NESTORIUS and NESTORIANISM. -
I. Life of N
Little is known about N. before his episcopate in Constantinople, because legend has embroidered much upon his name. Born at Germanicia (today Mar'aš) toward the end of the 4th century, he studied at Antioch and entered the monastery of Euprepius, situated in the vicinity of the city. If one is to trust the Syriac legend, he would have attended the lectures of Theodore of Mopsuestia, though this is uncertain, since Theodore was already bishop in 392. It is certain, however, that N. knew the celebrated exegete personally and assimilated his doctrine, especially that concerning Christology. His knowledge of sacred sciences was serious.Chosen by Theodosius II to succeed Sisinnus (d. Dec. 24, 427) on the throne of Constantinople, he took possession of the see on April 10, 428. At the outset he distinguished himself by zeal against heretics and induced the Emperor to issue a very severe edict against them (May 30, 428). Only the Pelagians were not named in it, doubtless because they were little known and few in number in the East. N. spoke strongly against moral laxity and against whatever he deemed abuse or error; but prudent men soon noticed that the reformer’s zeal was often indiscreet. He discovered, in fact, an error in the very title Θεοτόκος, commonly given to the Virgin in Constantinopolitan circles. One day, toward the end of 428, the priest Anastasius, one of his friends from Antioch who had followed him to Constantinople, dared in his presence to attack that title directly (Socrates, *Hist. eccl.*, VII, 32; PG 77, 802), but N., instead of rebuking him, publicly approved his action, to the great scandal of those present. From that moment the term Θεοτόκος became the object of bitter disputes. Worried, N. thought he had found a way to reconcile all: he declared that both the expression “Mother of man” (ἐνθρωποτόκος) and the expression “Mother of God” (Θεοτόκος) could be tolerated, provided that the union of divinity and humanity in Jesus Christ was maintained and neither was suppressed. But he preferred not to use these terms, which he considered improper and dangerous, and to employ instead the other Χριστότοκος (“Mother of Christ”), in which Christ indicated at once the two natures, humanity and divinity, closely united. The expedient was ingenious, but it could not satisfy orthodoxy. The disputes over the term Θεοτόκος, which had taken place in Constantinople, soon became known elsewhere. The echo of them soon reached Rome and Alexandria. N. himself thought to inform the Pope of the new controversy by sending him some of his discourses. St. Cyril of Alexandria, well informed about the matter, began in 429 to denounce the new heresy, at first without naming its author, then writing to him directly two letters, which received two contemptuous replies. Thereupon St. Cyril appealed to Celestine I, sending him a dossier, with Latin translation, containing his letters on the subject, some extracts from N.’s writings, and a florilegium of patristic texts on the mystery of the Incarnation (spring of 430). Celestine I convened a council in Rome at the beginning of August 430, which proclaimed the legitimacy of the title “Mother of God” given to Mary and rejected N.’s confused and tortuous explanations regarding the virgin birth. At the same time, in a letter dated Aug. 11, 430, the Pope threatened the innovator with excommunication and deposition if, within ten days from the notification of the Roman decisions—which was to be made by Cyril—he did not retract his errors.
