Changes

Between Bishop Timathus of Chaldean and Pope Eugène IV It is my wonder and regret to notice a group of our brothers and intellectual writers repeating a song that Pope Eugene IV (1441-1447) was the one who “bestowed” the Nestorians who united in Rome with the title of Chaldean, which was later followed by the title of Patriarch of the Chaldeans, without any of these writers bothering to inquire about the original text, its meaning and content. Although the text in question dates back to 1445, and is available in sources known to scholars, I acknowledge my inability to discover any revenue or review of this Latin text, or to translate it, in any of the books and articles that parrot a saying that turns it upside down. This may end up being in a solid Latin language that is not easy to translate, so I committed myself to translating it in an article I published in Mesopotamia in 1996 (No. 95/96, pp. 181-203, entitled “The Church of the East in its Two”).

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If we want to understand the meaning of in’am mentioned in the texts on this subject, it is intended to exempt from residence taxes imposed on foreigners and heretics coming to Cyprus, and has nothing to do with the conferral of a new national identity for a people – this exemption from taxation included Chaldeans and Maronites because they were equal to the rest of the population, united with the Catholic Church, in civil rights and privileges.

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Rome believed, on the basis of what was presented to it at the time, that the abbot Sulaqa had been elected to succeed Patriarch Shimon Barmama, on the grounds that the latter had died. As a result, Rome thought it had entered into a legal union with the Church of the East as a whole. As it was later established by Rome that Shimon Bermama was still alive at that time, she found herself confronted with a new reality: the division of the Church of the East into two groups: the “Nestorian group” headed by the patriarchal family of “Abuna” based in the monastery of Rabban Hormizd, and the Catholic group headed by the successors of Sulaqa whose headquarters shifted from Diyarbakir to Salamas in Iran and then to Cogans in Turkey. At the beginning of the seventeenth century, the Nestorian Patriarch (then Mar Elijah VIII of the Abuna family) was trying to contact Rome and exploring the possibility of reaching the legal union with it. Therefore, Mar Elijah the Patriarch sent to Pope Paul V and dated March 1610 (its original copy in the Vatican Archives, Borja Collection, Series 3, Volume 43, folio 109, and what follows – according to Jamil pp. 108-115), which is of interest to us here from this report is its conclusion, which reads as follows: “This letter, which was written by order of Mar Elijah, Patriarch of Babylon…” This report, as far as I know, is the oldest official document in which the Patriarch of the East himself adopts the title of “Patriarch of Babylon”, which undoubtedly constitutes an evolving stage of self-awareness and a return to historical origins, as stated by Abd Joshua al-Subawi in his compilation of the Sanhadusian Collection of Canons, the ninth passage;

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The title of “Patriarch of Babylon”, which emerged since the fourteenth century after the fall of Baghdad and the decline of its importance, is a complementary element to the elements of the historical and cultural identity of the Christians of Mesopotamia: the cities that were built to occupy the status of Babylon disappeared, and Baghdad, which was built to succeed it as the capital of the state and the country, was weakened at that time.

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