BOOK III.

FROM THE DEATH OF THE EMPEROR THEODOSIUS I TO THE PONTIFICATE OF GREGORY THE GREAT.A.D. 395-590.

CHAPTER III.

NESTORIANISM.

 

The younger Theodosius was carefully educated under the care of his sister Pulcheria, and throughout his life was directed by her influence. His character was mild, but feeble. The nature of his piety may be inferred from a story which Theodoret tells in commendation of it. An impudent monk, after having repeatedly met with a refusal in some application to the emperor, excommunicated him. When meal-time arrived, Theodosius declared that he would not eat until he were absolved, and sent to beg that the bishop of Constantinople would desire the monk to take off his excommunication. The bishop answered that no heed ought to be paid to such a sentence; but Theodosius could not be at ease until the monk was found and was prevailed on to recall it. Pulcheria vowed virginity, and persuaded her three sisters to join in the vow; the life and occupations of the imperial family resembled those of a monastic society.

In 421 Pulcheria provided her brother with a consort, Athenais, the orphan daughter of an Athenian rhetorician. The empress took the name of Eudocia, and gave birth to a daughter, Eudoxia, who, in 437, was married to the emperor of the west, Valentinian the Third. The mother then obtained leave to visit the Holy Land, where she expended immense sums on churches, monasteries, and hospitals; and on returning to Constantinople, she brought with her some relics which were regarded as exceedingly precious. But soon after her return, she fell into disgrace, probably in consequence of having aspired to counteract the ascendency of Pulcheria, and the remainder of her days was spent in penitential retirement at Jerusalem.

The state of the Christians in Persia drew the empire into a war with that country. Maruthas, a Mesopotamian bishop, after having laboured with much success among the Persians as a missionary, had been sent by Arcadius as an envoy to the king, Yezdegerd. While thus employed, he detected and exposed the arts by which the magi endeavoured to work on the superstitious feelings of the king; in consequence of his exertions, a complete liberty of religion was obtained for the Christians, and it was hoped that Yezdegerd himself would become a convert. But this state of things was reversed through the indiscretion of a bishop named Abdas, who destroyed a temple of the national religion. The king summoned him into his presence, mildly reproved him, and ordered him to restore the building, under pain of death and of retaliation on the Christian churches. As Abdas obstinately refused, the king found himself obliged to execute his threats, and in consequence of this affair his disposition towards the Christians was changed. Many of them were put to death with frightful tortures, and after some intermission during the last years of Yezdegerd, the persecution was renewed with greater violence under his successor, Bairam, or Vararanes. A The frontiers of Persia were guarded, lest the Christians should escape; but some of them made their way to Constantinople, and represented the sufferings of their community to the emperor. Theodosius refused to give up the fugitives; and a war ensued, which, after some years, was concluded in favour of the Romans. In the course of this war, Acacius, bishop of Amida, distinguished himself by a remarkable act of charity. Having learnt that seven thousand Persian captives were in his neighbourhood, he called his clergy together, and, reminding them that the God of Christians had no need of cups or dishes, as being Himself all-sufficient, he proposed to sell the gold and silver vessels of the church. With the price he ransomed the captives, and, after having entertained them until they were recovered from the effect of their privations, he sent them to the Persian king, as evidences of the real spirit of Christianity.

By the death of Theodosius, in 450, Pulcheria became in her own right empress of the east. Feeling, however, that a female reign was a hazardous novelty, she bestowed her hand on a nominal husband, Marcian, a senator sixty years of age; and his conduct amply justified the choice.

For some years the empire had been kept in terror by Attila, king of the Huns, who extorted humiliating submissions and concessions from Theodosius. Marcian resolved to deal more boldly with this enemy; he refused the tribute which his predecessor had paid, and Attila threatened vengeance. But before attempting to execute his purpose, the barbarian leader turned his arms against the empire of the west, where Aetius, after having effected the ruin of his rival Boniface, had gained an entire ascendency, and for twenty years sustained with admirable vigour throne of the feeble and depraved Valentinian. Attila, at the head of an immense host, had penetrated as far as Orleans, spreading desolation along his course, when Aetius, who had been urged to action by Anian, bishop of that city, advanced against him with a force composed of Romans and allies, of whom the most important were the Visigoths of southern Gaul, under Theodoric, the son of Alaric. The Huns, who had already entered Orleans, were driven off. Attila was defeated in the great battle of the plains of Châlons, and was compelled to retreat across the Rhine. In the following year he invaded Italy; but the peninsula was saved from the apprehended ravages of his host by the mediation of Leo, bishop of Rome, who, with two high officers of the empire, waited on him in the neighbourhood of Mantua, and persuaded him to retire on receiving a large sum of money. A few months later, the sudden death of the king, while employed in preparations for an attack on Marcian, and the consequent dissolution of the Hunnish monarchy, relieved both divisions of the empire from the fear with which he had inspired them.

