NESTORIANS NESTORIUS 241 vanced eastward, the Nestorians were borne down before it ; some were converted by the sword, and others killed. Still later Tamerlane destroyed a large portion of those who were not subdued by Mohammed ; so that the Nesto- rians of to-day, about 150,000, are but a feeble remnant of a once powerful people. They dwell in the northwestern districts of Persia, spreading westward into the Kurdish moun- tains, a small portion residing within the bor- ders of the Turkish empire. About 40,000 are on the plain of Oroomiah, inhabiting 300 villages, and chiefly occupied in agriculture. Their condition is seldom better than that of serfs under their Mohammedan masters. Many of the mountain districts inhabited by the Nestorians are so rugged that a beast of burden can hardly travel over them. The people subsist chiefly by the pasturage of their flocks, sometimes cultivating little ter- raced patches of land a few rods square. They are miserably poor, and often subject to the most cruel oppressions from their Kurdish neighbors, who inhabit the same mountains. A bloody onset was made upon them by the Kurds in 1843 ; nearly 10,000 Nestorians were slain, and many were sold into slavery. A little further south, in the deep, rugged valley of the Zab, a tributary of the Tigris, their condition is a little better, and they manifest more of the independent spirit of their ances- tors. They have often successfully resisted the attacks of the Kurds, and they subsist more by the cultivation of the soil. Attention was particularly called to the Nestoriansin 1831 by the " Researches " of Messrs. Smith and Dwight, missionaries of the American board, on a tour of observation in that region. They found them substantially maintaining their ancient faith, but sunk in ignorance and degradation. Few even of the men couM read intelligently, and only one woman was found who could read at all, she being the sister of the patriarch. They had no printed books, and only a few manu- script copies of the Scriptures and other works, and these only in the ancient Syriac, which was virtually a dead language, studied only by the priests and a few others. The Bible was venerated as a relic, and the few copies exist- ing were wrapped in cloth and laid away in the dingy churches, and brought out on great saints' days, to be kissed, but not to be read. All were enslaved by onerous fasts. Lewd dances formed their most popular social amuse- ment, and drunkenness was so common as hardly to excite notice. The condition of wo- man generally was that of degradation and servitude. The birth of a daughter was re- garded as a calamity. The abode of a family, often embracing several generations, consisted of a single room of the poorest description. Printing was unknown, and the spoken lan- guage had not been reduced to writing. The library of the patriarch, which was considered enormous, consisted of less than 60 volumes, in- cluding several duplicates. Many of the priests scarcely understood the meaning of the words they used in their church service, and to the people generally they were entirely unintelli- gible. Theirs was virtually a dead church. And yet they still held tenaciously to the Chris- tian name and substantially to the Christian doctrine, and their forms of worship were com- paratively simple. Professing the N icene creed with a few modifications, asserting the distinc- tion of person and natures in Christ, refusing the title of " Mother of God " to the Virgin Mary, rejecting the doctrine of purgatory, yet praying for the dead, they acknowledged seven sacraments, though it was not always clear which they all were, burial being sometimes reckoned as one ; they allowed marriage to all the clergy except bishops and the patriarch (though this restriction was violated by Bishop Mar Yohanan in 1859), and discarded auricular confession, though it is prescribed in their an- cient books. They were found to be frank and manly. In stature and complexion, though somewhat darker, they differ little from Amer- icans. American missionaries began to reside among them in 1833, and were kindly wel- comed by priests and people. The first work of the missionaries, after mastering the native tongue, was to reduce the spoken language to writing, to translate the Scriptures into it, and to establish schools, some of the native cler- gy being among their best scholars and most efficient helpers. They also prepared school books in the vernacular, translated works of general interest into Syriac, and became teach- ers of the people. Their first aim was to re- form the Nestorian church, not to plant any other, and for a time many of the best of the native ecclesiastics worked cordially with them. But after a while many of these drew back, and most of those who were regarded as real converts have come out from the -old church and organized new societies. These are now IV in number, with Y3 congregations, simpler forms of worship, and T67 members. There are YO schools and 1,124 pupils, and 110,000 volumes have been issued. See "A Residence of Eight Years in Persia," by Jus- tin Perkins (Andover, 1843), and Anderson's "Oriental Churches" (1872). KESTOBIUS, a Syrian bishop, born near the close of the 4th century, died in Libya about the year 440. He was a disciple of Theodore of Mopsuestia, became a presbyter of Anti- och, and was made patriarch of Constanti- nople in 428. He was distinguished for his zeal against the prevailing heresies, particularly those of the Apollinarians. In his opposition to their doctrine, Nestorius maintained that there was a great distinction between Christ as the Son of God and Christ as the son of man; that the actions and sensations of the one person were to be carefully discriminated from those of the other ; and that the Virgin Mary could not be called 6eor<ko?, " mother of God," but only X/a^rord/cof, " mother of Christ," because it was only the human nature of Jesus
