The Syrian Churches/The Jacobites

by John Wesley Etheridge

 

THE JACOBITES.

 

When Nestorius promulgated his doctrine of two persons in the Redeemer, he had not a more zealous antagonist than Eutyches, an archimandrite of a monastery of three hundred monks, near Constantinople. But while prosecuting his opposition to that erroneous dogma, Eutyches himself was carried away by a too common tendency of our nature to run into extremes, and became, in his own turn, the author and advocate of a new heresy. In contending for the oneness of the person of Christ, he began to teach that the two natures in that one person were so blended as to have become one nature; or, in other words, that the humanity of our Saviour had, by some mysterious process, been transmuted into, or identified with, his divine nature.

It will not consist with our brief limits to discuss the demerits of this particular opinion, nor to detail minutely the progress of the controversy occasioned by it. He who has received the plain teachings of the inspired volume regarding the person of our Lord, will learn a salutary lesson on the infirmity of the human mind, and its proneness to err in things spiritual, from the fact, that an idea at once so contrary to the letter of scripture, and the general economy of redemption, should have had an advocate, in other points of character, so respectable.

[Observe how emphatically the distinctness of the two natures is enunciated in such passages as Rom. i. 3; 1 Peter iii. 18; Heb. ix. 14; John i. 14; Phil. ii. 6, 7; Col. ii. 9, &c.

[It would follow from the Eutychian doctrine, that the Messiah not being really man with men, and physically incapable of death, could not have redeemed our nature by the atonement;^[1] nor would he have that eternal sympathy with his church which is so graciously made known to us in the gospel. Compare Heb. ix. 12; vii. 24; and iv. 15.]

The defection of Eutyches from the truth was made a subject of complaint at an occasional synod at Constantinople, by the same Eusebius, then bishop of Dorylea, who while a layman had taken so active a part in repressing the heresy of Nestorius. Summoned before this assembly, and declaring his unchangeable determination to abide by the position he had taken, the archimandrite was degraded, and deprived of his abbey.

The flames of polemical animosity were now kindled afresh. Eutyches had a multitude of partisans both in Constantinople and the East, at the head of whom was Dioscorus, bishop of Alexandria, and successor of St. Cyril. This dignitary prevailed on the emperor to summon a general council for the purpose of allaying the returning troubles of the church; and an assembly was convened at Ephesus, which, from its heterodox decisions, its determined partiality to Eutyches, who was absolved from his penalties, and its brutal treatment of Flavian, the patriarch by whom he was deposed, and who died of the ill usage in a few days, has been denominated in ecclesiastical history the "piratical synod,"—prædatorius synodus.

Theodosius, prejudiced in favour of the new opinion, was in vain requested by the bishop of Rome to indicate another general assembly to revise the proceedings at Ephesus. Marcian, however, who was soon after called to the throne, with greater zeal complied with the Papal requisition, and summoned around him the fourth ecumenical council in the church of St. Euphemia, at Chalcedon.

In this assembly, which convened on the 8th of October, 457, and consisted of six hundred and thirty bishops, the acts of the Ephesian synod were rescinded, the teaching of Eutyches formally condemned, and a symbolical declaration of the true doctrine on the subject in question set forth for the use of the church.

Yet these decisions were far from giving universal satisfaction. There was a numerous party in the East, not unaptly characterized as Demi-Eutychians, who, while they did not agree with that doctor in one of his errors, that the flesh of Jesus Christ was not consubstantial with our own, held fast, nevertheless, his primary idea of the one nature; and on this account they soon obtained the name of Monophysites.^[2]

The principal seat of the agitation which succeeded the council of Chalcedon was the church of Alexandria. There the deposition of the patriarch Dioscorus, on account of the part he had taken with Eutyches, was followed by a train of proceedings which have dishonoured the annals of that communion with treachery, violence, and bloodshed. And as it regards the Oriental church at large, it may be said, that the discussions and turbulencies of this, along with the yet unsubsided Nestorian, controversy, convulsed it in its length and breadth, and produced disruptions and schisms that have never been repaired.

