gives a not very accurate account of Nestorian theology. Christians, he says, are divided into three bodies: Melkites (who follow Malka!), Nestorians and Jacobites. Nestorians believe that the Word was joined to the body of Jesus, "like the shining of the sun through a window or on crystal, or like the figure impressed on a seal." According to them, the Messiah "is God and man in one, but each is an essence, a person and a nature." He says the Nestorians are Monotheletes, and gives a very strange account of their Trinitarian idea. He knows the Masalians as a sect of Nestorians.[1]
In the 13th century came the great invasion of the Mongols under Jengiz Khan (1206–1227). They swept over China, Transoxiana, Persia. Jengiz's grandson Hulagu Khan stormed and sacked Bagdad in 1258, and put to death the last Abbasid Khalif, Almusta‘ẓim billāh (‘Abdullāh Abū-aḥmad, 1242–1258).[2] This meant again a change of masters for the Nestorians. But it was not a painful one. The Mongols turned Moslem, and were at least as tolerant as the Arabs had been. The Crusades did not much affect the Nestorians in their ancient home; though from this time begin their occasional relations and correspondence with Popes, to which we shall return when we come to the Uniate Chaldees.
For about a century the Nestorians lived, not altogether unhappily, under the successors of Jengiz Khan. It was during this time (the 13th century) that their Church reached its largest extent through its wonderful missions (p. 108). We have a picture of their condition at this time in the life of their Patriarch Yaballâhâ III (1281–1317).[3] He was originally named Mark, and came from one of the remote missions in China. He had come to Bagdad to visit the Patriarch Denḥâ I[4] (1265–1281) on his way
- ↑ Ed. Haarbrücker, i. 259–267.
- ↑ For the Mongol invasion see Gibbon, chap. lxiv. (ed. cit. vol. vii. 1–22).
- ↑ See Chabot: Histoire de Mar Jab-Alaha, Patriarche, et de Raban Sauma (Paris, ed. 2, 1895).
- ↑ Denḥâ means "splendour," "epiphany." J. B. Chabot published a panegyric of Denḥâ I, written after his death by a contemporary monk,
second part treats of Greek, Arab, Buddhist and Hindu philosophers. The book is edited by W. Cureton in Arabic: Book of Religious and Philosophical Sects (2 vols., London, 1842–1846), in German by T. Haarbrücker: Schahrastāni's Religionspartheien u. Philosophenschulen (2 vols., Halle, 1850–1851).
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