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,[1] 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
- ↑ M.-Z., pp. 144–145. Is it possible that Assyrians confounded in their minds the first council of Ephesus with, the second, the Latrocinium?
