Nestorian Church

Nestorian Church, a communion of Eastern Christians, who follow the teachings of Nestorius, archbishop of Constantinople (present-day İstanbul), condemned as a heretic by the Council of Ephesus in 431 (see Nestorianism). Most Nestorians, numbering about 176,700, live in Iraq, Syria, and Iran, where they are generally known as Assyrians. Headed by a patriarch, at present residing in Iraq, they reject the doctrine, defined at Ephesus, that affirms that Jesus Christ is one single divine hypostasis (person), and that consequently his mother, Mary, should be called “Mother of God.” Nestorian doctrine, following the teachings of the great biblical scholar Theodore of Mopsuestia, insists on the distinctiveness of divinity and humanity in Jesus, which leads its critics to accuse Nestorians of believing that Christ was two distinct persons—the Son of God and the son of Mary.

The Nestorians crystallized into a separate religious body when a large group of them immigrated to Persia in 489 to escape persecution within the Roman Empire. The intellectual center of the Persian Nestorians was the school they established at Nisibis, Persia, and under the leadership of the Catholicos of Seleucia-Ctesiphon, they also established bishoprics in Arabia and India. Occasionally persecuted by Persian Zoroastrians, they were granted legal protection by Muslims after the Arab conquest of Persia in 637.

Between the 7th and the 14th centuries Nestorian communities were established, through an extraordinary missionary effort, in Central Asia, Mongolia, and China. They were later absorbed by Islam. In India, after the Portuguese colonized the west coast in the 16th century, most Nestorians joined the Roman Catholic communion under the name Chaldeans while others transferred allegiance to the Jacobite (Monophysite) patriarch of Antioch (see Jacobite Church). Many Nestorians in Meopotamia also became Chaldeans. In 1912 most Nestorians in Iran joined the Russian Orthodox Church. During World War I (1914-1918) about one-third of the remaining Nestorians in Mesopotamia starved or were massacred by Ottoman soldiers and Kurdish brigands.