The Syriac Orthodox Church

The Syriac Orthodox Church, one of the oldest churches in the world, had its origins in the city of Antioch in the Roman province of Syria; according to the New Testament, it was in Antioch that the disciples were first called Christians (Acts 11:26). Church tradition records that St. Peter served as the first bishop of the city, before his journey to Rome; the famous martyr Ignatius of Antioch, also known as St. Ignatius the Illuminator, is said to have been Peter’s second successor. Together with the patriarchates of Jerusalem, Constantinople, Rome, and Alexandria, Antioch became one of the five great centers of early Christendom. The city of Edessa, to the northeast of Antioch, was also an important center for the church, especially in the development of a distinctively Syriac heritage. The Syriac language itself originated as an Edessene dialect of Aramaic.

As Latin was the lingua franca for the Roman Church and Greek for the Byzantine Church, the Syriac language united Christians across a wide geographical region. The patriarchate of Antioch originally included under its jurisdiction all the lands from the Mediterranean Sea to the Persian Gulf (Meno 17), and at its height extended even as far east as Afghanistan (Roberson). In English the church was formerly known as the Syrian Orthodox Church of Antioch, but in 2000 the Holy Synod decided to adopt the term “Syriac” instead, to avoid confusion with the modern nation of Syria.

Antioch was an important center of theology, and its students and teachers were deeply involved in the christological debates of the early Ecumenical Councils. The third of these councils, held in Ephesus in 431, led to a schism within the Syriac-speaking community, with followers of the condemned theologian Nestorius eventually establishing a separate church in Persia, known today as the Assyrian Church of the East. The next major council was held at Chalcedon in 451, and its decision, too, proved divisive. The Syriac Church rejected the proclamation of the council that Christ has two distinct natures, maintaining instead a single nature, at once human and divine. The schism between the opponents and supporters of Chalcedon eventually led to the emergence of separate patriarchates in Antioch, which continue to this day: the Syriac Orthodox patriarchate belongs to the communion of churches known as Oriental Orthodox, while the other patriarchate is a member of the Eastern Orthodox communion.

At the time of the council, Antioch was part of the Byzantine Empire, and the Syriac Orthodox Church was frequently persecuted by Chalcedonian-leaning emperors. Many of its bishops were exiled, and by the mid sixth century the church was in great decline. But revival was soon to follow, through the labors of Jacob Baradaeus, who in around 544 was ordained bishop of Edessa. Jacob, who is commemorated as one of the greatest saints of the church, traveled extensively in an effort to renew the faith, ordaining twenty-seven bishops and hundreds of priests and deacons (Syriac Orthodox Resources). So successful was his undertaking that outsiders sometimes refer to the Syriac Church as “Jacobite,” though the church itself rejects the appellation.

With the Arab conquest of the Near East in the seventh century, the church was delivered from the threat of further Byzantine suppression. Syriac Christians and Muslims generally enjoyed good relations: “The early years of Muslim occupation were characterized by religious tolerance and justice,” writes Chorepiscopus John Meno, “and Syrian Orthodox enjoyed positions of great influence and prestige under the Caliphs” (18). Relations deteriorated to some degree after the Crusades, which stoked anti-Christian sentiments among many Muslim rulers. Nonetheless, the seventh to thirteenth centuries in general mark a prosperous era for the church, with some of the finest outputs of literature and scholarship.

In the fourteenth century the Mongols entered Syria, destroying countless monasteries and churches. These invasions marked the beginning of a period of oppression and decline from which the church has only in recent times emerged. Toward the end of the nineteenth century, the church suffered a particularly fierce persecution under the Turks, and “[b]y the beginning of the 20th century, Syriac Orthodox Christianity was confined mostly to mountainous rural areas, such as Tur Abdin, and various towns in the Ottoman Empire” (Syriac Orthodox Resources). The greatest tragedy befell the church in 1915, remembered as Sayfo (“The Year of the Sword”), when tens of thousands of Syriac Christians were massacred by the Ottomans. Many of the survivors fled Turkey, resettling in North America and in the newly emerging nations of the Middle East.

As a result of the difficult and often violent history the church has had to endure, the office of the patriarch has shifted several times over the centuries. The most recent move was to Damascus, where church administration has been centered since 1959. Over the past several decades, the church has enjoyed a period of revival—sometimes referred to as a modern renaissance—much of it taking place in the new diaspora. Today Syriac churches exist throughout the Middle East, as well as in Turkey, North America, Europe, Australia, and especially in India, where the church has long had an important presence. (For more information on the Syriac Church in India, see the section on Indian Orthodoxy.)

As of 2004, the Syriac Orthodox Church is estimated to have around 1,700,000 members worldwide, including approximately 1,200,000 faithful in India (Roberson).