Ḥnanišoʿ's episcopal court

I don't have much so I'll google-translate this from Mathieu Tillier, 205-21; 2.1.209:

Since the disappearance of the Sassanid Empire in the 7th century, ecclesiastical authors like Simeon of Rev-Ardašir took for granted that it was up to the bishop to resolve conflicts between Christians. The synods which succeeded one another in the Sufyānid period (660-683), notably that of George I, held in 676 in Darai/Dirin, affirmed that Christians must bring trials (dine) within the Church and submit their quarrels (ḥeryane) to priests – or, possibly, lay people – appointed as judges by their bishop. The latter exercised restrained justice and could be seized by a litigant who did not wish to address his priest. The ecclesiastical magistrate was therefore not an arbiter freely chosen by the litigants, but a judge established by a hierarchical authority claiming a monopoly of Justice.

If the practices of priests and bishops are poorly documented, a corpus of letters attributed to Ḥenanišoʿ I sheds some light on the judicial role of the catholicos at the end of the 7th century. The latter received the litigants in audience at the seat of the patriarchate, al-Madāʾin/Ctesiphon. Very often, the applicant appeared alone, his opponent having refused to accompany him. The catholicos could render a judgment or transfer the trial to a delegated authority (ecclesiastical or secular), in the locality of the plaintiff. The rescript he sent to the lower judge could contain a conditional judgment, depending on the result of the recipient's investigations. When the Catholicos already had evidence, he issued an unconditional verdict which he charged his addressee to apply.

I was dimly aware of this first Ḥnanišoʿ from Seeing Islam. He was catholicos from AD 686-91 (about when John bar Penkaye is bemoaning... everything); then in exile until 693 when ʿAbd al-Malik relented and let him back on the cathedra. Per Hoyland, 200-3: Hajjâj announced the office "abolished" in 695 - but our man lasted until 698, running things from his monastery. He wrote copiously, like Išoʿyahb III before him; and like that one, did not say much about the "shultane de-ʿalma". His (fragmentary, then or at least now) commentary on (Peshitta-) Matthew has a slight reference to the "folly" that Christ was a mere man, which credal statement was of utmost importance to ʿAbd al-Malik as the newly-anointed "David" in Jerusalem.

Islam being slightly weak in the 690s Orient, those lands having had to be reconquered, and its peoples still highly Christian, it makes sense that the Christians' courts were ... Christian. Ḥnanišoʿ, it seems, was well-regarded among the Christians as of AD 691, more so than Išoʿyahb "le grand" had been. Hence, the caliph's attempt to domesticate this Christianity, as a subbranch of Islam; hence, why that didn't work.

Ḥnanišoʿ wrote an argument for schools as the basis of Christian education. We fellow-dyotheletes in the Occident can assuredly appreciate the thought; Ḥnanišo himself perhaps just needed the schools dependent upon his cathedra. Beyond that his thought is had from his correspondence which I haven't read.