what Ifthe Crusades Had Never Happened?
increasi nglystrain ed,until in 424 the Church of the East finally declared
ina synod that its leader , the Catholi cos of Seleuci a-Ctesip hon (the Per-
sian capit al), was not subje ct to the churc hes of Rome or Antio ch, and
was equal to them in authority. Later, the Assyrians adopted the view of
Chri st arti cula ted by Nest oriu s, patr iarc h of Cons tant inop le, who had
been deposed as a heretic by the third Ecumenical Council in Ephesus in
- This further alienated the Assyrians from both Byzantine and Latin
Christians. After 424, the Assyrians had little or no contact with the great
Churches of Constantinople and Rome for centuries.
During those centuries, theAssyriansproved to be some of themost
energeticmissionaries Christianity has ever known. At one point in time,
the Nestorian Church stretched all the way from the Mediterranean
to the Pacific Ocean. Nestorian Christians could be found all across
CentralAsia aswellasin the Byzantine Empire, and particularly in the
MiddleEast and Egypt, At their height, the Assyrians hadmetropolitan
sees inAzerbai jan, Syria, Jerusa lem, Beijing , Tibet, India, Samarka nd,
Edessa, andArabia (at Sane in Yemen), as wellaschurches from Aden
to Bimbayand Shanghai. The Nestorian missionary Alopen took the
Gospel into China in 635; the firs t churc h in China was compl eted
thre e years late r. by the eigh th centu ry, there were enou gh Nesto rians
in China to establishseveral dioceses there; one Chinese emperor called
Christianity "the luminous doctrine" and fostered its growth.
Howe ver, stor m clo uds were form ing on the hori zon. Lat ein the seve nth
century, the caliphMuawiyaII(683-684)began a persecution and
destro ye d ma ny ch ur ch es af te r th e Ca th ol ic os re fu se d hi s de ma nd fo r
go ld .The persecut ion continued under the caliph Abd al-Malik(685-705).
TheAb ba si d ca li ph al-Ma nd i (7 75-78 6) not ic ed th at th e Ass yri ans ha d
bu il tnew churches since the Muslim conquest, in violation of dhimmi
laws; he ord ere d the m des tro yed. He app are ntl y tho ugh t tha t the Chr ist ian s
had violated the terms of the dhimma, thecontract of protection; five
thousandChristians in Syria were given the choice of conversion to Islam