the 19th century, and the various missions which work among them.
1. The Rediscovery of the Nestorians
The word rediscovery is not inappropriate. It is true that the little sect was never quite forgotten. People knew that there were still Nestorians in Turkey and Persia. The authorities of the Catholic Church especially were always conscious of them. Since the Crusades we have had missionaries working for their reunion. Since the 16th century there has been an organized Uniate Chaldsean Church. There have been constant negotiations between East Syrian Patriarchs and Rome; at intervals practically the whole body has come back to union. The Assemani and Renaudot knew much about them. Yet the general popular interest in these people, especially in England and America, dates from what was practically a rediscovery in the 19th century.
They owe this in the first place to the presence of Assyrian ruins in their land. Claude James Rich, Resident of the British East India Company in Bagdad, visited the ruins of Nineveh in 1820. His report excited great interest in England and America.[1] From that time begins the systematic exploration of Assyrian remains, in which A. H. Layard made for himself the greatest name.[2] These explorers brought back incidentally reports of the Christians they had found in those parts. Rich mentions them.[3] Layard employed Nestorian workmen to excavate for him, and gives in his book a considerable account of these people.[4] Two circumstances combined to spread this interest. One was the surprising discovery that they still talked Syriac; that this, therefore, was not a dead language, as people had supposed. It was almost as astonishing as would be the discovery of a nation which talks Hebrew. This fact seemed to give them the dignity of immemorial age. Were not these at last the real primitive Christians, unspoiled by later corruptions, still speaking the very