In the year after the death of Attila, Valentinian, on a suspicion that Aetius aimed at the crown, stabbed him at an interview in the palace; and, having treacherously violated the wife of a senator named Maximus, he fell a victim to the vengeance of the husband, which was executed by two of the murdered general’s adherents

On the death of Sisinnius, the successor of Atticus at Constantinople, a contest arose between the partisans of Philip of Side and Proclus. Both had been candidates in opposition to the late bishop; Proclus had since been consecrated by Sisinnius for Cyzicum, but, as the people of that city denied the right of the bishop of Constantinople to appoint their pastor, he had been unable to get possession of the see. The court, with a view to allay the strife of parties, resolved that the vacancy should not be filled by any of the Constantinopolitan clergy, and made choice of Nestorius, a presbyter of Antioch. Nestorius had been a monk; he was of blameless life, had some character for learning, and was celebrated for his fluent and sonorous oratory; while he is charged with pride, vanity, and an eager desire of popularity, which led him (it is said) to make an ostentatious display of sanctity in his behaviour, and to affect an ambitious and unsubstantial style in preaching. In addition to his personal reputation, the circumstance that he came from the same church with the revered Chrysostom rendered the nomination acceptable at Constantinople; and he was willingly elected by the clergy and people.

The new bishop entered on his office with a great display of zeal against heresy. Preaching in the cathedral on the day of his enthronement, he addressed the emperor—“Give me earth cleared of heretics, and I will give you the kingdom of heaven in return; aid me in subduing the heretics, and I will aid you to subdue the Persians!”. The words were loudly applauded; but we are told that the wiser of the hearers conceived from them no favourable idea of the speaker’s modesty and prudence.

This declaration of war was speedily followed up by deeds. Five days later the bishop attacked a meeting-house of the Arians; the congregation in despair burnt it down; the flames reached to other buildings, and Nestorius got the name of “the incendiary”. He also persecuted other sectaries, and procured from the emperor a severe law against them. Socrates particularly notices his proceedings against the Novatianists — a sect to which the historian himself inclined, and which Atticus had always spared, on the ground that they had suffered from the Arians in common with the catholics, and that, as their separation was so ancient, their agreement in the doctrine of the Trinity was a valuable witness to the orthodoxy of the church.

Nestorius himself was soon to fall under suspicion of heresy.

The schools of Alexandria and Antioch had been led, by their characteristic difference of tone, and by the necessity of opposing the several errors which more immediately pressed on each, to a diversity of view and expression on the subject of the Saviour’s incarnation. At Alexandria, where Arianism was the enemy to be com­bated, the Divinity was so strongly insisted on that language is found, even in the writings of Athanasius himself, which at a later time would have been a token of Eutychianism; as where he speaks of “not two natures, but one incarnate nature of God the Word”. Although the distinctness of the Godhead and the manhood was recognized, the natures were viewed in their union; and as the Person in whom they met was one, the properties of one nature were, in speaking of him, transferred to the other. Thus that which in strictness could belong only to his manhood, was predicated of him as God, since the personality was in his Godhead before he assumed the nature of man; “God” (it was said) “was born, suffered, redeemed us with his blood”. In the west, a doctrine resembling that with which the name of Nestorius was afterwards connected, had been broached by a Gaulish presbyter named Leporius, who also held questionable opinions as to original sin. Augustine, who succeeded in convincing him of his errors, illustrated the communication of properties in the Saviour by saying that we may speak of a “philosopher” as killed, dead, or buried, although it is in the body that such things befall the man, and not in that part of him to which the quality of philosopher belongs.

On the other hand, the Syrians—having to contend against Apollinarianism, with its denial of the Saviour’s entire humanity, and its consequent fusion of the God­head and the manhood into a third something, different from either—were under a necessity of carefully distinguishing between the two natures. This method appears more scientifically correct than the other; but, in a school of rationalistic tendency (if the word may be used without conveying too strong an idea) it was likely to become dangerous. Diodore, afterwards bishop of Tarsus, and Theodore, afterwards bishop of Mopsuestia— the former Chrysostom’s master, the latter his fellow-student and friend—were distinguished as teachers in this school, and introduced a system of explaining Scripture by the aid of history, criticism, and philology, whereas until their time commentators had been divided between the merely literal and the allegorical methods. Diodore and Theodore, therefore, may be regarded as the forerunners of modern interpretation; but it would seem that with the merits of their system they combined an inclination to lower and improperly to humanize the meaning of holy writ. For nearly fifty years Theodore maintained the cause of the church in controversy with various classes of assailants, and throughout his life his orthodoxy was regarded as unimpeachable. He was, however, afterwards represented by some as the father both of Nestorianism and of Pelagianism, and his memory became the subject of disputes which widely disturbed the church. Nestorius has been described as a pupil of Theodore; but the description, if meant to imply a personal relation between the two, is probably incorrect. Nor is much faith to be given to a story that Nestorius, on his way to take possession of his see, visited the bishop of Mopsuestia, who was then near his end, and that during this visit he imbibed the opinions which are associated with his name.

The first outbreak of the Nestorian controversy was on the occasion a sermon in which Anastasius—a presbyter who had accompanied the bishop of Constantinople from Antioch, and was much in his confidence—attacked the use of the word Theotokos (bearer or mother of God), as applied to the blessed Virgin. Mary, he said, was human, and from man God cannot be born. The term thus called in question had been used in the preceding century by Eusebius of Caesarea, by Athanasius, the two Gregories, and others; the import of it was not to imply that the blessed Virgin communicated the Divine nature to the Saviour, but to affirm the union of Godhead and man­hood in one Person, “because the Son of God took not to himself a man’s person, but the nature only of a man”. To the Syrians, however, the word appeared to involve the Apollinarian error of a confusion between the two natures; while the refusal of it by Anastasius suggested to his hearers at Constantinople the idea that the new bishop and his party maintained the mere humanity of the Redeemer—supposing the Spirit to have dwelt in Him only in the same manner as in the prophets.

