particularly during the long and peaceful episcopate of Abd-Mshikha (190–225). Many churches were then built; and even—we are told—monasteries founded, though this must surely be an anticipation of later events.[1] Bishoprics must certainly have multiplied steadily, though Mshikha-Zca, our sole reliable authority for this period, gives only the history of Adiabene, and the succession only of the Bishops of Arbela. The date of the foundation of other sees outside the province does not concern him; and it is only when he reaches the year 225 that he informs us that the Church, after a century and a quarter of existence, had more than twenty bishops, and gives us a list of eighteen sees. As none of these are bishoprics which were afterwards included in the jurisdiction of Arbela, when the bishop of that see was recognized as Metropolitan at a council held in 410,[2] it is probable that Arbela was for these early centuries the only episcopal seat in Adiabene.
Thus the Church continued in peace, till, in the year 225, the rule of the Parthians gave way to that of the Persians; a fact that Mshikha-Zca mentions with somewhat less of interest than that shown by the ordinary English writer in a general election.
The advent of the Sassanians produced no very conspicuous change, at first, in the attitude of the governing body towards the Church. Mobeds appeared by the side of the "Marzbans," or local governors, and these might, on emergency, show themselves almost equal to the civil authority in power. Fire-temples sprang up generally,[3] perhaps
- ↑ Mar Augin of Egypt, the friend of James of Nisibis, is stated to have been the first to bring the monastic life to the East, and he certainly did not arrive before the year 300. Bedj. i. 424 (Life of Mar Shalitha).
- ↑ Chabot, Syn. Orientale, p. 34, 273; M-Z., Life of Khiran.
- ↑ M.-Z., Life of Khiran.
