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RE: St. Alphonsus Liguori: The History of Heresies and Their Refutation - Stone - 03-25-2022
CHAPTER V. HERESIES OF THE FIFTH CENTURY
ARTICLE I. THE HERESIES OF ELVIDIUS, JOVINIANUS, AND VIGILANTIUS
ARTICLE I. THE HERESIES OF ELVIDIUS, JOVINIANUS, AND VIGILANTIUS
1. Heresy of Elvidius.
2. Errors of Jovinian.
3. Adverse Opinions of Basnage refuted.
4. Vigilantius and his Errors.
1. Elvidius was a disciple of the Arian Ausentius, who was intruded into the See of Milan by the Emperor Constans, when he banished St. Dionisius. St. Jerome says he was a turbulent character, both as priest and layman; but, notwithstanding this high authority, it is doubtful whether he ever was a priest, because, as Noel Alexander says, he was a poor peasant, who scarcely knew his letters. He began to disseminate his heretical doctrines in the year 382. He said that the Blessed Virgin had other children by St. Joseph, besides our Lord, and he relied on the authority of Tertullian for this blasphemy; but St. Jerome proves that Tertullian never held such doctrine. St. Ambrose, St. Epiphanius, and especially St. Jerome refuted the errors of Elvidius. He drew three arguments from the Scriptures in support of his heresy: First That text of St. Matthew : ” Before they came together she was found with child of the Holy Ghost” (Matt., i, 18). He, therefore, argued, as the text says ” before they came together,” it is a proof that they after wards did so. Next he adduced the twenty-fifth verse of the same chapter: ” And he knew her not until she brought forth her first-born son.”
Therefore, he argues he knew her after. St. Jerome, in his answer, says: “Should I grieve or smile at this folly.” He then asks, in derision; If any one should say that Elvidius was seized on by death before he did penance, is that a proof that he did penance after death? He then brings other texts of Scripture to refute him. Our Lord says to his apostles, ” Behold I am with you all days even to the consummation of the world” (Matt, xxviii, 20); does that prove, says St. Jerome, that Jesus Christ will not be with his elect any more after the end of the world? St. Paul says of Christ, ” For he must reign until he hath put all his enemies under his feet” (Cor. xv, 25); so, when our Lord has conquered his enemies, he will reign no longer. In the book of Genesis it is said of the crow that left the ark, ” That it did not return till the waters were dried up” (Gen. viii, 7); does it then follow that it returned to the ark when the waters were dried up? Away, then, with arguments of this sort, says St. Jerome (1); the Scripture here tells, not what was done, but what was not done not what took place, but what did not. The second proof Elvidius adduces is taken from the text already mentioned (Matt, i, 25):” She brought forth her first-born son;” therefore, if he was her first-born, she must have had others after. St. Jerome answers this: The Lord commanded, that for every first-born a certain ransom should be paid a month after the birth (Numbers, xviii, 15, 16). Here, then, says St. Jerome, according to Elvidius, one might say: “How can I be obliged to pay a price for my first-born after a month; how can I tell whether I shall ever have a second? I must wait till a second is born to me, and then I can pay for the first-born.” But the Scripture says itself, that the first-born is that which first ” openeth the womb.”
The same is declared in Exodus, where it says: “The Lord slew every first-born in the land of Egypt” (Exod. xii, 29). Here there is no doubt, but that the text speaks of only-born as well as first-born. His third argument is from the text of St. Luke (viii, 19) : ” His mother and brethren came to him.” Therefore, he had brothers; but St. Jerome proves, from a great many passages in the Scriptures, that first-cousins are also called brothers, and the brothers referred to in that text are St. James and St. John, the children of the other Mary, the sister of the Mother of God.
2. Jovinian shall now occupy our attention. He was a monk in Milan; and after spending the early years of his life in the austere practices of monastic life fasting on bread and water, going barefooted, and labouring with his hands he forsook his monastery, and went to Rome, where, as St. Ambrose (2) informs us, he began to disseminate his errors. After falling into this impiety he abandoned his mortified manner of living went shod, and clothed in silk and linen garments nourished and dressed his hair frequented taverns, and indulged in play, banquets, delicate dishes, and exquisite wines and still professed all along to be a monk, and led a life of celibacy, to avoid the responsibility of marriage. Preaching a doctrine pleasing to the senses, he soon had many followers of both sexes in Rome, who, having previously led chaste and mortified lives, now abandoned themselves to luxury, and got married. Jovinian was first condemned by Pope Siricius, in a Council, held in Rome, in the year 390, and soon after, in another Council, held by St. Ambrose, in Milan. In the end he was exiled by the Emperor Theodosius, and afterwards by Honorius, to Boas, a maritime town of Dalmatia, and died there in misery, in the year 412 (3). He taught many errors: First, that marriage and virginity were equally meritorius; secondly, that those once baptized can sin no more; thirdly, that those who fast and those who eat have equal merit, if they praise God; fourthly, that all have an equal reward in heaven; fifthly, that all sins are equal; sixthly, that the Blessed Virgin was not a virgin after giving birth to our Lord (4). This last error was followed by Hinckmar, Wickliife, Bucer, Peter Martyr, Molineus, and Basnage (5), but has been ably refuted by St. Jerome, and condemned in a Synod by St. Ambrose. Petavius says, that all the Fathers unanimously profess the virginity of the Blessed Virgin, as fixed by a decree of the Catholic faith. St. Gregory says, that, as Jesus Christ entered into the house, where the apostles were assembled, with the doors shut, in the same manner, at his nativity, he left the inviolated cloister of Mary.
The letter of Theodotus, of Ancira, was approved of by the General Council of Ephesus, in which, speaking of the Blessed Virgin, he says : the birth of Jesus Christ makes her a mother without injury to her virginity. The third canon of the Lateran Council, celebrated in the year 649, under Martin I., says: that he should be condemned, who does not confess that the Mother of God was always a virgin. A similar declaration was made in the Council of Trullus, in 692, and in the eleventh Council of Toledo, in 675 (6). He was also condemned by St. Gregory, of Nyssa, St. Isidore, Pelusiot, St. Proclus, St. John Chrysostom, St. John Damascenus, St. Augustine, St. Ambrose, St. Siricius, Pope, (who excommunicated him and his followers, in a synod held in Rome), St. Peter Chrysologus, St. Hilary, St. Prosper, St. Fulgentius, St. Eucherius, St. Paulinus, St. Anselm, St. Bernard, St. Peter Damian, and many others; and any one who wishes to see the opinions expressed by the fathers, has only to look to Petavius’s Theology (7). The text of Ezechiel : ” This gate shall be shut, it shall not be opened” (Ezechiel, xliv, 2), is generally understood to refer to the perpetual virginity of the Mother of God, and St. Leo (8), Pope Hormisdas, Pelagius I., and the Council of Chalcedon, in the discourse addressed to the Emperor Marcion, all understood it thus.
3. Let us now hear what Basnage, and the heretics who hold the contrary opinion, have to say. Their first argument is founded on that text of Isaias, ” Behold a virgin shall conceive, and shall bring forth a son” (Isaias, vii, 14), which St. Matthew, speaking of the Incarnation of the Divine Word, quotes (Matthew, i, 13). Basnage then argues on this text: The prophet says, that Mary conceived as a virgin; but he does not say, that she brought forth her son as a virgin. But what sort of argument is this? Because the text does not say that she was a virgin, in the birth of her son, therefore, it is a proof that she did not bring him forth a virgin; whereas, the universal tradition of the Church, as we have seen, explains the text in its true sense, that she conceived a virgin, and brought forth our Lord a virgin.
Basnage brings forth another argument, which he deems unanswerable. We read in St. Luke, he says:” After the days of her purification, according to the law of Moses, were accomplished, they carried him to Jerusalem, to present him to the Lord: as it is written in the law of the Lord, every male opening the womb, shall be called holy to the Lord” (Luke, ii, 22). Now, says Basnage, (and it is worthy of remark, with what temerity he threw overboard the doctrine of the Fathers, as opposed to Scripture, and the opinion of the learned), the opinion of the perpetual virginity of the Mother of God is generally held, and still it is opposed, both to Scripture and the opinions of the ancients. The narrative of St. Luke is quite plain:” When the days of her purification, &c.” Mary was then subjected to the usual law of women, after birth, not alone to avoid scandal, but as a matter of duty; and she was compelled, by the general discipline of the law, to offer a sacrifice for her purification. The days of her purification could not be accomplished if she had no necessity of purification. All his argument, then, is reduced to this, that Mary ought not to fulfil the days of her purification, if there was no necessity of purification; and, for all that, she was obliged (coacta sit) to fulfil the rite. This argument he took from Origen (9); but, as the Fathers of St. Maur say, truly, this was a blasphemy uttered by that Father (10); and, justly, for all the Fathers have said with St. Basil (11), this virgin never was obliged to the law of purification; and this is clear, says the Saint, from the Scriptures; for in Leviticus, xii, 2, it is clearly proved, that this law applies to ordinary mothers, but not to one who conceived by the Holy Ghost. “Scriptum est enim,” says the holy Father, “mulier quæ conceperit semen, et peperit masculum, immunda erit septem diebus; hæc autem cum facta sit Emmanuelis Mater sine semine, pura, et intemerata est; imo postquam effecta est Matre, adhuc virgo permansit.”
Even Melancthon, Agricola, and the other Lutherans, as we read in Canisius (12), all say that Mary had no necessity of purification. St. Cyril of Alexandria, the same author states teaches that to assert the contrary is rank heresy. With all that, Basnage is not convinced, and he quotes a passage of St. Fulgentius, where he says: ” Vulvam Matris Omnipotentia Filii nascentis aperuit.” But we have another passage, in St. Fulgentius himself, in which he declares that the mother of Christ was the only one who remained immaculate, after giving birth to a son (13). But how are we then to understand ” he opened the womb?” this is to be understood, as St. Gregory of Nyssa explains it (14); ” Solus ille haud ante patefactam virginalem aperuit vulvam ;” that he preserved the virginity of his holy mother. This is what St. Ambrose like wise says: ” Hic (Christus) solus aperuit sibi vulvam (15).” And, treating of the Mysteries against Jovinian, he says: ” Why do you seek the order of nature, in the body of Christ, when setting aside the order of nature, he was born of a virgin.” Basnage lauds St. Jerome as being of his opinion; but the passage he adduces is not to be found in St. Jerome’s writings; besides, St. Jerome (16) says, in his Dialogues : ” Christ alone opened the closed doors of the virginal womb, which, nevertheless, remained ever and always closed ;” so that the very Fathers Basnage quotes in his favour, most expressly condemnthe impious error he attempts to defend.
4. Vigilantius was a native of Comminges, near the foot of the Pyrenees, and of very low origin, having been a tavern-keeper for some time; somehow or other, he found leisure to study, and lead a pious life at the same time, so that he acquired the friendship of St. Paulinus, of Nola, who gave him a letter of recommendation to St. Jerome, and he undertook a journey to the Holy Land. This letter was so far useful to him, that St. Jerome, who knew him to be a man of relaxed morals, did not treat him as his hypocrisy deserved (17).
He had the audacity to treat St. Jerome as a heretic, of the sect of Origen, because he saw him reading Origen’s work; but the Saint, in the year 397, wrote to him (18), that he read these works, not to follow all their doctrine; but, to take whatever was good out of them, and he exhorts him either to learn or be silent. Some years after, about the year 404, Riparius, a priest, wrote to St. Jerome, that Vigilantius began to dogmatize, speaking against the Relics of Martyrs and Vigils in churches. St. Jerome gave summary answer, and promised to return again to the subject, and treat it more amply, when he would have read Vigilantius work (19); and having soon after seen the production, he gave it a short but strong answer, because the monk Sisinius, who brought it to him, was in a hurry to return to Egypt (20). The following are the errors of Vigilantius, refuted by St. Jerome. First. Like Jovinian, he condemned the practice of celibacy. Second He condemned the veneration of the relics of the martyrs; and called those who honoured them Cinerists and idolaters. Third He said it was a pagan superstition to light candles by day in their honor. Fourth He maintained, that the faithful after death could no longer pray for one another, and he founded this opinion on the apocryphal book of Esdras. Fifth He condemned public Vigils in the churches. Sixth He reprobated the custom of sending alms to Jerusalem. Seventh He totally condemned monastic life, and said, that it was only making ourselves useless to our neighbours, if we embraced it. This sect was not condemned by any council, it had but few followers, and soon became extinct (21).
(1) St. Hieron. l. 1, Comment, in cap. ii, Matt.
(2) St. Ambrose, Ep. 41, n. 9.
(3) Nat. Alex. t. 8, c. 3, ar. 19; Orsi, t. 9, l. 20, n. 27; Fleury, t. 3, l. 19.
(4) Nat. Alex. t. 8, ar. 19.
(5) Basnape, ad an. 5, ante Pom. n. 25.
(6) Col. Con. t. 1, col. 1. 10, col. 1151.
(7) Petav. Theol. Dog. 6, l. 14, c. 3
(8) St. Leo, Epist.
(9) Origen, Hom. 14, in Luc.
(10) Patres. S. Maur. apud S. Hieron. t. 7, p. 285.
(11) St. Basil, in can. 1; Isa. n. 201.
(12) Canis. l. 4, c. 10, de Virg. Deip.
(13) St. Fulgent. l. 1, devere Protest. n. 5.
(14) St. Greg. Nys.Orat. de Occursu.
(15) St. Ambrose, l. 2, in Luc. n. 57.
(16) St. Jerome, I. 2, Dial, contra Pelag. n. 4.
(17) St. Hier. Epis. 61.
(18) St. Hier. Epis. 75.
(19) Idem. Epis. ad Ripar. 55..
(20) St. Hier. l. con. Vigilan. c. 2.
(21) Fleury, t. 3, l. 22, n. 5; Orsi, t. 10, 1. 25, n. 62; Nat. Alex. t. 10 c. 3, art 1; Diet. Portatif. 4, ver Vigilan
RE: St. Alphonsus Liguori: The History of Heresies and Their Refutation - Stone - 03-26-2022
CHAPTER V. HERESIES OF THE FIFTH CENTURY
ARTICLE II. ON THE HERESY OF PELAGIUS
ARTICLE II. ON THE HERESY OF PELAGIUS
5. Origin of the Heresy of Pelagius.
6. His Errors and Subterfuges. 7-Celestius and his Condemnation.
8. Perversity of Pelagius.
9. Council of Diospolis.
10 & ll. He is Condemned by St. Innocent Pope.
12. Again Condemned by Sozymus.
13. Julian, a follower of Pelagius.
14. Semi-Pelagians.
15. Predestination.
16 & 17. Godeschalcus.
5. Pelagius was born in Great Britain, and his parents were so poor, that in his youth, he scarcely received any instruction in letters; he became a monk, but nothing more than a mere lay monk, and that was all the dignity he ever arrived at. He lived a long time in Rome, and was respected for his virtues, by very many persons; he was loved by St. Paulinus (1); and, esteemed by St. Augustine. He was also looked on as a learned man, as he composed some useful works (2), to wit, three books on the Trinity, and a collection of passages of the Scripture on Christian Morality. He, unhappily, however, fell into heresy, while he sojourned at Rome, in regard to grace; and he took his doctrines from a Syrian priest, called Rufinus, (not Rufinus of Aquilea, who disputed with St. Jerome). This error was already spread through the East (3); for Theodore, Bishop of Mopsuestia, had already taught the same errors as Pelagius; and deduced them from the same sources, the principles of Origen (4). This Rufinus, then coming to Rome, about the year 400, in the reign of Pope Anastasius, was the first introducer there of that heresy; but, as he was a cautious man, he did not publicly promulgate it himself, not to bring himself into trouble, but availed himself of Pelagius, who, about the year 405, began to dispute against the Grace of Jesus Christ.
One day, in particular, a bishop having quoted the words of St. Augustine, in his Confessions: “Lord, grant us what thou orderest, and order what thou wishest:” Pelagius could not contain himself, and inveighed against the author. He concealed his errors for a time, however, and only communicated them to his disciples, to see how they would be received, and to approve or reject them afterwards, as suited his convenience (5). He afterwards became himself the disseminator of his heresy. We shall now review his errors.
6. The errors of Pelagius were the following: First That Adam and Eve were created mortal, and that their sin only hurt themselves, and not their posterity. Second Infants are now born in the same state that Adam was before his fall. Third Children dying without baptism, do not indeed go to heaven, but they possess eternal life. Such, St. Augustine testifies, were the errors of Pelagius (6). The principal error of Pelagius and his followers, was, concerning Grace and Free-Will, for he asserted, that man, by the natural force of his free-will, could fulfil all the Divine precepts, conquer all temptations and passions, and arrive at perfection without the assistance of grace (7). When he first began to disseminate this pernicious error, which saps the whole system of our Faith, St. Augustine says, that the Catholics were horrified, and loudly exclaimed against him, so he and his disciples searched every way, for a loop-hole to escape from the consequences, and to mitigate the horror excited by so dreadful a blasphemy. The first subterfuge was this: Pelagius said, that he did not deny the necessity of Grace, but that Grace was Free-Will itself, granted gratuitously by God, to man, without any merit on their part. These are his words, quoted by St. Augustine (8): ” Free-Will is sufficient that I may be just, I say not without Grace;” but the Catholics said, that it was necessary to distinguish between Grace and Free-Will. To this Pelagius answered (and here is the second subterfuge), that by the name of Grace is understood the law or doctrine by which the Lord gave us the Grace to teach us how we are to live. ” They say,” St. Augustine writes (9), ” God created man with Free-Will, and, giving him precepts, teaches him how he should live, and in that assists him, inasmuch, as by teaching him, he removes ignorance.”
But the Catholics answered, that if Grace consisted in the Law alone given to man, the Passion of Jesus Christ would be useless. The Pelagians answered, that the Grace of Christ consisted in giving us the good example of his life, that we might imitate him; (and this was the third subterfuge,) and as Adam injured us by bad example, so our Saviour assisted us by his good example. Christ affords a help to us, not to sin, since he left us an example by living holily (10); but this example given by Christ, St. Augustine answers, was not distinct from his doctrine, for our Lord taught both by precept and example. The Pelagians seeing that their position regarding these three points was untenable, added a fourth subterfuge, that was, the fourth species of grace the grace of the remission of sins. They say, says St. Augustine (11), that the Grace of God is only valuable for the remission of sins, and not for avoiding future ones: and they say, therefore, the coming of Jesus Christ is not without its utility, since the grace of pardon is of value for the remission of past sins, and the example of Christ for avoiding future ones. The fifth subterfuge of the Pelagians was this: They admitted, as St. Augustine (12) tells us, the internal grace of illustration; but we should admit, with the holy doctor, that they admitted this illustration, solely ex parte objecti, that is, the internal grace to know the value of good and the deformity of bad works, but not ex parte intellectus, so that this grace would give a man strength to embrace the good and avoid the evil. We now come to the sixth and last shift: He finally admitted internal grace, not only on the part of the object, but on the part of human ability, strengthened by grace to do well; but he did not admit it as necessary according to our belief, but only as useful to accomplish more easily what is good, as St. Augustine explains it (13). Pelagius asserts, that Grace is given to us, that what is commanded to us by God, should be more easily accomplished; but Faith teaches us that Grace is not only useful, but absolutely necessary to do good and avoid evil.
7. The Pelagian heresy was very widely extended in a little time. His chief disciple was Celestius, a man of noble family, and a eunuch from his birth. He practised as a lawyer for a time, and then went into a monastery; he then became a disciple of Pelagius, and began to deny Original Sin. Pelagius was reserved, but Celestius was free-spoken and ardent. They both left Home a little before it was taken by the Goths, in 409. They went together, it is believed, first to Sicily, and afterwards to Africa, where Celestius thought to get himself ordained priest, in Carthage; but when the heresy he was teaching was discovered, he was condemned, and excommunicated by the Bishop Aurelius, and a Council summoned by him, in Carthage; he appealed from the Council to the Apostolic See, but, instead of going to Rome, to prosecute his appeal, he went to Ephesus, where he was raised to the priesthood without sufficient caution; but when his heresy became manifest, he was banished from the city, with all his followers (14). Notwithstanding all this, after the lapse of five years, he went to Rome to prosecute the appeal, but he was then condemned again, as we shall now see.
8. Pelagius, instead of repenting after the condemnation of Celestius, only became more obstinate in his errors, and began to teach them more openly. About this time the noble virgin, Demetriades, of the ancient Roman family of the Anicii, put into execution a glorious resolution she had made. She had taken refuge in Africa when the Goths desolated Rome, and when her parents were about to marry her to a nobleman, she forsook the world, and, clothing herself in mean garments, as St. Jerome (15) tells us, consecrated her virginity to Christ. St. Jerome, St. Augustine, and even the Pope, St. Innocent, congratulated this devout lady on the good choice she made. Pelagius also wrote a letter to her, in which, while he praises her, he endeavours to insinuate his poison. He used these words: In hic merito cœteris prœferenda es, quæ nisi ex te, et in te esse non possunt (16). St. Augustine at once recognized the poison disseminated in this letter, and, explaining the words, Nisi ex te et in te, he says, as far as the second expression, Nisi in te (17), it is very well said; but all the poison is in the first part, he says, Nisi ex te, for the error of Pelagius is, that all that man does of good he does altogether of himself, without the assistance of grace.
At the same time, when St. Jerome got cognizance of this letter of Pelagius, he also wrote to the lady (18), cautioning her against his doctrine, and from that out began to combat his heresy in several books, and especially in that of ” The Dialogue of Atticus and Oitobulus.” St. Augustine, likewise, never ceased for ten years to combat the errors of Pelagius; and his books, ” De Natura et Gratia,” ” De Gratia Christi,” “De Peccato Originali.” &c., prove how successfully he refuted them.
9. When Pelagius saw that he was not cordially received in Africa, he went to Palestine, where John, Bishop of Jerusalem, received him; and, in a Council held with his clergy, instead of condemning him, as he ought, he only imposed silence on both parties (19). In the year 415, a council of fourteen bishops as held in Diospolis, a city of Palestine; and here Pelagius, as Cardinal Baronius (20) tells us, induced the bishops to agree to the following propositions, all Catholic, indeed, and opposed to the errors promulgated by him and Celestius: First, Adam would not have died had he not sinned. Second, The sin of Adam is transfused into the whole human race. Third, Infants, are not such as Adam was previous to his fault. Fourth, as in Adam all die, according to the Apostle, so in Christ all will be vivified. Fifth, Unbaptized infants cannot obtain eternal life. Sixth, God gives us assistance to do good, according to St. Paul (I. Tim. vi, 17). Seventh, It is God that gives us grace to do every good work, and this grace is not given to us according to our merits. Eighth, Grace comes to us, given gratuitously by God, according to his mercy. Ninth, The children of God are those who daily say, ” forgive us our sins,” which we could not say if we were entirely without sin. Tenth, Free-will exists, but it must be assisted by Divine help. Eleventh, The victory over temptations does not come from our own will, but from the grace of God. Twelfth, The pardon of sins is not given according to the merits of those who ask it, but according to the Divine Mercy.
Pelagius confessed all these truths, and the council of bishops, deceived by his hypocrisy, admitted him to the communion of the Church (21); but in this they acted imprudently, for, although his errors were condemned, he was personally justified, which gave him a far greater facility of disseminating his errors, afterwards, and, on this account, St. Jerome, speaking of this Synod, calls it a miserable one (22), and St. Innocent the Pope refused to admit him to his communion, although he was informed of the retractation of his errors in that Synod, for he truly suspected that his confession was only feigned. The subsequent conduct of Pelagius proved the penetration of the holy Pontiff, for, as soon as he was freed from the obedience of those bishops, he returned to his vomit, and rejected the truths he had then professed, and especially on the point of grace, as St. Augustine remarks (23) he said, that Divine grace was necessary to do what was right more easily, but the good depended directly on our free will, and this grace he called the grace of possibility. St. Augustine (24), writing against this false novelty, indites this great sentence:” God, by co-operating in us, perfects that which he began by operating; for we are worth nothing for any pious work without him operating, that we may wish it, or co-operating, when we do wish it.” Pelagius, hoping that the proceedings of the Council of Diospolis would be buried in darkness, wrote four books afterwards against the “Dialogue” of St. Jerome, and entitled his work “De Libero Arbitrio” (25).
10. The affairs of Pelagius did not take such a favourable turn in Africa as they did in Palestine, for in the following year, 416, the Bishop Aurelius summoned another Council in Carthage, in which both he and Celestius were again condemned; and it was decided to send a Synodal letter to the Pope, St. Innocent, that he might confirm the decree of the Council by Pontifical authority (26); and, about the same time, another Council of sixty-one Numidian Bishops was held in Milevis, and a letter was likewise written to the Pope, calling on him to condemn the heresy (27).
Pope Innocent answered both Synodal letters in 417; confirmed the Christian doctrine held by the councils concerning grace (28); and condemned Pelagius and Celestius, with all their adherents, and declared them separated from the communion of the Church. He answered, at the same time, and in the same strain, the letters of five other bishops, who had written to him on the same subject; and, among other remarks, says, that he found nothing in Pelagius’s book which pleased him, and scarcely anything which did not displease him, and which was not deserving of universal reprobation (29). It was then that St. Augustine, as he himself mentions (30), when Pope Innocent’s answer arrived, said: ” Two Councils have referred this matter to the Apostolic See. Rescripts have been sent in answer; the cause is decided”
11. We should remark that St. Prosper (31) writes, that St. Innocent the Pope was the first to condemn the heresy of Pelagius: Pestein subeuntem prima recidit Sedes Roma Petri, quæ pastoralis honoris Facta caput mundi, quidquid non possidet armis, Religione tenet.
But how can St. Prosper say that St. Innocent was the first to condemn this heresy, when it was already condemned in 412 by the first Council of Carthage, and by the second, in 416, and by the Council of Milevis? Graveson (32) answers, that these Councils considered it their duty to refer the condemnation of Celestius and Pelagius to the Apostolic See, and, on that account, St. Prosper writes, that the first condemnation proceeded from the Pope. Garner (33) says that the Pelagian heresy was condemned by twenty-four Councils, and, finally, by the General Council of Ephesus, in 431 (34), for up to that time the Pelagians had not ceased to disturb the Church.
12. When Pelagius and Celestius heard of the sentence pronounced against them by St. Innocent, they wrote him a letter filled with lies and equivocations, appealing to his supreme tribunal from the sentence passed on them by the bishops of Africa; and, as St. Innocent had died, and St. Zozymus was elected in his place, Celestius went to Home himself, to endeavour to gain his favour. St. Zozymus was, at first, doubtful how he ought to act in the matter; but the African bishops suggested to him that he ought not to interfere with a sentence passed by his predecessor, and when the holy Pontiff was better informed of the deceits of Pelagius and Celestius, and especially of the flight of the latter from Rome, when he heard that the Pope was about to examine the cause more narrowly, he was convinced of their bad faith, and condemned their doctrine (35).
13. The author of the Portable Dictionary (36), writes that Pelagius, after his condemnation by Pope Zozymus, and the proclamation subsequent, issued against him by the Emperor Honorious from Rome, went to his beloved Palestine, where he was before so well received; but as his impiety and hypocrisy were now well known, he was driven out of that province. We do not know afterwards what became of him, but it is probable that he returned to England to disseminate his doctrines, and that it was this which induced the bishops of Gaul to send St. Germain de Auxerre there to refute him. The Pelagian heresy was finally extinguished in a short time, and no one was bold enough openly to declare himself its protector, with the exception of Julian, son and successor to Memorius, in the See of Capua. He was a man of talent, but of no steadiness, and the great liveliness of his understanding served to ruin him, by inducing him to declare himself an avowed professor of the heresy of Pelagius. His name is celebrated on account of his famous disputes with St. Augustine, who at first was his friend, but afterwards, in defence of religion, was obliged to declare himself his adversary, and pursued him as a heretic. He was afterwards banished out of Italy, and went to the East, and after wandering in poverty for a long time through various regions, he at last was obliged to support himself by teaching school. It is said he died in Sicily in the reign of the Emperor Valentinian (37). The refutation of the Pelagian heresy will be found in the last volume of this work.
14. Several years had rolled by since St. Augustine had successfully combatted the Pelagian heresy, when, in the very bosom of the Church, a sort of conspiracy was formed against the Saint, including many persons remarkable for their learning and piety; this happened about the year 428, and they were called Semi-Pelagians. The chief of this party was John Cassianus, who was born, as Genadius informs us, in the Lesser Scythia, and spent part of his time in the monastery of Bethlehem. From that he came first to Rome, and then to Marseilles, where he founded two monasteries, one of men and one of women, and took the government of them according to the rules he had practised, or seen observed, in the monasteries of Palestine and Egpyt; these rules he wrote in the first four books of twelve he published under the title of Monastic Instructions. What is more to the purpose we treat of, he endeavoured to bring into notice and establish his erroneous sentiments on the necessity of Grace, in his thirteenth Collation or Conference; and to give more weight to his errors, he puts them into the mouth of Cheremon, one of the solitaries of Panefisum, a place in Egypt, who, he said, was well instructed in all the disputes about Grace, but which, as Orsi says (38), were never spoken of at all when Cassianus was in Egypt; nor could any one, in any human probability, ever imagine that such a dispute would be raised in the Church. Nevertheless, he, as it were, constituted that holy monk as a sort of judge between Pelagius and St. Augustine, and puts into his mouth a condemnation, more or less of both, as if St. Augustine had erred in attributing too much to Grace, by attributing to it even the first movements of the will to do what is right, and that Pelagius erred in attributing too much to Free-Will, by denying the necessity of Grace to carry out good works. Cassianus thought, in the meanwhile, that he had found out a means of reconciling both parties, Catholics and heretics; but it was only by combatting one error by another, and his erroneous doctrine was followed by many persons of the greatest piety in Gaul, and especially in Marseilles, who willingly imbibed the poison, because mixed with many Catholic truths in his works.
