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I. THE DELICATE SITUATION
The fifth of the General Councils met at Constantinople, in May, 553--just one hundred years after the date of St. Leo's
final letter to the fathers of Chalcedon (March 21, 453). To the minds of many contemporaries this council of 553 was to seem
a flat repudiation of Chalcedon, and it was to be the occasion of numerous schisms in the Latin sees of the church, the most
widespread (non-doctrinal) revolt which the papacy has ever had to face. It was a council whose strange history was very closely
related to the hundred tense years of controversy that preceded it, controversy partly theological, partly political, partly
nationalistic.
More particularly, this council was the crowning effort of a Catholic emperor's policy to reconcile the Monophysites; an
emperor who came in after some fifty years of Monophysite domination, and at the end of a period of thirty-five years when
even the pro-Chalcedon party had been out of communion with Rome; thirty-five years when, in law, there had been no Catholics
at all within this empire of the East. That emperor was Justinian (527-45), the restorer par excellence, the ruler who set
himself to halt disintegration everywhere, and by no means unsuccessfully who brought back under imperial control Italy and
Africa and even part of Spain, the last great emperor who can be called Roman. His leading idea, in this stage of his religious
activities, was to make it clear beyond clear to the Monophysites that the Catholics, faithful to the Council of Chalcedon,
were as orthodox as themselves, that there was no difference, in fact, between what each party believed. It was the policy
of a sincerely religious Catholic that had nothing in common with the attempts of his predecessors, through the previous fifty
years, to heal the breach through dishonest, ambiguous formulae which each party could sign with its own meaning in mind as
it did so.
The differences that separated Monophysite from Catholic were undoubtedly as subtle as they were real. The Church has never
used any other form of expressing the doctrine of the Incarnation than that of St. Leo's Tome. It has, on the other hand,
never condemned the formula of St. Cyril--which, as he used it, is a wholly Catholic formula; and that he used it in a Catholic
sense is shown by the whole body of his writing on this great truth. Nor did the Monophysite leaders--the bishops and theologians--understand
the formula in any other sense.[1] None, at Chalcedon, supported the views of Eutyches, or asserted that Eutyches and St.
Cyril were at one in their belief. And this loyalty to the real St. Cyril characterises the main body of the party throughout
the next hundred years and more after Chalcedon. Where the party and such of its great leaders as the patriarch of Antioch,
Severus, went wrong, and put themselves outside the communion of the church, was in their constant assertion that the language
of St. Leo's Tome did not have a Catholic meaning, could not have a Catholic meaning; that it showed, on the contrary, that
he was a Nestorian. And Chalcedon, they persisted, was a council to be held accursed, for, according to them, it had reversed
the decision of the truly Catholic Ephesian Council of 431 where St. Cyril had triumphed.
If this seems now merely a tale "of old forgotten far-off things"--an especially pitiful tale of violent disputes between
people substantially in agreement--let it be remembered that in the next eighty years after 553 the differences had so undermined
the stability of a good half of the empire in the East, as to lose forever to the emperors the loyalty of Egypt and Syria,
and reduce the numbers of the Catholics there to a handful, and the jurisdictions of Alexandria, Antioch, and Jerusalem to
all but nought. These lands were the original strongholds of the Catholic faith, Egypt, Syria, and the rest, names which whatever
they now bring to mind do not suggest the triumph of the religion of Christ our Lord. Islam, of course, has for a thousand
years and more dominated them. But the break with the Catholic Church, and its destruction in these lands, goes back earlier
still, to long before Mahomet was born, to the Monophysite reaction following the Council of Chalcedon. The emperors who,
in the two hundred years after Chalcedon, showed such a passionate anxiety over the various pacts by which they sought to
end the division, and who treated the opponents of their endeavours with such ferocity, were by no means despots, half-crazy
through their determination that all men should believe as they believed about these high mysteries. What prompted them was
their realisation that a continuation of the division meant the end of their empire and, as we should say now, of civilisation.
As to the great council itself, taken as a whole it has never inspired historians with any excessive affection. Le malentendu
de Chalcedoine is, with many of them, the impression they seem to retain most vividly. The reason for this is, perhaps, that
"The Council of Chalcedon had drawn up a doctrinal formula: it had not produced a union of minds or of hearts."[2] It was
a council occasioned by a serious and long-standing theological quarrel about the interpretation of technical keywords. That
this initial misunderstanding survived the council is the tragedy of its history. What the council needed to have done, it
was impossible that it could have done- -given the passions of the disputants; given, especially, the feelings engendered
on all sides by what had happened at the Latrocinium. Given, what all knew, the fact of these two quasi-permanent theological
factions, Cyrillian and anti-Cyrillian, and their mutual ferocity, there ought, ideally, to have been some specific act of
the council showing that its statement of the faith did not conflict with the decisions of Ephesus (431) nor condemn Cyril's
theology of the Incarnation; saying plainly what it was that the Antioch party found faulty in the Alexandrian's terms and
why[3]; showing how there was yet no conflict between these last and the formula in which St. Leo had expressed the doctrine.
But could such a reasonableness in these actual bishops of 451 have been expected?
One thing alone seems to have controlled them, the words of him whom, whether joyfully or reluctantly, they acknowledged
to be a peculiarly privileged authentic witness to the truth. In this acknowledgment by these passionate, mutually hostile
men, there lies whatever is glorious in the conciliar action of 451. These Greeks, Syrians, Egyptians may not like to yield
their minds to the papal authority as a concrete factor of life; they may with all possible ingenuity avoid and evade it;
and once returned to their sees they may disregard and flatly disobey; but their homage at Chalcedon to what is greater in
the papacy than any pope is indeed "L'apogee en Orient, du principatus du Siege Apostolique."[4] And it is this that has survived
in the popular memory as the great glory of the council--its acceptance, that is to say, of a statement of the true belief
about the Incarnation on the authority of the bishop who, so they believe, is Peter's successor and heir.
From these simplicities we turn to the jungle of events. The opposition to the Council of Chalcedon's acceptance of St.
Leo's teaching showed itself as soon as this was known. A Syrian monk, present at the council, made his way home, to Jerusalem,
and began a campaign of violent preaching on the theme, "Chalcedon has betrayed Cyril." He speedily had the city aflame, and
the empress-dowager heading a plot to bar out the bishop--not yet returned- -and set another in his place: a successful plot,
for the bishop fled before the insurrection. In town after town in Palestine and Syria the same thing happened. It took the
whole force of an army to get the lawful bishop of Jerusalem back into his see.
