An Introduction to the History of the Assyrian Church/Chapter 7

by William Ainger Wigram

 

CHAPTER VII

THE PATRIARCHATE OF DAD-ISHU—PERSECUTION OF YEZDEGERD II

 

For more than twenty years after the important council of Dad-Ishu the history of the Assyrian Church is a void. The patriarch, whose tenure of office was longer than that of almost any other holder of his post, seems to have enjoyed a long period of peaceful rule, as compensation for his stormy experiences at its commencement; and we know nothing of any act of his until his death in 456, and practically nothing of the history of the Church from 424 to 447.

In secular matters Bahram V, after making peace with Rome, was busied for the rest of his life in the guarding of his north-eastern frontier against Turkish inroads; and on his death in 440 (he was drowned in a spring), his son and successor, Yezdegerd II, was similarly occupied for the first portion of his reign. It is true that his King did declare war on the Roman Empire at his accession, but no event of any importance followed,^[1] and peace was made very shortly. Broadly, the State and the Christian Church in Persia seem to have had no history between 424 and 447; and the fact that such a gap should be possible in those twenty-three years of the world's history shows how isolated was the Church's position, at any rate from the main stream of events.

In the further west, just that period saw the fall of the Roman Empire. Alaric had entered Rome in 410; and in the next generation, Goths, Vandals and other "barbarians" were establishing themselves in Gaul, Spain and Africa. Still, the Hesperiae sonitum ruinae which Horace had heard in imagination remained inauditum Medis when at last it acually came to pass.

Probably the activity of the Turks, which forced Persia to stand on guard on the Oxus, was but another manifestation of that mysterious outburst of energy in Central Asia which at the same time was sending Attila and his Huns to the West, and to the Catalaunian plains. Both empires were facing phases of a common danger, but each was ignorant of the other's fortunes.

In the nearer west, Asia Minor and Constantinople, events which were to have the most important influence on the history of the Assyrian Church were in actual course; but at that time its members seem to have been almost as ignorant of them as they had been of Nicæa and the Arian struggle. The Christological controversy, which had begun before the close of the fourth century, was rapidly becoming what it was to remain until the rise of Islam, viz., the dominant question in both Church and State in the Eastern Empire.

Hitherto we have been attempting to trace the story of the relations of the Church in the Persian Empire with the Government of that empire; and also, as far as our material will permit, the history of the internal life of the Church in question. Now a new element is introduced; and we have also to trace the effect of the impact of this great controversy, in its various phases, on the particular melet whose history forms our main subject.

It is, however, necessary to pause for a moment to discuss the problem, "How was it that questions so abstract and, as many men say, so unpractical roused passions so very concrete and mundane?"

Of course it is not really justifiable to call the point at issue "unpractical." The question (for though it is convenient to divide the great Christological controversy into minor heresies, yet it is essentially one question that is discussed throughout, and to which various solutions are propounded) is of supreme importance both theologically and practically. The answer given to it, however little the fact may be perceived, is bound to colour the whole of human life. Broadly, it may be stated thus: Admitting the full and proper Deity of "the Word," how is this Divine Being also man?

The question is most practical, for all its seeming remoteness. A man's conception of religion, and hence of worldly duty, is bound to be affected, in the long run, according as the object of his highest reverence is a Gnostic's Unknowable, or a God Incarnate; and this is not the less true because men who have turned their backs on the Star of Bethlehem may for a generation or two be able to walk by the light that streams from it, though they know not whence it comes. In the long run, the answer to the question whether a man is or is not bound to frame his daily life after the model left us by the Carpenter of Nazareth depends upon the answer to the question that He Himself set men asking, "Whom say ye that I am?" The connection between the highest problems of theology and the practice of daily life is as real and as strong as the force of gravitation which links the sun to every stone on earth's surface, and binds the universe in one. Neither is less real for being unperceived by the ordinary man.

Still, it was not because the supreme importance of the truth at stake was perceived and understood that men waxed so fierce in the controversy about them. To assert that it was so is probably no nearer to the truth than the gibe that the heat excited by theological controversy stands in inverse ratio to the importance of the questions discussed. No doubt men on each side felt, dimly or clearly, that it was Truth for which they struggled, and hence came their fierceness; but, speaking generally, nobody would dream of saying that the very ordinary men of the fifth and sixth centuries, who shouted themselves hoarse over these highest questions, understood their real, if unseen, practical bearing. Thus we are thrown back upon the question, How was it that ordinary men, of passions not wholly unlike our own, were moved to such fury by questions which to the ordinary man of to-day seem so unpractical?

