Jacobite Church

The Jacobite Church, also known as the Syriac Orthodox Church or the Syrian Orthodox Church, is a Christian Church, most of whose members are in Syria and Iraq, though there are also some Jacobite Christians in India. The Church was founded in the sixth century, acknowledges as its head the Syrian Orthodox patriarch of Antioch, and is committed to the doctrine of Monophysitism, i.e., the doctrine that Jesus has only one nature, not two natures (a human nature and a divine nature), as is claimed by orthodox Christians. Since Monophysitism was condemned as a heresy by the Council of Chalcedon in 451, the Jacobite Church is regarded as heretical by both the Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox Churches. (The Monophysite Heresy is sometimes referred to as the Jacobite Heresy.)

The derivation of the Church's name is not entirely certain, but the most plausible explanation derives it from Jacob Baradaeus (c500-578), a monk who lived in a monastery near Edessa (present-day Urfa in southeast Turkey) and who after a period in Constantinople, where he was imprisoned for his beliefs, was sent to Syria to organise the Monophysite Christians there.

You may like to see a note on some words sharing the same origins: Jacobean, Jacobin and Jacobite