RELIGIOUS COMMUNITIESseparate Nestorian identity was provided by a distinctive body of
doctrine based on Theodore of Mopsuestia. The way this theological
identity developed in opposition to Monophysitism and out of internal
factional problems allowed the Nestorians to consider themselves to
be Orthodox. The theology and exegesis of Theodore were institu-
tionalized in the liturgy taught in the schools. Like the Jews, the Nes-
torians effectively used religious education to train their own leader-
ship and to spread the doctrine of Theodore as contained in the liturgy
among the lay members of the community.
An equally powerful force for the establishment of a Nestorian
community and identity was the discipline provided by reformed coe-
nobitic monasticism by the late sixth century. The monks were ag-
gressive partisans of Theodore, took the lead in conversion activities,
and were organized by a system of monastic canons. In the late Sa-
sanian period, monastic organization was beginning to be extended
to include independent ascetics by extending monastic discipline and
conformity to the Sons and Daughters of the Covenant. In the same
period, the subjection of unorganized ascetics to monastic discipline
was accompanied by a more general extension of canon law which
began to enclose the entire community by including marriage, prop-
erty, and inheritance. This, as well as the appearance of a concept of
communal property, resembles the situation among the Jews. Both
communities effectively included their lay members in a system of
religiously sanctioned law. The Nestorian priest who acted as a local
ecclesiastical judge performed the same services for his own community
as the rabbi and the mobadh did for the Jewish and Magian com-
munities.
It becomes increasingly clear that a society composed of separate
religious communities had already begun to emerge in the late Sasanian
period. At least in the case of the Nestorians, it is clear that this trend
continued into the Islamic period with the further elaboration of canon
law. All the Islamic conquest really did was to encourage the operation
and development of an autonomous system of law that already existed.
The organization of a self-contained Nestorian community in the
sixth and seventh centuries by means of a distinctive doctrine, schools,
monasticism, and law was effectively limited by the way in which this
kind of institutionalization depended on those who followed religious
vocations. Total commitment only existed in the monasteries. Else-
where the problem lay in communicating the outlook and forms of
the Nestorian identity to the lay members of the community by those