Nestorius supported his friend by preaching a number of sermons, in which he brought forward quibbling and sophistical objections to the term Theotokos. If this expression were to be allowed (he said), the heathens might be excused for assigning mothers to their deities; the blessed Virgin ought in truth not to be styled Theotokos, but Theodochos, as having received God within her. Proclus, the late candidate for the see, preaching in the cathedral on a festival to which the subject was appropriate, eloquently asserted the use of Theotokos and his discourse was received with enthusiasm : when Nestorius rose and objected to the preacher's doctrine as confounding the two natures. He declared, however, that he did not refuse to use the word Theotokos, provided that it were rightly explained, so as not to deify the blessed Virgin herself; but if she were to be styled mother of God, the phrase must be balanced by also styling her mother of man—mother of the tabernacle prepared by the Holy Spirit for the habitation of the Divine Word. He therefore proposed to speak of her as Christotokos (mother of Christ)—a term which would denote her relation to Him who is both God and man. It may, he said, be affirmed that Christ has the attributes of either nature; but not that God was born, or that man may be adored.

The excitement at Constantinople was immense. Nestorius continued to preach on the subject in dispute, and was often interrupted in his sermons. Eusebius, an advocate, who afterwards became bishop of Dorylaeum, charged him with the heresy of Paul of Samosata, and openly placarded a parallel between the two systems. The monks and most of the clergy were against the bishop, and old jealousies connected with the election were revived among them; while the court supported him, and the majority of the people were as yet favourable to him, although many withdrew from his communion. He tells us that some of his opponents threatened to throw him into the sea; and from the petition of some monks against him we learn that he himself made liberal use of deposition, whipping, banishment, and other forcible means against such of them as were subject to his jurisdiction.

In the controversy which had thus arisen, as in the great controversy of the preceding century, the chief champion of orthodoxy was a bishop of Alexandria; but his character and policy remind us less of Athanasius than of his own uncle and immediate predecessor Theophilus.

Cyril had passed five years among the monks of Nitria; but his friend the abbot Isidore of Pelusium, a man of great piety and sincerity, tells him, in a letter written during this period, that, while he was praying in the desert, his heart was still fixed on the world. In 412, on the death of Theophilus, he was elected to the see of Alexandria after a contest with the archdeacon Timothy. In the administration of his office he showed himself covetous and rapacious; he left at his death a large property, amassed from the revenues of the church; he is even charged with simoniacal practices. The earlier years of his episcopate were marked by many displays of violence. He acquired for his see an amount of secular power such as had not till then been attached to any bishopric; he proceeded with great severity against the Novatianists; he expelled the Jews from Alexandria on account of a bloody tumult in the theatre, and in consequence of this act he quarrelled with the prefect, Orestes. A legion of fanatical monks from Nitria descended on the city, and attacked the prefect; one of them, who had hit him with a stone, was executed for the offence, and was thereupon canonized by Cyril as a martyr. The coolness with which the prefect regarded the bishop after these scenes was ascribed by the populace to the influence of Hypatia, a beautiful and learned virgin, whose lectures in philosophy drew admiring crowds to Alexandria; and in this belief, a mob of parabolani and others, headed by a reader named Peter, attacked her in the street, dragged her from her chariot, hurried her into the cathedral church, and there barbarously murdered her. That Cyril had any share in the atrocity appears to be an unsupported calumny; but the perpetrators were mostly officers of his church, who had unquestionably drawn encouragement from his earlier proceedings; and his character deservedly suffered in consequence of their outrage.

Cyril had accompanied his uncle in the expedition to Constantinople which proved so disastrous to Chrysostom. He held out longer than any other metropolitan against the insertion of Chrysostom’s name in the diptychs of the church, even when Atticus of Constantinople entreated him to yield for the sake of peace; nor, although he was at length persuaded to admit the name, and sometimes spoke respectfully of the great preacher’s eloquence, did his feeling towards the memory of Chrysostom ever become cordial. And it is evident that the same desire to humble the newly-exalted see of Constantinople which had actuated Theophilus in his enmity to Chrysostom mixed also with Cyril’s motives in his proceedings against Nestorius

The bishop of Alexandria was drawn into the controversy by finding that copies of Nestorius’ sermons had been circulated among the Egyptian monks, and that many of these had consequently abandoned the term Theotokos. He denounced the novelty in his paschal letter of 430, and entered into a correspondence with Nestorius himself, in which both parties soon became angry, while he also opened a communication with some clergy and monks of Constantinople who were opposed to their archbishop. It would seem to have been in consequence of the irritation caused by Cyril’s letters that Dorotheus, a bishop attached to Nestorius, on some occasion when the archbishop was seated on his throne, rose up in the cathedral, and loudly uttered an anathema against all who used the title Theotokos. Nestorius accused Cyril of having caused the disturbance which ensued at Constantinople. Some Alexandrians of worthless character, who were there, charged their bishop with various misdemeanours, which Nestorius threatened to bring before a general council. Cyril replied that he should rejoice if his affairs contributed towards the assembling of such a council, but that he would not allow his opponent to sit as one of his judges. He declared himself willing to sacrifice everything for the suppression of Nestorius’ heresies and, in order to detach the court from the opposite party, he addressed a treatise on the orthodox faith to Theodosius, and another to Pulcheria and Eudocia.

