Our Chaldean Catholic Faith
Christianity spread to Mesopotamia and regions of the Persian Empire as early as the first Christian century. Many Chaldeans and Assyrians accepted the Gospel and gradually established the Church of the East. According to their tradition, St. Thomas the Apostle was the first to evangelize these regions during his journey to India, followed by Mar Addai, one of the Seventy Disciples of the Lord, and then by Mar Mari, his own disciple. Both came from the missionary base established in Edessa, on the border of Syria and Mesopotamia. During the fourth and fifth centuries, prominent centers of learning for the Church of the East were located in Edessa and Nisibis, in Upper Mesopotamia. Early in the fourth century, the episcopal see of the Sasanian capital, Seleucia-Ctesiphon, gained prominence among all episcopal sees in Mesopotamia and the surrounding areas within the Persian Empire. It soon became the seat of the Catholicos (Patriarch) of the Church of the East. By the beginning of the seventh century, prior to the Islamic conquest of Mesopotamia (634 A.D.), almost one-third of the population was Christian. After the conquest, Islam became the majority religion. However, Christians and Jews were recognized in Islamic society as “People of the Book” and were allowed to live as organized religious, social, and cultural communities under their own leaders and laws. During the patriarchate of Mar Timothee the Great (780–823), when the Arab Abbasids established Baghdad as the capital of their empire, the Patriarchal See was transferred there.
The Abbasids turned to Christian scholars to help teach and disseminate scientific and philosophical knowledge—particularly in the fields of philosophy, medicine, chemistry, astronomy, and mathematics. Greek culture was translated by Chaldean scholars, first into Chaldean-Aramaic, then into Arabic, and eventually made its way to the West via Spain. For four centuries, the Church of the East considered itself part of the Catholic Church. In the fifth century, as a result of Christological controversies, the majority of this Church adopted the Nestorian theological formulas, which had been condemned at the Council of Ephesus (431 A.D.). This led to its isolation from the Church of the Roman Empire and to it being referred to as the "Nestorian Church". During nearly a millennium of isolation, the Church of the East carried out one of the most prodigious and ambitious missionary expansions of the Middle Ages (between the 7th and 13th centuries). "Nestorian" monks spread the Gospel—along with the Aramaic alphabet and culture—among the peoples of Khurasan, Azerbaijan, Afghanistan, Soviet Turkistan, Mongolia, China, Tibet, India, Japan, and the Philippines. The Stele of Si-Ngan- Fu in China (781 A.D.), along with 611 tombstones discovered in the province of Semiryenchensk in southern Siberia (all inscribed in Chaldean), remain powerful witnesses to the vast reach and influence of Chaldean Catholic expansion. The living legacy of this missionary work can still be seen in the three million Indians of Malabar, who continue to follow the liturgical rites of the Church of the East. The Mongolian persecutions of the first half of the 14th century devastated the Church, wiping out much of its faithful and recorded history. By the early 15th century, however, some segments of the Church, inspired by a spirit of renewal, began to reestablish ties with Rome. Ecclesiastical unity was formally restored with the Catholic Church in 1553, through the efforts of Patriarch Shimun VIII Yohannan Sulaqa (1510–1555 A.D.). In January 1555, upon his return from Rome, Patriarch Sulaqa was imprisoned, tortured, and martyred by local Ottoman authorities, due to strong opposition from a rival patriarch. To this day, the Chaldean Catholic Church remains one of the twenty-three Eastern Catholic Churches (sui iuris) in full communion with the Catholic Church.
