This had already been adopted by the Armenian Primate (p. 405), from whom apparently the Persians took it. It is not easy to account for the origin of the title. There was a civil Roman official so called. No doubt its suggestion of the name of the Church in the Creeds made it seem a suitable form for the chief bishop of a vast semi-independent local Church. It was meant to imply the next thing to a Patriarch. One could not call oneself a Patriarch, because there was a fixed idea of only three Patriarchs, and then (by act of General Councils) of five.[1] It would have been repugnant to all the idea of Christendom at this time to call any important bishop a Patriarch, as later ages have done; just as our present multitude of "Emperors" would have seemed absurd. Later schisms destroyed this concept; as a matter of fact, all the original Katholikoi now call themselves Patriarch too. That the two titles were understood as meaning nearly the same thing is shown by the fact that East Syrian writers about this time (4th and 5th century) very commonly speak of the "Katholikos of Antioch."[2] The Bishop of Seleucia-Ctesiphon later used various descriptions of the place of which he was Katholikos. The original see becomes less and less important, especially after the Moslem conquest. I doubt if Mâr Shim‘un of to-day considers himself Bishop of Seleucia-Ctesiphon. Rather the "Catholicate" (if one may so call it) itself becomes an office; as one could imagine the Papacy a separate thing, apart from the diocese of Rome. Isaac I's successors are just "Katholikoi," "Katholikoi of the East" (this is very common), "of Persia," and so on.
This synod of 410 drew up rules for the election of bishops, but made none for that of the Katholikos. As a matter of fact, for a long time he was nominated by the King of Persia. The synod incidentally found Isaac not guilty of the charges made
- ↑ Orth. Eastern Church, chap. i.
- ↑ Dr. Wigram thinks that Katholikos simply means Patriarch from the beginning; that the Katholikos of Seleucia-Ctesiphon was the equal of the Katholikos of Antioch (Hist. of the Assyrian Church, pp. 91–92). Eventually Persia certainly claimed this; but that was just because she had become a schismatical Church. In her Catholic period, no doubt the authority of Antioch was vague and rather theoretic, no doubt the Katholikos of Seleucia already tended towards independence, but by common Church law Antioch had jurisdiction over all the "East," and Persia was part of the East.
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