History
The doctrine of Nestorianism is associated with Nestorius, Patriarch of Constantinople 428 – 431. Prior to becoming Patriarch Nestorius had been a student of Theodore of Mopsuestia at the School of Antioch. Nestorius argued that Christ's human and divine natures were distinct, and was therefore against using the title Theotokos (Mother of God) for the Virgin Mary, instead preferring to call her Christotokos (Mother of Christ). Cyril of Alexandria considered Nestorius' doctrine to be contrary to Orthodox teaching, and encouraged measures to condemn it. Finally Nestorius and his doctrine were condemned at the First Council of Ephesus in 431, and the finding was reiterated at the Council of Chalcedon in 451.
Afterward churches aligned with Nestorius, centered around the School of Edessa, broke with the Orthodox Church, becoming an independent sect. Anathemized in the Roman Empire, they relocated to Sassanid Persia, where they were welcomed by Persian Christians who had already declared independence of Constantinople in an attempt to cast off accusations of foreign allegiance. The School of Edessa relocated to the Persian city of Nisibis (see School of Nisibis), thereafter a center of Nestorianism. In 484 the Sassanids executed the pro-Byzantine Catholicos Babowai and replaced him with the Nestorian Bishop of Nisibis Barsauma, effectively ending links between Persian Christianity and the Roman Empire. Thereafter Nestorianism spread widely through Asia, gaining a presence in India, Central Asia, the Mongol territories, and China. The medieval Nestorian movement survives in the Assyrian Church of the East, practiced most widely in Iran, Iraq, and Syria.
Read more about this topic: Nestorian Schism
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“It would be naive to think that peace and justice can be achieved easily. No set of rules or study of history will automatically resolve the problems.... However, with faith and perseverance,... complex problems in the past have been resolved in our search for justice and peace. They can be resolved in the future, provided, of course, that we can think of five new ways to measure the height of a tall building by using a barometer.”
—Jimmy Carter (James Earl Carter, Jr.)
“There has never been in history another such culture as the Western civilization M a culture which has practiced the belief that the physical and social environment of man is subject to rational manipulation and that history is subject to the will and action of man; whereas central to the traditional cultures of the rivals of Western civilization, those of Africa and Asia, is a belief that it is environment that dominates man.”
—Ishmael Reed (b. 1938)
“The greatest horrors in the history of mankind are not due to the ambition of the Napoleons or the vengeance of the Agamemnons, but to the doctrinaire philosophers. The theories of the sentimentalist Rousseau inspired the integrity of the passionless Robespierre. The cold-blooded calculations of Karl Marx led to the judicial and business-like operations of the Cheka.”
—Aleister Crowley (1875–1947)