Egypt received the news of Chalcedon's deposition of Dioscoros--and its new chief bishop, Proterius--no less badly. Troops
had to be used to get him safely through the streets of Alexandria. The vast mobs then turned on the soldiery, and when these
took refuge in the great temple of Serapis, burned it down and the troops with it. The government reprisals were, of course,
terrible--but efficient, and it was amid a military occupation that Proterius ruled. Until 457; when the emperor Marcian died,
and without awaiting the news of his successor's policy the Alexandrians rose again. The bishop was murdered, and his naked,
mutilated corpse dragged through the streets in triumph. In his place a leading Monophysite, Timothy, was elected.[5]
The new emperor, Leo I, was so impressed by all this that his first thought was to call a council that should repudiate
Chalcedon. Those bishops he consulted gave no support to his plan, and advised that Timothy should be banished. The strong
arm once more operated, and as long as Leo reigned, another sixteen years, the surface calm was unbroken. It was after Leo's
death (474) that the real trouble began, not the mere matter of rioting mobs and fanatical clerics, but of the state proposing
its own official solution of the great dilemma, to which every bishop had to set his signature. It was a usurper, Basiliscus,
hoping thus (it may be) to make his throne safe, who inaugurated the new policy: the policy that reached the heights of its
mischievous possibilities eighty years later, when the General Council we are now about to deal with (the fifth) was summoned,
for no other purpose than to accredit an imperial reconciliation scheme. Basiliscus sent to all the bishops of the empire
an encyclical letter, setting forth what that faith is which "is the basis and foundation of mankind's happiness." It is,
he states, the faith of Nicaea, of the council of 381, and of the Council of Ephesus that condemned Nestorius. But "we decree
that all the bishops of the world shall anathematize, and give to the flames, the Tome of Leo, and all that was done at Chalcedon
in the matter of defining the faith."[6] Every bishop was ordered to set his signature to the letter, as testimony of submission.
It was an eventful twenty months[7] in which Basiliscus reigned. Throughout Egypt, Palestine, and Syria, especially, the bishops
signed by hundreds. Then the lawful emperor, Zeno, managed to regain the throne.
Zeno was a crude type, from the mountains of Isauria, the first Asiatic to rule at Constantinople, a soldier, and notoriously
one of the great blackguards of his day. Religious affairs he handed over to the bishop of Constantinople, Acacius, almost
the only bishop who had stood firm against the Encyclical. This Acacius had done, apparently, from policy--Zeno might soon
be back; and Acacius had a Monophysite past. He was the real author, it seems, of the next attempt to settle the problem by
imperial edict.
The problem had not, in fact, diminished as the years went by, and it was a practical problem; for example, every time
a new bishop was appointed in Egypt or Syria the chances were that there would be a miniature civil war for some days or weeks
or for longer still. Zeno had closed his eyes to the fact that Timothy had returned to Alexandria during the usurpation, and
after Timothy's death he recognised a second leading Monophysite as bishop.[8] The new edict, called the Henoticon,[9] was,
in form, Zeno's letter to this personage, Peter Mongos (i.e., the hoarse). It was to have the most disastrous consequences.
Once already, a bare twenty years after Chalcedon, the all but entire episcopate of the empire had repudiated the council
at the bidding of the state. Now, six years later, it was to repeat the performance and, in doing so, to fall foul of the
Apostolic See.
The Henoticon of 482 was more subtly contrived than the short-lived edict of Basiliscus. It spoke of the traditional faith
in which alone all Christians are baptised, and upon which the preservation of the state depends, and proceeded to say that
this faith was that of the councils of Nicaea, of Constantinople (381), and Ephesus. It anathematized, by name, Nestorius
and Eutyches also, and it accepted the twelve anathemas which St. Cyril had drawn up against Nestorius. Then came a summary
of the doctrine of the Incarnation to which no Catholic could object, and, in the closing words, a casual back-kick at Chalcedon
which ruined all: "Whoever believes, or has believed, otherwise, now or at any time, whether at the council of Chalcedon or
at any other council, him we anathematize." The implication of this is clear enough. But the rest was orthodox, and so Catholic
bishops signed it freely. The last clause dispenses from any need to reverence Chalcedon those who thought the council accursed,
and so gave the Monophysite all the freedom he desired. There was no mention of Leo's Tome, nor of his terminology, "two natures."
The mass of the bishops rallied to the new formula, those who were Monophysites having trouble with their own extremists.
The pope--Felix III- -excommunicated Acacius for accepting the Henoticon, and deposed him from his see, and with him excommunicated
all who remained in communion with him (484). Acacius in return struck off the pope's name from the diptychs of the church
of Constantinople. For the first time, there was now open schism, separating the whole Catholic East from the Roman See. It
was to continue for thirty-five years.
Acacius died five years after his condemnation, still bishop and still unsubmissive. His successors made as full profession
of faith in Chalcedon as could be desired. But they would not retract their signatures from the Henoticon, nor recognise the
excommunication of Acacius. A new emperor came to the throne in 491, an elderly official, Anastasius. He was himself a Monophysite.
Once he had completed his careful reorganisation of the state he, too, turned to solve the great problem, and called in leading
Monophysites as his advisors--two very notable personages, Philoxene bishop of Mabboug[10] and the monk Severus whom, in 512,
the emperor made patriarch of Antioch.
It was during this period of the reign of Anastasius that the first signs were given of what was to be the storm centre--the
whole business indeed-- of the General Council of 553. This was a Monophysite crusade against three bishops--writers all of
them--now long since dead, who had once been friends and associates of Nestorius: the bishop of Mopsuestia, Theodore; the
bishop of Cyrrhus, Theodoret; the bishop of Edessa, Ibas. These three personages and their writings, a trinity of subjects
for controversy henceforward inseparable, the three topics, items kephalaia in Greek; capitula in Latin), headings; the Three
Chapters, of the English-speaking historians.
It was Philoxene who, around 506-7, began this campaign against them, denouncing them as heretics, Nestorians, at Antioch,
the metropolis with which all three were associated. Five years later, in the same city, he again raised the question of their
orthodoxy, in his endeavour to bring about the deposition of his superior, the bishop, Flavian--a strong anti- Monophysite.
Monophysites traditionally detested Theodoret and Ibas as leading critics, in their own day, of St. Cyril's theology of the
Incarnation. Catholics, on the other hand, stood by them as victims of the Alexandria-managed Latrocinium, who later were
restored and pronounced wholly orthodox at Chalcedon. From now on, with both Catholics and Monophysites, to be against or
for their condemnation was a sure way of proclaiming oneself for or against the Council of Chalcedon. "The Three Chapters"
was, for the next hundred years, to be a watchword and a battle cry through all the churches from Spain to Arabia.
