Yet it proves to be a time of misery for the national Church. The dominant party of Christians spend it in brutally persecuting their fellow-Christians.
Cyrus's violent measures went on for ten years. After seven or eight years of this persecution, Heraclius made his last attempt at securing the peace of the Church by the issue of the Ecthesis[1] advocating the newly invented Monothelete idea. It is probable that outside Alexandria the monks never heard of the existence of this document. No extant Coptic writing betrays any knowledge of it. To the Copts their old friend Heraclius appeared to have been changed into a persecutor, trying to force them back to the hated Chalcedonian heresy. This was a double mistake. The Ecthesis was a departure from Chalcedon, and as such was destined ultimately to be anathematised by an œcumenical council, and the emperor was no persecutor, but a peacemaker—in intention. Meanwhile, from the first Cyrus was exceeding his master's orders and directly contradicting the spirit of them. In being vested with supreme authority over Egypt he was able to oppress the Copts, who do not seem to have dreamed of going behind him to appeal to Heraclius, as though they had had any doubt of his approval of Cyrus. It must be admitted that although his original intention had been pacific, Heraclius, like Constantine three centuries earlier, was driven by force of circumstances into at least an acquiescence in persecution. This is the inevitable destiny of the autocrat who desires to force comprehension by the mutual reconciliation of all differences on his reluctant subjects. Heraclius must have known of Cyrus's persecution. Unless he was too weak to interfere, he must have acquiesced in it. No doubt in the latter part of the ten cruel years he was bitterly disappointed with his pet device for settling ecclesiastical differences. His Ecthesis was a last attempt at conciliation, and, in spite of some temporary success, in the end it proved to be a failure, partly because it was entrusted to the wrong hands.
