The Greek and Eastern Churches/Part 1/Division 1/Chapter 7

by Walter Frederic Adeney

 

CHAPTER VII

THE MONOPHYSITE TROUBLES

 

(a) Evagrius; Nicephorus; Procopius; Theodore the Reader, fragments (to a.d. 518). Mansi, Sacrorum conciliorum … collectio, vii. collectio, vii.

(b) Dorner, The Person of Christ, Eng. Trans., Div. ii. i., 1861; Hefele, Hist. of Councils, Eng. Trans., vol. iii., 1883; vol. iv., 1895; Ottley, The Incarnation, part vii., 1896.

 

The sequel to the council of Chalcedon was more like the sequel to the council of Nicæa than the history consequent to the council of Constantinople. That second general council which condemned Arianism did really seem to be successful, for after it we hear much less of the heresy within the borders of the empire; but then, as we have observed, it was already breaking up in consequence of internal divisions. On the other hand, the fourth general council, like the venerated first council, was quite unable to suppress the heresies it was especially summoned to condemn. Nestorianism was only banished; in exile it spread and flourished among the Persian Christians, and farther east Eutychianism, slightly modified, went on within the empire under the new title of Monophysitism. By dropping the obnoxious name of its founder, who was sacrificed as a victim to the passion for orthodoxy, and adopting a descriptive title, it was better able to emphasise its central idea and at the same time spread its influence within the Church, although its adherents, being out of sympathy with the dominant party, stood aloof and gradually crystallised into a sect. There was some softening of the extreme views that had been put forth by the old monk Eutyches, a man of no breadth of mind or depth of insight. The Monophysites were more refined and metaphysical in their thinking. While they insisted on the oneness of our Lord's nature in opposition to the Chalcedonian dogma of the continuance of two natures in the one person, they were willing to admit that He came to be the incarnate Christ by the union, the fusing together, of two natures. Thus they would allow that He was "of two natures,"^[1] though they denied that He existed "in two natures"^[2] and while with Eutyches the human nature was so absorbed that it virtually vanished, according to the Monophysites Christ had a composite nature.^[3] Moreover, they admitted the continuance of the two sets of attributes—the human and the Divine—although only as qualities of one substance. The union of the natures, however, could not be justly compared to a mere amalgam for two reasons. In the first place, each nature underwent change, the human taking on Divine properties and the Divine taking on human characteristics. There was this difference, that change in the Divine nature was only " by grace," an effect of an act of will done for the sake of the redemption of the world, while full freedom remained to abstain from it. There was no kenosis, no actual selfemptying, but only a condescending to the forms and modes of a human life, while the Divine remained in essence unchanged. Then, in the second place, the Divine nature so completely dominated the human element that, except in the outward appearance of a man's form and an earthly life, this human element really counted for nothing. We might state it thus. The fractional existence of the human nature being a finite numerator with an infinite denominator, it was really equivalent to zero. If f stands for a finite and ∞ for infinity we might express the doctrine by the formula ${\tfrac {f}{\infty }}=0.$

When we endeavour to trace out the course of the dreary Monophysite controversy which circled round this position we do not see on the surface of it sufficient cause for all the heat it developed, all the dust it raised. Here was a fine point of theology, so difficult to determine that only an expert could state it correctly, and yet it divided cities into furious factions with howling mobs and fatal riots. It is not enough to lay down the cynical principle that the heat of a controversy varies directly with the smallness of the difference between the contending parties—although there are not wanting instances apparently confirming it—as in the quarrel between the "Old Lights" and the "New Lights" among the Presbyterians of Scotland. The long-drawn Monophysite controversy threatened the disintegration of the Church and endangered the peace of the empire; in fact it did actually effect the disintegration of the Church by breaking off huge fragments that have remained down to the present day in separation from the Greek communion, which arrogates to itself the title of orthodox. Surely there must be some sufficient cause for so obstinate a schism.