The Semi-Pelagians then admitted the necessity of Grace, but they were guilty of a most pernicious error, in saying, that the beginning of salvation often comes to us from ourselves without it. They added other errors to this, by saying that perseverance and election to glory could be acquired by our own natural strength and merits. They said, likewise, that some children die before baptism, and others after, on account of the foreknowledge God possesses of the good or evil they would do if they lived (39).
15. Cassianus died in 433, and was considered a Saint (40); but the Semi-Pelagians were condemned in the year 432, at the request of St. Prosper, and St. Hilary, by Pope Celestine I., in a letter written by him to the Bishops of Italy. They were also condemned in 529, by Pope Felix IV., in the Synod of Oranges, and, immediately after, in the Synod of Valence; and both these Councils, as Noel Alexander testifies (41), were confirmed by Pope Boniface II. At the end of the work will be found the refutation of this heresy.
16. In the year 417, according to Prosper of Tyre, or in the year 415, according to Sigisbert, arose the heresy of the Predestinarians (42); these said that good works were of no use to those, for salvation, whom God foreknows will be lost; and that if the wicked are predestined to glory, their sins are of no harm to them. Sigisbert’s words are (43): “Asserebunt nec pie viventibus prodesse bonorum operum laborem, si a Deo ad damnationem præsciti essent : nec impiis obesse, etiamsi improbe viverent.” Noel Alexander says that a certain priest of the name of Lucidus (44), having fallen into the errors of the Predestinarians, and his opinions becoming notorious, he was obliged to retract them by Faustus de Hies, on the authority of a Council held at Aries, in 475; he obeyed, and signed a retractation of the following errors: First, The labour of human obedience is not to be joined to Divine Grace. Second, He should be condemned who says, that after the fall of the first man, the freedom of the will is entirely extinct. Third, Or who says that Christ did not die for all men. Fourth, Or who says that the foreknowledge of God violently drives men to death, or that those who perish, perish by the will of God. Fifth, Or who says that whoever sins, dies in Adam, after lawfully receiving baptism. Sixth Or who says that some are deputed to death eternal, and others predestined to life.
This heresy, or these errors were condemned in the Council of Lyons, in the year 475. It is a question among the learned, whether the Predestinarians ever existed as a heretical body. Cardinal Orsi and Berti (45), with Contenson, Cabassutius and Jansenius deny it; but Tournelly (46), with Baronius, Spondanus, and Sirmond, held the contrary opinion, and Graveson quotes Cardinal Norris (47) in their favour, and Noel Alexander thinks his opinion probable (48).
17. In the ninth century, Godeschalcus, a German Benedictine monk lived, who is generally considered a real Predestinarian. He was a man of a turbulent and troublesome disposition. He went to Rome through a motive of piety, without leave of his superiors, and usurping the office of a preacher without lawful mission, disseminated his maxims in several places, on which account he was condemned in a Synod, held on his account, in Mayence, in 848, by the Archbishop Rabanus, and sent to Hincmar, Archbishop of Rheims, his superior. Hincmar, in another, held in Quiercy, again condemned him, deprived him of the sacerdotal dignity, and after obliging him to throw his writings into the fire with his own hand, shut him up in close confinement in the monastery of Haut Villiers, in the diocese of Rheims. Two Councils were held in Quiercy on this affair, one in 849, in which Godeschalcus was condemned, and the other in the year 853, in which four canons were established against his doctrine, and which we shall hereafter quote. Finally, Hincmar being at Haut Villiers, the monks of the monastery told him that Godeschalcus was near his end, and anxious for his eternal welfare, he sent him a formula of Faith to sign, that he might receive Absolution and the Viaticum, but he rejected it with disdain.
Hincmar could then do no more, but after his departure, he wrote to the monks, telling them, that in case of the conversion of Godeschalcus, they should treat him as he had given them verbal directions to do; but if he persevered in his errors, that they should not give him the Sacraments, or Ecclesiastical burial. He died unchanged, and without sacraments, and he was deprived of Christian burial (49).
18. His errors, Van Ranst informs us, were these following : First as God has predestined some to eternal life, so he predestines others to everlasting death, and forces man to perish. Second God does not wish the salvation of all men, but only of those who are saved. Third Christ died for the salvation of the elect alone, and not for the redemption of all men. These three propositions of Godeschaleus are also contained in a letter written by Hincmar to Nicholas I. “He says,” writes Hincmar, ” that the old Predestinarians said, that as God predestined some to eternal life, so he predestined others to everlasting death” (50); and Rabanus, in his Synodical letter to Hincmar, says: “He (Godeschalcus) taught that there are some in this world, who on account of the predestination of God, who forces them to go to death, cannot correct themselves from sin; as if God, from the beginning, made them incorrigible and deserving of punishment to go to destruction. Second, He says that God does not wish all men to be saved, but only those who are saved. Third, He says that our Lord Jesus Christ was not crucified and died for the salvation of all, but only for those who are saved” (51). The four canons established in the Council of Quiercy against Godeschalcus, as Cardinal Gotti (52) writes, were these following: First There is only one predestination by God, that is to eternal life. Second The free will of man is healed by means of Grace. Third God wishes all men to be saved. Fourth Jesus Christ has suffered for all.
19. As to the judgment we should pass on the faith of Godeschalcus, some modern writers, as Christian Lupus, Berti, Contenson, and Roncaglia (53), defend it, by thus explaining his three propositions: As to the first, the predestination to death; they say that it can be understood of the predestination to punishment, which God makes after the prevision of sin. As to the second, that God does not wish the salvation of all; it can be understood of his not wishing it efficaciously. And, as to the third, that Jesus Christ had not died for the salvation of all; it can, likewise, be understood, that he did not die efficaciously. But on the other hand, as Tournelly writes, all Catholic doctors previous to Jansenius (with the exception of some few, as Prudentius, Bishop of Troyes, in France; Pandal, Bishop of Lyons; and Loup, Abbot of Ferrieres), condemned them as heretical, and, with very good reason; many modern authors, of the greatest weight, as Sirmond, Cardinal de Norris, Mabillon, Tournelly, and Noel Alexander, are of the same opinion (54).
As far as our judgment on the matter goes, we say, that if Godeschalcus intended to express himself, as his defenders have afterwards explained his words, he was not a heretic; but, at all events, he was culpable in not explaining himself more clearly; but, as Van Ranst very well remarks, his propositions, as they are laid before us, and taking them in their plain obvious sense, are marked with heresy. As he did not explain himself according as his friends do who defend him, and he showed so much obstinacy in refusing to accommodate himself to his superiors, and as he died so unhappily, as we have already related, we may reasonably doubt of his good faith, and have fears for his eternal salvation.
(1) St. Aug. de Gestis Pelagian, c. 22.
(2) Gennad de Scriptur. c. 42.
(3) Orsi, t. 11, /. 25, n. 42; Fleury, t. 4, l. 23, Nos. 1 and 2.
(4) Orsi, ibid.
(5) Fleury, ibid. n. 1, ex Mereat. Comp. Theolog. t. 5, pt. 1, Disp. 1, a. 3.
(6) St. Aug. de Gertis Pelagian, c. 35 & 35.
(7) Nat. Alex. t. 10, c. 3. art., 3; St. Fluery, l. c, n. 48; Tournelly,
(8) St. August, Serm. 26. al. 11, de. Verb, apost. (9) Idem, I. de. Spir. & littas.c . 2.
(10) Apud. St. Angus. l. de Gratia Christi. c. 2.
(11) St. Augus. de Gratia Christi. a. lib. arb. c. 13.
(12) Idem lib.de Gratia, cap. 7 & 10.
(13) St. Augus. de Gratia Christi c. 26.
(14) Orsi, t. 11, l. 25, n. 44; Fleury, l. 3, n. 3.
(15) St. Hier. Ep. 8, ad Demetr.
(16) Apud, St. Augus. Ep. 143.
(17) St. Aug. ibid.
(18) St. Hier. Ep. 8, ad Demetr.
(19) Orsi, t. 25, n. Ill; Fleury, l. 23, n. 18, & seq.
(20) Baron. Ann. a. 415, n. 23,
(21) Fleury, I. 23, n. 20.
(22) St. Hier. Ep. 79.
(23) St. Aug. de Her. c. 88.
(24) St. Aug. de Grat. & lib. arb. c.17.
(25) Orsi, I. 25, n. 117, ex St. Aug. l. de Gest. Pel. c. 33.
(26) Nat. Alex. t. 10, c. 3, ar. 4, s. 4; Fleury, ibid, n. 20: Orsi, t 11, l. 25, n. 121
(27) Nat. Alex, ibid, s. 5; Fleury,loc. cit.; Orsi, n. 122.
(28) St. Innoc. Ep. 181, n.8 &9, & Ep. 182, n. 6.
(29) Fleury, t. 4, l. 23, n. 34; Orsi, t. 11, I. 25, n. 129.
(30) St. Aug. Serm. 131, n. 10.
(31) St. Prosp. In Carm. de Ingratis.
(32) Graveson, t. 3, col. 2.
(33) Garner, ap. Danes Temp. not. p. 240.
(34) Act. 5 & 7, can. 1 & 4, ap. Danes ibid, p. 241, & vide Fleury, l. 25, n. 53.
(35) Hermant, t. 1, c. 124; Orsi, l.
(36) Diz. Tort. verb. Pelagio.
(37) Hermant, t. 1, c. 124.
(38) Orsi, t. 12, L 17, n. 59.
(39) Nat. Alex. t. 10, c. 3, a. 7 & 8; Orsi, loc. cit. n. 60 & 61.; Fleury, t. 4, l. 24, n. 56 & seq.
(40) Nat. l. cit. ar. 7, s. 4.
(41) Nat. Al. l. cit. ar. 10, in fin.
(42) Nat. Al. t. 10, c. 3, ar. 5.
(43) Sigisbert in Cron. an. 415.
(44) Nat. loco. cit.
(45) Orsi, t. 15, l;. 35, n. 83; Berti Hist. t. 1, s. 5, c. 4.
(46) Tour. t. 4, p. 1, D. 3, concl. 3.
(47) Graves, Hist. t. 3, coll. 2, p. 19.
(48) Nat. Alex. t. 10, c. 3, . 2, p. 144, and Dis. Prop. p. 461
(49) Fleury, t. 7, 1. 41, n. 41 &49, & l. 50, n. 48; Van Ranst, s. 9, p. 153.
(50) Tournelly, Theol. Comp. t. 5, 1, Disp. 4, ar. 3.
(51) Tourn. loc. cit.
(52) Gotti. t. 2, Viet. adv. Her. c. 84, s. 2.
(53) Lupus Not. ad conc. 1 Rom.; Berti, Theol. l. 6, c. 14, prop. 3, & Hist. s. 9, c. 4; Contens. Theol. l. 8; DePrædest. app. 1, .s. 3; Ron caglia, Animad. ap. N. Alex. t. 13, 8; De Prædest. app. 1, .s. 3; Ron
(54) Sirmund. Tract, de Præd. Har. Card, de Noris, l. 2; Hist. Pelag. c. 15; Mabillon, ad sec. IV. Bened. Tournelly, Theol. t. 5, loo. cit. p. 142; Gotti, loc. sopra cit. c. 84, s. diss. 5. 2; Nat. Alex. loc. cit. t. 13, diss. 5.
RE: St. Alphonsus Liguori: The History of Heresies and Their Refutation - Stone - 03-27-2022
CHAPTER V. HERESIES OF THE FIFTH CENTURY
ARTICLE III. THE NESTORIAN HERESY
ARTICLE III. THE NESTORIAN HERESY
20. Errors of Nestorius, and his elevation to the Episcopacy.
21. He approves of the Errors preached by his Priest, Anastasius; his Cruelty.
22. He is contradicted, and other acts of Cruelty.
23. St. Cyril’s Letter to him, and his Answer.
24. The Catholics separate from him.
25. Letters to St. Celestine, and his Answer.
26. He is admonished; Anathemas of St. Cyril.
27. The Sentence of the Pope is intimated to him.
28. He is cited to the Council.
29. He is condemned.
30. The Sentence of the Council is intimated to him.
31. Cabal of John of Antioch.
32. Confirmation of the Council by the Legates, in the name of the Pope.
33. The Pelagians are condemned.
34. Disagreeable Affair with the Emperor Theodosius.
35. Theodosius approves of the condemnation of Nestorius, and sends him into Banishment, where he dies.
36. Laws against the Nestorians.
37. Efforts of the Nestorians.
38. The same subject continued.
39. It is condemned as heretical to assert that Jesus Christ is the adopted Son of God.
40 – 43. Answer to Basnage, who has unjustly undertaken the Defence of Nestorius.
20. The heresy of Pelagius was scarcely condemned by the African Councils, when the Church had to assemble again to oppose the heresy of Nestorius, who had the temerity to impugn the maternity of the Mother of God, calling her the Mother, not of God, but of Christ, who, he blasphemously taught, was a mere man, as, with a similar impiety, Ebion, Paul of Samosata, and Photinus, had done before, by asserting that the Word was not hypostatically united with Christ, but only extrinsically, so that God dwelled in Christ, as in his temple. Nestorius was born in Germanicia, a small city of Syria, and, as Suidas, quoted by Baronius, informs us, was a nephew to Paul of Samosata, and was brought up in the monastery of St. Euprepius, in the suburbs of Antioch (1). He was ordained priest by Theodotus (2), and appointed his catechist, to explain the faith to the catechumens, and defend it against heretics; and, in fact, he was most zealous in combating the heretics who then disturbed the Eastern Church the Arians, the Apollinarists, and the Origenists and professed himself a great admirer and imitator of St. John Chrysostom.
He was so distinguished for his eloquence, though it was only of a vain and popularity-hunting sort, and his apparent piety, for he was worn, pale, and always poorly clad, that he was placed in the See of Constantinople, in place of Sissinnius, in the year 427, according to Noel Alexander, or 428, according to Hermant and Cardinal Orsi. His elevation, however, was not only legitimate, but highly creditable to him, for after the death of the Patriarch Sisinnius, the Church of Constantinople was split into factions about who should succeed him, which induced the Emperor Theodosius the Younger to put an end to it all, by selecting a Bishop himself; and, that no one should complain of his choice, he summoned Nestorius from Antioch, and had him consecrated Bishop, and his choice was highly pleasing to the people (3). It is said, also, that, at the first sermon he preached (4), he turned round to the Emperor, and thus addressed him: ” Give me, my Lord, the earth purged from heretics, and I will give you heaven; exterminate the heretics with me, and I will exterminate the Persians with you.”
21. Theodosius hoped that his new Patriarch would in all things follow in the steps of his predecessor, Chrysostom; but he was deceived in his hopes. His virtue was altogether Pharasaical, for, under an exterior of mortification, he concealed a great fund of pride. In the beginning of his reign, it is true, he was a most ardent persecutor of the Arians, the Novatians, and the Quartodecimans; but, as St. Vincent of Lerins tells us, his chief aim in this was only to prepare the way for teaching his own errors (5). ” He declared war against all heresies, to make way for his own.” He brought a priest from Antioch with him, of the name of Anastasius, and he, at the instigation of the Bishop; preached one day the blasphemous doctrine that no one should call Mary the Mother of God, because she was only a creature, and it was impossible that a human creature could be the Mother of God.
The people ran to Nestorius, to call on him to punish the temerity of the preacher; but he not only approved of what was said, but unblushingly went into the pulpit himself, and publicly defended the doctrine preached by Anastasius. In that sermon, called afterwards by St. Cyril (6), the Compendium of all Blasphemy, he called those Catholics blind and ignorant, who were scandalized by Anastasius preaching, that the Holy Virgin should not be called the Mother of God. The people were most anxiously waiting to hear what the Bishop would say in the pulpit, when, to their astonishment, he cried out: ” How can God have a mother? The Gentiles then ought to be excused, who bring forward on the stage the mothers of their Gods; and the Apostle is a liar, when, speaking of the Divinity of Christ, he says that he is without father, without mother, without generation: no, Mary has not brought forth a God. What is born of the flesh is nothing but flesh; what is born of the spirit is spiritual. The creature does not bring forth the Creator, but only a man, the instrument of the Divinity.”
22. It has always been the plan with heretics, to sustain this error, by accusing the Catholics of heresy. Arius called the Catholics Sabellians, because they professed that the Son was God, like unto the Father. Pelagius called them Manicheans, because they insisted on the necessity of Grace. Eutyches called them Nestorians, because they believed that there were two distinct natures in Christ the Divine and the human nature; and so, in like manner, Nestorius called them Arians and Apollinarists, because they confessed in Christ one Person, true God and true man. When Nestorius thus continued to preach, not alone once, but frequently, and when the whole burthen of his sermons was nothing but a blasphemous attack on the doctrine of the Church, the people of Constantinople became so excited, that, beholding their shepherd turned into a wolf, they threatened to tear him in pieces, and throw him into the sea. He was not, however, without partisans, and although these were but very few, they had, for all that, the support of the Court and the Magistracy, and the contests even in the church became so violent, that there was frequently danger of blood being spilled there (7).
Withal, there was one person who, while Nestorius was publicly preaching one day in the church (8), and denying the two generations of the Word, the Eternal and the Temporal, boldly stood forward, and said to his face: ” It is so, nevertheless; it is the same Word, who, before all ages was born of the Father, and was afterwards born anew of a virgin, according to the flesh.” Nestorius was irritated at the interruption, and called the speaker a miserable ribald wretch; but as he could not take vengeance as he wished on him, for, though but then a layman (he was afterwards made Bishop of Dorileum, and was a most strenuous opponent of Eutyches, as we shall see in the next chapter), he was an advocate of great learning, and one of the agents for the affairs of his Sovereign, he discharged all the venom of his rage on some good Archimandrites of monks, who came to enquire of him whether what was said of his teaching was true that he preached that Mary brought forth only a man that nothing could be born of the flesh but flesh alone and suggested to him that such doctrine was opposed to Faith. Nestorius, without giving them any reply, had them confined in the ecclesiastical prison, and his myrmidons, after stripping them of their habits, and kicking and beating them, tied them to a post, and lacerated their backs with the greatest cruelty, and then, stretching them on the ground, beat them on the belly.
23. The sermons of Nestorius were scattered through all the provinces of the East and West, and through the monasteries of Egypt, likewise, where they excited great disputes. St. Cyril, Bishop of Alexandria, hearing of this, and fearing lest the heresy should take root, wrote a letter to all the monks of Egypt (9), in which he instructs them not to intermeddle in such questions at all, and, at the same time, gives them excellent instructions in the true Faith. This letter was taken to Constantinople, and St. Cyril was thanked by several of the magistrates; but Nestorius was highly indignant, and got a person named Photius to answer it, and sought every means to be revenged on St. Cyril.
When this came to the knowledge of the Saint, he wrote to Nestorius (10) : ” This disturbance,” he says,” did not commence on account of my letter, but on account of writings scattered abroad (whether they are yours or not is another thing), and which have been the cause of so many disorders, that I was obliged to provide a remedy. You have, therefore, no reason to complain of me. You, rather, who have occasioned this disturbance, amend your discourses, and put an end to this universal scandal, and call the Holy Virgin the Mother of God. Be assured, in the meantime, that I am prepared to suffer every thing, even imprisonment and death, for the Faith of Jesus Christ.” Nestorius answered, but his reply was only a threatening tirade (11): ” Experience,” said he, ” will shew what fruit this will produce; for my part, I am full of patience and charity, though you have not practised either towards me, not to speak more harshly to you.” This letter proved to St. Cyril, that nothing more was to be expected from Nestorius, and what followed proved the truth of his conjecture.
24. There was a Bishop of the name of Dorotheas in Constantinople, who was such a sycophant to Nestorius, that while the Patriarch was one day in full assembly, seated on his throne, he rose up and cried out: ” If any one says that Mary is the Mother of God, let him be excommunicated.” When the people heard this blasphemy so openly proclaimed, they set up a loud shout, and left the church (12), determined to hold no more communion with the proclaimers of such an impious heresy (13); for, in fact, to excommunicate all those who said that Mary was the Mother of God, would be to excommunicate the whole Church all the Bishops, and all the departed Saints, who professed the Catholic doctrine. There is not the least doubt but that Nestorius approved of the excommunication announced by Dorotheus, for he not only held his peace on the occasion, but admitted him to the participation of the Sacred Mysteries. Some of his priests, on the contrary, after having publicly given him notice in the assembly, and seeing that he still persisted in not calling the Holy Virgin the Mother of God, and Jesus Christ, by his nature, true God (14), now openly forsook his communion; but he prohibited not only those, but all who previously had preached against his opinion, from preaching; so that the people, deprived of their usual instructions, said : ” We have an Emperor, but we have not a Bishop.”
A monk, burning with zeal, stepped forward while Nestorius was going into the church, and thought to prevent him, calling him a heretic, but the poor man was immediately knocked down, and given into the hands of the Prefect, who first caused him publicly to be flogged, and then sent him into exile (15).
25. St. Cyril wrote again to Nestorius, but seeing his obstinacy, and that the heresy was spreading in Constantinople, through favour of the Court, he wrote several letters, or, rather, treatises, to the Emperor Theodosius, and to the Princesses, his sisters, concerning the true Faith (16). He wrote, likewise, to Pope Celestine, giving him an account of all that took place, and explaining to him the necessity there was that he should oppose the errors of Nestorius (17). Nestorius himself, at the same time, had the boldness to write a letter to St. Celestine, likewise, in which he exaggerates his great labours against the heretics, and requires also to know why some Bishops of the Pelagian party were deprived of their Sees; he thus wrote, because he had kindly received those Bishops in Constantinople, and the Pelagians were not included in an edict he procured from Theodosius against the heretics; for, as Cardinal Orsi remarks, he adhered to the Pelagian opinion, that Grace is given to us by God, according to our own merits. He also wrote that some called the Blessed Virgin the Mother of God, when she should only be called the Mother of Christ, and on that account he sent him some of his books; this letter is quoted by Baronius (18). St. Celestine having read both letters, summoned a Council in Rome, in the month of August, 430, for the examination of the writings of Nestorius, and not only were his blasphemies condemned, but he was even deposed from his bishopric, if, ten days after the publication of his sentence, he did not retract his errors, and the Pope charged St. Cyril with the execution of the sentence (19).
26. St. Cyril, in discharge of the commission to which he was appointed by the Pope, convoked a Council, in Alexandria, of all the Bishops of Egypt, and then, in the name of the Council, wrote a Synodical letter to Nestorius, as the third and last admonition; telling him that, if in the term of ten days after the receipt of that letter, he did not retract what he had preached, those Fathers would have no more communication with him, that they would no longer consider him as a Bishop, and that they would hold communion with all clergymen and laymen deposed or excommunicated by him (20). The Synodical letter also contained the profession of Faith and the anathemas decreed against the Nestorian errors (21). These, in substance, are an anathema against those who deny that the Holy Virgin is Mother of the Incarnate Word, or deny that Jesus Christ is the only Son of God, true God and true Man, not alone according to his dignity, but through the hypostatic union of the Person of the Word with his most Holy Humanity. These anathemas are fully and distinctly expressed in the letter.
27. St. Cyril appointed four Egyptian Bishops to certify to Nestorius the authenticity of this letter, and two others one to the people of Constantinople, and another to the abbots of the monasteries, to give them notice likewise of the letter having been expedited. These Prelates arrived in Constantinople on the 7th of the following month of December, 430 (22), and intimated to Nestorius the sentence of deposition passed by the Pope, if he did not retract in ten days; but the Emperor Theodosius, previous to their arrival, had given orders for the convocation of a General Council, at the solicitation both of the Catholics, induced to ask for it by the monks, so cruelly treated by Nestorius, and of Nestorius himself, who hoped to carry his point by means of the Bishops of his party, and through favour of the Court. St. Cyril, therefore, wrote anew to St. Celestine, asking him (23), whether, in case of the retractation of Nestorius, the Council should receive him, as Bishop, into communion, and pardon his past faults, or put into execution the sentence of deposition already published against him.
St. Celestine answered, that, notwithstanding the prescribed time had passed, he was satisfied that the sentence of deposition should be kept in abeyance, to give time to Nestorius to change his conduct. Nestorius thus remained in possession of his See till the decision of the Council. This condescension of St. Celestine was praised in the Council afterwards, by the Legates, and was contrasted with the irreligious obstinacy of Nestorius (24).
28. As St. Celestine could not personally attend the Council, he sent Arcadius and Projectus, Bishops, and Philip, a priest, to preside in his place, with St. Cyril, appointed President in chief. He gave them positive orders that they should not allow his sentence against Nestorius to be debated in the Council (25), but to endeavour to have it put into execution. He wrote to the Council to the same effect, and notified the directions he had given to his Legates, and that he had no doubt but that the Fathers would adhere to the decision he had given, and not canvass what he already had decided, and, as we shall see, everything turned out most happily, according to his wishes. When the celebration of Easter was concluded, the Bishops all hastened to Ephesus, where the Council was convoked for the 7th of June. Nestorius, accompanied by a great train, was one of the first to arrive, and, soon after, St. Cyril, accompanied by fifty Egyptian Bishops, arrived, and in a little time two hundred Bishops, most of them Metropolitans and men of great learning, were assembled. There was no doubt about St. Cyril presiding as Vicar of Pope Celestine, in the Council of Ephesus; for, in several acts of the Synod itself, he is entitled President, even after the arrival of the Apostolic Legates, as is manifest from the fourth act of the Council, in which the Legates are mentioned by name after St. Cyril, and before all the other Bishops. It appears, even from the opening act of the Council, before the arrival of the Legates, that he presided in place of Celestine, as delegate of his Holiness the Archbishop of Rome. Graveson (26), therefore, justly says: ” That they are far from the truth, who deny that Cyril presided at the Council of Ephesus, as Vicar of Pope Celestine.”
St. Cyril, therefore, as President (27), gave notice that the first Session of the Synod would be held on the 22nd of June, in St. Mary’s Church, the principal one of Ephesus, and, on the day before, four Bishops were appointed to wait on Nestorius, and cite him to appear next day at the Council. He answered, that if his presence was necessary, he would have no objection to present himself; but then, in the course of the same day, he forwarded a protest, signed by sixty-eight Bishops, against the opening of the Council, until the arrival of other Bishops who were expected (28). St. Cyril and his colleagues paid no attention to the remonstrance, but assembled the next day.
29. On the appointed day the Council was opened; the Count Candidianus, sent by Theodosius, endeavoured to put it off, but the Fathers having ascertained that he was sent by the Emperor, solely with authority to keep order and put down disturbance, determined at once to open the Session, and the Count, accordingly, made no further opposition. Before they began, however, they judged it better to cite Nestorius a second and third time, according to the Canons, and sent other Bishops to him in the name of the Council, but they were insulted and maltreated by the soldiers he had with him as a body-guard. The Fathers, therefore, on the day appointed, the 22nd of June, held the first Session, in which, first of all, the second letter of St. Cyril to Nestorius was read, and the answer of Nestorius to St. Cyril, and they all called out immediately, with one accord (29) : ” Whoever does not anathematize Nestorius, let him be anathema. Whoever communicates with Nestorius let him be anathema. The true faith anathematizes him. We anathematize all the letters and dogmas of Nestorius.” St. Celestine’s letter was next read, in which he fulminates a sentence of deposition against Nestorius, unless he retracts in ten days (30).
Finally, the sentence of the Council was pronounced against him: It begins, by quoting the examination, by the Fathers, of his impious doctrines, extracted from his own writings and sermons, and then proceeds: “Obliged by the Sacred Canons, and the Epistle of our Holy Father and Colleague, Celestine, Bishop of the Roman Church, we have been necessarily driven, not without tears, to pronounce this melancholy sentence against him. Therefore, our Lord Jesus Christ, whom he has insulted by his blasphemies, deprives him, through this Holy Council, of the Episcopal dignity, and declares him excluded from every Assembly and College of Priests (31).” This sentence was subscribed by one hundred and eighty-eight Bishops. The Session lasted from the morning till dark night (32), though the days were long at that season, the 22nd of June, and the sun did not set in the latitude of Ephesus, till seven o clock in the evening. The people of the city were waiting from morning till night, expecting the decision of the Council, and when they heard that Nestorius was condemned and deposed, and his doctrine prohibited, and that the Holy Virgin was declared to be the Mother of God in reality, they all, with one voice, began to bless the Council and praise God, who cast down the enemy of the Faith, and of his Holy Mother. When the Bishops left the church, they were accompanied to their lodgings by the people with lighted torches. Women went before them, bearing vases of burning perfume, and a general illumination of the whole city manifested the universal joy (33).
