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CHAPTER 1
The Ancient Christian Community
1. Initial Evangelization and Formation of the Church of the East
Tradition has it that Christianity first arrived in the region during the first and second centuries AD through the preaching of St. Thomas the Apostle, and then his disciples Addai and Mari. This tradition is commonly held from Upper Mesopotamia (Osroene, Nineveh, Hatra, and Adiabene) through Lower Mesopotamia (SeleuciaCtesiphon, Babylon, and Basra), and the territory of the Parthian Empire of the Arsacids (247 BC–224 AD), which was east of the Euphrates and extended from the Tigris into Media and Persia. As early as the Acts of the Apostles, we read that among those who heard the preaching at Pentecost in their own language were "residents of Mesopotamia" (Acts 2:9). This cultural memory, or tradition, of Thomas the Apostle and his disciples bringing the Gospel to the region, and from there moving into southern Mesopotamia, had already taken root by the third century and was reported by Eusebius of Caesarea (265–340 AD) in his Ecclesiastical History. The roads to Mesopotamia, starting at the Syrian coast and Damascus, pass through Aleppo on their way to Edessa and Nisibis. Here they could be taken north, into the heart of Anatolia, eastward into the Parthian Empire, or south to Nineveh, Abril, Seleucia-Ctesiphon, and finally to Babylon. The alternative route follows the Euphrates, running through Dura-Europos and along the present Iraqi-Syrian border — which was then where the Roman and Parthian empires met — and enters Mesopotamia from the west, following a southeastern course. The remains of an early Christian house-church in Dura-Europos, found along with fragments of scrolls containing eucharistic prayers, suggest Christian communities were already living there by the second and third centuries. These roads were crisscrossed by armies, traders' caravans, and evangelizers. Sadly, they were also well used, even then, by those fleeing war and devastation, even entire displaced populations. Seleucia-Ctesiphon, the twin cities on the Tigris that were first the Arsacid and then the Sasanian capitals (225–651), lay just southeast of Baghdad and became a center of evangelization for the disciples of Mari, and were, from the second century until 780, first a diocese, then an archdiocese, and finally a patriarchal see for the Church of the East. As was the case in the Roman Empire in the west, the numerous Jewish communities, who had spread across Mesopotamia over the course of centuries, were the first to receive the Good News; and they took it with them along their usual routes of travel, creating a network of expansion for Christianity into the region. This Church, descending from the Apostles, gradually spread out from its original core eastward to Persia, as it did in the north toward the Caucasus; and in the first three centuries the primitive episcopal sees enjoyed a very great degree of autonomy. The first of these sees was under bar Aggai (237–336) who, as bishop of Seleucia-Ctesiphon, established a catholicate with his see as the head of the local ecclesiastical community. At that time, the Eastern Church existed on the very eastern fringes of the Roman Empire, beyond the borders of the Roman province of Syria; and scholars believe that, in terms of ecclesiastical hierarchy, it was formally subject neither to Rome nor to Constantinople. Indeed, from the beginning, the Apostolic and post-Apostolic Churches of the region have always maintained a certain separation as a natural result of geographical and political circumstances. This is not to say that they lacked contact with other Churches, with whom they had exchanges on spiritual and liturgical matters, and with the Jewish-Christian communities, with whom they discussed issues of ecclesiastical organization and theology, fostering discussion and agreement among them. While not hierarchically linked, the Christian communities of Mesopotamia may well have been in contact with the other neighboring Churches, including the great Apostolic sees of Antioch, Alexandria, Jerusalem, Constantinople, and Rome. Until the end of the third century, the unity which existed among the different Churches was guaranteed not by ecclesiastical structure but by the unity of the faith, based on an adherence to the Apostolic tradition and the celebration of the Eucharist, which together formed the great theological and sacramental bonds. And it was through these two, Apostolic tradition and the liturgy of the Eucharist, that the Church of the East expanded into the more far-flung Roman provinces and neighboring kingdoms beyond the Euphrates.