N., who saw in Cyril a personal enemy, instead of submitting—as his friend John of Antioch advised him—thought it a shrewder move to parry the threat hanging over him by requesting from Emperor Theodosius II the convocation of an ecumenical council to discuss his case. Cyril, suspecting nothing, favored the maneuver by delaying too long in communicating to N. the sentence of Rome; when his envoys arrived in Constantinople toward the beginning of December 430, an imperial decree of Nov. 19, 430, had already appeared, convoking an ecumenical council for Jan. 27, 431, the feast of Pentecost, at Ephesus (v.). N. refused to appear at the council that Cyril had opened on June 22, 431, before the arrival of John of Antioch and his party, as well as the legates of the Pope, despite the protests of numerous bishops and of Candidian, the Emperor’s representative. This council, regarded as the true one, launched the condemnation and finally decreed N.’s deposition; these acts were confirmed by the Pope’s three legates in the third session (July 11). The sentence was recognized both by the Emperor and by John of Antioch and his party after long negotiations between the two sides into which the Eastern episcopate was divided. N., considering his battle lost, asked and obtained from the Emperor permission to return to his monastery of Euprepius, where he remained for four years, without changing his mind, indeed trying to spread it as widely as possible, so that Celestine I was constrained to ask that his exile be fixed in some remote place. The Emperor procrastinated until 435, when two imperial decrees appeared: the first condemned N. and confiscated his goods in favor of the Church of Constantinople, the second ordered the burning of all his writings, imposed very severe penalties on his followers, and gave them the name “Simonians,” in memory of Simon Magus. From Petra the exile was soon transferred to the Egyptian oasis, then to Panopolis. He doubtless died near that locality about the year 450–451, shortly before the Council of Chalcedon, to which he would have been summoned, according to Monophysite and Nestorian legends. One thing is certain: before his death N. had knowledge of the acts of the “Robber Synod” of Ephesus and of the letter of St. Leo I to Flavian on the mystery of the Incarnation. According to what he himself relates in his work *The Book of Heracleides*, he approved the content of that letter and died with the conviction that Leo was of his opinion.
II. WRITINGS OF N
By imperial edict his works were destroyed in their original language. They consisted of letters, discourses, and treatises forming a kind of trilogy, written after the Council of Ephesus, with the following titles: *Theopaschite*, *Tragedy* (or *History*), *The Book of Heracleides*. With the exception of a dozen sermons, some letters, and *The Book of Heracleides*, of all N.’s literary output only a few important fragments remain in Greek, Syriac, and Latin, which, together with the complete parts, allow the reconstruction of N.’s exact thought on theological, and especially Christological, matters (ed. by F. Loofs, *Nestorians. Die Fragmente des Nestorius gesammelt, untersucht und herausgegeben*, Halle 1905). Subsequently *The Book of Heracleides* was published (in Syriac by P. Bedjan [Leipzig-Paris 1910]; in French by F. Nau [Paris 1910]; in English by G. R. Driver and L. Hodgson: *The Bazaar of Heracleides newly translated from the Syriac* [Oxford 1925]). The work seems to be authentic overall, though interpolations may be supposed, and is divided into three parts: a philosophical-theological introduction on the various heresies, with emphasis on the various forms of Monophysitism; a long commentary on the acts of the Council of Ephesus, in which N. seeks to demonstrate his orthodoxy and his agreement with the Fathers; an account of the events that followed the Council of Ephesus up to the “Robber Synod” of Ephesus in 449, of whose acts he was aware. In the course of the discussion he continually reiterates his theory on the union of the two natures.In an appendix to his translation of the *Book of Heraclides*, F. Nau published a lengthy excerpt from the *Letter to the Inhabitants of Constantinople*, which seems authentic, written after the “Robber Synod” of Ephesus and already mentioned by Philoxenus of Mabug. Three homilies on the temptations of Our Lord, found among the spuria of St. John Chrysostom and added by Nau to the *Book of Heraclides*, are certainly authentic. On the other hand, the fifty-two homilies attributed by P. Batiffol to Nestorius solely on grounds of internal criticism must be considered apocryphal. As for the twelve *Anathematisms* opposed to those of St. Cyril, translated into Latin by Marius Mercator, most critics (e.g., the edition by Schwartz and E. Amann) do not regard them as Nestorius’s.
