CHRISTIANSwife, and both clergy and laymen who had done so were required to
do penance. Likewise, Christians were to distinguish themselves from
pagans by not marrying unbelievers.134
Complications arising from the problems created by conversion and
the administration of church property led to further extensions of
canon law into the areas of marriage and inheritance by the Synod of
Joseph in 554. According to the tenth canon of this synod, priests and
deacons had married pagan women, some of whom converted to Chris-
tianity and bore them children. When the Magians found out about
these women, they seized them and threw them in chains. The women
would abandon their Christianity, and the priests and deacons were
then dishonored by their own apostate children. For this reason, those
who had married pagans or converts were forbidden to become or
remain priests. The eleventh canon described a situation in which
bishops and priests to whom the registers of the property of churches
and monasteries had been entrusted put the property in their own
names so that it could be inherited by their sons and daughters. The
alienation of church property by this means was especially deplorable
when pagans married the widows or daughters of clerics and through
them inherited the property of churches and monasteries. In such cases,
the property was "lost not only for the churches and monasteries, but
even for all the Christian community (Syr. gewii)." Consequently this
canon forbade a person who was in charge of a community to make
a will without consulting the assembly of the community (Syr. khe-
noshayii dhe gewii). If anyone made a secret will, it was to be annulled
by the ecclestiastical judge (Syr. dayyanii <edtanayii).135
The need to apply canon law followed naturally from its creation,
and the office of ecclesiastical judge apparently makes its first ap-
pearance among the Nestorians in the Synod of Joseph. According to
the thirteenth canon, the competency of ecclesiastical judges covered
the Sons of the Covenant (Syr. benai qeyamii) and the clergy up to and
including bishops. From the beginning, there was an element of pious
reticence about exercising judgment and those who desired to be judges
were advised to begin by judging themselves before they judged those
better than they.136
The Synod of Ezechiel, in 576, established more canons concerned
with church discipline and made priests officially responsible for the
134 Ibid., pp. 82-84, 335-37.
13S Ibid., pp. 102, 359-60.
136 Ibid., pp. 102, 103,361.