Severus ruled Antioch for a brief six years. In 518 his emperor died, and the general to whom the throne now came, Justin,
was a convinced Catholic, a Latin, whose first thought was peace with the Apostolic See. Once again Roman legates appeared
in the capital and, as the condition sine qua non of restoration to communion, the emperor and the bishop--and all the bishops
of the empire-- signed the formulary drawn up by the pope, Hormisdas.[11] No discussion of the terms was allowed, the pope
was as firm as St. Leo at Chalcedon. The signatories admitted that the first rule of salvation was to keep the rule of belief,
with regard to which the promise of Christ to St. Peter[12] had been marvellously fruitful since, "in the Apostolic See the
Catholic faith has ever been kept spotless." They therefore, desiring and hoping never to be separated from this faith, anathematize
all heresies, and, by name, "Nestorius, once bishop of Constantinople and condemned by Celestine pope of Rome and Cyril bishop
of Alexandria." Likewise they anathematize Eutyches and Dioscoros, "condemned by the holy council of Chalcedon which we follow
and embrace," a council which, "following the council of Nicaea, taught the apostolic faith." The bishops declare their detestation
of the "murderous Timothy the Cat" and his successor Peter; and they also condemn with these "Acacius, the bishop of Constantinople
whom the Apostolic See condemned," and all who had remained in communion with Acacius. Returning to Chalcedon, the signatories
accept the Tome of Leo, because "in all things we follow the Apostolic See and preach as it has decided." Here, "in this See,"
is to be found "the whole, true, perfect strength of the religion of Christ." And, for the future, they promise never to recite
in the sacred mysteries the names of those who "have been cut off from the communion of the Catholic Church, that is of those
who are not one in thought with the Apostolic See."[13] "If I attempt to vary from this my profession, I acknowledge I should
make myself the accomplice of those whom I have condemned."
This root and branch condemnation of Acacius and the hundreds of his episcopal accomplices, all now deceased, was a stiff
draught to swallow. But if the bishops were serious in their statements about the unique privilege of the Apostolic See as
the standard of belief, what choice had they but to drink it down?
But it was a long generation since, in these lands, the pope's name had, publicly, been allowed to matter. At Thessalonica
there were riots when the commissioners arrived to reconcile the bishop, riots which he organised. In Thrace generally the
changeover went through fairly peaceably, and in Asia Minor too. But in Syria there was violent opposition in many places.
The recusant bishops were ejected and, as of old, troops were needed to secure the installation of their successors. Egypt
the emperor let alone.
And in Syria, in some places where the anti-Monophysites came into their own again, the Three Chapters made an ominous
reappearance. At Cyrrhus there were feasts in honour of Theodoret, and at Mopsuestia in honour of Theodore and his master
Diodore of Tarsus--and, also, of "St. Nestorius."[14] Pro-Chalcedon enthusiasm of this sort augured ill for the new emperor's
hopes of a real peace. Was it now that the first seeds were sown in the mind of his nephew Justinian, soon to succeed to the
throne, of a deep aversion for these Syrian heroes as symbols of strife, and bound to provoke it everlastingly?
In April 527, at the age of forty-five Justinian began his reign--or, to speak according to the realities, what began was
the joint reign of Justinian and his accomplished and really capable wife Theodora. And Theodora was a Monophysite. While,
for the greater misery of the years to come, her husband was, among many other things, a talented amateur theologian, who
studied under the best masters of the day.[15] Justinian regarded himself as personally responsible to God for the well-being
of his empire, and in nothing more awfully responsible than for the maintenance of the Church. Hence the constant support
his laws gave to bishops in their disciplinary tasks, the care to provide good bishops and a determined, never ceasing war
on the enemies of the Church--the pagans, the Jews, the heretics. But the austere emperor did not, ever, think of the Monophysites
as heretics. These were, to him, victims of a profound misunderstanding, and it was one of his most rooted convictions that
he had a mission to reconcile them to the Church.
II. THE QUESTION OF THE THREE CHAPTERS, 527-44
The reign began, then, with overtures to the Monophysites. The exiles were recalled, preachers of the party were heard
once again in the churches, and the empress set up a monastery of five hundred of their monks in one of the imperial palaces.
In 533 Justinian called a conference of Catholic and Monophysite bishops and theologians to discuss the vital questions. He
himself presided. And at this conference the question of the Three Chapters came up. According to one account the Monophysites
accepted the Catholic explanation of their relation to Chalcedon and Ephesus. But another story relates that the conference
broke down on this very point.
This same year also witnessed the emperor's first attempts to make official declarations about Christian doctrine; an edict,
for example, which settled the orthodoxy of the latest attempt to state Catholic belief in language usually held by the other
side. This was the statement, "It was one of the Trinity who, in the flesh, suffered for us"--a mode of speech no Nestorian
heretic could possibly use, and therefore useful on Catholic lips as convincing evidence that the pro-Chalcedon party were
not Nestorians. The statement however grieved the most Chalcedonian of all the Catholics of the capital, the monks called
Akoimetoi,[16] and thereupon Justinian appealed to the pope, John II. Back came an assurance (March 534) that the formula
was wholly orthodox, and also, among other testimonies in its favour, the pope cited the anathemas of St. Cyril[17]-the first
time in a hundred years of controversy that a Roman document had quoted them. If Leo, through John, was now quoting Cyril,
what became of the Monophysite case against Chalcedon? But, of course, men (even ecclesiastical men) are not purely rational
animals. And there was always the empress, whom no one has claimed as a theologian.
On February 8, 535, the patriarch of Alexandria died, and on June 8, the patriarch of Constantinople. Between these deaths
came that of Pope John II, May 8. Through Theodora's activity both the new patriarchs were Monophysites--after street fighting
in Alexandria, where the rival candidate was also a Monophysite, of the straiter sort. And now the emperor thought the moment
opportune to invite to Constantinople the arch- Monophysite of the day, Severus, whom he had been, in part, responsible for
depriving of the see of Antioch, sixteen years before, and who, in all these years, had been a proscribed exile. The ex-patriarch
was now lodged in the emperor's palace, and no doubt Justinian fully enjoyed his unique opportunity of talking over these
questions with the monk who, to all seeming, must be counted one of the really great theologians. One effect of the presence
of Severus in the capital was to confirm the new patriarch-- Anthimos was his name--in a resolute anti-Chalcedon spirit.
