Page:Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire vol 5 (1897).djvu/138

116 THE DECLINE AND FALL streets of Ephesus ; the weary prelates, as they issued from the church of the mother of Cxod, were saluted as her champions ; and her victory was celebrated by the illuminations, the songs, and the tumult of the night. Opposition of Ou the fifth day, the trium])h was clouded by the arrival and June27*4c. ' indignation of the Eastern bishops. In a chamber of the inn, before he had wiped the dust from his shoes, John of Antioch gave audience to Candidian the Imperial minister : who related his ineffectual efforts to prevent or to annul the hasty violence of the Egyjitian. With equal haste and violence, the Oriental .synod of fifty bishops degraded Cyril and Memnon from their episcopal honours, condemned, in the twelve anathemas, the purest venom of the Apollinarian heresy, and described the Alexandrian primate as a monster, born and educated for the destruction of the church.^ Hi throne Avas distant and inac- cessible ; l)ut they instantly resolved to bestow on the flock of fj))hesus the lilessing of a faithful shepherd. By the vigilance of Menmon, the cliurches were shut against them, and a strong garrison was thrown into the cathedral. The troops, under the command of Candidian, advanced to the assault ; the outguards were routed and put to the sword ; but the place was impreg- nable : the besiegers retired ; their retreat was pursued by a vigorous sally ; they lost their horses, and many of the soldiers were dangerously wounded with clubs and stones. Ephesus, the city of the Virgin, was defiled with rage and clamour, with sedition and blood ; the rival synods darted anathemas and excomnumications from their spiritual engines ; and the court of Theodosius Avas perplexed by the adverse and contradictory narratives of the Syrian and Egy})tian factions. During a busy period of three months, the emjjeror tried every method, ex- cept the most effectual means of iiidifFerence and contempt, to reconcile this theological quarrel. He attempted to remove or intimidate the leaders by a common sentence of acquittal or condemnation ; he invested his representatives at P'phesus with ample power and military force ; he summoned from either party eight chosen deputies to a free and candid conference in the neighbourhood of the capital, far from the contagion of popular frenzy. But the Orientals refused to yield, and the Catholics, proud of their numbers and of their Latin allies, ■"(> 6; i'-" uAEtJpco T(ui' tV-K,.y<ru7)i- Texflei; Kat rpaif.fi?. After the coalition of John and <"vril, these invectives were mutually forgotten. The style of declamation must never be confounded with the genuine sense which respectable enemies enter- tain of each other's merit (Concil. tom. iii. p. 1244).