30. The following day, the foregoing sentence was intimated to Nestorius, and a letter sent to him as follows: ” The Holy Synod, assembled in the Metropolis of Ephesus, to Nestorius, the new Judas. Know that you, on account of your many discourses, and your obstinate contumacy against the Sacred Canons, have been deprived, on the 22nd of this month, of all Ecclesiastical dignity, according to the Ecclesiastical Decrees sanctioned by the Holy Synod” (34). The sentence was published the same day through the streets of Ephesus, by sound of trumpet, and was posted up in the public places; but Candidianus ordered it to be taken down, and published an edict, declaring the Session of the Council celebrated null and void. He also wrote to the Emperor, that the decision of the Council was obtained by sedition and violence; and the perfidious Nestorius wrote another letter to Theodosius to the same effect, complaining of the injustice done to him in the Council, and requiring that another General Council should be convened, and all the Bishops inimical to him excluded (35).
31. Several Bishops of the Nestorian party, who had signed the protest, were even shocked at his impiety, and convinced of the justice of the sentence passed against him, joined the Council (36). But when everything appeared to be about to settle down peaceably, John, Bishop of Antioch, raised another storm (37), in conjunction with other schismatical Bishops, to the number of forty; and, either to please Chrisaphius, Prime Minister of the Emperor, and a great friend of Nestorius, or because it went to his heart to see his friend and fellow-citizen (Nestorius was a native of Antioch) condemned, he had the hardihood to summon a Cabal in the very city of Ephesus, and then to depose St. Cyril, and St. Mennon, Bishop of Ephesus, and to excommunicate all the other Bishops of the Synod, because, as they said, they trampled on and despised the orders of the Emperor. St. Cyril and the other Bishops took no notice of such rash attempts, but, on the contrary, the Council put forth its authority, and deputed three Bishops to cite John, as chief of the Cabal, to account for his insolence, and after being twice more cited, and not appearing, the Council, in the fifth Session, declared John and his colleagues suspended from Ecclesiastical Communion, till such time as they would repent of their fault, and that, if they obstinately persevered, that they would be proceeded against, according to the Canons, to the last extremity (38). Finally, in the year 433, John, and the other Bishops of his party, subscribed the condemnation of Nestorius, and St. Cyril received him to his communion, and thus peace was re-established between the Metropolitans of Alexandria and Antioch (39).
32. We will, however, return to the Council, and see what was decided on in the subsequent Sessions, and, which we have postponed, to see the end of the Cabal of John of Antioch. Shortly after the first Session, the three Legates of St. Celestine arrived at Ephesus Philip, Arcadius, and Projectus and they came not alone in the Pope’s name, but also of all the Bishops of the West. The second Session was then held in the palace of St. Mennon, Bishop of the See, and the Legates took the first place (40). First of all, they wished that the letter of St. Celestine, sent by them to the Council, should be read. And when the Fathers heard it, they all agreed to the sentiments expressed in it by the Pope. Philip then thanked the Council, and said: ” You, by these acclamations, have united yourselves as holy members with your head, and have manifested that you well know that the Blessed Apostle, Peter, is the head of all the faithful, and chief of the Apostles.” Projectus then moved that the Council would put into execution what was mentioned in the letter of the Pope. Fermus, Bishop of Cesarea, in Cappadocia, answered, that the holy Synod, guided by the antecedent letters of the Pope, to St. Cyril, and to the Churches of Constantinople and Antioch, had already put it into execution, and pronounced a Canonical judgment against the contumacious Nestorius. The next day, therefore, all the acts of the Council, and the sentence of the deposition of Nestorius were read, and then the Priest Philip thus spoke : “No one doubts that St. Peter is the chief of the Apostles, the column of the Faith, and the foundation of the Catholic Church, and that he received the keys of the kingdom from Jesus Christ, and He lives even to-day, and exercises, in his successor, this judgment. Therefore, his Holiness Pope Celestine, who holds the place of St. Peter, having sent us to this Council to supply his place, we, in his name, confirm the Decree pronounced by the Synod against the impious Nestorius; and we declare him deposed from the priesthood and the communion of the Catholic Church; and, as he has contemned correction, let his part be with him, of whom it is written,”another shall receive his Bishopric. ” The Bishops Arcadius and Projectus then did the same, and the Council expressing a wish that all the acts of the two Sessions should be joined with those of the first preceding one, that the assent of all the Fathers might be shown to all the acts of the Council, it was done so, and the Legates subscribed the whole (41).
33. This being done, the Fathers of the Council wrote a Synodical Epistle to the Emperor, giving him an account of the sentence fulminated against Nestorius and his adherents, as the Pope, St. Celestine, had already decided, and charged his Legates with the execution of it in their name. They then subjoined the confirmation of the sentence by the Papal Legates, both in their own name, and the name of the Council of the Western Bishops, held in Home (42). The Council, besides, wrote another letter to St. Celestine, giving him an account of all that had been done, both against Nestorius, and against John, Patriarch of Antioch. They also notified to him the condemnation of the Pelagians and Celestians, and explained to him how the Pelagians disturbed the East, looking for a General Council to examine their cause; but that, as the Fathers had read in the Synod the Commentaries of the Acts of the deposition of these Bishops, they considered that the Pontifical Decrees passed against them should retain all their force. Cardinal Orsi (43) writes, that there is a great deal of confusion regarding the Synod of Ephesus, but there is no doubt but that the Pelagians were condemned in this Council as heretics, by the assembled Bishops of the world. The symbol composed by Theodore of Mopsuestia was also condemned in this Council, and every other formula, except that of the Council of Nice, was prohibited (44). Here, however, Cardinal Orsi justly remarks (45), that that does not prohibit the Church, when she condemns any heresy not formally condemned by the Council of Nice, from making additions necessary for clearing up the truth, as the Council of Constantinople had done already, and other Councils did since that of Ephesus. The heresy of the Messalians (Art. 3, chap. 4, n. 80), was also condemned in this Council, and a book, entitled The Ascetic, was anathematized at the same time (46).
34. When all was concluded, the Fathers wrote to Theodosius, requesting leave to return to their Churches; but the letter containing this request, as well as all the former ones they wrote to Constantinople, was intercepted by Count Candinianus, who placed guards on the roads for that purpose (47); while, at the same time, the letters of John of Antioch, and the schismatical Bishops of his party, stuffed with lies and calumnies regarding the proceedings of the Council, had already arrived some time at Constantinople; and thus it happened, that the Emperor, poisoned, on the one side, by the false accounts furnished him, and vexed, on the other, with the Fathers of the Council, for, as he believed, not having written to him, and informed him of what they had done in the affair of Nestorius, wrote to them that all the acts of the Synod, as done against his orders, were to be considered invalid, and that everything should be examined anew; and therefore, Palladius, the bearer of the Emperor’s letter to Ephesus, commanded, on his arrival, that none of the Fathers should be permitted to leave the city (48). The Fathers were confounded when they discovered how they were calumniated, and prevented from giving the Emperor a faithful account of all that had been done in the case of Nestorius, and the Patriarch of Antioch; they, therefore, devised a plan to send a trusty messenger (49), disguised as a beggar, with copies of all the letters they had already written, but which were intercepted, enclosed in a hollow cane, such as poor pilgrims usually carried. They wrote, likewise to several other persons in Constantinople, so that when the good people of that city discovered the intrigues of the enemies of the Council, they went in a crowd along with the Monk St. Dalmatius, who, for forty-eight years previously, had never left his monastery (50), and all the Archimandrites, singing hymns and psalms, to address the Emperor in favour of the Catholics. Theodosius gave them audience in the Church of St. Mocius, and St. Dalmatius, ascending the pulpit, said: “O Cæsar, put an end, at length, to the miserable imposture of heresy; let the just cause of the Catholics prevail for ever.” He then proceeded to explain the rectitude of the acts of the Council, and the insolence of the schismatics. Theodosius, moved by the reasons adduced, revoked his orders (51), and, concerning the dispute between St. Cyril and the Patriarch of Antioch, he said he wished to try the cause himself, and commanded, therefore, that each of them should send some of his Bishops to Constantinople.
35. The Legates had now left the Council for Constantinople, but, when matters were just settling down, another storm arose, for the Count Ireneus, a great patron of the schismatics, came to Ephesus, and informed the Emperor that Nestorius was no more a heretic than Cyril and Mennon, and that the only way to pacify the Church of the East, was to depose the whole three of them together. At the same time, Acacius, Bishop of Berea, an honest and righteous man, but who, deceived by Paul, Bishop of Emisenum, joined the party of John of Antioch, wrote to the Emperor, likewise, against St. Cyril and St. Mennon; so Theodosius thought it better to send (52) his almoner, the Count John, to Ephesus, to pacify both parties. When the Count came to Ephesus, he ordered that Nestorius, Cyril, and Mennon, should be put into prison; but the Catholic Bishops immediately wrote to the Emperor, praying him to liberate the Catholic Bishops, and protesting that nothing would induce them ever to communicate with the schismatics. In the meanwhile, the concerns of the Empire all went wrong; the Roman army was cut to pieces by the Goths, in Africa, and the few survivors were reduced to slavery. The clergy of Constantinople clamoured in favour of the Catholics, and they were assisted in their zealous exertions by St. Pulcheria, who opened the eyes of her brother to the impositions of the Nestorians (53). The Emperor, at length, assured of the wickedness of the schismatics, and the virtue of the Catholics, ordered St. Cyril and St. Mennon to be liberated, and gave leave to the bishops to return home to their Sees; he confirmed the deposition of Nestorius, and ordered him to shut himself up once more in his old monastery of St. Euprepius, and there learn to repent; but as he, instead of exhibiting any symptoms of sorrow for his past conduct, only continued to infect the monks of the monastery with his heretical opinions, he was banished to the Oasis between Egypt and Lybia (54), and soon after, as Fleury informs us, was transferred to Panapolis, and from Panopolis to Elephantina, and, from thence, back again to another place near Panopolis, where, at last, he died in misery, worn out by years and infirmities. Some say that, through desperation, he dashed his brains out; others, that the ground opened under him and swallowed him, and others, again, that he died of a cancer, which rotted his tongue, and that it was consumed by worms engendered by the disease a fit punishment for that tongue which had uttered so many blasphemies against Jesus Christ and his Holy Mother (55).
36. Nestorius was succeeded in the See of Constantinople, by Maximinian, a monk untainted in the Faith, and Theodosius deprived Count Ireneus of his dignity (56). The Emperor next, in the year 435, made a most rigorous law against the Nestorians. He ordered that they should be called Simonians, and prohibited them from having any conventicle, either within or without the city; that if any one gave them a place of meeting, all his property should be confiscated, and he prohibited all the books of Nestorius treating of Religion. Danæus (57) says, that the heresy of Nestorius did not end with his life; it was spread over various regions of the East, and, even in our own days, there are whole congregations of Nestorians on the Malabar Coast, in India.
37. When the Nestorians saw their chief rejected by all the world, and his works condemned by the Council of Ephesus and the Emperor, they set about disseminating the writings of the Bishops Theodore and Diodorus, who died in communion with the Church, and left a great character after them in the East (58). The Nestorians endeavoured to turn the writings of those prelates to their own advantage, and pretended to prove that Nestorius had taught nothing new, but only followed the teaching of the ancients, and they translated those works into various languages (59); but many zealous Catholic Bishops, as Theodosia of Ancyra, Acacius of Meretina, and Rabbola of Edessa, bestirred themselves against the writings of Theodore of Mopsuestia. When St. Cyril heard of the matter, he also wrote against those books, and purposely composed a declaration of the Symbol of Nice, in which, with great particularity and diifuseness, he explains the doctrine of the Incarnation (60).
38. We should also remark, that Theodoret being soon after re-established in his See, by the Council of Chalcedon, after subscribing the condemnation of Nestorius and of his errors; and Ibas, being, likewise, reinstated, after retracting the errors imputed to him, and anathematized Nestorius, the Nestorians made a handle of that, to insinuate that their doctrines were approved of by the Council of Chalcedon, and thus they seduced a great many persons, and formed a numerous party. God sent them, however, a powerful opponent, in the person of Theodore, Bishop of Cesarea, who prevailed on the Emperor Justinian to cause the writings of Theodore against St. Cyril, and the letter of Ibas, on the same subject, to be condemned. Justinian, in fact, condemned the works of these Bishops, and of Theodore of Mopsuestia, and requested Pope Vigilius to condemn them also, which he did, after mature examination in his Constitution, and approved of all that was decided in the fifth General Council, the second of Constantinople, held in the year 533 (61), as we shall see in the next chapter. The condemnation of these works, afterwards called The Three Chapters, put an effectual stop to the progress of Nestorianism (62); but still there were, ever since, many, both in the East and West, who endeavoured to uphold this impious heresy.
39. The most remarkable among the supporters of Nestorianism were two Spanish Bishops Felix, Bishop of Urgel, and Elipandus, Archbishop of Toledo; these maintained that Jesus Christ, according to his human nature, was not the natural, but only the adopted, Son of God, or, as they said, the nuncupative, or Son in name alone. This heresy had its origin about the year 780.
Elipandus preached this heresy in the Asturias and Galicia, and Felex in Septimania, a part of Narbonic Gaul, called, at a later period, Languedoc. Elipandus brought over to his side Ascarieus, Archbishop of Braga, and some persons from Cordova (63). This error had many opponents, the principal were Paulinus, Patriarch of Aquilea; Beatus, a priest and monk in the mountains of Asturias; Etherius, his disciple, and afterwards Bishop of Osma; but its chief impugner was Alcuinus, who wrote seven books against Felix, and four against Elipandus. Felix was first condemned in Narbonne, in the year 788, next in Ratisbon, in 792, and in 794, in a Synod held at Frankfort, by the Bishops of France, who, as Noel Alexander tells us, condemned him with this reservation (64) : ” Reservato per omnia juris privilegio Summi Pontificis Domini & Patris nostri Adriani Primæ Ssedis Beatissimi Papæ.” This error was finally twice condemned in 799, in Rome, under Adrian and Leo III (65). Felix abjured his errors in the Council of Ratisbon, in 792; but it appears he was not sincere, as he taught the same doctrine afterwards. In the year 799, he was charged with relapsing by Alcuinus, in a Synod held at Aix-la-Chapelle, he confessed his error, and gave every sign of having truly returned to the Church, but some writings of his, discovered after his death, leave us in doubt of the sincerity of his conversion, and of his eternal happiness. This was not the case with Elipandus, for though he resisted the truth a long time, he at length bowed to the decision of the Roman Church, and died in her communion, as many authors, quoted by Noel Alexander, testify (66).
40. Who would believe that after seeing Nestorius condemned by a General Council, celebrated by such a multitude of Bishops, conducted with such solemnity and accuracy, and afterwards accepted by the whole Catholic Church, that persons would be found to defend him, as innocent, and charge his condemnation as invalid and unjust. Those who do this are surely heretics, whose chief study has always been to reject the authority of Councils and the Pope, and thus sustain their own errors. The history of Nestorianism would be incomplete without a knowledge of the modern defenders of the heresy, and the arguments made use of by them.
Calvin was the first to raise the standard, and he was followed by his disciples, Albertin, Giles Gaillard, John Croye, and David de Roden. This band was joined by another Calvinistic writer, in 1645, who printed a work, but did not put his name to it, in which he endeavours to show that Nestorius should not be ranked with the heretics, but with the doctors of the Church, and venerated as a martyr, and that the Fathers of the Council of Ephesus ought to be considered Eutychians, as well as St. Cyril, St. Gregory Thaumaturgus, St. Dionisius of Alexandria, St. John Chrysostom, and St. Hilary, who give it such praise. This book was refuted by the learned Petavius, in the year 1646, in the sixth book of his work on Theological Dogmas. Finally, Samuel Basnage, in his Annals (67), has joined with Calvin and the other authors above-named, and has taken up the defence of Nestorius; he has even the hardihood to declare, that the Council of Ephesus had filled the world with tears.
41. We shall let Basnage speak for himself. He says, first, the Council of Ephesus was not a General one, but only a particular Synod, as the bishops refused to wait either for the Pope’s Legates, or for the other Bishops of the East. As far as the Legates are concerned, we see (No. 28.) that St. Cyril assisted at the Council, from the beginning, and that he had been already nominated by the Pope as President; that a few days after, the other Legates arrived, and that they confirmed the Council. It is true all the Bishops of the East did not attend it, for eighty- nine Bishops seceded, and formed a Cabal apart, in the very city of Ephesus, in which they deposed St. Cyril; but a few days after, the eighty-nine were reduced to thirtyseven, among whom, were the Pelagian Bishops, and several others already deposed; and the rest, when their eyes were opened to the truth, united themselves to the Fathers of the Council, so that Theodoret, who at first adhered to the party of John of Antioch, wrote to Andrew of Samosata: ” Pars maxima Isrælis consentit inimicis, pauci vero valde sunt salvi, ac sustinent pro pietate certamen :” but John himself, afterwards, together with Theodoret and the rest who repented, subscribed to the Council, which then was recognized as Ecumenical by the whole Church. With what face, then, can Basnage say that it was a particular, and not a General Council?
42. Basnage says next (68), that it is a false supposition of Noel Alexander, that Nestorius taught that there were two Persons in Christ, or denied that Mary was the true Mother of God, and he was condemned, he says, only because he was not well understood; but how does he prove this as to the maternity of the Blessed Virgin?
By saying that Nestorius, in a certain letter he wrote to John of Antioch, admits, that as far as the words of the Gospel go, he has no objection that the Virgin should be piously called the Mother of God, but these words he afterwards interpreted in his own way. But why should we lose time in trying to interpret these obscure and equivocal expressions of his, when he expressly declares more than once, that Mary was not the Mother of God, otherwise the Gentiles ought to be excused for adoring the mothers of their gods. “Has God,” he says, ” a Mother? therefore Paganism is excusable. Mary brought not forth God, but she brought forth a man, the instrument of the Divinity.” These are his own words, quoted by Basnage himself, and he also relates that the monks of the Archimandrite, Basil, in their petition to the Emperor Theodosius, stated that Nestorius (69) said, that Mary only brought forth a man, and that nothing but flesh could be born of the flesh, and, therefore they required, that in a General Council, the foundation of the Faith should be left intact, that is, that the Word with the flesh, taken from Mary, suffered and died for the Redemption of mankind. We have, besides, a letter written by Nestorius to the Pope St. Celestine (70), in which he complains that the clergy, “aperte blasphemant, Deum Verbum tamquam originis initium de Christotocho Virgine sumsisse. Sed hanc Virginem Christotochon ausi sunt cum modo quodam Theotocon dicere, cum Ss. illi Patres per Nicæam nihil amplius de S. Virgine dixissent, nisi quia Jesus Christus incarnatus est ex Spiritu Sancto de Maria Virgine;” and he adds, “Verbum Theotocon ferri potest propter inseparabile Templum Dei Verbi ex ipsa, non quia ipsa Mater sit Verbi Dei, nemo enim antiquiorem se parit :” thus, he denies in the plainest terms, that the Blessed Virgin is Theotocon, the Mother of the Word of God, but only allows her to be Christotocon, the Mother of Christ; but St. Celestine answers him (71): “We have received your letters containing open blasphemy,” and he adds that this truth, that the only Son of God was born of Mary, is the promise to us of life and salvation.
43. Let us now see what Nestorius says of Jesus Christ. No nature, he says, can subsist without its proper subsistence, and this is the origin of his error, for he therefore gives two Persons to Christ, Divine and human, as he had two natures, and he therefore said that the Divine Word was united to Christ after he was formed a perfect man with appropriate human subsistence and personality. He says: ” Si Christus perfectus Deus, idemque perfectus homo intelligitur, ubi nature est perfectio, si hominis natura non subsistit” (72)? He also said that the union of the two natures was according to grace, or by the dignity or honour of Filiation given to the Person of Christ, and he, therefore, in general, did not call the union of the two natures a union at all, but propinquity, or inhabitation; he thus admits two united, or more properly speaking, conjoined natures, but not a true unity of person, and by two natures understands two personalities, and therefore could not bear to hear it said in speaking of Jesus Christ, that God was born, or suffered, or died. In his letter to St. Cyril, quoted by Basnage, he says : ” My brother, to ascribe birth, or suffering, or death, to the Divine Word by reason of this appropriation, is to follow the Pagans or the insane Apollinares.” These expressions prove that he did not believe that the two Natures were united in one Person. When his priest, Anastasius, preaching to the people, said : ” Let no one call Mary the Mother of God, it is not possible that God should be born of man,” and the people horrified with the blasphemy, called on Nestorius to remove the scandal given by Anastatius, he went up into the pulpit, and said: ” I never would call him God, who has been formed only two or three months,” and he never called Jesus Christ, God, but only the temple or habitation of God, as he wrote to St. Cyril. It is proper, he said, and conformable to Ecclesiastical Tradition, to confess that the body of Christ is the temple of the Divinity, and that it is joined by so sublime a connexion to his Divine self, that we may say his Divine nature appropriates to itself something which otherwise would belong to the body alone.
(1) Nat. Alex. t. 10, c. 3, a. 12, s. 1; Baron. Ann. 428, n. 1, & seq.; Orsi, t. 12, 7. 28. ex n. 1, & Floury, t. 4, l. 24, n. 54.
(2) Evagr. Hist. l, 1, c. 5.
(3) Orsi, t. 12, I 28, n. 1.
(4) Fleury, t. 4, L 24, n. 54; Nat.. loc. cit.
(5) Apud. Nat. Alex. t. 10, c. 3, art. 12
(6) Orsi, loc. cit. n. 8; Serm. 1, ap. More.
(7) Orsi, l. 28, n. 9.
(8) Orsi, n. 10; Fleury, t. 4, l. 25, n.6.
(9) St. Cyril, Ep. adMon. n. 3, apud.; Fleury, t. 4, t. 25, n. 3; Orsi, l. 28, n. 14.
(10) Epis. ad Nestor, c. 6, ap.; Fleury, ibid.
(11) Fleury, ibid.
(12) St. Cyril, Ep. ad Nest. c. 10, ap.; Fleury, I 25.
(13) St. Cyril, ad. Acac. c. 22.
(14) Libell. Basil, c. 30, n. 2.
(15) Nat. Alex. t. 10, c. 3, a. 12, s. 2; Fleury, l. 25, n. 3; Orsi, t. 12, l, 28, n. 37, and seq.
(16) Con. Ephes.p. 1, c. 3, n. 6.
(17) Conc. Ephes. p. I, c. 14.
(18) Baron. An. 430, n. 7.
(19) Fleury, t. 4, l. 25, n. 10, & seq; Nat. Alex. cit. ar. 12 & 3
(20) Conc. Ephes. p. 1, c. 26
(21) Apud, Bernini, t. 1, sec. 5, c. 4, p. 452, & Orsi, t. 12, l. 28, n. 48.
(22) Orsi, t. 13, l. 29, n. 1, ar. 2.
(23) Celest. Ep. 161.
(24) Orsi, loc. cit. n. 1, in fin.
(25) Celest Epis. 17, apud; Orsi, ibid. n. 2.
(26) Graveson, t. 3, sec. 5, col 4.
(27) Orsi, l. 29, n. 12.
(28) Orsi, loc. cit. n. 12.
(29) In actis Con. Ephes. ap. Bernin. sec. 4, c. 4, p. 458.
(30) Orsi, t. 13, l. 29, n. 18.
(31) Orsi, n. 21; Fleury, t. 4, 1. 25, n. 42.
(32) Epis. Cyr. l. 3, Conc.
(33) Floury and Orsi, loc. cit.
(34) Apud, Bcrnin. sec. 5, c. 4,; Nat, Alex. t. 10, c. 3, err. 12, s. 6.
(35) Orsi, 1. 29, n. 23, and seq.
(36) Orsi, n. 25.
(37) Cabassu. not. Con. sec. 5, n. 17, and Orsi, n. 33.
(38) Orsi, l. cit. n. 49.
(39) Orsi, t. 13, l. 30, n. 28.
(40) Orsi, n. 42.
(41) Orsi, l. 29, n. 42, & seq.
(42) Orsi, loc. cit.
(43) Orsi, l. 29, n. 52.
(44) Baron. Ann. 431, n. 98 & 99.
(45) Orsi, n. 58.
(46) Baron, n. 101; Orsi, n. 61.
(47) Baron. Ann. 451, n. 104.
(48) Baron, n. 105 & 107.
(49) Baron. Ann. 451, n. 108; Cabass. sec. v, 17; Fleury, t. 4, l. 26, n. 6.
(50) Orsi, t. 13, l.30, n. 28.
(51) Baron. Ann. 431, n. 113.
(52) Baron, n. 126 & 127.
(53) Baron, n. 159.
(54) Fleury, t. 4, L 26, n. 34.
(55) Baron. Ann. 520, n, 67; Cabass. sec. 5, n. 18; Orsi, t.l8, 1. 30, n. 74; Nat. t. 10, c. 3, ar. 12, n. 18, s. 10, Hermant, t. l. c. 148.
(53) Lupus Not. ad conc. 1 Rom.; Berti, Theol. l. 6, c. 14, prop. 3, & Hist. s. 9, c. 4; Contens. Theol. l. 8; De Prædest. app. 1, .s. 3; Ron caglia, Animad. ap. N. Alex. t. 13, 8; De Prædest. app. 1, .s. 3; Ron
(54) Sirmund. Tract, de Præd. Har. Card, de Noris, l. 2; Hist. Pelag. c. 15; Mabillon, ad sec. IV. Bened. Tournelly, Theol. t. 5, loo. cit. p. 142; Gotti, loc. sopra cit. c. 84, s. diss. 5. 2; Nat. Alex. loc. cit. t. 13, diss. 5.
(56) Baron, n. 177 & 181.
(57) Dan. temp. not. p. 241.
(58) Liberat. Brev. c. 10.
(59) Coll. Sup. c. 199.
(60) Fleury, t. 4, 1. 26, n. 36.
(61) Berti, t. 1, sec. vi. c. 2.
(62) Hermant. t. 1, c. 202.
(63) Fleury, t. 6. l. 44, n. 50.
(64) N. Alex, t . 12, s. 8, c. 2, a. 3, f. 2.
(65) Graves, f. 3; Colloq.3, p. 55.
(66) Nat. Alex. loc. cit. c. 2, a. 3, f. 1 .
(67) Basnage, ad. an. 444, n. 13.
(68) Basnage, I. cit. ad an. 430.
(69)Habetur, in Sess. 4; Con. Col.
(70) Sess. 4; Cone. Col. 1021.
(71) Tom. 4; Con. Col. 1023
(72) Tom. 5; Con. Col. 1004.
RE: St. Alphonsus Liguori: The History of Heresies and Their Refutation - Stone - 03-28-2022
CHAPTER V. HERESIES OF THE FIFTH CENTURY
ARTICLE IV. THE HERESY OF EUTYCHES
I – THE SYNOD OF ST. FLAVIAN. THE COUNCIL OR CABAL OF EPHESUS, CALLED THE "LATROCINIUM,” OR COUNCIL OF ROBBERS
ARTICLE IV. THE HERESY OF EUTYCHES
I – THE SYNOD OF ST. FLAVIAN. THE COUNCIL OR CABAL OF EPHESUS, CALLED THE "LATROCINIUM,” OR COUNCIL OF ROBBERS
44. Beginning of Eutyches; he is accused by Eusebius of Dorileum.
45. St. Flavian receives the charge.
46. Synod of St. Flavian.
47. Confession of Eutyches in the Synod.
48. Sentence of the Synod against Eutyches.
49. Complaints of Eutyches.
50. Eutyches writes to St. Peter Chrysologus, and to St. Leo.
51. Character of Dioscorus.
52 & 53. Cabal at Ephesus
54. St. Flavian is deposed, and Eusebius of Dorileum.
55. The Errors of Theodore of Mopsuestia.
56. Death of St. Flavian.
57. Character of Theodoret.
58 & 59. Writings of Theodoret against St. Cyril. Defence of Theodoret.
60. Dioscorus excommunicates St. Leo.
61. Theodosius approved the Council or Cabal and dies.
62. Reign of St. Pulcheria and Martian.
44. The heresy of Eutyches sprung up(l) in the year 448, eighteen years after the Council of Ephesus. Eutyches was a monk and priest; he was also the abbot of a monastery near Constantinople, containing three hundred monks; he was a violent opponent of his Archbishop, Nestorius, and accused him at the Council of Ephesus, where he went in person to testify to his prevarications, so that he was considered by the friends of St. Cyril, as one of the staunchest defenders of the Faith (2). St. Leo having received a letter from him, informing him that Nestorianism was again raising its head (3), answered him, approving his zeal, and encouraged him to defend the Church; imagining, that he was writing at the time, against the real Nestorians, while he, in that letter, meant all the while the Catholics, whom, he looked upon as infected with Nestorian principles (4). Eusebius, Bishop of Dorileum, in Phrygia, was also one of the most zealous opponents of Nestorius, for, while yet only a layman, in the year 429, he had the courage to stand up and reprove him publicly for his errors (5). (No. 20, supra.)
