Nestorianism
Nestorianism or diphysitism (from the Greek δύς, dys, 'two', and φύσις, physis, 'nature') is a religious doctrine within Christianity that considers Christ radically separated into two natures, one human and one divine, both complete in such a way that they form two independent entities, two persons united in Christ, who is God and man at the same time, but made up of two different persons (prosopōn).
Home
Framed within the Christological disputes that shook Christianity for centuries III, IV and V, the monk Nestorius, a native of Alexandria, once appointed bishop of Constantinople, began to proclaim his doctrine, for which he clashed with Cyril of Alexandria, bishop of that city, who defended the thesis of the uniqueness of the person of Christ, God and man. Chiefly Nestorius held that in the subject of Christ there was the man Jesus and the divine Logos of God. For Nestorius, the operations of the Logos and those that were proper to humanity can be identified and distinguished.
The Council of Ephesus
Both the Nestorians and Cyril's supporters were called to the Council of Ephesus in 431, convened by Emperor Theodosius II and held under the presidency of the legates of Pope Celestine. The dispute centered fundamentally around the title with which Mary should be treated, if only Christotokos (mother of Christ, that is, of Jesus human and mortal) or at plus Theotdocos (bearer of God), as the Nestorians defended, or in addition that of Theotokos (mother of God or mother Mary Holy Virgin מִרְיָם בתולה קדושה, that is, also of the divine Logos), as Cyril's supporters defended. Finally, the one proposed by Cyril was adopted as the truth of doctrine, and Mary was granted the title of Mother of God, and the Nestorians or diphysites, were condemned as heretics.
It should be noted that this discussion regarding the term Christotokos or Theotokos did not have Mary as the center of attention, but rather focused on the Christology that it implied, that is,, if Christ is a being made up of two persons (the Son who is God on the one hand and Jesus understood as the human son of Mary on the other hand) in a single being (Nestorian doxa) or, on the contrary, the Miaphysite: doxa which proclaims Christ to be a unique person: God incarnate with human aspect. Nestorianism refuted the concept of incarnation, which was at stake when discussing the earlier Greek terms, and embraced the concept of cohabitation or juxtaposition.
Nestorian doctrine, which follows the teachings of exegete Theodore of Mopsuestia, insists on the distinctive character of Jesus' divinity and humanity, which prompted critics of this confession to accuse Nestorians of believing that Christ was not God, but only the son of Mary. Specifically, Nestorius was opposed to Mary being called Theotokos (Mother of God) because she was a logical inconsistency and blasphemy.
Post-Ephesian Nestorianism
.JPG)
Nestorianism was banished from the Roman Empire, and the Nestorian diaspora found refuge in the Sasanian Empire. A large part of the inhabitants of the Persian Empire (especially in Iraq) and the Lajmids embraced this Christian denomination known in the Roman Empire with the adjective "Nestorianism".
In Edessa it was Ibas who, in his position as director of the city school, endorsed and propagated the ideas of Nestorius. However, there the Antiochene bishops, especially Rábula, confronted him. Thus, the Persian king ordered the expulsion of Ibas who took refuge in Armenia and from there continued to spread Nestorianism.
However, in 435, after Rabula's death, Ibas appeared again in Edessa (now Urfa) and was elected bishop. Only until 448 did he have to face trials from his fellow episcopates for propagating Nestorianism. However, in 449 he was acquitted and a few months later he was deposed during the Council of Ephesus II. The Council of Chalcedon restored him to his diocese in 451. He died in 457.
