The Nestorians and their Rituals/Volume 1/Chapter 1
THE NESTORIANS
AND
Their Rituals, &c.
CHAPTER I.
Long shall I recall to mind, with sincere gratitude, the pious valediction of our late revered Primate at Lambeth, and the cordial farewell with which the present Lord Bishop of London sped us on our way, and commended our persons and our work to the blessing of the Almighty.
We left London bridge on the 2nd of April, 1842, for the coast of France; but as the journal of an ordinary traveller through that country would be of little interest to the generality of readers, and contain, moreover, matter foreign to the design of this work, I shall simply state, that after arriving at Marseilles, touching at several seaports in the Mediterranean, spending some time on business at Malta, and visiting Syra and Smyrna, we reached Constantinople on the 24th of June, where it was proposed that we should make all the necessary arrangements for our further journey eastward.
Here we were welcomed by the Rev. Horatio Southgate, a missionary of the American Episcopal Church, who had been sent out originally to labour among the Mohammedans of Persia; but who was now directing his efforts to the amelioration of the spiritual condition of the Jacobites. Mutran Behnâm, the Jacobite Bishop of Mosul, was residing at his house, and from him, as well as from our kind host, I learned much of the state of the Christians in Mesopotamia. He had been sent to the capital by his Patriarch, to use all his influence with the Porte, for the restoration to their community of several churches and church lands in the districts of Diarbekir and Mosul, which had been seized upon by the dissenters from their body, who had submitted to the see of Home. This work of proselytism commenced in Aleppo, towards the end of the 17th century, and gradually extended to other parts of Syria and Mesopotamia, fostered as it was by the consular agents of France, and abetted and protected by their ambassadors at Constantinople. The result of this powerful co-operation on the part of a foreign power, which laid claim to a protectorate over all the adherents of the Pope in the Turkish empire, was the alienation or division of many of their churches and church property, and the consequent depression and impoverishment of the parent body. The venality of the Turkish ministers had over and over again been bribed by the two contending parties to annul their preceding decrees; but up to this time the seceders had triumphed, and the Jacobite Patriarch was now, through his representative, seeking to obtain a reversal of the imperial order, which gave his adversaries the partial possession of the churches originally under the jurisdiction of his predecessors.
The question herein involved must be viewed apart from the doctrinal orthodoxy or heterodoxy of the two communities, with which it has no direct concern; and when so regarded, there can be little doubt, that the decree which confirmed to the seceders the possession of their spoil was a palpable injustice, perpetrated by the strong towards the weak, in defiance of all right and precedent. In other instances of late occurrence, the Porte had acted, or, I should rather say, had been compelled to act, differently. Thus, at Angora, out of 6,000, as many as 4,000 families had seceded from the Monophysite Armenian body; nevertheless, the minority retained possession of the seven churches in that town, and the dissenters were obliged to worship in a chapel of their own building. At Tocât, where similar proselytism has taken place, the seceders were unable to make good their claim to a single church. At Diarbekir, some years ago, the whole Greek community of the town became Romanists. The Greek Patriarch instituted proceedings against them for keeping possession, and succeeded in forcing them to give up the church which they had retained after their change of creed.
Why, then, it may be asked, were the Jacobites treated with such injustice? The reason is evident, and serves to disclose somewhat of those foreign machinations which exert so powerful an influence in such matters on the councils of the Porte. The Greek rayahs being of the same creed with the Russians, look up to that power for its support, and the out-spreading wing of the great eagle of the north casts its protecting shadow over the spiritual interests of its co-religionists. And since so goodly a portion of Upper Armenia was meekly ceded to the empire of the Tsar by the treaty of Unkiar Skelessi; and the Catholicos, or Patriarch of the Armenians, became a subject of the Father of All the Russias, those also among the subjects of the Porte who acknowledge obedience to him come in for a share of the same powerful aid. The notoriety of this foreign influence, and the pace with which it was advancing, may be gathered from the following circumstance.
Being one day at the Armenian patriarchate in Constantinople, the collector of the subscriptions for the Turkish Government Gazette called for the amount due from the Armenian subscribers. A long altercation took place between him and an official, who acted as agent for the payment of the money, the latter declaring that he would not disburse anything on account of those who had been absent the whole or part of the past year. On inquiry it turned out, that many of the opulent Armenians were in the habit of taking a trip to Odessa, or to some other Russian town, and after residing there a year or more, received a passport as Russian subjects, and returned to Constantinople, where the native authorities dared not to call in question the rights of their new citizenship.