The conformity of their opinions, therefore, made him a friend of Eutyches, but, in the course of their intimacy, he, at length, perceived that he (Eutyches) went too far and fell into heretical propositions (6). He endeavoured then, for a long time, by reasoning with him, to bring him round; but, when he saw it was all in vain, he gave up his friendship and became his accuser. Even before that the Orientals (7) had already denounced the errors of Eutyches to the Emperor Theodosius; but he so adroitly turned aside the charge, that, instead of being arraigned, he became the accuser. The Bishops of the East exclaimed, that Eutyches was infected with the errors of Apollinares, but as it was an old trick, to charge with the profession of this false doctrine, the adversaries of Nestorius, and especially all who defended the anathemas of St. Cyril; and, as those same bishops, had before defended Nestorius, and, even still upheld the doctrine of Theodore of Mopsuestia, no one took any notice of their accusation of Eutyches on the present occasion. The unfortunate man, had then nothing to fear from the charges of those bishops, but when Eusebius of Dorileum, took up the matter, it wore a more serious aspect. Eusebius then, having frequently admonished him privately, and seeing that this had no effect on him, considered himself now bound by the Gospel, to denounce him to the Church, and, accordingly, laid the matter before St. Flavian, Archbishop of Constantinople (8).
45. St. Flavian foresaw, that a judicial process and condemnation of Eutyches, would occasion a great deal of tumult, for he was venerated by the people, and respected by the Court, as a man, who, having dedicated himself to God from his infancy, had now grown grey in monastic solitude, and never went outside of his cloister for a day, only, when he joined with St. Dalmatius, to defend the Council of Ephesus; the Archbishop, therefore, advised Eusebius to act with the greatest caution. Eutyches, was also protected by the Eunuch Chrisaphius, whose god-father he was, and joined with Dioscorus, Bishop of Alexandria, in opposing the Oriental Bishops, who were the first to accuse him of heresy; it would appear then, in intermeddling at all with the matter, that St. Flavian and Eusebius were joining the enemy, and opposing both the Court and Dioscorus, and thus occasioning a great disturbance in the Church; but neither this, nor any-other consideration, could restrain the zeal of Eusebius, so St. Flavian was obliged to receive the charge, and let justice take its course.
46. While this was going on, St. Flavian held a Synod for the adjustment of some disputes, between Florens of Sardis, the Metropolitan of Lydia, and two bishops of the same province. When this case was concluded (9), the Bishop of Dorileum arose, and presented a document to the Council, requiring that it should be read and inserted in the Acts. The document was read, and in it Eusebius charged Eutyches with blaspheming Jesus Christ, with speaking with disrespect of the Holy Fathers, and with accusing himself, whose whole study it was to make war with heresy, with being a heretic; he demanded, therefore, that Eutyches should be cited to appear before the Council, to give an account of his expressions, and he promised that he would be prepared to convict him of heresy, and thus, those whom he had perverted, could see the evil of their ways and repent. When the paper was read through, St. Flavian besought Eusebius to see Eutyches once more in private, and try to bring him to a better sense. Eusebius answered, that he had done so over and over already, and could bring many witnesses to prove it, but all in vain, and, he therefore, again begged of the Council, at any cost, to summon Eutyches, that he might not lead others astray, as he had already perverted a great number. Still, however, St. Flavian wished that Eusebius should try once more the effect of a private remonstrance, but he refused, as he had so often made the attempt already and could not succeed. The Synod, at length, received the charge against Eutyches, and deputed a priest and deacon to wait on him, and summon him to appear at the ensuing Session of the Council to clear himself. The second Session was then held, and in that, the two principal letters of St. Cyril, on the Incarnation of the Word, were read, that is, his second letter to Nestorius, approved by the Council of Ephesus, and the other to the Council of John, of Antioch, after the conclusion of the peace.
When these letters were read, St. Flavian said, that his Faith was, that Jesus Christ is perfect God and perfect man, composed of body and soul, consubstantial to his Father, according to his Divinity, and consubstantial to his Mother, according to his humanity, and that from the union of the two natures Divine and human, in one sole hypostasis or person, there results but one Jesus Christ, after the Incarnation of the Word, and all the other Bishops made the same profession. Other Sessions were held, and other citations were sent to Eutyches, calling on him to appear and justify himself, but he refused, and alleged as an excuse that he never left his convent, and, besides, that he was then sick (10).
47. Towards the close of the seventh Session, Eutyches, presented himself before the Council, for he could no longer refuse the repeated citations he received, but the Fathers were surprised to see him enter, accompanied by a great troop of soldiers (11), of monks, and of officers of the Prefect of the Pretorium, who would not allow him to enter the Council, till the Fathers promised to send him back safe again. He came into the Council hall, and he was followed by the ” Great Silenciary,” (an officer so called among the Romans, whose duty it was to preserve the peace of the Imperial Palace), who presented, and read an order from the Emperor, commanding that the Patrician Florentius, should attend the Council for the conservation of the Faith. Florentius came, and then Eusebius of Dorileum the accuser, and Eutyches the accused, were placed both standing in the midst of the Council. The letter of St. Cyril to the Orientals, in which, the distinction of the two Natures is expressed was then read. Eusebius then said: Eutyches does not agree to this, but teaches the contrary. When the reading of the Acts was concluded, St. Flavian said to Eutyches: You have heard what your accuser has said; declare, then, if you confess the union of the two Natures in Christ? Eutyches answered that he did. But, replied Eusebius, do you confess the two natures, after the Incarnation; and do you believe that Jesus Christ is consubstantial to us, according to the flesh or not? Eutyches turning to St. Flavian answered: I came not here to dispute, but to declare what my opinion is, I have written it in this paper, let it be read.
St. Flavian said, read it yourself. I cannot read it, said Eutyches. He then made this confession: “I adore the Father with the Son, and the Son with the Father, and the Holy Ghost with the Father and the Son. I confess his coming in the flesh, taken from the flesh of the Holy Virgin, and, that he has been made perfect man for our salvation.” Flavian again asked him: Do you now confess, here present, that Jesus Christ has two Natures? ” Hitherto, I have not said so, said he, now I confess it.” Florentius asked him: If he professed that there are two Natures in Christ, and that Jesus Christ is consubstantial to us? Eutyches answered: “I have read in Cyril and Athanasius, that Christ was of two Natures, and I, therefore, confess that our Lord was, before his Incarnation, of two Natures, but after these were united, they do not say any longer that he had two Natures, but only one; let St. Athanasius be read, and you will see that he does not say two Natures.” Eutyches did not advert, that both his propositions were open heresy, as St. Leo well remarks in his letter: The second proposition, that is, that Christ, after the union of the two Natures, was of only one Nature. The human nature, as Eutyches said, being absorbed in and confounded with the Divine Nature, would prove, that the Divinity itself in Christ had suffered and died, and, that the sufferings and death of Christ were only a mere fable. The first proposition was no less heretical than the second, that Christ, previous to his Incarnation, had two natures for this could only be sustained by upholding the heresy of Origen, that the souls of men were all created before the beginning of the world, and then, from time to time, sent to inhabit the bodies of men.
48. When Eutyches spoke thus, Basil of Seleucia said to him, ” If you do not say that there were two Natures after the union, you admit a mixture or confusion.” Florentius replied, ” He who does not admit two Natures in Christ, does not believe as he ought.” Then the Council exclaimed: ” Faith ought not to be forced. He will not submit; what do you exhort him for?” St. Flavian then, with consent of the Bishops, pronounced the sentence in these terms, ” Eutyches, Priest, and Archiman drite, and fully convicted, both by his past acts, and his present confessions, to hold the errors of Valentine and Apollinares, and more so, as he has had no regard to our admonitions : therefore, weeping and sighing for his total loss, we declare, on the part of Jesus Christ, whom he blasphemes, that he is deprived of every priestly grade, of our communion, and of the government of his monastery; and we make known this, that all those who hold any conversation or communication with him shall be excommunicated” (12). Here are the words of the decree, as quoted by Noel Alexander (13) : ” Per omnia Eutiches quondam Presbyter, et Archimandrita, Valentini, et Apollinaris perversitatibus compertus est ægrotare, et eorum blasphemias incommutabiliter sequi; qui nec nostram reveritus persuasionem, atque doctrinam, rectis noluit consentire dogmatibus. Unde illacrymati, et gementes perfectam ejus perditionem, decrevimus per Dominum N. Jesum Christum, quem blasphematus est, extraneum eum esse ab omni officio Sacerdotali, et a nostra communione, et primatu Monasterii; scientibus hoc omnibus, qui cum eo exinde colloquentur, aut eum convenerint, quoniam rei erunt et ipsi pœne excommunationis.” This sentence was subscribed by thirty-two Bishops, and twenty-three Abbots, of whom eighteen were Priests, one a Deacon, and four laymen. When the Council was terminated, Eutyches said to the Patrician Florentius, in a low voice, that he appealed to the Council of the Most Holy Bishop of Rome, and of the Bishops of Alexandria, of Jerusalem, and of Thessalonica, and Florentius immediately communicated it to St. Flavian, as he was leaving the hall to go to his own apartment. This expression, thus privately dropped (14), gave a handle to Eutyches afterwards to boast that he had appealed to the Pope, to whom he wrote, as we shall soon see.
49. This pretended appeal did not prevent St. Flavian from publishing the sentence of excommunication, but Eutyches made use of it, to publish a great many false charges against the Synod, which he accused of trampling on all the rules of justice in his regard.
The sentence of the Council was published, by order of St. Flavian, in all the Monasteries, and subscribed by their Archimandrites; but the Monks of the Monastery Eutyches governed, instead of separating themselves from his communion, preferred to remain without Sacraments, and some of them even died without the Viaticum, sooner than forsake their impious master. Eutyches complained very much of St. Flavian, for calling on the heads of the other Monasteries to subscribe his sentence, as a novelty never before used in the Church, not even against heretics; but, on the other hand, it was a new thing to find an Abbot chief of a heretical Sect, and disseminating his pestilent errors in the Monasteries. He also complained that St. Flavian had removed his protests, posted up in Constantinople, against the Council, and which were a tissue of abuse and calumny, as if he had any right to stir up the people against a Council now closed, or to defend his pretended innocence by calumnious libels (15).
50. He next wrote to St. Peter Chrysologus, Bishop of Ravenna, complaining of the judgment of St. Flavian, with the intention of gaining the favour of this holy Bishop, who had great influence with the Emperor Valentinian, and his mother, Placida, who, in general, resided at Ravenna. St. Peter answered him, that, as he had not received any letter from Flavian, nor heard what that Bishop had to say in the matter, he could give no opinion on the controversy, and he exhorts him to read and obey whatever the Pontiff, St. Leo, would write to him,” Above all things, we advise you, honourable brother, obediently to attend to whatever is written by his Holiness the Pope, since St. Peter, who lives and presides in his See, affords to those who seek it the truth of Faith.” This letter is found in Bernini and Peter Annatus (16). Both Eutyches and St. Flavian wrote afterwards to St. Leo Eutyches, to complain of the grievances he asserted were inflicted on him by the Council of Constantinople, and St. Flavian, to explain the just cause he had to depose and excommunicate Eutyches.
St. Leo having received the letter of Eutyches before that of St. Flavian, wrote to him (17), wondering that he had not already written to him what he thought of the matter, for he could not make out, from the letter of Eutyches, the reason of his excommunication. He, therefore, ordered him to inform him immediately of the whole transaction, and especially of the erroneous doctrine for which he was condemned, that, as the Emperor wished, an end might be put to this discord, and peace restored, especially as Eutyches professed his willingness to be corrected, if it was proved he had erred. St. Flavian answered the Pope, giving him a full account of every thing, and, among the rest, that Eutyches, in place of repenting, was only endeavouring to disturb the Church of Constantinople, by wicked libels and petitions to the Emperor, for a revision of the Acts of the Synod at which he was condemned, and making charges to the effect that the Acts were falsified. In fact, on the 8th of April, 449, another assembly was held in Constantinople, by order of the Emperor, and St. Flavian (18) was obliged to present his profession of Faith, in which he declares, that he recognizes in Jesus Christ two Natures after the Incarnation, in one Person, and that he did not also refuse to say one nature of the Divine Word, if the words incarnate and humanized were also used, and he excommunicated Nestorius and all who divided Jesus Christ into two persons (19). No other matter of importance was decided in that meeting.
51. In the meantime, Dioscorus, Patriarch of Alexandria, at the instigation of Eutyches, and urged on by Chrysaphius, his protector, wrote to the Emperor, that it was necessary to convoke a General Council, and he obtained an order for it, through the influence of Chrysaphius. Before we proceed, however, it will be necessary to give an insight into the character of Dioscorus, as we shall have to speak frequently of his wickedness hereafter. He concealed his vices under an exterior of virtue, to obtain the Bishopric of Alexandria (20), in which, for his own misfortune, he was successful; he was avaricious, immoral, and furiously violent. When placed on the Episcopal throne of Alexandria, he threw aside all restraint; treated most cruelly those Ecclesiastics who were honoured by St. Cyril; some he reduced to beggary, and even burned their houses, and tortured them in prison; others he sent into banishment.
He kept improper women in his palace, and publicly bathed with them, to the insufferable scandal of the people. He so persecuted the nephews of St. Cyril, depriving them of all their property, that he drove them as wanderers through the world, while he made a show with their property, distributing it among the bakers and tavern-keepers of the city, that they might sell better bread and wine (21). He was charged with many homicides, and with causing a famine in Egypt by his insatiable avarice. It is even told of him that, a lady having left her property to the hospitals and the monasteries, he ordered it to be distributed among the actors and prostitutes of Alexandria. Hermant asserts (22) that he followed the errors of the Origenists and the Arians : such was the protector of Eutyches. Now to the subject.
52. Theodosius convoked the Council, in Ephesus, for the 1st of August, 449 (it was not held, however, till the 8th), and sent his diploma to Dioscorus, appointing him President, with power to assemble whatever bishops he pleased to try the case of Eutyches. Never, perhaps, before was the world disgraced by such acts of injustice as were committed by Dioscorus in that Synod, which has been justly called, by Ecclesiastical writers, the Latrocinium Epliesinium, or meeting of robbers at Ephesus; for he, abandoning himself to his innate ferocity, used horrible violence towards the Catholic Bishops, and even towards the two Legates, Hilary, Deacon of the Roman Church, and Julius, Bishop of Pozzuoli, sent by St. Leo, to represent him at the Council. When these saw the Holy See excluded from the presidency of the Council, in their persons, for Dioscorus, who usurped the first place, they judged it better to take the last place, and to appear no longer as Legates of the Pope, when they saw his authority slighted.
Lucretius, the Pope’s Legate in the Council of Chalcedon, charged Dioscorus with this after, and called him to answer for his audacity, in holding a Synod in Ephesus, without the authority of the Apostolic See, which never, he said, has been lawful, nor has ever been done; and he could not have made this charge, if Hilary and Julius had been received in the Council as Legates of the Pope (23). Nevertheless, they several times requested that the letter of Pope Leo should he read (24); but Dioscorus would never allow it, calling for other documents to be read, according to his own pleasure; neither would he allow any examination of Articles of Faith, fulminating anathemas against any one who would allude to it. It was quite enough, he said, to hold by what was decided in the Councils of Nice and Ephesus, and, since they had decided that, no novelty should now be introduced to interfere with their decisions (25).
53. Dioscorus now called on Eutyches to read his profession of Faith and the impious heresiarch anathematized Apollinares and Nestorius, or any one that would assert that the flesh of Jesus Christ came down from heaven. When he came to this passage, Basil of Seleucia interrupted him, and asked him to explain the manner in which he believed the Word had taken human flesh? but he gave him no answer, nor did the heads of the Synod, as they ought to have done, oblige him to explain himself, for this was the principal point of the whole question; for, if the Divine Nature destroyed the human nature in the Incarnation, or the human nature was confounded with the Divine Nature, as the Eutychians asserted, how could it be said that the Word of God took human flesh ? However, without waiting for the answer to the question of Basil, the notary was ordered to proceed with the reading of the document of Eutyches, in which he complained of the sentence passed on him, and concluded by requiring that his persecutors should be punished (26). When this statement of Eutyches was read, St. Flavian said that it was but just that his accuser, Eusebius of Dorileum, should be heard likewise, but not only this was refused, but St. Flavian himself, was told that he was not allowed to speak, as the Emperor had given positive orders that none of those who had passed judgment on Eutyches before should be allowed to say a word without leave of the Synod (27).
54. The Acts of the Synod, held by St. Flavian, were then read, and also the two letters of St. Cyril to Nestorius and John of Antioch, in which St. Cyril approved of the expression of the two Natures. Eustatius of Beyrooth, a partizan of Eutyches, then remarked to the Council that St. Cyril, in two other letters written to Acacius of Melitis and Valerian of Iconium, did not use the words, two Natures, but the one Nature of the Divine Word Incarnate, and thus this Eutychian bishop wished to make it appear that St. Cyril held the same faith as Eutyches, but this was all a calumny against St. Cyril, for the saint in a thousand passages of his writings had expressly spoken of the two Natures of Christ, and besides the expression, the one nature of the Incarnate Word only meant the union in Christ of two distinct Natures, the Divine and human. And this was most clearly expressed soon after, in the Council of Chalcedon, in which it was laid down that these words, used first by St. Cyril, and afterwards by St. Flavian, were only used in that sense, and an anathema was pronounced against any one using the expression, ” the one nature,” with the intention of denying that the flesh of Christ was consubstantial with ours. The votes given in the Council held by St. Flavian were next read, and when the vote of Basil of Seleucia, that two Natures should be required in Christ, was read out, all the Egyptians and the monks, followers of Barsuma, cried out: ” Let him be cut in two who speaks of two natures in Christ; he is a Nestorian heretic.” It was then read out that Eusebius of Dorileum had pressed Eutyches to confess two Natures in Christ, and when the same party heard this, they cried out with all their force: ” To the pile with Eusebius, let him be burned alive; as he has divided Jesus Christ, let him be cut in two halves himself” (28). Dioscorus being now assured of the suffrages of the bishops, for some adhered to him through liking, and more through terror, called on every one to give his sentence; and thus the faith of Eutyches was approved of, and he was re-established in his dignity, and the monks, his adherents, who were excommunicated by St. Flavian, were again received into communion (29).
55. The great object which Dioscorus had in view, however, was the deposition of St. Flavian and of Eusebius of Dorileum, and he therefore ordered the decree of the Synod antecedent to that of Ephesus to be read, prohibiting, under pain of anathema and deposition, any other Symbol but that of Nice to be used. The intention of the Council in passing this law, was to reject the malignant Symbol of Theodore of Mopsuestia, in which, as Rabbula, Bishop of Edessa (30), relates, the Nestorian blasphemy was introduced, and it was professed : First That the Holy Virgin was not the real Mother of God. Second That man was not united to the Word according to the substance, but through good will. Third That Jesus Christ ought to be adored but only as the image of God. Fourth That the flesh of Jesus Christ availeth nothing. Theodore, besides, denied Original Sin, and on that account, when Julian and his fellow Pelagians were banished out of Italy by the Pope St. Celestine, they went to Theodore, who, as Marius Mercator informs us, received them kindly. Cassianus (31) also tells us that the Pelagians taught the same errors as Nestorius and Theodore, that is, that Christ was but a mere man, and they meant to prove by that proposition that it was possible for a man to be without Original Sin, as he was so, and hence they deduced as an inference, that other men might be without sin, likewise, if they wished to be so. But to the point; the intention of the Council then was to reject the Symbol of the impious Theodore, as it was afterwards declared in the fifth Ecumenical Council, in which, as we shall see in the following chapter, the Three Chapters were condemned, as was also Theodore and his writings; but it was not the intention of the Council of Ephesus, nor did it ever prohibit the use of other words, besides those used in the Council of Nice, when these expressions are only used to express more clearly the sense of any Catholic dogma, impugned by some new heresy not taken into consideration of the Council of Nice.
Still, Dioscorus, intent on the condemnation of St. Flavian and Eusebius, ordered that the Decree of the Council of Ephesus should be read, and then immediately called on the notaries, and without any form of trial, or giving St. Flavian any time to defend himself, ordered one of the notaries to read the sentence of deposition against these two bishops, on the false charge that they had introduced novelties in Faith, and had not adhered to the words of the Symbol of Nice (32). St. Flavian instantly put into the hands of the Legates of the Pope, an appeal against the sentence (33). Several Bishops, horrified at such a glaring act of injustice, endeavoured to soothe Dioscorus; some of them even throwing themselves at his feet, and embracing his knees, besought him to revoke the sentence, but all to no avail, for he told them he would sooner cut out his own tongue than revoke it; and when they still, in the most pressing manner, continued to implore him to change his mind, he stood up on the steps of the throne and cried out : “Are you then determined to create a sedition; where then are the Counts ?” The Counts at once came into the church with a strong body of soldiers, and were joined by the partisans of Diodorus and the monks of Barsumas, so that the church became a scene of tumult and confusion. The Bishops all fled, some to one part of the edifice, some to another, but the doors were all bolted, and guarded, so that no one could escape. Dioscorus then, to give a finishing stroke to this villany, presented a blank paper to the Bishops, that they might subscribe the sentence, and those who showed any disposition to refuse, were threatened with deposition, banishment, and even with death, as partisans of the Nestorian heresy. On all sides shouts arose : ” Cut them in pieces if they say there are two Natures.” The soldiers obliged them to sign their names, and if they refused, beat them with clubs, threatened them with drawn swords, and even wounded some of them, so that the church was sprinkled with their blood. The Bishops thus constrained, finally all signed the sentence of deposition, but said when the Synod was dissolved, that it was not they, but the soldiers, who deposed St. Flavian; but this excuse went but a little way to justify them, for no Christian, let alone a Bishop, should through fear, condemn an innocent man, or betray the truth (34).
56.The wretch Dioscorus was so enraged at the appeal of St. Flavian, that, not satisfied with having deposed and banished this holy Bishop, he laid violent hands on him, and became his executioner, or, at all events, the cause of his death, for he was so blinded with passion, that he struck him on the face, kicked him in the stomach, and throwing him on the ground, trampled on his belly. Timothy Eleurus, and Peter Mongus, who afterwards disgraced the Episcopal throne of Alexandria, and the impious Barsumas, who cried out in the Synod : ” Kill him, kill him,” were also parties to his death, and it is on that account, that when Barsumas presented himself afterwards in the Council of Chalcedon, they cried out : ” Turn out the murderer Barsumas; cast the murderer to the beasts.” St. Flavian did not die on the spot, but being dragged to prison, and given in the hands of the guards the next day to be conveyed to the place of his banishment, after three days weary travelling, he arrived at Epipa, a city of Lydia, and then gave up his holy soul into the hands of his Maker. This is the account Cardinal Orsi gives of his death (35), and Fleury and Hermant agree with him in the particulars; and it is on this account the Fathers of the Council of Chalcedon did not scruple to give him the title of Martyr (36). Eusebius of Dorileum escaped, because he was not allowed admission into this impious meeting; he was deposed and condemned to exile, but escaped to Rome, where St. Leo received him into his communion, and retained him with himself, till his departure for the Council of Chalcedon. In the meanwhile, Dioscorus continued to publish anathemas and suspensions against these Bishops whom he any ways suspected were opposed to the doctrines of Eutyches; he condemned Theodoret, Bishop of Cyrus, as a heretic, in his absence, and proscribed his works, on account of his having written against the anathemas of St. Cyril (37). It is necessary, in order to explain the injustice of condemning Theodoret as a heretic, to give some account of this learned and remarkable man.
57. Cardinal Orsi (38) very justly remarks, that if Theodoret never was so unfortunate as to oppose for some time St, Cyril, the great defender of the Faith, against Nestorius, his name, at the present day, would be venerated like the venerable names of St. Basil, St. Chrystostom, and St. Gregory, whose equal, perhaps, he was both in virtue and learning.
He was born in Antioch (39), about the end of the fourth century. After the death of his parents, who were both rich and noble, he sold all his property, and gave it to the poor, reserving nothing for himself. He retired to the solitude of a monastery, and spent the greater part of the day in prayer, and the remainder in the study of literature, both sacred and profane. His master, unfortunately, was Theodore of Mopsuestia, of whose errors we have already spoken (n. 48), but he did not infect his disciple with them. He was forced from his solitude, and against his will made Bishop of Cyrus, a small, but very populous See, with eight hundred churches. The desire of assisting the many poor souls in his diocese, infected with heresy, overcame his attachment to his solitude, and his repugnance to accept of any dignity, so he gave up his whole soul to the discharge of his pastoral duties, nourishing the piety of his people, and combatting the heresies which infected part of his diocese; and he succeeded in rescuing eight villages from the darkness of the heresy of Marcion.
58. On reading the Anathematisms of St. Cyril (40), he wrote against them, and in no measured terms, and appeared rather to favour Nestorius than St. Cyril, who laboured to convince him of his mistake. Although he appeared to recognize only one Christ alone, and called the Holy Virgin the Mother of God, still, his arguments would lead us to believe, that he divided Christ into two persons, and gave Mary the title of Mother of God, in the sense of Nestorius, that is, mother of him who was the temple of God. St. Cyril, withal, justified him, and said, that though his mode of expressing himself was rash, that they agreed in Faith, and, he therefore writes (41), that he did not wish to fall out with Theodoret, as long as he confessed that God was not separated from human nature, and that Christ was not separated from the Divinity, but was both God and man.
On the other hand, Theodoret (42), being in Antioch when the letters of Pope St. Celestine and St. Cyril were received, joined with John, Patriarch of Antioch, and wrote to Nestorius, that he should not disturb the Church, by denying to Mary the title of the Mother of God, because, said he, that cannot be denied without corrupting the truth of the Incarnation of the Word. It cannot be doubted, but that Theodoret was somewhat reprehensible in his writings, against the Anathematisms of St. Cyril, and the Cabal of Ephesus, and in his defence of Theodore and Nestorius, and those productions were condemned in the second Council of Constantinople; but we should not forget, that he erred, not in holding the doctrines of Nestorius, but in believing that St. Cyril was an upholder of the doctrines of Apollinares, so that when he read (43) St. Cyril’s letter, to Acacius of Berea, in which the Saint clears himself from the imputation of being a favourer of the doctrines of Apollinares, and professes, that he firmly believes, that the body of Christ was animated by a reasoning soul, and expresses his detestation of the confusion of the two Natures, and declares that he holds the nature of the Word to be impassable, but that Christ suffered according to the flesh; he at once, thinking that St. Cyril had now forsaken the doctrine of Apollinares (44), and no longer believed in the confusion of the two Natures, felt quite happy, and said, that St. Cyril now followed the pure doctrine of the Fathers, and wrote him a loving letter, because, as he said, he now recognized in the Incarnation of the Word, one Son alone, and one Christ alone, with the distinction of the two Natures; St. Cyril cordially answered him, and this was the commencement of a friendly correspondence between them (45).
59. Theodoret next wrote his work Eranistes (the Beggar), against the Eutychians (46), and, on that account, through the calumnies of Eutyches, he was first confined by the Emperor to his Diocese of Cyrus, and was afterwards deposed by Dioscorus, in the Cabal of Ephesus, but he appealed from this sentence to St. Leo, and subsequently retired to his old monastery, near Apamea (47).
He was afterwards recalled from exile, by Marcian (48), and St. Leo declared him innocent, and reinstated him in the See of Cyrus (49). Finally, in the Council of Chalcedon, after publicly anathematizing Nestorius, and all who did not call the Virgin Mary the Mother of God, and divided Jesus Christ into two Sons, he was received by all the Fathers, and declared worthy of being restored to his See (50). It is supposed that he lived to the year 458, and that, towards the end of his life, he composed the treatise on Heretical Fables (51).
60. We now come back to the impious Synod of Ephesus. The majority of the Bishops having now subscribed the condemnation of St. Flavian, the few, who refused to lend themselves to this iniquity, were sent into banishment by Dioscorus. These few confessors alone, and Hilary, the Pope’s Legate, were the only members who had the courage to protest, and declared that a Cabal like that would never be approved of by the Pope, or be received, as it undermined the Apostles Creed, and that they never would, through terror, give up the Faith they professed (52). Dioscorus, in the meanwhile, having now closed the meeting, returned in joy and triumph to Alexandria, and to such a pitch did his arrogance then arrive, that he solemnly published a sentence of excommunication against St. Leo, and partly by cajolery, and partly by terror, obliged about ten Bishops, who returned with him to Egypt, to subscribe to it, though they did it weeping, and lamenting the horrible impiety they were called on to perform (53). Orsi (54) says, on the authority of the statement made to the Council of Chalcedon, by Theodore, a Deacon of Alexandria, that Dioscorus was guilty of this act of madness in Nice, beyond the bounds of Egypt (55).
