List of maphrians

For a description of the office, see Maphrian. For the current Maphrianate, see Catholicos of India.

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The Maphrian, originally known as the Grand Metropolitan of the East or the Catholicos, was the head of the Maphrianate of the East and was the second highest-ranking prelate within the Syriac Orthodox Church, after the Patriarch of Antioch.[1] The maphrianate originated as a distinct miaphysite ecclesiastical institution in the Sasanian Empire after the ordination of Ahudemmeh as Grand Metropolitan of the East by Jacob Baradaeus in 559.[2] However, it claimed to be the legitimate continuation of the Church of the East and counted its leaders prior to the church's adoption of dyophysitism as its own.[3][4][5] Sources disagree on the first to use the title of maphrian as Michael the Syrian's Chronicle gives John IV Saliba,[6] who is believed to have adopted it in c. 1100,[1] whereas Bar Hebraeus' Ecclesiastical History names Marutha of Tikrit as the first.[7]

A separate maphrianate of Tur Abdin under the authority of the Patriarch of Tur Abdin was established in c. 1479 and endured until 1844.[8] Eventually, the Maphrianate of the East was abolished in 1860.[1] A maphrianate in India was established in 1912, thereby creating the Malankara Orthodox Syrian Church, but was not recognised by the Syriac Orthodox Church until 1958.[7] In 1975, Patriarch Ignatius Jacob III withdrew recognition of the maphrian Baselios Augen I, and appointed Baselios Paulose II in his stead.[7] The Malankara Orthodox Syrian Church thus split from the Syriac Orthodox Church which continues to appoint its own maphrians in India.[7] Since the death of Baselios Thomas I, the maphrianate is vacant.

  1. ^ a b c Takahashi (2018), p. 957.
  2. ^ Barsoum (2003), p. 299.
  3. ^ Weltecke (2016), p. 308: "Bar ʻEbroyo also claimed the maphrians to be the legitimate heirs of the See of Seleucia-Ctesiphon, the original residence of the catholicos of the ancient autocephalous Church of the East in the Persian Empire".
  4. ^ Wood (2013), pp. 67–68: Bar Hebraeus' Ecclesiastical History "presents the early catholicoi as precursors to the late sixth-century Miaphysite maphrians".
  5. ^ Wood (2021), p. 3: "Narratives of the bishops of Takrit represent them as successors to the fifth-century catholicoi of the Church of the East before the latter’s turn towards Dyophysite ‘Nestorianism’".
  6. ^ Ignatius Jacob III (2008), p. 51.
  7. ^ a b c d Kiraz (2011).
  8. ^ Wilmshurst (2019), pp. 812–813.