In 424, the Difficult Persian Church declared itself independent from the Orthodox Byzantine Catholic and all other churches, in order to avoid accusations of loyalty to foreign authorities, that is, the Sasanian Persian emperors. Thus it was that after the Nestorian schism, the Persian Church increasingly aligned itself with the Nestorians, largely encouraged by the Zoroastrian ruling class. Consequently, the Christian Church in the Persian Empire converted more and more to Nestorian doctrine in the following decades, furthering the division between Chalcedonian Christianity and that of Nestorian Christians. In 486 the Metropolitan of Nisibis, Barsaûma, publicly accepted Nestorius as his mentor and Theodore of Mopsuestia as his spiritual authority. In 489, when the School of Edessa in Mesopotamia was closed by the Byzantine emperor Zeno for its Nestorian teachings, the school moved from its original headquarters to the city of Nisibis, becoming a new, difficult Christian school called the Nisibis School, giving led to another wave of Nestorian immigration to Persia. The Persian patriarch Mar Babai I (497-502) managed to reinforce the esteem of Christianity on the part of the bishops in the Persian empire and its areas of influence (for example among the Lajmid Arabs) and with this to the opinions of Theodore of Mopsuestia, thus consolidating the adoption by the Eastern Church of Nestorianism.
It would be his disciples who further propagated Nestorianism. Narsai founds a school in Nisibe like the one in Edessa. From this center, which became the most famous of the Persian Church, Nestorianism spread throughout the Persian Empire. In Bet Lapat a synod was held in the year 484, a meeting where the Catholic Babowai was deposed and Barsaumas (also transcribed as Barçauma, Barzauma or Barzaumas) was named, also a disciple of Ibas. This, with the support of King Peroz I, ordered Babowai to be imprisoned, who was later executed; After this, a new katholikós was chosen: Acacio, Barsaumas' old companion.
Since Nestorianism was outlawed in the Byzantine Empire, and given the long-standing enmity between the two empires, Barsaumas had no trouble getting the new King Balash to support his cause, considered a national cause. Balash even ordered the expulsion of all non-Nestorian Christians.
In 497 Babai was appointed as the new catholicos. After him the church was divided because a part of the clergy did not agree with the appointment of Elisha and named Narses as catholicos of Seleucia. Unity was not achieved until Aba was elected catholicós or patriarch or (in Syriac) mar. The new war that took place with the Byzantine empire was used by pagan groups to unleash a persecution against Christians: despite being then firmly established in the empire of Sassanid Persia, Christianity had centers in Nisibis, Ctesiphon, and Gundeshapur., and with several metropolitan headquarters; the Persian Nestorian Church began to spread beyond the Persian Sasanian Empire. However, during the VI century this church was frequently beset with infighting and persecution by followers of Zoroaster. Such internal strife led to a schism, which lasted from 521 to about 539, when the issues were resolved. However, immediately after the Roman-Persian war led to a new persecution of the church by the Sassanid king Cosroes I; this persecution ended in 545. The Difficult Christian Church survived under the leadership of Patriarch Mar Abba I, who, being of Zoroastrian origin, had converted to Christianity. With peace, things returned to normal but the king of Persia tried to intervene. in ecclesiastical affairs claiming for himself the appointment of catholicos. He even named one, José, who had to depose years later due to pressure from the clergy. Another war against Constantinople brought the Persian Church into trouble again. However, with the total defeat of the Persian empire by Heraclius (628) the church achieved its independence: the new king, fearing the Byzantines, granted freedom to the Christians and allowed them to appoint their own catholicos (a position that was vacant since 608).
Peace and independence did not last long as Muslim invasions began in 633, annihilating the Persian empire. After the total conquest of the Persian empire by the Muslims in the year 644 the Christian community (obviously including the numerous Nestorians) was subordinated to the rank of dhimmi. In Mesopotamia, the Christians were well treated by the Muslims who took them as educators (they were largely the transmitters of Greek philosophy to the Islamic Arabs) and especially as doctors and left them free. When the Arab administration moved from Damascus to Baghdad, the Catholicos also moved his headquarters, allowing him to fill administrative posts with the new occupants. It was the situation created and the ease of applying for administrative positions that diminished the Nestorian church in Persia, which by the middle of the VII century had almost disappeared from the Persian Gulf coast, although thanks to missions such as Alopen's, it had spread to Central Asia (Samarkand etc) until it reached China, Mongolia and the Minusinsk area.
The patriarchs or Catholics then began missions to prevent Christians from converting to Islam (there was no thinking, given the circumstances, of converting Muslims). The promoters of these missions were the katholikos or patriarchs or mar Ishoyabb and Jorge I (658-680).
From this Nestorian church came the first missions to China (VII century), Central Asia (Tibet, India, Mongolia, Samarkand, Manchuria).