Of course it might have been infinitely better, both for the Church and the world, if the problems of theology could have been confined to the study, and discussed calmly there till agreement was reached; if they could have been kept "out of the street," and so have avoided both the raising of the dust and the soiling of themselves in it. Had every theologian of the time possessed the temperament, if not the talent, of an Athanasius, that might have been possible. As, however, it was morally impossible that a party defeated in conclave should not appeal to popular support outside it, that "might have been" may be put aside; and it must be remembered that struggle, with all its unedifying incidents and consequences, is better for the souls of men than a peace based on indifference to all except things mundane.

To us it appears that the discussion, thus inevitably brought "into the street," raised heat simply because the odium theologicum, if a very ridiculous, is also a very human passion, and one that exists to-day in a slightly different form. We do not tear one another to pieces in the twentieth century over the matter of an iota in the creed; but we have seen quarrels over points of geology or archæology, or the question whether A, or B, was the first to reach a wholly conventional point of the world's surface; and these problems are surely at least as remote from practical importance as the question whether the central figure of a man's religion is or is not a proper object of worship. Man was then, and is still, a highly combative animal.

Further, under the Roman Empire religion was politics. Putting the military and civil services aside, the Church, and the politics of the Church, offered to the ordinary man the one real carrière ouverte in which he could rise to importance locally or even imperially. All that his Church, and his office in it, means to the member of an oriental melet to-day, it meant then; with this addition — that a man of power in the Church had the opportunity of using his talents, not merely in an institution that Government despised, but in the one institution that the Emperor could not despise. All that political life and its struggles mean to a constitutional country to-day was meant by ecclesiastical politics and struggles to a Roman subject of the fifth century; and interest was as real and keen in one as in the other.

Next, the theological strife of the period was the expression, not only of politics, but of nationality, and of a national feeling consciously opposed to the Government policy. In the empire religion and the Church tended rapidly, during the fifth and sixth centuries, to become instruments of government in a despotism that tended more and more toward what is suggested to us by the name Byzantine. Orthodoxy was loyalty to the Emperor, not to Christ; and heresy was not the display of a special variety of unchristian spirit, but an offence against State order. This was, of course, only the reappearance, under slightly different conditions, of a, spirit that had dictated the persecution of Christianity under Decius and Diocletian, and that now dictated the persecution of pagans and "heretics."

And it must be remembered that while the empire was getting more and more into the habit of using the Church as its instrument, it was also itself becoming more and more Greek in its character; and so used the Church as the means to "Græcize," or rather to "Byzantize," all nations within it. This process was instinctively resented by nationalities that were not Greek; and Egyptian, "Latin" and Syrian fought against it. Under the circumstances it was perhaps inevitable that they should fight the battle of nationality on the religious field; and that when the Christological controversy came up they should tend to take an anti-Byzantine line.

The struggle continued till the nationalities concerned fairly split off from the Church of the capital and empire, and the bulk of them found under Moslem rule at least a semi-recognition of that independent life which the empire denied them. That part of the empire which was either really Greek, or which had been content to become so, remained subject to Constantinople; and was for centuries the most solid and permanent, and one of the most important facts of history.

Thus the battle was fought on the theological field, and around theological truths of the last importance; but it was not for these that the combatants fought, but for something that in their minds they represented.

As regards the merits of the controversy, the Greeks were the better theologians; that is, to say, their expressions of infinite truths in finite words appear to us to be the least unsatisfactory and misleading. Of course every human expression intended to explain or describe the mystery of the Incarnation becomes false if its inadequacy is forgotten; and each party, as a rule, only half remembered this fact as regards their own terms, and quite forgot it as regards those of their opponents. Thus each usually insisted on stretching the language used by the other to its full logical conclusion; forgetting that logic does not apply to the case, and that this reductio ad absurdum line of argument, if used at all, was applicable equally to both. Each side vehemently asserted that the other was teaching a doctrine which the other as vehemently denied that he taught. A. stretched B.'s tenets (usually misunderstood, and sometimes misstated) to their full logical conclusion, and presented them to B. as B.'s doctrines. B. returned the compliment to A. Each denied holding the views that the other attributed to him, and anathematized what he insisted that the other must hold.^[2]

Whether "heretics" of any variety really intended to deny the truths which the Greek theologians asserted, and which they intended their expressions to guard, is another and very difficult question. We shall have to examine it later as far as one variety is concerned. They very certainly did not intend to agree with the Greeks; in fact, they wanted to differ from them. On the other hand, the Greeks did not want to agree with them, but to subdue them. Rancour against Greek theologians, however, though it may be a wrong thing, is not necessarily rancour against truth; even though the Greek may think that it is, and though what he shouts as a battle-cry may be sound theology. Neither side in the battle made any attempt to "get behind words," and to see whether they could not, and did not, fully accept the principle embodied in the objectionable form of words that was the other's standard in the theological war. Again and again one is disposed to cry, as one studies the weary warfare, "Oh for one hour of St. Athanasius!"

