Antioch.[1] We shall see a story of the same kind in Persia (p. 42). On the other hand, it is, no doubt, true that the authority of Antioch in these distant East Syrian lands was rather theoretic than practical. Edessa is a long way off. Moreover, its development, long before the schism, already shows signs of peculiar features, of a want of close cohesion with the Mother Church, such as often makes an all too easy beginning for schism. Language made a difference. Antioch was mainly Greek and became more and more so, as did the cities near it in West Syria.[2] Its liturgy was celebrated in Greek, at any rate in the cities. Preachers, such as St. John Chrysostom, spoke Greek; at Jerusalem St. Cyril taught his catechumens in Greek. At Edessa and in the East there is no Greek at all; everything, including the liturgy, is Syriac. And the East Syrian liturgy, though one might classify it remotely as Antiochene, was celebrated so far from its original source, was so little confronted with the later use of Jerusalem-Antioch, that it developed into a special rite, hardly recognizable as having any connection with that of West Syria.[3] If we use later language (never actually applied to this East Syrian Church) we may describe the Metropolitan of Edessa as the almost independent Exarch of East Syria and (at first) of Persia, having a vague dependence on the distant Patriarch of Antioch.[4]
For the present we leave Edessa. Only we may note lastly one other point. The story of Paluṭ's ordination by Serapion of Antioch is not content to join Edessa to Antioch. It carries the line further, and tells us that Serapion was ordained by Zephyrinus of Rome, who came from Peter, who came from Christ. Serapion was not ordained by Zephyrinus, as we have seen (p. 31).[5] But that does not matter. The meaning of the legend is clear.
- ↑ In the East the right of ordaining always involves jurisdiction over the ordained; ib. pp. 7, 45, etc.
- ↑ Though in the country Syriac was spoken in the West too.
- ↑ For the East Syrian liturgy see pp. 149–156.
- ↑ Even the detail that East and West Syria evolved variant forms of their alphabet shows their separate development.
- ↑ Burkitt suggests a reason for the name of Zephyrinus. He was Pope when Abgar IX, the last King of Edessa, was sent a prisoner to Rome in 216. It was possibly this Abgar who was the first Christian king, who at least protected Christianity, and so was the origin of the story of Abgar the Black (Early Eastern Christianity, pp. 26–27).
