page_title: Assyria
section_title: Christianity
hierarchical_section_title: Assyria / Culture / Religion / Christianity
context_page_description: Assyria, also called the Assyrian Empire, was a Mesopotamian kingdom and empire of the ancient Near East and the Levant that existed as a state from perhaps as early as the 25th century BC until its collapse between 612 BC and 609 BC – spanning the periods of the Early to Middle Bronze Age through to the late Iron Age. This vast span of time is divided into the Early Period, Old Assyrian Empire, Middle Assyrian Empire and Neo-Assyrian Empire.
  From the end of the seventh century BC to the mid-seventh century AD, it survived as a geopolitical entity, for the most part ruled by foreign powers such as the Parthian and early Sasanian Empires between the mid-second century BC and late third century AD, the final part of which period saw Mesopotamia become a major centre of Syriac Christianity and the birthplace of the Church of the East. Greeks, Romans, and subsequently Arabs and Ottomans also took over control of the Assyrian lands.
  A largely Semitic-speaking realm, Assyria was centred on the Tigris in Upper Mesopotamia. The Assyrians came to rule powerful empires in several periods.
context_section_description: The tradition of the Church of the East is that Thomas the Apostle and his disciples Addai (Thaddeus of Edessa) and Mari brought Christianity to Mesopotamia, thus attributing to the first century the founding of the episcopal see of Seleucia-Ctesiphon, which became that Church's primatial see in 410. There is clear evidence of the presence of Christianity in Osroene in the second century. At that time, Christians were persecuted in the Roman Empire, but were at peace under the expanding Persian Empire. Shapur I (241–272), the second shahinshah (king of kings) of the Sasanian dynasty, occupied Roman territory, advancing as far as Antioch in 260, and deported eastward much of the population to strengthen the economy of his own empire. One of those deported in 253 was Bishop Demetrius of Antioch, who then became the first bishop of Beth Lapat. After 312, when Constantine the Great legalized Christianity in the Roman Empire, Christians in Persia came under suspicion of pro-Roman sympathies and were persecuted, especially under Shapur II (309–379).
  Under Yazdegerd I (399–421) the situation of the Christian minority improved considerably. In 410, on the recommendation of several Western bishops (the signatories included the bishops of Antioch, Aleppo, Edessa and Amid) Yazdegerd called the Council of Seleucia-Ctesiphon, which organized the Persian Church after the model approved by the First Council of Nicea for the Church in the Roman Empire. The Church of the East was arranged as six ecclesiastical provinces, with the bishops in each grouped around a metropolitan, while the bishop of Seleucia-Ctesiphon, the capital city, referred to in the acts of the council as the Grand Metropolitan, held authority throughout the Church and for that reason was called (probably only from a later date) the Catholicos.
  Papa bar Aggai, who in about 315, almost 100 years before this council, suffered a sudden stroke during a synod held to depose him, is looked on as the first Catholicos of the Church of the East, although this may only mean that he was the first bishop of Seleucia-Ctesiphon.
  In a synod held in Markabta in 424, the participating bishops recalled the circumstances concerning Papa, blaming the opposition to him on the influence of unnamed Western bishops, and declared or reaffirmed that the Catholicos of Seleucia-Ctesiphon was totally independent. They excluded any right of appeal against him to any patriarch in the West. They "defined, by the word of God, that Easterners cannot appeal to Western patriarchs against their patriarch. Any case that cannot be resolved in his presence shall be reserved to the tribunal of Christ [...] There can be no reason for thinking or saying that the Catholicos of the East can be judged by superiors or by another patriarch. He himself is to be the judge of all his subjects, and judgment on himself is reserved to Christ, who has chosen him, raised him up and placed him at the head of his Church."
  This was six years before the 431 Council of Ephesus, the enforcement within the Byzantine Empire of whose condemnation of Nestorianism is sometimes given as what led to the break between the Church of the East and the Western Churches.
  In 484, Catholicos Babowai wrote to some Western bishops asking them to get the Byzantine emperor to intercede with the Persian king Peroz I on behalf of persecuted Christians. His letter was intercepted, reportedly by Barsauma, metropolitan of Nisibis, between whom and Babowai there was a heated dispute. It was shown to the king, who then had Babowai executed. Barsauma called the Synod of Beth Lapat, which, as well as condemning some of Babowai's policies, permitted marriage of clergy and of vowed monks and reputedly adopted Nestorian teaching. Under Babowai's successor, Acacius of Seleucia-Ctesiphon, a synod held in the capital in 486 revoked the decrees of the Synod of Beth Lapat, whose acts have consequently not been preserved, and in its own name affirmed the teaching of Theodore of Mopsuestia against Monophysitism, forbade wandering monks or clergy, and allowed marriage
caption: Metropolitan sees and missionary activity of the Church of the East in the Middle Ages