III. THE NESTORIAN HERESY
Nestorius’s heresy is commonly presented as the denial of the divine maternity of Mary. This is correct, but some observations are necessary. The denial of the divine maternity is merely a corollary derived from an explanation of the mystery of the Incarnation, current in the Antiochene school from the second half of the 4th century, elaborated by Diodorus of Tarsus and Theodore of Mopsuestia to combat Apollinarianism. According to this view, the human nature assumed by the Word, the Only-begotten Son of the Father, was a true human person, a true concrete subject, subsisting in itself, autonomous, united to the person of the Word in a manner, no doubt, very intimate and ineffable, but which could only be extrinsic, moral, and relative—such as exists between two intimate friends who have but one heart and one soul. This union is comparable to an indwelling (ἐνόκτησις) of the Word in the man Jesus. It is the man Jesus who is the temple (ναός) in which the Word dwells. It is an adhesion, a conjunction, not a true union resulting in a genuine unity of being, of the individual, of the subject, of the “I,” of the person. In Christ there is a true duality of persons: God the Word and the man Jesus. Each is the subject of operations proper to itself, which cannot be attributed to the other except in an “improper” and “abusive” manner because of the close union between the two. This is precisely the case that makes the title *Mother of God* given to Mary legitimate. Strictly speaking, God the Word was not born of the Virgin. He is begotten only by the Father from all eternity. Nevertheless, it may be permitted to call Mary Θεοτόκος, *Mother of God*, because He whom she bore, Jesus of Nazareth, is closely united to the Word, who in some way communicated to Him His personality, His “prosopon,” with the divine titles of Lord, Son, and Christ—terms employed by the Council of Nicaea. In other words, what theologians call the “communication of idioms” (v.) cannot be applied either to the name *God-the Word* or to the name *Jesus of Nazareth*, because “God-the Word” denotes only the divinity, and “Jesus of Nazareth” denotes only the man. Hence it cannot be said that the Word was born twice, nor that Mary is truly Θεοτόκος.The communication or exchange of properties is, however, permissible with respect to certain designations which, in usage, indicate at the same time God and man, closely united and mutually communicating their natural personality, their “physical prosopon” (πρόσωπον φυσικόν), as Nestorius himself expresses II. Nestorius in fact distinguishes two kinds of “prosopon”: the “natural or physical prosopon,” i.e., the natural personality of each of the united natures, and the personality or “prosopon of the union” (πρόσωπον τῇ ἐνώσει), which is a resultant of the union, a kind of fictitious and juridical personality by which the divinity makes use of the “prosopon” of the humanity, and the humanity that of the divinity. It is in this way that Nestorius sought to preserve the unity of Christ: “The natures subsist in their ‘prosopa’ and in their nature and in the ‘prosopon of the union.’ As for the natural ‘prosopon’ of one, the other makes use of the same by virtue of the union, and thus there is but one ‘prosopon’ for the two natures” (*Le Livre d’Héraclide*, trans. F. Nau, Paris 1910, pp. 193–94). Mary may be called Χριστοτόκος, because the term “Christ” is a name that indicates at the same time the two natures or, if one prefers, the “prosopon of the union.”
These are the broad outlines of the Christological system elaborated by Nestorius in the *Book of Heraclides* and in his other writings. It rests on the philosophical principle that every concrete human nature is a hypostasis, a true person. For Nestorius, the terms *nature* (φύσις), *essence* (οὐσία), *physical person* (πρόσωπον φυσικόν), and *hypostasis* (ὑπόστασις) are synonymous. He lacked the notion of an individual nature abstracted from its suppositum; this is why he used concrete and abstract terms, masculine and neuter, indifferently. For him, the term *God* is synonymous with *divinity*. To say of Mary that she is *Mother of God* is equivalent to saying that she is the mother of the divinity. In Jesus Christ there is not only one thing and another (aliquid et aliquid), but also one person and another (alius et alius): “I speak of two natures, and one is He who clothes Himself, another is He who is clothed; He has two ‘prosopa,’ that of Him who clothes and that of Him who is clothed” (loc. cit.). Such a manner of speaking is irreconcilable with the expressions of Scripture and the symbols of faith, which speak of one and the same Lord Jesus Christ, Son of the Father, who became incarnate by the Holy Spirit, was born of the Virgin Mary, suffered, died, and rose again. The Nestorian heresy is thus, essentially, the denial of the true unity of Christ, the incarnate Son of God. It is an unhappy attempt at a rational explanation of the revealed dogma.