I do not know whether such international filching has received any check within the last few years; but of this there can be no doubt, that Russia still exercises almost unlimited sway over the affairs of the Greek Church in Turkey, and that the Armenian rayahs look up to her for assistance, which for the extension of her political influence, if for no other reason, she is never backward to grant. Causes such as these are sufficient to explain why the Greeks and Armenians have been able to make a better stand against the encroachments of Rome than the poor Syrians, whose comparatively small number, their distance from Russia, and geographical position,1 render them of little importance to the political views of the great Tsar. And added to this, in all their conflicts, they have had to contend singlehanded against the powerful influence of France, which arrogates to herself the right of protecting all the "Catholics" in the Turkish empire. This right, which has been put forth with so much impudence, and which some years ago was seemingly admitted in the House of Lords, when a discussion took place on the state of the Christians in Turkey, has no foundation whatever in any treaty made between France and the Porte. Let the capitulations be searched, and the only superior right granted to France is that of protecting the conventual establishments at Jerusalem, which a lax interpretation may extend to the Latin missionaries in other parts of the empire; but not one word is said which in any way can be taken to entitle that power to protect the subjects of the Porte who have joined the Church of Rome.
The influence which the representatives of France at Constantinople have exercised in behalf of emissaries from Rome, and their intervention in favour of the proselytes made from the different Christian communities in the Turkish empire, is not kept secret by their own writers. The Jesuit, Mons. Eugène Boré, thus writes in his work on Armenia, published in the "Univers":—"Si les catholiques n'avaient trouvé un appui politique dans les ambassadeurs, et principalement dans celui de France, le protecteur official de la religion des Latins, ils n'auraient pu résister à la persecution." And again:— "C'est dans cette circonstance que I'ambassadeur Français, Monsieur Guilleminot, protecteur legal de tous les Catholiques de l'empire Turc, opéra une réaction heureux au moyen de ses énergiques représentations." The effect of such powerful support, whilst it has led to the encouragement of proselytism, and to the extension of the authority of the see of Rome, has also had an undoubted tendency to loosen the dependence of a whole class of rayahs upon the justice and protection of the Porte, and to augment a pernicious foreign influence.
There are four Patriarchs residing at Constantinople, viz., the Greek and Armenian, and the so-called Greek Catholic and Armenian Catholic, who have large establishments here, called Patrik-khaneh, or patriarchates. They are the medium through which all the official affairs of their different communities are carried on at the Porte, to which end they receive a Nishân, or decoration, from the Sultan on their election to office. The incumbent of the Armenian Patriarchate, however, is generally a Bishop, who receives the honorary title of "Patriarch," in order to put him on a level with the heads of the other Churches: the Armenians, like ourselves, having no Patriarch,2 but a Catholicos or Primate, who resides at Etchmiadzine. The Jacobites have no representative at Constantinople, but their official correspondence with the Porte is carried on through the Monophysite Armenian Patriarch; and this doubtless is another cause why their ecclesiastical interests have been so much neglected. The affairs of the Chaldeans of Mesopotamia are in like manner committed to the care of the Armenian Catholic Patriarch.
During our residence at Constantinople, the Greek Patriarch died, and two days after a successor was appointed in the person of the Bishop of Δερκαὶ, which is one of the largest dioceses in the empire. It derives its name from two small islands in the Black Sea called Δερκαὶ,3 but commences at Therapia, and includes a large extent of country around the capital. Some, I understand, proposed the late Patriarch, who had been deposed at the instance of Lord Ponsonby:4 but doubts arising whether he would be recognized by the Porte, another was appointed.
The mode of electing a new Patriarch is as follows: the Holy Synod, consisting of twelve Bishops, together with a number of the lower clergy, the principal influential laymen, and the heads of the trade corporations, assemble in the great hall of the Patriarchate, where they deliberate with closed doors, whilst a crowd generally fills the outer court anxiously awaiting the result. The senior member of the Synod then proposes an individual, and if approved of, the rest cry out Ἄξιος, He is worthy; if they disapprove of the selection, they exclaim Ἀνάξιος, He is unworthy. It seldom happens, however, that there is any division in their councils, as the whole is previously concerted by the four principal laymen, who exercise great influence over the Bishops. In the present instance there was no dissenting voice, and when the name of the successful candidate was announced to the people without, it was received with a general shout of Ἄξιος! Ἄξιος!