The Monophysites not only waged a strife with the catholic, or orthodox, on the great topic of this controversy, but were so ill agreed among themselves, as to be speedily marshalled into various divisions and subdivisions of theological sectarianism; such as, 1. The Eutychians, properly so called, who denied the literal reality of the human nature of our Lord, and were, on this ground, sometimes called by the revived names of Phantasmists and Docetæ.

2. The Acephali; those who, having separated themselves from the existing patriarchal authorities, were as yet without a settled church status; having, as the term applied to them means, no ecclesiastical head.

3. The Julianists; from their leader, Julian of Halicarnassus, whose distinguishing tenet was the incorruptibility of the flesh of Christ. And these, more strictly described, branched into three parties: (1.) The first held that the body of our Saviour was a created substance, but incorruptible, on account, of its immaculate conception. (2.) The second affirmed, that the body of Christ, from the moment of its immaculate conception, was not only incorruptible, but uncreated; while, (3.) The third party asserted, that the sacred body might in itself have been corruptible, but was never corrupted, by virtue of its union with the Word incarnate.

4. The Theopaschitæ; who, as a consequence of the Eutychian view, believed that the divine nature of our Saviour underwent the passion which atoned for sin.

5. The Severians; followers of Severus, or Souarios, a distinguished Monophysite leader,^[3] who, by the patronage of the emperor Anastasius, had been intruded into the patriarchal see of Antioch. With respect to the doctrine of the Trinity, he confounded person with nature, and taught a species of tritheism. His partisans, however, had several variations or shades of opinion. There were, (1.) The Damianitæ, who held that the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, were distinct persons; each not God in himself, but God by participation in a common divine nature. (2.) The Petritæ, sectators of Peter of Antioch, who professed to believe that each person in the blessed Trinity is in himself God, by independent nature, substance, and individuality; and with these merely symbolized, (3.) The Cononitæ, or followers of Conon, bishop of Tarsus; while, (4.) The Philoponiaci, so called from Philoponus, a schoolman of Alexandria, holding the same views with the Peterites on the Trinity, differed from them on several other points of doctrine. (5.) The Agnoëtæ, or Ignorantians, who held, with respect to the second person of the Trinity, that though all things were known to him, yet, on account of his hypostatical union with our humanity, he willed to be ignorant of some things. (6.) The Condobauditæ, (from the place where they were mostly found,) who attributed ignorance to Christ, and denied the co-equality of the three persons in the Godhead. Besides these, there were the followers of Paul the Black, the Sergiani, the Nicobitæ, and other sub-sects, which it would be useless to enumerate.

This painful anarchy of docrine, with the manifold evils attendant upon it, continued to afflict and desolate the church for more than seventy years. During this time, though the authority of the council of Chalcedon was resolutely maintained by a minority, and often a small one, of faithful men, the Eutychian, or rather Monophysite, cause, by the success of factious intrigue and the partiality of the emperors, held sway over nearly the entire East. The emperor Basilicus compelled no less than five hundred bishops to condemn the creed of Chalcedon; while the Henoticon, or Irenical Decree, of Zeno, though in words condemnatory both of Nestorius and Eutyches, maintained a silence on the authority of that council, which was considered as equivalent to at least a toleration of its opponents. At one period during the reign of Zeno, the three great patriarchates were held by men of avowedly heretical sentiments; Moggos, or Mongos, at Alexandria, Acacius at Constantinople, and Peter the Fuller at Antioch. Anastasius also, on coming to the throne, made it one of the leading objects of his administration to establish the Monophysite interest, and with such vigorous effect, that most of the oriental prelates gave in their adherence to the dominant heresy; nor was it till the time of Justinian, who attained the imperial dignity in 527, that the down-trodden cause of truth was relieved of its accumulated oppressions. But at that epoch a better clay seemed to have dawned for the church. The advocates for the early faith were once more permitted to defend it openly before its enemies, and the result, as at Constantinople, was the confutation of error. At the fifth general council, the decisions of Chalcedon harmonizing with the three which had preceded it, were solemnly recognised; while peace, in holy unison with truth, once more returned to the majority of the oriental churches.

