to the region. It also, however, had wider implications. In stressing a fundamental connection between marriage and the public shape of the religious community, George’s canon set a precedent for how to conceive of and regulate Christian social groups within the Islamic empire that bishops in later centuries would develop in novel and significant directions.
The particular prescriptions of George’s canon were several. They revolved around the steps unwed Christians would have to take in order to marry, and the role of priests and the church in that process:
Women who have not [yet] been married39 and are [fit to be] given in betrothal by their fathers’ house[s] shall be betrothed to men through Christian law [b-nāmosā krēsṭyānā], according to the custom of the faithful. [This shall be accomplished] through the consent of their parents, the mediation of the holy cross of our Savior, and a priestly blessing [burktā kāhnāytā]. Because it is easy for Christians, unlike the rest of the nations, strangers to the fear of God, to err in lawful marriage [shawtāputā d-zuwwāgā nāmosāyā] and adhere to something else, it is necessary and all the more beneficial that a contract between the betrotheds [tanway da-mkirē w-da-mkirātā] be [confirmed] in the presence of the Creator of our life and the Giver of our salvation. [This is] so that if they break the pact of their union, the sign of our victory [nishā d-zākutan, cf. Philippians 3:14], through which all our hidden things are revealed and our deeds scrutinized before the tribunal of His fearsome glory, shall seek vindication of them [it [h]u l-hon tāboʿā]. Together and through a priestly blessing, then, [the betrothed ones] shall affirm faithfully that they conclude, by the blessing, the bond of their union [assārā d-shawtāputhon], according to their hope [for salvation in the world to come]. If, however, they transgress against these things because they want to marry in a new way and despise the established law, when they come to deceive each other they shall be left without vindication [tbaʿtā], for they have been deprived of the priestly blessing. They shall not deserve to be freed from the injustices [that they visited upon] each other through [ecclesiastical] decisions.40 Along with these things, they shall also be anathematized from the church.41
In George’s presentation, properly Christian marriage is demanding; the high standards of Christian sexual morality make it much easier for Christians to go astray than it is for adherents of other religions, with their looser sexual and marital norms. Therefore, it is only appropriate that ecclesiastical officials oversee marriages between Christians, ensuring that they have been contracted in the presence (qarributa) of God. Henceforth, the Church of the East shall recognize only betrothals blessed by a priest in a proper Christian ritual as legitimate; the priestly blessing, consent of the spouses’ parents,42 and a vocal affirmation of consent on the part of the spouses themselves are the constitutive elements that bring a valid betrothal contract (tanway da-mkirē w-da-mkirātā) into effect.43 If some dispute arises over the contract or between the spouses, they may seek settlements from ecclesiastical judges. If Christians do not marry through a priestly blessing, however, not only will they be unable to have disputes adjudicated by ecclesiastics. They shall also be banned from the church—that is, from receiving the Eucharist and thereby participating in Christian communion, the path to salvation.
George’s canon offers a considerable reformulation of marriage as a legal institution. There had been a variety of judicial avenues through which Christians in the late antique Middle East contracted marriages and formed households, and though ecclesiastical officials and blessings were often involved, the norms of civil law traditions were commonly understood to grant public recognition of a marital union’s validity. In George’s formulation, marriage is no longer a civil institution within which laypeople are expected to behave in appropriately Christian ways. The institution itself is now under the purview of Christian law (nāmosā krēsṭyānā); to marry requires correct ritual performance in conformity with that law; and as a contract and a legal relationship, marriage is constituted through its ritual elements, chiefly the priestly blessing, rather than consensual cohabitation or handing over a dowry. To fall short of this, moreover, means not only that one’s marriage is not legally valid; it is to lose the right of participation in Christian communion. George, in other words, has remade getting married as a religious practice, an act through which the faithful embody their commitment to a specific divine tradition and its clerical custodians. This formulation is notable for its silence on the other modes of association that marriage traditionally mediated in the late antique Mediterranean world; it evinces no concern to invoke the authority of a king, assert citizenship or subjecthood in an empire, or acknowledge a civil tradition like the “Roman custom” of the Nessana contracts we saw in the previous chapter. If baptism and the Eucharist were the traditional rituals that initiated individuals into Christian communion, George’s canon brings marriage to a similar level as a ritual practice that facilitates continued membership in that communion.
To those familiar with the sacrament of marriage of later Christian traditions, the idea that getting married is fundamentally a religious practice defined by religious law may seem unexceptional. Nothing, however, is necessary or natural about that idea. When George issued his canon in the late seventh century, there was no systematic sacramental theology of marriage in any major Christian tradition, including the Latin one; these would develop only later in the medieval period.44 The notion that administering the formation of marriage bonds was exclusively the domain of the religious tradition and its clerics was decidedly novel. In fact, given that East Syrian synods of the Sasanian period routinely issued a smattering of canons related to marriage, it is all the more striking that only in 676, under the rule of the caliphate, did George make marriage the Church of the East’s canonically delimited territory.45
Why did he do so when he did? Particular conditions arising from the Arab conquests and initial spread of Islam, concentrated in this case in eastern Arabia, provide the answer. These conditions included ecclesiastical schism, the specter of apostasy to Islam, and the unacceptable heterogeneity of local marital practices, especially the pattern of Christian women marrying non-Christian men. From the point of view of East Syrian bishops like George, these developments impinged alarmingly upon the social integrity of eastern Arabia’s Christian communities and, ultimately, the Church of the East as a whole. One way to attend to this threat was to affirm a constitutive connection between the religious community and marriage, that ancient institution whose purpose was to facilitate the formation of households and the social reproduction of the human species. Bringing that institution under the purview of ecclesiastical law was an effort to ensure its proper practice in service to the religious community: reproducing not only the species in general but the true-believing individuals and households that together made up the church. By making marriage exclusively subject to the law of the religious tradition, George promoted a specific vision of East Syrian Christians as a distinct social collectivity within the caliphate.
Rebellion, Apostasy, and Polygamy on the Persian Gulf Coast
The immediate impetus for George’s synod of 676 on the Persian Gulf island of Dayrin was ending a schism between the East Syrian patriarchate and the ecclesiastics of Bet Qatraye that had developed a generation earlier.46 Under George’s predecessor as patriarch, Ishoʿyahb III (r. 649–59), the bishops of Fars—the ecclesiastical province on the Iranian side of the Gulf to which the Qataris were subordinate—had declared their autonomy from the patriarchate in Seleucia-Ctesiphon, the former Sasanian capital in central Iraq. Fars was an old and venerable see that claimed apostolic foundation; it appears that when the Arabs overthrew the Sasanians, the ecclesiastics of Fars saw no reason to recognize the bishop of a now defunct imperial capital as their superior.47 While they ultimately reconciled with Ishoʿyahb, their fellow bishops of Bet Qatraye continued to claim autonomy for themselves. Only under George did the various factions come to terms; he and six Qatari bishops convened the synod of 676 to formalize the reconciliation.
From Ishoʿyahb and George’s perspective, an ecclesiastical schism like the Qataris’ represented a major loss to the Church of the East. The bishops of Bet Qatraye severed an entire province from its ecclesiological structure when they removed themselves from communion with Seleucia-Ctesiphon. The laypeople of Bet Qatraye were in danger of losing their chance at salvation, as the ecclesiastical