prevented from entering its territory, since Zeno drove them out in 489 (p. 78). But they had a force of expansion which would honour any Christian Church. Shut off from the West, they reached out towards the East and carried the name of Christ to India, Turkestan and China.
In the West the Nestorians had tried to push their doctrine. Under the Moslem Khalif the Roman anti-Nestorian laws, of course, had no force; so they sent missionaries to Syria, Palestine, Cyprus. In Cyprus they had churches and a Metropolitan, who has some importance as having come into union at the Council of Florence.[1] Even in Egypt there were Nestorian congregations, in the very home of Monophysism. Under the Patriarch Mâr Abâ II (742–752) the Nestorians of Egypt had a bishop under the (Nestorian) Metropolitan of Damascus. In Arabia they had still older settlements. Mohammed is often said to have learned what he knew of Christianity from a Nestorian monk (p. 92, n. 4). In the 6th century Nestorian missionaries had founded a great Church along the west coast of India. This is to us their most important mission, because it has had a long history of its own and still exists. It is the Church of Malabar, of which in Chapter XI. Here it shall be enough to note that the Arabian and Indian missions were under the Bishop of Persis (Pâres). In Ceylon, too, there were Nestorians in the 6th century. When Kosmas Indikopleustes travelled in those regions (about 530) he found Christians in Ceylon, India, and a bishop at Kalliana[2] who was ordained in Persia.[3] In Khorasan they had flourishing churches. In the 7th century the Katholikos Yeshu‘yab complains to Simon Metropolitan of Yaḳut that he is neglecting the churches of Merv and Khorasan.[4] The island of Socotra (Dioscorides) had a Nestorian church in the 6th century. Kosmas Indikopleustes speaks of Christians there;[5] in 880 the Katholikos Enush sent
- ↑ One of the ruined churches of Famagusta is still known as the Nestorian church; see Enlart: L'Art gothique et la renaissance en Chypre (Paris, 1899), i. 356–365.
- ↑ Now Kalyāna, near Bombay.
- ↑ Ed. M'Crindle: The Christian Topography of Cosmas, an Egyptian Monk (London, Hakluyt Soc., 1897), pp. 118, 120, 365. Kosmas calls these "Persian Christians." He was probably himself a Nestorian.
- ↑ His letter is in Assemani: Bibl. Orient. iii. (part 1), 130–131.
- ↑ Ed. cit. p. 119.