It was then that the communion since known by the name of Yakóbee, or Jacobites, began to be consolidated from the various sectaries who held to the Monophysite doctrine in Syria, and the countries on the Tigris and Euphrates, This was brought about mainly by the agency of Jacob Zanzala, a monk who had been a zealous disciple of Severus. Jacob is sometimes known by the cognomen of Al Bardai, which was given him, according to D'Herbelot, from the circumstance of his wearing a garment fabricated of a species of stuff, similar to felt, which the Arabs call barda; though others consider it as derived from the name of Bardaa, the city in Armenia of which it is said he was a native. He commenced his labours at a time (about a.d. 550) when the interests of Monophysitism had been reduced to a very low ebb; and his ordination to the episcopal office was received, according to tradition, from the hands of certain bishops of his sect, then in prison by the force of the imperial edict.^[4] Having been authorised by them, he fulfilled the duties of a missionary prelate in various parts of Syria and Mesopotamia, in zealously preaching what he believed to be the truth, in the settlement of congregations, the ordination of presbyters and bishops, and the organization of a united ecclesiastical system.

Here, then, we are to draw a line of distinction between the Monophysites in general, and the Jacobite church in particular. The latter, as a specific communion, was consolidated in Syria and Mesopotamia; but the theological dogma of the one nature has been held in common with them by multitudes in the patriarchates of Constantinople, Alexandria, and Ech-miazin.

The Jacobites have always protested against being considered followers of Eutyches. But while they profess to anathematize that heresiarch, they merely reject some minor opinions of his, and hold fast his great distinguishing error of the absorption of the humanity of our Saviour in his divine nature. They think, that, in the incarnation, from two natures there resulted one. In other words, they believe that the Redeemer does not possess two natures, but one, composed of two: (ex duabus naturis, non in duabus; id est, ex duabus in unum coalescentibus, non duabus remanentibus:) illustrating their dogma in this way,—"Glass is made of sand; but the whole is only glass, no longer sand: thus, the divine nature of Christ has absorbed the human, so as that the two are become one."

There have been those among them, indeed, who have pursued a kind of middle path between Eutychianism and orthodoxy. Of this school was the celebrated Xenayas, or Philoxenus, bishop of Mabug, whose name has been given to the later Syriac version of the New Testament. Xenayas, in a book ܥܰܠ ܡܶܬܓܰܫܡܳܢܽܘܬܳܐ‎ Al Methgashmonutho, "On the Incarnation," maintains the existence in Christ of one nature, composed of the divinity and humanity, but without conversion, confusion, or commixture. He teaches that the Son, one of the Trinity, united himself with a human body and a rational soul, in the womb of the virgin. His body had no being before this union. In this he was born, in it he was nourished, in it he suffered and died. Yet the divine nature of the Son did not suffer or die. Nor was his human nature, or his agency, or death, merely visionary, as the Phantasmists taught, but actual and real. Moreover, the divine nature was not changed or transmuted into the human, or commixed or confused therewith; neither was the human nature converted into the divine, nor commixed or confused with it; but an adunation of the two natures took place, of a mode equivalent to that which, by the union of body and soul, makes a human being: for as the soul and body are united in one human nature, so, from the union of the Godhead and manhood of our Lord Jesus Christ, there has arisen a nature peculiar to itself; not simple, but complex; ܚܰܕ ܟܝܳܢܳܐ ܥܦܺܝܦܳܐ‎ chad kyono ephipho, "one double nature," which he designates by employing a (perhaps ill-judged) phrase of St. Cyril's, "the one only nature of the Word Incarnate."

Xenayas, therefore, and a numerous class of the Jacobite divines with him, receded in this doctrine equally from the Eutychians and the Catholics:—From the old Eutychians, in maintaining that the flesh of the Saviour taken from the virgin was actual and real, and united with his Deity, without confusion, change, or division; but from the orthodox as well, in teaching that, after the union, the two natures were no longer two, but one, composed of two.

