Timothy I

Timothy I, Patriarch of the Nestorians, 727/728-823

779-823 Patriarchate of Timothy I, greatest Nestorian patriarch under the Arab Caliphate, during which metropolitans are appointed for Armenia and Syria and the Kaghan of the Turks is said to have been converted.

His letters contain much of interest for the study of the transmission of texts. In particular he records the discovery of some ancient Hebrew psalms in the region of the Dead Sea by a goatherd.

Early presence of Christians in Tibet is well attested. Towards the end of the eighth century the Nestorian Patriarch Mar Timothy I (AD 779-823) in his letter to the monks of Mar Maron concerning the addition of the formula Crucifixus es pro nobis [Crucified for us] to the trisagion wrote:

"And also in the countries of Babylon, of Persia, and Assyria, and in all the Countries of the sun rise, that is to say, -- among the Indians, the Chinese, the Tibetans, the Turks, and in all the provinces under the jurisdiction of this patriarchal see, there is no addition of Crucifixus es pronobis." (Mingana, op.cit., p. 466.)

In another of his letters, Timothy mentioned that he was about to consecrate a metropolitan for Tibet. (Lawrence Browne, op.cit.. p.95.)

Bibliography

• "Timothei patriarchae I Epistulae", ed. Oskar Braun, CSCO 74, 75. Louvain :Durbecq (1914/15, repr. 1953). Syriac and Latin.

• Alphonse Mingana, ed. and trans. The Apology of Timothy the Patriarch before the Caliph Mahdi. No. 3, Woodbrooke Studies, Bulletin of the John Rylands Library (Manchester, 1928), 137-298.

• Lawrence E. Browne, "The Patriarch Timothy and the Caliph al-Mahdi" in The Moslem World, January 1931.

Links

• Mark Dickens, Nestorian Christianity in Central Asia