The schism of 1552 was the division of the Church of the East into two factions, one of which entered into communion with Rome becoming part of the Catholic Church at this time and the other remained independent until the 19th century. Although the Eliya line, which emerged as a result of this schism, did eventually enter into communion with Rome, various Eastern Protestant sects with their origins in the Church of the East emerged as a result of this schism. The Shimun line whose entry into full communion with Rome caused this schism became independent again by the 17th century. The circumstances of the 1552 schism were controversial at the time and have been disputed ever since.
Summary of events
(16th century)
Around the middle of the fifteenth century the patriarch Shemʿon IV Basidi made the patriarchal succession hereditary, normally from uncle to nephew. This practice, which tended to result in a shortage of eligible heirs, eventually led to a schism in the Church of the East. The patriarch Shemʿon VII Ishoʿyahb (1539–1558) caused great offence at the beginning of his reign by designating his twelve-year-old nephew Hnanishoʿ as his successor, presumably because no older relatives were available. Several years later, probably because Hnanishoʿ had died in the interim, he designated as successor his fifteen-year-old brother Eliya, the future patriarch Eliya VI (1558–1591). Besides making these two provocative appointments, he was also accused by his opponents of permitting concubinage, selling clerical posts and living intemperately. By 1552 Shemʿon VII Ishoʿyahb had become so unpopular that his opponents rebelled against his authority. The rebels, principally from the Amid, Seert and Salmas districts, elected as patriarch a monk named Shimun VIII Yohannan Sulaqa, the leader of Rabban Hormizd Monastery near Alqosh. No bishop of metropolitan rank was available to consecrate him, as canonically required. Franciscan missionaries were already at work among the Nestorians as well, and they legitimised their position by persuading Shimun VIII's supporters and getting him consecrated by Pope Julius III (1550–1555).
Shimun VIII went to Rome to put his case in person. At Rome he made a satisfactory Catholic profession of faith and presented a letter, drafted by his supporters in Mosul, which set out his claims to be recognised as patriarch. On 9 April 1553, having satisfied the Pope that he was a good Catholic, Shimun VIII was consecrated bishop and archbishop in the basilica of Saint Peter. On 28 April he was recognised as "Patriarch of Mosul" by Pope Julius III in the bull Divina disponente clementia and received the pallium from the pope's hands at a secret consistory in the Vatican. These events, which marked the birth of the Chaldean Catholic Church, created a permanent schism in the Church of the East.
Shimun VIII returned to Mesopotamia towards the end of the same year. In December 1553 he obtained documents from the Ottoman authorities recognising him as an independent "Chaldean" patriarch, and in 1554, during a stay of five months in Amid, consecrated five metropolitan bishops (for the dioceses of Gazarta, Hesna d'Kifa, Amid, Mardin and Seert). Shemʿon VII Ishoʿyahb responded by consecrating two more underage members of the patriarchal family as metropolitans for Nisibis and Gazarta. He also won over the governor of Amadiya, who invited Shimun VIII to Amadiya, imprisoned him for four months, and put him to death in January 1555.
Disputed circumstances of Sulaqa's election
There are two very different, and contradictory, traditions as to the circumstances of Sulaqa's election. According to one version of events, which derives from a letter of Andrew Masius and is also reflected in the Vatican's consistorial act of April 1553, the schism of 1552 was precipitated by the death of the patriarch 'Shemʿon Bar Mama' at Gazarta in 1551, and by the subsequent consecration of an eight-year-old boy, 'Shemʿon VIII Denha', as his successor. Sulaqa was thereupon elected by a party in the church which disapproved of the principle of hereditary succession. Shemʿon VIII Denha and Sulaqa then lived for two years as rival patriarchs, until Shemʿon Denha encompassed Sulaqa's death in 1555, dying himself in 1558. This tradition sought to legitimise Sulaqa's election to Pope Julius III and his cardinals, by presenting it as a return to the elective principle.
This version of events has been repeated in several subsequent histories, by Giuseppe Luigi Assemani in 1775, and Filippo Angelico Becchetti in 1796. It has also been accepted by several modern scholars of the Church of the East, including the Chaldean deacon Joseph Tfinkdji in 1914, and Cardinal Eugene Tisserant in 1931. More recently, it was accepted in 1993 by Jean-Maurice Fiey, a scholar of particular eminence in this field, who listed all known patriarchs and bishops of the East and West Syrian churches, including the patriarchs Simon VII Bar Mama (1538–1551) and Simon VIII Denha (1551–1558).
According to another version of events, deriving from the testimony of the second Chaldean patriarch ʿAbdishoʿ IV Maron and confirmed by a letter of January 1555 by the papal nuncio Ambrose Buttigeg, Sulaqa was consecrated during a rebellion against the reigning patriarch Shemʿon VII Ishoʿyahb (1539–1558). The rebellion was prompted by Shemʿon's dreadful conduct in general, and by his consecration of two underage metropolitans in particular. This tradition sought to legitimise Sulaqa's election to critics in the Church of the East, by presenting it as a justified revolt against a dissolute patriarch.
The two versions of events cannot be reconciled, and give rise to the strong suspicion that Sulaqa or his supporters lied to the Vatican in 1552 when they claimed that Sulaqa had been elected in response to the consecration of the eight-year-old patriarch Shemʿon VIII Denha after Bar Mama's death in 1551.