IV. NESTORIANISM AFTER NESTORIUS
The Nestorian heresy did not vanish with Nestorius. After the Council of Ephesus, it soon spread in the Syriac-speaking churches and especially in the Church of Persia (v. infra).Moreover, the Nestorian error has periodically reappeared in the Church. The Spanish Adoptionism of the 8th century was a more or less veiled Nestorianism. In the 12th century, Scholastic theologians following Abelard concealed a genuine Nestorianism beneath their philosophical terminology. In the 18th century, the two Jesuits Hardouin and Berruyer elaborated a Christological system that logically culminated in a dualistic hypostatic doctrine. The same may be said of Günther’s explanation (v.), based on the modern conception of the person as constituted by self-consciousness. Although condemned by psychological theories, this tendency has reappeared among certain contemporary advocates of the improper expression *assumptus homo*. One of these, Léon Seiller, in the pamphlet *La psychologie humaine du Christ et l’unicité de personne* (Rennes 1949), which was placed on the Index, went so far as to affirm that the name *Jesus Christ* in its direct sense does not designate the divine person of the Word, but the man united to the Word, the *Homo assumptus*. Only indirectly, obliquely, would this name apply to the Word, to whom the man is united. The *Homo assumptus* would be not only truly free but autonomous, preserving his human *I*, his psychological personality, which is said to be distinct from his ontological personality. All these innovations in terminology, consecrated neither by Scripture nor by conciliar definitions, are dangerous and logically lead to a dualistic hypostatic doctrine, for whether one wills it or not, they separate man from God, contrary to the definition of the Council of Chalcedon.
V. THE NESTORIAN CHURCH OF PERSIA
Nestorianism, condemned at the Council of Ephesus (431), was accepted by the Church of Persia. The clergy of this Church were largely trained in the catechetical school of Edessa, where Nestorianizing tendencies then predominated. Among its teachers was Hibbā, who followed the doctrine of Theodore of Mopsuestia. Narsai, an eminent Nestorian, was master of the school of Edessa from 437 to 457; then, driven out of that city, he founded in 457 the school of Nisibis (v.) in Persia, which became the spiritual centre of the Church of that country. When in 489 the school of Edessa was closed because of its Nestorian doctrines, many teachers and disciples emigrated to Persia and there propagated Nestorianism.1. History
a) The Nestorian Church under the Sassanids (486-643). — Political factors also favoured the penetration of this heresy. The Christians of Persia had indeed been suspected of treason against their homeland and persecuted for their religion, which was identical to that of the Roman enemy. Since at that time Monophysitism was regarded with greater favour in the eastern part of the Empire, the acceptance of the opposing doctrine, namely Nestorianism, appeared the most suitable means of detaching the Persian Church from that of the Empire. A bishop of Nestorian tendencies, Barsauma, persuaded the king of the opportunity of having Nestorianism accepted by the Christians of Persia. Thus, at the Synod of Seleucia in 486, it was accepted as the official doctrine of the Persian Church. It is true that the Christological formulas of the first synods, except for the very suspect one of the Synod of 486, allow for an orthodox interpretation. But the fact that the Church of Persia took as its teachers Theodore of Mopsuestia, N., and Diodorus of Tarsus shows how the formulas must be interpreted. Nestorianism clearly appears in Bābai the Great (d. c. 628).After the introduction of Nestorianism, the Church of Persia generally enjoyed external peace under the Sassanids; but there was the danger of the Church’s dependence on the Mazdean kings, and then many internal difficulties and continual disputes among the hierarchs disturbed internal peace. Thus from 522 to 539 there was an internal schism. To avoid similar difficulties in the future, the katholikos Abā I, elected in 540, reorganized the method of electing the katholikoi. At his time the Nestorians suffered a new persecution because of the war between Persia and the Empire. New difficulties arose at the beginning of the 7th century. From 609 to 628 a new katholikos could not be elected.
