as to relegate the monomotapa to the realm of myth. But such scepticism is unjustifiable in view of the perfect unanimity with which, in spite of variations of detail, all Portuguese writers from the beginning of the 16th century onwards reiterated the assertion that there was a powerful rule known far and wide by that title.
The word “monomotapa” is of Bantu origin and has been variously interpreted. Father J. Torrend, Comparative Grammar of the South African Bantu Languages (p. 101) renders it “Lord of the water-elephants,” and remarks that the hippopotamus is even to the present day a sacred animal among the Karanga. The earliest recorded bearer of the name is Mokomba Menamotapam, mentioned by Diogo de Alcacova in 1506 as father of the Kwesarimgo Menamotapam who ruled at that date over Vealanga, a large kingdom that included Sofala. His capital was called Zumubany, an obvious corruption of the term “Zimbabwe,” regularly used to describe the residence of any important chief. The title is still found during the 18th century, but had probably become extinct by the beginning of the 19th if not earlier. Possibly its use was not confined to a single tribal section, occurring as it does in conjunction with the distinct dynastic names of Mokomba and Mambo, but the Karanga is the only tribe to which the Portuguese chroniclers attribute it. The latter, indeed, not only refer to the territory and the people of the monomotapa as “Mocaranga” (i.e. of the Karanga tribe), but explicitly assert that the “emperor” himself was a “Mocaranga.” Consequently, he must have been a negro, and the Dominican who records the baptism of Dom Filippe by a friar of the order in the middle of the 17th century actually states that this “powerful king” was a black man (“com as carnes pretas”). This alone would be sufficient to controvert the baseless assumption that there existed in southern Rhodesia a ruling caste of different racial origin from the general Bantu population. The events following on the murder of the Jesuit father Dom Gonçalo da Silveira (cf. Lusiads X. 93) sufficiently demonstrate that the monomotapa, though susceptible to the persuasion of foreigners, was an independent potentate in the 16th century. The state and ceremony of his court, the number of his wives, and the order and organization of his officials, are described by several of the chroniclers.
It is difficult to arrive at an estimate of the extent of territory over which this great negro chief exercised direct or indirect control. The most extravagant theory is naturally that which was expressed by the Portuguese advocates in connexion with the dispute as to the ownership of Delagoa Bay. The crown of Portugal based its case against England on the cession of territory contained in a well-known treaty with the monomotapa (1629), and stated that this monarch’s dominions then extended nearly to the Cape of Good Hope. A more moderate and usual view is given by Diogo de Couto, who in 1616 speaks of “a dominion over all Kaffraria from the Cabo das Correntes to the great river Zambezi.” Several 17th-century writers extend the “empire” to the north of the Zambezi, Bocarro giving it in all “a circumference of more than three hundred leagues.” It was “divided among petty kings and other lords with fewer vassals who are called inkosis or fumos.” According to these authors, however, including Dos Santos, the paramountcy of the monomotapa was impaired in the 17th century by a series of rebellions. His zimbabwe, wherever it may have been in earlier days, was now fixed near the Portuguese fort of Masapa, only a short distance south of the Zambezi. A Portuguese garrison was maintained in it, and the monarch himself from the year 1607 onwards was little more than a puppet who was generally baptized by the Dominicans with a Portuguese name.
The only authorities of value are the original Portuguese documents collected, translated and edited by G. McC. Theal under the title Records of South Eastern Africa (9 vols., London, 1898–1903). Reference may be made to A. Wilmot’s Monomotapa (London, 1896), which is, however, to a large extent superseded by Theal’s far richer collection of material. (D. R.-M.)
MONONGAHELA, a city of Washington county, Pennsylvania,
U.S.A., on the Monongahela river, 31 m. by rail S. of
Pittsburg. Pop. (1890), 4096; (1900), 5173 (711 foreign-born
and 345 negroes); (1910) 7598. It is served by the
Pennsylvania and the Pittsburg & Lake Erie railways,
and by electric railways to Pittsburg and Washington, Pa.
Monongahela is in a coal region, and the mining of coal is its
principal industry. It was laid out as a town in 1792 by Joseph
Parkinson, and named by him Williamsport; but it was commonly
known as Parkinson’s Ferry until 1833, when it was
incorporated as a borough. Four years later the present name
was adopted, and in 1873 Monongahela was chartered as a city.
It was here that the Whisky Insurrection convention met on
the 14th of August 1794.
MONOPHYSITES (Gr. μονοφυσῖται), the name given to those who hold the doctrine that Christ had but one (μόνος) composite
nature (φύσις), and especially to those who maintained this
position in the great controversies of the 5th and 6th centuries.
The synod of Chalcedon (q.v.) in 451, following the lines of
Pope Leo I.’s famous letter, endeavoured to steer a middle
course between the so-called Nestorian and Eutychian positions.
But the followers of Cyril of Alexandria, and with them those
of Eutyches, saw in the Chalcedon decree of two natures only
another form of the “Nestorian” duality of persons in Christ,
and rose everywhere in opposition. For a century they were
a menace not only to the peace of the Church but to that of
the empire.
The first stage of the controversy covers the seventy-five years between the council of Chalcedon and the accession of Justinian in 527. In Palestine the fanatical monks led by Theodosius captured Jerusalem and expelled the bishop, Juvenal. When he was restored, after an exile of twenty months, Theodosius fled to Sinai and continued his agitation among the monks, there. In Alexandria an insurrection broke out over the supersession of the patriarch Dioscurus by the orthodox Proterius, who was killed during the struggle. Timothy Aelurus was, chosen bishop, and a synod which he called was so powerful as to impress even the emperor Leo I. at Constantinople, who, however, deposed him as well as Peter Fullo, who at Antioch had usurped the see of the orthodox bishop Martyrius. The short reign of Basiliscus (474–476) favoured the Monophysites, but the restoration of the rightful emperor Zeno marked an attempt at conciliation. On the advice of Acacius, the energetic patriarch of Constantinople, Zeno issued the Henotikon edict (482), in which Nestorius and Eutyches were condemned, the twelve chapters of Cyril accepted, and the Chalcedon Definition ignored. This effort to shelve the dispute was quite in vain. Pope Felix III. saw the prestige of his see involved in this slighting of Chalcedon and his predecessor Leo’s epistle. He condemned and deposed Acacius, a proceeding which the latter regarded with contempt, but which involved a breach between the two sees that lasted after Acacius’s death (489), through the long and troubled reign of Anastasius, and was only healed by Justin I. in 519. The monophysite cause reached its crowning point in the East when Severus was made bishop of Antioch in 513. This man was the stormy petrel of the period. A law student who had been converted from paganism, he became a monophysite monk at Alexandria. Expelled from that city in 513, he went with his followers to stir up strife in Constantinople, and succeeded in bringing about the deposition of the orthodox bishop, Macedonius, and of Flavian, bishop, of Antioch. But Severus himself was deprived in 518: he went back to Alexandria, and became leader of the Phthartolatrai (see below), a subsection of the Monophysites.
Justin I. was only a tool in the hands of his nephew Justinian, who sided with the orthodox and brought about the reconciliation between Rome and Constantinople. In Jerusalem, Tyre, and other centres also, orthodoxy was re-established, In Egypt, however, monophysitism was as strong as ever, and soon at Constantinople the arrogance of Rome caused a reaction, led by Theodora, the wife of the new emperor Justinian (527–565). Justinian himself, with the aid of Leontius of Byzantium (c. 485–543), a monk with a decided turn for Aristotelian logic and metaphysics, had tried to reconcile the Cyrillian and