Nestorius had more than once applied to Celestine, bishop of Rome, for information as to the Pelagians, some of whose leaders were then at Constantinople; but he had not received any answer. He now repeated his inquiries, and added some account of the new controversy which had arisen. Cyril also applied to Celestine, but more skilfully; for whereas Nestorius had addressed the Roman bishop as an equal, the bishop of Alexandria adopted a strain of deference, or rather subserviency, of which there had been no example on the part of any one among his predecessors. His representation of Nestorius’ opinions procured from Celestine and a Roman synod a condemnation of the bishop of Constantinople as a heretic, with a letter announcing to him that he would be deposed and excommunicated, to unless within ten days after receiving it he should conform to the faith of Rome and Alexandria, and restore all whom he had deposed on account of the late disputes. Cyril was authorized to execute this sentence as plenipotentiary of the Roman bishop; and at the same time Celestine wrote to the church of Constantinople, and to John, bishop of Antioch, denouncing the errors of Nestorius, and intimating the condemnation which was to be pronounced if the archbishop should persist in them.

Cyril also wrote to some eastern bishops, giving his statement of the controversy. From Acacius of Berrhoea (who was now a hundred and ten years old), from John of Antioch, and others, he received answers disapproving of what had been said by Nestorius, and more especially by Dorotheus, but entreating him to avoid an open breach. John, in the name of several other bishops, wrote to Nestorius, expressing full confidence in his orthodoxy, and advising him not to insist on unnecessary scruples as to the disputed term; and, as Nestorius had professed his willingness to adhere to the doctrine of the fathers, and to admit the word Theotokos in a certain sense, the patriarch of Antioch flattered himself that peace would be easily restored.

After some delay, Cyril forwarded the Roman letter to Nestorius, with one written in the name of an Alexandrian council, which summoned the bishop of Constantinople to forswear his errors, and concluded with twelve anathemas, which it required him to subscribe. To these Nestorius replied by a like number of counter-anathemas, which, in their turn, were answered at far greater length by Marius Mercator, a zealous layman from the west, who was then resident at Constantinople, and had already made himself conspicuous by his energetic opposition to Pelagianism. Of the propositions thus put forth on each side, while some are really contradictory of each other, others, in words studiously contrasted, express different sides of the same truth. The leading object of Cyril is to assert the unity of the Saviour’s person, while that of Nestorius is to guard against a confusion of His natures. Cyril expressed the combination of natures by the term union; Nestorius, by conjunction. The Alexandrian anathemas produced a great commotion in the east, where they were regarded as doing away with the distinction of natures in the Saviour. John of Antioch wished that they should be generally condemned as Apollinarian, and treatises were written against them by Andrew, bishop of Samosata, and by Theodoret, bishop of Cyrus.

The last-named of these objectors was the most learned divine of whom the eastern church could in that age boast. He was born at Antioch about 390, and is supposed to have studied under Theodore of Mopsuestia, of whose writings he was certainly a diligent reader and a zealous admirer. About the year 420 he was elected to fill the see of Cyrus or Cyrrhus, in the Euphratensian province, where he laboured with great activity and success to extirpate the heresies with which his diocese had been infested,—often even exposing his life to danger from the fury of the Marcionites and other sectaries, who held possession of entire villages. His influence over his clergy is attested by the fact that in five-and-twenty years not one of them had appeared before a secular tribunal. Nor was his care for his people limited to spiritual things; he devoted the whole of his income to their benefit, erected bridges, baths, and other public buildings, and induced persons skilled in physic and other useful arts to settle at Cyrus. The variety of Theodoret’s literary merit was extraordinary; it has been said of him that he equally well sustains the character of a commentator, a theologian, a historian, a controversialist, an apologist, and a writer on practical religion. Throughout the differences of his time he was the most eminent leader on the oriental side; but his moderation and fairness were ill appreciated amid the rage of party strife, and he suffered from the violence of opposite factions.

Finding himself beset by the patriarchs of Rome and Alexandria, Nestorius saw no other chance of escape from his difficulties than an appeal to a general council. Some of his opponents had already petitioned for such an assembly; and in November 430 Theodosius, in his own name and in that of the western emperor, issued orders for the meeting of representatives of the whole church at Ephesus. The time appointed was the following Whitsuntide, and in the meanwhile things were to remain as they were, so that the execution of the Roman decree was suspended. Each metropolitan was to bring with him so many of his suffragans as he might think expedient—taking care that a number sufficient for the performance of the ordinary pastoral duties should be left. The citation addressed to Cyril was accompanied by a special letter from Theodosius, in which the patriarch was charged with pride, turbulence, assumption of rights which belonged to a general council alone, and with fondness for intruding into palaces, as if there were discord between relations, or as if he hoped to set them at variance. This last charge, which refers to the separate letter written by Cyril to Eudocia and Pulcheria, appears to indicate that the suspicion imputed to him was not without foundation. Of bishops below the degree of metropolitan, Augustine alone was honoured with an invitation by name; but, unhappily for the council, he had died some months before.