It will not be out of place to give here some account of the proceedings of the American Board of Foreign Missions in Constantinople, whose agents belong to the Presbyterian, Independent, Dutch Reformed, and other dissenting bodies, especially as my conduct towards them during my residence at the capital was publicly censured by certain periodicals. It is well known to every one, that many of the doctrines, and the entire constitution of these sects, are as opposed to the teaching and discipline of the Anglican Church, as they are to the faith and ecclesiastical government professed by all the Eastern Churches. Yet, notwithstanding this wide difference existing between us, they designedly or otherwise give it to be understood that they hold the same faith as we do, and differ only on the most trivial points. This opinion has been so deeply impressed upon the great mass of the native Christians, and has been so strengthened by the manner in which many of our own missionaries have fraternized with them, that I have found it a most difficult task to persuade them to the contrary; and their missionary proceedings have been carried on upon principles so diametrically opposed to those professed by our Church, that any efforts on our part have come to be regarded not only with suspicion, but to be treated as pernicious by all the Churches of the east.
The right, moreover, which the committee of the American Dissenting Board arrogate to labour among the eastern Christians, is as ludicrous as it is presumptuous, and savours much more of exclusiveness, which they are so fond of attributing to us, than any measures yet undertaken by the Church of England for the benefit of the ancient communities in these parts. Take for instance the following extract from their report for the year ending September, 1841, in which the right of the English to labour among the Nestorians is more than called in question:
"Not long after Dr. Grant's second visit to the Independent Nestorians, the Patriarch was visited by Dr. Ainsworth, agent of the English Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, accompanied by Mr. Rassam, who is of Nestorian origin, and now English Vice-Consul at Mosul. Dr. Ainsworth was understood by the Patriarch to offer, in behalf of the English National Church, to establish schools among them, and to aid them in other ways; but the Committee have not seen his own report of the matter. The Committee have been assured, however, on competent authority, that it is not the intention of their English brethren to attempt a mission among the Nestorians. Some consequences have resulted from this partial interference, that of course were not anticipated by Dr. Ainsworth and his associate, but which show the importance of carefully avoiding whatever would tend to awaken the thought among the Nestorian ecclesiastics, that there are rival Protestant sects and interests, upon which they may practise for the private gratification of avaricious desires."
Nor is this the only instance in which our right to labour for the benefit of the Oriental Christians, as our own Church may deem most fit, is called in question by the same body. The establishment of an Anglican Bishopric at Jerusalem is thus commented upon by Dr. Anderson their secretary: "This mission, [to Syria,] Dr. Anderson stated, is threatened with expulsion from the country by the influence of a spirit which threatens all evangelical Churches. From one of its most conspicuous manifestations it is called Puseyism; but it is found in all Protestant sects. Its object is to extend the power of The Church. It treats the establishment and extension of church power as the end to be attained, and is therefore directly at war with the true missionary spirit, which makes the publication of Gospel truth for the salvation of men the great object of its labours, and regards Churches as mere agencies for effecting it. This spirit at the present moment portends more evil to the cause of truth and piety throughout the world than it is in the power of the whole Popedom to inflict. Prudential considerations have hitherto prevented the full disclosure of what the Committee know on this subject, and must still prevent it in some degree. It is time, however, to announce that our missionaries are threatened by an extended interference from a great ecclesiastical power, which denies our right to preach the Gospel anywhere. This interference is connected with the late appointment of an English Bishop at Jerusalem, who, the newspapers announce, has sailed for Joppa in the steam-ship 'Devastation.'" The following, bearing a later date, was doubtless intended as a recantation of the preceding, but the same jealousy lurks in every line: "Dr. Anderson said. The English Bishop, whose appointment for Jerusalem was mentioned at the concert in January, arrived at Jerusalem on the 21st of that month. We have lately seen a printed statement of proceedings relative to this bishopric, published by authority of the Archbishop of Canterbury, together with a pamphlet of about one hundred pages, printed in London and dedicated, by permission, to the Bishop of Oxford, on the nature of the intercourse which is desirable between the Church of England and the Oriental Churches. The effect of establishing this bishopric in Syria upon our mission in that country must depend in great measure upon the personal character of the Bishop; but it is beyond question, so far as the parties in England are concerned, that the whole operation is based upon high, exclusive, church principles; though the impression we first had connecting it with Puseyism, (which grew out of a letter, apparently of high authority, from a distinguished Puseyite, published in the London 'Times' newspaper) is not sustained, I am happy to say, by the official documents. These documents declare the Bishop's missionary duties to relate chiefly to the Jews. He is himself, as is well known, a converted Jew."
