had his see at Seleucia, and had suffragans
on both sides of the Persian Gulf. In Assyria and Chaldaea the mass of
the population became Christians, and Christians were spread, less
thickly, over Media, Khorassan, and Persia itself. The dignity of the
Persian catholicos was considerable; he might be compared with the
Byzantine patriarchs, and the Church almost occupied the position of an
established religion, related to the civil power. But the distance,
and the constant wars between the Empire and Persia, tended inevitably
to separate the Churches. From the end of the fifth century the Church
in Persia, surrendered to {94} Nestorianism, had begun visibly to
decay. It was controlled by the Persian kings, it was a prey to
endless controversy and intrigue, and when the Persian kingdom was at
war with the Empire it was in grave danger. It held councils
furtively; it passed canons, and, itself heretical, condemned other and
more recent heresies than its own. But often its catholicos engaged in
the dynastic politics of the Persian dynasties, and Christianity,
regarded as one among many religions, and tainted with the same
materialism as the rest, sank into impotence and was torn by schism.
Meanwhile, in the neighbourhood of the Persian realm, Christianity was
spreading.

[Sidenote: Growth of the Church under Justinian.]

Many barbarous tribes during Justinian's reign were admitted to the
Christian faith and fellowship. The Tzani dwelling on the border of
Armenia and Pontus, "separated from the sea by precipitous mountains
and vast solitudes, impassable torrent beds and yawning chasms,"
[2]--in a land where, Procopius tells us,[3] "it is not possible to
irrigate the ground, to reap a crop, or to find a meadow anywhere; and
even the trees bear no fruit, because for the most part there is no
regular succession of seasons, and the land is not at one time
subjected to cold and wet, and at another made fertile by the warmth of
the sun, but is desolated by perpetual winter and covered by eternal
snows. They changed their religion to the true faith, became
Christians, and embraced a more civilised mode of life." The king of
those Heruls who served in the Roman army, and a Hunnish king, Gordas,
{95} became Christians. The Abasgi (or Albagrians) of the Caucasus
were converted, and for the most part remained associated with the
Armenians and the Iberians of Georgia,[4] "when they were compelled by
the Persian king to worsh