Such was the position when political events in Italy--the threat to the Gothic king of Justinian's army, now master of
Sicily--brought to Constantinople the unlikeliest person of all, the new pope, Agapitus I. He arrived on February 2, 536,
and was given a stupendous reception by the imperial court. At the thought of the other guest lodged with the emperor, the
Catholics recalled the story of St. Peter and Simon Magus.[18]
The pope had come on a political errand, to plead for the Gothic king. But he had first to settle the problem of his own
relations with Anthimos--whom he must meet at every turn, at the court no doubt, and above all at the sacred liturgies. It
was a weak point in the patriarch's position that he had previously been bishop of Trebizond, in an age when translations
were most stringently forbidden. The pope opened with this objection, and when the emperor overruled it, he asked whether
Anthimos admitted the two natures in the incarnate Son. Anthimos saw the game was up. His only reply was to cast off his patriarchal
robes and disappear. He was an extremely pious ascetic, still the monk through and through, happy to be back in his cell,
and his "cell" the empress provided for him--in the upper stories of the vast palace; and he occupied it peacefully for the
next twelve years or so, when he died.
At a lower level, the election of his successor went forward, whom the pope, assured this was truly a Catholic, consecrated
on March 13.
The Catholics, heartened by this great demonstration of power, petitioned that all this world of important Monophysites
should now disappear. The pope was already negotiating this with the emperor when, April 22, he suddenly died. But the council
he had asked for was held, and all the excommunications and expulsions of the leading Monophysites were renewed and carried
out. It was the beginning of a general purge throughout the empire, and the beginning of a new chapter in Justinian's religious
policy, of a change that lasted for seven years or so.
The defeated empress turned to explore the chances offered by the vacancy of the papal see. From Rome the late pope had
brought with him an elderly official of the Curia, Vigilius, who once already had all but been pope-- had been appointed pope,
in fact, five years before by the reigning pope, Boniface II; a strange innovation which public opinion caused the innovator
to renounce very speedily. It is Vigilius--who, very soon, will really be pope--who is the pope of the fifth General Council.
Here is the leading actor in the incredible, stormy scenes of the year 553.
At this moment Vigilius is the confidant of the empress, and she is promising him the papacy, on condition that once elected
he will ... what? The stories, and the guesses, of the details of this intrigue are as difficult to summarize as they are
to reconcile one with another. But in some way Theodora thought she had bought Vigilius, and he ultimately became pope through
her influence--this seems certain.
His present task was to go with all speed to Rome. When he arrived, however, it was to find the election over. The new
pope, Silverius, had been chosen, June 1 (or 8).
In Italy the armies of Justinian slowly made their way north from the toe of the peninsula. They were besieging Naples
while Silverius was being elected pope, and next it was the turn of Rome. On December 10, 536, the ancient capital was once
more really in the power of the Roman emperor, after eighty years' subjection to "Barbarians." But the Goths rid themselves
of their incompetent king, and the imperialists soon found themselves, in turn, defending Rome. And it was now that Vigilius
acted, Theodora's other instrument being the great commander of the armies, Belisarius. What it was that Silverius, supposedly,
refused to do for the empress, though warned of the retribution this would bring, we know not. The pope was summoned to the
palace of Belisarius, accused of intrigues to deliver the city to the Goths, declared to be deposed, stripped of his insignia
and, clad in a monk's dress, hurried off to Greece. A few days later, March 29, 537, Vigilius was elected in place of the
man who, it was announced, had abdicated in order to become a monk.
Silverius found a protector in his exile, the bishop of Patara,[19] who made a most indignant protest to Justinian. Whereupon
Silverius was taken back to Italy and an enquiry there ordered--despite the protestations of the empress, and the endeavours
of yet another cleric of the Roman Curia, a friend of Vigilius, the deacon Pelagius. His, too, will be a curiously ambiguous
role in the events of 553; and, succeeding Vigilius as pope, he will have to face the storm which his predecessor's tergiversations
had raised. Meanwhile the enquiry went against Silverius--thanks to the machinations of the new pope; and, despite the commands
of Justinian that he should be allowed to live, as a bishop, in some other city than Rome, Silverius was hurried off to the
tiny island of Palmaria,[20] and there perished miserably, of starvation, some months later.[21]
Pelagius acted in Constantinople as the pope's permanent legate at the court, apocrisiarius was the title. He was an extremely
able personage, an experienced diplomatist, and well skilled in theology. In the next few years he was, perhaps, Justinian's
chief advisor in the difficult business of keeping the peace in these eastern churches.
But he had a rival, an eastern monk, Theodore Askidas, whom the empress had procured in 536 to be bishop of one of the
greatest sees in the church, Caesarea in Cappadocia, once the see of St. Basil. Theodore belonged to Palestine, really. What
had brought him to the court was an appeal arising out of clamour caused among the monks by a revival of interest in the often
condemned theories of Origen, belief in the transmigration of souls for example, and the final return of all things to the
Creator. Askidas had been a leading Origenist, and from the court, which continued to be his residence, he lent his new prestige,
secretly, to his erstwhile associates.
Next when, in 540 or so, matters wholly unconnected with this dispute took Pelagius to the Holy Land, as commissioner for
the pope, the Roman legate could not be indifferent to these new noisy troubles that were the scandal of the day in Jerusalem
and elsewhere. He returned to Constantinople the natural ally of the anti-Origenists, and induced the emperor (in 543) to
put forth as an edict what was, in fact, a tract on the errors of Origen. All bishops were required to sign their adherence
to this, and it was sent to Rome for the approval of the pope. There was no resistance anywhere among the bishops--were any
but a handful of them, at any time, adepts of this semi-pantheism?
Among the adepts, in 543, was Askidas of course, but he signed. And to be revenged on Pelagius he revived the idea of a
condemnation of the Three Chapters, the three reputations whose rehabilitation in 451 had been for so long a striking witness
in the East to the Roman primacy. It was Rome again, in Pelagius, that had brought down Origen. To bring down Rome's prestige
in the East, through the condemnation of the Three Chapters, would be an appropriate riposte. Does this sound too childishly
fanciful? It was apparently thus that the mind of Askidas worked. And he won Justinian round to the plan--most probably because,
of all moves to reconcile the Monophysites, this public condemnation of leading "Antiocheans" seemed the one most likely to
succeed. And the move was heavily backed by a more powerful counsellor than Askidas, the empress. Also Pelagius had, by this
time, been recalled to Rome, and the deacon Stephen sent in his place. The new edict appeared in 544.[22]
The trouble began when, as with the edict against Origen, this condemnation was sent for signature to the patriarchs and
the pope. The legate Stephen immediately refused to sign and, impressed by this, the patriarch of Constantinople hesitated.
When, finally, he signed, the legate broke off relations with him. At Antioch, also, the patriarch at first refused but then
yielded to threats. It was the same story at Jerusalem and at Alexandria. Though all signed they did so against their judgment
and, even so, only conditionally. The officials who brought the edict explained that, by the emperor's orders, the pope was
going to be consulted. At Constantinople the patriarch, as he signed, reserved his right to withdraw his signature should
the pope refuse to sign. None of these bishops was willing to seem to reverse Chalcedon and St. Leo. In view of the coming
debacle in the eastern episcopate this initial attitude is of high importance.
