Page:Nestorius and his place in the history of Christian doctrine.djvu/36

More interesting, therefore, in my opinion, is the fourth Ineditum which Nau gives in a French translation, after a Syrian British Museum manuscript to which I pointed in my Nestoriana^[1]. I refer to a fragment of a letter of Nestorius to the inhabitants of Constantinople, the beginning and end of which were previously known by a quotation made by the Monophysite Philoxenus of Mabug^[2]. I did not include this letter in my Nestoriana, because with all other scholars I regarded it as a monophysitic forgery intended to discredit the doctrine of Pope Leo by showing it to be approved by Nestorius. Indeed the letter appears for the first time in monophysitic circles—in the writings of Philoxenus about 520^[2] and, what escaped the notice of Nau, about 570 in the so-called anonymous Historia miscellanea^[3]. But according to the Syrian translator^[4] the Nestorians also, e.g. Simon Bar Tabbahê about 750^[5]; acknowledged it as genuine, and since we know from the Treatise of Heraclides the judgment of Nestorius about Flavian and Leo there is no longer a plausible objection which may be raised from this side against the genuineness of the letter. I confess, however, that I am not rid of all doubts. Certainly a definite judgment is not possible till the whole of the letter be brought to

1. p. 84.
2. Comp. Nestoriana, p. 70.
3. Die Kirchengeschichte des Zacharias Rhetor in deutscher Übersetzung von K. Ahrens und G. Krüger, Leipzig, 1899, pp. 23, 31 ff.
4. Nau, p. 376.
5. Assemani, Bibliotheca orientales, iii, 215.