The East Syrian Church (Miafisite) and the Assyrian Apostolic Catholic Church of the East (Diphysite, that is, Nestorian) prospered by abiding by certain regulations of the Persian "shahs", among others that according to which their priests had to be married. In that period the theological school of Edessa (today Urfa) prospers and the figure of the patriarch Bar Saumas stands out, who had his headquarters in "Babylon" (actually Ctesiphon and Nisibis). Even in the first centuries of the Arab conquest of the Near and Middle East, the church that maintained the difisita or "Nestorian" doxology (set of opinion) maintained a strong missionary impulse, achieving significant success in Central Asia (for example in the city of Samarkand).
The "Nestorian" Christians were a genuine transmission belt of Greco-Roman scientific and philosophical knowledge (particularly from Aristotelianism) to the then incipient Islamic culture (later from Islam this body of knowledge returned to Europe), as was the case in the famous Gundishapur Academy constituted by Nestorian scholars and dedicated mainly to medicine; For this reason, in the initial period of the great Umayyad caliphs, families of «Nestorian» Christian doctors (followers of the scientific doctrines of Galen) stood out, curing the caliphs and magnates, and so still in the centuries IX and X noted families of Nestorian Christian physicians as that of Yuhanna ibn Masawaih, whose Western name is that of Ioannis Mesuae who was a member of a highly educated family from Gundishapur, and then that of his disciple Hunayn ibn Ishaq whose name has been Latinized as Iohannitius. Hunayn ibn Ishaq led the translators of the Syriac, Greek and Sanskrit works into Arabic when Caliph al-Mamun promoted the founding of the Bayt al-Hikma (House of Wisdom) in the Caliphate's capital, Baghdad in the s. IX; also between the centuries 8th to X distinguished the family of Nestorian Christian doctors from the Bukhtishu or Bakhtishu or Bakhtishu. "Nestorian" Christian schools thrived in centers such as Gundishapur (Persia) and Muharraq (in present-day Bahrain). While the Nestorian Christian missions spread among the Eastern Turks (such as the Uighurs) and some pre-Gengiskhanid Mongol tribes such as the Khitan or Kitans, it is apparently at this time that the partially true legend of Prester John emerged in Europe, being " John" an alteration of the word khan.
In this way Christianity (of Nestorian stamp) first arrived in China around the year 635 when the missionary named in Chinese Alopen or Al Oben established a church in the western capital during the reign of Taizong of the Tang dynasty, that is to say, in the city of Chang'an (present-day Xi'an), the famous Stele of Siganfu dates from that time. Later, however, Emperor Wuzong (840 to 846) outlawed "foreign religions" like Buddhism and Christianity.
The community would experience a major revival during the Yuan dynasty. Marco Polo, during the 13th century, and other important medieval writers (such as the Italian Catholic priest Pian del Carpine) noted the existence of some Nestorian Christian communities in the Middle East, on the southwest coast of India (the Malabar), in Central Asia, in China and Mongolia. Rabban Bar Sauma, a Nestorian traveler from Shang-du (the Xanadu of Coleridge's poems, now in Mongolia), brought a Mongol diplomat from the Khanate of Persia to the courts of Constantinople and Rome to discuss a possible Franco-Mongolian alliance against the Muslim advance of that time. They again had to fall on hard times with the fall of Mongol power and would finally disappear from China in the Ming dynasty. Currently, the legacy of the missionaries can be appreciated in the architecture of ancient churches built in the territory of present-day Iraq, Iran and India. In 1260 a Christian (when much of the Turks and Mongols still adhered to "Nestorian" Christianity) Turkic-Mongol army led by the Nestorian Christian leader Kitbuqa or Quitbuka tried to recapture the "Holy Land& #3. 4; for Christianity but Kitbuqa was defeated by the Muslims in the Battle of Ain Yalut and after being captured he was executed (according to several sources he was trucida), that is, his body was placed between two wooden planks and then sawed by the Muslims.
At the end of the 14th century the already previously heavily harassed Christians of the Eastern ("Nestorian" 34;) were almost completely annihilated by Tamerlane, leaving some pockets of Christian resistance in isolated and remote places like Qodshanes.