Meanwhile it was Vigilius who was cast for the spectacular part. All these signatures were provisional. They would not
have any value until Vigilius had signed.
Vigilius it seems, was not a popular figure in Rome. The stories current about him might be guessed even if, in all their
improbability, they had not come down to us. Some of them cast doubts on his faith. He was said to be leagued with the Monophysite
chiefs, for example. But Vigilius by no means gave in to the request that he sign the emperor's edict. It was the expressed
belief of Pelagius, now in Rome as his chief advisor, that the aim of those who had inspired the condemnation was simply to
destroy the dogmatic effect of Chalcedon.
The pope's delays provoked the emperor to a singular act of violence. As Vigilius was celebrating the feast of St. Cecilia,
November 22, 545, in the church that is her shrine, he was kidnapped, hurried the few yards down to the Tiber and a waiting
ship, thence to Ostia and the open sea, and so to Sicily. As the ship made its way down the river the crowds who lined the
banks called out, some of them, insulting remarks, and others were encouragingly indignant; and others shouted, "Don't condemn
the Three Chapters." What none realised, of course, was that what they were witnessing was the beginning of a ten years' captivity.
Vigilius never saw Rome again.
The pope remained in Sicily until the end of the year 546. Then new orders came, and he was once more embarked, his destination
Constantinople, where he arrived January 25, 547.
Once again, as in 535, there was a pompous ceremonial, and vast external deference, under cover of which there began a
theological siege of the pope. He steadfastly refused to lend his authority to a dogmatic pronouncement put out by the state,
and he broke off relations with the patriarch who refused to withdraw his support. Then, after months of harassing discussions
to prove that the Three could be condemned and Chalcedon not involved, Vigilius pledged himself, in a secret writing given
personally to Justinian and to Theodora, to condemn the Three Chapters, June 29, 547. It was his first defeat, and almost
the only one in the six years of continuous warfare that now began.
Nine months after this promise, the pope sent his judgment to the emperor; it is known as the Iudicatum (April 11, 548).
The text has only survived in fragments, quoted in the ensuing controversies, but it was a condemnation so written as to make
clear that it in no way involved Chalcedon. It suited the emperor, seemingly, and all the professional clerics who surrounded
him. But the whole of the West, all the Latins, spontaneously rose in rebellion as the news reached them. That the Latins
were fairly solid against the plan to condemn the Three, Vigilius had already learned during his stay in Sicily. Scarcely
any Latin bishop had signed the emperor's edict. But the Iudicatum, the pope had expected--had taken for granted?-- would
win them round. This first revolt of the Latins against Rome was a fearful surprise, and it did not die down for nearly fifty
years. And so from Illyricum, Dalmatia, Italy, and Gaul came news of councils and protestations, but nowhere more violent
news than from Africa, where a council at Carthage excommunicated the pope. And at Constantinople his own curial staff, so
to call it, boycotted him.
The letters that came in, the controversial exchanges, showed that many of the indignant prelates in these distant lands
did not really know what the famous dispute was about--they were in no condition to take sides, far too ill-informed to see
that it was possible to condemn certain things in the three Syrian bishops and yet cast not a shadow of blame on the great
council of 451. And the idea developed, at Constantinople, of a General Council where the whole thing could be made clear,
and a universal condemnation be achieved more readily than by sending officers all round the Roman world, to each individual
bishop. So the emperor consented that the pope withdraw the Iudicatum, the council plan was accepted by both, and both agreed
to keep silent on the whole question until the council met. And Justinian wrung from the pope a most solemn oath that he would
really condemn the Three Chapters and do nothing that would work against their condemnation; all this in August 550.
The preparations for the council now began, on the part of the emperor. One important item was to see that only well-trusted
bishops should be sent from such places as Africa. From this desire to be certain before the council met how the verdict would
go came the idea of another imperial edict making the theological problem clear. All would be thus instructed by the time
the council met, and at the council could accept the edict or, as the emperor entitled it, the Confession or Declaration of
Faith.
To this plan the pope, immediately, gave a firm refusal, and spoke of excommunicating all who set their signature to the
Declaration. Then, as the air grew sultry with threats he took sanctuary in the neighbouring church of St. Peter. On August
14 the emperor ordered his arrest, and the church became a battleground, soldiers fighting their way through the mob that
fought to protect the pope, who clung to the altar while soldiers took him by the feet. Vigilius was an old man, by this time,
but tall, well built, and forceful. He resisted manfully, and finally, as the columns of the altar fell in under the strain
of the conflict the crowd began to prevail, and the soldiers fled.
The pope returned to his home in the palace of Placidia which, now filled with spies, became a close prison. After some
months, in the week before Christmas, he made his escape, clambering over the roofs of neighbouring buildings, and so to the
shore where a waiting boat conveyed him to Chalcedon, and in the very church where the council had sat, just one hundred years
before, he found a refuge (December 551).
In the basilica at Chalcedon the pope remained for the next eight months-- to the fury of Justinian, as well aware as any
ruler of the prodigious "loss of face" all this entailed, and of serious possibilities that any day the mob might rise against
him with "religion" as its war cry. The emperor began negotiations.
It was now six years since Justinian had kidnapped the pope, and how much nearer was he to his goal?
The pope busied himself with an encyclical letter in which he related the full story of Justinian's outrages and deceptions.
To the deputation of high officials who came across the Bosporus from the emperor, Vigilius, ignoring the new wonderful promises,
made only one request, the restoration to the church of the freedom of action it had once enjoyed; and he bade them beg Justinian
to avoid the company of the excommunicated. This brought threats of new violence from the tyrant, and the pope replied with
a copy of his encyclical. The letter, February 5, 552, ended with a profession of faith, as explicit as a pope's should be.
It declared his fidelity to Chalcedon and made no mention of the Three Chapters.
The emperor now arrested all those who had joined the pope at Chalcedon. Some of the Italian bishops he put to the torture;
Pelagius (the pope's chief intelligence officer, as ever) he threw into prison. Vigilius retorted with strength, by publishing
the deposition of Theodore Askidas from his see, and an excommunication of all who had signed the emperor's Declaration of
Faith, the patriarch of Constantinople notably. And he contrived to have these sentences posted in various places of the capital.
It was a bold act that, once more, rallied the city to his side. Justinian bade his bishops make their submission, and in
the basilica at Chalcedon they did so, very fully if something less than sincerely. And the pope returned to Constantinople
(August 552).
III. THE GENERAL COUNCIL OF 553
And now the summonses to the General Council were sent out. It was to meet not, as Vigilius had desired, in Italy or Sicily,
but at Constantinople, and while the bishops assembled, indeed when most of them had already arrived, the conflict with the
emperor took up again.
