Chapter 57. Christological Councils and the Oriental Churches: Ephesus, Chalcedon and the Great Schisms of the East

Once Nicaea (325) and Constantinople (381) had settled that the Son is fully God, the fifth century faced the next question: how do the divine and the human belong together in the one Christ? The quarrel began over a title of Mary. Within a generation it had split Eastern Christianity into three communions that still exist: the Chalcedonian imperial church, the “miaphysite” churches of Egypt, Syria, Armenia and Ethiopia, and the Church of the East in Sasanian Persia, which its opponents called “Nestorian”. The library’s sources do not treat this as a matter of doctrine alone. They describe imperial women, rival patriarchates, mob action, Persian taxation and, in the end, Arab conquest. This chapter follows them in that order.

The Theotokos quarrel: Nestorius against Cyril

According to McGuckin, the Syrian monk Nestorius became archbishop of Constantinople in 428 and began a campaign of “reform” against heretics. His opponents thought it violent and rash. Arians burned their last church rather than surrender it, and Novatians and surviving Apollinarians were persecuted. Nestorius came to see anyone who used the title Theotokos (“God-bearer”) as a heretic, identifying it with late sectarian Apollinarian usage [McGuckin, Semnele Imparatiei. Antologie, #16120, “Termenul de Theotokos în cadrul controversei de la Efes”]. In his view Mary could be called only “mother of the man Jesus” (Anthropotokos) or, better, “mother of Christ” (Christotokos). His chaplain Athanasius preached in Advent 428 that “no one should call Mary Theotokos, for she is only a human being, from whom God could not be born”. Nestorius then called the title outright pagan and described Christ as the “instrument” and “garment” of God [McGuckin, #16120]. Proclus answered with his famous homily in defence of the Theotokos, and Nestorius had to sit and listen to it in his own cathedral [McGuckin, #16120].

Cyril of Alexandria, kept informed by his agents in the capital, made the matter a “scandalum oecumenicum”. McGuckin sums up the exchange as a duel of slogans. To “Mary cannot strictly (akribos) be called Mother of God”, Cyril replied: “If Mary is not strictly the Mother of God, then the one born of her is not strictly God” [McGuckin, #16120]. Cyril’s positive formula, mia physis tou theou logou sesarkomene, “one incarnate nature of God the Word”, later became the charter of the miaphysite churches. The reference shelf records that scholars dispute whether the phrase began with Apollinaris, and that McGuckin reads Cyril’s physis as “a rough semantic equivalent to hypostasis” [Wikipedia: Miaphysitism].

McGuckin gives the title a long history. A liturgical hymn on the Rylands papyrus 470, from the later third century, already invokes the Theotokos (“Beneath your protection we take refuge, Theotokos…”). Origen, Pierius, Peter and Alexander of Alexandria, Athanasius and Gregory of Nazianzus all used the term. McGuckin calls it “an ancient Alexandrian theologoumenon” which in Syria had become tied to Apollinarian “mixis” theology. That association, in his reading, explains why the Syrian Nestorius misjudged it [McGuckin, #16120, “Originile termenului Theotokos”].

Pulcheria, the court and the fall of Nestorius

Both McGuckin and the Lightmans make the empress Pulcheria, elder sister of Theodosius II, central to the outcome. The Lightmans record that in 413, at fourteen, she “assumed control”, publicly dedicated herself and her sisters Arcadia and Marina to virginity, and became Augusta and regent in July 414. The sisters “fervently believed that Mary was Mother of God (Theotokos) and rejected any suggestion that diminished her status to Mother of Christ (Christotokos)” [Lightman, A to Z of Ancient Greek and Roman Women, #68226, “Arcadia”; “Pulcheria, Aelia”]. In the Lightmans’ telling, Nestorius barred Pulcheria from taking communion in the sanctuary of the Great Church. When she cited her virginity pledged to Mary, the Mother of God, “he replied that women only gave birth to evil and Satan” [Lightman, #68226, “Pulcheria, Aelia”].

McGuckin adds further offences. Nestorius removed from the altar a costly golden vestment Pulcheria had made from her imperial robe. He questioned her claim to consecrated virginity. He restricted monks from wandering the streets, and he banned the evening charitable gatherings of the college of virgins and deaconesses over which she presided. Aristocratic women in her circle, Droseria and Marcella, acted as Cyril’s confidantes at court and were later paid 50 pounds of gold by him. McGuckin concludes: “It would not be wrong to say that the fall of Nestorius is owed to this group of aristocratic women around Pulcheria.” He suggests they probably arranged for the council to move from the capital to Ephesus, already a pilgrimage centre of the Virgin and hard for Nestorius’s Syrian allies to reach [McGuckin, #16120, “Nestorie şi împărăteasa Pulcheria”]. He cites his own article “Nestorius and the Political Factions of 5th Century Byzantium: Factors in his Downfall” (Bulletin of the John Rylands University Library) and his St. Cyril of Alexandria and the Christological Controversy (Brill, 1994). He also points readers to the revisionist literature: the article “Nestorius was Orthodox” (Dumbarton Oaks Papers 16, 1962, 119–140) and G. Bebis, “The Apology of Nestorius. A New Evaluation” (Studia Patristica 11, 1972) [McGuckin, Semnele Împărăţiei vol.1, #16119].