Nestorius arrived at Ephesus soon after Easter (April 19th), attended by sixteen bishops. Before Whitsuntide (June 7th), Cyril appeared at the head of fifty bishops, with a large train of sailors and other disorderly persons. About forty bishops were with Memnon, metropolitan of Ephesus, a man of unscrupulous character, who had a special motive for taking part with Cyril against the patriarch of Constantinople, inasmuch as the independence of his own ‘apostolical’ church was in danger from the neighbourhood of the new capital. The African church was prevented by the Vandal invasion from sending any representative to the council; but Capreolus, of Carthage, wrote a letter, entreating that the fathers would not countenance any novelty. Celestine, of Rome, deputed two bishops and a presbyter to represent himself and “the whole council of the west”, with directions to guide themselves by Cyril’s judgment, and to consult the dignity of the apostolic see by acting as judges, not as disputants. These, however, had not yet reached Ephesus. Candidian, count of the domestics, was commissioned by the emperor to keep order. In obedience to his instructions, he commanded that all monks and lay strangers should leave Ephesus, and that no bishop should under any pretence absent himself until the business of the council should have been concluded. About two hundred bishops were assembled, but John of Antioch had not yet appeared. The beginning of his journey had been delayed, partly by the difficulty of collecting his suffragans, who were unable to leave their homes until after the octave of Easter, and partly by disturbances in his city on account of a scarcity; and the state of the roads, flooded by heavy rains, had obliged him to travel slowly, with the loss of many horses by the way. The bishops who were already at Ephesus, while waiting for the arrival of John and the orientals, engaged in frequent informal discussions, which tended rather to exasperate than to heal their differences Nestorius declared that his life was in danger from the ruffians of Cyril’s train, and from the peasants who were at the beck of Memnon; while the opposite party complained against the soldiers who acted as a guard to the bishop of Constantinople.

On the 21st of June, Cyril, who, in virtue of the dignity of his see, assumed the presidency of the council, declared that he would wait no longer, although he had received a courteous letter from John, apologizing for his delay, and stating that he was within a few days’ journey of Ephesus. Nestorius was cited to appear before the council next day; he answered that he would attend when John should be present, or when summoned by Candidian. Theodoret and sixty-seven other bishops, of whom twenty-two were metropolitans, protested against proceeding to business without the presence of the Orientals. But the council met on the following day, in the church of St. Mary, where the Theotokos was believed to have been interred. Candidian attended, and, at the desire of the bishops, read his commission from the emperor. His request that four days might be allowed for the arrival of the Orientals was refused; and as the commission restrained him from entering into questions of doctrine, on the ground that these belonged to the bishops alone, he was—not without indignity, as he complains—obliged to leave the church, after protesting that anything which might be done in opposition to his directions should be of no effect. The bishops refused even to look at the memorial of their sixty-eight brethren. A second and a third citation were sent to Nestorius, but his guard prevented the delivery of them.

The council proceeded to the question for the consideration of which it had been summoned. After the recitation of the Nicene creed, Cyril’s second letter to Nestorius was read, and the bishops severally expressed their high approval of it, as being conformable to the Nicene faith. The answer returned by Nestorius was then read; whereupon many of the bishops spoke in condemnation of it, and the whole assembly joined in uttering anathemas against the writer and his doctrine. Other documents followed; among them was Cyril’s third letter to Nestorius—that containing the anathemas—which was received without any remark. By way of proof that Nestorius still adhered to his errors, reports were made as to language which he had used in conversation since coming to Ephesus: as that he had asked how he could give the name of God to a child two or three months old—a question which was understood as a denial of the Saviour’s Godhead. A collection of extracts from earlier theologians was produced, in evidence of the true doctrine on the disputed points; and after it a number of passages from the writings of Nestorius were read amidst general disapprobation—the fathers stopping their ears at the occurrence of words which they considered blasphemous. A sentence of deposition against Nestorius was drawn up in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ whom he hath blasphemed; it was signed by a hundred and ninety-eight bishops, and, in token of the feeling which animated them, it was addressed to the patriarch as “a new Judas”. Cyril afterwards attempted to excuse the indecency and the glaring unfairness of these hasty proceedings by such pretences as that John of Antioch was not in earnest, that his delay was intentional, and that he was determined not to condemn one who had been promoted from among his own clergy. Perhaps the boldest of all the pleas was, that two Syrian metropolitans, who reached Ephesus on the day before the session, had answered some complaints of delay by expressing their patriarch’s willingness that the council should be opened without waiting longer for him. This Cyril ventured to interpret as if the bishop of Antioch consented that the great question proposed for the council’s judgment should be decided before his arrival.

Candidian was astonished on the following morning to find what had been done. He tore down the placard in which the deposition of Nestorius was announced; he issued an edict declaring the proceedings of the council to be null and void; he sent their placard to the emperor, with a letter strongly reflecting on the irregularities of Cyril and his associates. Nestorius also wrote to Theodosius, begging that an impartial synod might be assembled for the examination of his case; that each metropolitan should bring with him only two bishops—a regulation which, from the arrangement of the Egyptian patriarchate, would have left Cyril almost unsupported ;g and that not only monks and clergy, but all such bishops as were not so summoned, should be kept at a distance from the place of meeting.

