has had many additions made to it from previous and contemporary
chronicles, such as those of Volinia and Novgorod. Soloviev, the
Russian historian, remarks that Nestor cannot be called the earliest
Russian chronicler, but he is the first writer who took a national
point of view in his history, the others being merely local writers.
The language of his work, as shown in the earliest manuscripts just
mentioned, is Palaeo-Slavonic with many Russisms. It has formed
the subject of a valuable monograph by Professor Miklosich.
The Chronicle has been translated into Polish, Bohemian, German and French. The compiler cannot very well be the author of the lives of Boris and Gleb, the martyrs, and of the life of St Theodosius, because they contradict many passages in the Chronicle. The work is of primary importance for early Russian history, and, although devoid of literary merit, is not without its amusing episodes of an Herodotean character. The reputed body of the ancient chronicler may be seen among the relics preserved in the Pecherskiy monastery at Kiev.
See Louis Leger’s Chronique dite de Nestor (Paris, 1884); Bestuzhev Riumin, On the Composition of the Russian Chronicles till the end of the 14th century (in Russian), (St Petersburg, 1869). (W. R. M.)
NESTOR, the name of a small but remarkable group of parrots peculiar to the New Zealand sub-region, of which the type is the Psittacus meridionalis of Gmelin, founded on a species described by J. Latham (Gen. Synopsis i. 264), and subsequently termed by him P. nestor, in allusion to its hoary head, but now usually known as Nestor meridionalis, the “Kaka” of the Maories and English settlers in New Zealand, in some parts of which it was very abundant, though its numbers are fast decreasing. Forster, who accompanied Cook in his second voyage, described it in his MSS. in 1773, naming it P. hypopolius, and found it in both the principal islands. The general colour of the kaka is olive-brown, nearly all the feathers being tipped with a darker shade, so as to give a scaly appearance to the body. The crown is light grey, the ear-coverts and nape purplish-bronze, and the rump and abdomen of a more or less deep crimson-red; but much variation is presented in the extent and tinge of the last colour, which often becomes orange and sometimes bright yellow. The kaka is about the size of a crow; but a larger species, generally resembling it, though with plumage mostly dull olive-green, the Nestor notabilis of J. Gould, was discovered in 1856 by Walter Mantell, in the higher mountain ranges of the Middle Island. This is the “Kea” of the Maories, and incurred the enmity of colonists by developing an extraordinary habit of assaulting sheep, picking holes with its powerful beak in their side, wounding the intestines, and so causing death. The bird is admittedly an eater of carrion in addition to its ordinary food, which, like that of the kaka, consists of fruits, seeds and the grubs of wood-destroying insects, the last being obtained by stripping the bark from trees infested by them. The amount of injury the kea inflicts on flock-masters has doubtless been much exaggerated, for Dr Menzies states that on one “run,” where the loss was unusually large, the proportion of sheep attacked was about one in three hundred, and that those pasturing below the elevation of 2000 ft. are seldom disturbed.
On the discovery of Norfolk Island (October 10 1774) a parrot, thought by Forster to be specifically identical with the kagháá (as he wrote the name) of New Zealand—though his son (Voyage, ii. 446) remarked that it was “infinitely brighter coloured”—was found in its hitherto untrodden woods. Among the drawings of Bauer, the artist who accompanied Robert Brown and Flinders, is one of a Nestor marked “Norfolk Isl. 19 Jan. 1805,” on which Herr von Pelzeln in 1860 founded his N. norfolcensis. Meanwhile Latham, in 1822, had described, as distinct species, two specimens evidently of the genus Nestor, one said, but doubtless erroneously, to inhabit New South Wales, and the other from Norfolk Island. In 1836 Gould described an example, without any locality, in the museum of the Zoological Society, as Plyctolophus productus, and when some time after he was in Australia, he found that the home of this species, which he then recognized as a Nestor, was Phillip Island, a very small adjunct of Norfolk Island, and not more than 5 m. distant from it. Whether the birds of the two islands were specifically distinct or not we shall perhaps never know, since they are all extinct, and no specimen undoubtedly from Norfolk Island seems to have been preserved. The Phillip-Island Nestor may be distinguished from both of the New-Zealand species by its somewhat smaller size, orange throat, straw-coloured breast, and the generally lighter shade of its tints.
