heart of China. They must have baptized thousands, and they taught the wild men of Tartary to worship one God, to serve Christ, even if they did think him two hypostases, to love his mother, even if they did not call her Theotókos. Let that be remembered to their honour.
3. Nestorian Monasticism
There are now no Nestorian monasteries and few monks or nuns. What remnant there is of East Syrian monasticism is only to be found among the Uniate Chaldees. But monasticism was once a very flourishing institution in this Church. It played so great a part in their history that we must say at least a word about it here.
Their own tradition is that a certain Augīn[1] brought the monastic life from Egypt in the 4th century. He had been a pearl fisherman in the Red Sea. Then he became a monk in the Nitrian desert, and eventually, with seventy companions, set out for Nisibis. Here he founded the first East Syrian monastery on Mount Īzlâ, near the city. Three hundred and fifty disciples gathered round him and kept the rule he had brought from the Fathers of the Egyptian desert. So Mâr Augīn of Egypt founded monasticism in the East.[2] Most modern scholars doubt this story altogether.[3] As a matter of fact, monasticism was already so established in Western Syria that it must have spread eastwards with Christianity. There is no need to look for the name of one special founder here. Monks came, probably as the first missionaries, and monasteries were built as soon as churches. So East Syria and Persia received monasticism simply as a natural part of the Christian system. We have seen that in very early days there were "sons" and "daughters of the Covenant" in the East Syrian Church (p. 43). This was the beginning which only needed organization to develop into regular monasticism.