[The Eutychians, and Monophysites in general, had a manner of speaking of the human nature of our Lord, which implied that it had an actual existence prior to the incarnation of the Word. This was well animadverted upon by St. Leo, in his admirable letter to Flavian of Constantinople, at an early stage of the controversy; where he observes, that it was scarcely a less blasphemy to say, that before his advent the Redeemer had two natures, than to say, that after it he possessed but one.]

The view of Xenayas appears to be that still taken of this mysterious subject by the ecclesiastics of the Jacobite communion at the present day. The laity, as among the Nestorians, and all other fallen churches, enter but rarely into the examination of religious doctrines, content with passively receiving the instruction sparingly enough inculcated by their priests. On the topic in question, they have some imperfect idea that the Saviour is God and man in the same nature; a mystery which they indicate by making the sign of the cross with only the middle finger of their hand, holding the others so as to render them invisible.

The Jacobites believe in the personality and Deity of the Holy Spirit; but, in common with the Greek church, deny his procession from the Son. Yet there have been some among them who have asserted that truth. In the parts of their service-books which relate to the Holy Ghost, they say, in reference to that Divine Person, "Who from thee, O Father, proceedeth, and taketh of (or from) thy Son."

With respect to the sacraments, it has been generally said, that the Jacobites hold the septenary number, like the Romanists. But this must be taken in a qualified sense, as they have no distinct service of confirmation, nor do they use extreme unction, unless it be sometimes imparted to members of the priesthood. Auricular confession, too, is scarcely known among them.^[5] And in the eucharist, while they profess to recognise the real presence, it must not be understood in the Papite sense of transubstantiation, but the presence of the Saviour which accompanies, in an undescribed manner, the elements of the bread and wine: a species of consubstantiation, illustrated by Bar Salib,^[6] under the idea of iron in union with fire, and receiving from it the properties of light and heat, while its own nature remains unaltered. So also Bar Hebræus, adopting an explication, probably from the Nestorians, says, "As the humanity of the Lord, not by [its own] nature, but on account of its union with the divine nature, is called God; so this bread and wine, not being flesh and blood by nature, but (metul Taibutho da-rucho da-alaihun) on account of the grace of the Spirit which is upon them, are called the body and blood of Christ." And again: "We call the bread and the wine, because of the Spirit's grace, the body and blood of God, (lau ba-kyono,) not by nature, but from their union with God."^[7]

In the administration of the eucharist they use newly-made unleavened bread, commixed with salt and oil; and the communion is not restricted to one kind. But most commonly the cake is dipped into the wine, as among the Nestorians.

In the administration of baptism, the old Jacobites are reported to have signed the child in the face, or the arm, with the figure of the cross by the imprint of a burning iron.^[8]

They pray, as the other Syrians, for the dead, but deny the doctrine of purgatory.

The Jacobites of Syria and Mesopotamia have a traditionary belief, that they are lineally descended from the first Hebrew Christians. Dr. Wolff, speaking on this point, says: "They call themselves the Bnee Israel, 'the children of Israel,' whose ancestors were converted by the apostle James. There cannot be the least doubt, that their claim to being the descendants of the Jewish Christians of old is just. Their physiognomy, mode of worship, their attachment to the Mosaic law, their liturgy, their tradition, so similar to the Jewish, the technical terms in their theology,—all prove that they are real descendants of Abraham."^[9]

