According to Church legend, the Apostleship of Edessa (Assyria) is alleged to have been founded by Shimun Keepa (Saint Peter) (33–64),[5] Thoma Shlikha, (Saint Thomas), Tulmay (St. Bartholomew the Apostle) and of course Mar Addai (St. Thaddeus) of the Seventy disciples. Saint Thaddeus was martyred c.66 AD.
Around 280, visiting bishops consecrated Papa bar Aggai as Bishop of Seleucia-Ctesiphon, thereby establishing the succession.[12] With him, heads of the church took the title Catholicos.
14. Barbaʿshmin (Barbashmin) (343–346 AD). The apostolic see of Edessa is completely abandoned in 345 AD due to persecutions against the Church of the East.
Isaac was recognised as 'Grand Metropolitan' and Primate of the Church of the East at the Synod of Seleucia-Ctesiphon in 410. The acts of this Synod were later edited by the Patriarch Joseph (552–567) to grant him the title of Catholicos as well. This title for Patriarch Isaac in fact only came into use towards the end of the fifth century.
With Dadisho, the significant disagreement on the dates of the Catholicoi in the sources start to converge. In 424, under Mar Dadisho I, the Church of the East declared itself independent of all the Church of the West (Emperor Justinian's Pentarchy); thereafter, its Catholicoi began to use the additional title of Patriarch.[12] During his reign, the Council of Ephesus in 431 denounced Nestorianism.
Patriarchal lines from the schism of 1552 until 1830
By the Schism of 1552 the Church of the East was divided into many splinters but two main factions, of which one entered into full communion with the Catholic Church and the other remained independent. A split in the former line in 1681 resulted in a third faction.
The Eliya line (1) in Alqosh ended in 1804, having lost most of its followers to Yohannan VIII Hormizd, a member of the same family, who became a Catholic and in 1828, after the death of a rival candidate, a nephew of the last recognized patriarch of the Josephite line in Amid (3), was chosen as Catholic patriarch. Mosul then became the residence of the head of the Chaldean Catholic Church until the transfer to Baghdad in the mid-20th century. For subsequent Chaldean Catholic patriarchs, see List of Chaldean Catholic patriarchs of Baghdad.
Since patriarchs of the Eliya line bore the same name (Syriac: ܐܠܝܐ / Elīyā) without using any pontifical numbers, later researchers were faced with several challenges, while trying to implement long standing historiographical practice of individual numeration. First attempts were made by early researchers during the 18th and 19th century, but their numeration was later (1931) revised by Eugène Tisserant, who also believed that during the period from 1558 to 1591 there were two successive Eliya patriarchs, numbered as VI (1558-1576) and VII (1576-1591), and in accordance with that he also assigned numbers (VIII-XIII) to their successors.[27] That numeration was accepted and maintained by several other scholars.[28][29] In 1966 and 1969, the issue was reexamined by Albert Lampart and William Macomber, who concluded that in the period from 1558 to 1591 there was only one patriarch (Eliya VI), and in accordance with that appropriate numbers (VII-XII) were reassigned to his successors.[30][31] In 1999, same conclusion was reached by Heleen Murre-van den Berg, who presented additional evidence in favor of the new numeration.[32] Revised numeration was accepted in modern scholarly works,[33][34][35][36][37][38][39] with one notable exception.
Tisserant's numeration is still advocated by David Wilmshurst, who does acknowledge the existence of only one Eliya patriarch during the period from 1558 to 1591, but counts him as Eliya "VII" and his successors as "VIII" to "XIII", without having any existing patriarch designated as Eliya VI in his works,[40][17][41] an anomaly noticed by other scholars,[36][38][39] but left unexplained and uncorrected by Wilmshurst, even after the additional affirmation of proper numbering, by Samuel Burleson and Lucas van Rompay, in the Gorgias Encyclopedic Dictionary of the Syriac Heritage (2011).[37]
^Coakley (1999), p. 65, 66: "Catholikos-Patriarchs of the East who served on the throne of the church of koke in Seleucia-Ktesiphon".
^Walker 1985, p. 172: "this church had as its head a "catholicos" who came to be styled "Patriarch of the East" and had his seat originally at Seleucia-Ctesiphon (after 775 it was shifted to Baghdad)".
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