61. When St. Leo heard of these atrocious proceedings, he wrote to Theodosius, explaining to him the deplorable state to which Religion was reduced by Dioscorus, but all in vain, for the Emperor, gained over by his courtiers, in favour of Eutyches, and regardless of the prayer of the Pope, and the sage advices of the Princess Pulcheria, instead of punishing the efforts the Eutychians were making, reestablished Eutyches himself in all his honors, condemned the memory of St. Flavian, and approved of all that was done in Ephesus (56). He, therefore, wrote to St. Leo, that as the Council of Ephesus had examined everything according to the rules of justice and of the Faith, and as those unworthy of the dignity of the priesthood were deprived of it, so those who were worthy were re-established in the grade they before held (57). Such was the answer of Theodosius; but God, who always watches over his flock, though he sometimes appears to sleep, soon after removed this Prince out of the world, in the year 450, the 59th of his age; previous to his death, however, as Orsi remarks (58), he listened to the remonstrances of his holy sister, and gave several proofs of his sorrow for having favoured Eutyches. As he died without issue, he left the Empire to his sister, St. Pulcheria, whose piety and wisdom soon healed the disorders caused by the weakness of her brother, in allowing himself to be governed by his courtiers. Though no one could be found more worthy to govern the Empire alone than she was, still her subjects were anxious that she should marry, and give them a new Emperor. She was, however, now advanced in years, and besides, had made a vow of perpetual virginity; anxious, there fore, to please her subjects, and at the same time, remain faithful to her promises to God, she gave her hand to the Senator Marcian, of whose probity and regard for herself, personally, she was perfectly convinced, and who, she well knew, was better qualified than any other to govern the Empire; and his subsequent conduct proved, that her opinion of his goodness was not unfounded. In the beginning of his career, this great man was only a private soldier, but his wisdom and prudence elevated him to the senatorial rank (59).
(1) Nat. Alex. 1. 10, c. 3, ar. 13, s. 1;.Baron. An. 448, ex. n. 19; Hermant, t. 1, c. 155; Fleury, t. 4, l. 27, n. 23
(2) Liberat. Brev. c. 11.
(3) St. Leo, Ep. 19, I. 6.
(4) Fleury, t. 4, I. 27, n. 23 (5) Snip. l. 25, n. 2, ap. Fleury, cit. n. 23
(6) Orsi, ibid. n. 16; Fleury, cit. n. 23; Nat. Alex. t. 10, or. 13, s. 2.
(7) Orsi, t. 14, Z. 32, n. 9.
(8) Orsi, ibid. n. 16; Fleury, l. c.
(9) Orsi, loc. cit. n. 17; Fleury, A 27, n. 24.
(10) Orsi, n. 18.
(11) Fleury, 7. 27, n. 28; Orsi, t. 14, t I 32, n. 23; Baron. An. 448, n. 48; Hermant. t. 1, c. 155.
(12) Fleury, t. 4, l. 27, n. 28; Orsi, t. 14, I. 52, n. 23.
(13) Nat. Alex. t. 10, c. 3, art. 13, sec. 4.
(14) St. Leo, Epis. 20, al. 8.
(15) Orsi, cit. n. 33.
(16) Bernin. t. 1, sec. 5, c. 6, p. 510;. Petr. Anat. Ap. par ad Theol. I. 4, de Script. Eccl. art. 30.
(17) St. Leo, Epis. 20, ap. Orsi, ibid, n. 24, 25; ileury, n. 31, 32
(18) Liberat. Brevia. c. 11.
(19) Fleury, t. 4, l. 97, n. 31; Nat. Alex. c. 3, art. 13, sec. 6, 7.
(20) Hermant, t. 1, c. 156.
(21) Baron. Ann. 444, n. 33, ex Lib.
(22) Hermant, loc. cit.
(23) Liberat. Brevia. c. 12.
(24) Orsi, n. 41.
(25) Orsi, n. 52.
(26) Orsi, n. 53.
(27) Orsi, n. 14, l. 32, n. 54.
(28) Orsi, n. 55.
(29) Orsi, n 56; Baron. Ann. 448, it. 91, ad 93.
(30) Fleury, t. 4, Z, 26, n. 36, in fine.
(31) Cassian. l. 1, de Incar. contra Nestor, c. 2 & 3.
(32) Fleury, L 27, n. 41.
(33) Orsi, l. 33, n. 58; Baron. Ann. 449, n. 92.
(34) Orsi, n. 59 & 60.
(35) Orsi. t, 14, 1. 32, n. 62; Fleury, t. 4, 1. 27, n. 41; Hermant. t. 1, c. 157.
(36) Orsi, l. 14, I. 33, n. 62, vide; Fleury, f.4, l. 67, n. 41, t. 1; Ber. p. 552.
(37) Orsi, n. 68.
(38) Orsi, t. 12, l. 28, n. 49.
(39) Nat. Alex. t. 10, c. 4, n. 28; Orsi, loc. cit. n. 50.
(40) Orsi, l. 28, n. 62.
(41) St. Cyril, Apol. cap.
(42) Orsi, t. 13, l. 30, n. 66 & seq.
(43) Orsi, t. 13, l. 30, n. 12.
(44) Orsi, n. 13.
(45) Orsi, t. 13, l. 30, n. 67.
(46) Orsi, t. 14, 1. 32, n. 10 & 11.
(47) Orsi, t14, l.32, n.68,&seq. ad. 85,
(48) Orsi, t. 14, l. 33, n. 3.
(49) Orsi, ibid. n. 20.
(50) Orsi, ibid. n. 70.
(51) Orsi, ibid. n. 20.
(52) Orsi, t. 14, l. 13, n. 61.
(53) Hermant. t. 1, c. 157; Fleury, t. 4, l. 27, n. 41.
(54) Orsi, t. 14, I 32, n. 97.
(55) Libel. Theo. set. Con. Chal. v;. Fleury, l. cit.
(56) Hermant. t. 1, c. 157.
(57) Orsi, l. 32, n. 90.
(58) Orsi, loc. cit. n. 101.
(59) Hermant. t. I, c. 158.
RE: St. Alphonsus Liguori: The History of Heresies and Their Refutation - Stone - 03-29-2022
CHAPTER V. HERESIES OF THE FIFTH CENTURY
V. THE COUNCIL OF CHALCEDON
V. THE COUNCIL OF CHALCEDON
62. A Council is assembled in Chalcedon, under the Emperor Martian, and the Pope St. Leo.
63. The cause of Dioscorus is tried in the first Session.
64. He is Condemned.
65. Articles of Faith defined in opposition to the Eutychian Heresy, according to the Letter of St. Leo.
66. Privileges granted by the Council to the Patriarch of Constantinople.
67. Refused by St. Leo.
68. Eutyches and Dioscorus die in their obstinacy.
69. Theodosius, head of the Eutychians in Jerusalem.
70. His Cruelty.
71. Death of St. Pulcheria and of Martian.
72. Timothy Eleurus intruded into the See of Alexandria.
73. Martyrdom of St. Proterius, the true Bishop.
74. Leo succeeds Marcian in the Empire.
75. Eleurus is expelled from the See of Alexandria, and Timothy Salofacialus is elected.
76. Zeno is made Emperor; he puts Basiliscus to death. Eleurus commits suicide.
77. St. Simon Stilites.
78. His happy Death.
79. Peter the Stammerer intruded into the See of Alexandria.
62. Marcian was proclaimed Emperor on the 24th of August, in the year 450, and on assuming the Imperial power, recognizing in his elevation the work of God, he, at once, began to advance His glory, and try every means to banish heresy from his dominions. With that intention, he wrote two letters to Pope Leo, praying him to convoke a Council, and preside at it in person, or, at all events, to send his Legates, and strive to give peace to the Church. St. Pulcheria wrote to St. Leo, likewise, and informed him of the translation of the body of St. Flavian to Constantinople, and, also, that Anatolius, the Patriarch of that city, had already subscribed the letter he, the Pope, had sent to St. Flavian, against the heresy of Eutyches; that all who had been banished were now recalled; and she prayed him, to do what was in his power to have the Council celebrated (1). The Pope was highly delighted that what he sought for so anxiously, during the reign of Theodosius, was now in his power, but he requested that the Council should be put off for a time, for the Huns, under Attila, overran Italy, and the Bishops could not, with safety, proceed to the place of meeting.
The barbarians were soon after defeated by the Franks, and St. Leo now set about convening the Council, and, at once, sent as his Legates to Constantinople, Pascasinus, Bishop of Lilibeum, in Sicily, Julian of Cos, Lucentius of Ascoli, and Basil, and Boniface, Priests of the Roman Church (2). The Emperor, at first, was desirous that the Council should be held in Nice, but, for just reasons, he was satisfied afterwards that it should be transferred to Chalcedon. This Council was celebrated in the year 451, in the great Church of St. Euphemia, Virgin, and Martyr; and St. Leo (3) says, it was attended by six hundred Bishops; but Liberatus and Marcellinus (4) tell us, the number was six hundred and thirty; and Nicephorus (5) raises it to six hundred and thirty-six.
63. The first matter the Council deliberated on in the first Session, held on the 8th of October, 451, was the examination of the conduct of the impious Dioscorus. He went to the Synod with the hope that his party would be still all-powerful through the Bishops who subscribed the acts of the Cabal of Ephesus, but Pascasinus standing up, said that Dioscorus should not take his seat in the Council, but should present himself as a criminal, to be judged; and seeing him then seated among the Bishops, he called on the Judges and the Senate to have him expelled, otherwise he and his colleagues would leave the Council. The Imperial ministers demanded from the Legate his reasons for calling for the expulsion of Dioscorus, and then Lucentius, another of the Legates, answered that he had dared to summon a Synod, without the authority of the Apostolic See, which never was lawful, nor ever before done (6). Dioscorus then took his seat in the middle of the church, and Eusebius of Dorileum, likewise, as his accuser, on account of the sentence pronounced against himself and against St. Flavian, and he demanded that the Acts of the Council of Ephesus should be read. The letter of the Emperor for the convocation of the Council was first read, and Theodoret, on account of his writings against St. Cyril, was at first prevented from taking his place among the Fathers, but as St. Leo and the Emperor Marcian, had re-established him in his See, he was introduced as one of the members.
His enemies, however, immediately began tumultuously to oppose his admission, so the Imperial Officers ordered him to sit also in the middle as an accuser, but without prejudice to his rights, and he was afterwards re-established in his See by the Council itself, after anathematizing the errors of Nestorius, and subscribing the definition of Faith, and the Epistle of the Pope, St. Leo (7). The Acts of the Latrodnium of Ephesus were next read, and the Profession of Faith of St. Flavian, and the Imperial Judges asked the Council if it was Catholic. The Legates answered in the affirmative, as it coincided with the letter of St. Leo. Many of the Bishops then, who sat with Dioscorus’s party, went over to the other side, but he, though left alone almost, as only a few Egyptian Bishops held on to him, still persevered in maintaining the Eutychian errors, and asserting that after the union of the Divinity with the humanity of Christ, we should not say those were two Natures, but only one in the Incarnate Word. When the reading of the Acts was finished, the Imperial Minister declared that the innocence of St. Flavian and Eusebius of Dorileurn, was fully established, and that those Bishops who had caused them to be deposed, should undergo the same sentence themselves, and thus the first Synod was concluded (8).
64. The second Synod was held on the 10th of October, to decide on the Faith that should be held; the two creeds of Nice and Constantinople, the letter of St. Leo, and the two letters of St. Cyril, were read, and the Bishops then exclaimed : ” We all believe the same. Peter has spoken by the mouth of Leo; anathema to him who does not believe likewise.” A petition, presented by Eusebius, against the injustice practised by Dioscorus, was then read, but he had left the church. Three Bishops were sent to summon him before the Council, but on various false pretences he refused to appear, though cited three times. The Legates, then, in the name of the Pope, declared him excommunicated and deposed from his Bishopric, and all the Bishops, both verbally and in writing, confirmed the sentence, which was sanctioned, likewise, by Marcian and St. Pulcheria (9).
Some monks of the Eutychian party now presented themselves before the Synod; the principal among them were Carosus, Dorotheus, and Maximus. When these and their party entered the church (and among them was Barsumas, at whose appearance the Bishops all cried out : ” Out with the murderer of St. Flavian”, they impudently demanded that Dioscorus and the other Bishops who came with him from Egypt, should be admitted as members of the assembly, and in case this demand was rejected, they would separate themselves, they said, from the communion of the Council. They received for answer, that in that case they would be deposed, and that if they persevered in disturbing the Church, they would be punished, as creators of sedition, by the secular power; but as they pertinaciously persevered, the Council gave them thirty days to consider themselves, at the expiration of which they would be punished as they deserved (10).
65. After this, the Bishops subscribed the Dogmatical Epistle, of St. Leo, and set about definitively arranging the articles of Faith in opposition to the heresy of Eutyches; a formula composed by Anatolius, Patriarch of Constantinople, and some other Bishops, was read, but was not received by the Pope’s Legates (11), for it said that Christ was in two Natures, but it did not say that he was of two Natures. The Bishops, who pertinaciously declared that nothing should be added to the ancient Symbols, were thus reasoned with by the Judges; Dioscorus, said they, is satisfied that it should be declared that Christ is in two Natures, but will not allow that he is of two Natures; on the other hand, St. Leo says, that there are in Christ two Natures united, without confusion or divisibility; whom then will you follow, Leo or Dioscorus? Then all cried out: ” We believe as Leo believes; he has properly expounded the Faith; whosoever contradicts it is an Eutychian.” The judges then added : “So you agree to the definition, according to the judgment of our Holy Father, that there are in Christ two Natures, united without confusion or division.”
Thus the clamours were finally stopped, and a formula adopted (12), in which it was declared, that the Fathers took for the rule of their definition, the Symbols of the two Councils of Nice and Constantinople, which were also the rule for that adopted in the Council of Ephesus, in which Pope Celestine and St. Cyril presided; in continuation it was said, that although the forementioned Symbols were sufficient for the full knowledge of the Faith, nevertheless, as the inventors of new heresies had adopted new expressions, and corrupting the doctrine of the Mystery of the Incarnation, some of them denied to the Virgin the title of the Mother of God, and others taught, that the nature of the Divinity and of the humanity were one and the same, and, that the Divine Nature was passible in Christ, therefore the holy Council confirmed both the Faith of the three hundred and eighteen Fathers of Nice, and of the one hundred and fifty Fathers of Constantinople; and, as the Council of Constantinople has added some words to the Creed of Nice, not because it was deficient in anything essential, but more clearly to explain the doctrine regarding the Holy Ghost, in opposition to those who denied the Divinity of the third Person of the Trinity, thus, with a similar intention, the Council of Chalcedon, in opposition to those who wish to corrupt the doctrine of the Incarnation, and say, that one Nature alone was born of the Virgin, or deny two Natures to Christ, besides the two forenamed Symbols admits the Synodical letter of the Blessed Cyril, and lastly, the letter of St. Flavian, against the errors of Eutyches, which corresponds with the letter of St. Leo, in which these are condemned, who divide the ” Only-begotten” into two Sons; and those who attribute the Passion to his Divine Nature; and those who, of the Divinity and the humanity, make one Nature alone; and those, who say the flesh of Christ is celestial, or of any other substance than flesh; and those, who blasphemously teach, that before the union there were two Natures in Christ, but only one after the union. The Council, therefore, teaches that there is only one Lord Jesus Christ, in two Natures, without division, without change, and without confusion; that the difference of the two Natures was never removed on account of the union, but that each remains properly the same, both one and the other concurring in one person alone, and in one substance, so that Jesus Christ is not divided into two persons, but is always the same, only Son, and only-begotten Word, God.
The Council finally prohibited the teaching or holding of any other Faith, or any other Symbol to be composed for the use of the Catechumens, renewing after this manner the order of the Council of Ephesus, notwithstanding the abuse Dioscorus made of it. When the definitive decree was read, it was uniformly received by all the Fathers, and first the Legates, and next all the Metropolitans, put their signatures to it (13).
66. When all these matters had been defined, the Council made other regulations, and, especially in the sixteenth and last Session, by the twenty-eighth Canon, the privilege of ordaining the Metropolitans of Pontus, of Asia, and of Thrace, who were, before, subject to the Patriarch of Antioch, was confirmed to Anatolius, Patriarch of Constantinople. This privilege was already granted to the Bishop of Constantinople, by a Council of one hundred and fifty Bishops, held in that city, in the time of Theodosius the Great, on the plea, that as Constantinople had become the seat of Empire, and the second Rome in the East, it was only proper that it should be decorated with the Primacy of honour, second only to Rome itself, especially as it was already in possession of the honour for sixty or seventy years past. The Legate Pascasinus, Bishop of Lilibeum, opposed this Canon. It was, he said, contrary to the ancient Canons of the Church, and especially to the sixth Canon of the Council of Nice, in which it was recognized that the Church of Alexandria, Antioch, and Jerusalem, took precedence of Constantinople, not to speak of the Church of Rome, which always enjoyed the Primacy; but notwithstanding the opposition, the Fathers remained firm to the arrangement they decreed (14).
67. The Bishops then wrote to St. Leo, giving him a statement of all that was done in the Council, and asking for his confirmation of their proceedings. In the Synodical Epistle, they recognize the Pope as the faithful interpreter of St. Peter, and acknowledge that he presided at the Synod as the head over the members. They first praise his Epistle, and next inform him of the sentence fulminated against Dioscorus, on account of his obstinacy, and the re-union of the repentant Bishops, and all these things, they said, were effected with the assistance of the Pontifical Vicars.
They made some other regulations, they said, on the presumption that his Holiness would confirm them, and, especially, they confirmed the Primacy of honour to the Archbishop of Constantinople, for the reasons already stated (15). Besides this Synodical letter, the Emperor Marcian, St. Pulcheria, and Anatolius, wrote without the least delay to St. Leo, begging him, notwithstanding the opposition of the Legate, to confirm the twenty-eighth Canon of the Council, in favour of the See of Constantinople (16); but, although he was extremly desirous of obliging Marcian and St. Pulcheria, still, he never would agree to the violation of the Canons of the Council of Nice, and he answered them, that the prerogatives of the See of Antioch should be preserved (17).
68. Before we go any further, we shall relate the fate of Eutyches and Dioscorus. Eutyches was banished by order of the Emperor, in 450, but being confined in the vicinity of the city of Constantinople, St. Leo (Ep. 75, edit. Rom.) wrote to St. Pulcheria (18), and afterwards to Marcian (Epis. 107), that he heard from Julian of Cos, that even in his exile, he continued to infect the people with his pestilent doctrines, and continued to disseminate his errors; he, therefore, besought the Emperor to banish him to some deserted neighbourhood. The Emperor complied with this request of the Pope; Eutyches was banished to a distant place, and there died as he lived, in sinful obstinacy (19). Dioscorus was banished to Gangres, in Paphlagonia, and soon after died without repentance, on the 4th of September, 454, leaving some impious writings, composed by him, in favour of the Eutychian heresy, which were afterwards condemned to be burnt by the Emperor Marcian (20).
69. The followers of Eutyches and Dioscorus continued for many ages to disturb the Church, and there were several among these leaders of perdition, who excited others, and caused a great deal of harm. The Council of Chalcedon was scarcely over, when some monks from Palestine, who refused submission to the decree of the Council, excited several other monks of that country to join them, proclaiming that the Council had taken the part of Nestorius, obliging the faithful to adore two Persons in Christ, as they had decided on two Natures.
The chief of these was a monk of the name of Theodosius (21), who was expelled by his Bishop from his monastery, on account of his vices, but still retained the monastic habit. He succeeded in gaining over to his side a great many monks in Palestine, through favour of Eudoxia, the widow of the Emperor Theodosius, who after his death retired to that country, to spend the remainder of her days (22). I have said he gained over a great many monks, but not all of them, for, as Evagrius (23) relates, there were very many among those solitaries, who led a most holy life, and we cannot, therefore, believe that all followed the impious Theodosius. When Juvenal returned from the Council, to his See of Jerusalem, he strove in vain to bring these blinded men to reason, but instead of succeeding, they not only did not repent, but had the audacity to attempt to force him to anathematize the Council and St. Leo, and on his refusal, collected a mob of the most depraved characters, and took possession of Jerusalem; they burned several houses, killed a number of persons, opened the prisons, and closed the gates of the city, to prevent the escape of Juvenal, and then proceeded to elect the wretch Theodosius Bishop of the See (24).
70. When Theodosius was thus so iniquitously placed in the Episcopal throne of Jerusalem, he endeavoured to have Juvenal assassinated, and employed a wretch for that purpose, but this assassin, as he could not come at Juvenal, who escaped to Constantinople, joined some other wretches along with him, and killed St. Saverianus, Bishop of Schytopolis, (commemorated in the Roman Martyrology, on the 21st of February), and some of his adherents. He next set about establishing himself in his usurped See, by persecuting all who opposed his tyranny; some he caused to be cruelly tormented, he burned the houses of others, and, in particular, he put to death a Deacon of the name of Athanasius, and not satisfied with his murder, had his body dragged through the city, and cast to the dogs. Athanasius is commemorated in the Martyrology, on the 5th of July (25). He next set out on a visitation through the Dioceses of the Patriarchate, accompanied by the monks of his party, and many others of dissipated characters, who spread desolation and destruction wherever they went.
He drove several Bishops from their churches, and he even had some of them killed, and put his own partisans in their Sees; one of these, Theodotus, he ordained Bishop of Joppa, and another, Peter of Iberia, Bishop of Majuma, and, it was from one of these afterwards, that the impious Eleurus, the usurper of the See of Alexandria, received consecration (26). When Marcian was informed of the tyranny and insolence of Theodosius and his monks, he appeased the sedition, by proclaiming a pardon to all who would return to the obedience of the Church, and when he saw himself abandoned by his followers, he privately fled. After various wanderings, he came to the Convent of Sinai, and begged the monks to receive him, but they refused, so he fled on to Arabia, and concealed himself in the solitudes of that region. His usurpation lasted only a year and eight months, from the beginning of the year 452, till August, 453, when Juvenal returned to Jerusalem, and again took possession of his See (27).
71. About this time, that is, in the year 453, St. Pulcheria died; though the learned have agreed as to the year, they have not as to the day of her death; but the Greeks in their Menelogues, and the Latins in their Martyrologies, celebrate her festival on the 10th of September. St. Leo, in one of his Epistles (Ep. 90), says in her praise, that she was possessed of the Royal power, and the Sacerdotal learning and spirit, with which she offered to God a perpetual sacrifice of praise; and to the zeal of this holy Empress he ascribed the stability of the Faith against the heresies of Nestorius and Eutyches. She preserved her virginity in marriage, and by her example, induced her sisters also to consecrate themselves to God. She built many hospitals, founded several monasteries, and erected a great number of churches, especially in honour of the Divine Mother, and the Church soon venerated her as a Saint (28). Four years after, in the year 457, the Emperor Marcian died. St. Leo calls him a Prince of blessed memory, and the Greeks celebrate his festival on the 17th of February. We have already seen how great was his piety, and with what fervour he opposed every enemy of the Faith (29).
72. We shall now speak of the principal followers of Etityches. The second hero of iniquity was Timothy Eleurus, a priest, but who, before his ordination, wore the monastic habit, though merely as a mask of piety. He was of a most ambitious character, so that scarcely had he heard of the deposition of Dioscorus when he considered he had pretensions to the Diocese of Alexandria, but when St. Proterius was elected in place of Dioscorus, he was filled with rage, and began to declaim against the Council of Chalcedon. He succeeded in gaining over to his side four or five Bishops and some monks, infected, like himself, with the errors of Apollinares, and thus had the boldness to separate himself from the communion of Proterius. When Marcian was informed of this schism he endeavoured to extinguish it, but could not succeed, so St. Proterius assembled a Synod of all Egypt, and condemned Eleurus, Peter Mongos his companion, and these few Bishops and Monks who adhered to him. With all that, St. Proterius was obliged to be constantly on his guard against him, although he was sent into banishment by the Emperor, and only with difficulty saved his life during the reign of the Emperor Marcian (30). At the Emperor’s death he renewed his pretensions, set at nought the decree of banishment he laboured under, returned to Egypt, and endeavoured to drive St. Proterius from the Church of Alexandria. He concealed himself in a Monastery of Alexandria, and to induce the Monks to join his party he used to go about their cells in the night time, telling them in a feigned voice that he was an angel sent from heaven to admonish them to separate themselves from Proterius, and elect Timothy Eleurus for their Bishop. Having by these schemes gained over many Monks to his side, he sent them into Alexandria to excite the people against St. Proterius and the Council of Chalcedon. When all was prepared, and the people sufficiently excited, he came forth into the city, accompanied by his schismatical Bishops, Peter Mongos, his Monks, and several other Monks, accomplices of his schism, and caused himself to be proclaimed Bishop in the church.
Here then, are the very words of Nestorius himself, and nothing can be more clear than that he means to say that Christ is only the temple of God, but united to God in such a manner by Grace, that it might be said that the Divine nature appropriated the qualities proper to humanity. Now, Basnage does not deny that these are the letters and expressions of Nestorius, and how then can he say that he spoke in a pious and Catholic sense, and that the Council of Ephesus, by his condemnation, filled the world with tears, when Sixtus III., St. Leo the Great, and the fifth General Council, together with so many other doctors and learned writers received the Council of Ephesus as most certainly Ecumenical, and all have called and considered Nestorius a heretic. Basnage, however, prefers following Calvin and his adherents, instead of the Council of Ephesus, the fifth Council, the Pope, and all the Catholic doctors. Selvaggi, the annotator of Mosheim, is well worthy of being read on this question (31), he has six very excellent reflections, and makes several useful remarks about Luther and the other modern heretics, who seek to discredit St. Cyril and the Council of Ephesus. It is the interest of all heretics to weaken the authority of Councils, that there may be no power to condemn them, and expose their errors to the world. But I remark that the devil has made it a particular study to ruin, by his partisans, the credit of the Council of Ephesus, to remove from our sight the immense love which our God has shown us, by becoming man and dying for our love. Men do not love God because they do not reflect that he has died for love of them, and the devil endeavours not only to remove this thought from our minds, but to prevent us from thinking it even possible.
(1) Fleury, t. 4, l. 27, n. 48, in fin.
(2) Orsi, t. 14, l. 35, n. 28 & 29.
(3) St. Leo, Epis. 52.
(4) Lib. Brev. c. 13, & Mar. in Chron
(5) Vide. Nat. Alex. t. 10, c.4, a. 13, s. 17.
(6) Acta, Con. Chal.
(7) Orsi, l. 23, n. 45, 47 & 70.
(8) Orsi, ibid, l. 49. 17; Orsi, ibid, . 50 & 55.
(9) Nat. Alex. t. 10, c. 3, ar. 13, s.
(10) Orsi, t. 14, l.33, n. 59, 60.
(11) Orsi, t, 14, 1. 33, n. 62. Orsi, loc. cit. n. 61.
(12) Fleury t. 4, l. 28, n. 21;
(13) Orsi, t. 14, I. 33, . 66.
(14) Orsi, t. 14, l. 33, n. 78 & 79.
(15) Orsi, l. cit. n. 84.
(16) Orsi, l. cit. n. 82 & 63.
(17) Fleury, t. 14, l. 28, n. 33; Orsi, n. 86.
(18) Orsi, t. 14, l. 33, n. 4; Fleury, ibid. l. 28, n. 55.
(19) Berni. t. 1, c. 6, p. 534.
(20) Orsi, t. 14, l. 33, n. 55, in fin. 133.
(21) Evag. 1. 2, c. 5.
(22) Ap. Orsi, t. 14, L 35, n. 91.
(23) Evag. l. 1, c. 31.
(24) Orsi, l. cit. n. 90.
(25) Orsi, t. 14, /. 33, n. 94.
(26) Orsi, n. 111.
(27) Orsi, cit. loc. 33, n. 131.
(28) Orsi, t. 15, l. 34, n. 12 & 13.
(29) Orsi, t. 15, 1. 34, n. 12 & 13.
(30) Orsi, t, U, I 33, n. 105.
(31) Selvag. in Mosheim, Part II. n. 82. p. 729.
RE: St. Alphonsus Liguori: The History of Heresies and Their Refutation - Stone - 03-30-2022
CHAPTER VI. – HERESIES OF THE SIXTH CENTURY
ARTICLE I. – OF THE ACEPHALI, AND THE DIFFERENT SECTS THEY SPLIT INTO
ARTICLE I. – OF THE ACEPHALI, AND THE DIFFERENT SECTS THEY SPLIT INTO
1. Regulation made by the new Emperor, Anastasius, to the great detriment of the Church.
2. Anastasius persecutes the Catholics; his awful Death.
3. The Acephali, and their Chief, Severus.
4. The Sect of the Jacobites.
5. The Agnoites.
6. The Tritheists.
7. The Corruptibilists.
8. The Incorruptibilists.
9. Justinian falls into this error.
10. Good and bad actions of the Emperor.
11,12. The Acemetic Monks; their obstinacy.
1.When Zeno died, the Catholics hoped for peace; but, in 491, Anastasius was elected Emperor, and he commenced a long and fierce persecution against the Church (1). In his private life he appeared a pious man; but when he was raised to the Empire, and saw all the Churches of the world split into different factions, so that the Western Bishops would not communicate with the Eastern, nor even the Easterns among themselves, and wishing to see no novelty introduced, as he said, he gave orders (2) that all the Churches should remain in the same state he found them, and banished from their Sees any Bishops who introduced novelties. Nothing could be better than this, if all the Churches were united in the profession of the true Faith; but as there were several at that time which did not adhere to the Council of Chalcedon, to make a law, that no Church should change its ancient usage, was the best possible means of perpetuating discord, and this was precisely the effect it produced.
