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Jacobite / Assyrian / Syrian Orthodox Church

The Jacobites are the Monophysites of Syria. This is a very old name, from James (Ya'kub) Baradai, their chief founder. They do not appear to use it themselves; they call themselves simply "Syrians" or "Syrian Christians." With the best will other Christians cannot use these as their technical names. But all the people round call them Jacobites ; so most others use that name, apologizing to the worthy little sect if it hurts their feelings. The name Jacobite is sometimes also used for the Egyptian Monophysites. There is no objection to this, except that "Copt" is sufficient.

There is no historical authority for the name "Assyrian."; but the various appellations given to the body by various writers ("Easterns," Persians, Syrians, Chaldaeans, Nestorians) are all, for various reasons, misleading to the English reader. To the ordinary English Churchman of to-day "the Eastern Church" is the Church to the east of him--viz. the Greek Orthodox; the Church of the old "Eastern Roman Empire," of Constantinople, with her great daughter, the Russian Church. The name "Eastern," however, as applied by those Greeks, meant the Church to the east of them-beyond the oriental frontier of the Roman Empire.

To speak of "the Persian Church" is to do as much violence to ancient facts, as to speak to-day of "the Turkish Church" (meaning thereby some one Christian melet in the Ottoman Empire) is to disregard modern facts. "Syrian," to an Englishman, does not mean "a Syriac-speaking man "; but a man of that district between Antioch and the Euphrates where Syriac was the vernacular once, but which is Arabicspeaking to-day, and which was never the country of the "Assyrian" Church. "Chaldean" would suit admirably; but it is put out of court by the fact that in modern use it means only those members of the Church in question who have abandoned their old fold for the Roman obedience: and "Nestorian" has a theological significance which is not justified.

The Church of Assyria, of the "Chaldean Patriarchate," or, as it was usually called by Greek, or even by Syriac writers, "The Church of the East", was broadly speaking, the Christian Church, as it existed to the east of the Eastern border of the Roman Empire. The Christian Church was a thing that the Sassanids found existing when they established themselves in the country, and one that was already widely spread, and organized on apostolic lines. This fact was of considerable importance for the future relations of the two, for the struggle would have been very hard before the Church could have established herself, de novo, in a Zoroastrian kingdom.

The old Jacobite churches were under the ecclesiastical authority of the Patriarch of Antioch. The Jacobite Patriarch of Syria had as a usual place of residence Mardin, or a monastery in its vicinity, and he claims to be Patriarch of Antioch and successor of St. Peter in that see. It was usual in the Jacobite Church for a monk when consecrated Bishop to take a new name; and it was the fixed custom, from and after A.Gr. 1604 (AD 1293) that anyone, Priest or Bishop, when elevated to the Patriarchate, should be styled Ignatius.

Some were in northern Syria, but most in Mesopotamia. Their doctrine is essentially the old Monophysite doctrine, but in their worship and ecclesiastical organization they are practically at one with other Eastern Churches. They have never been more than a comparatively small, poor and scattered sect. They never succeeded in capturing all Syria, as their co-religionists the Copts captured all Egypt. Now, especially, they are a very small body scattered around Diyarbakr, with colonies in most Syrian towns. In religion they agree with the Copts, with whom they are in communion. In rite they are quite different. They alone keep, in the Syriac language, the old rite of Antioch. This is perhaps the chief importance of the sect to students.

It has long been an admitted fact that the lands of Mesopotamia and Adiabene, and in fact the whole of what became the Sassanid Persian Empire, received the gospel from teachers whose head-quarters were at Edessa. When the Edessene Church was merged in that ecclesiastical circle that developed into the Patriarchate of Antioch, one at least of these "daughters" was strong enough to stand alone; and the circumstances of its infancy probably contributed to give it that instinct of independence that was always so marked a feature of its life. The "Church of the Easterns" was the daughter, not of Antioch, but of Edessa, and was never included in the Patriarchate of the former city.

Already in the 5th century the Egyptian party (against Chalcedon) made many converts, expecially monks, in Palestine and Syria. These are the beginning of the present Jacobite Church. At first, as in Egypt, the Monophysites were rather a party within the Church than a separate sect. They did not set up rival sees, but tried, with varying success, to capture the existing ones. In Jerusalem they drove out Juvenal, set up a Monophysite, Theodosius, in 452, and supported him by Monophysite suffragans. But the Government soon drove these people out. At Antioch for a long time there were alternate vicissitudes of Monophysite and Chalcedonian Patriarchs. The great leaders of the heresy in Syria got temporary possession of the see — Peter the Fuller (471, 475), Severus (after 536). At last Justinian I (r. 527-565) made a firm stand for Chalcedon. expelled all Monophysite bishops, and demanded acceptance of the council from everyone. The Monophysites lost ground throughout Syria. It seemed as if the sect were about to die out. But the Emperor's wife, Theodora, was their friend ; she succeeded in restoring their hopes and giving them a hierarchy.