Attention was first drawn to the contradictions in the relevant sources by Jacques Marie Vosté in 1931, but he did not pursue their implications. In an influential study by Joseph Habbi in 1966, these implications were more fully explored. Habbi's study concentrated on the contradictions between the surviving documentary evidence in the Vatican and an alternative version of events preserved in the poems of ʿAbdishoʿ IV Maron, Sulaqa's successor as Chaldean patriarch, and he concluded that Sulaqa was elected in 1552 in the course of a rebellion against the reigning patriarch Shemʿon VII Ishoʿyahb. Habbi focused purely on the literary sources, and did not consider a significant additional body of evidence available in the colophons of a number of sixteenth-century East Syrian manuscripts. The evidence from these colophons, deployed by David Wilmshurst, fully supported Habbi's main contention, and also shed further light on the circumstances of Sulaqa's election by identifying the two youthful metropolitans whose consecration precipitated the schism of 1552. Habbi and Wilmshurst's conclusions were accepted by Heleen Murre-van den Berg in an important article published in Hugoye in 1999, The Patriarchs of the Church of the East from the Fifteenth to Eighteenth Centuries, and have not subsequently been challenged by scholars of the Church of the East.
Disputes over history
Version of Andrew Masius
According to a letter of Andrew Masius, Sulaqa was elected shortly after the death of the previous patriarch at Gazarta in 1551, who was succeeded by his eight-year old nephew Shemʿon Denha, the only surviving male relative. According to Labourt, who does not identify his source, Shemʿon Denha was consecrated by Hnanishoʿ, the sole remaining metropolitan. Sulaqa was thereupon elected by a party in the church which disapproved of the principle of hereditary succession, and Shemʿon VIII Denha and Sulaqa lived for some years as rival patriarchs, until Shemʿon Denha encompassed Sulaqa's death in 1555, dying himself in 1558. This tradition is reflected in the language used in the consistorial act in the Vatican recognising Sulaqa as patriarch. After asserting that Sulaqa's election followed the death of the patriarch 'Simon Mama', the act continues as follows:
About a hundred years ago a patriarch tried to make his sacred office hereditary in his family, and every bishop, metropolitan and patriarch since has been a member of his family. The last patriarch likewise tried to designate as his successor his nephew, whom he had made a bishop when just a child of eight, but died before he could achieve his aim. The whole nation, priests and laymen alike, resolved to take this heaven-sent opportunity of ending the tyranny and restoring its old right of election.
Problems with Masius's account
Despite the authority of the scholars who have followed Masius, there are grounds for rejecting his version of events. First, the only evidence is Masius's statement that a patriarch died at Gazarta in 1551, and it is possible that he misunderstood the position. His letter drew on a letter written at Mosul in 1552 by Sulaqa's supporters, which was taken to Rome by Sulaqa. This letter, quoted in two slightly different versions by Giuseppe Simone Assemani, and Wilhelm van Gulik, does not mention the recent death of a patriarch. Instead, it states that the patriarch had tried to create a metropolitan from among his relatives:
A hundred years ago we had a patriarch who would only consecrate a metropolitan from among his own stock, clan and family, and his family has maintained that custom for the last hundred years. Now only one bishop is left from the family, and he has impudently tried to do the same as his predecessors. But we have refused to accept or proclaim him ...
Furthermore, by this period it had become customary for the patriarchs to be buried in the monastery of Rabban Hormizd, and there is no intermediate tomb between that of Shemʿon VI (†1538) and that of a patriarch named Shemʿon who died in 1558.
Finally, a number of poems on the life of Sulaqa composed in the year following his death by his successor ʿAbdishoʿ IV Maron know nothing of the recent death of a patriarch and the succession of Shemʿon Denha. In these poems, translated in 1931 by Jacques Marie Vosté, Sulaqa and his supporters rebelled against a dissolute patriarch named Bar Mama ('son of Mama'), a veteran in office and not a recently elected child. The earliest manuscripts of these poems are copied in 1556 by Sulaqa's brother Joseph, metropolitan of India (MS Vat Syr 45), and again, a little later by Eliya Asmar, metropolitan of Amid (MS Borgia 21). This patriarch remained in office after Sulaqa's election, and was eventually able to encompass his death in 1555. He may therefore have been the "feeble catholicus Shemʿon, son of the deceased Mama", whose (undated) ownership note has been preserved in a manuscript copied in 1482.
Version of ʿAbdishoʿ IV Maron
ʿAbdishoʿ's account, written close to the events it describes, and for a readership familiar with the circumstances of Sulaqa's election, is to be preferred to the version (more favourable to Sulaqa) which outsiders were encouraged to believe. ʿAbdishoʿ wrote both to justify Sulaqa's irregular election and to rebut its critics. The emphasis of the poem showed that Sulaqa's supporters were uneasy on two points: first, that they had rebelled against a reigning patriarch; and secondly, that they had gone outside the Church of the East and sought Sulaqa's consecration at Rome. ʿAbdishoʿ dealt with the second point by stressing the lack of bishops available in Kurdistan, and giving a (spurious) list of previous patriarchs who had been consecrated at Rome. The first and more important criticism he parried by citing biblical examples of the deposition of bad rulers, stressing Bar Mama's unfitness for his position, and suggesting that he was "as good as dead":
When this Bar Mama had estranged himself from the patriarchal throne, and might just as well have been dead as alive, the bounty of our Saviour chose an excellent monk of the monastery of Beth Qoqa, named Sulaqa, and created him catholicus.
A long passage in one of these poems lists a catalogue of Bar Mama's offences: