The Persian Church and Its Missionary Work.

The Christians of Mesopotamia at first were under the authority of the Patriarch of Antioch. Since their country was part of Persia, it became necessary for them to have an independent head of their own church. This primate, or catholicos as he was called, resided from the beginning of the fifth century in what was then the capital of the Persian Empire, the huge twin city of Seleucia-Ctesiphon on the Tigris. A synod held in this city in 424 affirmed the independence of the new church from the Patriarch of Antioch. In matters of dogma, too, the Persian Church henceforth went its own way and officially espoused the doctrines of Nestorius. When in 489 the Eastern Roman emperor closed down the theological school of Edessa, the teachers fled to Persian territory. The vast expanses of the Persian Empire, which included the Land of the Two Rivers between Euphrates and Tigris, and all the land from Armenia to the Persian Gulf, offered the Nestorians an enormous field for missionary work. What was more, the political and commercial ties of Persia extended into central Asia and India. The Nestorians profited so well by the chance thus offered to them that from the seventh to the eleventh centuries the Nestorian Church had spread over more territory than any other Christian Church; it held sway over an area many times that of the Western Catholic Church. Its twenty-seven metropolitanates and thirty-two dioceses, containing many millions of believers, stretched from eastern Syria across Mesopotamia and Iran eastward as far as South India, southwest as far as Arabia. Yemen, too, belonged to the Persian Empire in those days, and in the capital of Sana and on the island of Sokotra, Nestorian bishops continued to be active down to the tenth century. Their influence upon the still-pagan Arabs was very considerable. Modern research has shown beyond a doubt that Muhammad, the founder of Islam, was deeply influenced by Nestorian teachings.

Throughout the whole period of the Sassanid dynasty the Persian Church was never a state Church in the same sense as the Church of the Byzantine Empire. Rather, it was consistently persecuted by the Sassanid rulers, who were themselves followers of the ancient Zoroastrian religion. A measure of reconciliation and toleration was attained under King Yazdegerd I (399-420). But its very history of persecution kept the Nestorian Church spiritually mobile and sharpened its sense of mission.

Later, when Mohammedanism came to eastern Syria and Mesopotamia, the Nestorian Church suffered severe numerical losses, but the ecclesiastical organization never crumbled. In fact, the Nestorians were the one Christian community toward whom the Muslims showed some favor. When the seat of Islam's caliph was transferred to Baghdad, the Nestorian catholicos also repaired there. He was considered the spokesman for all the Christians in the caliph's domains; that is to say, his position corresponded with that assigned to the Byzantine Patriarch in the Ottoman Empire after the fall of Constantinople.

The Nestorians of the caliphate became teachers, physicians and transmitters of the Greek classical heritage. They translated classical and Hellenistic philosophical, medical and scientific works. They paved the way for the Muslim Arabs to take over the heritage of Greek culture and science. This cultural work on the part of Nestorian Christianity was of the highest and most far-reaching importance, for after Greek philosophy and science had spread through the Islamic Orient it found its way back to Europe via the Moorish culture of Sicily and especially Spain. When the Latin Middle Ages rediscovered the works of Aristotle and of so many Greek scientists and physicians through Latin translations from the Arabic, they were receiving back the heritage that Oriental Christendom had transmitted to the Arabs during the sixth and seventh centuries. In those early centuries, too, Christianity had also spread over Transoxiana to Herat, Samarkand and China.

During the Islamic period Nestorian culture was centered in three cities: Nisibis, Gunde-Shapur and Merv. Nisibis was the site of a famous theological school founded by the Persian Narses — the creators of Syrian culture were for the most part of Persian origin. In Gunde-Shapur there arose a medical school that played a great part in the development of Arabic medicine. Merv, finally, was the principal cultural center for Transoxiana under the Sassanids. In the course of the Christianization of this country, numerous Christian works were translated into the language of the Sogdians, whose real homeland was the region around Samarkand and Bokhara, but who had early spread as far as Chinese Turkestan; there is evidence that the Sogdian literary language was in use in those parts in the second half of the first millennium. In translating the great body of Christian literature into this tongue, a modified form of the Syrian-Nestorian script was used.

Syrian culture continued to thrive during the period of Arab domination. In addition to theologians, the Nestorians produced great philosophers, physicians, jurists, historians and grammarians. The Nestorian doctors who were the caliph's personal physicians even wielded a certain amount of political influence, especially in the days of Harun-alRashid and his two successors. Frequently the caliphs entrusted high government offices to Christians.

Nestorian asceticism underwent curious changes, in consequence of the fact that marriage was highly prized in the Zoroastrian state religion of the Persian Empire and celibacy regarded as a religious crime. The Persian state passed numerous decrees penalizing monks and bishops for their celibacy. In the fifth century an anti-ascetic movement sprang up within the Nestorian Church. The canones of 485 gave monks the right to marry if they were not able to maintain a state of celibacy. At a council held in 499 it was decided that patriarchs and bishops might marry once, whereas the lower clergy were even permitted a second marriage. In the sixth century there was a reaction against the marriage of higher church dignitaries. The synod of 545 forbade the election of married persons as bishops or patriarchs. At the beginning of the same century a Mesopotamian monk named Abraham was sent from Kashkar to Egypt to study Egyptian monasticism. Upon returning home he set up a strict monastic order modeled upon Egyptian practices, and henceforth became known as the “Father of monks.” This reorganization of monasticism led to a fresh missionary drive.

The Nestorian anchorite movement seems to have spread to the heart of central Asia, for Cosmas Indicopleustes, the sixth-century Egyptian geographer, mentions monks and hesychasts[7] among the Bactrians, Huns, Indians, Perso-Armenians, Medes and Elamites. In the ninth century the Muslim dynasties of Persian origin, chief among which was the dynasty of the Samanids (874-999), penetrated central Asia. In accounts of Arabic writers of the Samanid period we find mention of the spread of Christianity in the region around Samarkand. In that area, however, Christianity had a formidable rival in Manichaeanism, which became established especially among the stable population of east Turkestan, who were more highly civilized than the nomadic Turkish tribes. But Christianity also gained ground among the Turkish tribesmen of central Asia. When the Muslim ilkhans began to rule in east and west Turkestan — from the end of the tenth century on — Christians were no longer oppressed. Samarkand remained the seat of a Nestorian metropolitan.

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