Schism of 1552

[1] 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.

Besides making these two provocative appointments, he was also accused by his opponents of permitting concubinage, selling clerical posts and living intemperately.

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.

Franciscan missionaries were already at work among the Nestorians as well, and they legitimised their position by persuading Sulaqa's supporters and getting him consecrated by Pope Julius III (1550–1555).

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 Vatican that he was a good Catholic, Sulaqa was consecrated bishop and archbishop in the basilica of Saint Peter.

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.

[6] It has also been accepted by several modern scholars of the Church of the East, including the Chaldean deacon Joseph Tfinkdji in 1914,[7] and Cardinal Eugene Tisserant in 1931.

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.

[11] 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,[12] 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.

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.

This letter, quoted in two slightly different versions by Giuseppe Simone Assemani,[16] and Wilhelm van Gulik,[17] does not mention the recent death of a patriarch.

He may therefore have been the "feeble catholicus Shemʿon, son of the deceased Mama", whose (unfortunately undated) ownership note has been preserved in a manuscript copied in 1482.

[20] 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[according to whom?]

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.

He dearly loves gold and silver, and so he courts the wealthy, conferring the clerical order of his choice on anyone who gives him enough money.

A fifth also, with his approval, sinfully married his godmother, who should have been to him as a sister or an aunt.Confirmation of ʿAbdishoʿ's version of events was later provided by the bishop Ambrose Buttigeg, a Maltese Dominican who accompanied Sulaqa back to Mesopotamia in late 1553 as papal nuncio.

On 12 January 1555 Buttigeg wrote to the Vatican to inform pope Julius III that Shemʿon Bar Mama was still alive and had just contrived Sulaqa's murder: Your holiness will be shocked to learn that, contrary to what your holiness, the most reverend cardinals, and the rest of you were told, the old patriarch never died at all, and has recently murdered the said Simon Sulaqa.

[21] To have committed the catalogue of crimes imputed to him by Abdisho IV Maron, the patriarch Bar Mama must have held office for several years.

[citation needed] According to the evidence from the dating formulas of manuscripts copied in the first half of the sixteenth century, the patriarch Shemʿon VI, who died on 5 August 1538, was succeeded by his brother Shemʿon VII Ishoʿyahb, who is first mentioned as a metropolitan and guardian of the throne as early as 1504 (MS Seert 46),[22] and who is first mentioned as patriarch in a colophon of 1539 (MS Vat Syr 339).

According to ʿAbdishoʿ, Bar Mama scandalised the faithful by consecrating two boys as metropolitans, one of twelve and the other of fifteen, and of handing over the administration of other dioceses to laymen.

In 1539, not long after his accession, he consecrated his nephew Hnanishoʿ metropolitan of Mosul, and shortly afterwards designated him "guardian of the throne" (natar kursya).

[28] It is clear from these references that, besides holding successively the metropolitan appointments of Mosul and Gazarta, Hnanishoʿ was also natar kursya as early as 1541 and as late as 18 October 1545.