The man who did this under her protection, the restorer of the sect in Syria, in some sort the founder of the present Jacobite Church, is James Baradai [Barda'tha, a coarse horse-cloth, from barduna, a mule]. He was born at Telia early in the 6th century, and became a monk at Constantinople. He owes his nickname Baradai to the fact that later, as the organizer of Syrian Monophysism, he went about in a ragged cloak. When he was at Constantinople his heresy (he was always a Monophysite) was at a very low ebb. John of Ephesus says that only two or three of their bishops remained out of prison. Theodosius, Monophysite Patriarch of Alexandria, was in prison in the capital. Under the Empress's protection he, to save the situation, ordained two bishops — Theodore for Bosra and the South, James Baradai for Edessa and the East (probably in 543). As soon as Baradai was ordained he began those amazing journeys up and down Syria which fill the rest of his life, by which he practically re-created his sect, for which certainly he deserves the everlasting gratitude of the Jacobites who inherit his name. He was, of course, compelled to hide from the Government (then rigidly enforcing the decrees of Chalcedon). Fleeing always from the officials, soldiers and Melkite bishops, disguised in the ragged cloak which his name has made famous, for nearly forty years Jarnes travelled over Syria, Egypt, Thrace and the islands of the Archipelago.

Baradai did not himself become Patriarch of Antioch, but he ordained two. When Severas of Antioch was dead in exile (c. 543) he ordained Sergius of Telia (543-546) to succeed him, then an Egyptian monk, Paul. From these descends the line of Jacobite Patriarchs of Antioch, by the side of their Orthodox rivals. From this time, then, may be counted the Syrian Jacobites as a separate sect. Worn out by his labors, Baradai died in 578.

From the foundation of the sect till modern times there are not many events of importance to chronicle. Through all the vicissitudes of Syrian history, for thirteen centuries, this Church existed obscurely by the side of the Orthodox and the Nestorians. Its first general note is that it has always been a small and scattered body. It never became the national Church of the whole country, as did the Copts in Egypt. The reason of this lies in the different state of the two countries. Egypt is practically an island, surrounded by desert and sea, peopled by one people with one language. Nothing of this applies to Syria. Syria (with Palestine) has no natural frontiers. It has always been the home of several races, keeping their own languages. It is in no sense one, neither physically nor in population.

It is curious that the Jacobites did not attempt to keep up a Jacobite line of Patriarchs of Jerusalem. They had followers in Palestine, and once the Monophysites had intruded a man of their party there. But they let that succession go. The Orthodox were allowed to keep the line of Jerusalem unchallenged. We hear incidentally of a Jacobite bishop of Jerusalem, Severus, who ordained Athanasius I of Antioch (595-631), but after of no other till the time of the Crusades. Then they made Ignatius I Metropolitan of Jerusalem, to save their people from the Latin Patriarchs. He reigned from about 1140 for forty-five years. With him begins a regular line of Jacobite Bishops of Jerusalem. These were sometimes (rarely) called Patriarchs. Now the title of Jerusalem is merged in that of the Mafrian. The one Patriarch whom they all obey is he of Antioch, successor of Sergius of Telia whom Baradai ordained But in the West and in Palestine, the Orthodox were strong. So the Jacobites moved eastward and soon came into contact with their great adversaries—the Nestorians. They even got a footing in Persia. Here they became the rival body to Nestorians. Each was the heretical body to the other. The Jacobite Church was unable to withstand the "uniting" policy of Rome. After several attempts, a Roman-Syrian patriarchate was founded in 1783, with its seat in Mardin; and although the Patriarch retired thence before the attacks of the faithful remnant of the Jacobites into the Lebanon, yet the Catholic Syrian Church was recognized by the Ottoman Porte in 1830 as a separate religious body, and since 1854 a Catholic patriarch resided in Mardin. The 20,000 Jacobites "united" with Rome formed a fifth of the West Syrian Church by the end of the 19th Century.

One curious point is that their Church shifted gradually towards the East. At firet the situation was simple: East Syria was Nestorian. West Syria Jacobite. This old distinction is still kept in their liturgical language and characters. Jacobite liturgies are in the West Syrian dialect, written in West Syrian letters, different from those of the Nestorians. Both "Nestorian" and "Jacobite" Churches were content to recognize in theory, and in practice to ignore, the existence of the other.

A result of the smallness and poverty of the Jacobites i? that their Patriarch was able to live in his titular city — Antioch, which was held as a stronghold by the Orthodox. The Jacobite claimant wandered about Syria, chiefly to the East, as that became the center of gravity of his sect. About the 12th century the Jacobite Church was probably in its most flourishing state. The Patriarch had then, immediately subject to himself, twenty Metropolitans and about a hundred bishops in Syria, Asia Minor, Cyprus, and eighteen more bishops under the Mafrian in the East. But the Patriarchal dignity itself does not seem to have been much coveted.

Their relations with the Copts are interesting. They profess the same faith * and are normally in communion with them. Indeed, the Jacobites have always looked up to the Copts as the leaders of their religion, as a larger and wealthier body ; also because the old canon law, which in this point they maintain, gives Alexandria precedence over Antioch. But they are a quarrelsome folk, and frequent schisms have interrupted these good relations.