The trouble began with the affair of Eutyches,[1] archimandrite of a great monastery just outside the walls of Constantinople. Eutyches was known as an ardent opponent of Nestorianism. He had distinguished himself on the side of St. Cyril at Ephesus.[2] He was also a person of considerable importance; in his monastery he ruled over three hundred monks. He was a kind of leader of Byzantine monasticism in his time, known and respected by all the empire. He was also godfather, spiritual director and intimate friend of the Grand Chamberlain and Chief Eunuch Chrysaphios, leading minister of the Emperor Theodosius II (408–450). Eutyches conceived the idea of perfecting the work of the Council of Ephesus. Nestorianism, he thought, was not yet dead. It lived still in that suspicious Eastern school. In this enterprise he could count on the support of Egypt and the Egyptian Patriarch, besides that of his friends at court. So he began preaching what purported to be a crushing attack on Nestorianism.
He went far beyond St. Cyril. The basis of the Catholic position was Cyril's agreement with John of Antioch in 433 (p. 73). Cyril had then accepted John's profession of faith which defended "the union of two natures"[3] in our Lord; he himself had written in his famous letter of union (Lætentur cœli): "Therefore Jesus Christ is one, although the difference of natures, indelibly united, may not be ignored."[4] Eutyches apparently thought this a concession to John and the "Easterns" which should now be revoked. His theory was a complete fusion and identification of the natures in Christ. A result of this idea was that he said plainly that our Lord was not "consubstantial" with other men, had not the same nature as we have. So here his heresy is patent. This flatly contradicts Scripture:[5] our Lord would not really be man. But Eutyches went beyond what
- ↑ Εὐτυχής.
- ↑ Hefele-Leclercq: op. cit. ii. (1), p. 513 (Dom Leclercq's note); Hefele himself doubts whether Eutyches was actually at Ephesus (ib. p. 514).
- ↑ δύο γὰρ φύσεων ἕνωσις γέγονε. See the letter in Hefele-Leclercq: op. cit. ii. (1), p. 396.
- ↑ Such expressions as this and the whole text of the letter show that St. Cyril was not a Monophysite. See above, p. 73.
- ↑ E.g. Heb. iv. 15; Rom. v. 15; 1 Tim. ii. 5.