As the months had gone by and almost no bishops from the Latin sees were arriving, the pope's anxieties grew. He was willing
to condemn the Three Chapters, but in his own way--the way of the Iudicatum--in a way that would not lose the Latin west to
the unity of the church. And so, while his Latin advisors were strong that he should refuse utterly to have any part in the
council, the pope wavered, now of their opinion, now hoping against hope, through the council to keep the East and not lose
the West. At last he announced that the council should go its own way. He would not be present, nor be represented, but would
let the council know his decision. Justinian replied that his decision would be ignored. And with affairs in this state the
council, 145 bishops in all, held its first meeting, May 5, 553.
Almost all these bishops were Greeks. There were none from Gaul or Spain. The dozen or so Italians who had been with the
pope these last eight years were there, but no bishops from the Latin provinces of Dalmatia and Illyricum. The only bishops
from Africa--six--were a chosen few already engaged to follow the emperor's lead.
The council lasted four weeks (May 5-June 2). There were eight sessions. On the first day the emperor sent a long message
about the historic role of the emperor as defender of the faith, noting how the decisions of the great councils had been enrolled
among the laws of the state. His criticised Declaration of Faith had been simply an imperial consultation of the bishops of
the empire, its purpose to root out what remained of the heresy of Nestorius. Hence his questions about the Three Chapters.
The bishops had unanimously condemned these, but since there were yet some who defended them, he had thought it good that
the bishops should be given the chance to express their views as a council. As to "the most religious pope of Old Rome," he
too had been consulted, and had condemned the Three Chapters. His definitive judgment, he had told the emperor, would shortly
be forthcoming.
The council voted that the pope be asked to preside, and on May 6 an imposing deputation waited on him with the invitation,
the three patriarchs of Constantinople, Antioch, and Jerusalem leading. The pope pleaded his present sickness--he was now
a chronic sufferer from stone--as a reason for not deciding. The deputation came a second time, on May 7, with one of Justinian's
chief officers of state in attendance. Vigilius now boldly said he would not appear at the council until more Italian bishops
had been brought over. The next day the report of this was made to the council--its second session. The third session was
taken up with the council's formal declaration of its orthodoxy--it held to the faith of the previous "four holy councils"
of the Fathers.
The next three sessions, May 12, 17, 19, dealt with the case against the Three Chapters, the reading out loud of the writings
held against the three bishops, in full or in extracts. There were seventy-one passages from Theodore of Mopsuestia, for example,
and also the creed he had drawn up, which already had been condemned at Ephesus in 431. About the letter from Ibas, bishop
of Edessa, to the Persian bishop Maris, there were differences of opinion. The point was raised that at Chalcedon this particular
document had been definitely declared to be orthodox. It was Askidas who steered the majority around this formidable obstacle,
and the day ended with the condemnation voted.
Meanwhile, May 14, the pope had made his own judgment about the Three Chapters. It had been sent to the emperor, who had
refused to receive it. What he thought of the judgment his action twelve days later, at the seventh session of the council,
was to show. In the interval the text of the document, known to us as The Constitutum of Pope Vigilius about the Three Chapters,[23]
was no doubt known all over the town. It is a very lengthy piece, a good hundred pages such as this, and "one of the finest
works, as literature, that have survived from the fifth century."[24] Upon the emperor's careful arrangements by which the
council was to be all and the pope a nullity, it fell like an unexpected bomb. We shall see the unheard of violence it drove
Justinian to enact. Meanwhile, here is the pope's decision.[25]
The message falls into three sections. In the first he gives the profession of faith made to him by Theodore Askidas and
by the patriarch of Constantinople, Mennas, at Chalcedon in 552, and also the profession lately made by Mennas' successor,
Eutychius, January 6, 553. There follows a resume of what has happened down to the council's first meeting. The main part
of the Constitutum is the pope's examination of the three accused bishops--for that was, in fact, their status at this moment.
As to Theodore of Mopsuestia, the pope had before him the list of seventy- one extracts from his writings that was to be
put before the council, a list supplied by the emperor. He accepted that twelve of these were certainly heretical and added
a thirteenth--against all these he placed the mark anathema. But, pointing out that Theodore's case had never been before
the councils of Ephesus and Chalcedon, and that it is not the Church's custom to condemn the dead, the pope, while condemning
the errors in the writings, refused to cast a stigma on their author. And he forbade that others should stigmatise him.
As to Theodoret, the pope refused to condemn him too. He had been received as orthodox at Chalcedon, and as a test he had
there been asked to anathematize Nestorius, and had solemnly done so before the whole assembly. As to the insulting language
about St. Cyril with which he was charged, in part he had denied that he was the author of these words, and St. Cyril had
never raised this against him. This had satisfied St. Cyril and the council, why should men now be demanding more than they?
Wherefore the pope strictly forbade anyone to condemn now any work or writing of Theodoret's, or any writing as though it
were his. At the same time, he solemnly condemned all propositions contrary to the faith whether found in Theodoret's writings
or in any other author. To strengthen this, the pope quoted four Nestorian theses, and to each fixed the note anathema.
As to Ibas of Edessa, the Constitutum recalls, first of all, that at Chalcedon the papal legates said, "The letter of Ibas
having been read we have decided that he is orthodox," that the then patriarch of Constantinople agreed that he was clear
of heresy, and the patriarch of Antioch too. Other bishops there had spoken in a like sense. None, at Chalcedon, rose to denounce
him as a heretic. Not that the bishops had approved of the insults he had lavished on St. Cyril, but when Ibas accepted to
be in communion with Cyril, recognised solemnly, that is to say, that Cyril's teaching was the orthodox faith, he, as it were,
recalled and withdrew these insults [e.g., that St. Cyril was an Apollinarian heretic]. With the warning to the council of
553, that to go back on the judgment of Chalcedon was dangerous, the pope came to his conclusion: the verdict that Ibas was
orthodox should stand, and stand so far as the letter to Maris was concerned, a verdict, Vigilius said, based in part on this
letter exactly and rightly interpreted.
Wherefore, summing up his decision, the pope forbade any cleric to make any change whatever in what Chalcedon had decided,
and--no matter what the rank of the cleric--to write or teach anything against what this Constitutum laid down, or, in the
face of this decisive sentence, ever again to raise the question of the Three Chapters. The document was signed by the pope,
and countersigned by the sixteen bishops with him and six clerics of his household, one of them Pelagius. It was probably
he who was the actual author of the piece.
The emperor showed his hand at the next, seventh, session of the council, May 26. His representative, the quaestor of the
imperial palace, appeared with the dossier of all the pope's iniquities, and to the council he read out document after document.