The expansion of Christianity into eastern Syria and Osroene, conquered by the Emperor Trajan in around 116, can be documented in the first half of the second century. The evangelization of that kingdom is most commonly attributed to Addai, while Mari went south to preach to the Parthians in their capital, Seleucia-Ctesiphon. Addai's work of evangelization is believed to have been carried on by his disciple Aggai, who was later martyred. From a purely historical point of view, we can establish the presence of Christian communities in Nisibis (between Edessa and Mosul) from the testimony of Abercius, bishop of Hierapolis, who was martyred under Marcus Aurelius in 167. Historical documents regarding the period of initial evangelization and the formation of the first Christian communities are somewhat more scarce, but the unbroken tradition of the region gives credibility to the so-called Anaphora of Addai and Mari which categorically asserts the existence of well-structured and liturgically organized communities. The Anaphora of Addai and Mari, which is written in Syro-Aramaic, is one of the oldest known Eucharistic liturgical texts, dating back to the primitive Church, and was clearly composed with the intention of celebrating the Eucharist in full continuity with the Last Supper, and according to the intention of Christ and the tradition of the Church. This particular Anaphora,which was used by the communities of Edessa, as well as those as far south as Seleucia-Ctesiphon, indicates — through its attribution to Addai and Mari — the way in which the two were held to be not only evangelizers and disciples, but figures of authority as well. Eusebius of Caesarea, in his Ecclesiastical History, speaks of Edessa hosting the Synod of Osroene in 197, which met to discuss the date of Easter. From the synod's text it is clear that the various Christian communities were governed by leaders who exercised the same functions as bishops. This evidence suggests that the churches of the Mesopotamian region were an important grouping around a site of particular importance, and indicates a transition from a primitive stage to a more structured phase in life of the community, typical of the third century. In addition to Eusebius (writing in 325), there are also the accounts of the Christian community in Edessa centering on the Mandylion, a cloth on which Christ's face was supernaturally imprinted, which was famous enough to attract the curiosity of Egeria, who was a pilgrim there in 384. We must also consider the binding force of, and the unity suggested by, the common liturgical language of the region, Syriac, which is part of the Aramaic group, and which was used among the general population. It is a dialect of Phoenician and Hebrew, widely used by the Assyrians and in Edessa, where it became the literary language of the Church; it remained the common language at least until the eighth century, when Arabic was imposed by the new conquerors. Today it is still a living language, as a dialect, among the Assyrian-Chaldean Christian communities of Syria, Iraq, Turkey, and Iran.
2. Heresies, the Separation and Isolation of the Church of the East
There was never a shortage of heresies in Edessa. It was here that Bardesanes was born to wealthy Parthian parents, and was educated alongside Abgar IX (179–216), the heir to the throne of Osroene. He converted to Christianity by listening to the homilies of Hystaspes, the bishop of Edessa and helped Abgar establish the first Christian kingdom. While he produced many works of his own against the gnostics of his time, his own theories were infected by Babylonian astrology and refuted by Ephrem the Syrian. He probably died around 222 in Edessa, having witnesses the defeat of the Osroene kingdom and its absorption into the Roman Empire in 216. Further south at about that same time, Mani was born to a prominent Iranian family and would join the Mandaeans. Educated according to their principles, he came to know Christianity through the Gospels as well as through many different apocryphal New Testament accounts, which he harmonized with Zoroastrian doctrine. Believing himself to be the divinely inspired prophet and leader of a new religion, he set off to preach in the East, going as far as Balochistan, now spread across parts of modern Pakistan, Iran, and Afghanistan. This trip was possible because of the ascent of the Sassanian dynasty to power in the Persian Empire, replacing the Arsacids in 225. In 242, in Ctesiphon, King Shapur I granted Mani permission to organize his new religion and to preach his doctrine across all of Mesopotamia. It quickly spread to Basra, Babylon, and the kingdom of Adiabene up to Nisibis, while his followers spread as far as Syria, Egypt, and the Caucasus. Denounced by the Zoroastrians, and having lost favor with the Sassanid king Bahram I, Mani died in prison around the year 277. After his death, his followers were harshly persecuted and scattered to the west and to the east of the Sassanid kingdom, taking their new religion to Africa (where Diocletian promulgated a severe edict against the Manichaeans in 297), Spain, Gaul, and even to Rome itself. Such was their influence that the synods of the fourth century were largely concerned with the Manichaean heresies. While various emperors passed increasingly punitive legislation, the Church expended an enormous amount of intellectual energy in the long fight against them, including that of Augustine, Leo the Great, Cyril of Jerusalem, and Aphrahat.