Another question remains, and one which is of growing importance in our own day. Supposing, for argument's sake, that the "heretics" did hold at the beginning of each of the various schisms all that the "orthodox" imputed to them (a large supposition—a test of the size of which is the extraordinary character of the views which the "heretics" imputed to the "orthodox"), do those views still exist to-day? It is of the nature of "heresy" to disappear, and of imperfect and inadequate conceptions to melt silently away when they are not maintained by opposition. The writer can affirm this much of his own personal knowledge: that where "heretics," of various complexions, state the beliefs they hold in non-technical language, so that they do not use the terms to which they cling as a sacred heritage (and which often have very different meanings as used by different Churches), they usually make a statement of faith indistinguishable from orthodoxy.

A formidable complication, which one does not see how to disentangle, still further increases the difficulty of the problem. It must be remembered^[3] that the great crux of specifically Christian theology, "How can Christ be at once God and Man?" was approached in the East from Antioch to Seleucia by minds steeped for generations in the dualistic conceptions that lie at the base of all oriental philosophy—conceptions which postulate the evil of matter, and the existence of an impassable gulf between Creator and creature.

Doctrines of this kind are called Manichæan, principally because disciples of Manes did much to popularize them in the West, but Manes did not create or give currency to the conceptions; he merely based his system upon them.

Minds bred in a "Manichæan" medium shrank inevitably from the conception of a real Incarnation of the Word, resulting in a true "God-Man"; and they explained away the difficulty in various ways. Some declared, with the Gnostics, that the nature assumed must have been a phantom merely; others adopted one of two explanations superficially opposite but essentially the same, the concave and convex sides of the curve. They either declared the Incarnation to be a mere association of a man with the Divinity, which is Nestorianism; or that the manhood was annihilated by assumption into the Divinity, which is Monophysitism. In either case, belief in the absolute incompatibility of the human and the Divine lies at the root of the conception. Neither the "Nestorian" nor the "Monophysite" Christ (if the language they used be pressed) is a true Mediator, for a Mediator is impossible. The persistence of this inadequate conception may be judged from the fact that it also underlies Mahommedan theology.

So much for the general mental atmosphere, so to speak, in which the problems of the Christological controversy were approached by some of the combatants in the struggle, a statement necessary for our comprehension of it.

The Assyrian Church, however, had not to face it until it was pretty far advanced. Isolated as ever, it might have escaped this controversy as thoroughly as it did that of Arianism, had it been no more prolonged and equally decisive in its issue. The patriarchate of Dad-Ishu saw in the West the assembling of the first council of Ephesus, and the deposition of Nestorius; the scandal of the second council of that name, and the assembly of the fourth "general council" at Chalcedon. It saw, in a word, the rejection of Nestorianism and the rise of Monophysitism in the Roman Empire. But only the faintest echoes of this strife appear to have reached the Church of Assyria, which was in the peaceful state of having nothing to record during most of that period. Mshikha-Zca, writing about a hundred years later,^[4] has absolutely nothing "local" to say of the two bishops, Daniel and Rkhima, who during this period were the metropolitans of Arbela. Concerning the controversy he tells us that the first of them, Daniel, heard of the persecution of "the martyr Nestorius" by "the second Pharaoh, Cyril of Egypt"; and, being a prophet, foretold the "extinction of the true light in the West, and its shining forth in the East." If (as we are given to understand) this worthy prelate died before his time, owing to his grief at the persecution referred to, we need certainly not question his status as a prophet—seeing that he died on Low Sunday, 431, and the council of Ephesus did not meet till June of that year.

