RELIGIOUS COMMUNITIESadministration of justice within the church. The authority of the priest
as judge was provided with a divine sanction by the declaration that
the Holy Spirit was the author of the laws and that the judgment of
the priest was the very judgment of God. This synod also had to deal
with the continuing problem of the alienation of church property
through inheritance in addition to taking up the question of the status
of escaped slaves who had taken ecclesiastical orders. In the latter case
it was decided that a slave was to receive orders only if he had a
written document freeing him. Otherwise he was to be returned to his
former master.^137
By the 580s, with the growing Monophysite challenge, Nestorian
canon law was beginning to enclose the entire community by extending
its principles to cover the laity. The twenty-seventh canon of the Synod
of IshO'yahbh I, in 585, forbade the marrying of one's son or daughter
to a heretic (Monophysite) or accepting a benediction (Syr. boraitha)
from a heretic.!38 In a letter dated the same year, Ish6'yahbh laid
down general rules for inheritance. If a will had been made, no change
was to be allowed in it except for the payment of debts. If no will had
been made, the wife would inherit, and if the wife was dead, the
children would inherit. If the deceased had neither a surviving wife
nor children, the estate was to be divided into three parts: one for the
brothers and relatives of the wife, one for the relatives of the man,
and one for the house of God (Syr. beth aiaha). If a will deprived a
widow of her dowry or property acquired by their common lab or, it
was to be annulled.139
By the end of the Sasanian period, the Nestorians possessed a body
of canon law and the means to apply it to the entire membership of
their church. In this case, the advent of Islamic rule had the effect of
encouraging the operation of an autonomous system of law among
Nestorians simply because the religious and social regulations in the
Qur'an could not be applied to non-Muslims. The marriage laws were
reiterated by Ish6 'yahbh of Adiabene in the 640s and by the Synod
of George I in 676, at which betrothal was given church sanction by
requiring that the contract be made legal by a sacred benediction in
137 Ibid., pp. 115, 119, 123, 124,275,279 382-83.
138 Ibid., pp. 158,418.
139 Ibid., pp. 181-82, 441. According to the Chronicle of Si'irt, after the consecration
of Isho'yahbh I in 582, Hurmizd IV ordered his governors to have recourse to the
opinions of the bishops in making judgments and in other matters (Scher, Histoire
nestorienne, II(2), 439).