McGuckin also reads the Theotokos as a missionary strategy. In Egypt, Isis bore the titles “Mother of God” and “Great Virgin”, and at Ephesus the cults of the Great Mother, Artemis and Isis had merged. On this view, Cyril’s insistence on the title was a way to “replace the old religion by borrowing its positive elements.” He notes that after the vote of 431, women carrying torches, which recall Isiac processions, escorted the “orthodox bishops” home with perfumed water. He calls this “a Christianisation of Hellenism”, not a Hellenisation of Christianity [McGuckin, #16120, “Titlul de Theotokos şi strategia misionară a lui Chiril”].

Ephesus 431, the “Robber Council” 449, Chalcedon 451

The sources agree on the sequence and differ on emphasis. McGuckin notes that Cyril presided at Ephesus in 431 with Pope Celestine’s mandate to obtain Nestorius’s retraction or deposition. Cyril’s Twelve Anathemas were judged too offensive “even by Fathers who favoured the council” [McGuckin, #16120]. The Lightmans write that Memnon of Ephesus and Cyril “organized mobs that intimidated the supporters of Nestorius”. Late-arriving Nestorian bishops then deposed Cyril and Memnon in a counter-council. Street protests in Constantinople led Theodosius, “undoubtedly with advice from Pulcheria”, to depose Nestorius [Lightman, #68226, “Pulcheria, Aelia”].

The Lightmans then trace a compromise of 443, which affirmed the Theotokos, and its unravelling. Dioscorus of Alexandria backed the monk Eutyches, godson of the eunuch Chrysaphius, after a Constantinopolitan synod in 448 excommunicated him. At the second council of Ephesus in August 449, Eutyches was reinstated “under pressure from the emperor”, and Flavian and Eusebius of Dorylaeum were deposed. Leo of Rome and the Western court appealed to Pulcheria. After Chrysaphius fell and Theodosius died in July 450, Pulcheria and Aspar made Marcian emperor. She married him in “an unconsummated marriage”. The council near Chalcedon (8 October–1 November 451) deposed Dioscorus and adopted Leo’s definition of two natures “each nature preserved in union in Christ”. It affirmed the Theotokos “under pressure from Pulcheria and Marcian” and raised Constantinople to the level of Rome over Leo’s objections. The bishops acclaimed her as a new Helena [Lightman, #68226, “Pulcheria, Aelia”]. The Lightmans’ verdict: “With the Chalcedon compromise, orthodoxy was defined, but not everywhere accepted.” Monks rioted in Palestine in 452, and Eudocia sheltered them [Lightman, #68226, Introduction; “Pulcheria, Aelia”]. McGuckin adds that the Constantinople council of 553 was a “desperate attempt”, made “too late”, to make Cyril’s theology the standard for both Chalcedonians and miaphysites [McGuckin, #16120].

The Church of the East: from Chalcedon-friendly to “Nestorian”

Philip Wood’s study of the Chronicle of Seert (catalogued in the library under the title Drama of the Divine Economy) shows that “Nestorian” identity came later and was not uniform. Barhadbeshabba’s history treats Nestorius as an Antiochene martyr and “spiritual athlete”. It directs its polemic against “the Egyptians”, not against the Roman world [Wood, The Chronicle of Seert, #55093, “Dyophysite History of Barhadbeshaba”]. Under the catholicos Ishoʿyahb I, close ties with the emperor Maurice, who was then persecuting miaphysites at Harran and Edessa, produced a positive image of Chalcedon in the East [Wood, #55093, “Chalcedon in the Church of the East”].

The Nisibene theologians built the opposite, anti-Chalcedonian tradition. Paul of Nisibis argued before Justinian in 562 that “the two natures cannot exist in a single hypostasis”. Babai the Great (d. 628) asserted two qnome in Christ. Wood records that in 612, when miaphysites had influence at the Persian court, their opponents were “labelled for the first time ‘Nestorians'”. When Ishoʿyahb II took communion with Heraclius in 630, Barsauma of Susa protested: “there is a chasm between us and the Greeks that has its origin at the council of Chalcedon”. Ishoʿyahb himself called Chalcedon “neither orthodox nor heretical” [Wood, #55093, “The Anti-Chalcedon Tradition”]. The synod of Giwargis I (680) defended “Nestorius and Theodore”. By the ninth century pseudo-George of Arbela and Shahdost of Tirhan used “Nestorian” as a term of pride [Wood, #55093, “A Nestorian Church”]. Wood also stresses the Sasanian setting. Shapur II persecuted the church after the catholicos Symeon refused to collect a wartime poll tax from Christians [Wood, #55093].

