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Theological Doctrines and Debates within Syriac Christianity
Religious regimes of normativity, pertaining to non-catholic traditions of Christianity, which are particular to the history of Asia, where they originated and throve between late antiquity and early modern age, provide a powerful testimony as to social, legal and cultural entanglements that cannot be acknowledged nor understood from the binary vision of the Kulturkampf between the “East” and the “West”. Case in point: the tradition of the “Nestorian” Church of the East, with its early spread eastward, from Mesopotamia and Persia to India and China, through all of Central Asia, long before the catholic and protestant missions of the late Middle Ages and the modern age (14th to 19th centuries), defies the paradigms of postcolonial analysis. Legal and liturgical multilingual documents and monuments of the Church of the East-born from the persecution of the followers of Nestorius and Theodore of Mopsuestia under the Roman rule, established in Eastern Mesopotamia as a self-standing denomination under the katholikós, since 410-, reflect an original and autonomous Christian culture, risen from heresy, independent from any papal or imperial agenda. Its bodies of theological doctrines and liturgical formularies, particularly its legal texts, reveal a transnational, non-exclusively confessional mindset, open to hybridization. Likewise, the legal and liturgical system of the Church of the East, developed over eight centuries through migrations, commerce, missional and literary activity (writing and translations) along the Silk Roads trade and knowledge network, provided governance and justice for Christians (and also non-Christians) belonging to many peoples in diverse territories. Built with a communal rather than institutional outreach, the tradition of “Nestorian” Christianity is a genuinely “Eastern” one. It survives among us, confirmed and reinforced in its jurisdictional and pastoral structures, but also misinterpreted and misplaced, as to its role in the context of the history of Asia. Challenged and hunted, it’s facing oblivion, dispersion and, eventually, annihilation.
Despite its linguistic and physical distance from the Mesopotamian heartland, the Church of the East maintained its spiritual and theological heritage amongst its Iranian-speaking communities at Turfan. Psalters written in a wide variety of languages and bilingual lectionaries attest the efforts that were made to ‘reach out’ to the local communities, but it was through the Syriac liturgy that the intrinsic connection with Seleucia-Ctesiphon was maintained. Using MIK III 45, the most complete liturgical text from Turfan, consisting of 61 folios with a C14 dating (771–884 CE), the paper explores the role of liturgy as a tool of community memory. Of prime significance was the commemoration of Mart Shir, the Sassanid queen who eschewed her royal connections to become the evangelist of Marv. Here, the liturgy offers a very different perspective to the ninth-century Arabic Chronicle of Se’ert, in which she was subordinated to Baršabbā, the alleged first bishop of Marv. The prayer of Bar Sauma, bishop of Nisibis, recited plene during the rite for the consecration of a new church (altar), also recalled the close association that had been forged with the Sassanid realms.
This paper offers a first examination of the unfolding of the Trinitarian controversies in the Syrian city of Edessa. By indicating possible contacts with a variety of ecclesiastical milieus, it explores institutional developments in the Edessene Church, traces its participation in the broader empire-wide debates, and suggests an avenue for further research concerning the earliest stages of construction of a local memory, embedded in ecclesiastical propaganda. The so-called 'Palut{combining dot below}ian' community of the 'Blessed City', linked to the origins of the Trinitarian disputes through Lucian of Antioch and Eusebius of Emesa, reportedly saw the participation of its bishop Aithallah in the Council of Nicaea. One of Aithallah's successors, bishop Barses, appointed to the Edessene see by virtue of his Homoian, anti-Nicene affiliation, later came to head the heavily embattled pro-Nicene community of the city as the result of a doctrinal re-alignment paralleling Meletius of Antioch's. Barses and other members of the Edessene pro-Nicene establishment (such as the presbyters Protogenes and Eulogius) were eventually exiled to Egypt during the incumbency of the pro-Homoian emperor Valens. Theodoret of Cyrrhus' account of the Egyptian exile of the 'orthodox', filled with competitive and expansionistic overtones, calls for further examination in light of the self-representation and geo-ecclesiological projects of the Edessene and Antiochene episcopates. Overall, fourth-century Edessa appears as a theologically diverse Christian center, receptive to outside intellectual and institutional trends, and fully integrated in the imperial Church.
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