nisibis, is stated to have been the first to bring the monastic life to the East, and he certainly did not arrive before the year 300. Bedj. i. 424 (Life of Mar Shalitha).
12. Chabot, Syn. Orientale, p. 34, 273; M-Z., Life of Khiran.
13. M.-Z., Life of Khiran.
14. The "tels" so common, e.g. round Mosul, are very different things from the "ash-mounds" of Azerbaijan.