If having to combat heresies across the region had the negative effects of sowing division within the Church and of disrupting the evangelization, it also had the positive consequences of inspiring more vivid theological formulations, a huge increase in apologetic writings, and new schools of ascetic thought and practice, all of which undoubtedly enriched the life of the Church. Aphrahat (270–345) was one such example in Mesopotamia and presents a very interesting example in the history of the Church in the third and fourth centuries. He was a figure who contributed to the ecclesiological and literary life of his time, particularly in the ascetic monasticism of Syria and Upper Mesopotamia, of which he was a leading exponent, and which was different from the monasticism of the Egyptian desert. In fact, the communities that arose in the Syrian-Mesopotamian region at that time were an expression of Christianity whose theological formation was very much its own and not yet in regular contact with other cultural currents. These were Churches in which asceticism, in both hermetical and communal forms (of the desert, of the caves, the stylites, the recluses), had a vital role in the development of theological and spiritual thought. Aphrahat, known as "the Sage," a native of Nineveh, embodied several aspects of ecclesial life in the region, first as a monk, then an abbot, and finally a bishop. He is well-known for his collection of twenty-three speeches, known as the Expositions or Demonstrations, which discuss various aspects of the Christian life: faith, love, humility, prayer, fasting, the ascetic life, and the relationship between Judaism and Christianity, and which drew upon both the Old Testament and the New Testament.
Aphrahat was also a contemporary of Ephrem the Syrian. Ephrem was born into a Christian family in Nisibis in about 306 and became a hugely significant figure as a theologian, poet, and deacon of his local Church, in which he was vitally active, co-founding a theological school at Nisibis with his bishop, James (303–38), in the year 325, which came to be called the "the Persian School." When the Emperor Jovian surrendered Nisibis to the Persians in 363, Ephrem moved to Edessa, which was still under Roman control, taking with him many of the local Christian community, as well as the school. He remained and preached in Edessa until his death, ten years later. He is especially remembered for his Holy Thursday discourse on the primacy of Peter and for his Hymn to St. Peter, in which he wrote: "The Son of God has placed you as the foundation of the Church, so that you will support the weight of all creatures, as He maintains the whole world ... (the Church) confesses with you that He is the Son of God." Ephrem's ecclesiology, and deference to the see of that city, was heavily informed by the historical significance of Peter's confession and martyrdom having taken place in Rome.
Ecclesiastical structures in the Mesopotamian region at that time were not unlike those of Syria and Asia Minor, in particular as regards the role of the bishop, who was elected by the consensus of the faithful for the wisdom and the esteem in which they held him, and later was confirmed and consecrated by the bishops of the province; as well as the role of priests, to whom were entrusted the pastoral care of the faithful; and that of deacons, who functioned as aides to the bishop and who performed works of charity for and on behalf of the community. The ecclesiastical provinces of the time were formed by the missionary process, by language, and by nationality. Within the provinces, synods formed the link between the different bishops and allowed them a measure of pastoral and canonical collaboration. In the third century, across Mesopotamia, as well as Persia, a number of displaced Syrian Christian communities, complete with their own bishops, began to arrive and organize themselves into distinct groups of faith and cult — the communities had been forced to flee as a result of the Sassanian military campaigns. In 325, the Synod of Seleucia met to discuss the issue of episcopal jurisdiction, but it was Catholicos Ishaq who settled the ecclesiastical organization of the province when he convened a further synod in the same city, in about 410, and reordered the dioceses into a great metropolitan, with himself as the Primate of the Church of the East. It was at this later synod that the Church of the East broke hierarchical links to Antioch and the other western bishops, and adopted the canons of the Councils of Nicaea and Constantinople and reaffirmed the See of Seleucia-Ctesiphon as primatial.
The Edict of Constantine in 313 greatly changed the situation for Christians in the Roman Empire, securing them civil rights and religious freedoms, and addressing some of the injustices of the great persecutions. The edict also carried into the provinces of the Eastern Roman Empire (later known as the Byzantine Empire), where the new toleration of Christianity was also to be observed; this had a great impact on the social and religious life of the Church, including the institution of the observance of Sunday as a day of rest and worship, the emancipation of slaves, and new civil protections for Christians and Jews. The extent to which the new toleration ushered in by Constantine carried over outside the bounds of the empire is not, however, easy to document. Certainly it was a happy time for the community in Edessa, which reordered and better established itself, as we know from the Chronicle of Edessa, which records the ministries of nine bishops of that city during the fourth century. Circumstances were certainly less favorable in the Persian Empire under the reign of Shapur II (309–79), during which the Church of the East suffered heavy persecution and Nisibis came under Persian control in 363, resulting in the already discussed emigration of Ephrem, and many other Christians, to more tolerant Edessa. The Persian persecution did not spare the catholicos of Seleucia-Ctesiphon, Shimun Bar Sabbae, who was martyred on Good Friday in 341, along with a great many of his priests and monks, and the faithful. The next two catholicoi, Shahdost and Barba'shmin, suffered the same fate; and the persecution continued through the reign of Yazdegerd I (ending in 399) and that of his son Bahram V, until 422, when the Roman Empire brought in tolerance for the cult of Zoroastrianism and the Persian Empire finally allowed Christian worship.
(Continues…)
Excerpted from "The Church in Iraq"
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