to all authorities, he was both luxurious and covetous, selling even the church vessels in his greed. The eighteen years of his patriarchate (505–523) seem to have passed without incident, as though the patriarch was more occupied with his family than with his duties. The Metropolitan of B. Lapat (Buzaq, the successor of Papa), had influence with "the Porte," and secured peace for the Christians.[1] The decadence which had begun no doubt under Silas, continued and worsened at his death in 523; when there ensued what is known as "the duality," a period of sixteen years during which rival claimants to the patriarchate hurled anathemas at one another's heads, consecrated opposing bishops to the sees as they fell vacant, and generally brought confusion and schism into the Church.
Silas, when he felt himself failing, had endeavoured to secure the succession to his office to one Elisha, his own son-in-law and archdeacon, and head of a school recently founded in Seleucia.[2] The act was, of course, both improper and uncanonical, being directly forbidden by the first canon of the Council of Isaac, but was not for that reason opposed to oriental ways of thought. Ideas which in another Eastern land have produced caste were consonant to the Persian mind; and those who had the existence of a priestly clan constantly before them in the Magians were not shocked at the thought of a sacred office belonging naturally to one house or family. We can see the custom beginning in the election of the nephew and archdeacon of Mar Shimun to the vacant throne when the latter was martyred; and the strange semi-hereditary system of to-day shows how persistent, and how far superior to all canons, the habit can be.[3]
m 2
