order to obtain imperial influence in favour of his Church policy.[1] 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.[2] 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.[3] 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
- ↑ 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).
- ↑ Evagrius, iii. 14.
- ↑ So Tillemont points out, Mem. Ecclés. xvi. 327.
