SYRIAC CHURCH

SYRIAC CHURCH. We take this phrase as applying to Syriac-speaking Christians. Syriac, a dialect of Aramaic spoken in Roman Syria and Mesopotamia, was the language of Christianity in early Persia (qq.v.) as well as in the Roman province. Its original home was the city of Edessa (q.v.), where Christianity may date from the earliest periods of the Christian faith, though documentary evidence is lacking-or at least fiercely debated-until the early 4th c.

The golden age of Syriac Christian literature ran from the 4th to the 8th c., although important works were being produced both by the Assyrian (Nestorian) Church and the Jacobites (qq.v.) as late as the 13th-14th c. Besides the original writings of such luminaries as Aphraat, Ephrem, Philoxenus of Mabboug, Jacob of Serugh, Isaac of Nineveh (qq.v.), and the 7th-8th-c. Nestorian mystics, Syriac Christians also served as a vital conduit for the passage of Greek thought into Arabic and the nascent civilization of Islam (q.v.). The christological controversies of the 5th c. shattered the ecclesiological unity of the Syriac church, and resulted in a division into three main groups, the “Nestorians” in the east, and the “monophysites” and “Melchites” (qq.v.) in the west. The latter group was to be dominated by a Greek-speaking hierarchy appointed from Constantinople (q.v.) and later adopted Arabic as the vehicle of its worship and normal communication.