Patriarchs of Constantinople,
Armenia, and the East

he Armenian Church developed largely outside of Roman authority. It also split with Orthodoxy over Chalcedon. Thus, it is almost like a separate religious tradition (comparable to Ethiopia and the Church of the East). While traditionally Armenia converted to Chistianity before Rome, in 301, there is now some question about this, discussed elsewhere. The conversion may have before more like in 314, though still in the days of St. Gregory I the Enlightener (d.325). While the Arab Conquest left the Patriarchate in place, the Turkish Conquest of 1064 was something else. People were already fleeing to relative safety in Cilicia. The Patriarch relocated there in 1062. The collapse of Roman power at Manzikert in 1071 meant that even more Armenians fled to Cilicia, where soon the Kingdom of Lesser Armenia became established. With the fall of the Kingdom to the Mamlûks in 1375, the Patriarch continued to represent the Armenian community. But with the loss of political authority, and the disrupted nature of the area, in 1441 a new Patriarchate was established back in Armenia proper, at Etchmiadzin. This was not a relocation but resulted in two Patriarchates, with the original line continuing, down to the present, as the Patriarchs of the Great House of Cilicia. This curious situation is rather like what happened in the Church of the East. The Cilician line eventually was itself relocated. In 1921, as a Greek invasion and an Armenian revolt were being crushed by Kemal Atatürk, attacks on Armenians in Cilicia, who previously has been protected by a French occupation, began. Most of the Armenians, including the Patriarch, fled to French controlled Lebanon. The Patriarchate was formally established there, at Antelias, in 1930. It thus continues down to the present, while now recognizing the primacy of the Patriarchate in Armenia.

The Patriarchs have often been called the Patriarchs of "Babylon," but the first seat of the Patriarchate was at the Sassanid capital of Ctesiphon. Ctesiphon, however, was on the Tigris River very nearly opposite Babylon on the Euphrates, and also not far up the Tigris from the old Seleucid capital of Seleucia. Not much further up the Tigris is where the Abbasid capital of Baghdad would be built, and in the 9th century the Patriarchate moved there. And there it would stay until the arrival of the Mongols in the 13th century. Many Mongols, including the wife of the conqueror of Baghdad and the first of the Ilkhâns, Hülägü, were Nestorians. Briefly, it looked like the Church of the East might become the state religion of a quarter of the pan-Eurasian Mongol Empire. The Patriarchate moved to Maragha in Azerbaijanistan, not far from Tabrîz, the capital of the Mongols. One Patriarch, Mar Yab-Alaha (or Yoalaha) III, was a Mongol himself. In 1295, however, the Ilkhâns converted to Islâm, and the chance for dominant status had passed.

Before long the Patriarchate had moved back down out of the mountains to Mosul, now the principal city of northern Iraq. There it would stay, nearby at Alqosh (or Alqush), for many centuries. Next would come schism. Patriarch Mar Shimun IV Bassidi ruled (c.1450) that his office would only pass to members of his own family -- in practical terms to a nephew, since the Patriarch was celibate. This formalized nepotism was not accepted by many in the Church, and later a rival Patriarch came to be elected in 1551, Yohanan (or Hanna) Sulaqa (or Soulaqa). At the suggestion of Franciscan missionaries, Sulaqa made his way to Rome, where he was ordained in 1553 as a Catholic Patriarch.

Various terms were used by and for the people of this Church. In 1445 Pope Eugenius IV had accepted "Chaldean," and in time this became the offical name of the Catholic version of the Church of the East. Thus, the Chaldean Church was not made up out of whole cloth, like typical Catholic counter-Churches, but was more like the Maronite Church in Lebanon, where an existing Orthodox Church entered into communion with Rome. But the whole Church of the East had not done that, so right down to the present Catholic and "Nestorian" Churches have both existed. But the history has been nowhere near that simple.

Yohanan Sulaqa settled at Diyarbakir, today in Turkey. His successors moved around a bit between there and Urmia in western Iran, but settled at Qochanis (or Qotshani, Kochanes) near Hakâri (Hakkari), south of Lake Van, today in Turkey. The 8th Patriarch renounced Catholicism and reinstated the Eastern theology. This line continues to the present as the Assyrian Church of the East. Meanwhile, two Patriarchs at Alqosh had accepted Catholicism, but their successor didn't. Thus, for a while, both Patriarchs had been Catholic; and then later both Patriarchs were not. When it turned out that neither was Catholic, a Catholic Patriarchate (a true counter-Church) was installed at Diyarbakir again. Then the hereditary line at Alqosh died out in 1804. Soon, a new Patriarch, now at Mosul, accepted Catholicism and continued the Catholic succession. Now at Baghdad, this continues as the Chaldean Church.