On the 27th of June, John of Antioch, with fourteen oriental bishops, reached Ephesus. As they approached the city, a deputation from the council met them, and reported the transactions which had taken place. The patriarch was filled with astonishment and indignation. Immediately on reaching his lodgings, he held a council of the bishops who had accompanied him, with twenty-nine others who joined them. Candidian appeared, gave his account of the late session, and withdrew. The bishops then proceeded to consider Cyril’s conduct, and the anathemas which he had published; they pronounced him guilty of turbulence, and of reviving the Arian, Apollinarian, and Eunomian heresies; they sentenced him and Memnon to deposition, and declared the rest of the two hundred to be separated from their communion until they should join in condemning the anathemas. The deputies of Cyril’s party endeavoured to communicate with John, but were insulted, beaten, and repulsed by the soldiers of his guard. On receiving the report of this, and apparently before the decree of the orientals had reached them, Cyril and his synod declared John to be excommunicate until he should give an explanation of his behaviour. The orientals attempted to carry out their condemnation of Memnon by consecrating a bishop in his stead; but they were unable to gain entrance into a church for the purpose, and were beaten by a rabble of his adherents.

Reports of the proceedings at Ephesus got into circulation, and produced in many quarters an impression unfavourable to Cyril. Isidore of Pelusium, with his usual frankness, wrote to beg that he would act with fairness and deliberation, telling him that he was charged with seeking to disguise his private enmity against Nestorius under the name of a zeal for Christ, and that parallels were drawn between his conduct and that of his uncle Theophilus.

The emperor, on receiving Candidian’s letter, wrote to the bishops who had condemned Nestorius, blaming them for having proceeded irregularly and on motives of personal malice, and forbidding them to leave Ephesus until the affair should be rightly settled. A reply was drawn up, in which they excused themselves for having acted without the presence of the Orientals, and begged that Candidian might be recalled as having shown partiality to their opponents, and that five of their number might be allowed to wait on the emperor. The acts of the council, revised by Cyril (perhaps not without some unfairness), were annexed to this letter. But Candidian prevented the papers from reaching the court, and the ways were so closely watched that the council, in order to communicate with Constantinople, was obliged to intrust a letter to a beggar, who carried it in a hollow staffs. On the receipt of this missive a great agitation arose among Cyril’s partisans. The monasteries of the capital poured forth their inmates, among whom the most conspicuous was Dalmatius, an abbot who for eight-and-forty years had been shut up within the walls of his retreat, refusing to leave it even when entreated by the emperor to take part in solemn processions on occasion of earthquakes. This recluse was now warned by a heavenly voice to go forth, and proceeded to the palace at the head of an immense multitude, which filled the air with the chant of psalms. The abbots were admitted into the emperor’s presence. Dalmatius showed the letter from Ephesus; he set forth the grievances of the orthodox party, and asked whether it were better to adhere to a single impious man or to six thousand bishops, dispersed throughout the world, but represented by their metropolitans and brethren at Ephesus. Theodosius was moved, and said that the council had only to send some of its members to state its case. Dalmatius in answer explained the constraint in which the bishops were held, and obtained from the emperor an order that some deputies should be sent to the court. The crowd, which had been waiting in anxious expectation, received the abbots with enthusiasm as they left the palace. Monks carrying lighted tapers, and chanting the 150th Psalm, escorted them to a church, where Dalmatius ascended the pulpit, read the Ephesian letter, and gave a report of the interview with the emperor; after which the whole multitude joined in shouting anathemas against Nestorius.

Some bishops of Cyril’s party were now allowed to go to Constantinople, where their representations and solicitations, seconded by heavy bribes, were so effective that the most influential persons about the court were gained to the Alexandrian interest.

The council, in the meantime, held its second session on the 10th of July, when the envoys from Rome appeared, and were received with marks of honour. At the third session, these envoys expressed their approbation of what had been done, and signed the deposition of Nestorius. The hostile parties remained at Ephesus, threatening and excommunicating each other, with equal pride, according to the expression of an ancient historian, and with a deplorable want of temper and decency on both sides. The emperor—supposing (it is said) that the depositions of Nestorius, and of his enemies, Cyril and Memnon, were all determined by the whole council—confirmed the sentences; John, count of the Sacred Largesses, who superseded Candidian as commissioner put the three bishops under arrest; and in August, consequence of Cyril’s removal, Juvenal, bishop of Jerusalem, became president of the council. It was in vain that the commissioner attempted to mediate between the parties; he reported their mutual exasperation to his master, but laid the greater share of blame on the Cyrillians. The extreme heat of the summer, and the confinement within the walls of Ephesus, affected the health of many of the bishops, as well as of their attendants, and a considerable number of deaths took place; while many, who had not made provision for so long an absence from their homes, were reduced to distress for the means of subsistence.

Dalmatius was again employed to represent the case of his friends to the emperor, and at length, at the request of both parties, a conference of eight bishops from each of the rival councils was held at Chalcedon, in the presence of Theodosius. The court was now against Nestorius,—partly influenced by Cyril’s money, partly by Pulcheria, whom Nestorius had offended, partly by dread of the monks and of the populace. Before the arrival of the bishops at Chalcedon, the emperor issued an order that the patriarch, agreeably to a request which he had formerly made, should retire to a monastery near Antioch of which he had been an inmate before his elevation. Nestorius, in acknowledging the receipt of this order, professed himself willing to suffer for the truth, but expressed a wish that an imperial mandate should be issued for a general condemnation of the Egyptian anathemas.

