THE CAMBRIDGE MEDIEVAL HISTORY I 260
The Nestorian Controversy: Two Natures United Into One
17.8. The Nestorian Controversy: Two Natures United Into One
The populace of Ephesus received the result with wild enthusiasm, and gave the champions of the Theotokes an ovation on their way to their lodgings. Perhaps it is not mere fanciful analogy to recall the two-hours' shouting of an earlier city mob: "Great Artemis of the Ephesians."
Five days afterwards, John of Antioch arrived. He had with him comparatively few bishops, and when he was joined by the Nestorians, the number of his party only amounted to forty-three. There seems a touch of irony in the assertion which he made afterwards that the reason of his scanty numbers was to be found in his strict injunctions to follow out the Emperor's directions. Similarly, when he justifies the delay by the necessity that the bishops should officiate in their churches on the First Sunday after Easter, we may seem to have a covert hit at Cyril’s large numbers, who found no difficulty in absenting themselves. From the first, John took his stand against the acts of Cyril. He rejected the communications of the Council and joined forces with Nestorius. The imperial officials afforded him protection and support.
In the Conciliabulum, as his assembly was contemptuously called, Cyril and Memnon of Ephesus were in their turn deprived and excommunicated. Meantime the original Council, now joined by delegates from Rome, continued its sessions, deposed John and all his adherents, and continued to pass decrees against the Pelagians and other heretics. Whether or no the precise articles anathematising Nestorius, which had been drawn up at Alexandria, were passed by the Council is a disputed matter and one of inferior importance. Their sense was certainly maintained, and they were answered by counter-anathematisms on the other side.
The situation was becoming intolerable. Two rival assemblies of bitterly hostile factions were sitting in conclave through the sultry days of an Eastern summer, in a city always given to turbulence, and now stirred up by long and eloquent discourses such as a Greek populace ever loved to hear. Count Candidianus and the other imperial delegates had a hard task. He had, after the first session, torn down the placards declaring the deposition of Nestorius. He tried to prevent the Egyptian party from preaching inflammatory sermons, and from communicating the fever of controversy to Constantinople. This, however, he could not do, as Cyril found means of corresponding with the monks of Constantinople.
The Emperor himself was hardly equal to the emergency. The difficulty as to Nestorius was partly removed by the offer of Nestorius himself to retire to a monastery. With regard to the other leaders, Cyril and Memnon were for a time imprisoned. The Emperor received embassies from both sides, and finally decided to maintain the decisions of both councils. Maximian, a priest of Constantinople, was appointed to the vacant see of that city. Then Cyril and Memnon were liberated and restored to their sees, and the remaining members of the council ere bidden to return home, unless they could first find some means of accommodation with the Orientals.
The means by which the Emperor's partial change of front and the yet more clearly marked prevalence of anti-Nestorian feeling at Court were brought about can only be brought to light by untangling a most involved skein of ecclesiastical diplomacy. From a letter of one of Cyril's agents, as well as from the recently published account of Nestorius himself, there was a profuse distribution of gratuities among notable persons, including the princesses themselves. But Cyril appealed to zeal as well as to avarice. It would appear that a good many people in Constantinople were favourable to Nestorius, but that the clergy and the monks were generally against him. The union between Egyptians and Orientals was brought to pass sooner than we might have expected.
It was based on an explanation not wholly unlike that urged on Nestorius by John of Antioch near the beginning of the difficulties, an acknowledgment of two natures united into one, with a recognition, in virtue of the union, of the propriety of the term. It was a triumph for Cyril, but some of the most independent of his opponents still held out. Especially Theodoret, the best theologian of the party, and the most faithful — a slight distinction — to his friends, refused to be included in an arrangement which did not restore all the sees of the dispossessed bishops to their rightful occupants. It was only to a special decree of the Emperor, enforcing ecclesiastical agreement in the East, that he gave at last a qualified assent. But the indignant protest widely raised against Alexandrian ambition was expressed in a playful letter which he wrote after Cyril's death in 444, in which, along with more charitable wishes that we might expect for the final judgment on his soul, he recommends that a large stone be placed over the grave, to keep quiet the disturber who had now gone to propagate strange doctrines among the shades below. The last efforts of Cyril had been towards the condemnation of the great commentator, the father of Antiochene philosophy, Theodore of Mopsuestia. The reverence in which the memory of Theodore was held caused the scheme to fail, only to be renewed, with baneful consequences, by the Emperor Justinian.
We may now narrate the end of Nestorius. For some years he lived in peace in a monastery near Antioch, but his relations with its bishop appear to have cooled. In 435, he was banished to Petra in Arabia, but instead of going thither, he seems to have been sent to one of the oases of Egypt. There a wandering horde of Libyans, the Blemmyes, made him prisoner. Soon after he was released, and fled to Panopolis in Egypt. Thence he wrote a pathetic letter to the Praeses of the Thebaid, begging for protection "lest to all time the evil report should be brought that it is better to be a captive of barbarians than a fugitive suppliant of the Roman Emperor." But Nestorius had fallen into the very hotbed of fanatical monasticism. The Praeses caused him to be removed by barbarian soldiers to Elephantine, on the borders of the province. There is some evidence that the blow which put an end to his sufferings was dealt by the hand of Senuti himself. This was however some years later.
Nestorius was not a great leader of men, nor a very striking figurehead for a great cause. His whole story illustrates the perversity and blind cruelty of his opponents, and it is only in comparison with them that he sometimes appears in an almost dignified character. This character is greatly emphasized by the lately discovered writings in which Nestorius was employed shortly before his death. He seems to have approved the final arrangement of Chalcedon, and even to have acquiesced, with a magnanimity hardly to be expected, in the compromise by which his own name was left under the cloud while the principles for which he had striven were in great measure confirmed.
To obtain a deluxe leatherbound edition of COMMENTARII DE BELLO GALLICO by Julius Caesar, subscribe to Castalia History.
For questions about subscription status and billings: library@castaliahouse.com
For questions about shipping and missing books: shipping@castaliahouse.com