2. Although Anastasius had shown some signs of piety, still Euphemius, Patriarch of Constantinople, who had narrowly watched his sentiments in regard of the Faith, considered him a heretic, and opposed his exaltation with all his might (3); he never even would consent to it, till he had from him a sworn promise, and signed, besides, with his own hand, binding him to defend the Council of Chalcedon. All this Anastasius did; but he not only broke his promise afterwards, but endeavoured (4) to destroy all proof of it, by requiring the restoration of the paper he had signed and sworn to, which was kept in the treasury of the Church; for the retention of such a document, he said, was an insult to the Empire, as if the word of a Prince was not worthy of faith by itself. He favoured the heretics, and persecuted the Catholics, especially the Patriarch Euphemius, whom he succeeded in deposing (5). He favoured, above all others, the Eutychians, who principally infested the Church at that time. He could not, however, be called an Eutychian himself; he was rather one of the sect of Existants or Tolerators, who permitted every religion except the Catholic (6). He died at last, in the year 518, on the 9th of July, and in the ninetieth, or, at all events, the eighty-eighth year of his age, having constantly persecuted the Church during the twenty-seven years he reigned. According to the account of Cyril, Bishop of Scythopolis, in the life of St. Saba, quoted by Orsi and Fleury (7), he had an unhappy end.
St. Saba, he says, came to Aila, where St. Elias, Patriarch of Jerusalem, was banished. They used to take their meals together, at the hour of noon every day; but, on the 9th of June, the Patriarch did not make his appearance till midnight, and, when he entered, he said, do you eat, for I will not nor can not eat any more. He then told St. Saba, that, at that very hour, the Emperor was dead, and that he should follow him before ten days, to meet him at the bar of Divine Justice, and, in fact, on the 20th of July, he slept in the Lord, in the eighty- eighth year of his age, having taken no food for eight days previously. St. Elias, and St. Flavian, Patriarch of Constantinople, who also died in exile, banished by Anastasius for defending the Council of Chalcedon, are commemorated in the Roman Martyrology, on the 4th of July (8). The circumstances of the Emperor’s death were remarkable : On the night of the 9th and 10th of July a dreadful thunder-storm raged over his palace. Terrified with the frequent flashes of lightning, but much more, on account of his sins, he imagined that God was now about to chastise him for his iniquities, and he fled wandering from chamber to chamber; he, at last, retired into a private cabinet, and was there found dead, whether from the effects of terror, or struck by lightning, authors are undecided. This was the end of this bad man, after twenty-seven years persecution of the Church of God. On the day of Anastasius’s death, Justin was invested with the Imperial dignity; he was a Prince (9) always obsequious to the Apostolic See, and zealous in combatting heresies, and establishing unity and peace in the Church. He reigned nine years, and was succeeded by Justinian, of whom we shall speak by-and-by, and he was succeeded, in 565, by his nephew, Justin II., who began his reign well, but soon fell into dreadful excesses, though he never lost the Faith, and died, at last, with sentiments of Christian piety (10).
3. The heresies which disturbed the Church in this century were almost all offshoots from the stock of Eutychianism. Those from whom the Catholics suffered most were the Acephali, who were also Eutychians. They were called Monophysites, as they believed only one Nature in Christ (11); but as they separated themselves from Mongos, the pretended Bishop of Alexandria, and refused to adhere, either to the Catholic party, or to their Bishop, Mongos, they were called Acephali, or Headless.
They were not without a chief, withal one Severus, from the city of Sozopolis, in Pisidia. He was a Pagan in the beginning of his days, and it is thought, he never sincerely renounced his errors; he went to Beyrooth to study law, and was convicted there of idolatry and magical practices, so, to escape the punishment his infamies deserved, he pretended to embrace Christianity. He was baptized in Tripoli, in Phenicia (12), but he was not eight days a Christian, when he forsook the Catholic Communion, and threw himself into the arms of the party who had separated from Mongos, and he rejected from that out both the Council of Chalcedon and the Henoticon of Zeno. He was a man of corrupt morals, but, to gain credit with the Monks, he professed the monastic life in the Monastery of the Abbot Nefarius, in Egypt; but he was there discovered to be a heretic, and expelled, and he then went to Constantinople, where he, some time after, found himself at the head of two hundred Monks, and of many other heretics (13), and, with them, committed many excesses, without regard to either the laws or the judges. Anastasius, who then reigned, desirous of upsetting the Council of Chalcedon, winked at his crimes, and thus, under favour of that impious Sovereign, he succeeded in driving out of Constantinople the Bishop of the See, Macedonius, and substituting Timothy, treasurer of the city, in his place, who had the hardihood to cause the Trisagion, composed by Peter the Fuller, to favour the Eutychian doctrines, to be publicly sung in the Church (14), Timothy, likewise, through favour of the Emperor, got Severus elected Bishop of Antioch, and Flavian banished (15); and he, on the very day he took possession of his See, anathematized the Council of Chalcedon and the Epistle of St. Leo.
4. The Acephali were split into several sects. The Jacobites are among the most remarkable; these took their name from a Syrian Monk of the name of James, a disciple of Severus. He preached the Eutychian heresy in Armenia and Mesopotamia; and from that time the Syrian Catholics, who received the Council of Chalcedon, were called Melchites, or Royalists, from the Syrian word, Melk, a King, because they followed the religion of the Emperors, that is of the Emperors who received the Council of Chalcedon.
The Jacobites professed the error of Eutyches, that Christ suffered in the flesh, and they added other errors to this, especially in Armenia, for there they denied that the Word had taken flesh from the Virgin, but taught that the Word itself was changed into flesh and merely passed through the Virgin; they do not mix water with the wine in the celebration of Mass; celebrate Easter the same time as the Jews; do not venerate the cross until it is baptized the same as a human being; when they make the sign of the cross, they do it with one finger alone, to signify that they believe in one nature; they observe singular fasts, and during the lent they cannot eat eggs or cheese unless on holy Saturday.
5. The Agnoites or Ignorants were founded by Themistius, a Deacon of Alexandria. This Eutychian taught that Christ, being of one Nature alone, composed out of, or confounded, rather, between the Divinity and humanity, was, even according to the Divinity, ignorant of many things, as he, in particular, himself alludes to his ignorance of the day of judgment: ” But of that day or hour no man knoweth, neither the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but the Father” (Mark, xiii, 32); and this ignorance, he said, was just as natural to him as the other inconveniences, hunger, thirst, and pain, which he suffered in this life (16). St. Gregory (17), however, explains the text by saying that Christ did not know it as far his humanity was concerned, but that he knew it by the union of the humanity with the Divinity. God made man, he says, know the day and the hour by the power of his Divinity.
6. The chief of the Tritheists was John, a grammarian of Alexandria; he was known by the name of Philoponos the labourer. He objected to the Catholics, that if they recognized two Natures in Christ, they should admit two Persons; but he was answered that Nature was one thing and Person another: for, if Nature and Personality were one and the same thing, we should admit three Natures in the Trinity as there are three Persons.
This reasoning was so convincing to Philoponos, that he at once admitted its force, but it led him into a much greater error, for he recognized three distinct Natures in the Trinity, and therefore, admitted three distinct Gods, and hence his followers were called Tritheists (18). He wrote, likewise, against the resurrection of the flesh (19). With these exceptions, he believed in Christianity, and defended it against Proclus of Licia, a Platonic Philosopher who attacked it at the time.
7. From this hot-bed of error two other sects sprung up, the Corruptibilists and the Incorruptibilists. Theodosius, a Monk, founded the Corruptibilists, who believed that Christ had a corruptible body. These erred, not because they said that the Word had in Christ taken a corruptible body by its nature, and subject to hunger and thirst and sufferings, but because they asserted that Christ by necessity was subject to these sufferings, in the same manner as all of us were subject to them, so that he should undergo them whether he willed or not (20). The Catholic doctrine is that the Word in the body of Christ put on the common sufferings of mankind, hunger, weariness, pain and death, not through necessity, as they are of necessity with us the punishment of Original Sin, but of his own free will on account of his unbounded charity which induced him to come ” in the likeness of sinful flesh” (Romans, viii, 3), to condemn and punish sin in the flesh. And in the same manner, says St. Thomas (21), our Saviour wished to assume the passions of the mind, sorrow, fear, weariness, not in the same way as they are in us, opposed to reason, for all the motions of the sensitive appetites in Christ were ordered according to reason, and were, on that account, called in him propassions; for passion in itself, says the Angelic Doctor, is so called when it rules over reason, but it is propassion when it remains in and does not extend beyond the sensitive appetite.
8. St. Julian of Halicarnassus was the head of the Phantasiasts or Incorruptibilists. These taught that the body of Christ was by its nature incorruptible and free from all passions, so that he suffered neither hunger nor thirst, nor weariness nor pain, but that is directly opposed to the words of the Gospel: ” When he had fasted he was hungry” (Matt, iv, 2); “Fatigued from his journey, he sat down” (John, iv, 6). The Eutychians were favourable to this doctrine, for it corresponded with their own, that there was only one, an impassible, nature in Christ (22). Julian wrote in favour of the Incorruptibilists and Themistius of the Corruptibilists, and they both stirred up such a commotion among the people of Alexandria, that they burned each other’s houses, and murdered each other on account of their difference of opinion (23).
9. We should here remark that the Emperor Justinian fell into the error of the Incorruptibilists. Who could have imagined that this Prince, who showed himself so zealous against heretics, and above all, against the Eutychians, should have died, as many suppose he did, a heretic himself, and infected with the pestilential dogmas of Eutyches. Fleury and Orsi (24) both attribute his fall to his overweening desire of meddling by his Edicts in matters of Faith which God has committed to the heads of his Church. He had the misfortune to have as a most intimate confident, Theodore, Bishop of Cesarea, a concealed enemy of the Council of Chalcedon, and a friend of the Acephali, and at his instigation he promulgated an Edict in the year 564, in which he declared that the body of Christ was incorruptible, so that after it was formed in the Virgin’s womb, it was no longer capable of any change or natural passion, no matter how innocent, as hunger and thirst, so that although he ate before his death, he only did so in the same manner as after his Resurrection, without having any necessity of food. If the body of Christ, therefore, was not capable of any natural passion, he suffered nothing in the flesh, neither in life nor death, and his Passion was merely an appearance without any reality. Isaias therefore uttered a falsehood when he said, ” Surely he hath borne our infirmities, and carried our sorrows” (Isaias, liii, 4). So did St. Peter, where he says, ” Who his own self bore our sins in his body upon the tree” (I. Peter, ii, 24).
Even Christ himself stated what was false when he said, ” My soul is sorrowful unto death” (Matt, xxvi, 38); and then exclaiming on the cross, ” My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me” (Matt, xxvii, 46). All this would be false if Christ was insensible to internal and external sufferings. ingratitude of mankind. Christ died of pain on a cross for the love of man, and men say that he suffered nothing in reality, only in appearance. Justinian required that this doctrine should be approved of by all the Bishops, and he was particularly anxious to induce six learned African Bishops to give it their approbation, but they resisted, and were accordingly separated, and shut up in six different Churches in Constantinople (25). St. Eutychius, Patriarch of Constantinople, opposed it likewise, and laboured in vain to undeceive the Emperor. He was driven from his See and another put in his place, and all the Patriarchs and many other Bishops refused to sign their approbation (26). When the Oriental Bishops were required to subscribe, they said they would follow the example of Anastasius, Patriarch of Antioch, and Justinian therefore, used every effort to induce him to agree to it, but he sent the Emperor an answer in which he learnedly proved that the body of Christ, as to the natural and innocent passions was corruptible, and when informed that it was the Emperor’s intention to banish him, he prepared a sermon to take leave of his people, but he never published it, as Justinian died at mid-night, the 13th of November, 566, the eighty-fourth year of his age, after a reign of thirty-nine years and eight months (27).
10. Cardinal Baronius (28) says that the Emperor’s death was sudden and unexpected, but it was most serviceable to the empire, which was daily falling from bad to worse, God revenging the injuries inflicted on the Bishops of his Church, and preventing by his death, that fire from spreading, which he enkindled. Evagrius and Nicephorus (29) remark, that he died just at the time he had decreed the exile of St. Anastasius and other Catholic priests, although the order had not been yet promulgated. This Evagrius, a contemporaneous author, as Orsi (30) remarks, gave it as his deliberate opinion that Justinian, having filled the world and the Church with tumult and confusion, only received from God, in the end, that condign punishment his crimes deserved.
Baronius adds (31), that although the name of Justinian was not removed from the Ecclesiastical Registers, like that of other heretics, and though the sixth Council and several Pontiffs had entitled him Pious and Catholic, we should not be surprised, if his falling off from the Faith was not published in any public decree. However, his other crimes, the banishment of so many Bishops, his cruelties to so many innocent persons, his acts of injustice in depriving so many of their properties, prove that he was, at all events, unjust and sacrilegious, if not a heretic.
11. Besides these sects of the Acephali, another sect of the Acemetic * monks sprung up in this century. This was another sprout of Nestorianism, and it was thus discovered. During the reign of Pope Hormisdas, the Scythian monks took on themselves to sustain, as a necessary article of Faith, that one of the Trinity was made flesh, and they sent a deputation to Rome to get a decree from the Pope to that effect; he, however (32), refused to accede to their wishes, dreading that some leaven of Eutychianism might be concealed in the proposition, and that they wished besides to throw discredit on the Council of Chalcedon and the Epistle of St. Leo, as deficient in the definition of the expressions necessary to condemn the Nestorian and Eutychian heresy. On the other hand, that proposition was embraced by all the Oriental Churches, as a touchstone against the Nestorian heresy, and was impugned by the Acemetic monks alone, who, it is true, in the time of Zeno and Anastasius, had fought strenuously against the heresy of Eutyches, but becoming too warm against the Eutychians, began to agree with the Nestorians, not alone denying that one of the Trinity was made flesh, but also that the Son of God suffered in his flesh, and that the Blessed Virgin was really and truly the Mother of God (33).
* Acemetic, or sleepless monks, were a celebrated order in the East. They were called the sleepless, because night and day they kept up Divine psalmody without intermission; the community was divided into three sections, and each spent eight hours out of the twenty-four singing the praises of God. TRANS.
12. The Emperor Justinian undertook the defence of the proposition upheld by the monks of Scythia, and wrote to Pope John, II., for his approbation, and gave his letter in charge to two Bishops, Ignatius, Archbishop of Ephesus, and Demetrius of Philippi. When the Acemetic monks got a knowledge of this proceeding, they sent two of their body to Rome, Cyrus and Eulogius, to defend their cause (34); so Pope John had the matter most particularly examined. We know, for certain, that Anatolius, Deacon of the Roman Church, wrote to Ferrandus, a Deacon in Africa, a man of most profound learning, and of great sanctity, who, having previously expressed a doubt as to whether this proposition was admissible or not, now, after a rigorous examination, answered that there should be no hesitation in admitting it. Among other proofs, he adduces the words of St. Paul : ” Take heed to yourselves and to the whole flock wherein the Holy Ghost hath placed you Bishops, to rule the Church of God, which he hath purchased with his own blood” (Acts, xx, 28). Now when the Apostle says that God hath shed his blood, every one must understand that he shed the blood of the flesh he had taken from the Virgin, and that it is not God the Father, nor God the Holy Ghost, but God the Son, who has done so, as the Scripture declares in several places : ” For God so loved the world as to give his only – begotten Son” (John, iii, 16) : ” He hath spared not even his own Son, but delivered him up for us all” (Rom. viii, 32) : if, therefore, we can say that God has shed his blood for us, we can also say that one of the Persons of the Trinity shed his blood, and suffered in the flesh. After a rigorous examination, therefore, Pope John answered the Emperor, and authentically gave his approbation to the proposition, that one of the Trinity suffered in the flesh. He then strove to get the Acemetic monks who had come to Rome, to accept his definition, but they obstinately refused, and he was obliged to separate them from the communion of the Church (35). We should remark that the letter of Pope John did not contradict the letter of Pope Hormisdas, for this Pope did not condemn the proposition, but only withheld his approbation for just causes, lest, as Roncaglia says, a hasty definition at the time, might divide some from the unity of the Church (36).
(1) Orsi, t. 16, J. 36, n. 67.
(2) Orsi, n. 68.
(3) Evagr. l. 3, c. 32; Orsi, t. 16, l. 35, n 37, con Theodoret.
(4) Orsi, loc. cit. n. 70.
(5) Orsi, n.112.
(6) Orsi, t. 19, l. 37, n. 21.
(7) Orsi, t.17, l. 38, n. 34; Fleury, t. 5, l. 31, w. 33.
(8) Orsi, L 19, l. 42, n. 89.
(9) Orsi, t. 19, l. 39, n. 37, in fin.
(10) Orsi, t, 19, l. 43, n. 67.
(11) Orsi, loc. cit. n. 68.
(12) Orsi, t. 16, l. 37, n. 62, cum Evagr. l. 3, n. 33.
(13) Orsi, n. 63.
(14) Orsi, n. 71
(15) Orsi, n. 72
(16) Fleury, t. 5, l. 33, n. 2; Nat. Alex, t.ll, c. 3, a, 3; Gotti, loc. cit.
(17) St. Greg. l. 10, Ep. 39, a. 42,
(18) Fleury & Nat. Alex. l. cit.Berti, Brev. His. t. 1, s. 6, c. 3.
(19) Niceph. l. 18, c. 47, 48.
(20) Gotti, l. cit. c.76, s. 6, n. 7.
(21) St. Thomas, p. 2, q. 15, a. 4.
(22) Gotti l. cit. ex Liberal, m Brev. c. 20.
(23) Gotti ibid. n. 78.
(24) Fleury, t. 5, I. 34, n. 8, cum Evagr. l. 4, n. 30; Orsi, t. 19, l. 42,
(25) Fleury, l. cit.
(26) Evagr, I. 4, n. 33. c. 31.
(27) Fleury, I. c. n. 11.
(28) Baron. Ann. 565, n. 1
(29) Evagr. I.4, c. 40; Nicph. l. 16,
(30) Orsi, t. 19, l. 42, n. 84.
(31) Baron, loc. cit. n. 3.
(32) Orsi, t. 17, l. 39, n. 123.
(33) Orsi, loc. cit.
(34) Fleury, t. 5, l. 32, n. 35; Orsi, ibid, n. 24.
(35) Fleury, t. 5, 1. 32, n. 39; Gotti. t. 2, loc. cit. c, 77. l. t. 3; Orsi, loc. cit. n. 128.
(36) Eoncaglia, Not. apud.; Nat. Alex. t. 11, c. 3, ar. 2.
RE: St. Alphonsus Liguori: The History of Heresies and Their Refutation - Stone - 03-31-2022
CHAPTER VI. – HERESIES OF THE SIXTH CENTURY
ARTICLE II. – THE THREE CHAPTERS
ARTICLE II. – THE THREE CHAPTERS
13. Condemnation of the Three Chapters of Theodore, Ibas, and Theodoret.
14, 15. Defended by Vigilius.
16. Answer to the objection of a Heretic, who asserts that one Council contradicts another.
13. It was during this sixth century that the controversy about the Three Chapters was carried on. These were: First The books of Theodore of Mopsuestia, in which it was clear he taught the heresy of Nestorius (supra, cap. v. n. 48); Second The Letter of Ibas to Maris of Persia, in which he condemned alike St. Cyril and Nestorius, and praised Theodore of Mopsuestia; and, Thirdly The writings of Theodoret, Bishop of Cyrus, against the twelve Anathematizms of St. Cyril. This controversy grieviously disturbed the Church, but it was put at rest by the condemnation of these Three Chapters, in the year 553, in the fifth General Council, the second of Constantinople. The Emperor Justinian hurried on the condemnation of Theodore and his writings, the Letter of Ibas to Maris the Persian, and the writings of Theodoret against St. Cyril, and, finally, the sentence received the approbation of Pope Vigilius, in his famous Constitutum. Danæus (1) says that Vigilius was opposed to the celebration of this Council, but as he had not the power to prevent it, and foresaw that a ruinous schism would spring from his objection, he gave his assent, and, confirmed by the assent of the Holy See, it now ranks among the Ecumenical Councils.
14. Pope Vigilius was blamed for his conduct in regard to this Council, and for so frequently changing his judgment regarding the condemnation of the Three Chapters, but Cardinal Norris (2), after relating all his changes, defends him as does Peter of Marca and says, that his inconstancy was not weakness, but prudence.
“Vigilius,” he says, ” was a most tenacious upholder of Pontifical authority, even setting at defiance the Sovereign himself, as appears from his actions. He is reproached with inconstancy of mind, and too great a facility in changing his opinions, for in the case of the Three Chapters, he was often inconsistent, and more than once was opposed to his previous opinions. In the beginning, while he was yet in Sicily, he defended the Three Chapters; but, if we are to believe Victor, he had already promised to Theodora Augusta, that he would condemn them. When he came to Constantinople, he suspended Menna for condemning the Three Chapters; but he was soon after reconciled to him, and juridically condemned them himself. Three years after, he revoked his judgment, published a new Constitution, and denied that they could be condemned; but he held this opinion for only a few months, for he forwarded an Epistle to Eutyches, declaring the Constitution of no effect, and coming to the Synod, he proscribed the Three Chapters.” That most learned man, Peter of Marca (lib. iii, De Concordia Sacerdotii & Imperii, cap. 13), testifies that this inconstancy of Vigilius has been considered prudence by the learned; he calls it dispensation, for at one time he acted up to the rigour of Law and Canons, and then again dispensed with them for the sake of Faith and public tranquillity.
15. Peter of Marca, therefore, says, that the Popes, at all times, in questions relating to discipline, have acted according to the rules of prudence, sometimes, when necessary, using all the rigour of the Canon, at other times the Dispensing Power, called by the Greeks, Economy, by the Latins, Dispensation, to preserve the union of the faithful and the peace of the Church. Cardinal Orsi (3) remarks, besides, that it was the last Constitution or Judgment alone, that was proposed to the Church by Vigilius, as a peremptory decree, and as Theologians say, pronounced ex Cathedra. He was unwilling at first to condemn the Three Chapters, because he feared to give a handle to the Nestorians to throw discredit on the Council of Chalcedon, which, it was said, approved of the Three Chapters; but when, on one hand he perceived that the Eutychians more vigorously attacked the Council of Chalcedon, which they said (though it was not the case) had approved of these Chapters; and on the other, the Nestorians laying hold of that, boasted that this Council was favourable to the doctrine of Nestorius, then indeed, he was convinced that it was necessary to condemn them absolutely, and he accordingly gave a decree to that effect, in unison with the Fathers of the Council of Constantinople, which is, therefore, as Tournelly says (4), considered one of the Ecumenical Councils, as it was approved of by Vigilius, and also by some of his successors, as Pelagius II., Leo II., &c., and Photius, according to Orsi, mentions the same thing in his writings.
16. How does it happen though, says Maclain, the annotator of Mosheim (5), that in the Council of Chalcedon the writings of Ibas and Theodoret were not condemned, and they themselves were praised for the purity of their Faith, and, for all that, the Council of Constantinople condemns their writings; the decision of the Council of Constantinople then is, he says, opposed to that of Chalcedon, and is a proof that both the Councils and the Doctors differ among themselves. Thus, he endeavours to prove the fallibility of General Councils of the Catholic Church, as these two Councils were opposed to each other. But as Selvaggi, in his sixteenth note, very fairly remarks, this is altogether false, for the Three Chapters were not approved of by the Council of Chalcedon; in fact, as Tournelly also remarks, they were neither approved nor rejected; they were altogether passed over in that Council, lest by condemning them, more disturbance would be raised in the Church, already distracted by the Nestorians. Peter of Marca explains the omission of the condemnation, on the authority of St. Cyril (6). Cyril, he says, prudently teaches that rigorous rules must sometimes be tempered by dispensation, as people at sea frequently throw some of their merchandise overboard to preserve the rest; and in his Epistle to Proclus of Constantinople, he tells him that the Council of Ephesus acted in this manner, for the Synod, indeed, condemned the heretical impiety, but in this condemnation prudently abstained from mentioning the name of Theodorus, lest many, led away by their respect for his person, would forsake the Church itself.
17. Juenin (7) tells us that the books of Origen were condemned in this Council, and the following errors of his especially were noted: First – That the souls of men are created before they are united to their bodies, and that they are joined to the body as a place of punishment. Second – That the heavens, the sun, the moon, the stars, and the* waters above the heavens, are animated and reasoning powers. Third – That in the General Resurrection, our bodies will arise all in a round form, and that the pains of the damned and of the devils will have an end some time or other. Fourth That in some future ages Jesus Christ will be again crucified for the devils, and that the wicked spirits who are in heaven will inflict this suffering on him. Juenin also remarks that the condemnation of these erroneous doctrines does not appear clearly, from the original Acts of the second Council of Constantinople, as in the edition of L’Abbe, but that Cardinal Norris clearly shows that they were condemned there, though Garner maintains that it was not in this Council they were condemned at all, but in the Constantinopolitan Council, celebrated under Menna.
(1) Danes.; Nat. Temp. p. 255,
(2) De Norris; Diss. Histor. de Syn. V.c.d.
(3) Orsi, t. 7, l. 39, it. 84.
(4) Tournelly, Theol. Comp. t. 3; append, a. 2, de Con. Constan. 2, p. 998.
(5) Mosheim, Hist. Eccles. Centur. 6, par. 2, c. 3, p. 839
(6) Mos. loc. cit.
(7) Juenin, Theol. t. I, ar. 5, s. 2, ver. Quinto
RE: St. Alphonsus Liguori: The History of Heresies and Their Refutation - Stone - 04-02-2022
CHAPTER VII. – THE HERESIES OF THE SEVENTH CENTURY
ARTICLE I. – OF MAHOMETANISM
ARTICLE I. – OF MAHOMETANISM
1. Birth of Mahomet, and Beginning of his False Religion.
2. The Alcoran filled with Blasphemy and Nonsense.
1. The impious sect of Mahometanism sprung up in this century. I have already written the history of Mahomet in my work on the “Truth of the Faith” (1), but I consider it necessary to give a short sketch of it here. Mahomet, the founder of this destroying sect, which has spread over the greater perhaps, the greatest part of the Christian world, was born in Arabia, in 568, according to Fleury (2), and his family was among the most illustrious of that Peninsula. His uncle put him to trade on the death of his father, and when twenty-eight years of age, he became, at first, the factor of, and, soon after, married, a rich and noble widow, called Cadijah(3). He was brought up an idolater; but, as he grew old, he determined, not alone to change his own religion, but that of his countrymen, who, for the greater part, were idolaters also, and to teach them, as he said, the ancient religion of Adam, of Abraham, of Noah, and of the Prophets, among whom he reckoned Jesus Christ. He pretended to have long conversations with the Archangel Gabriel, in the cave of Hera, three miles from Mecca, where he frequently retired. In the year 608, being then forty years of age (4), he began to give out that he was a Prophet inspired by God, and he persuaded his relatives and domestics of this first, and then began publicly to preach in Mecca, and attack idolatry. At first, the people did not very willingly listen to him, and asked him to prove his mission by a miracle; but he told them that God sent him to preach the truth, and not to work miracles.
The impostor, however, boasts of having wrought one, though ridiculous in the extreme : a piece, he says, fell off from the moon once into his sleeve, and he fixed it on again; and it is said, that this is the reason for the Mahometans adopting the half-moon as the device of their Empire. He gave out, in the commencement of his career, that God commanded him not to force any one to embrace his religion, but the people of Mecca having risen up against him, and driven him from their city, he then declared that God commanded him to pursue the infidels with arms, and thus propagate the Faith; and from that till his death he was always at war. Now Lord of Mecca, he made it the Metropolis of the Faithful, and before his death he saw almost all the tribes of the Arabian Peninsula subject to his spiritual and temporal sway.
2. He composed the Koran (Al Koran the book), assisted, as some think, by Sergius, a Monk. It is a collection of precepts, taken from the Mosaic and Christian Law, together with many of his own, and interspersed with fables and ridiculous revelations. He recognizes the Divine Mission of Moses and Jesus Christ, and admits many parts of the Scriptures; but his law, he says, is the perfection of the Jewish and Christian law, and he is the reformer of these codes, though, in truth, it is totally different from both one and the other. He professes that there is but one God; but in his Alcoran he relates many trivialities unworthy of the Supreme Being, and the whole work is, in fact, filled with contradictions, as I have shown in my book on the ” Truth of the Faith.” Jews or Christians, he says, may be saved by the observance of their respective laws, and it is indifferent if they exchange one for the other; but hell will be for ever the portion of the infidels; those who believe in one God alone will be sent there for a period not exceeding, at most, a thousand years, and then all will be received into the House of Peace, or Paradise. The Mahometan Paradise, however, is only fit for beasts; for filthy sensual pleasure is all the believer has to expect there. I pass over all the other extravagancies of the Koran, having already, in the ” Truth of the Faith,” treated the subject more fully.
