East Syrian Rite - Scope of Usage

Scope of Usage

The Syrian and Mesopotamian Catholics are now commonly called Chaldeans (or Assyro-Chaldeans). The term Chaldean, which in Syriac generally meant magician or astrologer, denoted in Latin and other European languages Syrian nationality, and the Syriac or Aramaic language. For Aramaic, it especially refers to that form which is found in certain chapters of Daniel. This usage continued until the Latin missionaries at Mosul in the seventeenth century adopted it to distinguish the Catholics of the East Syrian Rite from those of the West Syrian Rite, whom they call "Syrians". It is also used to distinguish from the Nestorian Christians, some of whom call themselves "Syrians" (Surayi), and even "Christians" only, though they do not repudiate the name "Nestorayi". Modern Nestorians distinguish themselves from the rest of Christendom as the "Church of the East" or "Easterns", as opposed to "Westerns", by which they denote Latin Catholics, Orthodox, Monophysites, and Protestants.

In recent times they have been called, chiefly by the Anglicans, the "Assyrian Church", a name which can be defended on archaeological grounds. Brightman, in his "Liturgies Eastern and Western", includes Chaldean and Malabar Catholics and Nestorians under "Persian Rite", and Bishop Arthur Maclean of Moray and Ross (Anglican) who is the best living authority on the existing Nestorians, calls them "East Syrians", which is perhaps the most satisfactory term.

The catalogue of liturgies in the British Museum has adopted the usual Roman Catholic nomenclature:

• Chaldean Rite: that of the East Syrian Catholics and Nestorians
• Malabar Rite: South Indian Syrian Catholics and schismatics
• Syrian Rite: West Syrian Monophysites and Catholics

Most printed liturgies of these rites are Eastern Rite Catholic.

The language of all three forms of the East Syrian Rite is Syriac, a modern form of which is still spoken by the Assyrian Church of the East and some of the Catholics.