believe that the village had been so completely hidden that no rumour of its doings had got abroad. The reasonable explanation is that this was known and was connived at by the governor all along.
That such a condition of things could have been going on quite openly, unmolested and unrebuked for years, in connection with a monastery, must strike the reader who has only been accustomed to monasticism in the Roman Catholic and orthodox Churches as simply amazing. It was not so remarkable in Mesopotamia, for it was quite in line with the Nestorian disregard of asceticism which allowed the marriage of bishops. But now comes this stern censor denouncing the married monks with the spirit of a Hildebrand, or like a Nehemiah commanding the Israelites to send away their foreign wives. He expostulates with the governor for not having stopped the scandal, "while in this Divine inheritance Sodom is being raised to life again, and Geba rebuilt."[1] The upshot is that the offending monks with their wives and children were expelled and their huts burned. But this was not all. Not so far away there lived the holy Rabban Mar Jacob, whom Thomas characterises as "the most meek and humble of all men, who knew not that any sin besides his own existed in creation, whose eye was pure, and who never perceived wickedness in his neighbour."[2] Was there ever a more lovely description of a Christian soul than this account of the seventh century Nestorian monk among the mountains of Eastern Syria? He was as different as possible from the fierce Elijah, and that self-elected reformer charged Jacob with conniving at the abomination. Although the good man had known nothing of it, according to Thomas, or had never suspected harm in it, as we may more probably conclude, he was driven from the monastery almost broken-hearted. After wandering about for a time Jacob came to Bêth ʿAbhê. But this expulsion of a perfectly innocent man was not to be taken lightly. The monks made a great commotion at
