Page "Eastern Christianity" Paragraph 58

After a period of expansion under the Mongol Empire, the church went into decline through the 14th century, and was eventually confined largely to its heartland in what is now Iraq, northeastern Syria, southeastern Turkey, northwestern Iran and to the Malabar Coast of India.

In the 16th century dynastic struggles sent the church into schism, resulting in the formation of two rival churches.

Two modern churches developed from the schism, the Chaldean Church, which entered into communion with Rome as an Eastern Catholic Church, and the Assyrian Church of the East, the followers of these two churches are almost exclusively ethnic Assyrians.

In India, the local Church of the East community, known as the Saint Thomas Christians, experienced its own rifts as a result of Portuguese influence.