Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 17.djvu/370

356 NESTORIUS which had recently arisen within his patriarchate. This implied appeal, however, was the reverse of successful, for the pope, in a synod which met in 430, decided in favour of the epithet COTOKOS, and bade Nestorius retract his erroneous teaching, on pain of instant excommunication, at the same time entrusting the execution of this decision to the patriarch of Alexandria. On hearing from Rome, Cyril at once held a synod and drew up a doctrinal formula for Nestorius to sign, and also twelve anathemas covering the various points of the Nestorian dogmatic. Nestorius, instead of yielding to the combined pressure of his two great rivals, merely replied by a counter excommunication. In this situation of affairs the demand for a general council became irresistible, and accordingly Theodosius and Valentinian III. issued letters summoning the metro politans of the catholic church to meet at Ephesus at Whitsuntide 431, each bringing with him some able suffragans. Nestorius, with sixteen bishops and a large following of armed men, was among the first to arrive ; soon afterwards came Cyril with fifty bishops. Juvenal of Jerusalem and Flavian of Thessalonica were some days late. It was then announced that John of Antioch had been delayed on his journey and could not appear for some days ; he, however, is stated to have written politely requesting that the opening of the synod should not be delayed on his account. Cyril and his friends accordingly assembled in the church of the Theotokos on the 22d of June, and summoned Nestorius before them to give an account of his doctrines. The reply they received was that he would appear as soon as all the bishops were assembled ; and at the same time the imperial commis sioner, Candidian, presented himself in person and formally protested against the opening of the synod. Notwith standing these circumstances, Cyril and the one hundred and fifty-nine bishops who were with him proceeded to read the imperial letter of convocation, and afterwards the letters which had passed between Nestorius and his adversary. Almost immediately the entire assembly with one voice cried out anathema on the impious Nestorius and his impious doctrines, and after various extracts from the writings of church fathers had been read the decree of his exclusion from the episcopate and from all priestly communion was solemnly read and signed by all present, whose numbers had by this time swelled to one hundred and ninety-eight. When the decision was known the populace, who had been eagerly waiting from early morning till night to hear the result, accompanied the members with torches and censers to their lodgings, and there was a general illumination of the city. A few days afterwards (June 26 or 27) John of Antioch arrived, and efforts were made by both parties to gain his ear ; whether inclined or not to the cause of his former co-presbyter, he was naturally excited by the precipitancy with which Cyril had acted, and at a " conciliabulum " of forty-three bishops held in his lodgings shortly after his arrival he was induced by Candidian, the friend of Nestorius, to depose the bishops of Alexandria and Ephesus on the spot. The efforts, how ever, to give effect to this act on the following Sunday were frustrated by the zeal of the Ephesian mob. Meanwhile a letter was received from the emperor declaring invalid the session at which Nestorius had been deposed unheard ; numerous sessions and counter-sessions were afterwards held, the conflicting parties at the same time exerting them selves to the utmost to secure an effective superiority at court. In the end Theodosius decided to confirm the depositions which had been pronounced on both sides, and Cyril and Memnon as well as Nestorius were by his orders laid under arrest. Representatives from each side were now summoned before him to Chalcedon, and at last, yielding to the sense of the evident majority, he gave a decision in favour of the " orthodox," and the council of Ephesus was dissolved. Maximian, one of the Con- stantinopolitan clergy, a native of Rome, was promoted to the vacant see, and Nestorius was henceforward represented in the city of his former patriarchate only by one small congregation, which also a short time afterwards became extinct. The commotion which had been thus raised did not so easily subside in the more eastern section of the church ; the Antiochenes continued to maintain for a considerable time an attitude of antagonism towards Cyril and his creed, and were not pacified until an understanding was reached in 433 on the basis of a new formula involving some material concessions by him. The union even then met with resistance from a number of bishops, who, rather than accede to it, submitted to deposition and expulsion from their sees ; and it Avas not until these had all died out that, as the result of stringent imperial edicts, Nestorianism may be said to have become extinct through out the Roman empire. Their school at Edessa was closed by Zeno in 489. As for Nestorius himself, immediately after his deposition he withdrew into private life in his old monastery of Euprepius, Antioch, until 435, when the emperor ordered his banishment to Petra in Arabia. A second decree, it would seem, sent him to Oasis, probably the city of the Great Oasis, in Upper Egypt, where he was still living in 439, at the time when Socrates wrote his Church History. The invasions of savage tribes compelled him to seek refuge in the Thebaid, where, however, the governor caused him to be dragged to Elephantis and sub sequently to Panopolis. The time, place, and circum stances of his death are unknown ; but zeal for theological truth and retributive justice has led at least one historian to exercise his invention in providing a fit end for the friendless heretic. The followers of Nestorius found tolera tion under the rulers of Persia, from which empire they gradually spread into India and even into Arabia and China. They also succeeded in securing a foothold among the Tartars. Their patriarch had his see for a consider able time at Seleucia-Ctesiphon, afterwards in Baghdad, and then in Alk6sh. In the 13th century he is said to have had twenty-five metropolitans under him. The sect was almost extirpated by Timur. What is technically and conventionally meant in dogmatic theo logy by "the Nestorian heresy" has been briefly indicated elsewhere (vol. xiii. p. 671). As Eutychianism is the doctrine that the God- man has only one nature, so Nestorianism is the doctrine that He has two complete persons. So far as Nestorius himself is concerned, however, it is certain that he never formulated any such doctrine ; nor does any recorded utterance of his, however casual, come so near the heresy called by his name as Cyril s deliberately framed third anathema (that regarding the "physical union" of the two hypostases or natures) approaches Eutychianism. It must be remembered that Nestorius was as orthodox at all events as Athanasius on the subject of the incarnation, and sincerely, eveu fanatically, held every article of the Nicene creed. Hefele him self, one of the most recent as well as most learned and acute of Cyril s partisans, is compelled to admit that Nestorius accurately held the duality of the two natures and the integrity of each, was equally explicitly opposed to Arianism and Apollinarianism, and was perfectly correct in his assertion that the Godhead can neither be born nor suffer ; all that he can allege against him is that "the fear of the communicatio idiomatum pursued him like a spectre." But in reality the question raised by Nestorius was not one as to the communicatio idiomatum, but simply as to the proprieties of language. He did not refuse to speak of Mary as being the mother of Christ or as being the mother of Emmanuel, but he thought it improper to speak of her as the mother of God. And there is at least this to be said for him that even the most zealous desire to frustrate the Arian had never made it a part of orthodoxy to speak of David as Bfoirdrup or of James as <x5A$o 0eos. The secret of the enthusiasm of the masses for the analogous expression Theotokos is to be sought not so much in the Nicene doctrine of the incarna- nation as in the recent growth in the popular mind of notions as to the dignity of the Virgin Mary, which were entirely unheard of (except in heretical circles) for nearly three centuries of the Christian era (see MAUY. vol. xv. p. 590-1). (J. S. BL.)