Among men earnest in their religious faith no doubt the charm of the Monophysite doctrine was found in the honour it appeared to give to Christ. This view was most vehemently maintained by the monks of the Egyptian deserts, men who were at once grossly ignorant and passionately in earnest, of the stuff that fanatics are made of, prototypes and in part ancestors of the modern dervishes. The immediate motive of the movement into which these half savage monks threw themselves with such fiery enthusiasm was antagonism to Nestorianism. It was represented to them by Dioscurus that the council of Chalcedon favoured that heresy—which had been condemned at the council of Ephesus; it was even rumoured that Nestorius had been invited to Chalcedon and had only been prevented from attending by his timely death on the way thither. Then the Nestorians were regarded with horror as men who divided Christ into two persons, who really denied the incarnation, and who were virtually Unitarians. To oppose this dishonouring error the Monophysite presented himself as the champion of the perfect Divinity of Christ. Moreover, the popularity of the term Theotokos, the watchword of anti-Nestorianism, tended in the same direction. With this, and powerfully aided by it, came the growing cult of the Virgin, especially welcome in Egypt, the original home of the Mother-god Isis. The visitor to Cairo will see displayed in shops of antiquities statuettes of Isis with Horus in her arms, found in ancient Egyptian tombs, which are almost perfect counterparts of Christian statuettes of the Virgin and child. There came gradually into use such phrases as "God was born"; "God died." The whole tendency of thought in the Church was moving in this direction. It was rather hard on the Monophysites that they were excommunicated as heretics, since generation after generation of the orthodox was moving nearer and nearer to their position during the course of the succeeding centuries. In fact, all through the later patristic period and down into the Middle Ages the humanity of Christ became more and more shadowy, and His Divinity increasingly dominated the minds of the Church teachers, so that sorrowful people who were craving for human sympathy turned from the awful Byzantine Christ to the compassionate Mary, and found in the mother that actual human sympathy which it had been the object of the now neglected incarnation to bring them in her Son. It is hardly too much to say that Mary became to all intents and purposes the incarnate Saviour, while the humanity of Christ and His incarnation were lost in the grandeur of His Divinity.

But while these religious and doctrinal tendencies were influencing serious minds, the disgraceful history of the dispute shows that personal pique, party passion, political intrigue, jealousy, and ambition only too often swept all before them, impelling men to the clash of collision with little or no genuine appreciation of the merits of the cause they were defending. We must go further afield, beyond the Church and the cell, to the decaying society of the empire in the throes of dissolution, for an explanation of the abominations that now accompanied the theological quarrels of monks and clergy. The squat, savage Huns from the East—the yellow peril of the empire, and the rough, vigorous Teutons from the North—its real salvation, were now pouring over the rich fields of southern and western Europe. At the same time the helplessness of the legionaries, due to their numerical impoverishment in the dwindling population of the provinces, that was waiting for the fresh blood of a new healthy stock, had left the cities a prey to the worst elements of society. In some respects Alexandria and Antioch, and occasionally even Constantinople, were now like Paris at the time of the Revolution. Men came to the front who in more settled times would never have been heard of; inhuman deeds were done which revealed the conscious corruption of an old civilisation as more cruel, more foul, more bestial than the unabashed habitude of primitive barbarism.

The Emperor Marcian had forcibly upheld the decisions of the council of Chalcedon by forbidding the Eutychians to hold meetings, to ordain clergy, or to build churches or monasteries. But to silence an obnoxious party is not to convert it. The death of the emperor, in January 457, was the signal for an outbreak of violence by the followers of Dioscurus against his successor Proterius and the orthodox Alexandrians. Timothy, nicknamed Ælurus—"the Cat"—one of the presbyters of Dioscurus, who had been deposed and banished to Lybia, now returned secretly to Alexandria, and crept about at night, cat-like, visiting the cells of ignorant monks. On being asked who he was, he would answer, "I am an angel sent to warn you to break off communion with Proterius, and to choose Timothy as bishop."^[4] Unfortunately Proterius had behaved like a tyrant, and had only held his position by the aid of a guard of 2,000 soldiers, so that Timothy had no difficulty in gathering a following from the indignant populace as well as from the monks. Towards the end of Lent, with the support of these adherents, he seized the great "Cæsarean" church, and was there consecrated by two bishops whom Proterius and his synod had deposed. Meanwhile the patriarch was sitting in his palace with his clergy. A few days later Timothy was expelled from the city by the civil authorities. This enraged the mob, who rose in riot on Easter Tuesday, hunted Proterius into his baptistery, and there murdered him. After hanging up his body for a time, they dragged it through the streets and then hacked it to pieces. Some of them, reduced to the level of the lowest savages, devoured the entrails. The remains were burnt and the ashes scattered to the winds.^[5] The clergy of the orthodox party were now expelled from their churches and their places filled by men whom Timothy appointed. Fourteen of the deposed bishops, who had been driven, as they said in their account of these proceedings, to "a life more full of fear than that of hares or frogs," travelled to Constantinople to lay their complaint before the new emperor, Leo i.^[6] Timothy also sent a deputation to represent his side of the case. Unwilling to bear the onus of a decision, Leo consulted the bishops of the various provinces, all of whom but one, Amphilochius of Side, condemned Timothy, and, with the exception of Amphilochius of Side, also accepted the council of Chalcedon.^[7] Timothy was described as "a tyrant and a man of blood," "a homicide, a slayer of his father," one who "became not a shepherd of Christ's sheep, but an intolerable wolf," and more to the same effect, though some added the qualifying clause, "if the statements of the exiles were true."^[8]