The position of the genus Nestor in the order Psittaci must be regarded as uncertain, but it is now usually placed in the sub-family Nestorinae of the Trichoglossidae (see Parrot).
Further knowledge of this very interesting form may be facilitated by the following references to the Transactions and Proceedings of the New Zealand Institute, ii. 64, 65, 387, iii. 45-52, 81-90, v. 207, vi. 114, 128, ix. 340, x. 192, xi. 377; and to Sir W. Buller’s Birds of New Zealand. (A. N.)
NESTORIANS. §1. The Early Nestorians.—Among those who had been present at Ephesus in support of Nestorius (q.v.) was Ibas, presbyter and head of the theological school of Edessa. In 435 he became bishop of Edessa and under his influence the Nestorian teaching made considerable progress. On the accusation of the orthodox he was deposed by the “Robber Synod” of Ephesus, but at Chalcedon in 451 was pardoned on condition of anathematizing both Nestorius and Eutyches and accepting the Tome of Leo. He had not, however, changed his views, and this was generally recognized. Meanwhile one of his pupils, Barsumas, had settled at Nisibis in Persian territory where he became bishop in 435 and established a Nestorian school. And when the emperor suppressed the school of Edessa (“the Athens of Syria”) in 489, and expelled its members, they travelled far afield as eager and successful missionaries of the Gospel. In Persia their numbers and their zeal stimulated the old churches into vigour and led to the founding of new ones. And as they were under ban from Rome and out of communion with the Byzantine Church the Persian government welcomed them as a political ally, though the religious opposition of the Magi was still largely retained. In their new environment the Nestorians abandoned some of the rigour of Catholic asceticism, and at a synod held in 499 abolished clerical celibacy even for bishops and went so far as to permit repeated marriages, in striking contrast not only to orthodox custom but to the practice of Aphraates at Edessa who had advocated celibacy as a condition of baptism. The liberty here granted to bishops was enjoyed as late as the 12th century, but since then the Nestorian Church has assimilated its custom to that of the Greek Church. That the ascetic ideal was by no means wholly extinct is evident from the Book of Governors written by Thomas, bishop of Marga, in 840 which bears witness to a Syrian monasticism founded by one Awgin of Egyptian descent, who settled in Nisibis about 350, and lasting uninterruptedly until the time of Thomas, though it had long been absorbed in the great Nestorian movement that had annexed the church in Mesopotamia.
The Nestorian Church in Eastern Syria and Persia was under the jurisdiction of an archbishop (catholikos), who in 498 assumed the title “Patriarch of the East” and had his seat at Seleucia-Ctesiphon on the Tigris, a busy trading city and a fitting centre for the great area over which the evangelizing activity of the Nestorians now extended. The church traced its doctrines to Theodore of Mopsuestia rather than to Nestorius, whose name at first they repudiated, not regarding themselves as having been proselytized to any new teaching.
§ 2. The Later Nestorians.—In 608 Magian influence was so strong in Persia that the Christians were persecuted and the office of catholicus was vacant for 20 years, being filled again by Jesu-Jabus, during whose patriarchate the Mahommedan invasion overran Persia. The patriarch was able to secure from the caliph permission for the Christians to practice their religion in return for tribute money and this was afterwards remitted. Ibn Ali Talib, anxious to perpetuate their severance from the orthodox church and the Byzantine empire, confirmed these privileges by charter and in 762 the patriarchate was removed to Bagdad. For five centuries the Nestorians were a recognized institution within the territory. of Islam, though their treatment varied from kindly to harsh. Biruni, a Mahommedan writer, who lived at Khiva c. A.D. 1000, speaks of them as comprising the bulk of the population of Syria, Irak and Khorasan, and as superior to the orthodox in intellectual ability.
