Nestorius

NESTORIUS : UNDERSTANDING INCARNATION
PROF. M. M. NINAN
Rai in Tabaristan, for Sarbaz in Segestan, for the Turks of Central Asia, for China, and possibly
also for Tibet. He also detached India from the metropolitan province of Fars and made it a
separate metropolitan province, known as India. By the 10th century the Church of the East had a
number of dioceses stretching from across the Caliphate's territories to India and China.
Nestorian Christians made substantial contributions to the Islamic Umayyad and Abbasid
Caliphates, particularly in translating the works of the ancient Greek philosophers to Syriac and
Arabic. Nestorians made their own contributions to philosophy, science (such as Hunayn ibn
Ishaq, Qusta ibn Luqa, Masawaiyh, Patriarch Eutychius, Jabril ibn Bukhtishu) and theology (such
as Tatian, Bar Daisan, Babai the Great, Nestorius, Toma bar Yacoub). The personal physicians of
the Abbasid Caliphs were often Assyrian Christians such as the long serving Bukhtishu dynasty.
After the split with the Western World and synthesis with Nestorianism, the Church of the East
expanded rapidly due to missionary works during the Medieval period. During the period between
500–1400 the geographical horizons of the Church of the East extended well beyond its heartland
in present-day northern Iraq, north eastern Syria and south eastern Turkey. Communities sprang
up throughout Central Asia, and missionaries from Assyria and Mesopotamia took the Christian
faith as far as China, with a primary indicator of their missionary work being the Nestorian Stele, a
Christian tablet written in Chinese script found in China dating to 781 AD. Their most important
conversion, however, was of the Saint Thomas Christians of the Malabar Coast in India, as they are
now the largest group of non ethnically Assyrian Christians on earth, with around 10 million
followers when all denominations are added together and their own diaspora is included. The St
Thomas Christians were believed by tradition to have been converted by St Thomas, and were in
communion with the Church of the East until the end of the medieval period.[36]
India
The Saint Thomas Christian community of Kerala, India, who as per tradition trace their origins to
the evangelism of Thomas the Apostle, had a long connection with the Church of the East. The
earliest known organised Christian presence in Kerala dates to the 3rd century, when Nestorian
Christian settlers and missionaries from Persia settled in the region. The Saint Thomas Christians
traditionally credit the mission of Thomas of Cana, a Nestorian from the Middle East, with the
further expansion of their community. From at least the early 4th century, the Patriarch of the
Church of the East provided the Saint Thomas Christians with clergy, holy texts, and ecclesiastical
infrastructure, and around 650 Patriarch Ishoyahb III solidified the church's jurisdiction in India. In
the 8th century Patriarch Timothy I organised the community as the Ecclesiastical Province of India,
one of the church's Provinces of the Exterior. After this point the Province of India was headed by a
metropolitan bishop, provided from Persia, who oversaw a varying number of bishops as well as a
native Archdeacon, who had authority over the clergy and also wielded a great amount of secular
power. The metropolitan see was probably in Cranganore, or (perhaps nominally) in Mylapore,
where the shrine of Thomas was located.
In the 12th century Indian Nestorianism engaged the Western imagination in the figure of Prester
John, supposedly a Nestorian ruler of India who held the offices of both king and priest. The
geographically remote Malabar church survived the decay of the Nestorian hierarchy elsewhere,
enduring until the 16th century when the Portuguese arrived in India. The Portuguese at first
accepted the Nestorian sect, but by the end of the century they had determined to actively bring the
Saint Thomas Christians into full communion with Rome under the Latin Rite. They installed
Portuguese bishops over the local sees and made liturgical changes to accord with the Latin
practice. In 1599 the Synod of Diamper, overseen by Aleixo de Menezes, Archbishop of Goa, led to
a revolt among the Saint Thomas Christians; the majority of them broke with the Catholic Church
and vowed never to submit to the Portuguese in the Coonan Cross Oath of 1653. In 1661 Pope
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