The deputies at Chalcedon had five audiences of the emperor. The party of Cyril refused to enter into any argument, and insisted on the condemnation of Nestorius, while their opponents were equally bent on that of Cyril’s anathemas; and, as it became evident that no reconciliation could be expected, Theodosius resolved to put an end to the council. The letter in which he announced his determination appears to show that he was rather overpowered by the influence of Cyril than convinced of the justice of his cause; he declares that he cannot condemn the Orientals, since no one had argued against them, and they had not been convicted of any error before him. By the same letter it was ordered that Cyril and Memnon should retain their sees; and in the month of September, Maximian, a monk of recluse and unambitious character, was consecrated as patriarch of Constantinople, in the room of Nestorius.

The council of Ephesus is received as the third general council, and its doctrine respecting the Saviour’s person is a part of the catholic faith. But it would be vain to defend the proceedings of those by whom the true doctrine was there asserted; and there remains a question whether Nestorius was really guilty of holding the opinions for which it condemned him. Socrates, whose prejudices, were all against Nestorius, acquits him of any worse error than the use of improper language, into which the historian supposes him to have been led by a conceit of his own eloquence, and by a disregard of the writings of earlier divines. The great body of the Orientals who supported him at Ephesus are unimpeached in their character for orthodoxy. Perhaps, therefore, Nestorius, in using the words which gave colour to the charge of heresy, may in truth have meant only to guard against opposite errors which might have been inferred from the Alexandrian language, and which shortly after were actually put forth by Eutyches; and the most startling of his expressions may rather have been exaggerations, into which he was driven by irritation, than serious denials of the truths which they seemed to contradict. He steadily disavowed the more odious opinions which were imputed to him; he repeatedly expressed his willingness to admit the term Theotokos, provided that it were guarded against obvious abuses The controversy more than once appeared to be in such a position that it might have been ended by a word of explanation : but an unwillingness on both sides to concede, and personal animosities, unhappily prolonged it.

The breaking up of the council left the parties greatly exasperated against each other. The Orientals, on their way homewards, held a synod at Tarsus, and after reaching Antioch they held a second. At these meetings they renewed the deposition of Cyril, and extended the sentence to the bishops who had appeared against them at Chalcedon, and had consecrated Maximian for Constantinople; while they declared that they would never consent to the deposition of Nestorius, that they were resolved to adhere to the Nicene faith, and resist the Egyptian anathemas. Theodoret, Andrew of Samosata, and others, wrote against Cyril, and kept up a correspondence with the friends of Nestorius at Constantinople. Many bishops were deprived, and the church was in a miserable state of distraction. Theodosius was anxious for peace, and after a time, by advice of Maximian, proposed that the bishops of Alexandria and Antioch should meet at Nicomedia, to confer on the means of restoring it. Count Aristolaus, to whom the letters were intrusted, was charged to labour for a reconciliation of the parties; and the emperor wrote to beg the prayers of Symeon the stylite and the exertions of Acacius of Berrhoea in furtherance of his pacific intentions.

John of Antioch declined the conference on the ground of ill health, and also because he had been informed that there was a plot to waylay him. He consulted, however, with the bishops of his party, and it was agreed that, putting aside the personal question as to Nestorius, they would communicate with Cyril, on condition of his condemning his own anathemas and acknowledging the Nicene creed as a sufficient rule of faith. Cyril was urged from many quarters to accept these terms. He replied that he had written nothing but what was conformable to the catholic faith; that to condemn his own writings would be to deprive himself of the means of combating Nestorianism in future, but that he would give explanations of his former words, if the Orientals would accept the acts of the late council, the deposition of Nestorius, and the ordination of Maximian; that he acknowledged the sufficiency of the Nicene creed, but not in such a way as should exclude proper interpretations of it in points where it might be misrepresented by heretics; and in a letter to Acacius he stated his opinions in such a form that Theodoret declared him to be orthodox, and to have abandoned his former errors. The bishop of Antioch was disposed to an accommodation, and sent Paul, bishop of Emesa, to Alexandria, with instructions to promote it. The mission was successful. Cyril subscribed a creed which was substantially the same with one drawn up by Theodoret at Dec. 432. Ephesus; the envoy preached thrice at Alexandria with great applause, enlarging on the term Theotokos; and John agreed to sign the condemnation of Nestorius, and to approve the ordination of Maximian. On these terms Alexandria and Antioch were reconciled in April 433.

In the course of these transactions Cyril expended enormous sums in bribes (or benedictions, as they were styled), for the purpose of maintaining his interest at court. A letter from his archdeacon Epiphanius to Maximian of Constantinople is extant, in which it is stated that the Alexandrians groaned under the heavy imposts to which they had been subjected in order to provide the means of this corruption, and that nevertheless, a debt of 1900 pounds of gold had been contracted in the name of the church.