The subsequent career of this unscrupulous schemer is highly significant. In spite of the condemnation by the bishops, and although the pope wrote to the emperor urging the deposition of such a character, the influence of his friends at court delayed this action on the part of the government for two years. Even then Timothy obtained permission to come to Constantinople and plead his cause, on the cool assumption that the only objection to him was his heresy; but though he was restored for a time he was soon after again removed from Alexandria. Some years later, when Constantinople was in the hands of the usurper Basiliscus, Timothy was summoned to the capital and welcomed by his admirers with the acclamation, "Blessed is he that cometh in the name of the Lord."

Eeinstated in his position at Alexandria, the outrageous hypocrite took credit to himself for his gentle treatment of Timothy Salofaciolus, who had held the patriarchate for sixteen years, and now had to make way for the returned exile. When his flatterers cried, "Thou hast fed thine enemies, pope," he accepted the compliment, exclaiming, "Yes, indeed I have fed them."

We may be sure that Timothy Ælurus had good reason for acting so mildly. He could see how popular his rival had become. A man of a gracious, pacific disposition, Timothy Salofaciolus had been rebuked by the Emperor Zeno for not exercising discipline more severely. He was so universally appreciated that even Monophysites would stop him in the streets to express their personal respect for him and their regret at being compelled to stand aloof from his communion. It is pleasant to meet with such a character amidst the narrow-minded partisans and fiery polemical theologians of the age. We need not conclude that he was a wholly exceptional character. Those were times of war, when fighting men came to the front. But meanwhile no doubt many a country pastor was quietly at work on his labour of love among the members of his simple flock, and a host of good men and women were endeavouring to walk in the footsteps of their Master, although history has preserved no records of their unexciting lives. The emergency into publicity of such a man as this amiable patriarch of Alexandria lifts for a moment the veil that hides the better side of the life of the Church. Ecclesiastical history is mainly the story of important bishops. A picture of the Christian life of their times might surprise us with its much brighter colours. Although subsequently an attempt was made to again remove Ælurus, it was frustrated on the plea of his old age, and he was allowed to remain patriarch of Alexandria till his death.

Now the significance of this extraordinary story lies in the fact that, although the conscience of Christendom must have revolted against the enormity of his crime, and although his subtle, intriguing ways proved him to be a cunning schemer as well as a man of violence, Timothy had a powerful following throughout his career, and was permitted to end his days at one of the highest posts of honour in the odour of sanctity. The indignant protest of the bishops voiced the wholesome horror which we should expect all right-minded people to feel at such deeds as he had committed. Yet it only came from the orthodox party, that is to say, from his enemies. His friends the Monophysites were ready to profit by his wickedness and even to condone it for the sake of their cause. The only approach to an excuse for them is that they had a cause which they believed to be right and true, that therefore they were not merely place-hunters. But in view of the development of theological rancour and partizan passion which such a state of affairs reveals, this very excuse is a plain proof how entirely the degenerate monks and their adherents in the mob had substituted metaphysical accuracy as their test of true religion for the old sound idea of the prophet: "What doth the Lord require of thee, but to do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God?"

