Asia's Forgotten Christian Story

Steve Cochrane

• Publisher: Regnum
• Year: 2019
• Print ISBN: 9781912343843
• eBook ISBN: 9781913363185
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Christian Ministry

A largely forgotten story in Asian Christian history is the spread of the Church through missionary-sending monasteries. This book focuses especially on the 8th-9th century period, when the thriving Church of the East, led by the dynamic Patriarch Timothy I, not only continued to spread to India and China but also reached out to Muslims in its heartland of Mesopotamia.

Chapter 2
Foundations and Activity of Church of the East Monasteries until the Early Ninth Century

Introduction

Mission and monasticism are not mutually exclusive and the Church of the East activity shows how monasticism co-existed with outward witness. While the concept of monks withdrawing in ascetic practices to inaccessible islands, mountains and deserts to worship God and battle with demons has been a normative pattern in Christian history, one writer, Yannoulatos, has said that:

The role of monks and monasteries in bringing Christianity to idolatrous populations in the East cannot be overestimated, although most of its pages remain unknown at several points of value. The fact beyond dispute is that, from the beginning of monasticism, the most daring and most efficient missionaries were the monks who lived the gospel without compromise.

A stream of withdrawal is unmistakable in monastic history yet it is only one part of a story that has included at other times an engagement with society and involvement in Christian witness. Kenneth Scott Latourette a historian of Christianity writes: ‘From the sixth century onward most of the missionaries of the Roman Catholic and eastern churches were men and women who had taken monastic vows.’

Other influences on Syrian monasticism in these early centuries were coming from further east. Buddhism, with its emphasis on a missionary monasticism, may have had some influence on early Christian monks. Buddhist monasticism reached its peak in the period 606-647 in India with more than one thousand monasteries and perhaps as many as fifty thousand monks. Monasticism having an outward dimension of witness and service was never solely a Christian phenomenon. In fact it is quite probable that the origins of monasticism lie in Buddhism in its Indian homelands. As a Sri Lankan Jesuit and leader in inter-religious dialogue writes:

The religion founded by Buddha is essentially a missionary monasticism.

Many Buddhist monks and nuns travelled across the Indian subcontinent as well as into Central Asia and China, founding monasteries with an emphasis on study and witness. The influence of Buddhist monasticism on early Christian monasticism deserves further study.

It seems likely that Syrian missionary monasticism was shaped from both western and eastern directions while developing its own indigenous version. The East Syrian variety took advantage of its geographical position to receive a ‘cross-pollination’ from various directions.

Two streams in Syrian monasticism from the beginning were coenobitic [living in community] and anchoritic [living separately but often near community]. Both streams were included in the conception of monastic life. One writer, Aphrahat, lists some of the qualities necessary for both streams:

Above all else, it is appropriate that the man upon whom the yoke [of Christ] is laid should have a sound faith, in accordance with what I wrote to you in the first letter: he should be assiduous in fasting and in prayer, he should be fervent in the love of Christ, he should be humble, composed and alert; his speech should be gentle and kind, he should be sincere-minded with everyone, he should speak [carefully] weighing his words, he should make a fence [barrier] for his mouth against any harmful words, he should distance himself from hasty laughter, he should not have a liking for finery in clothing, nor again should he let his hair grow [long] and adorn it; it is not appropriate for him to use on it scented unguents, nor should he take a seat at banquets.

Aphrahat wrote about the tradition of martyrdom that continued in the Church of the East in the coming centuries, representing not only the end of earthly life due to persecution but also the daily life of sacrifice. It involved both virginity and holiness, two qualities important to East Syrian monastic identity. This identity was affirmed in the daily practice of the liturgy.

Theological foundations for the monastic mission of the Church of the East can be seen not only in the work of Aphrahat but also in the sixth-century Church leader Narsai (c. 520). Narsai provided some of the most important religious and intellectual roots for the school system of the East Syrians and in his homilies, a wealth of Biblical exposition used in Nisibis and other monasteries and schools of the Church. One of Narsai’s homilies that described the calling of the Church to outward witness is in his Homily to Paul and Peter.

Missionary dimensions in Narsai’s theology included martyrdom for Christ, a special calling of Christians to be a witness to the world, the importance of the teacher in that calling, and the universal nature of that mission call to the whole earth.

In examining the foundation and theology of monastic mission in the Church of the East, various models of response can be seen from monasticism to the surrounding cultures and faiths they encountered. A helpful list of five is given by the historian of Asian missions, Samuel Moffett. First is the Hermit on his Holy Hill with an emphasis on hostility to culture, personified by St Simon Stylites who would sit on an elevated platform near Aleppo: praying, preaching or just being silent. Hundreds of these platforms existed in the region of Syria and Palestine but were much less common further east in Mesopotamia and Persia. An emphasis on withdrawing from society, whether to a platform above the ground or to a lonely place, was a common perception of the monasticism found in Egypt. It was also similar in perception to the harsher forms of Syrian monasticism, particularly in its West Syrian version. It was less common in East Syrian monasticism.

A second model was the Bishop in his Blessed City with its emphasis on drawing people for witness and wisdom. Monasteries in this model were places of hospitality and, while there, the traveller or visitor received various forms of solace or advice. As Islam began to spread, Muslims became aware of and wrote about the monasteries around them.

Third was the model of the Teacher in his School, with the school often within or next to the monastery. Although common to both West and East Syrian branches, this model would become particularly important to the latter and be combined with training for monastic activity in witness.