The clergy of the Jacobite church are constituted on the model of a perfect hierarchy. Extremely tenacious of their ecclesiastical status in this particular, they glory in an apostolical succession from St. Peter as the first bishop of Antioch, and exhibit what they hold to be an unbroken series of more than an hundred and eighty bishops of that see from his day to our own. But without insisting upon the fact, that the tendency of authentic history is opposed to the assertion that St. Peter was ever bishop of Antioch, it may be observed, that could his episcopate there be established, the Jacobites, as a specific body ecclesiastic, date from a period more than five hundred years after the death of that apostle. The earliest bishop of Antioch whom they can rightfully consider as a chief pastor, is Severus, surreptitiously intruded upon that patriarchate by the emperor Anastasius; and who, tried by the test of proper ecclesiastical law, would be found to have had but a dubious title to the episcopal dignity at all. Their orders, moreover, have never been cleared of the suspicion thrown upon their genuineness by the statements of the historians Maris and Amrus, that Jacob Al Bardai, being only a simple presbyter, gave ordination, nevertheless, to a multitude both of priests and bishops.^[10] But upon controverted topics of this kind it is not our province to enter. The subject of a succession of individuals, each duly qualified for, and legitimately constituted in, the episcopal office from any of the apostles downwards, when examined with even a merely canonical exactness, to say nothing of a scriptural judgment, becomes a labyrinth of difficulties: and it would seem that Divine Providence had so overruled or permitted certain events in the history of all churches which have made such a claim, as to confound the pretensions of those who are disposed to glory in the adventitious externals of Christianity, rather than in its intrinsic spiritual and immutable excellences.

In the Jacobite communion the ministerial orders, beginning with the lowest, are as follow:—

1. The janitor, acolyte, and exorcist. These are conferred, without imposition of hands, by a simple commission of the bishop; and to them maybe added the rab-baitho da-idtho, or steward of the church, and the meshamshonitho, or deaconess.

2. The mazmorono, or singer; the koruyo, reader; phelguth-mashamshono, the half-deacon; mashamshono, the deacon; and rish-mashamshonee, "head of the deacons," or archdeacon.

3. Kashisho or koheno, the presbyter or priest, the chorepiscopus, and the periodeutes, or visitor.

4. The bishop; metropolitan, maphrian; and abo darishonee, "father of the chiefs," or patriarch.

Those in the third class are by the same ordination; the same is true of the higher dignitaries of the fourth, with the addition of a few circumstantials.

In the ordination of a bishop, the person elected reads a confession of faith in the presence of the patriarch and of two or three bishops, who perform the entire ceremony, no priest or deacon assisting. A portion of the gospel is read upon the head of the elect, after which is the investiture with the episcopal habits, namely, ܡܰܨܝܰܧܬܳܐ‎ matsyaphtho, the robe, or vestment, of wrought linen, the ܟܽܘܟܽܠܘܢܳܐ‎ black hood, ܦܰܝܢܳܐ‎ phaino, the mantle, and ܐܽܘܪܳܪܳܐ‎ urroro, the stole or pallium. The Maronite bishops wore formerly the ring, the cross on the breast, and the mitre; but these latter decorations have never been in use among the Jacobites. The imposition of hands then takes place, preceded by a thanksgiving from one of the bishops, and followed by the annunciation of the patriarch, who signs the newly ordained in the forehead, and proclaims his ordination as bishop or metropolitan of such a church or diocese: another lesson from the gospel is then recited by the new bishop, who receives at the conclusion the episcopal staff.

The ܡܰܦܪܝܳܢܳܐ‎ maphriono, holds a dignity peculiar to the Jacobite church. He takes precedence next to the patriarch. The Syrian writers deduce this office from that sustained by the disciples of the apostles, Adæus, Achæus, and Mari. The name itself some consider to be a corruption of ܡܰܠܦܳܢܳܐ‎ malphono, a doctor; but others, with a greater appearance of correctness, derive it from ܐܰܦܪܝ‎ aphri, a word designative of fruitfulness, and suggesting the idea of paternity; the maphrian being considered as a bishop of bishops, or a pater patrum. In former days his power was all but supreme. He instituted episcopal sees, ordained and deposed bishops, and discharged in general those pontifical functions in the regions to the East, which the patriarch himself undertook in the West. But the office in the present day is merely titular.

The patriarch is elected by lot, in a synod of the maphrian and bishops, the consecration being performed by the senior members of the episcopal college. His style, or dignity, as proclaimed at his enthronement, is "patriarch of the city of Antioch, and of the whole domain of the apostolic see;" and in his epistolary and official communications, "Ignatius, patriarch of Antioch, the city of God, and of the whole East." The name Ignatius, after the illustrious martyr of Antioch, has been assumed ever since the year 878. The patriarchal residence has been variously at Mabug, Mardeen, Rhesa, Caramit or Amida, and Alep; but it is now generally at the convent of Deyr Safran, at Merdeen. The maphrian has lived usually at Tagrit, Nineveh, Mosul, and Bagdad. After the East became subject to the Mahometans, the Jacobite patriarch, like the Nestorian, commonly received from the khalif, sultan, or other regnant potentate, a charter or diploma, called by Bar Hebræus, ܣܝܺܔܝܺܠܝܳܘܢ‎ sigilion, by which he was confirmed and protected in his authority.