Rkhima, his successor, was a hard-working bishop within his own diocese. He certainly, and other bishops probably, warned their flocks against "the perversion of the faith" current in the West; and men's minds were thus prepared for the separation that was to follow fifty years later. For the time being, however, the Church took no corporate action. How little they knew of the rights and wrongs of the matter appears from the fact that they believed Cyril to have proclaimed, in his "sacrilegious council of Ephesus," the doctrine of "one nature and one qnuma," with the express object of severing communion between East and West.^[5]

A man of some fame in later ages appears to have arisen during this period, though he probably reached maturity a few years after this date. This was Isaac of Nineveh; who as ascetic and mystic was honoured by all sects in after time, and who, therefore, probably dates from a period antecedent to their division. Though his writings on the contemplative life and the various grades thereof were to exercise a great influence on Eastern monasticism, he did not exert, and, indeed, carefully refrained from exerting, any sway over his contemporaries. If his biographer tells the truth, he may share with another bishop mentioned in this chapter the distinction of having the shortest episcopate on record. He was (much against his inclination, no doubt) dragged from his cell on the mountain of Mar Mattai (where his monastery still exists), and consecrated Bishop of Nineveh. The new bishop made the six hours' journey from the monastery to the city, and was installed; but either that evening or next morning two litigants brought a case of debt for the episcopal decision. "What says the Gospel?" began the bishop. "Oh, never mind the Gospel just now, Holiness," said the creditor. "But if you don't mind the Gospel, what am I doing here?" said the prelate, who apparently did not admit that he was there to get them to mind it, or that if they did mind it they would hardly need a pastor at all! So, "seeing that his solitary life would be disturbed by the episcopal office—which was, indeed, inevitable, but might perhaps have been foreseen—the bishop resigned at once, and betook himself to the desert of Scete; where he remained until death, undisturbed either by office or by the troubles that arose in the Church before the time of his final departure.^[6]

At the time, however, things were peaceful; and the time of peace was also one of growth. In the life-story of Pethiun,^[7] evangelist of the country about the sources of the lesser Zab, we have a picture that must have been repeated in many another province at the time. There we read the story of the lad Yazdin, son of a wealthy Magian, who, being unhappy at home, found happiness, and was led to Christianity in the house of one Jacob, a Christian dependent of the family, and apparently foster-father of the youth. Jacob refused his charge baptism when he applied for it, "from fear of what your father will say"; and Yazdin ran away from home and found an asylum with the Bishop of Karka d'Bait Sluk, who received him into a monastery. After some years he returned home, to find his father dead and his brother Gushnasp (now owner of the family property) a Christian also, baptized by the name of Dad-Ishu, and more than willing that his rabban-brother should build the cell he needed on the estate, and receive his son Pethiun under his care. Neither Government nor clan openly resented, at the moment, this conversion of a family that was obviously of some local importance.

Still, this exemption of an active Church from Government interference and from doctrinal quarrels could not last; and about the year 448 we find Yezdegerd II declaring war against Christianity in his dominions. At about the same time he started a vehement persecution of both Armenians and Assyrians; in the former case avowedly because Christians could not possibly be loyal subjects of Persia, and, in all probability, for the same reason in the latter case also.

The persecution seems to have been intended to be general all over Persia,^[8] but we have only details of it as far as it affected the province of B. Garmai. It is probable that it was far more severe there than elsewhere, and perhaps was unknown in some districts altogether.

According to the rather late account that remains to us, a massacre of appalling magnitude took place; ten bishops and 153,000 (!) clergy and laity being martyred in several consecutive days of slaughter on a mound outside the city of Karka d'Bait Sluk. Local tradition still asserts that the red gravel of the hillock was stained that colour by the martyrs' blood, and the martyrium built over the bodies remains to this day.^[9]

The fact of a great massacre of Christians in this persecution at this spot need not be doubted, even if the number given by the historian be impossibly large, and if there be some other errors in the narrative.^[10] Nor need we question the perfectly historical character of the episodes recorded; such as the act of the woman Shirin, who with her two sons came of her own accord to seek the martyrdom that she received;^[11] or the conversion of the chief agent of the persecution, Tamasgerd, who was led by the sight of the endurance of those whom he was butchering to own that the faith that gave them strength must be from God, and joined himself with them in their confession and their fate. The place of martyrdom and the memorial church that stands there still bear the name, not of any of the bishops that perished then, but of this convert who was there "baptized in his own blood."

As John, the metropolitan of Karka, was led to death,^[12] a youth among those who stood by called to him to be of good cheer and play the man; and the bishop, turning to him, declared that he was worthy to take his place. So, in their prison, or perhaps on the very place of execution, the other bishops laid hands upon the youth Dindui; and for a day or so he remained as metropolitan of Karka, until he too, marked by the persecutors, received his crown.

