Christians are of recent origin. It was in a. d. 1681, that the Nestorian Metropolitan of Diarbekir, having quarrelled with his patriarch, was first consecrated by the Pope patriarch of the Chaldeans. The sect was as new as the office, and created for it. Converts to papacy from the Nestorian and Jacobite churches[1] were united in one body, and dignified by the name of the Chaldean Church. It means no more than Papal Syrians, as we have in other parts Papal Armenians and Papal Greeks." After giving this quotation, Dr. Grant remarks: "There appears to be no propriety in applying this name to the Nestorians as a Christian sect; and its casual employment among them is a circumstance of little importance, except as it may lead to wrong conclusions respecting their origin. If its occasional use proves any thing regarding their origin, it indicates their relation to the Father of the Faithful, agreeably to their own explanations."[2] When the Latin missionaries had succeeded in forming a schism among the Nestorians of Diarbekir, they wanted a name whereby to designate the proselytes. In other instances the national title of the parent body supplied a ready and unobjectionable appellative. Thus, by prefixing the term "Catholic," they adequately, and according to their views appropriately distinguished the seceders from the Greek, Armenian, and Syrian communities. A difficulty now arose; the new converts styled themselves "Soorâyé" and "Nestorâyé." The Romanists could not call them "Catholic Syrians," or "Syrian Catholics," for this appellation they had already given to their proselytes from the Jacobites, who also called themselves "Syrians." They could not term them "Catholic Nestorians," as Mr. Justin Perkins, the Independent American missionary does[3] for this would involve a contradiction. What more natural, then, than that they should have applied to them the title of "Chaldeans," to which they had some claims nationally in virtue of their Assyrian descent?
This, then, was the first use of the term as applied to a Christian community, and I can confidently vouch for the fact,
- ↑ This is a mistake; no proselytes from the Jacobites were received into the Chaldean Community.
- ↑ The Nestorians, &c., ut supra.
- ↑ Residence in Persia among the Nestorians, p. 171.