The Britannica gives the older, simpler account. Eastern Syria clung “to the teaching and person of Nestorius”, and “Nestorian, or, as it was termed, Chaldaic Christianity” was “separated from the West” and “directed its energies towards the East”. The Persian church was “definitely Nestorian” from the patriarch Babaeus (498–503). It reached the St Thomas Christians of India, Merv, Herat and Samarkand, and China, as the Si-ngan-fu inscription (before 781) shows. Nestorian physicians and philosophers became “the teachers of the great Arabian natural philosophers” [Encyclopaedia Britannica 11th ed., vol. VI, #70744, “Church History: The Nestorian and the Monophysite Churches”]. The Encyclopedia of Missions (1904/1910) likewise records that the Nestorians, “driven from the Roman dominions”, lodged in Persia in the fifth century and sent missions to Arabia, India, Ceylon and China. It adds that the patriarch Timothy (778–820) sent missionaries to China and India [The Encyclopedia of Missions, #64675, “Geography”].

Syriac origins: Edessa and Adiabene

The Syriac churches tell their own founding stories. Cureton’s Ancient Syriac Documents preserves the Abgar legend, with Abgar Ukkama’s letter to Jesus and Jesus’s reply: “Blessed is he that hath believed in me, not having seen me”, together with the promise that the city “shall be blessed, and the enemy shall not prevail against it for ever”. The texts appeal to “the Book of Records which is at Edessa” [Cureton, Ancient Syriac Documents, #55005, “Letter of Abgar”; “Doctrine of Addai”]. The Chronicle of Arbela, a list of the bishops of Adiabene, says that the first of them “was Mar Peqida, whom Apostle Addai himself had ordained”. It also reports that Mar Hibai taught “in the schools of Orhai” [Edessa] [Chronicle of Arbela, #55002].

Armenia, Egypt and the bridge to Islam

According to the Encyclopedia of World History, the traditions of the women missionaries and martyrs Rhipsime and Gaiane “are among the earliest accounts of the conversion of Armenia”, and Tertullian (c. 200) mentions Christians in Armenia [Encyclopedia of World History, #5204]. The Encyclopedia of Missions calls Armenia “the first nation, as such, to embrace Christianity” [#64675, “Geography”]. Kouymjian’s study of Lazar P’arpets’i dates the end of the Arsacid (Arshakuni) dynasty to about 428 and the deaths of Sahak and Mesrop to 438/9. In other words, the line ended in the same year Nestorius took office. His bibliography lists a study of The Relations of the Armenian Church with Syrian Churches (Ejmiatsin, 1908) [Kouymjian, Studies in Classical Armenian Literature, #60390].

For Egypt, Reid records Coptic self-understanding plainly: “Copts traced their church back to Mark and had practically invented Christian monasticism” [Reid, Whose Pharaohs?, #366549, ch. 1]. The Britannica calls Egypt “the home of Monophysitism”, which Jacob Baradaeus (d. 578) saved in Syria. It says the Arab conquest (641) “put an end to the oppression of the native Christians by the Greek minority”. It also gives a demographic estimate: six million Copts at the conquest, about one hundred thousand in 1820 [Britannica, #70744]. The Encyclopedia of Missions is harsher: “In Egypt and Nubia the monophysite Christians for the most part turned traitors, caring less for orthodoxy from Constantinople than fancied protection from Medina” [#64675, “Geography: The Feudal Church”]. The two sources thus describe the same transfer of allegiance in opposite terms, as liberation in one and as betrayal in the other. That transfer is where Part 7 begins.

Key points

• McGuckin traces Theotokos to third-century Egyptian liturgy (Rylands papyrus 470). Nestorius (428) rejected it as Apollinarian or pagan, while Cyril answered with “one incarnate nature of God the Word” [#16120; Wikipedia: Miaphysitism].
• McGuckin and the Lightmans make Pulcheria and her circle of consecrated aristocratic women decisive in Nestorius’s fall [#16120; #68226]. McGuckin also cites the revisionist case “Nestorius was Orthodox” [#16119].
• McGuckin reads Cyril’s promotion of the Theotokos as missionary replacement of the Isis and Great Mother cults [#16120].
• Ephesus 431 (Cyril presiding, mobs per the Lightmans) was followed by Ephesus 449 (Eutyches restored) and Chalcedon 451 (two natures; Constantinople raised). In the Lightmans’ words, “orthodoxy was defined, but not everywhere accepted” [#68226].
• Wood shows that “Nestorian” was first a hostile label (612). It became a self-designation by the ninth century, and earlier Persian catholicoi had viewed Chalcedon favourably [#55093].
• The Britannica describes “Chaldaic Christianity” turning east to Persia, India, Central Asia and China [#70744], and the Encyclopedia of Missions records the Nestorians’ missionary march east [#64675].
• Syriac Christianity grounds itself in the Abgar–Addai legend [#55005] and the Adiabene episcopal list [#55002]. Armenian tradition looks to Rhipsime and Gaiane [#5204].
• On the Arab conquest of Egypt, the Britannica speaks of an end to Greek “oppression”, while the Encyclopedia of Missions says the monophysites “turned traitors” for “fancied protection from Medina” [#70744; #64675].