There were letters of Vigilius going back four years, when he defended his earlier judgment against the Three Chapters, the
so-called Iudicatum, and there were the two written promises given to Justinian and Theodora that he would condemn the Three
Chapters; and there was the signed statement made on oath, August 15, 550, to the same effect, the pope pledging that he would
not act against the emperor's wishes, and would do nothing to defend the incriminated three. Vigilius, then, was a perjured
liar, and his name should be struck off the diptychs. Not, the emperor craftily argued, that any wickedness of a particular
pope could blemish the Apostolic See. This was not a breach with Rome, but only with Vigilius. For seven years he had condemned
the Three Chapters, and now he had repudiated obligations of the most solemn kind. In defending the Three Chapters he shares
in the wickedness of Nestorius, and has put himself out of the Church.
The council listened, and it did as the emperor intended, declaring the pope's name should be put out of the sacred liturgy;
but not decreeing a sentence of excommunication, and using Justinian's distinction between the sedes and sedens--the chair
of Peter and the one now sitting in it. "The council, sitting so far despite the pope, was now in session against him. It
was in full schism."[26] One week later to the day the council held its final session. The task before it was to put in form
its condemnation of Theodore of Mopsuestia and his writings, of Theodoret's writings against St. Cyril, and of the letter
of Ibas of Edessa. The decree took the form, first, of a resume of the council's proceedings, and then, fourteen statements
calling down a curse on whoever did not accept the council's judgment regarding various heresies and their authors, and supporters.
These fourteen sentences reflect, very clearly, the mind of a disciple of Leontius--they are evidently the work of an author
very concerned to show that the decisions of Ephesus and Chalcedon are not contradictory. In the first, the doctrine of the
Trinity is set out, in the second the two births (in eternity and in time) of the Divine Word. The third declares the identity
of the Word and Jesus Christ, one person, God and man at the same time; it was the one same person who both wrought the miracles
and suffered death. In these last two sentences the student will recognise echoes of the theological conflict of the previous
hundred and fifty years, the flames of which, of course, were still flickering brightly in 553.
Theodore of Mopsuestia makes a first appearance in sentence 4 of the series, described as a maniac for his particular theory
of the manner of union between the divine and human in the Incarnate Word, and condemned along with the Nestorians, Apollinarians,
and the followers of Eutyches. He is again the subject of a condemnation in sentence 5, and Nestorius with him, for saying
that the union is but a moral union that unites two persons. Supporters of these theories now calumniate the Council of Chalcedon
when they interpret its decree of the unity of person to mean just this, and this travesty is met by another condemnation.
This sentence 5, in part, is repeating the sentence of Ephesus on the Nestorians, and 6 also repeats the same council when
it condemns those who say that the ever- virgin Mary is not truly Theotokos, but only the mother of a human being. And once
again the later heretics are condemned who falsely say that this heresy was allowed by Chalcedon--this, the heresy "invented
by the detestable Theodore." Sentence 7 condemns those who, when they distinguish the two natures, do so in such a way as
to convey that these are two persons--again the repetition of the old condemnation of Nestorius.
With the eighth sentence the council comes to grips with the Monophysites, for it quotes verbatim the much controverted
formula of St. Cyril,[27] and determines the, Catholic, sense in which he used it, a sense that fits with Ephesus as well
as with Chalcedon. This formula, it is now said, should not be understood to mean that the unity by which Christ is one being
is the effect of a fusion between the divine and the human natures; the two natures remain two natures in the union, and the
union is a union in a single person. Those who thus fuse the natures are as erroneous as those who speak of them as separate
beings. Both are condemned by this sentence 8. It is the turn of the Nestorians again in 9--their practical direction is condemned,
that Christ should be worshipped with a double worship simultaneously directed, first to the divine in Him, and then to the
human. To balance this the single adoration of Christ in the sense of Eutyches-- i.e., as though before the adorer there were
present God alone and this being, neither man nor God, who cannot be adored--is also condemned. The doctrinal decision of
Pope John II, twenty years ago now, is repeated in sentence 10; it is correct to say, "One of the Trinity suffered in the
flesh for us." The eleventh sentence strings together a list of heresiarchs from Origen to Eutyches, and with all others condemned
already "by the four holy synods"[28] condemns them and their supporters anew. We then come to the explicit condemnation of
the Three Chapters, sentences 12,13, 14.
"If anyone defends the wicked Theodore of Mopsuestia," so the twelfth sentence is framed, "who said ... and also ... and
what is worse still ... If therefore anyone defends the aforesaid wicked Theodore and his wicked writings ... and does not
anathematize him and his wicked writings ... let him be anathema." The errors of his teaching--unmistakable Nestorianism--as
set out run to a good page of print.
The judgment on Theodoret is somewhat different. Nowhere is he himself anathematized, or the good Catholic ordered to anathematize
him. It is "the writings of Theodoret, against the true belief, against the council of Ephesus, and against St. Cyril and
his twelve chapters" that are the target; and "all that he wrote on behalf of the wicked Theodore and Nestorius and of others
who smacked of the same [ideas] as these two aforesaid--writings defending them and their wickedness and, to this end, stigmatising
as wicked men those ecclesiastical teachers who professed" the true doctrine about the oneness of God the Word. All, therefore,
who do not anathematize these writings and those who savour of the like ideas, "and especially all those who have written
against the true faith, or against St. Cyril and his twelve chapters, and who remained to the end in this wickedness," let
them be anathema.
The condemnation, in the case of the third of these bishops, is even more circumscribed. "If anyone defend the letter which
Ibas is said to have written to the Persian heretic Maris ..." The letter is said to deny that God the Word took flesh of
the ever-virgin Mary and was born of her, so that God the Word was one thing, the man the other. It says also that St. Cyril,
who set out the true Christian belief, was a heretic of the sect of the wicked Apollinaris, and it blames the first (sic!)
council of Ephesus because it condemned Nestorius without a hearing. The letter also is said to stigmatise St. Cyril's twelve
chapters against Nestorius as "impious and contrary to the true belief," and to defend Theodore and Nestorius and all their
wicked doctrines and writings. So then, all who defend this wicked letter, and do not anathematize it and those who defend
it, who say it is right, or part of it, those who defend either the letter or the wickedness it contains in the name of the
Council of Chalcedon) and persist to the end in this, let them be anathema.
Nowhere is it said that Theodoret or Ibas is a heretic, nor are those who have defended "the aforesaid wicked Three Chapters"
denounced or threatened as heretics. To this final act of the council, June 2, 553, 164 bishops set their names.