3. The Mahometans shave the head, and leave only a lock of hair on the crown, by which they hope Mahomet will take them up to heaven, even out of hell itself. They are permitted to have four wives by their law, and they ought, at least, to have one; they may divorce each wife twice. It is prohibited to dispute on the Alcoran and the Scriptures; and the devil appears to have dictated this precept himself, for, by keeping those poor people in ignorance, he keeps them in darkness. Mahomet died in 631, in the sixty-third year of his age, and nine years after he was recognized as Sovereign of Arabia. He saw almost the whole Peninsula subject to his sway, and for four hundred leagues to the North and South of Medina no other Sovereign was known. He was succeeded by Aboubeker, one of his earliest disciples, and a great conqueror likewise. A long line of Caliphs united in their own persons the Spiritual and Royal power of the Arabian Empire. They destroyed the Empire of Persia; and Egypt, and Syria, and the rich provinces and kingdoms of the East yielded to their arms (5).
(1) Ver. del. Fede, part 3, c. 4, nota a.
(2) Fleury, t. 7, l. 38, n. 1.
(3) Nat. Alex. t. 12, c. 12, a. 2.
(4) Fleury, loco cit.
(5) Fleury, t. 6, l. 38, n. 4, 5.
RE: St. Alphonsus Liguori: The History of Heresies and Their Refutation - Stone - 04-03-2022
CHAPTER VII. – THE HERESIES OF THE SEVENTH CENTURY
ARTICLE II. – HERESY OF THE MONOTHELITES
4. Commencement of the Monothelites; their Chiefs, Sergius and Cyrus.
5. Opposed by Sophronius.
6. Letter of Sergius to Pope Honorius, and his Answer.
7. Defence of Honorius.
8. Honorius erred, but did not fall into any Error against Faith.
9. The Ecthesis of Heraclius afterwards condemned by Pope John IV.
10. The Type of the Emperor Constaris.
11. Condemnation of Paul and Pyrrhus.
12. Dispute of St. Maximus with Pyrrhus.
13. Cruelty of Constans; his violent Death.
14. Condemnation of the Monothelites in the Sixth Council.
15. Honorius Condemned in that Council, not for Heresy, but for his negligence in repressing Heresy.
4. In the year 622, according to Noel Alexander (1), or 630, according to Fleury (2), the Monothelite Heresy sprung up; and this was its origin: Some Bishops who had received the Council of Chalcedon, recognizing two Natures in Christ, still asserted that as both Natures were but one Person, we should only recognize in him one operation (3). N. Alexander (loco cit.) says that the founder of this error was Sergius, Patriarch of Constantinople; he communicated his opinions to Theodore, Bishop of Pharan, in Arabia, and he answered him that his sentiments were the same. It happened also about this time that the Emperor Heraclius was in Gerapolis in Upper Syria, when he was visited by Athanasius, Patriarch of the Jacobites, a crafty and wicked man; he gained the Emperor’s confidence, who promised to make him Patriarch of Antioch, if he would receive the Council of Chalcedon. Athanasius pretended to receive it, and confessed the two Natures; he then asked the Emperor, if, having received the two Natures, it was necessary to recognize in the person of Christ two wills and two operations, or one alone. This question posed him, and he wrote to Sergius, Patriarch of Constantinople, and asked also the opinion of Cyrus, Bishop of Phasis, and both persuaded him, that he should confess in Christ one will alone, and only one operation, as he was only one Person. The Eutychian Athanasius was quite satisfied with this false doctrine, because, if we recognize in Christ only one operation, we should, according to the Eutychian system, only recognize one Nature also. Thus Sergius, Theodore, Bishop of Pharan, Athanasius, and Cyrus joined together, and as, on the death of George, Patriarch of Alexandria, Cyrus was raised to that dignity, and Athanasius was immediately appointed Patriarch of Antioch, three of the Eastern Patriarchs embraced the heretical doctrine, that there was but one will in Jesus Christ; and, on that account, this sect was called the Monothelites, from the two Greek terms composing the word, and signifying one will (4). Sophronius, Patriarch of Jerusalem, remained faithful to the Church, and never could be induced to embrace the heresy.
5. Cyrus, being now Patriarch of Alexandria, formed a union there of all the Theodosians, a very numerous Eutychian sect. This Act of Union was concluded in 633, and contains nine Articles; but the seventh is the one that contains all the poison of heresy.
This asserts that Christ is the Son himself, who produces the Divine and human operations by means of one Theandric operation alone that is, we may say, a human-Divine operation, both Divine and human at the same time so that the distinction exists not in reality, but is only drawn by our understandings (5). Cyrus gave these articles to be examined by the Monk Sophronius; but when he read them, he threw himself at the Bishop’s feet, and, with tears, implored of him not to promulgate them, as they were contrary to Faith, and conformable to the doctrine of Apollinares. Cyrus, however, would not listen to him, but published the Act of Union, and Sophronius, seeing he could make no impression in Alexandria, betook himself to Constantinople, to lay the affair before Sergius; but he being one of the firmest supporters of the error, refused to see him, and, under pretext of re-uniting all the heretics of Egypt, approved the doctrine of Cyrus (6).
6. Sophronius returned again to the East, and was elected this same year, 633, Patriarch of Jerusalem, much to the displeasure of Sergius, who endeavoured to blacken him in the estimation of Pope Honorius, to whom he wrote a long letter, filled with deceit and lies. He pretends to have been ignorant altogether of the question of two wills, until Cyrus of Phasis wrote to him, and lays great stress on a pretended work of Menas, formerly Bishop of Constantinople, written to support Monothelism. Some of the Fathers, he says, teach one operation in Christ, but not one of them ever speaks of two, and he then falsely reports that St. Sophronius, when he was made Patriarch of Jerusalem, entered into an agreement with him not to say anything about the controversy at all. The Pope, ignorant of the artifices of Sergius, answered him, and commended him for putting a stop to this novel doctrine (the two operations in Christ, maintained by Sophronius), as only calculated to scandalize the simple, and he then adds : ” We confess one will alone in Jesus Christ, for the Divinity did not assume our sin, but our nature, as it was created before it was corrupted by sin. We do not see that either the Sacred Scriptures or the Councils teach one or two operations. That Jesus Christ is one alone, operating by the Divinity and humanity, the Scriptures prove in many places; but it is of no consequence to know whether by the operation of the Divinity or of the humanity we should admit one or two operations. We should leave this dispute to the grammarians.
We ought to reject these new expressions, lest the simple, hearing of two operations, might consider us Nestorians, or perhaps might count us Eutychians, if we recognize one operation alone in Christ” (7).
7. Not alone the heretical, but even some Catholic writers, have judged, from these expressions of Pope Honorius, that he fell into the Monothelite heresy; but they are certainly deceived; because when he says that there is only one will in Christ, he intends to speak of Christ as man alone, and in that sense, as a Catholic, he properly denies that there are two wills in Christ opposed to each other, as in us the flesh is opposed to the spirit; and if we consider the very words of his letter, we will see that such is his meaning. “We confess one will alone in Jesus Christ, for the Divinity did not assume our sin, but our nature, as it was created before it was corrupted by sin.” This is what Pope John IV., writes to the Emperor Constantino II., in his apology for Honorius : ” Some,” said he, “admitted two contrary wills in Jesus Christ, and Honorious answers that, by saying that Christ perfect God and perfect man having come to heal human nature, was conceived and born without sin, and, therefore, never had two opposite wills, nor in him the will of the flesh ever combatted the will of the Spirit, as it does in us, on account of the sin contracted from Adam.” He, therefore, concludes that those who imagine that Honorius taught that there was in Christ but one will alone of the Divinity and of the humanity, are at fault (8). St. Maximus, in his dialogue with Pyrrhus (9), and Anastasius Bibliothicarius (10), make a similar defence for Honorius. Graveson, in confirmation of this (11), very properly remarks, that as St. Cyril, in his dispute with Nestorius, said, in a Catholic sense, that the Nature of the Incarnate Word was one, and the Eutychians seized on the expression as favourable to them. In the same manner, Honorius saying that Christ had one will (that is, that he had not, like us, two opposite wills one defective, the will of the flesh and one correct, the will of the Spirit), the Monothelites availed themselves of it to defend their errors.
8. We do not, by any means, deny that Honorius was in error, when he imposed silence on those who discussed the question of one or two wills in Christ, because when the matter in dispute is erroneous, it is only favouring error to impose silence. Wherever there is error it ought to be exposed and combated, and it was here that Honorius was wrong; but it is a fact beyond contradiction, that Honorius never fell into the Monothelite heresy, notwithstanding what heretical writers assert, and especially William Cave (12), who says it is labour in vain to try and defend him from this charge. The learned Noel Alexander clearly proves that it cannot be laid to his charge (13), and, in answer to the great argument adduced by our adversaries, that in the Thirteenth Act of the Sixth Council it was declared that he was anathematized” Anathematizari prævidimus, et Honorium eo quad invenimus per scripta, quæ ab eo facto sunt ad Sergium, quia in omnibus ejus mentem secutus est, et impia dogmata confirmavit” replies that the Synod condemned Honorius, not because he formally embraced the heresy, but on account of the favour he showed the heretics, as Leo II. (Optimo Concilii Interprete, as N. Alex, calls him) writes to Constantino Pogonatus in his Epistle, requesting the confirmation of the Synod. In this letter Leo enumerates the heretics condemned, the fathers of the heresy, Theodore of Pharan, Cyrus of Alexandria, Sergius, Pyrrhus, Paul and Peter, successors in the See of Constantinople; he also anathematizes Honorius, not for embracing the error, but for permitting it to go on unmolested: ” Qui hanc Apostolicam Ecclesiam non Apostolicæ Traditionis doctrina lustravit, sed profana proditione immaculatam maculari permisit.” He also writes to the Spanish Bishops, and tells them that Theodore, Cyrus, and the others are condemned, together with Honorius, who did not, as befitted his Apostolical authority, extinguish the flame of heretical doctrine in the beginning, but cherished it by his negligence.
From these and several other sources, then, Noel Alexander proves that Honorius was not condemned by the Sixth Council as a heretic, but as a favourer of heretics, and for his negligence in putting them down, and that he was very properly condemned, for the favourers of heresy and the authors of it are both equally culpable. He adds that the common opinion of the Sorbonne was, that although Honorius, in his letters, may have written some erroneous opinions, still he only wrote them as a private Doctor, and in no wise stained the purity of the faith of the Apostolic See; and his letters to Sergius, which we quoted in the last paragraph, prove how different his opinions were from those of the Monothelites.
9. On the death of Honorius, in 638, the Monothelite heresy was very much extended by the publication of the Ecthesis of the Emperor Heraclius. This was an Edict drawn up by Sergius himself, and published in the name of Heraclius. It was called Ecthesis, the Greek word for exposition, as it contained an exposition of the Faith regarding the question of one or two operations in Jesus Christ. It commences by an exposition of the Faith regarding the Trinity, speaks of the Incarnation, and distinguishes two Natures in the single person of Christ, and it then proceeds : ” We attribute all the operations of Christ, Divine and human, to the Incarnate Word, and we do not permit it to be said or taught that there are one or two operations, but rather, according to the doctrines of the Ecumenical Councils, we declare that there is one Jesus Christ alone, who operates things Divine and human, and that both one and the other operations proceed from the same Incarnate Word, without division or confusion; for although the expression of one or two Natures has been made use of by some of the Fathers, still others look on it as strange, and dread lest some may avail themselves of it to destroy the doctrine of the two Natures in Christ. On the other hand, the expression of two operations scandalizes many, as it was never made use of by any of the principal Doctors of the Church, and because it appears to be the same thing to admit two contrary wills in Christ, as to admit two Persons. And if the impious Nestorius, although he admitted two Sons, did not dare to say that there were two wills nay, more, he declared that in the two Persons supposed by him, there was only one will how then can Catholics, who recognize one Jesus Christ alone, admit in him two wills, and even one will contrary to the other ? We, therefore, following in all things, the Holy Fathers, confess in Christ one will alone, and we believe that his flesh, animated with a rational soul, never of itself made any movement contrary to the Spirit of the Word which was united in one Person.” Such was the famous Ecthesis of Heraclius, confirmed afterwards by its author, Sergius, in a Cabal or Council held by him in Constantinople; we perceive that in the commencement it prohibits the expression of one or two operations, to deceive the people, but afterwards the dogma of one will, the formal heresy of the Monothelites, is maintained (14). This Ecthesis was sent to Pope Severinus, but, either because it did not come to hand, or that he died before it reached Rome, we hear nothing of its condemnation then, but it was subsequently condemned by Pope John IV. (15).
10. Notwithstanding the condemnation of the Ecthesis, the Monothelite heresy still continued to flourish, through the malice of Pyrrhus and Paul, the successors of Sergius in the See of Constantinople. Paul pretended, for a long time, to be a Catholic, but at length, he threw off the mask, and induced the Emperor Constans to publish, in 648, an edict called the “Type,” or formula, imposing silence on both parties. In this formula there is a summary review of the reasons on both sides, and it then proceeds: “Wherefore, for the future, we forbid all our Catholic subjects to dispute about one or two wills or operations, without prejudice, however, to what was decided by the approved Fathers, relative to the Incarnation of the Word. We wish, therefore, that they should hold by the Holy Scriptures, the five General Councils, and the simple expressions of the Fathers, which doctrine is the rule of the Church, without either adding to, or diminishing, anything, nor explaining anything by the private opinions of others, but let everything be in the same state as it was before this controversy sprung up at all, and as if it had never taken place. Those who will dare to contravene this decree, if they are Bishops or clergymen, they shall be deposed; if Monks, excommunicated and banished from their Monasteries; if in public employments, cashiered; if private individuals, their property shall be confiscated; and all others shall suffer corporal punishment, and be transported.” Such is the ” Type” of Constans (16).
11. We should here remark, that on the death of Sergius, he was succeeded by Pyrrhus, and he resigned the See, of his own free-will, afterwards, on account of disputes he had with his people, and Paul, the Econome of the Cathedral Church, was elected in his place (17), and he followed the heretical doctrines of both his predecessors. Pope Theodore laboured hard, both by writing to him and through his Legates, to bring him back to the Catholic Faith, but finding it all in vain, at length, by a formal sentence, deposed him (18). It is supposed that this took place in the same Council in which Theodore condemned Pyrrhus, for after he had made his retractation in Rome at the Pope’s own feet, as he had promised St. Maximus he would do, when he disputed with him in Africa (as we shall see hereafter), he went to Ravenna, and again relapsed into Monothelitism. It is probable he was induced by the Exarch, who was a heretic himself, to take this step, hoping to regain his See of Constantinople, and in fact he again got possession of it in the year 655. When Pope Theodore heard of his relapse, he convoked a partial Synod of Bishops and the Roman clergy, and pronounced an anathema and sentence of deposition against him, and not only that, but he had the chalice with the Consecrated Blood of the Redeemer, brought to him, dipped the pen in it, and thus signed the awful sentence with the precious Blood of Christ (19).
12. We have spoken of the dispute of Pyrrhus with St. Maximus the Abbot, in Africa. The controversy was about the one or two wills and operations, and it is worthy of remark how forcibly the learned St. Maximus refuted him. If Christ is one, said Pyrrhus, he should only will as one person, and, consequently, he has but one will. Tell me, Pyrrhus, said St. Maximus, Christ is certainly only one, but he is, at the same time, both God and man. If, then, he is true God and true man, he must will as God and as man in two different manners, though but one person all the time, for, as he is of two natures, he must certainly will and operate according to the two natures, for neither of these natures is devoid of will, nor devoid of operation.
Now, if Jesus Christ willed and operated according to the two Natures, he had, as they were, two, we must admit that he had two natural wills and two essential operations, and as the two Natures did not divide him, so the two wills and operations essentially attached to the two natures did not actually divide him, and being united in Christ did not prevent him from being one alone. But, Pyrrhus replied, it is not possible, for as there are several wills there should be several persons. Then you assert, said St. Maximus, that as there are many wills there must be many persons to wish; but if you go by this rule, you must also admit, reciprocally, that as many persons as there are, so many wills must there be; but if you admit this, you must grant that there is but one Person, as Sabellius teaches, for in God and in the Three Divine Persons there is but one will alone, or, you must grant that as there are in God Three Persons, so there are three wills, and consequently three Natures, as Arius taught, if according to the doctrine of the Fathers the number of wills must correspond to the number of Persons. It is, therefore (concludes St. Maximus), not true that wherever there are many wills, there are many persons, but the real truth is that when several Natures are united in the same Person, as in Jesus Christ, there are several wills and operations, though only one person. Pyrrhus raised more difficulties, but St. Maximus answered them all so clearly that he was at last convinced, and promised him that he would go to Rome, and retract his errors at the feet of the Pope, which he soon after did, and presented to his Holiness the instrument of his retractation (20); but again, as we have seen, relapsed.
13. But to return to the Type of Constans; that together with all the Monothelite doctrine, was condemned in Rome in a Synod held by Pope Martin; and in consequence, the holy Pontiff was bitterly persecuted by Constans, and ended his days in the Crimea, in 654, where he was banished (21). Constans himself, after practising so many cruelties against the Pope and the faithful, especially in Syracuse, was called away by God, in the year 668, the twenty-seventh year of his reign, and met an unhappy end. He went into the bath along with an attendant, who killed him with a blow on the head, inflicted with the vessel used for pouring out water, and instantly took to flight; his attendants, astonished at his long delay in the bath, at last went in to see what was the matter, and found him dead (22). Cardinal Gotti (23) says, he also put St. Maximus to death; and among his other acts of cruelty related by, Noel Alexander (24), on the authority of Theophanes, Cedrenus, Paul the Deacon, &c., is the murder of his brother Theodosius. He first got him ordained a Deacon through envy, by the Patriarch Paul, but he never after enjoyed peace of mind, for he frequently dreamed he saw his brother clad in the Diaconalrobes, and holding a chalice filled with blood in his hand, and crying out to him, ” Drink, brother, drink.”
14. The scene was changed. Constaritine Pogonatus, son to Constans, mounted the Imperial throne; he was a lover of Faith and Justice, and lost no time in procuring the assembly of the Sixth General Council in Constantinople, in 680 (25), which was presided over by the Legates of Pope Agatho. Noel Alexander informs us that authors are not agreed as to the number of Bishops who attended; Theophanes and Cedrenus reckoned two hundred and nineteen, while Photius only counts one hundred and seventy. This Council was happily brought to a conclusion in eighteen Sessions, and on the 18th of October, the definition of the Faith, in opposition to the heresy of the Monothelites was thus worded: “We proclaim that there are in Christ, two natural operations, invisibly, inconvertibly, inseparably, and unconfusedly, according to the doctrine of the Fathers.” This definition was subscribed by all the Fathers (26). Thus was concluded the Sixth General Council; the zeal of the Prelates was seconded by the approbation and authority of the Emperor, whose Faith was lauded by the assembled Fathers, and he was decorated with the title of the Pious Restorer of Religion. The Pope, St. Leo II., the successor of Agatho, who died during the celebration of the Council, confirmed its decisions and decrees, and, as Graveson (27) says, confirmed by his Apostolic authority, this Sixth Council, and ordained that it should be numbered among the other General Councils.
15. We should here remark, that Cardinal Baronius (28), to wipe off the stain of heresy from Pope Honorius, says, that the Acts of this Council have not been handed down to us fairly, but were corrupted through the artifice of Theodore, the Bishop of Constantinople. But Graveson properly remarks, that this conjecture is not borne out by the learned men of our age, because (as he says,) Christian Lupus, Noel Alexander, Anthony Pagi, Combesis and Garner, clearly prove the authenticity of the Acts. Graveson (29), besides, remarks that several follow Cardinal Bellarmine’s opinion, and endeavour to clear Honorius, by saying, that the Fathers of the Council were in error in the examination and judgment of Honorius; but, he adds, it is very hard to believe that all the Fathers, not alone of this Council, but also of the Seventh and Eighth General Councils, who also condemned Honorius, were in error, when condemning his doctrine. I think it better, then, to keep on the highway, and conclude, that Honorius can, by every right, be cleared from the Monothelite heresy, but still was justly condemned by the Council, as a favourer of heretics, and for his negligence in repressing error. Danæus (30) says the same thing; there is no open heresy in the private letter of Honorius to Sergius, but he is worthy of condemnation for his pusillanimity in using ambiguous words to please and keep on terms with heretics, when it was his duty to oppose them strenuously in the beginning. Hermant says (31), that Honorius was condemned, because he allowed himself to be imposed on by the artifices of Sergius, and did not maintain the interests of the Church with the constancy he should have done. It is dreadful to see the blindness and obstinacy of so many Prelates of the Church poisoned by this heresy. Among the rest, Noel Alexander tells us, was Macarias, Patriarch of Antioch, who was present at the Council (32), who, when the Emperor and the Fathers asked him if he confessed two natural wills, and two natural operations in Christ, answered that he would sooner allow himself to be torn limb from limb, and thrown into the sea; he was very properly deposed, and excommunicated by the Synod.
The same author informs us (33), that the heresy continued to flourish among the Chaldeans, even since the Council (but they abandoned it in the Pontificate of Paul V.), and among the Maronites, and Armenians, likewise; among these last another sect, called Paulicians, from one Paul of Samosata, took root in 653. They admitted the two Principles of the Manicheans, denied that Mary was the Mother of God, and taught several other extravagances enumerated by Noel Alexander (34). Before I conclude this chapter, I wish to make one reflection; we see how it displeases the powers of hell, that mankind should be grateful to our Redeemer, and return him love for love; for the devil is constantly labouring to sow amongst Christians, by means of wicked men, so many heresies, all tending to destroy the belief of the Incarnation of the Son of God, and, in consequence, to diminish our love for Jesus Christ, who, by the assumption of the flesh of Man, has constituted himself our Saviour. Such were the heresies of Sabellius, of Photinus, of Arius, of Nestorius, of Eutyches, and of the Monothelites; some of these have made of Christ an imaginary personage, some deprived him of the Divinity, others again of his humanity, but the Church has always been victorious against them.
(1) Baron. Ann. 163, n. 4; Nat. Alex. t. 12, c. 2, a. 1, sec. 2.
(2) Fleury, t. 6, I 37, n. 41.
(3) Meury, al luogo cit.
(4) Fleury, loc. cit.; Van Ranst, sec. 6, p. 125; Herm. Hist. 1. 1, c. 235.
(5) Epist. Cyri, p. 952, ap. Fleury, loc. cit. n. 42.
(6) Fleury, cit. n. 42.
(7) Fleury, t. 6, l. 37, n. 43, 44.
(8) Fleury, loc. cit. l. 28, n. 25.
(9) Nat. Alex. t. 12, dis. 2, p. 3.
(10) Anasta. Præf. ad Joan. Diacon
(11) Graveson, Hist. Ecclesi. t. 2, p. 48, c. 3.
(12) Cave Hist. St. Leo, Monoth.
(13) Nat. Alex. t. 11, Hist. Ecclesias. Diss. II. Prop. 3.
(14) Nat. Alex. t. 12, c. 2, . 2, n. 4; Fleury, t. 6, l. 38, n. 21.
(15) Fleury, loc. cit. n. 22.
(16) Nat. Alex.loc. cit. n. 6; Fleury, loc. cit. n. 45.
(17) Fleury, t. 6, l. 38, n. 24, in fine.
(18) Anast. in Thed. Con. Lat. s. 2, p. 116.
(19) Fleury, loc. cit.
(20) Fleury, t. 6, 1. 38, n. 36 & 40.
(21) Danæus. Temp. Natio. p. 158,
(22) Fleury. t. 6, l. 39, n. 42.
(23) Gotti, Vic. adver. Her. c. 68, f. 4, n. 41.
(24) Nat. Alexander, t. 12, c. 5, or. 3.
(25) Nat. Alexander, t. 12, c. 2, a. 1, s. 4; Herm. c. 240; Fleury, t. 6, l. 4, n. 11; Berti. t. 1, sec. 7, c. a.
(26) Tournely. Theol. Com. t. 3, in appen. p. 304.
(27) Graveson, Hist. Ecclesias. t. 3, p. 60; Collog. 4.
(28) Baron, ap. Grav.
(29) Grav. loc. cit. p. 27.
(30) Danams Temp. Not. p. 259.
(31) Hermant. t. 5, c. 242,
(32) Nat. Alexander, t. 12, or. 1, s.4.
(33) Nat. Alexander, t. VI, c 2, ar. 12, s. 2, in fine.
(34) Nat. Alexander
RE: St. Alphonsus Liguori: The History of Heresies and Their Refutation - Stone - 04-04-2022
CHAPTER VIII. – HERESIES OF THE EIGHTH CENTURY
THE HERESY OF THE ICONOCLASTS
THE HERESY OF THE ICONOCLASTS
1. Beginning of the Iconoclasts.
2, 3. St. Germanus opposes the Emperor Leo.
4. He resigns the See of Constantinople.
5. Anastasius is put in his place; Resistance of the Women.
6. Cruelty of Leo.
7. Leo endeavours to put the Pope to death; opposition of the Romans.
8. Letter of the Pope.
9. A Council is held in Rome in support of the Sacred Images, but Leo continues his Persecution.
10. His hand is miraculously restored to St. John of Damascus.
11. Leo dies, and is succeeded by Constantine Copronymus, a greater Persecutor; Death of the impious Patriarch Anastasius.
12. Council held by Constantine.
13. Martyrs in honour of the Images.
14. 0ther tyrannical Acts of Constantine, and his horrible Death.
15. Leo IV. succeeds to the Empire, and is succeeded by his Son, Constantine.
16. The Empress Irene, in her Son’s name, demands a Council.
17. Seditions against the Council.
18. The Council is held, and the Veneration of Images established.
19. Erroneous opinion of the Council of Frankfort, regarding the Eighth General Council.
20. Persecution again renewed by the Iconoclasts.
1. The first and fifth Acts of the Eighth General Council attest that the Gentiles, the Jews, the Marcionites, and the Manicheans, had previously declared war against Sacred Images, and it again broke out, in the year 723, in the reign of Leo Isaurus. About this period, a Captain of the Jews, called Sarantapechis (or four cubits), induced the Caliph Jezzid to commence a destructive war against the Sacred Images in the Christian Churches, and promising him a long and happy reign as his reward. He, accordingly, published an edict, commanding the removal of all Images; but the Christians refused to obey him, and six months afterwards God removed him out of the way. Constantius, Bishop of Nacolia, in Phrygia, introduced this Jewish doctrine among Christians. He was expelled from his See, in punishment of his perfidy, by his own Diocesans, and ingratiated himself into the Emperor’s favour, and induced him to declare war against Images (1).
2. Leo had already reigned ten years, when, in the year 727, he declared publicly to the people, that it was not right to venerate Images. The people, however, all cried out against him; and he then said, he did not mean (2) to say that Images should be done away with altogether, but that they should be placed high up, out of the reach, that they should not be soiled by the people kissing them. It was manifest his intention was to do away with them altogether; but he met the most determined resistance from St. Germanus, Patriarch of Constantinople, who proclaimed his willingness to lay down his life for the Sacred Images, which were always venerated in the Church. The Holy Pontiff wrote many letters to those Bishops who held on to the Emperor’s opinion, to turn them from their evil ways, and he also wrote to Pope Gregory II., who answered him in a long letter, approving of his zeal, and stating what was the doctrine of the Catholic Church in the veneration of the Sacred Images which he was contending for (3).
3. The Emperor continued his rage against Images, and the displeasure of the people of Continental Greece and the Islands of the Cyclades at length broke out into open rebellion. Zeal for religion was the motive assigned for this outbreak, and one Cosimus was elected as their Emperor, and they marched to Constantinople to have him crowned. They fought a battle near Constantinople, under the leadership of Cosimus, Agallianus, and Stephanus, but were totally defeated; so Agallianus threw him self into the sea, and Stephanus and Cosimus were taken and beheaded. Leo was emboldened by this victory to persecute the Catholics with greater violence. He sent for the Patriarch, St. Germanus, and strove to bring him over to his way of thinking; but (4) the Saint told him openly, that whoever would strive to abolish the veneration of Images was a precursor of Antichrist, and that such doctrine had a tendency to upset the Mystery of the Incarnation; and he reminded him of his coronation oath, not to make any change in the Traditions of the Church.
All this had no effect on the Emperor; he continued to press the Patriarch, and strove to entrap him into some unguarded expression, which he might consider seditious, and thus have a reason for deposing him. He was urged on to adopt this course by Anastasius, a disciple of the Patriarch, but who joined the Emperor’s party, and was promised the See of Constantinople, on the deposition of St. Germanus. The Saint, knowing the evil designs of Anastasius, gave him many friendly admonitions. One day, in particular, he was going in to see the Emperor, and Anastasius followed him so closely that he trod on his robe : “Do not be in a hurry,” said the Saint; ” you will be soon enough in the Hyppodrome” (the public circus), alluding to his disgrace fifteen years afterwards, when the Emperor Constantine, who placed him in the See of Constantinople, had his eyes plucked out, and conducted round the Hyppodrome, riding on an ass, with his face to the tail; but, for all that, kept him in the See, because he was an enemy to the Sacred Images. The Emperor, in the meanwhile, continued a bitter enemy of the Patriarch St. Germanus, and persecuted, not alone the Catholics who venerated the Sacred Images, but those also who honoured the Relics of the Saints, and invoked their intercession, not knowing, or, perhaps, not wishing to learn, the difference between supreme worship, which we Catholics pay to God, and that veneration which we pay to Relics and Holy Images (5).