Next to Timothy Ælurus the most conspicuous leader of the Monophysites at this time was Peter the Fuller (a.d. 465–474), the patriarch of Antioch. It is difficult to piece together the several accounts of his early life,^[9] but according to the arrangement of the data worked out by Tillemont, he first appears as a monk in Bythinia. Expelled from his monastery for heresy and misconduct, he goes to Constantinople and worms his way into the confidence of Zeno, the future emperor. His true character being discovered here also he is obliged to move again, and going east in the train of Zeno he comes to Antioch, where he wins the ear of the populace, especially those who are still in sympathy with Apollinarianism, persuading these people that the patriarch Martyrius is a secret Nestorian. The result is a public tumult resulting in the expulsion of Martyrius and the election of Peter to his place.^[10] In all these historical studies it is a wholesome caution, due as much to justice as to charity, to be slow to admit accusations against the moral character of heretics brought forward by their opponents. For us the significant fact is that a Monophysite secured the patriarchate of Antioch. Thus for the moment the rival sees are both in possession of representatives of the Alexandrian doctrine. Peter is especially notorious for having supplied to the Trisagion the phrase, "Who was crucified for us."^[11] He formulates the liturgical sentence, "Holy God, holy Strong One, holy Immortal One, who for our sakes was crucified, have mercy on us." This gave rise to what has been known as the "Theopassian controversy." Thus, as Dorner justly remarks, "Patripassianism had, consequently, returned in an exaggerated Trinitarian form." ^[12]

The affairs of the Church in the East now became more and more mixed up with those of the empire. Leo i. died in the year 474, and was nominally succeeded by his daughter Ariadne's young son Leo ii., who died within a twelvemonth, when Ariadne's husband Zeno became emperor. He was a rude Isaurian, a native of the mountainous region north of the Taurus range, and he used the opportunities of a court to plunge into the most outrageous debauchery. It was not difficult for the one strong person in Constantinople, the late Emperor Leo i.'s widow, to raise a revolt in favour of her brother Basiliscus, before which Zeno fled to his old home beyond the mountains. Basiliscus leaned on the support of the Monophysites, and even dared to issue a circular letter condemning the council of Chalcedon—the first instance of an emperor on his own authority presuming to reverse the decision of a general council. It carries the State's interference with the Church a stage further.

Acacius the patriarch of Constantinople stoutly resisted this imperial favouring of Monophysitism; he draped the cathedral and the clergy in black in sign of mourning for the calamity that had come on the Church. Daniel, the greatest of the Stylites then living, came down from his pillar, entered the city, and preached to the awestruck populace. Crowds assembled at the gates of the cathedral in protest against the doings of the emperor. Meanwhile the reign of Basiliscus had been disgraced by disorderly and violent scenes in the court. Thus another revolt was provoked which issued in the deposition of the usurper and the return of Zeno to power. This man was the very last person who should have ventured to interfere with the creed of the Church. What could an ignorant debauchee know of such abstract mysteries as it involved? in what spirit could such a man handle them? The very idea of such a thing is shocking to the Christian conscience. But Zeno was a weak creature who lent himself as a tool for abler hands. It is an ominous sign of the settled subservience of the Church to the State, that a great ecclesiastic should have condescended to make use of so unclean an instrument. Nothing could more forcibly demonstrate the immense contrast between the condition of the Church in the East and its condition in the West than a comparison of the policy of Acacius the patriarch of Constantinople with Leo of Rome who had died but a few years earlier (a.d. 461). Soon after the Roman pontiff had proved himself the most powerful personage in the West, saving the empire, saving civilisation, by his courage, energy, and ability, his brother in the Eastern capital was to be seen cringing before the throne of a low, semi-barbarous sensualist in order to obtain imperial influence in favour of his Church policy.^[13] The result of Acacius's adroit manipulation of the emperor was the issue of the famous document known as Zeno's Henoticon (a.d. 482).

