306 New Comedy sometimes markedly different than those of his namesake church Nestorius grew up in Antioch and distinguished himself by his fasting, prayer, and preaching His pious reputation caused him to be named as bishop of Constantinople (428 c.e.), the capital city of the Byzantine Empire and the center of the Greek Church One of the ambitious theologians of rival city Alexandria, Cyril of Alexandria, criticized Nestorius for an alleged heresy involving the nature of Jesus (Christ) of Nazareth He claimed that Nestorius taught that Jesus Christ was the union of two persons, one that suffered and died and the other that was divine and eternal However, Nestorius did not teach that there were two persons in Christ but rather that he had two natures in one person This position was vindicated at the Council of Chalcedon, though the council emphasized the unity of the divine and human natures in the person of Jesus This was too late and too little noticed by the Greek Church and Latin Church, for the brand of heresy had already emblazoned the name of Nestorius He was stripped of his office, his literary works were burned, and then he was exiled He spent 10 years in the area of the Nabataeans in the Jordanian desert and then 10 years at the Great Oasis in the Libyan Desert, before dying in 451 The popular association of Nestorius with the Assyrian Church occurred because many followers of Nestorius migrated from Antioch to Edessa, the intellectual center for the whole Syriac Church Here they found sympathy among the Christians who were not allied with the Greek or Latin Churches Eventually, pressure came against Edessa’s intellectuals so that the dissidents moved into the Persian domain to the city of Nisibis, where they established their own school of theology From there they dispersed into other parts of the Persian Sassanid Empire By the sixth century the Assyrian Church had become “Nestorianized,” as Nestorius’s followers were welcomed into high ecclesial and educational positions Their school at Nisibis was held in high esteem among the Persian Christians The Assyrian Church had severed ties with the Greek and Latin Churches anyway and was little interested in the nuances of the controversy As refugees from the Byzantine Empire they were not suspected of subversion or disloyalty Thus, the Assyrian Church grafted the followers of Nestorius and other Syriac Christians into their fold and received the name of their figurehead The irony of history is that it never officially adopted Nestorius’s position on the nature of Christ, nor did it accept the alleged heresy for which he was exiled many generations before The Assyrian Church has always been on the fringes of Persian society, whether the society was Zoroastrian or Muslim This diminished and flexible status perhaps explains how the Assyrian religion so readily penetrated other people groups and political boundaries The scope of its mission is remarkable for such a small group of believers: Their communities spread within 300 years to India, Sogdiana, Turkestan, Turfan, Manchuria, Siberia, and China See also Assyria; heresies; Oriental Orthodox Churches; Syriac culture and church Further reading: Loofs, Friedrich Nestorius and His Place in the History of Christian Doctrine Whitefish, MT: Kessinger Publishing, 2004; Wessel, Susan Cyril of Alexandria and the Nestorian Controversy: The Making of a Saint and of a Heretic New York: Oxford University Press, 2004 Mark F Whitters New Comedy New Comedy refers to ancient Greek theatrical comedies created and performed during the era in which the Macedonians ruled Greece—roughly 320–260 b.c.e The revolutions in lifestyle of this period facilitated a change in entertainment The characters in these comedies were typically drawn from the masses of everyday people, as opposed to earlier plays that featured caricatures of the rich, the famous, or the ruling elite Many hundreds or perhaps even thousands of comedies were produced during this period, but only a few survive today All Greek theatrical performances originated in religious rites honoring Dionysus, also known as Bacchus, the god who roamed the world followed by throngs of crazed women These women, called Maenads (from whom we get the term mania), participated in wild orgiastic rites The god’s symbol was the thyrsus, a phallic staff topped with a large pinecone and wound with an ivy or grape vine Originally, festivals honoring Dionysus took the form of choreographed dances performed by a chorus This evolved into cathartic performances of tragedy, a word that literally means “goat ode,” the goat being the symbol of Dionysus Tragedies gradually evolved into plays with actors and stylized formats, but the chorus remained The chorus was held by some to represent the will and opinions of the society, while others believed the chorus represented supernatural forces According to some, the oldest known comedies emerged as a break between tragedies or between parts of a single tragedy, in which exaggerated characters lam-