monk Euthymius, who was a great power on that side. She died reconciled to the Church.
At Antioch a priest, Peter the Fuller,[1] started an agitation against Chalcedon; so that while the Eastern part of the Antiochene Patriarchate was falling away into Nest onanism, the West and the Patriarchal city itself were torn by the opposite heresy. Peter was protected and encouraged by the Emperor's son-in-law Zeno, then commander-in-chief of the forces in Syria;[2] he, too, gathered around him a strong party, succeeded in driving out the lawful Patriarch, Martyrios, and set himself up as Patriarch of Antioch (about the year 471). This Peter is famous as the author of a liturgical clause which was destined to cause much trouble.
Just before the lessons (or just after them) in the Antiochene rite they sing the Trisagion. This is the verse which occurs in the Roman rite on Good Friday: "Holy God, holy and strong, holy and immortal, have mercy on us."[3] Peter added a clause to this, and made his clergy sing: "Holy God, holy and strong, holy and immortal, who wast crucified for us,[4] have mercy on us." At first sight it is not easy to see anything wrong in this, nor why all Chalcedonians objected to it so strongly. It depends, of course, on who is addressed. If the prayer is made to Christ, the addition is perfectly correct; it might well stand as a protest against Nestorianism. He (the same person) who is God, holy and immortal, was crucified for us. On the other hand, it was always supposed that the Trisagion is addressed to God, to the Holy Trinity.[5] In this case Peter's addition would involve the idea that the Holy Trinity was crucified. This is one of the strange corollaries of the Monophysite idea. It would follow. If our Lord has only one nature, we cannot say (as we do) that he died in his human nature, while his divine nature remained im-
- ↑ Γναφεύς, fullo, a cloth-dresser, apparently his trade.
- ↑ Afterwards himself Emperor (474-491).
- ↑ In the Greek Antiochene liturgy it occurs before the lessons (Brightman: Eastern Liturgies, p. 35); in the Syriac form it follows the first (ib. p. 77). The Byzantine (p. 370), Armenian (p. 423), Alexandrine (118, 155), Abyssinian (218), and Nestorian (255) rites also have the Trisagion at about the same place.
- ↑ ὁ σταυρωθεὶς δι᾽ ἡμᾶς, deṣṭlebth ḥlâfain.
- ↑ Its triple form suggests this; though, of course, one must not think that the three invocations are meant one for each Divine Person.