Like other persecutions, this trial passed at last; and when peace came again, the bishops of two provinces gathered at the spot,^[13] and decreed a solemn annual memorial of those who had perished there. More than fourteen centuries have passed, and the Christians of Kirkuk own now a jurisdiction that was strange to their ancestors; yet still they gather year by year at the little church upon the red hillock, and still the 25th day of Ilul is the holy dukrana of those who died for Christ in the year 448.

Other martyrdoms, of course, took place elsewhere, and in particular we know of the death of the Pethiun mentioned above. This teacher was put to death near the modern Sulimanieh (the ancient Kholwan), and with him perished his disciple and companion in "rabbanship," Anahid, the beautiful daughter of the Mobed Adur-Hormizd. The nun, however (who, as usual, was offered life "if she would marry as women ought"^[14]), was for some reason taken to Nisibis for execution.

However extensive the massacres in the Assyrian Church, the sufferings here can hardly have been greater than those inflicted in Armenia in the course of what Armenians describe as the first great persecution of their national Church. We perhaps should describe it rather as a rebellion or civil war, prompted by the attempt of the Government to destroy the national faith.

In this case,^[15] Yezdegerd, by rather treacherous means, was able to procure a more or less forced apostasy from most of the Armenian nobles, as a preliminary measure; and then attempted, through them, to force Zoroastrianism on the mass of the people. A national rising followed, the rebels making a fruitless appeal to Rome for help; and a fierce "guerilla" warfare waged for several years—the Armenians finding, as usual, patriots who were able leaders on a small scale, but somehow producing no great general.^[16] As usual, too, their worst foes were those of their own households, and none did so much to subdue Armenia as Armenian renegades.

Finally, a sullen submission was secured; and Zoroastrianism drove Christianity out of sight for the moment, so that the Shah-in-Shah could plume himself on a new country won to Magianism—a conversion which lasted, of course, for just so long as it could be enforced. It is worth mentioning that the history of their country, between the years 448 and 456, affords an ample explanation of the non-appearance of the Armenian bishops of Chalcedon, and of their consequent non-acceptance of that council. The Assyrian Church was not represented at it either, any more than at the preceding councils; nevertheless, they seem to have accepted, at some subsequent date, what they understood to be the decision of this synod.^[17]

 

1. The "war" seems to have been no more than a military demonstration, intended to prevent the building of fortresses, contrary to treaty, on the Roman side of the frontier. It succeeded in its object.
2. For instance, the "Orthodox" said to the "Nestorian," "You call the B.V.M. 'Mother of Christ.' You must mean by that, 'Mother of a mere Man.'"

   "We mean nothing of the kind," said the "Nestorian" to the "Orthodox," "but you call her 'Mother of God,' and that can only mean, 'Mother of the God-head.'"

   Both were quite logical, particularly when the varying nuances of the technical words in the different languages used are remembered, and both were wrong.

3. For the thought expressed in this paragraph, the writer must express his indebtedness of a friend, the Rev. O. H. Parry.
4. M.-Z., pp. 144–145. Is it possible that Assyrians confounded in their minds the first council of Ephesus with, the second, the Latrocinium?
5. M.-Z., p. 144. Life of Rkhima.
6. Assem., i. 445; Chabot, De S. Isaaci vita, etc., ch. i.
7. Bedj., ii. 559.
8. Bedj., ii. 519, and, passim, 518–531. Certain officials are ordered "to deal with" the Christians of Karka. The order reads like one of a series issued to governors at large, but M.-Z., though he knows of the persecution (p. 147), does not refer to it as extending into Adiabene.
9. The writer believes the existing building, a church of unusual design, to be at least built on the lines of the original. Memory of other sites referred to in the History of Karka (Bedj., ii. 510–531) has perished; the Christian community of Kirkuk (as Karka is now called) having been almost exterminated by plague about 100 years ago.
10. The Acts put the Bishop of Arbela among the victims. This is contradicted by M.-Z.
11. The act may be paralleled elsewhere, but the fact does not imply "borrowing" but simply that human beings under similar conditions tend to act similarly.
12. Bedj., ii. 528.
13. Bedj., ii. 531; M.-Z. p. 147. Ilul is September (old style).
14. Bedj., ii. 583–603. Some of the peculiar tortures inflicted on Anahid and other confessors were, until very lately, still in practical use in the country.
15. See Rawlinson, Seventh Monarchy, ch. xv.
16. To call Armenians a nation of cowards is a gross injustice; but as soldiers they have never produced anything higher than good "generals of division" like Loris Melikon, and partisan leaders.
17. Syn. Or., p. 6. See chap. xiii. note 2.