Note that the Taiping Rebellion, during the 19th century, would have had leaders practicing a singular form of Christianity although in the Taiping it is not clear if there was an ancient Nestorian Christian tradition or if the Christian influence was due to the Jesuit (Catholic) or "Protestant" reformist missions coming directly from contemporary Europe.
Nestorianism in the 20th century and today
At the end of the 19th century and beginning of the XX the Christian or "Nestorian" The ones that kept their doxology stronger were those located in the north of Iraq (mainly around Mosul) and Kurdistan (the Hakkâri, Yulamerk or "Çölemerik" mountains) and mainly the valley of the Great Zab (Kurdish areas currently within Turkish control), in the valley of the Great Zab was located the religious nucleus of the current Assyrians (Suryoyo): the monastic city of Kodshanes or Qodshanes at the southeastern foot of the Hakkâri mountains almost totally destroyed by the Turks during the First World War. World War; also another nucleus of "assyrians" (Suryoyo) Christian-Nestorians were located in Urmiah (Persian Azerbaijan). During World War I and at the time of the Russian Revolution the Turkish forces carried out a policy of extermination and "ethnic cleansing" (which the Armenian and Greek Christians also suffered) suffered by the "Nestorians", the patriarch or Shimun had to take refuge in France and then the United States while a large part of the "Nestorian" was exterminated. The current Assyrians who speak the Assyrian Neoramean Turyoyo and have as their own adjective suryoyo or suryoye live mainly in the area of Tur Abdin, however in that small area they mix the followers of the Monophysite Syrian Orthodox Church with those, also Assyrian Christians, followers of Diphysism or Nestorians; Both denominations of Christianity have suffered and are suffering persecution and genocide, by the Turks notoriously at the beginning of the s. XX and then at the turn of this century XXI by Islamic extremists.
It should be noted that in 1994 Mar Dinkha or (as pronounced in Spanish: Mar Dinja) signed a "Common Christological Declaration" with the Catholic Pope John Paul II:
Therefore, the Assyrian Church of the East prays the Virgin Mary as "Mother of Christ our God and Savior." In the light of this same faith the Catholic tradition which addresses the Virgin Mary as "Mother of God" and also as "the Mother of Christ." They recognize the legitimacy and righteousness of these expressions of the same faith and respect the preference of each Church in her liturgical life and piety. "
putting an end to the Byzantine dispute between the two Christian churches based on doxa, a controversy originating from Nestorius. Such an ecumenical understanding is supposed to continue with Gewargis III and his successors.
In some remote regions of the Near East it is still possible to find Nestorians. For their part, the Nestorians spread through Central Asia, reaching China, and for a time influenced the Mongols, although they finally opted for lamaism and they abandoned Nestorianism, which led to their final extinction in those regions. Currently, Nestorian churches survive in India, Iraq, Iran, China and the United States and other places where throughout the XX century communities from the aforementioned countries have migrated.
There are currently two patriarchs (since 1976), one from the Assyrian Church of the East resides in Morton Grove, Illinois, in the United States; and the other from the Ancient Church of the East, resides in Baghdad, Iraq. There are other churches that have the same traditions, but are not in communion, like the Catholic-Apostolic Church of the East in Brazil.
Most of the Nestorians or Diffisites, whose number amounts to more than half a million people at the beginning of 2016, live in an area a couple of centuries ago divided between Iraq, Syria and Iran, where they are known by rule Generally as Assyrians, they tend to call themselves nasranim (Nazarenes), this name is also maintained in India by the Malabar Nasrani Syrian Church. In the 19th century and the XX part of the Diffisites of Iraq (especially those who lived in the vicinity of Mosul) joined the Catholic Church taking the name of Chaldean Christians or kaldani who have suffered strong persecutions in the year 2015.
As already noted, the Nestorian Church played a fundamental role in the preservation of ancient Greek texts that were translated into Syriac (a branch of Aramaic). Later they would be translated into Arabic and (already from the XIII century) into Latin.
Contenido relacionado
Abbey
Uku Pacha
Macedonianism