some personal offences were skilfully detected: his rash and illegal excommunication of the pope, and his contumacious refusal (while he was detained a prisoner) to attend the summons of the synod. Witnesses were introduced to prove the special facts of his pride, avarice, and cruelty; and the fathers heard with abhorrence that the alms of the church were lavished on the female dancers, that his palace, and even his bath, was open to the prostitutes of Alexandria, and that the infamous Pansophia, or Irene, was publicly entertained as the concubine of the patriarch."[1]
Faith of Chalcedon For these scandalous offences Dioscorus was de])osed by the synod and banished by the emperor; but the purity of his faith was declared in the presence, and with the tacit approbation, of the fathers. Their prudence supposed rather than pronounced the heresy of Eutyches, who was never summoned before their tribunal; and they sat silent and abashed, when a bold Monophysite, casting at their feet a volume of Cyril, challenged them to anathematize in his person the doctrine of a saint. If we fairly peruse the acts of Chalcedon as they are recorded by the orthodox party,[2] we shall find that a great majority of the bishops embraced the simple unity of Christ; and the ambiguous concession, that he was formed of or from two natures, might imply either their previous existence, or their subsequent confusion, or some dangerous interval between the conception of the man and the assumption of the God. The Roman theology, more positive and precise, adopted the
- ↑ (
Greek characters) (Concil. tom. iv. p. 1276). A specimen of the wit and malice of the people is pre-
served in the Greek Anthology (J. ii. c. 5, p. 188, edit. W'echel.), although the application was unknown to the editor Brodæaus. The nameless epigrammatist raises a tolerable pun, by confounding the episcopal salutation of "Peace be to all!" with the genuine or corrupted name of the bishop's concubine:
(Greek characters)
(Greek characters)I am ignorant whether the patriarch, who seems to have been a jealous lover, is the Cimon of a preceding epigram, whose ttcos co-tvkos was viewed with envy and wonder by Priapus himself.
- ↑ Those who reverence the infallibility of synods may try to ascertain their sense. The leading bishops were attended by partial or careless scribes, who dispersed their copies round the world. Our Greek Mss. are sullied with the false and proscribed reading of (Greek characters) (Concil. tom. iii. p. T460); the authentic translation of Pope Leo I. does not seem to have been executed; and the old Latin versions materially differ from the present Vulgate, which was revised (A.D. 550) by Rusticus, a Roman priest, from the best Mss. of the (Greek characters) at Constantinople (Ducange, C. P. Christiana, 1. iv. p. 151), a famous monastery of Latins, Greeks, and Syrians. See Concil. tom. iv. p. 1959-2049, and Pagi, Critica, tom. ii. p. 326, &c.