Added to the above grounds, several instances of their unfriendliness to him and to his work, and of their unwarrantable sectarian proceedings among the Armenians, as related to me by the Rev. H. Southgate, confirmed me in the opinion that I ought to hold no intercourse with them, and decided me not to return the visits which one or two of the missionaries obligingly paid me, though I did not see them, being absent at the time. In thus acting I did violence to my own natural feelings, for I had been personally acquainted with these gentlemen years before, and held them in high esteem for their uniform kindness and other excellent qualities. But I had a duty to perform for the Church,—I was commissioned by my superiors to seek intercourse with the heads of the Eastern communities, and to make known to them, not only our good-will towards them, but our doctrines and constitution, and I sacrificed my feelings to what I deemed to be a solemn and imperative obligation. For how could I rightly perform the latter, if at the same time friendly intercourse with those who were doing all in their power to create schisms in the Churches, pointed me out as their associate? or how could I justify such intercourse with my repeated expositions and assurances to them that the Independents were not of us, but originally Separatists from the Church of England, and held doctrines widely differing from our own? It was impossible; and any such fellowship on my part would have been hollow and insincere. And why should the Independents object that their peculiar doctrines should be made known to the Eastern Churches? If true, he who exposes them will serve as their minister; and if false, the sooner they abandon them and return to the Catholic faith of their ancestors the better. If the differences which separate us are as trifling as they would make them, then their continuance in schism is the greater sin, and they must feel persuaded that, if united with us, their work would be far more likely to be blessed among the Christians of the East.
Let it not for a moment be thought that any ill-will has dictated the above. As a body of men the American Independents are exemplary in their lives and conversation, and my heart's desire is that they may see the great hindrance which their continued separation causes to the success of Eastern missions, and be led to join with us in the confession of "one Lord, one faith, one baptism."
During our stay in Constantinople the American dissenting missionaries had made little progress among the Armenians, but they have since succeeded, chiefly, I regret to say, through the influence of England, in getting their proselytes to be recognised by the Porte as a separate sect called "Protestants," and the number of their adherents from the same community is said to be increasing, especially in Aintâb near Aleppo, and in other places. Here, then, we see the ultimate result of their plans, though they have loudly affirmed that it was not their design to create schism. However sincerely such assertions were made, they must at once be regarded as puerile in the extreme; since professing, as they do, to reject such doctrines as the mysterious efficacy of the sacraments, episcopacy, the use of a ritual, appointed festivals and fasts, and to hold in the place of these the unlimited right of every individual to choose his own creed from the Holy Scriptures, they are bound in all honesty to teach that the former are errors or irrelevant to salvation, and that the latter is the safer and more excellent way. And can it be supposed that proselytes to these views would themselves remain, or be permitted by their clergy to remain, in communion with their native Churches?