4. The Emperor convoked a Council in the early part of the year 730 (6), in which he made a decree against Sacred Images, and wanted the Patriarch to subscribe it, but he firmly refused, and preferred resigning his dignity; he threw off his Pallium, and said : “It is impossible, my Lord, that I can sanction any novelty against the Faith; I can do nothing without a General Council ;” and he left the meeting. The Emperor was enraged, and he sent some armed officials to eject him from the Archiepiscopal Palace, which they did, with blows and outrages, not even respecting his venerable age of eighty years. He went to the house of his family, and lived there as a monk, and left the See of Constantinople, which he had governed for fourteen years, in a state of the greatest desolation. He then died a holy- death, and the Church venerates his memory on the 12th of May (7).
5. A few days after the banishment of St. Germanus, Anastasius was appointed Patriarch of Constantinople, and, by force of arms, was put in possession of the See. The impious usurper, at once, gave up all power over the churches to the Emperor, and he having now no one to contradict him, began vigorously to enforce his decree against the Holy Images. In the vestibule of the imperial palace, at Constantinople, there was an image of our Redeemer crucified, held in extraordinary veneration by the people, as it was believed to have been erected by Constantine, in memory of the Cross that appeared to him in the heavens. Leo intended to begin with this most sacred image, and he ordered Jovinus, one of his guards, to throw it down; a number of women who were present, endeavoured to dissuade him from the sacriligious attempt, but he despised their supplications, mounted on a ladder, and gave three blows with an axe on the face of it. When the women saw this, they dragged back the ladder, threw him on the ground, killed him, and tore him in pieces. Withal, the holy image was cast to the earth and burned, and the Emperor put in its place a plain cross, with an inscription, telling that the image was removed, for the Iconoclasts venerated the cross, and only did away with images representing the human figure. The women, after killing Jovinus, ran off to the Bishop’s palace, hurled stones against it, and poured out all sorts of abuse on Anastasius : Wretch that you are, said they, you have usurped the priesthood, only to destroy everything sacred. Anastasius, outrageous at the insult, went at once to the Emperor, and had the women all put to death; ten more suffered along with them, and the Greek Church honours them as martyrs on the 9th of August (8).
6. The Emperor Leo, a man of no learning himself, was a bitter persecutor of learned men, and abolished the schools of sacred literature, which flourished from the time of Constantine. There was a library founded by the ancient Emperors, near the Imperial palace of Constantino, containing over three thousand volumes. The librarian, Lecumenicus, was a man of great merit, and he superintended the labours of twelve professors, who taught gratuitously both the sacred and the profane sciences. This learned corporation had so high a character, that even the Emperor himself could not make any unusual ordinance without consulting them.
Leo used every means in his power, both threats and promises, to induce these professors to give their sanction to his proceedings; but when he found it was all in vain, he surrounded the library with faggots and dry wood, and burned both the professors and the literary treasures together. Partly by threat, and partly by seduction, he got all the inhabitants of Constantinople to bring together into the middle of the city, all the images of the Redeemer, the Blessed Virgin, and the Saints, and burn them, and the paintings in the churches were all destroyed, and covered over with whitewash. Many refused obedience, and he beheaded some, and mutilated others, so that many clergy, monks, and even lay people suffered Martyrdom (9).
7. When the news of this persecution reached Italy, the images of the Emperor were thrown down and trampled (10), and when he sent his impious decree against holy images, to Rome, and threatened Pope Gregory II. to depose him, if he resisted its execution, the Pontiff rejected the impious command, and prepared to resist him as an enemy to the Church, and wrote to the faithful in all parts, to put them on their guard against this new error. The people of the Pentapolis, and the army quartered in the Venetian territory, refused obedience to the Imperial decree, and proclaimed that they would fight in defense of the Pope. Paul the Exarch of Ravenna, the Emperor, who sent him his orders, and all who would obey them were anathematized, and Chiefs were elected. All Italy, at last, in a general agreement, resolved to elect another Emperor, and conduct him to Constantinople; but the Pope having still some hopes of the conversion of Leo, used all his influence to prevent this plan being put into execution.
While things were in this state, Exilaratus, Duke of Naples, and his son Adrian, Lord of Campania, persuaded the people of that province to obey the Emperor, and kill the Pope, but both father and son were taken by the Romans, and killed by them, and as it was reported that Peter, the Duke of Rome, had written to the Emperor against the Pope, he was driven out of the city by the people. The people of Ravenna were divided into two factions, one party for the Pope, another for the Emperor; they broke out at last into open warfare, and the Patrician Paul, Exarch of Ravenna, was killed. While all this was going on, the Lombards conquered several strong places of Emilia and Auxumum, in the Pentapolis, and finally took Ravenna itself. Gregory II., therefore, wrote to Ursus, Duke of Venice, or rather of the Province of Ravenna, called Venice, to unite with the Exarch, then in Venice, and recover the city for the Emperor. But the Emperor was only more outrageous, and sent the Patrician Eutychius, a eunuch* to Naples, who sent one of his creatures to Rome, to procure the Pope’s death, and the death of the chief people of the city likewise; when this was discovered, the people wanted to kill the Patrician, but the Pope saved his life. The whole people then, rich and poor, swore that they would die before they would allow the Pope, the defender of the Faith, to be injured. The ungrateful Patrician sent messengers to the Lombard Dukes, and offered them the most tempting bribes if they would desert the Pope, but they, already acquainted with his perfidy, joined with the Romans, and took the same oath as they did to defend the Pope (11).
8. Anastasius, the newly-elected Patriarch of Constantinople, sent his Synodical letter to Pope Gregory II., but the Pope knowing him to be a supporter of the Iconoclasts, refused to recognise him as a brother, and gave him notice that if he did not return to the Catholic Faith, he would be degraded from the priesthood (12).
Gregory did not long survive this; he died in the February of 731, and was succeeded by Gregory III., who, in the beginning of his reign, wrote to the Emperor an answer to a letter sent to his predecessor, rather than to him. In this able production he thus speaks : “You confess an holy Faith in your letters, in all its purity, and declare accursed all who dare to contradict the decisions of the Fathers. What, therefore, induces you to turn back, after having walked in the right road for ten years ? During all that time, you never spoke of the Holy Images, and, now, you say that they are the same as the idols, and that those who venerate them are idolaters. You are endeavouring to destroy them, and do not you dread the judgment of God; scandalizing, not alone the faithful, but the very infidels? Why have you not, as Emperor and chief of the Christian people, sought the advice of learned men? they would have taught you why God prohibited the adoration of idols made by men. The Fathers, our masters, and the six Councils, have handed down as a tradition, the veneration of Holy Images, and you refuse to receive their testimony. We implore of you to lay aside this presumption.” He then speaks of the doctrine of the Church regarding the veneration of Images, and thus concludes : “You think to terrify me by saying : I will send to Rome, and will break the statue of St. Peter, and I will drag away Pope Gregory in chains, as Constans did Martin. Know then that the Popes are the arbiters of peace between the East and the West, and as to your threats, we fear them not” (13).
9. He wrote a second letter to Leo soon after, but neither the first or second reached him, for a priest of the name of George, to whom they were entrusted, was afraid to present them, so the Pope put him under penance for his negligence, and sent him again with the same letters, but the Emperor had the letters detained in Sicily, and banished the priest for a year, and would not allow him to come to Constantinople (14). The Pope was highly indignant that his letters were despised, and his Legate, George, detained, so he felt himself called on to summon a Council in Rome, in 732 (15), which was attended by ninety-three Bishops, and by the Consuls, the nobility, the clergy, and people of Rome, and in this assembly it was ordained that all those who showed disrespect to Holy Images should be excluded from the communion of the Church, and this decree was solemnly subscribed by all who attended. The Pope again wrote to the Emperor, but his letters were detained a second time, and the messengers kept in prison for a year, at the termination of which, the letters were forcibly taken from him, and he was threatened and maltreated, and sent back to Rome.
All Italy joined in a petition to the Emperor to re-establish the veneration of the holy Images, but even this petition was taken from the messengers by the Patrician Sergius, Governor of Sicily, and they, after a detention of eight months, were sent back, after having received cruel treatment. The Pope, however, again wrote to the Emperor, and to the Patriarch, Anastasius, but all in vain, and Leo, enraged with the Pope and his rebellious subjects in Italy, sent a great fleet against them, but it was shipwrecked in the Adriatic. This increased his fury, so he raised to a third higher the capitation tax in Calabria and Sicily, and obliged a strict registry to be kept of all the male children that were born, and confiscated in all the countries where his power reached in the East, the estates belonging to the Patrimony of St. Peter. He continued to persecute all who still venerated the Holy Images; he no longer, indeed, put them to death, lest they should be honoured as Martyrs, but he imprisoned them, and tortured them first, and then banished them (16).
10. About this time the cruel persecution of St. John of Damascus took place. This Saint defended, in Syria, the honour due to the sacred Images, so Leo endeavoured to ruin him by an infamous calumny; he had him accused as a traitor to the Saracen Caliph Hiokam, and the false charge proved by a forged letter; the Caliph called his Council together, and the Saint was condemned, and sentenced to have his hand cut off as a traitor. His innocence was, however, miraculously proved; animated with a lively faith, he went before an image of the Blessed Virgin, whose honour he constantly defended, placed his amputated hand in connexion with the stump of his arm, prayed to the Holy Mother that his hand might be again united to his body, that he might be able to write again in her defence; his prayer was heard, and he was miraculously healed (17). Noel Alexander says (18), that the wonderful things related of St. John of Damascus, are proved from the book of the life of St. John of Jerusalem.
11. The Almighty, in the end, took vengeance on the crimes of the Emperor, and evils from all sides fell thick upon him; pestilence and famine ravaged both the city and country, and the fairest provinces of Asia were laid waste by the Saracens. He became a prey to the most direful and tormenting maladies himself, and died miserably in 741, leaving the Empire to his son Constantine Copronimus. He surpassed his father in wickedness, his morals were most debased, and he had no principle of Religion; not alone satisfied with destroying the Images and relics of the Saints, he prohibited all from invoking their intercession. His subjects could no longer bear with his vices, so they rose up against him, and proclaimed his relative, Artavesdes, Pretor of Armenia, Emperor. This Prince, brought up in the Catholic Faith, re-established the veneration of Sacred Images; and Religion began to hope once more for happy days, but Constantine recovered the Empire, took Constantinople, and Artavesdes fell into his hands with his two sons, Nicephorus and Nicetus, and he deprived all three of sight. The justice of God now overtook the false Patriarch, Anastasius; he ordered him to be led through the city, as we have already remarked, mounted on an ass, with his face to the tail, and to be severely flogged; but as he could find no one wicked enough to carry out his designs, he continued him in the Patriarchate; he enjoyed the dignity but a short time after this disgrace; he was attacked by a horrible cholic, in which the functions of nature were disgustingly reversed, and he left the world without any signs of repentance (19).
12. Constantine, raging more furiously against Sacred Images every day, wished to have the sanction ofEcclesiastical authority for his impiety; he accordingly convoked a General Council, as Danæus tells us, in 754, in Constantinople, and three hundred and thirty-eight Bishops assembled, but the Legates of theApostolic See, or the Bishops of the other Patriarchates were not present. Theodore, Bishop of Ephesus, and Palla, or Pastilla, Bishop of Perga, at first presided, but the Emperor afterwards appointed Constantine, a Monk, President, a man whose only law was the Emperor’s will, and who, having been a Bishop, was degraded and banished from his See, on account of his scandalous vices.
In the Cabal which they had the hardihood to call the Seventh General Council, all honour shown to the images and saints, was condemned as idolatry, and all who approved of recurring to the intercession of the Blessed Virgin, were anathematized. We find no decision against relics, or against the Cross, which they held in great veneration, for they obliged every one to swear on the Cross to receive the Decree of their Council, and to do away with the veneration of Images. Thus, we always remark, as a particular characteristic of heresy, the spirit of contradiction.
13. When this Council was brought to a close, the Emperor redoubled his persecutions against the Catholics. Several Bishops and several Solitaries, who forsook their cells to defend the Faith, received the crown of Martyrdom. Among these, three holy Abbots are particularly remembered; the first was St. Andrew Calabita; he had the courage to charge the Emperor to his face with impiety; he called him another Valens, a second Julian, and he was ordered to be flogged to death: he suffered in 761, and the Church honours his memory on the 17th of October (20). The second was the Abbot Paul; he was taken by Lardotirus, Governor of the Island of Theophanos. This wretch placed on the ground an image of Jesus Christ on one side, and the rack on the other. “Now, Paul,” said he, ” choose whichever you like; trample on that image, or you shall be put on the rack.” ” Jesus Christ, my Lord,” said the Saint, ” may God never permit me to trample on your holy image,” and throwing himself on the ground, he most devoutly kissed it. The Governor was furious, and commanded that he should be stripped; he was stretched on the rack; the executioners squeezed him from head to heels, and bored all his limbs with iron nails; he was then suspended by his feet, his head down, and roasted alive, in that posture, with a great fire (21). The third was St. Stephen, Abbot of Mount Auxentium; he was first of all exiled to the Island of Proconesus, near the Hellespont, for two years; afterwards brought to Constantinople, and put into prison, with chains on his hands, and his feet in the stocks.
There he had the consolation to meet three hundred and forty-two Monks from different countries some had their noses cut off; some their eyes pulled out, or their hands or ears cut off; some were covered all over with scars, from the floggings they had received; and many were afterwards put to death, and all this because they would not subscribe the Decree against Holy Images. After being detained forty days in prison, a number of the imperial satellites came there one day, furiously calling on the guards to bring out Stephen of Auxentium. The Saint came boldly forward, and said : “I am he whom you seek ;” they immediately threw him on the ground, tied a rope to the irons on his legs, and dragged him through the streets, kicking and trampling him on the head and body, and striking him with clubs and stones all the way. When they dragged him as far as the Oratory of St. Theodore the Martyr, just outside the first gate of the Pretorium, he raised up his head, and recommended himself to the intercession of the Martyr. “See,” said Philomatus, one of his tormentors, ” the scoundrel wishes to die a Martyr,” and he at once struck him on the head with a heavy club, and killed him. The murderer immediately fell to the ground, the devil entered into him, and took possession of him, and he died a death of torment. They still withal continued dragging along the body of St. Stephen; the ground was covered with his blood, and his limbs were torn from his body. If any one refused to insult the sacred remains, he was looked on as an enemy to the Emperor. They came at last to a Convent of Nuns, and the Saint’s sister was one of the community; they thought to make her come out and throw a stone at the remains of her brother, with her own hand; but she concealed herself in a tomb, and they were foiled in this savage intent. Finally, they threw the body of the Saint into a pit at the Church of the Martyr St. Pelagia, where the Emperor commanded that the bodies of malefactors and Pagans should be buried. This Saint was martyred in the year 767 (22).
14. The churches themselves did not escape the fury of Constantine; numberless sacrileges were committed in them by his soldiers. When the Decree of the Council was promulgated in the provinces, the heretics at once commenced the destruction of all pictorial and sculptural ornaments; the images were burned or broken, the painted walls whitewashed, the frames of the paintings were burned (23) in a word, more barbarity was exercised in the name of a Christian Emperor than under any of his Pagan predecessors. Michæl, the Governor of Anatolia (24), collected together, by order of the Emperor, in the year 770, all the religious men of the province of Thrace in a plain near Ephesus, and then addressed them: ” Whosoever wishes to obey the Emperor, let him dress himself in white, and take a wife immediately; but those who refuse it shall lose their eyes, and be banished to Cyprus. The order was immediately put into execution. Many underwent the punishment (though some apostatized), and were numbered among the Martyrs. The next year the Governor sold out all the Monasteries, both male and female, with all the sacred vessels, stock, and entire property, and sent the proceeds to the Emperor; he burned all their books and pictures, burned also whatever reliquaries he could lay hands on, and punished those who had them in their possession as guilty of idolatry. Some he put to death by the sword; more expired under the lash; he deprived an immense multitude of sight; he ordered the beards of others to be anointed with oil and melted wax, and then set on fire; and more he banished, after subjecting them to various tortures. Such was the furious persecution by Constantino of the venerators of Holy Images; but with all his cruelty, he could not destroy Religion, and in the end God destroyed him by an extraordinary sickness in the year 775. According to Danæus, his death was like that of Antiochus, and his repentance of the same sort as that of his prototype (25). Fleury says (26), that Constantino having cast his eye on a crown of gems presented to the Patriarchal Church by the Emperor Heraclius, seized it; but he had scarcely put it on his head, when he was covered with carbuncles, and tortured, besides, with a violent fever, and that he died in the most excruciating agony. Van Ranst adds (27), that he died consumed by an internal fire, and crying out that he was burning alive as a penalty for the irreverence he showed to the Images of the Mother of God.
15. Constantino Copronimus was succeeded by his son, Leo IV.; he pretended to be a Catholic in the commencement of his reign, with the intention of cementing his authority, and more especially he expressed his wishes that the Mother of God should be treated with the greatest respect; he permitted the Religious scattered in the late persecution to inhabit their monasteries once more, and assisted them to do so, and he appointed Catholic Bishops to the Sees; but when he felt himself firmly established on the throne, he threw off the mask, and renewed the persecution with all his father’s fury : he even banished the Empress Irene, his wife, because he suspected that in private she venerated the Holy Images, and nothing would induce him to see her again. His reign, however, was short; he was attacked by a strange disorder like his father’s, and died, having only reigned about five years. He had associated his son Constantino in the empire with him, but as he was only ten years old at his father’s death, his mother, the Empress Irene, took the reins of government, and under her pious care the Christian Religion flourished once more. Paul, then Patriarch of Constantinople, was attacked with a severe sickness, and took the sudden resolution of retiring into a Monastery, and declared to the Empress, that against his conscience he condemned the veneration of Images to please the Emperor Copronimus. Withal, he was a virtuous man, and the Empress endeavoured to force him to resume the government of his Church, but he was firm in his refusal, and said he would spend the remainder of his days weeping for his sins (28).
16. Tarasius, as yet a layman, and who had been Secretary of State, was, with the good will of all, appointed to succeed Paul; but as the See was separated from the communion of the other Patriarchates, he accepted it solely on condition that as soon as possible a General Council should be convoked, to reunite all the Churches in one faith. This condition was agreed to by all, and he was consecrated Patriarch, and immediately sent his profession of faith to Pope Adrian, and at the same time the Empress also wrote to the Holy Father, both in her own and her son’s name, imploring him to consent to the convocation of a General Council, and to assist at it himself in person to re-establish the ancient tradition in regard to the veneration of Holy Images, and if he could not attend himself, at least to send his Legates.
The Pope answered this letter of the Empress, and besought her to use all her influence to get the Greeks to pay the same veneration to Holy Images as did the Romans following the tradition of the Fathers; and should it be found impossible, he says, to re-establish this point without a General Council, the first thing of all to be done should be, to declare the nullity of the false Council, held in the reign of the Emperor Leo. He besides required that the Emperor should send a declaration sworn in his own name, and in the names of the Empress his mother, of the Patriarch, and of the whole Senate, that the Council should enjoy full and perfect liberty (29).
17. The Pope then sent two Legates to Constantinople Peter, Archpriest of the Roman Church, and Peter, Abbot of the Monastery of St. Saba, and they arrived at their destination while the Emperor and Empress were in Thrace. The Iconoclast Bishops, who were more numerous, and supported by a great number of the laity, took courage from this, and insisted that it was necessary to maintain the condemnation of Images, and not allow a new Council. The Emperor and Empress returned to Constantinople, and the 1st of August of the year 786 was appointed for opening the Council in the Church of the Apostles. The evening before, however, the soldiers went to the Baptistery of the church, crying out that they would have no Council. The Patriarch notified this to the Empress; but, not withstanding the disturbance, it was determined not to postpone the Council, and it was opened the following day. When the Bishops were assembled, and while the Synodical letters were being read, the soldiers, urged on by the schismatical Bishops, came round the church, and thundering at the doors, told the assembled Prelates that they would never allow what was decreed under the Emperor Constantine to be revoked, and they then burst into the church with drawn swords, and threatened the Patriarch and Bishops with death.
The Emperor sent his own body-guards to restrain them, but they could not succeed, and the schismatical Bishops sung the song of victory. The Patriarch and the Catholic Bishops went into the Sanctuary, in the meantime, and celebrated the Holy Mysteries, without showing any signs of fear; but the Empress sent him word to retire for that time, and avoid the extremity the schismatics might be led to. Everyone then went to his own lodging, and the disturbance was quelled. The Empress then, in the ensuing month, brought in a reinforcement of new troops from Thrace, and sent out of the city all those, together with their families, who had served under her father-in-law, Constantino, and were tainted with his errors (30).
18. Being thus secured against the violence of the soldiery, and the intrigues of the chiefs of the sedition, on the May following, in the year 787, the Bishops were again called on to hold the Council in Nice, in Bythynia; and, on the 24th of September (31), the same year, the first Session was held in the Church of St. Sophia, in that city. Three hundred and fifty Bishops, the Legates of the Apostolic See, and of the three Patriarchal Sees, and a great number of Monks and Archimandrites, attended. The Legates of Pope Adrian presided in this Council, as we gather from the Acts, in which they are named before the Patriarch Tarasius, and before the Legates of the other Patriarchal Sees. Graveson remarks, that the statement of Photius, that Tarasius presided in the Seventh Council, is as false as what he asserts in another place, that the Patriarchs of Constantinople presided at all the former General Councils. Seven Sessions were held in this Council. In the first Session the petition of a great many Bishops was read, condemning the heresy of the Iconoclasts, and asking pardon, at the same time, for having subscribed the false Council of Copronimus. The Council having examined their case, admitted them to mercy, and re-established them in their dignity; but deferred the admission of those Bishops who had lived for a long period in heresy.
In the Second Session, the letter of Pope Adrian to the Emperor, and to Tarasius, was read, and several other Bishops were re-established in their Sees. In the Fourth Session, several proofs of the veneration of Holy Images were read from the Scriptures, and from the Holy Fathers. In the Fifth, it was proved that the Iconoclasts had drawn their erroneous doctrines from the Gentiles, the Jews, the Manicheans, and the Saracens. In the Sixth, chapter by chapter of every thing that was defined in the late Cabal of Constantinople was refuted (32); and, in the Seventh Session, the veneration of Sacred Images was defined. Cardinal Gotti (33) gives the Decree in full; this is the substance of it : ” Following the tradition of the Catholic Church, we define that, in the same manner as the image of the precious Cross, so should be likewise venerated, and placed in churches, on walls in houses, and streets, the images of our Lord Jesus Christ, of the Holy Mother of God, of the Angels, and of all the Saints. For those who frequently have before their eyes, and contemplate those Sacred Images, are more deeply impressed with the memory of those they represent, and give them an honorary adoration, but do not, indeed, offer them that real adoration which Faith teaches should be given to God alone; for the honour paid to the image is referred to the principal, and he who venerates an image venerates the person it represents.” It then anathematizes all those who profess or teach otherwise, and who reject the Images, Crosses, Pictures, or Relics, which the Church honours. This Decree was subscribed by all the Bishops.
19. When the Acts of this Council were brought to France, the Bishops of that nation (34), assembled in Synod, in Frankfort, absolutely rejected them; and so did Charlemagne, in the ” Four Books,” either composed by him, or more properly published in his name, in the year 790, and called the Four Caroline Books. But as Selvaggi, in his notes on Mosheim, remarks (35), all this was caused by an error of fact, as the Frankfort Fathers believed that the Fathers of Nice decided that images should be absolutely worshipped, and this he proves from the Second Canon of the Council of Frankfort itself. ” A question has been submitted to us,” it says, ” concerning the new Synod the Greeks have holden in Constantinople, relative to the worship of images, in which it is reported to have been decided, that those should be anathematized who would not worship them. This doctrine we totally reject :” “Allata est in medium quæstio de nova Græcorum Synodo, quam de adorandis Imaginibus Constantinopoli fecerunt, in qua scriptum habebatur, ut qui Imaginibus Sanctorum, ita ut Deifies Trinitatis servitium, aut adorationem non impenderent, anathema judicarentur. Qui supra sanctissimi Patres nostri omnimodis adorationem renuentes contempserunt atque consentientes condemnaverunt.”
This mistake occurred, as Danæus says, on account of the unfaithful version of the Acts of the Council of Nice received in France, and translated from the Greek; whereas the Council of Nice itself, as we have already seen, makes the distinction between honorary reverence and absolute adoration very clearly.
20. Besides, Graveson informs us, that the French Bishops did not consider this Council of Nice as a General one at all, but merely a Greek National Synod, since it was almost altogether composed of Eastern Bishops, and they did not see the customary letter of confirmation from the Pope to the Emperor, and to the whole Church : but, as Danasus says, as soon as the matter was cleared up, there was no longer any disagreement. Still, he says, in the ninth century, several Emperors, adherents of the Iconoclasts, renewed the persecution of the Catholics, and especially Nicephorus, Leo the Armenian, Michael the Stammerer, and, above all, Theophilus, who surpassed all the rest in cruelty. He died, however, in 842, and the Empress Theodora, his wife, a pious and Catholic lady, administered the Empire for her son, Michael, and restored peace to the Church, so that the Iconoclasts never after disturbed the peace of the Eastern Church. This erroneous doctrine began to spring up in the West, in the twelfth century the Petrobrussian first, and then the Henricians and Albigenses followed it. Two hundred years after, the same error was preached by the followers of Wickliffe; by the Hussites, in Bohemia; by Carlostad, in Wittemburg, though against Luther’s will; and by the disciples of Zuinglius and Calvin, the faithful imitators of Leo and Copronimus; and those, as Danæus says, who boast of following the above-named masters, should add to their patrons both the Jews and the Saracens. I have explained the doctrine of the Veneration of Holy Images in my dogmatic work on the Council of Trent (sess. 25, sec. 4, n. 35), in which this matter is discussed, and the veneration due to the Holy Images of the Trinity, of the Cross of Jesus Christ, of his Divine Mother, and the Saints, is proved from tradition, and from the authority of Fathers, and ancient history; and the objections made by heretics are there answered likewise.
(1) Nat. Alex. t. 12, sec. 8, c. 2, a. 1; Hermant, t. 1, p. 283; Fleury, t. 6, l. 42, n. 1; Baron. Ann. 723, n. 17, & vide Ann. 726, n. 3.
(2) Nat. Alex. loc. cit. , Fleury, loc. cit.
(3) Fleury, t. 6, 7. 42, n. 3.
(4) Fleury, loc. Git, n. 4, ex Theophil.
(5) Fleury, t. 6, l. 42, n. 4.
(6) Theoph. Ann. 10, p. 340, ap. Fleury, loc. cit.; Baron. Ann. 754, n. 42.
(7) Fleury, loc. cit,
(8) Fleury, t. 6, I. 42, n. 5.
(9) Baron. An. 754, n. 37; Fleury, loc. cit. n. 5, con. Anas, in Greg. II. and Theopeil. 15.;p. 543, &c.
(10) Fleury, loc. cit. w. 6.
(11) Fleury, t. 6, l. 42, n. 6
(12) Theoph. or. 13, p. 343, apud; Fleur. loc. cit. n. 7.
(13) Fleury, t. 6, l. 42, n. 1 & 8.
(14) Fleury, loc. cit. n. 9.
(15) Anast. in Greg. III., n. 8 & 9 apud; Fleury, l. 42, n. 16
(16) Fleury, t. 6, l. 42, n. 16 & 17.
(17) Hermant, t. 1, c. 187; Gotti. t. 2, c. 80, s. 1, n. 15, 16, 17.
(18) Natal, t. 12, c. 2, . 1, s. 1.
(19) Hermant, l. 1, c. 289; Baron. 763, n. 19.
(20) Fleury, t. 6, l. 43, n. 32.
(21) J Fleury, loc. cit. n. 46.
(22) Fleury, t. 6, l. 43, n. 36,
(23) Fleury, n. 8.
(24) Nat. Alex. t. 12, c. 2, art. 1, s. 2; Fleury, t. 6, l. 44, n. 7.
(25) Hermant, t. 1, c. 299, 300.
(26) Fleury, l. 44, n. 16.
(27) Van Ranst, sec. 8, p. 147.
(28) Hermant, t. 1, c. 304, 305.
(29) Fleury, t. 6, l. 44, n. 25.
(30) Fleury, t. 6, l. 44, 28.
(31) Fleury, n. 39; Nat. Alex. t. 11, c. 3, d. 3; Graves, t. 3, col. 4.
(32) Fleury, t. 6, 7. 44, n. 29.
(33) Gotti, Ver. Rel. t. 2, c. 80, s. 4.
(34) Graves. Hist. Eccl. t. 3, col. 4.
(35)Selvag. nota, 65, ad 1. 10, Mosh. p. 1063,