Despite everything, the organization of the Church in that first period was “flourishing.” A very active monasticism prospered and the clergy were well trained in the theological schools of Nisibis and Seleucia. Missionary expansion towards the eastern part of the Persian Empire and even beyond the border into India had already begun.
b) The Nestorian Church under Muslim rule (from 634 to the present). — With the invasion of the Arab Muslims, at first the position of Christians in Persia improved somewhat. The Nestorians, being Syrians, were akin to the Arabs; therefore, also because of their monotheistic religion, they were more acceptable to the Muslims than to the Persians. These could now freely convert to Christianity. Thus from the beginning to the end of the 8th century Christianity still progressed. But gradually the burden of taxes and the social inferiority imposed on Christians by the Arab conquerors brought about several defections. The Christians not infrequently held other offices at the courts of the caliphs, established in Mesopotamia from 749 onwards, which certainly also brought disadvantages, since influential Christians interfered too much in Church affairs. The Nestorian katholikos under Muslim rule became to some extent also the civil head of his community, which increased the internal disputes over his election to the throne, ever more coveted.
Later the Church suffered greatly under the succession of various dominations and invasions. Under the Mongols the condition of the Nestorians was relatively prosperous, especially in the time of the katholikos Jaballāh III (1283-1317) of Mongol origin. After him the Nestorian Church rapidly declined. Of its further history up to the 16th century nothing precise is known; political upheavals, especially in the time of Tamerlane (1400 A.D.), almost completely ruined II. Towards the middle of the 16th century the movement towards union began (v. CHALDEANS).
c) The missionary expansion of the Nestorians. — This expansion, as already noted, began under the Sassanids. Many Christians fled at the time of the persecutions to the distant eastern regions of the Empire, and the fugitives became messengers of the Gospel. In the most eastern regions of Persia Christian communities and episcopal sees are already found at the beginning of the 5th century. Towards the end of the same century Christianity had already spread among the Turks and Huns on the shores of the Oxus, and not much later the Good News was carried even into Transoxiana. Missionary expansion reached its peak under Arab rule. The bearers of the Gospel were primarily monks, but also merchants, among whom there were married priests; it was they who spread Christianity along the ancient trade routes into the most distant lands.
Christianity entered China already in the first half of the 7th century. This fact is attested by the famous Xi’an Stele, erected in 781 (v. XI). The missionary activity of the Nestorians was especially under the katholikos Timothy I (780-823), who sent missionaries into Central Asia. Whole peoples with their kings were converted. In the 11th and 12th centuries various Mongol tribes were converted. The mission in China, which for the 10th century was resumed in the 13th, when the Mongols, very favourable to Christians, conquered that country. At the same time the first Latin missionaries arrived there. After the collapse of Mongol rule in China in the second half of the 14th century, the missionary work of the Nestorians again dissolved. On the expansion into India V. MALABAR.
2. Current Situation
Of the once extensive Nestorian Church, very little remains today. Most Nestorians returned to the Catholic Church from the 16th century onward (v. CALDEI). Others fell under the influence of American Protestant missionaries (from 1830) or Anglican ones (from 1835, and more intensively from 1886). The Russians and Orthodox also worked among the Nestorians from 1897 onward, converting some to Orthodoxy. During the World War, many Nestorians were massacred by the Turks. Others fled from the mountains of Kurdistan to the Mesopotamian plain already occupied by the British. Today, Nestorians are found in Iraq, Syria, Persia, and India.
In Iraq, after the declaration of independence, serious excesses against the Nestorians occurred in 1933, causing a large portion to flee to Syria. Their resettlement occupied the League of Nations (the Assyrian question). Approximately 30,000 remain. Patriarch Mār Sem'ōn XXI, educated at Oxford, was forced to leave the country in 1933.