This document, which aimed at bringing the divided Church into unity, sought peace by means of vagueness. It was destined from the first to fail, although it was well meant by Acacius whom we should probably regard as its author. While re-affirming the decrees of Nicæa and Constantinople, it asserts that our Lord Jesus Christ is "Himself God incarnate, consubstantial with the Father according to His Godhead, and consubstantial with us according to His manhood … was incarnate by the Holy Ghost of the Virgin Mary, mother of God"; and that He is "one Son, not two." Further, it condemns those "who divide or confound the natures," or admit only a fantastical incarnation, and it anathematises all who do or think anything to the contrary, either now or at any other time, either at Chalcedon or in any other synod," especially Nestorius and Eutyches and their followers.^[14] The very different manner of referring to the councils of Nicæa and Constantinople, on the one hand, and Chalcedon, on the other, is highly significant. The Henoticon was formally addressed to the bishops and clergy, monks and people, of Egypt and the Lybian district, but really only intended for the benefit of the Monophysites in order to reconcile them to union with the Church.^[15] They could accept it without abandoning their specific tenets, while the orthodox could admit it while still holding to Leo's Tome and the Chalcedon decision. Some may think this a reasonable compromise on so difficult and abstruse a question. But no one who understood the temper of its age could have hoped much from it. It failed to accomplish its immediate purpose of uniting the Monophysites and the "orthodox" party of Chalcedon.

At Alexandria the Monophysite patriarch Peter Mongus signed, and he was allowed to retain his bishopric on condition that he received the Catholics to his communion. But the result of this concession on his part was that his own party broke off from him and remained in stiff separation from the main body of the Church under the title of the Acephali—"the Headless." So little or nothing was gained in Egypt, the scene of the schism. Meanwhile, the unfortunate document that was meant to be the flag of truce, if not the treaty of peace, developed a new line of cleavage in quite another direction. This cavalier treatment of Chalcedon gave mortal offence at Rome. For Chalcedon was the most Roman in its sympathies of all the general councils, since its elaborate statement of doctrine had been based on the great Leo's venerated Tome. The Henoticon was regarded in Rome as a distinctly heretical document, and it produced a severance between the Eastern and the Western churches which lasted for thirty-six years. Peter Mongus, the one champion of the document, was an unworthy man quite unfit to act as peacemaker, and while he was trying to force his bishops to accept it on pain of deposition, he was privately negotiating with the Pope Sylvester. On the accession of Felix to the papacy (a.d. 484), that pope immediately took strong measures. He cited Acacius to Rome; but Acacius declined to come at the bidding of his brother patriarch. Then Felix, with the support of an Italian synod, "deposed" Acacius; but the patriarch took no notice of his "deposition," and retained his position immolested. Thus the Henoticon was another wedge driven in between the East and the West, and it scarcely wanted a prophet to predict what must be the end with this everwidening fissure in the Catholic Church.

Anastasius, who succeeded Zeno in the year 491, was already well advanced in age, and yet he reigned for twenty-seven years, during the whole of which time Rome stood aloof from the Eastern Church in stern disapproval. The emperor was welcomed as "the sweetest tempered of sovereigus," and greeted with the complimentary acclamation, "Reign as you have lived."^[16] Unfortunately an immaculate character even when joined to an amiable disposition will not secure success in a ruler who lacks discernment and vigour. The emperor's spirit of toleration was intolerable to a society which clamours for violent polemics. Gradually he was driven to lean more and more to the Monophysite side. Wild stories were told of how monks and priests, archimandrites and patriarchs, behaved like dancing dervishes round the old man, some shouting "Anathema to the council of Chalcedon!" others, "Anathema to Eutyches—to Zeno—to Acacius!"

Constantinople now became a centre of frequent disturbances. The symbol of the Monophysites was Peter's addition to the Trisagion, "Holy, Holy, Holy, Lord God Almighty," consisting of the phrase, "Who was crucified for us." When this full sentence was sung in the great Basilica the Catholic party shouted the Trisagion in its original shorter form. Soon the opponents came to blows and the quarrel spread to the streets. The orthodox party carried about the head of a Monophysite monk on a pole, crying, "See the head of an enemy of the Trinity"; they flung down the statues of Anastasius, burnt the houses of the two prefects, and received the emperor's emissaries with a shower of stones. The next day they rushed into the circus to see the aged man—now eighty-one years old—seated on his throne without either purple robe or diadem. Not having strength of voice to make himself heard in that wild, seething mob of excited people, he proclaimed his readiness to abdicate. Touched by the pathetic sight of their feeble, humiliated emperor, the people accepted some vague assurance that he would respect the faith of Chalcedon. But Anastasius was now in the hands of the Monophysites, and even after this pitiable scene he was driven to demand an anathema on the council of Chalcedon from the bishops. Since they refused, all over the East, but especially in Syria, orthodox bishops were driven out of their churches. When the pope interfered some negotiations followed, which Anastasius ended with unexpected dignity by declaring, "We can bear insults and contempt, but we cannot allow ourselves to be commanded."

