CHAP. colour attested the mixture of a foreign race. XLVII. In arms, in arts, and possibly in virtue, they excelled the natives of Hindostan : the husbandmen cultivated the palm-tree, the merchants were enriched by the pepper-trade, the soldiers preceded the nairs or nobles of Malabar, and their hereditary privileges were respected by the gratitude or the fear of the king of Cochin and the Zamorin himself. They acknowledged a Gentoo sovereign, but they were governed, even in temporal concerns, by the bishop of Angamala. He still asserted his ancient title of metropolitan of India, but his real jurisdiction was exercised in fourteen hundred churches, and he was inA.D. 1500, trusted with the care of two hundred thousand souls. &c. Their religion would have rendered them the firmest and most cordial allies of the Portuguese, but the inquisitors soon discerned in the Christians of St. Thomas the unpardonable guilt of heresy and schism. Instead of owning themselves the subjects of the Roman pontiff, the spiritual and temporal monarch of the globe, they adhered, like their ancestors, to the communion of the Nestorian patriarch; and the bishops whom he ordained at Mosul traversed the dangers of the sea and land to reach their diocese on the coast of Malabar. In their Syriac liturgy, the names of Theodore and Nestorius were piously commemorated; they united their adoration of the two persons of Christ; the title of Mother of God was offensive to their ear, and they measured with scrupulous avarice the honours of the Virgin Mary, whom the superstition of the Latins had almost exalted to the rank of a goddess. When her image was first presented to the disciples of St. Thomas, they indignantly exclaimed, "We are Christians, not idolaters!" and their simple devotion was content with the veneration of the cross. Their separation from the western world had left them in ignorance of the improvements, XLVII. or corruptions, of a thousand years; and their con- CHAP. formity with the faith and practice of the fifth century would equally disappoint the prejudices of a papist or a protestant. It was the first care of the ministers. of Rome to intercept all correspondence with the Nestorian patriarch, and several of his bishops expired in the prisons of the holy office. The flock, without a shepherd, was assaulted by the power of the Portuguese, the arts of the Jesuits, and the zeal of Alexis de Menezes, archbishop of Goa, in his personal visitation of the coast of Malabar. The synod of Diamper, at which he presided, consummated the pious work of the reunion, and rigorously imposed the doctrine and discipline of the Roman church, without forgetting auricular confession, the strongest engine of ecclesiastical torture. The memory of Theodore and Nestorius was condemned, and Malabar was reduced under the dominion of the pope, of the primate, and of the Jesuits who invaded the see of Angamala or Cranganor. Sixty years of servitude and hypo- A. D.1599 crisy were patiently endured; but as soon as the Portuguese empire was shaken by the courage and industry of the Dutch, the Nestorians asserted, with vigour and effect, the religion of their fathers. The Jesuits were incapable of defending the power which they had abused: the arms of forty thousand Christians were pointed against their falling tyrants; and the Indian archdeacon assumed the character of bishop, till a fresh supply of episcopal gifts and Syriac missionaries could be obtained from the patriarch of Babylon. Since the expulsion of the Portuguese, the Nestorian creed is freely professed on the coast of Malabar. The trading companies of Holland and England are the friends of toleration; but if oppression be less mortifying than contempt, the Christians of St. Thomas have reason to complain -1663. CHAP. XLVII. II. THE BITES. of the cold and silent indifference of their brethren of Europe.' II. The history of the Monophysites is less copious and interesting than that of the Nestorians. Under the reigns of Zeno and Anastasius, their artful leaders surprised the ear of the prince, usurped the thrones of the East, and crushed on its native soil the school of the Syrians. The rule of the Monophysite faith was defined with exquisite discretion by Severus patriarch of Antioch; he condemned, in the style of the Henoticon, the adverse heresies of Nestorius and Eutyches, maintained against the latter the reality of the body of Christ, and constrained the Greeks to allow that he was a liar who spoke truth." But the approximation of ideas could not abate the vehemence of passion; each party was the more astonished that their blind antagonist could dispute on so trifling a difference; the tyrant of Syria enforced the belief of his creed, and his reign was polluted with the blood of three hundred and fifty monks, who were slain, not perhaps without provocation or resistance, under A. D. 518. the walls of Apamea. The successor of Anastasius replanted the orthodox standard in the East: Severus * Concerning the Christians of St. Thomas, see Asseman. Bibliot. Orient. tom. iv. p. 391-407. 435-451; Geddes's Church History of Malabar; and, above all, La Croze, Histoire du Christianisme des Indes, in two vols. 12mo., La Haye, 1758, a learned and agreeable work. They have drawn from the same source the Portuguese and Italian narratives; and the prejudices of the Jesuits are sufficiently corrected by those of the protestants. u Olov EiTeiv Yevdaλnons is the expression of Theodore, in his Treatise of the Incarnation, p. 245. 