Jacobite Church
Jacobite Church
(jăk`əbīt'), officially Syrian Orthodox Church, Christian church of Syria, Iraq, and India, recognizing the Syrian Orthodox patriarch of Antioch as its spiritual head, regarded by Roman Catholics and Eastern Orthodox as heretical. It was founded (6th cent.) as a Monophysite church in Syria by Jacob Baradaeus, greatly helped by Empress Theodora. It is thus analogous in position to the Coptic Church, the Monophysite church of Egypt (see CoptsCopts, the native Christian minority of Egypt; estimates of the number of Copts in Egypt range from 5% to 17% of the population. Copts are not ethnically distinct from other Egyptians; they are a cultural remnant, i.e.
..... Click the link for more information. ). For many centuries the Jacobites were under Muslim dominion. Most Jacobites live in Iraq, while their patriarch resides at Damascus. They resemble other Eastern Christians in custom; their rite is the Antiochene or West Syrian; the liturgical language is Syriac.
Since the 17th cent. there has been constant contact with Rome; as a result there is a community in communion with the pope having practices and rite in common with the Jacobites. These Syrian Catholics number about as many as the Jacobites; their head, another patriarch of Antioch, lives at Beirut. They have a separate church organization from the MelchitesMelchites
or Melkites
, members of a Christian community in the Levant and the Americas, mainly Arabic-speaking and numbering about 250,000. They are in communion with the pope and have a Byzantine rite much like that of Constantinople but in the Arabic language.
..... Click the link for more information. , MaronitesMaronites
, Lebanese Christian community, in communion with the pope. By emigration they have spread to Cyprus, Palestine, Egypt, South America, and the United States and now number about one million.
..... Click the link for more information. , and Chaldaean Catholics, which are other communities of Syria and Iraq in communion with Rome.
In SW India there are Christian churches of Malabar Jacobites; this group came into existence in the 17th cent., when many Syrian Malabar Christians left the Roman communion and established relations with the Jacobite patriarch. They now use the Antiochene rite, with some differences. They are divided into disputing jurisdictional churches, including the Malankara Orthodox Syrian Church, which isindependent of the Jacobite patriarch, as well as several churches of Reformed or Independent Jacobites. In the 20th cent. a large number of Malabar Jacobites entered into communion with the pope, retaining their liturgy and practices. These Syro-Malankara Catholics are ecclesiastically separate from both the Syrian Catholics, whose rite they share, and from the Syro-Malabar Catholics (Chaldaean rite), who represent the Malabar Christians who did not leave the Roman communion when the Malabar Jacobites did.
Bibliography
See D. Attwater, The Christian Churches of the East (1947–48).