Catholic Missions to the ‘St John Christians’
Total Page：16
File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb
CHAPTER SEVEN CATHOLIC MISSIONS TO THE ‘ST JOHN Christians’ In previous chapters we have touched on Augustinian contacts and inter- action with the Syrian Church, and in greater detail with members of the Armenian Church, representing two differing traditions of Eastern Christianity. There questions of ecclesiastical jurisdiction relating to papal supremacy and to a lesser extent of doctrine, were the principal concerns. We turn now to a consideration of contacts with a group which we know with the privilege of historical hindsight was not, and never had been, Christian: the Mandaeans of lower Mesopotamia, a group which had acquired the sobriquet of ‘St John Christians’.1 Both Augustinians and Carmelites would establish missions almost contemporaneously in Basra and a scarcity of material relating to the Augustinian will oblige us to make greater use of Carmelite accounts in order to provide a coherent overview of Catholic missions to the Mandaeans, of value for the descrip- tion of the Mandaeans by missionaries of both Orders, and in setting the context for the dispute over jurisdiction which characterised them and which will be examined in detail in the chapter following. The Mandaeans Writing from Baghdad in 2003, a US reporter describes a remarkable scene: 1 The most important study of the Catholic missions to the Mandaeans in the 17th cen- tury remains Carlos Alonso, Los Mandeos y Las Misiones Católicas en la primera metad del s. XVII (Orientalia Christiana Analecta 179) (Rome, 1967), hereinafter Mandeos. Unless noted otherwise, the archival references given below are taken from Alonso’s text. Alonso had previously published monographs on both the initial embassy of the Augustinians to Hawizah and the mission of 1623 to Basra: ‘Los Mandeos, una misión agustiniana en la Baja Mesopotamia’, Missionalia Hispanica 15 (1958), 57–84; ‘Misiones de la Orden de S. Agustin entre los Mandeos (1623–1668)’, ibid., 16 (1959), 323–362. See also Roberto Gulbenkian ‘Relações Político-Religiosas entre os Portugueses e os Mandeus da Baixa Mesopotâmia e do Cuzistão na primeira metade do século XVII’, Anais da Academia Portuguesa da História Series II, 32/2 (1989), 229ff, reprinted in idem, Estudos Históricos II, 325–424. For a synthesis see John Flannery, ‘The Augustinians and the Mandaeans in 17th century Mesopotamia’, ARAM: Society for Syro-Mesopotamian studies 22 (2010), 335–348. 150 chapter seven Under the unblinking eye of the searing Iraqi sun, several hundred people gather on the banks of the historic Tigris River, clad in rustic white tunics secured by a simple rope. One by one, they lower themselves up to their chests in the murky water. A sheik with a long, white beard chants qui- etly, slowly immersing worshippers until their heads are almost completely submerged. He scoops some river water into each person’s mouth before uttering a final blessing. After everyone has been re-baptized, the full-day cleansing ritual is capped off by a ceremonial feast.2 The participants in this ritual are Mandaeans, members of a religion whose origins remain unclear. It has been suggested that they are the only surviv- ing Gnostic sect,3 possibly originating in the region of the Jordan valley,4 before migrating between the first and third centuries of the Christian era to their traditional homeland in the lower Mesopotamian basin and Khuzestan over time, and appearing to incorporate elements from Jewish mysticism, Christianity, Babylonian religions, and Islam.5 The earliest Western Christian writer to mention them was the Florentine Dominican, Ricoldo da Montecroce, visiting Baghdad in 1290.6 In his Itinerarium he describes these ‘Sabians’, who approached them and asked for missionaries to be sent.7 It will be more than two and a half cen- turies, however, before the use of the term ‘St. John Christians’ appears in 2 Kevin Whitelaw, ‘Baghdad’s Baptizers’ in US News and World Report of 6 June 2003. On the Mandaeans, see Edmondo Lupieri, The Mandaeans: The last Gnostics, tr. Charles Hindley, (Grand Rapids, Michigan, 2002) originally published as I Mandei, Gli ultimi gnos- tici (Paideia, 1993); Jorunn Jacobsen Buckley, The Mandaeans: ancient texts and modern people (Oxford, 2002). Ethel Stefana Drower, The Mandaeans of Iraq and Iran: their cults, customs, magic legends, and folklore (Oxford 1937, facsimile edition Leiden, 1962, new edi- tion Piscataway NJ, 2002) remains a valuable introduction to the subject. Of continuing value are Kurt Rudolph Die Mandaer, 2 vols. (treating of the mythology and cult respec- tively) (Gottingen, 1960–1961); Mandaeism (Leiden, 1978). 3 So Buckley, The Mandaeans, 7; Edmondo Lupieri, The Mandaeans. According to E. S. Drower and R. Macuch (eds), A Mandaic Dictionary (Oxford, 1963), one of the names used for themselves by the Mandaeans is mandaiia, ‘Gnostics’. 4 See Sinasi Gunduz, ‘The Knowledge of Life: the origins, and early history of the Mandaeans and their relations to the Sabians of the Qur’an and to the Harranians’, Journal of Semitic Studies, Supplement 3 (Oxford, 1994), 3–14. 5 Parallels between Mandaeism and other religions are addressed in ARAM Periodical 11/2 (1999). 6 The region had become accessible to Christian missionaries as a result of the tolerant religious policy of the Mongol Il-Khans. 7 The Latin text of the section of the friar’s manuscript relating to the ‘Sabians’ is given in Ugo Monneret de Villard, Il libro della peregrinazione nelle parti d’Oriente de frato Ricoldo da Montecroce (Rome, 1948), 89–90, and in Gulbenkian Estudos Históricos II, 325, n. 47. Ricoldo also encountered Shi‘a Muslims, although Kohlberg (‘Western Studies’, 32) suggests that his understanding of Shi‘ism was sketchy at best. The Dominican’s overall verdict was that they were ‘minus mali’ (‘less bad’) than the majority Sunni..