Iraq after the Muslim Conquest - Michael G. Morony

CHRISTIANS

the ardor of their convictions to laymen and clergy alike; and with-

out the bishops of the province, without the assembly of all the

clergy and the faithful, they elect among themselves in secret the

person whom they desire; and they also make oaths and pacts that

until death they will not abandon this person.^70

The way in which such factions led to splits in local churches and to
the intervention of the authorities was dealt with in the first canon:

It is said that in a certain place there were two churches in the

same village: one called the new church and the other called the old

church. And there was a separate congregation in each of them. The

bishop wrote a letter concerning a certain matter to the priests and

the faithful of the congregation of the new church; those who be-

longed to the old church seized it, took it to the governor [rad] and

turned it over to the Persians. On the evidence of the bishop who

had called it "new," this church was destroyed; so that the entire

congregation was reunited and the clergy were able to satisfy their

greed.7^1

. The single most important factor ensuring continuity in the rela-
tionship between the Nestorians and first the Sasanian and then the
Islamic regime was the existence of two major factions within the
church and the way the conflict between them tended to involve the
authorities. The conflict was primarily over monastic versus lay control
of the church and generally pitted the monks and clergymen favoring
ecclesiastical autonomy against the landed Persian Christian aristoc-
racy and courtiers who favored the kind of official status and toleration
for their church in which they could exercise patronage. Other issues
tended to get caught up in the central one. On some occasions, the
Persian clergy from the Iranian plateau, in alliance with the notables,
seem to be ranged against the Aramaean clergy of Iraq. This issue also
took on an intellectual dimension, with the aristocratic laymen fa-
voring men of medicine or astrology (both effective means of prefer-
ment at the Sasanian court) against the obscurantism and dogmatism
of the monks. On the other hand, individuals of aristocratic Persian
origin (often converts) were to be found among the ranks of the monks
in growing numbers as the seventh century progressed, and the mo-

70 Chabot, Synodicon, pp. 99, 357.

71 Ibid., pp. 99, 356. This, by the way, provides very good evidence of the prohibition

against the building of new churches in the Sasanian empire before 561.