247, as he is quoted by La Croze (Hist. du Christianisme d'Ethiopie et d'Armenie, p. 35), who exclaims, perhaps too hastily, "Quel pitoyable raisonnement !" Renaudot has touched (Hist. Patriarch. Alex. p. 127— 138) the oriental accounts of Severus; and his authentic creed may be found in the epistle of John the Jacobite patriarch of Antioch, in the xth century, to his brother Mennas of Alexandria (Asseman. Bibliot. Orient. tom. ii. p. 132— 141). V Epist. Archimandritarum et Monachorum Syriæ Secundæ ad Papam Hormisdam, Concil. tom. v. p. 598-602. The courage of St. Sabas, ut leo animosus, will justify the suspicion that the arms of these monks were not always spiritual or defensive (Baronius, A. D. 513. No 7, &c.). XLVII. fled into Egypt; and his friend, the eloquent Xenaias," CHAP. who had escaped from the Nestorians of Persia, was suffocated in his exile by the Melchites of Paphlagonia. Fifty-four bishops were swept from their thrones, eight hundred ecclesiastics were cast into prison, and notwithstanding the ambiguous favour of Theodora, the oriental flocks, deprived of their shepherds, must insensibly have been either famished or poisoned. In this spiritual distress, the expiring faction was revived, and united, and perpetuated, by the labours of a monk; and the name of James Baradæus has been preserved in the appellation of Jacobites, a familiar sound which may startle the ear of an English reader. From the holy confessors in their prison of Constantinople, he received the powers of bishop of Edessa and apostle of the East, and the ordination of fourscore thousand bishops, priests, and deacons, is derived from the same inexhaustible source. The speed of the zealous missionary was promoted by the fleetest dromedaries of a devout chief of the Arabs; the doctrine and discipline of the Jacobites were secretly established in the dominions of Justinian; and each Jacobite was compelled to violate the laws and to hate the Roman legislator. The successors of Severus, while they lurked in con w Assemanni (Bibliot. Orient. tom. ii. p., 10-46), and La Croze (Christianisme d'Ethiopie, p. 36-40) will supply the history of Xenaias, or Philoxenus, bishop of Mabug, or Hierapolis, in Syria. He was a perfect master of the Syriac language, and the author or editor of a version of the New Testament. * The names and titles of fifty-four bishops who were exiled by Justin are preserved in the Chronicle of Dionysius (apud Asseman. tom. ii. p. 54). Severus was personally summoned to Constantinople—for his trial, says Liberatus (Brev. c. 19)—that his tongue might be cut out, says Evagrius (1. iv. c. 4). The prudent patriarch did not stay to examine the difference. This ecclesiastical revolution is fixed by Pagi to the month of September of the year 518 (Critica, tom. ii. p. 506). y The obscure history of James, or Jacobus Baradæus, or Zanzalus, may be gathered from Eutychius (Annal. tom. ii. p. 144. 147), Renaudot (Hist. Patriarch. Alex. p. 133), and Assemannus (Bibliot. Orient. tom. i. p. 424. tom. ii. p. 62–69. 324–332. p. 414. tom. iii. p. 385-388). He seems to be unknown to the Greeks. The Jacobites themselves had rather deduce their name and pedigree from St. James the apostle. CHAP. vents or villages, while they sheltered their proscribed XLVII. heads in the caverns of hermits, or the tents of the Saracens, still asserted, as they now assert, their indefeasible right to the title, the rank, and the prerogatives of patriarch of Antioch: under the milder yoke of the infidels, they reside about a league from Merdin, in the pleasant monastery of Zapharan, which they have embellished with cells, aqueducts, and plantations. The secondary, though honourable, place is filled by the maphrian, who, in his station at Mosul itself, defies the Nestorian catholic with whom he contests the primacy of the East. Under the patriarch and the maphrian, one hundred and fifty archbishops and bishops have been counted in the different ages of the Jacobite church; but the order of the hierarchy is relaxed or dissolved, and the greater part of their dioceses is confined to the neighbourhood of the Euphrates and the Tigris. The cities of Aleppo and Amida, which are often visited by the patriarch, contain some wealthy merchants and industrious mechanics, but the multitude derive their scanty sustenance from their daily labour: and poverty, as well as superstition, may impose their excessive fasts; five annual lents, during which, both the clergy and laity abstain not only from flesh or eggs, but even from the taste of wine, of oil, and of fish. Their present numbers are esteemed from fifty to fourscore thousand souls, the remnant of a populous church, which has gradually decreased under the oppression of twelve centuries. Yet in that long period, some strangers of merit have been converted to the Monophysite faith, and a Jew was the father of Abulpharagius primate of the East, so truly eminent both z The account of his person and writings is perhaps the most curious article in the Bibliotheca of Assemannus (tom. ii. p. 244—321, under the name of Gregorius Bar-Hebræus). La Croze (Christianisme d'Ethiope, p. 53–63) ridicules the prejudice of the Spaniards against the Jewish blood which secretly defiles their church and state. |