Edessa was conscious of a throne in the far West, still greater than Antioch, and wanted to show that it got its bishop ultimately from the main line of Pontiffs, who go back to St. Peter and from him to Christ. It is only a little hint; we could hardly expect more in the legend of a remote Eastern Church; but it is significant. Edessa, too, knew that there is another centre behind Antioch, that a perfect line of dependence goes on till it joins Peter's successor at Rome. The early Church of Edessa was Catholic.
3. The Persian Church
The same impulse which brought the Gospel to Mesopotamia carried it over the frontier into the rival state. The barrier of the Persian Empire stopped the legions; it could not stop men who obeyed the command to go and teach all nations. So under the Great King very early we find people who were, as Tertullian says of the Britons, "to the Romans indeed inaccessible, but subject to Christ."[1]
In this case, too, we have a legend which we will examine first. It has various forms. The most mythical form is that of Timothy I, Nestorian Patriarch (728–823), who says that the Wise Men of the Epiphany began to preach the Gospel as soon as they came home.[2] Others ascribe the first mission to the Apostle St. Thomas and make lists of bishops from him. The chief legend is that of the Acta Maris,[3] a Syriac work of the 6th century, based on the Doctrine of Addai.[4] This was then repeated by many writers, and was, so to say, the official account of its origin accepted by the Persian Church, and by the Nestorians down to our own time.
The story is that Addai sent his disciple Mari[5] to Nisibis. Mari there destroys pagan temples, builds many churches and monasteries. Then he travels down the Tigris, preaches the Gospel by Ninive, around the capital (Seleucia-Ctesiphon), and comes as far
- ↑ Adv. Iud. 7 (P.L. ii. 610).
- ↑ Labourt: Le Christianisme dans l'empire perse, p. 10.
- ↑ Abbeloos: Acta S. Maris Syriace sive Aramaice (Brussels, 1885, with a Latin version); re-edited by P. Bedjan: Acta martyrum et sanctorum, i. (Paris, 1890); German version by R. Raabe: Die Geschichte des Dominus Mari (Leipzig, 1893).
- ↑ Cf. Duval: Littérature syriaque, 117–120.
- ↑ Greek Μάρης.
