Eastern Christian sects retained full hierarchical churches larger than the Western Church

Evidence

Many people are terrified when they hear that these countries overseas are inhabited by Nestorians, Jacobites, Maronites, Georgians, and others, who take their name from heretics whom the Church has condemned. These people believe that their followers also are heretics and follow the errors from which they take their name. But this is absolutely untrue. God forbid that it should be. They are simple men of devout behavior. I don’t deny that there are some fools among them, just as the Roman Church does not lack its fools. But all the above nations, and others too many to list, have their archbishops, bishops, abbots, and other prelates, just like us, and they are called by the same names, except that among the Nestorians their chief prelate is called Iaselick, and I have learnt that his jurisdiction is of much wider extent in the East than that of the whole Western Church. — R. W. Southern, Western Views of Islam in the Middle…, 377

Categorization

• DEFINE: Clarifies that ‘heresy’ labels like Nestorian and Jacobite misrepresent living Eastern churches with full episcopal hierarchies.