too (at this time a Roman city still), had no bishop, a fact due probably to the circumstance that it was a purely military station. It is, however, a curious coincidence that the two most important thrones in the later history of "the East" should both have been founded late in its development.
The question now arises, how and when did this Church come into being?
It has long been an admitted fact that the lands of Mesopotamia and Adiabene, and in fact the whole of what we may call by anticipation the Sassanid Persian Empire, received the gospel from teachers whose head-quarters were at Edessa. The little kingdom of Osrhöene had but a precarious independence during the brief period of its existence; still that independence was sufficient to give, for as long as it lasted, a distinctive character to the Christianity that existed in its capital, and made it an appropriate "nursing mother" to the two national Churches founded by teachers who came from thence, those, namely, of Armenia and Persia.[1] When the Edessene Church was merged in that ecclesiastical circle that developed into the Patriarchate of Antioch, one at least of these "daughters" was strong enough to stand alone; and the circumstances of its infancy probably contributed to give it that instinct of independence that was always so marked a feature of its life.
The "Church of the Easterns" was the daughter,
- ↑ Armenia, of course, owed much to Cappadocian help in later days, and became a sort of adopted daughter of Cæsarea. Christianity, however, existed in the land before the conversion of the King by Gregory the Illuminator, and Armenian writers declare that it owed its existence to Edessene teachers, and principally to Thaddeus the Apostle. They also declare that Osrhöene was a tributary state of the "Armenian Empire," but the ecclesiastical tradition may be better founded than the political.