The council over, Justinian ordered that every bishop in the empire should endorse the condemnations. In the East there
were no difficulties about this, but the Latins everywhere resisted. At Constantinople the pope's chief counsellors were arrested;
some were exiled to the depths of the Egyptian deserts, Pelagius (the real force behind Vigilius) was once more thrown into
prison. Was the pope, too, imprisoned? It is not certainly known. But whether in prison (in the technical sense) or not, he
was the emperor's captive still. What it was that, as the months went by, brought him to change his mind no one knows. But
by December 8, 553, the pope had accepted the council's condemnation of the Three Chapters.[29] And we possess a second document,
dated February 23, 554, in which the pope argues at great length that the condemnation is justified, and that it in no way
conflicts with Chalcedon. This document, generally known as the second Constitutum of Vigilius,[30] was possibly meant to
persuade the Latin bishops.
The pope was now allowed to make his journey homeward--it was all but ten years since he had been carried off--but when
he reached Sicily he fell ill, and at Syracuse he died, June 7, 555.
Chalcedon was not in conflict with Ephesus. The fourteen "chapters" of the council just dissolved seem to have established
this clearly, with, if anything, a little more favour for the Alexandrian way of speech than that of Antioch. But had one
alleged conflict been extinguished only for another to spring from its ashes? Was the council just dissolved at cross purposes
with Chalcedon? The West seems to have thought so, and the action of those who for years deprecated the condemnation of the
Three Chapters had been compromised by this fear that Chalcedon must, thereby, be compromised inevitably. And certainly Askidas
and his party--the crypto-Monophysites of the court--hoped that Chalcedon must, thereby, be so compromised. But this was never
any part of the emperor's plan. How could he have intended such a wholesale surrender? Nor, among the great majority of the
eastern bishops-- better equipped to deal with these matters than their Latin brethren--did the name of Chalcedon suffer.
As to the Monophysites, they already, and for a hundred years, had the worst possible opinion of Chalcedon. Moreover--as we,
with what is called "hindsight," can so easily see--the Monophysites had by now washed their hands of the Catholic Church,
and what its councils decided would no longer have any interest for them.
The subsidiary questions apart--for example, should councils condemn men dead long ago, who died in the peace of the Church?--what
had the bishops of 553 done, in their list of reprobations, except condemn yet once again the Nestorian theology (as Vigilius
had condemned it in his own message to the council) whether this heresy showed--as it certainly did--in the writings of Theodore,
or of Theodoret and Ibas? The last two had, of course, corrected themselves long before they died. Even their controversial
language about St. Cyril had been, as it were, apologised for and the amende accepted, in the reconciliation of 433. This
did not, of course, alter the fact that they had, once upon a time, written erroneously. But the condemnations of 553, in
so far as it touched these writings, was little better than spite. And the spirit that so moved the bishops in 553 was, obviously,
not that of the bishops who at Chalcedon had welcomed Theodoret and Ibas back to their sees. Other conflict than this, between
the councils of 553 and 451, there was none.[31]
Vigilius and Justinian had had a grave difference about an important policy. The emperor's tyranny, and the shiftiness
of the pope had no doubt aggravated it--but nowhere had they differed as to what had been defined about the Incarnation by
the councils of Ephesus and Chalcedon, or denied that what these councils had defined was the divinely given truth of the
matter. NOTES
1. "... the great Monophysites who claimed that their doctrine was his
[Cyril's] were Monophysite in language, rather than doctrine." Tixeront,
Histoire des Dogmes, 111, 75 (72) (the figures in parentheses refer to the
English translation). It has to be added that there were soon divisions in
the party, and many of these were certainly heretical in their theories
about the Incarnation.
2. Tixeront, Histoire des Dogmes, III, 104 (99).
3. Of the saint's classic formula that "Christ is the unique incarnated
nature of God the Word," the last named theologian can say, "It is true ...
that if one looked only to the words, Cyril is a Monophysite." Ibid., 73 (
70 ) .
4. Batiffol, Le Siege Apostolique (1924), 543.
5. Called, from his elegant figure and dainty carriage, Ailouros, the Cat.
6. Kirch, Enchiridion, prints extracts from this document, 542-46.
7. January 475-September 476.
8. June 482.
9. I.e., Act of Union. Kirch, as before, prints extracts, 546-48.
10. Hierapolis, in Greek; a town from miles east of Cyrrhus, 100 miles from
Antioch.
11. It is printed in Denzinger, nos. 171-72.
12. The formula quotes Matt. 16:18, "Thou art Peter and upon this rock I
will build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it."
13. Id est non consentientes Sedi Apostolicae.
14. Following this there was a government inquiry, and the bishop was
deposed.
15. For example, Leontius of Byzantium (485-543), called the first of the
Scholastics, because one of the first to give his books a rigorous
demonstrative pattern; one of the first to use, in the exposition of
theology, Aristotle's logic; he had a deep knowledge of the theologians who
had preceded him, was the principal antagonist of the great Monophysite,
Severus, and it was his life's work to show the perfect harmony of the
definitions of Ephesus and Chalcedon.
16. The Unsleeping, so called because in their church the service of prayer
went on ceaselessly, day and night, the community being divided into relays
for this purpose.
17. Denzinger, nos. 201-2, prints the relevant part of the letter. It is
the twelfth of the propositions of St. Cyril that is quoted.
18. "Naturellement les Monophysites les voyaient tout autrement." Duchesne
L'Eglise au VIme Siecle (1925), p. 95.
19. The town in Lycia (Asia Minor) to which the pope had been taken. The
nearest approximation to its position on a modern map is the coast of Asia
Minor (in modern Turkey) due east of the southern tip of the island of
Rhodes.
20. It lies in the Mediterranean, some 7o miles west of Naples. It is now
called Palmarola.
21. November 11, 537. The church keeps his feast as a martyr-pope, June 20.
22. The date is an approximation. The text of the edict no one knows, it
has long since disappeared, and no writer of the time quotes it in any work
that has survived.
23 The text is in Mansi, IX, cols. 61-106; also in Migne, Patrologia
Latina, vol. 69, cols. 67-114.
24. Tixeront, as cited, III, 143 (137).
25. This resume follows very closely the account in Tixeront, III, 143-45
(137-39).
26. Tixeront, III, 146 (140).
27. There is [but] one incarnate nature of God the Word.
28. Nicaea, Constantinople 381, Ephesus, Chalcedon.
29. The letter to Eutychius, patriarch of Constantinople. It is printed in
Mansi, IX, cols. 414-19, and Migne, P.L., vol. 69, cols. 122-28.
30. "The Constitutum of Pope Vigilius for the Condemnation of the Three
Chapters"; such is its title. The text is in Mansi, IX, cols. 457-88, and
Migne, P.L., vol. 69, 143-78.
31. I do not forget the difficulty that, at Chalcedon, the papal legates
explicitly said the letter of Ibas was orthodox.
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