THE CAMBRIDGE MEDIEVAL HISTORY I 268
The Monophysite Controversy: The End of the Schism
17.16. The Monophysite Controversy: The End of the Schism
The end of the schism can hardly be regarded as terminating the series of controversies which are the subject of this chapter. East and West were never again to be reunited with any cordiality. But now, for a time, the outward dissension ceases, and in the struggle not far distant with Vandals in Africa and Goths in Italy, the Empire represents the s ide of the Catholic Faith against either persecuting or tolerant Arianism.
Meantime, in the East, the Henoticon and the semi-Monophysite policy of the Emperors had far-reaching results. Mention has already been made of the school of Edessa, once presided over by Ibas, and of the reaction in Osrhoene, after Ibas's death, in a Monophysite direction. In 489 Zeno, regarding Edessa as still a hotbed of Nestorianism, closed the school there. The result was that a good many scholars migrated across the Persian frontier to Nisibis where, as already stated, Barsumas was bishop. In this city a very flourishing school was founded, in which the works of the great Antiochene doctors, Diodorus of Tarsus and Theodore of Mopsuestia, might be studied in peace, and where even the memory of Nestorius himself was honoured. The great episcopal see of the Persian Church had since 410 been fixed at Seleucia-Ctesiphon, and the bishop (catholicos) of that see was fairly independent of those who, from his point of view, were regarded as the Western fathers of the Syrian churches. Christians in Persia enjoyed peace and patronage, with intermittent persecutions, under the great kings of the Sassanid dynasty. It seems to have been part of the Nestorian policy of Barsumas to convince the king that Monophysitism meant inclination to side with the Empire whenever war broke out, while Nestorianism was consistent with loyalty to Persia. Under these circumstances, the Nestorian Church in Persia grew and flourished Beside its school at Nisibis, it had, in course of time, one at Seleucia.
Its character was greatly determined by its monastic institutions. Its missionary zeal made itself felt in India and even in China. Altogether, though the time of its greatness was not of very long duration, it acquired, by its intellectual and religious activity, a very respectable place among the Churches which the dissensions of the fifth century alienated from Catholic Christendom.
While Christianity in Persia was becoming Nestorian, Syria was becoming Monophysite. The whole story of the process does not fall within our present limits, but it may be remarked that the great organiser of the Monophysite communities, both in Egypt and Syria, was Severus the Pisidian who held the see of Antioch from 512 till his deposition in 519, and whose active and productive life ended about 540. The reorganiser of the Monophysite Church after the persecution which followed the reunion of Rome and Constantinople was Jacobus Baradaeus, who died about 578, and from whom the Syrian Monophysites are sometimes called Jacobites. His history, however, does not concern us here.
Historically viewed, the interest of these controversies lies not so much in the motives by which they were inspired as in the dissolutions and combinations to which they gave birth. The alienation of churches seems in many cases to be at bottom the alienation of peoples and nations, the religious difference supplying pretext rather than cause. And sometimes the asserted cause of the dispute is lost sight of when the difference has been made permanent. So it was, apparently, with the Jacobite-Syrian and the Nestorian-Persian Churches. Also we may notice that the Christianity of the Copts has become more like a reversion, with differences, to the popular religion of the old Egyptians than an elaboration of the principles of Cyril and Dioscorus. And again the breach between Greeks and Latins was sure to break out again, however often the ecclesiastical dispute which had served as the occasion of a temporary alienation might be settled.
The fruits of the disunion we have been examining became evident enough in the days of the Mahommedan invasions, yet had the actual occasions of the disunion been entirely absent, we can hardly feel sure that a united Christendom would have stood ready to repel the Saracen advance. Even if the Empire had never lost its unity, it could hardly have retained in permanent and loyal subordination the populations of Egypt and of the East. They had been but superficially connected with Byzantium, while, perhaps unconsciously, they remained under the sway of more ancient civilisations than those of Hellas and of Rome.
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