The accommodation was not satisfactory to the adherents of either side. Isidore of Pelusium and other friends of Cyril expressed surprise that he had agreed to admit two natures in the Saviour. He replied that, while in one sense he acknowledged two natures, in another sense he allowed only one; that the two natures are separate in conception, although united in the one person of Christ, and that their predicates are properly distinct—a statement which Nestorius himself would probably not have declined, and might in fairness have been invited to accept. On the other hand, Theodoret remonstrated with John against making peace on any terms but such as should secure the restoration of the deposed bishops and include all who had been in the same interest. That Cyril, after having proved himself orthodox by his late explanations, should require consent to the condemnation of Nestorius, was, he said, much the same as if a convert from Arianism were to insist on anathematizing those who had always been sound as to the doctrine of the Son’s consubstantiality with the Father; he was still for a condemnation of Cyril’s anathemas, and declared that he would rather suffer both his hands to be cut off than subscribe the condemnation of Nestorius. Others, among whom was Theodoret’s metropolitan, Alexander, bishop of Hierapolis, an aged and venerable man, still refused to admit the orthodoxy of Cyril. Under the pretence that Alexander had forfeited or abdicated his rights as metropolitan, John of Antioch took it upon himself to ordain some bishops for the Euphratensian province; and the proceeding called forth a loud remonstrance, both as being an invasion of jurisdiction, and on account of the personal character of the new bishops. Nine provinces of the Antiochene patriarchate renounced communion with John, who at length called in the aid of the secular power to eject such bishops as refused to accede to his agreement with Cyril.

Theodoret was prepared to withdraw into a monastery; but the urgent entreaties of his flock prevailed on him to seek an interview with John, and he agreed to retain his see on condition of being excused from condemning Nestorius or his opinions. Alexander, however, continued to resist all importunities; he declared that if all the dead were to rise and testify in favour of the Egyptian doctrines, he must yet follow the light of his own conscience, and reject them. It was in vain that Theodoret endeavoured either to mitigate the sternness of his resolution or to prevail with John that the law might not be enforced against a man so greatly revered; the aged bishop was ejected from Hierapolis, and was banished to the mines of Famothim, in Egypt, while his clergy and people displayed their grief at his removal by closing for a time all the churches of the diocese. Other recusant bishops were driven from their sees by military force, and by such means a general conformity was established throughout the east in the year 435 .

The original author of these commotions was, notwithstanding the remonstrances of Celestine with the emperor, allowed to remain nearly four years in his retirement at Antioch, where he was treated with great respect and enjoyed the correspondence of his friends. On the death of Maximian, in 434, the partisans of Nestorius demanded that he should be reinstated in the bishopric of Constantinople; and so serious was the danger of an outbreak that the emperor hastened to fill up the vacancy by nominating Proclus, who was installed while the late bishop was yet unburied. The demonstration at Constantinople may probably have served to bespeak attention to a representation which John of Antioch made in the following year, that Nestorius persisted in his blasphemies and was perverting many from the faith; whereupon an edict was issued, commanding that all the heresiarch’s books should be burnt, that his followers should be called Simonians, “even as the Arians were styled Porphyrians by a law of Constantine of blessed memory”, and that their meetings should be suppressed. His property was seized, and he was sentenced to be banished to Petra for life; but (apparently before this sentence had been executed) the place of his exile was changed to the Great Oasis. There he employed himself in composing a history of his troubles; but after a time he was carried off by the Blemmyes, a wild tribe of marauders who devastated the Oasis. The old man was dismissed by his captors as useless, and surrendered himself to an imperial officer in Egypt, who inhumanly caused him to be hurried from place to place until he sank under the treatment. A writer quoted by Evagrius relates that his tongue was eaten up by worms, and that so he “departed to everlasting torment”, while other authors of kindred spirit are not content with less than a living putrefaction of the heresiarch’s whole body.

Fresh discords broke out in the east on the subject of Theodore of Mopsuestia and Diodore of Tarsus. The memory of these teachers had some years before been attacked by Rabula, bishop of Edessa, who, after having acted with the Orientals at Ephesus, Easter, made himself conspicuous by the vehemence with which he espoused the opposite side. Now that Nestorianism was formally suppressed, Cyril resolved to make an attempt against the authority of Diodore and Theodore, whose writings were diligently read by the Nestorians since those of their nominal leader had been forbidden. The attempt was eagerly urged on by a strong monastic party; and Rabula with other bishops took part in it. Proclus of Constantinople extracted some propositions from the works of Theodore, and, without naming the source, proposed that they should be generally condemned; but the authorship was betrayed by some over-zealous agents, and the name of Theodore, which was generally revered throughout the east, excited a commotion. A synod of bishops, held at Antioch, while they approved of Proclus’ doctrine, appealed to Theodosius against a condemnation of one who had done important, services to the church; they said that the language quoted from Theodore had been used by him in controversy with Arians and Eunomians, and ought to be interpreted with a fair consideration of its object; and the emperor, in consequence of this appeal, recommended that nothing should be done against the memory of men who had deserved well of the church and had died in its communion. Proclus withdrew from the affair, declaring that he had not intended any censure against the person of Theodore; and Cyril himself at length found it expedient to desist from the prosecution of his attempt, and to profess himself satisfied with the condemnation of Theodore's errors which was implied in the sentence against Nestorius. He afterwards wrote against Theodore, and was answered by Theodoret.

Although suppressed within the empire, Nestorianism found a refuge beyond its bounds. At Edessa there was a flourishing school of clergy for the Persian church. Its head, Ibas, was favourable to Nestorius, and translated some works of Diodore and Theodore into Syriac. Rabula, in 435, broke up the institution; but Ibas, on succeeding him as bishop, re-established it, a and it continued to flourish until the reign of Zeno, by whom it was finally suppressed in 485. From this seminary Nestorianism was propagated in Persia and India; and the doctrine continued to exercise a powerful influence on the Christianity of the east

 

CHAPTER IV.

EUTYCHIANISM.—THE COUNCIL OF CHALCEDON.— ADVANCE OF THE ROMAN SEE.