patriarch of Diarbekir, having quarrelled with the catholicos, turned to the pope, who consecrated him "patriarch of the Chaldæans," thus creating the new office on his own authority. This movement was the result of a Jesuit mission in the East, and the Chaldæans are a sect springing out of the influence of that mission.[1] The Crusades raised hopes on the part of the papacy that if the stubborn Greek Church could not be induced to bow the neck to the pope, the Nestorians who were anathematised by that church might join hands with the Latin Church. Their very antagonism to the Byzantines might induce them to have friendly feelings towards the rival communion. Accordingly efforts were made to win over the Nestorians in the year 1247, and again some forty years later; but though Eastern courtesy or suppleness at first deceived the papal missionaries with hopes of success, these were doomed to disappointment. Nothing more was done for more than three hundred years. Then, in the year 1552, a large secession from the Nestorian Church took place on the question of the election of a catholicos. The office had long been hereditary; but at length a considerable body of clergy objected to this unhealthy arrangement, and on the death of a patriarch in the year 1551 they passed by his nephew and elevated to the vacant post a more popular candidate, Sind (or Sulaka). Now it was held to be requisite that three metropolitans should take part in the appointment of a patriarch. But there were not three to be found siding with the schism. The difficulty was got over by an appeal to Rome, and the Chaldæan catholicos was consecrated by Pope Julius iii. At the same time a priest named Moses brought the Peshitta to Europe, and thus prepared for the study of Syrian Christianity by Western scholars.
- ↑ Etheridge says that the Chaldæans came from both sections of Eastern Syrian Christians—the Nestorians and the Jacobites, and claims in support of this view the authority of Smith and Dwight, "Researches in Armenia," in Grant's Nestorians or Lost Tribes, p. 170. But according to Badger they are simply a branch of the Nestorians.
