Alexander Schmemann

3. The Age Of The Ecumenical Councils (50 pages)

From Schmemann's A History of the Orthodox Church

Page 17

The main source of nourishment for the reaction against Chalcedon and for Monophysitism was monasticism. In its origins least of all connected with Hellenism, this movement was nourished in the fourth and fifth centuries primarily by local national elements — Syrian and Coptic — in Syria and Egypt. In the support the monks gave Athanasius when in hiding from the police, we may perhaps discern a tinge of the defense of one’s own man against outsiders. When they backed Cyril and rioted at the Synod of Robbers, the monks were openly defending their own Church from the alien imperial center that was creeping in on them. The struggle against Chalcedon, aside from its theological significance, now acquired new importance, both religious and political. The ethnic passions that had seethed beneath the surface found an outlet in Monophysitism, and the struggle against “two natures” threatened to turn into a rebellion against the empire itself.

When the bishops returned from Chalcedon, they were met in many places by popular opposition. In order to bring the Patriarch Juvenal to his city of Jerusalem, troops had to intervene. In Alexandria the soldiers who were guarding Patriarch Proterius, appointed by Constantinople to replace the deposed Dioscurus, were locked in the Caesareum by an inflamed mob and burned alive. At first the government resorted to force and tried to impose the terms of Chalcedon, but when Marcian, last representative of the dynasty of Theodosius the Great, died in 457, there began a period of compromises with the Monophysites.

For two centuries this problem was dominant in imperial politics. In Alexandria in March 457 the people elected their own Monophysite patriarch, Timothy Aelurus, and Proterius was killed. In 475 the Monophysites controlled the seat of Antioch as well, and elected a certain Peter the Fuller to occupy it. The authorities understood that behind Monophysitism stood immense popular forces which threatened the political unity of the empire. Also in 475 the usurper Basiliscus, who had driven out Emperor Zeno for a short time, published his Encyclion, which in fact condemned Chalcedon, and required the bishops to sign it. From five to seven hundred of them did so! Zeno, after returning to power in 476, at first supported Chalcedonian orthodoxy, but under the influence of the patriarch of Constantinople, Acacius, and in view of the undiminishing growth of Monophysitism in Egypt, Syria, and Palestine, in 482 he published his Henoticon, a dogmatic decree in which he rejected both the Tome of Leo and the creedal definition of Chalcedon without naming them. The Monophysite patriarch of Alexandria and Antioch signed it, but the people refused to follow them; in Alexandria alone a crowd of thirty thousand monks demanded that the patriarch repudiate the Henoticon. More important, the emperor, by accepting the signatures of the hierarchs of these cities, recognized their legitimacy.

There was a Chalcedonian patriarch in Alexandria as well, however (appointed to succeed Proterius), and he then appealed to Rome. Pope Felix III demanded that Acacius of Constantinople, leader of the policy of compromise, should accept outright the dogma of Chalcedon and Leo’s epistle.
This failing, he solemnly deposed and excommunicated Acacius in July 484, and so began the first schism with Rome, which lasted for about thirty years until 518. Thus, by trying to preserve the Monophysite East, Constantinople lost the orthodox West; the “schism of Acacius” was one link in the long chain of disagreements that led to final separation. Emperor Anastasius I (491-518) openly supported the Monophysites; in 496 he deposed the patriarch of Constantinople, Euphemius, for refusing to compromise with the Monophysite patriarch of Alexandria. In 511 Macedonius of Constantinople shared a like fate for faithfulness to Chalcedon and was replaced by the declared Monophysite Timothy. In 512 Anastasius appointed to the seat of Antioch the leading Monophysite theologian, Severus of Antioch, who solemnly condemned Chalcedon at the Council of Tyre in 518. Every year the division between orthodox and Monophysites became more profound and impossible to retrieve. In Palestine and Syria, it is true, some of the monks under the leadership of St. Sabas, founder of the famous Palestinian monastery, remained faithful to orthodoxy and did not recognize the Monophysite hierarchy, but the main mass of Syrians and practically all Egypt were ready prey to heresy. It was not by chance that the orthodox there received the name of Melkites or emperor’s men.

Chalcedon represented a theological synthesis, but not an imperial one. The Monophysite schism demonstrated with increasing clarity that the price paid for the union of Church and empire — or rather, the price paid by the Church for the sins of the empire — was the first great tragedy of the young Christian world.

 

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