Meanwhile, the rigour of persecution under the dominance of the Monophysites in the East even surpassed the ugly record of persecution by Valens and his Arian allies more than a century earlier. The bad pre-eminence in these exploits is accorded to Severus, who was patriarch of Antioch from a.d. 512 till 518.

These were six terrible years for those Syrians who adhered to the decision of Chalcedon. Neale, who is too ready to listen to the denunciation of a heretic by the orthodox, paints the character of Severus in the darkest colours.^[17] But while we must accept the testimonies of bitter foes with some caution, it is difficult to resist the conclusion that this Monophysite patriarch was a man of blood. His presence in Alexandria and Constantinople at an earlier period had been the signal for sanguinary outbreaks at both places, for which he must be held more or less responsible. No sooner did he obtain the exalted position of the headship of the Church at Antioch with its supremacy over the Oriental bishops, than he expressly anathematised the council of Chalcedon in his synodical letters announcing his enthronement. A few complied at once; some yielded to violence; others stoutly resisted the heretical patriarch's contention. Among these, as Evagrius tells us, was Cosmas the bishop of the historian's native place, Epiphanea on the Orontes, who sent his senior deacon with a letter deposing Severus. It was a dangerous embassy, for the patriarch maintained the majesty of royal state at his palace and was held in awe by all about his court. So the deacon disguised himself in woman's attire, and approaching Severus "with delicate carriage," having let his veil fall to his breast, acted the part of a weeping suppliant presenting a petition, as he handed in the letter, and immediately after slipped away unobserved among the crowd.^[18] The anecdote vividly illustrates the tyranny of the stern prelate and the terror he was inspiring. Of course he took no notice of what he would only regard as a daring insult. Poor Anastasius was now so much under the power of the Monophysites that he ordered his military commander in the Lebanon to eject Cosmas and another recalcitrant bishop from their sees, although with his usual mildness sending an apology with the order, and expressly stipulating that it must only be executed if this could be done without bloodshed.^[19] Severus himself, if we are to believe the statements of the opposite party, acted in a very different spirit, loading orthodox monks and clergy with irons, slaughtering some and flinging out their dead bodies for birds and beasts to devour, drowning others in the Orontes.^[20]

 

1. ἐκ δύο φύσεων.
2. ἐν δύο φύσεσιν.
3. Called μία φύσις σύνθετος.
4. Theodore the Reader, i. 1; see Gibbon, chap. xlii.
5. This is stated in the letter of the Egyptian bishops to Anatolius of Constantinople, Mansi, vii. 533.
6. Mansi, vii. 536.
7. Evagrius, ii. 10.
8. Mansi, vii. 537 ff.
9. In Acacius of Constantinople, Theodore the Reader, and Alexander a monk of Cyprus.
10. Tillemont, Emp. vi. p. 404 ff.
11. ὁ σταυρωθεὶς δί ἡμᾶς.
12. Person of Christ, Div. ii. vol. i. p. 125.
13. Robertson, however, justly remarks that "it must be remembered that the subsequent quarrel of Acacius with Rome has exposed him to hard treatment by writers in the Roman interest" (Hist. of Christian Church, vol. ii. p. 275).
14. Evagrius, iii. 14.
15. So Tillemont points out, Mem. Ecclés. xvi. 327.
16. See Gibbon, chap. xxxv.; Tillemont, Hist. des Emp. vi. 472–652.
17. Patriarchate of Antioch, pp. 163, 164.
18. Evagrius, iii. 34.
19. Ibid.
20. Neale, Patriarchate of Antioch, p. 164; Theophanes, p. 136.