In so great a mass of details I cannot hope that there are no inaccuracies. But I have taken pains to verify statements, especially about modern practice, and I think I have given my authority for everything.
For information about what is now done and believed in these Churches I am indebted to many people, to their own clergy and Catholic missionaries. More than to anyone else I owe thanks to the French Jesuit Fathers at Beirut. To their guest they were the kindest and most hospitable of hosts, in their "Faculté orientale" most capable teachers. Since my return to England they have kept up cordial relations, and have always answered the many questions I have sent them. In answering these questions, and in procuring photographs for illustration, Father Louis Jalabert, S.J., has been more than kind. To him and to his colleagues in Syria every Catholic must wish God-speed in the work of educating and converting Eastern Christians, undertaken by them according to the noble tradition of their nation and their order.
I have also to thank the Rev. Dr. W. A. Wigram and the Rev. F. N. Heazell, of the Archbishop of Canterbury's Mission to the Assyrian Christians, for corrections and photographs of Mâr Shim‘un and Ḳudshanis; also Mr K. N. Daniel, editor of the Malankara Sabha Tharaka paper at Kottayam, for information contained in the paragraph at pp. 368–375.
There is no bibliography in this volume. Most books on these Churches treat also of matters which concern the Uniates. Rather than repeat the same titles in both volumes, it seems convenient to reserve them for the next, which will be the last of the series. In it there will be a fairly complete list of books on all these lesser Churches.
And, lastly, I hope that nothing in this book will seem to argue anything but sympathy for the people who, isolated for centuries, have still kept faithful to the name of Christ; sympathy and regret for the lamentable schisms which are not so much their fault as those of their fathers, Bar Ṣaumâ, Dioscor, Baradai, in the distant 5th and 6th centuries.
Letchworth, St. Peter and St. Paul, 1913.
