said to have been his first patriarchal sermon, Nestorius exhorted the emperor in the famous words—“Purge me, O Caesar, the earth of heretics, and I in return will give thee heaven. Stand by me in putting down the heretics and I will stand by thee in putting down the Persians.” In the spirit of this utterance, steps were taken within a few days by the new prelate to suppress the assemblies of the Arians; these, by a bold stroke of policy, anticipated his action by themselves setting fire to their meetinghouse, Nestorius being forthwith nicknamed “the incendiary.” The Novatians and the Quartodecimans were the next objects of his orthodox zeal—a zeal which in the case of the former at least was reinforced, according to Socrates, by his envy of their bishop; and it led to serious and fatal disturbances at Sardis and Miletus. The toleration the followers of Macedonius had long enjoyed was also rudely broken, the recently settled Pelagians alone finding any respite. While these repressive measures were being carried on outside the pale of the catholic church, equal care was taken to instruct the faithful in such points of orthodoxy as their spiritual head conceived to be the most important or the most in danger. One of these was that involved in the practice, now grown almost universal, of bestowing the epithet Θεοτόκος, “Mother of God,” upon Mary the mother of Jesus. In the school of Antioch the impropriety of the expression had long before been pointed out, by Theodore of Mopsuestia, among others, in terms precisely similar to those afterwards attributed to Nestorius. From Antioch Nestorius had brought along with him to Constantinople a co-presbyter named Anastasius, who enjoyed his confidence and is called by Theophanes his “syncellus.” This Anastasius, in a pulpit oration which the patriarch himself is said to have prepared for him, caused great scandal to the partisans of the Marian cultus then beginning by saying, “Let no one call Mary the mother of God, for Mary was a human being; and that God should be born of a human being is impossible.” The opposition, which was led by one Eusebius, a “scholasticus” or pleader who afterwards became bishop of Dorylaeum, chose to construe this utterance as a denial of the divinity of Christ, and so violent did the dispute upon it become that Nestorius judged it necessary to silence the remonstrants by force. The situation went from bad to worse, and the dispute not only grew in intensity but reached the outer world.
Matters were soon ripe for foreign intervention, and the notorious Cyril (q.v.) of Alexandria, in whom the antagonism between the Alexandrian and Antiochene schools of theology,[1] as well as the jealousy between the patriarchate of St Mark and that of Constantinople, found a determined and unscrupulous exponent, did not fail to make use of the opportunity. He stirred up his own clergy, he wrote to encourage the dissidents at Constantinople, he addressed himself to the sister and wife of the emperor (Theodosius himself being known to be still favourable to Nestorius), and he beggared the clergy of his own diocese to find bribes for the officials of the court.[2] He also sent to Rome a careful selection of Nestorius’s sayings and sermons. Nestorius himself, on the other hand, having occasion to write to Pope Celestine I. about the Pelagians (whom he was not inclined to regard as heretical), gave from his own point of view an account of the disputes which had recently arisen within his patriarchate.[3] While ordinarily Rome might have been expected to hold the balance between the contrasted schools of thought, as Leo was able later to do, it is not surprising that this implied appeal proved unsuccessful, for Celestine naturally resented any questioning of the Roman decision concerning the Pelagians and was jealous of the growing power of the upstart see of the Nova Roma of the East. He was not slow to use the opportunity of gaining what was at once an official triumph and a personal satisfaction. In a synod which met in 430, he decided in favour of the epithet Θεοτόκος, and bade Nestorius retract his erroneous teaching, on pain of instant excommunication, at the same time entrusting the execution of this decision to the patriarch of Alexandria. On hearing from Rome, Cyril at once held a synod and drew up a doctrinal formula for Nestorius to sign, and also twelve anathemas covering the various points of the Nestorian dogmatic. Nestorius, instead of yielding to the combined pressure of his two great rivals, merely replied by a counter excommunication.
In this situation of affairs the demand for a general council became irresistible, and accordingly Theodosius and Valentinian III. issued letters summoning the metropolitans of the catholic church to meet at Ephesus at Whitsuntide 431, each bringing with him some able suffragans. Nestorius, with sixteen bishops and a large following of armed men, was among the first to arrive; soon afterwards came Cyril with fifty bishops. Juvenal of Jerusalem and Flavian of Thessalonica were some days late. It was then announced that John of Antioch had been delayed on his journey and could not appear for some days; he, however, is stated to have written politely requesting that the opening of the synod should not be delayed on his account. Cyril and his friends accordingly assembled in the church of the Theotokos on the 22nd of June, and summoned Nestorius before them to give an account of his doctrines. The reply they received was that he would appear as soon as all the bishops were assembled; and at the same time the imperial commissioner, Candidian, presented himself in person and formally protested against the opening of the synod. Notwithstanding these circumstances, Cyril and the one hundred and fifty-nine bishops who were with him proceeded to read the imperial letter of convocation, and afterwards the letters which had passed between Nestorius and his adversary. Almost immediately the entire assembly with one voice cried out anathema on the impious Nestorius and his impious doctrines, and after various extracts from the writings of church fathers had been read the decree of his exclusion from the episcopate and from all priestly communion was solemnly read and signed by all present, whose numbers had by this time swelled to one hundred and ninety-eight. The accused and his friends never had a hearing. As Nestorius himself said, “the Council was Cyril”; it simply registered the Alexandrian patriarch’s views.
When the decision was known the populace, who had been eagerly waiting from early morning till night to hear the result, accompanied the members with torches and censers to their lodgings, and there was a general illumination of the city. A few days afterwards (June 26th or 27th) John of Antioch arrived, and efforts were made by both parties to gain his ear; whether inclined or not to the cause of his former co-presbyter, he was naturally excited by the precipitancy with which Cyril had acted, and at a conciliabulum of forty-three bishops held in his lodgings shortly after his arrival he was induced by Candidian, the friend of Nestorius, to depose the bishops of Alexandria and Ephesus on the spot. The efforts, however, to give effect to this act on the following Sunday were frustrated by the zeal of the Ephesian mob. Meanwhile a letter was received from the emperor declaring invalid the session at which Nestorius had been deposed unheard; numerous sessions and counter-sessions were afterwards held, the conflicting parties at the same time exerting themselves to the utmost to secure an effective superiority at court. In the end Theodosius decided to confirm the depositions which had been pronounced on both sides, and Cyril and Memnon as well as Nestorius were by his orders laid, under arrest. Representatives from each side were now summoned before him to Chalcedon, and at last, yielding to the sense of the evident majority, he gave a decision in favour of the “orthodox,” and the council of Ephesus was dissolved. Maximian, one of the Constantinopolitan clergy, a native of Rome, was promoted to the vacant see, and Nestorius was henceforward represented in the city of his former patriarchate only by one small congregation, which also a short time afterwards became extinct. The commotion which had been thus raised did not so easily subside in the more eastern section of the church; the Antiochenes continued to maintain for a considerable time an attitude
- ↑ At Alexandria the mystic and allegorical tendency prevailed, at Antioch the practical and historical, and these tendencies showed themselves in different methods of study, exegesis and presentation of doctrine.
- ↑ Letters of the archdeacon Epiphanius to the patriarch Maximianus (Migne, Patr. Gr. lxxxiv. 826).
- ↑ The letter is given in F. Loofs, Nestoriana 166-168, partly translated in J. F. Bethune-Baker, Nestorius and his Teaching, p. 16 seq.