Meanwhile, Nestorian missionaries had spread across Asia. They had arrived in T'ang China in 635. Although there never was a Christian Mongol state, the Syriac alphabet carried by the missionaries ended up used to write, for the first time, the Mongol language, and also Uigur and Manchu. Until the last days of the Chinese Empire, Chinese coins displayed the name of their mint in the Syriac characters of Manchurian. As the See of St. Thomas, the Patriarchs of the East were also the primates of the oldest Christian Church in India, where St. Thomas is supposed to have eventually traveled.

Like the Armenians, Chaldean and Assyrian Christians, together with Syrian Orthodox Christians, were massacred and driven out of the mountains by the Turks and Kurds in World War I -- although there had previously been close relations, even intermarriage and conversions, with local Kurds. After Russian troups occupied western Iran, there were also reprisals against Christians there. Many Christians thus fled from Turkey and Iran into the new British Mandate of Iraq, where the Assyrian Patriarch then joined the Chaldean in Mosul. The British were pleased to have local Christian allies, and the community briefly attracted a great deal of attention -- along the lines of "our friends in Iraq." But the British used the local Christians for their own purposes and completely forgot them once it suited their purpose to grant Iraqi independence in 1932. This left the Christians in the lurch, and there were some massacres again in 1933. Many have subsequently immigrated to Europe and the United States. The Assyrian Patriarchate itself is in exile in the United States.

While many people find the history of the Church of the East, and its use of Aramaic (or Syriac), the language of Jesus, fascinating, a nationalistic movement among Assyrians has tended to be less interested in the Church, or even hostile. In its most extreme form, some Assyrian nationalists reject Christianity altogether and suggest that the gods of ancient Assyria, or at least the principal god, Ashur, should be revived. At a time when Middle Eastern Christians are often victims of attacks from radical Islâm, this proposal invites a great deal of trouble, since Muslims are under no obligation to tolerate polytheism or idolatry -- and governments administering Islâmic Law are little inclined to do so. The worship of Ashur (although presumably it would now be monotheistic), would not be Assyrian religion in the ancient sense without images of the god. At the same time, both Christian Assyrians and Chaldeans sometimes have objections to parts of the Old Testament, since both Assyrians and Babylonians are often portrayed negatively there -- the Book of Nahum, which prophecies (or celebrates) the fall of Nineveh, is particularly offensive. Others argue that Christianity actually derives from ancient Assyrian religion, and not from Judaism at all. Both these tendencies seem to involve an anti-Semitic aspect -- perhaps not surprising in the climate of the Arab world -- and are awkward features, not only in a Catholic Church like the Chaldean, but even for the Assyrian Church, where moves towards ecumenicism have involved downplaying doctrinal differences with Catholicism and other Orthodox Churches. It is hard to imagine either Patriarch seriously putting it to the Pope that Christ's role as Savior and Redeemer was based on the Kings of Assyria. While some form of Assyrian nationalism is widely popular in the Assyrian community, and even among some Chaldeans and Syrian Orthodox Christians, other Chaldeans and Syrian Orthodox find it offensive. The histories of these Churches has thus become entangled with political and ethnic issues that exist independently of the Christian histories of the communities. Other information on Assyrians and Chaldeans can be found in the Note on the Modern Assyrians. Since most Westerners are going to be interested and sympathetic with the modern Assyrians for their Christianity, the history of their Church, and their persecution under Islâm, they are bound to be uninterested, or put off, by celebrations of the ancient Assyrians, let alone by complaints about the Jews or the Bible. The nationalists, however, interpret such aversion as hostility to them -- an attitude that would seem to aim to cultivate Christian and Jewish, as well as Islamic, antipathy for the Aramaic speaking communities. This list of the Patriarchs of the East is an attempt to combine the list at the Chaldeans on Line site with the list of Patriarchs of the East, published by Qasha Yosip d-Bet Kelaita in 1924, as given and discussed by J.F. Coakley in his "The Patriarchal List of the Church of the East" [Orientalia Lovaniensia Analecta, 89, "Studies on Continuity and Change in Syriac Christianity in Honour of Professor Han J.D. Drijvers," 1999]. Other information comes from The Modern Assyrians of the Middle East by John Joseph [Brill, Leiden, Boston, Köln, 2000] and from The Church of the East and the Church of England by J.F. Coakley [Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1992]. The different sets of dates are usually those given in the Chaldean and Assyrians lists, respectively. The absolute numbering of the Patriarchs is the Chaldean. This skips over some Patriarchs given in the Assyrian list and continues down to the Chaldean Patriarch at present. The alternative Assyrian numbering results in the present Patriarch Mar Dinkha IV being the "120th Catholicos-Patriarch of the Church of the East," as John Joseph says.