Again and again did they throw off the foreign yoke which their patriarchs had heen mainly instrumental in fixing upon their necks, until at length their obstinacy so wearied out the efforts of the court of Rome, that Pope Innocent XI. proceeded to effect a new schism: which he did by appointing Yoosef, the first of that name, as Patriarch of the Chaldeans at Diarbekir, a.d. 1681.
The new patriarchate thus formed, and which could lay claim to no other authority, than that of being founded by the Papal see, since it was neither recognized by the Nestorian bishops, nor by the Sublime Porte, did not at first extend beyond the city of Diarbekir, where most of the Nestorians had become proselytes to Rome, and were thenceforth styled "Chaldeans," The Latin missionaries, however, did not suspend their exertions, but continued to disseminate the peculiar doctrines of the Papacy among the Nestorians around Mosul. The decay of learning among these latter, their spiritual and temporal destitution, as well as the internal dissensions which racked and rent this ancient community, favoured the arts and stratagems of the missionaries, and after five successive Yoosefs had occupied the See of Diarbekir it was declared abolished by the submission of Mar Elîa[1] the Nestorian Patriarch of Mosul to the Roman Pontiff, in which he was followed by most of the villages in the plains of the Tigris.
Yoosef V., however, continued to exercise jurisdiction over Diarbekir, till the time of his death, which occurred about the year 1828, notwithstanding that the secession of the last Nestorian patriarch to Rome took place as early as 1778. A detailed account of that event, and of the troubles and divisions which it occasioned, are fully recorded in the following autobiography translated from a Syriac MS. now in my possession, and written by the author's own hand.
"I Hormuzd, son of deacon Hanna, the brother of Mar Elîa the Patriarch of the East, was born a.d. 1760, and received the order of deacon from my above-named uncle, in the year 1773,
- ↑ Mar or Mutran Hanna or Yohannân, (John,) is the name by which the last of the Nestorian patriarchs is generally known. The succeeding narrative will show why Rome objected to his assuming the official title of his predecessors, which he himself hardly ever used except upon his seal, and that only a year or two before his death.
