Jacobite is a word from outside.
The church calls itself the Syriac Orthodox Church of Antioch and All the East. Jacobite comes from Jacob Baradaeus, the sixth-century bishop who travelled in disguise ordaining clergy after the imperial church deposed its hierarchy — a rescuer, not a founder. The church accepts him and rejects the label; in India, where the name became a legal designation, the argument is still live.
Jacob Baradaeus, bishop of Edessa from 543, is said to have travelled the Levant and Mesopotamia in rags — his nickname comes from the horse-blanket he wore — consecrating bishops and priests for congregations the empire had left without clergy. Without him the non-Chalcedonian hierarchy in Syria would probably have died out. Outsiders named the church after him, which the church resents because it implies a sixth-century foundation rather than continuity with the see of Antioch. In Kerala the term became fixed in colonial court records and is now the legal name of a distinct body, the Jacobite Syrian Christian Church, which complicates any attempt to retire it.
The same ground, other faiths
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