Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 17.djvu/369

N E S N E S 355 "infinitely brighter coloured," was found in its hitherto untrodden woods. Among the drawings of Bauer, the artist who accompanied Robert Brown and Flinders, is one of a Nestor marked "Norfolk Isl. 19 Jan. 1805," on which Herr von Pelzeln in 1860 founded his N. norfolcensis. Meanwhile Latham, in 1822, had described, as distinct species, two specimens evidently of the genus Nestor, one said, but doubtless erroneously, to inhabit New South Wales, and the other from Norfolk Island. In 1836 Gould described an example, without any locality, in the museum of the Zoological Society, as Plyctolophus productus, and when some time after he was in Australia, he found that the home of this species, which he then recognized as a Nestor, was Phillip Island, a very small adjunct of Norfolk Island, and not more than five miles distant from it. Whether the birds of the two islands were specifically distinct or not we shall perhaps never know, since they are all extinct (see BIRDS, vol. iii. p. 735), and no specimen undoubtedly from Norfolk Island seems to have been preserved ; while, now that we are aware of the great diversity in colour, size, and particularly in the form of the beak, to which the New-Zealand members of the genus are subject, it would be unsafe to regard as specific the differences pointed out by Herr von Pelzeln from Bauer s drawing. The Phillip-Island Nestor may be distinguished from both of the New-Zealand species by its somewhat smaller size, orange throat, straw-coloured breast, and the generally lighter shade of its tints. The position of the genus Nestor in the Order Psittad must be regarded as uncertain. Garrod removes it altogether from the neighbourhood of the Lories (Proc. Zool. Society, 1874, p. 597), to which indeed the structure of its tongue, as previously shewn by him (op. cit., 1872, p. 789), indicates only a superficial resemblance. Like 30 many other New-Zealand forms, Nestor seems to be isolated, and may fairly be deemed to represent a separate Family Nestoridse a view which is fully justified by a cursory examination of its osteology, though this has hitherto been only imperfectly described and figured (Eyton, Osteol. Avium, p. 72; A. B. Meyer, Abbild. von Vogel-Skeletten, p. 18, pi. 23). Further knowledge of this very interesting form may be facili tated by the following references to the Traiisactions and Proceed ings oftlie New Zealand Institute, ii. pp. 64, 65, 387; iii. pp. 45-52, 81-90 ; v. p. 207; vi. pp. 114, 128; ix. p. 340; x. p. 192 ; xi. p. 377; and of course to Mr Buller s Birds of New Zealand. (A. N.) NESTORIUS AND NESTORIANS. Nestorius, patri arch of Constantinople from 428 to 431, was a native of Germanicia, at the foot of Mount Taurus, in Syria. The year of his birth is unknown. At an early age he was sent for his education to Antioch, where it is probable, though not certain, that Theodore of Mopsuestia was for some time his master. As monk in the neighbouring monastery of Euprepius, and afterwards as presbyter, he became cele brated in the diocese for his asceticism, his orthodoxy, and his eloquence ; hostile critics, such as Socrates, allege that his arrogance and vanity were hardly less conspicuous. On the death of Sisinnius, patriarch of Constantinople (December 427), Theodosius II., indifferent to or possibly perplexed by the various claims of the local clergy, appointed the distinguished preacher of Antioch to the vacant see. The consecration took place on April 10, 428, and then, or almost immediately afterwards, in what is said to have been his first patriarchal sermon, Nestorius exhorted the emperor in the famous words " Purge me, O Caesar, the earth of heretics, and I in return will give thee heaven. Stand by me in putting down the heretics and I will^ stand by thee in putting down the Persians." In the spirit of this utterance, steps were at once instituted by the new prelate (Socrates says five days after his consecra tion) to suppress the assemblies of the Arians ; these, by a stroke of policy which seems to have been as successful as it was bold, anticipated his action by themselves setting fire to their meeting-house, Nestorius being forthwith nick named " the incendiary." The Novatians and the Quarto- decimans were the next objects of his orthodox zeal, a zeal which in the case of the former at least was reinforced, according to Socrates, by his envy of their bishop ; and it led to serious and fatal disturbances at Sardis and Miletus. The toleration the followers of Macedonius had long enjoyed was also rudely broken, the (foreign) Pelagians alone finding any favour. While these repress ive measures were being carried on outside the pale of the catholic church, equal care was taken to instruct the faithful in such points of orthodoxy as their spiritual head conceived to be the most important or the most in danger. One of these was that involved in the practice, now grown almost universal, of bestowing the epithet COTOKOS, " Mother of God," upon Mary the mother of Jesus. In the school of Antioch the impropriety of the expression had long before been pointed out, by Theodore of Mopsuestia, among others, in terms precisely similar to those after wards attributed to Nestorius. From Antioch Nestorius had brought along with him to Constantinople a co- presbyter named Anastasius, who enjoyed his confidence and is called by Theophanes his " syncellus." This Ana stasius, in a pulpit oration which the patriarch himself is said to have prepared for him, caused great scandal to the partisans of the Marian cultus then beginning by saying, " Let no one call Mary the mother of God, for Mary was a human being ; and that God should be born of a human being is impossible." The opposition, which was led by one Eusebius, a " scholasticus " or pleader who afterwards became bishop of Dorylseum, chose to construe this utter ance as a denial of the divinity of Christ, and so violent did the dispute upon it become that Nestorius judged it necessary to silence the remonstrants by force ; an over- zealous monk who had withstood him to his face was scourged and sent into exile, while many of the mob who sympathized were also punished with the lash. The exact chronological order of the recorded incidents in this stage of the controversy is somewhat difficult to determine, but an important part in it was taken by Proclus, bishop of Cyzicus, who, preaching in the cathedral before the patriarch, and at his invitation (429), on one of the festivals of the Virgin, asserted so firmly the propriety of the disputed epithet that Nestorius was constrained to rise and reply. 1 Dorotheus, bishop of Marcianopolis, on the other hand, anathematized from the same pulpit all who persisted in using the expression; his audience retorted by uproariously leaving the church, while a large body of clergy and laity formally withdrew from communion with Nestorius, whose friend Dorotheus was. Matters were soon ripe for foreign intervention, and the notorious CYRIL (q.v.) of Alexandria, in whom the antagonism between the Alexandrian and Antiochene schools of theology, as well as the perhaps inevitable jealousy between the patriarchate of St Mark and that of Constantinople, found an exponent of unexampled determi nation and unscrupulosity, did not fail to make use of the opportunity. He stirred up his own clergy, he wrote to encourage the dissidents at Constantinople, and he addressed himself to the sister and wife of the emperor (Theodosius himself being known to be still favourable to Nestorius). Nestorius himself, on the other hand, having occasion to write to Pope Celestine I. about the Pelagians (whom he was not inclined to regard as heretical), gave from his own point of view an account of the disputes 1 The substance of this discourse has been preserved in a Latin translation by Marius Mercator, which is given in Galland s BiUioth. Patr., vol. viii.