In Syria, in the Upper Jazirah (=northern Mesopotamia), there are several thousand Nestorians who fled from Iraq; in Persia, about 9,000, mainly in the territory around Lake Urmiah. In India, only 2,000 remain, called Mellusians, after Bishop Elia Mellus, who came from Mesopotamia and led a small number of Malabar Catholics into apostasy.
3. Literature
This can be summarized as follows:
### a) Period of Christological Disputes
The first center of literary life among the Nestorians was the theological school of Nisibis, founded by Narsai (v.), known as the "arm of the Holy Spirit," who left numerous poetic discourses distinguished by beauty and elegance of style. The most eminent representative of Nisibene theology is the katholikós Mar Abā (540–52), who founded the new school of Seleucia. Among his disciples, Thomas of Edessa stands out. A severe crisis in Nestorian theology was caused by the head of the Nisibene school, Hēnānā (d. 610), who attempted to introduce Alexandrian and Origenist theology there. Alongside the theology of the schools, monasticism, with its ascetic works, was another force in the intellectual life of the Nestorians. Its founder is Abraham of Kaškar (d. 588), and the most eminent ascetic writer is Abraham of Netpar (second half of the 6th century). Historiography in this early period is represented above all by Mēḥīšā-zkā, author of the famous Chronicle of Arbela (c. mid-6th century). Finally, the most important representative of Nestorian theology in this early period is Babai the Great (d. c. 628).
### b) Muslim Period, up to 1000
In this period, Arab influence is noted, but also a new wave of Greek influence, which again sought to revise theology in an Alexandrian direction, without, however, succeeding. The first important figure of this period is the katholikós Išō'jahb III (650–57), known as a reformer of the liturgy. His collaborator, 'Enānīšō', represents a monastic ascetic literature of a narrative character. Contemporary with him is also Sahdōnā, who adhered to Chalcedonian theology. From the mid-7th century onward, there was a flourishing of historiographical, juridical, and exegetical literature. Sēmḥe of Rēwardāšīr (7th century) is the author of a collection of canons; Elia of Merv (7th century) wrote an ecclesiastical history and a commentary on the Gospels; the katholikós Hēnānīšō' I (685–99) published a canonical collection. At the same time lived the eminent ascetic writer Isaac of Nineveh. Important theological writers of the 8th century include the katholikōi Abā II (741–51), Hēnānīšō' II (773–79), and the bishop Išō'bōkt of Rēwardāšīr.
The transition from the 8th to the 9th century represents the moment of the greatest expansion of the Nestorian Church and also the apex of its spiritual and literary life. Among theological writers to be mentioned are the great katholikós Timothy I (780–823) and his contemporaries Ephrem of Elam, Theodore bar Kōnī, and Išō' bar Nūn.
In the time of Timothy I, the theological opposition favorable to Alexandrian ideas was definitively overcome. The 9th century, in the field of ecclesiastical literature, is rather an age of epigones who summarize what had been elaborated earlier. In the exegetical field, Išō'dād of Merv is to be noted; in the canonical field, Gabriel of Baṣra and the katholikós Jōḥannān V bar Abgar (d. 905).
Theologians of the 10th century who remained famous include Elia of Anbar, author of a doctrinal poem; George of Arbela, canonist and liturgist; and the anonymous author of a lengthy liturgical commentary: *Explanation of the Ecclesiastical Service*.
### c) Second Millennium
Even Nestorian literature experienced, in the second millennium, though less markedly than Jacobite literature, a new flourishing before the total decline due to political turmoil. Great importance for this favorable development of spiritual life among the Syrians was the Byzantine expansion, which began in the second half of the 10th century.
Elia of Nisibis (bar Šīnājū; d. after 1044) wrote a book to prove the truth of the faith. The 13th century brought a new flourishing of liturgical and doctrinal poetry. Its most notable representatives are George Wardā and the katholikós Jāḥallāh II (1190–1222).