Nestorius, a native of Germanicia, a city of northern Syria, in the patriarchate of Antioch, was probably a disciple of the celebrated Theodore of Mopsuestia. Having received priest's orders at Antioch, he became so eminent for his zeal, ascetic life, and eloquence in preaching that he was selected by the emperor as patriarch of Constantinople (April 428). Soon after his consecration a controversy arose as to the divine and human natures of our Lord, in which Nestorius took a leading part. The presbyter Anastasius, having in a sermon denied that the Virgin Mary could be truly called the Mother of God (θεοτόκος), it being not God the Logos but only the human nature which had a mother and suffered pain and death, Nestorius warmly defended Anastasius, and elaborated his view into the theory which has since been known by his name. He held that Mary was the Mother of Christ (χριστοτός), or the Receiver or Conceiver of God (θεοδόχος), and that, while the divinity of the Logos is to be distinguished from the temple of his flesh, yet there remained but one person in the God-man. By his antagonists he was accused of exaggerating the distinction of two natures into a co-existence of two persons (προσώπων ἕνσις)—the human person of Christ and the Divine Person of the Word. A vigorous controversy ensued, which extended from Constantinople to the other patriarchates, and drew from Cyril of Alexandria a formal condemnation of the doctrine of Nestorins in twelve anathemas, and a similar condemnation, accompanied by a threat of deposition and excommunication, from Celestine, Bishop of Rome, unless he would withdraw the obnoxious doctrine. Nestorius remaining firm in his opinions, a general council was convened at Ephesus in 431, at which Cyril took the most active and prominent part, and in which, notwithstanding the absence of John the Patriarch of Antioch and his bishops, Nestorius was condemned and deposed. Considerable opposition was offered to this judgment for a time, but ultimately the emperor was led to side with Cyril, and Nestorius was confined in a monastery near Constantinople, whence, after four years, he was banished to Petra in Arabia. He next found shelter in the Greater Oasis in Upper Egypt, and, after several changes of his place of confinement, died in exile, time and place alike unknown.
See Walch's Hist. d. Ketzeren; Dorner's History of the Doctrine of the Person of Christ; and the church histories of Gieseler and Neander.
The sect of the NESTORIANS, formed in the 5th century, was, after its exclusion from the Roman empire, extended into Persia, India, and even China. The teachers who were driven out of Edessa settled at Nisibis, which soon became an active centre of learning and missionary enterprise throughout Persia. Babaens, Bishop of Seleucia (498-503), assumed the title of patriarch, and openly professed Nestorianism, and under his successors the sect grew rapidly and produced many learned theologians and philosophers, and not a few very eminent physicians. Under the rule of the califs the Nestorians enjoyed toleration, and spread in Arabia, Syria, and Palestine, and even to Samarcand, Herat, and China. The Prester John (q.v.) of romance was a Christian of this colour, and there is a tradition that Mohammed learned what he knew of Christianity from Sergins, a Nestorian monk. In the middle of the 13th century as many as twenty-five metropolitans owned the jurisdiction of the Nestorian patriarch, but after the persecutions of Tamerlane they dwindled away. Meantime the Roman Catholic Church had been active in missionary labours amongst them, and already in the 14th century the pope was nominally at least acknowledged as the head shepherd of all Christendom. In the 16th century a great schism took place, a portion renouncing their distinctive doctrine, and placing themselves under the jurisdiction of the Roman pontiff, to whom, under the title of Chal-dean Christians, they have since remained faithful. Their patriarchs still bear the traditional name of Joseph. The others to the present day maintain their old creed and their ancient organisation. Their chief seat is in the mountain-ranges of Kurdistan. They are at present a poor and illiterate race, and were carefully estimated in 1833 to number 70,000 souls. Their patriarch since the close of the 17th century has borne the name of Sineon. The bishops are bound to observe celibacy, but marriage is permitted to the priests and inferior clergy. Their liturgical books recognise seven sacraments, but confession is infrequent, if not altogether disused. Marriage is dissoluble by the sentence of the patriarch; communion is administered in both kinds; and although the language of the liturgy plainly implies the belief in transubstantiation, yet, according to Layard, that doctrine is not popularly held among them. The fasts are strict, and of very long duration, amounting to very nearly one-half of the entire year. They pray for the dead, but are said to reject the notion of purgatory, and the only sacred symbol which they use or reverence is the cross. The Nestorians of Kurdistan, like the Christians of the Lebanon, have suffered much from time to time through the fanaticism of the wild tribes among whom they reside. In a massacre in 1843, and again in 1846, as many as six thousand perished, and even still they owe much of their security to the influence exercised in their favour by the foreign representatives at the Turkish and Persian courts. There has been among them since 1834 an active American mission, which has translated the Bible into their speech—a dialect of the old Aramaic.
There is another body of Nestorians who have existed in south India from the period of the early migrations of the sect, known as Syrian Christians or Christians of St Thomas (see THOMAS, CHRISTIANS OF ST), and works there noted.
See GREEK CHURCH, Vol. V. p. 398; Maclean, The Catholics of the East and his People (1892); Parry, Six Months in a Syrian Monastery (1895); Hefele's Councils; Petermann's article in Herzog's Real-Encyclop.; Perkins's Residence of Eight Years in Persia among the Nestorian Christians (Andover, 1843); Badger's Nestorians and their Rituals (1852); Anderson's Oriental Churches (1872); Dean Stanley's History of the Eastern Church; and Professor Legge's Nestorian Monument of Hsi-an Fu, rel. Christ. in China (1888).