But if the principles of dissent are unscriptural, so are they also opposed to the genius and sympathies of the oriental mind. Up to the present time, no one form of republicanism in religion has ever arisen in the East; and I am fully persuaded that the present partial success of the Independents will be ephemeral, or lead eventually to the spread of a pernicious rationalism wherever their tenets meet with acceptance. They may succeed in spreading abroad a vast amount of secular knowledge through the medium of their schools, and may bring up many eastern youths to argue and to dispute, but the good, if any, will rest here. Trained like their masters, to respect no authority in matters of faith but their own individual judgment upon the text of Scripture, and united to each other by no other bond than that of a common rejection of some of the errors of their parent Churches, the proselytes can never exist in a compact community, exhibit the outward order and life of a branch of the heavenly vine, or "grow up into Him in all things which is the Head, even Christ, from whom the whole body fitly joined together and compacted, by that which every joint supplieth, according to the effectual working in the measure of every part, maketh increase of the body unto the edifying of itself in love." I had some conversation with several of their principal converts, who called upon me of their own accord in Beyroot and Aleppo as late as 1850, and the truth of the above remarks forced itself upon me. Talk of the infallibility of the Pope! these youngmen seemed to lay claim to inspiration, and decided what was truth and what was error with the assurance of Apostles. Another thing which struck me also in their conduct, was the importance which they attached to Protestantism, by which I mean the bare rejection of certain doctrines held to be true by the communities from which they had seceded. Theirs was evidently a religion of negation; for, these errors discarded, it did not appear with them a matter of much importance what truths were embraced and what were rejected. As to all outward forms and sacred rites, these they looked upon with contempt, and it made one's heart sick to hear these children of yesterday treat with scorn and derision things which their forefathers and the holy Church throughout the world had revered from the beginning of Christianity.
Sad, sad indeed, is it to think what the necessary consequences of such teaching must be! The leaven has already begun to work, and unless stayed in its progress, will sooner or later taint the Eastern Churches with a latitudinarianism and rationalism, far more pernicious than the errors and superstitions with which they have so long defaced the pure truths of the Gospel. It is time indeed, that the Church of England should awake to a sense of her responsibilities towards the East, from which she first received a knowledge of Christ, and to emulate the zeal of the Independents, whose large band of missionaries, extensive scholastic establishments, and sumptuous residences, betoken an earnestness and liberality worthy of our imitation.
During our stay at the capital I was honoured with several interviews with Sir Stratford Canning, whose courtesy and friendliness I shall ever remember with gratitude. He was then as since, doing all in his power to obtain an amelioration of the condition of the Christians in Turkey, and his benevolent efforts have not been in vain. Unswerving in his integrity, firm in his just demands, and spurning the questionable expediency of ordinary diplomatists, he has wrought for himself a name for uprightness and inflexibility of purpose and principle which even the lax Turks have learned to honour and to applaud.
The hot season having set in before our preparations for departure were fully made, we decided to remain at Constantinople, where for the space of three months, I had frequent opportunities, in company with Mr. Southgate, of conversing with many of the Greek and Armenian Clergy, and of explaining to them the doctrine and discipline of the English Church. For the reasons already given, they were profoundly ignorant of us, and in most cases looked upon us as a sect of Protestants, differing little, if at all, from the Independents. It has appeared to me, that, if a treatise were written with the sanction of our Bishops at home, and dedicated to the Patriarchs and other clergy of the East, in which our Church and her relations to other Churches should be fully explained, the effect thereof would greatly tend to remove the many suspicions, misconceptions, and erroneous notions, which at present exist among them in regard to ourselves. The following should be among the points treated of:—History of the foundation of the British Churches; the commencement of Papal domination; the different conduct of our Church under the Papal yoke; causes which led to a reform; the Reformation explained and vindicated; the doctrines and corrupt practices which were then discarded; why others not corrupt were suspended or disallowed; an exposition of our faith as contained in the Creeds, Articles, Rituals, Homilies, and Canons; causes of our little intercourse with the Oriental Churches, arising out of our former subjection to the Pope, the Reformation and subsequent events, extensive colonies to provide for, our isolated position, &c.; attempts formerly made to bring about communion with the holy Eastern Church: these altogether distinct from the late efforts of Dissenters which are not recognized by our Church; what are the religious principles of Dissenters in the United States and in England; the Church of America shown to be a sister Church; our amicable designs and wishes on behalf of the Eastern Churches; the blessings which may be anticipated by a re-union of the East and West, &c. I am persuaded that a work of this kind would be well received, extensively read, and be productive of much general good.
So numerous are the published journals now-a-days of travellers who have visited Constantinople, that I must refer the reader to them for a full account of the modern Byzantium. Its unrivalled situation and genial atmosphere, its sea-river lined with sumptuous palaces and sylvan valleys, its Golden Horn traversed by many a light caïque, its magnificent mosques, and extensive cemeteries, over which forests of cypress throw a perpetual shade, its gaudy and rich bazaars, crowded with merchants and spectators from every eastern clime, all these deserve a detailed description; but this task I must leave to others and betake me to my onward journey.