Some of the Jacobite patriarchs have at various times entered into communion with the see of Rome. The first who did this was Ignatius, in 1552, who sent his profession to pope Julius III. It was at the same time that Moses, a priest of Mardeen, brought the manuscript of the Peschito New Testament into Europe for the purpose of procuring a printed edition of it. The example of that Ignatius was afterwards followed by Ign. Juchanon, Ign. Daoud, Ign. Nahemus, Ign. Andreas, and Ign. Petros, patriarchs, and by Gregory, metropolitan of Damascus, Ignatius, bishop of Alep, and Taizonius, bishop of Jerusalem;^[11] but few of these "reconciliations" were permanent. The congregations which have been converted to Romanism, are designated by the steadfast Jacobites, Maghlobeen, the "Beaten," or "Conquered."^[12]

When will something be attempted by our Protestant Missionary Societies for the true evangelization of this venerable church?

 

1. Fleury relates an anecdote of Almondar, a Saracen, who had been converted to Christianity, and who, being urged by certain Monophysites to come over to their way of thinking, resisted them on one occasion by the following argument: "He said, 'I have received letters which send me information that the archangel Michael is dead.' 'That,' cried they, 'is impossible.' Almondar replied: 'And how, then, if Jesus Christ had been simply Divine, without having our human nature, could he have been crucified for us, if, as you say, even an angel is incapable of dying?'"
2. From μονος, "single," and φυσις, "nature."
3. See notices of him in Evagrii Hist. Eccles. lib. iii. cap. 33, and Fleury, tom. vii. 182.
4. The ordination of Jacob to the episcopate has been questioned. Renaudot, on the authority of Marus and Amrus, affirms, that while ordaining bishops and presbyters, he himself was no more than a simple priest.
5. Brerewood, chap. xxi.
6. In Matt. xxvii. [Codd. Syr. Clement. Vatic. 10, fol. 29.]
7. Bar Hebræus, Menorath Kudshee, or the "Lamp of the Saints," fundam. vi. sect. 2.
8. So Brerewood, but on what authority he does not state. ("Inquiries," p. 188.) With regard to baptism, they believe that the Holy Spirit descends into the water, and regenerates the subject of the ordinance. The face of the child, or person, is turned toward the East, and a triple affusion of water is made by the left hand of the priest. Chrism is added to baptism, and confirmation follows after seven days.
9. Journal, 1839. Saligniac, in his Itinerary, viii. c. 1, asserts that in his day they still used circumcision.
10. Antiocheni Jacobitarum patriarchæ, quamvis successionem habent propriorum ex sua hæresi antistitum, ea tamen non adeò certa est, quum Severus Antiochenus et Jacobus Baradæus multas contra communem ecclesiæ disciplinam ordinationes celebrassent, quarum validitas in dubium vocari poterat. Et sanè parùm commodè sensisse de illis Nestorianos testantur Maris et Amrus, qui Jacobum Baradæum simplicem sacerdotem fuisse scribunt; ordinasse tamen episcopos et sacerdotes bis millenos et amplius.—Renaudot, Liturg. Orient. tom. i. p. 365.
11. Evodius Assemanni, Biblioth. Mediceæ.
12. The Jacobites mostly abound in Mesopotamia, especially about Mosul and Mardeen. In Palestine there are scarcely any. There are a few families in Damascus and in Nebk, the villages of Sudud and Karysteen: small congregations also subsist in Hooms, Hamah, and Aleppo. In Jerusalem they have a monastic house and a resident bishop. Exclusive of those in Malabar, their entire number does not probably exceed 150,000 souls.