The fourth model was the Patriarch in his Christian Ghetto. The nature of being a dhimmi community within Islam created at times separation into their own worlds and realities. In the early Abbasid period, the influence of Patriarch Timothy I with the Muslim rulers provided the East Syrian Church with a realm of stability and peace despite living under restrictions.

Fifth was the model of the Missionary to the ends of the earth. The teacher and missionary were vital to the sustaining of monastic activity across Asia in the early Abbasid period.

A sixth model that Moffett does not mention, but which should be added, and one that would have importance across the Indian Ocean to India and China, was The Merchant across Asia. This aspects will be discussed further below.

Monastic Mission among the Arabs in the Seventh and Eighth Centuries

In the early seventh century, as a new prophetic voice emerged in Arabia, these monks in cells spread throughout West Asia, including the Arabian Peninsula. They belonged to both West and East Syrian monasteries, living at times a coenobitic life and also an anchoritic one. Their presence had been noted by Arabs in the years before Islam began and would be written about as it developed, creating a new form of literature for Muslims.

Important seventh-century Christian sources for this Arabian and Mesopotamian monasticism, are histories that describe the activity of the monks and the role of these monasteries. These works include the History of Ahudemmeh and the History of Maruta. Maruta served as the Metropolitan of Tikrit (629-649) and built a monastery dedicated to Saint Sergius near the River Euphrates. The History of Maruta has descriptions of some of the monasteries that had been constructed, as well as their impact on the surrounding areas as Islam began to spread into Mesopotamia:

One description of a particular monastery in Mesopotamia, as Islam was beginning to expand, outlines its role as ‘a refuge, a harbor, and a place of repose’ as well as a place where the hungry are fed and the thirsty are nourished. It was also a place where ‘the indigent, the sick, the afflicted and the feeble’ are brought to the monastery, and ‘are cured and leave strengthened, in good health and succoured as much in body as in spirit’.

An important location for monastic witness among the Arabs, both before and after the coming of Islam, was the city of Hira in what is now western Iraq. In a 1974 Japanese archaeological expedition to Hira, excavations have uncovered one of the many monastic institutions which dotted the region of Hira in the fifth to eighth centuries. Abraham of Kaskar (d. 588) who built the ‘Great Monastery’ at Mount Izla in Northern Iraq wrote his monastic rules in 571. These rules provided a model and impetus for many other new monasteries that included Beit Abhe.

Hira was also a location of importance as the place where Islamic writing about Christian monasteries started which included material stretching back to pre-Islamic Arabia. The first Muslim to write about the monasteries was Hisham al-Kalbi (d. 819) who lived in the region of Hira and his work provided a detailed list of the monasteries in and around Hira.

The amount of material written by Muslims on Christian monasteries and their activity, suggests a certain level of readership and interest. Many works on monasteries were written in the centuries before and after the coming of Islam and the amount of writings, particularly by poets describing the monks and monasteries, indicates that the monasteries were of some importance for the Arabs, both before and after Islam made its appearance. Al-Shabushti’s work has also a large amount of poetry that includes the symbols of the monasteries and activity there providing a valuable reflection by Muslim authors on the presence and activity in these monasteries.

One East Syrian ascetic named John of Dailam (d. 738) who had close links with Beit Abhe monastery and received his training there, entering it as a child, prayed for Arabs as part of his monastic witness. One of his encounters was in Damascus with the Arab Ummayad Caliph [King] Abd al-Malik (685-705):

The King asked him to pray for his daughter who was tried by demons. She was healed. The King then offered John gifts, but he refused them, asking the King instead for peace and calm for the Christian people, and for permission to build churches and monasteries wherever they wanted.

According to this account, the encounter that John of Dailam had led to the Caliph giving permission to build churches and monasteries wherever they wanted.

In the decades before the encounters of John of Dailam, the Patriarch of the Church of the East, Isho-yahbh III (d. 658), was aware of the growing influence of the new faith of Islam and how many Christians were going over to it. In his letters, the sense of ambiguity and questions that many had about the nature of this faith was apparent and brought out the passionate struggle the Patriarch was feeling as he saw ‘so many thousands of men called Christians going into apostasy’, many not as the result of outward compulsions of violence but for economic reasons. A sense of helplessness of the Christian leader comes through in his letters and perhaps contributes to a sense of an unpredictable future.

Later however, the Patriarch takes a different tone with a greater sense of ambiguity about the new faith and its leaders and their involvement in areas where churches and monasteries exist:

Nevertheless, those very Arabs, to whom God has granted the rule of the lands at this time, lo! they are in our part of the country, as you know; but they not only refrain from attacking our religion. They even commend our Faith, honour the priests and saints of our God, and confer benefits on churches and monasteries!

In the first generation of Muslim rule when the churches and monasteries were strong institutions, the relationship between the two faiths was unpredictable and uneasy. Whether the Patriarch or the many Christians in...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Content
• Introduction
• Foundations and Activity of Church of the East Monasteries until the Early Ninth Century
• Monastic Presence and Encounter in Mission: Mesopotamia and the East in the Early Ninth Century
• Training for Monastic Mission in the Early Abbasid Period
• View of East Syrian Monasteries from Muslim Literature of the Ninth and Tenth Centuries
• East Syrian Monasteries in the Early Abbasid Period: Issues of Identity and Role in Mission
• Conclusion
• Recommended Reading
• BCover