An Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine Part 24

The Nestorian heresy, I have said, gave less opportunity for doctrinal varieties than the heresy of Eutyches. Its spirit was rationalizing, and had the qualities which go with rationalism. When cast out of the Roman Empire, it addressed itself, as we have seen, to a new and rich field of exertion, got possession of an Established Church, co-operated with the civil government, adopted secular fashions, and, by whatever means, pushed itself out into an Empire. Apparently, though it requires a very intimate knowledge of its history to speak except conjecturally, it was a political power rather than a dogma, and despised the science of theology. Eutychianism, on the other hand, was mystical, severe, enthusiastic; with the exception of Severus, and one or two more, it was supported by little polemical skill; it had little hold upon the intellectual Greeks of Syria and Asia Minor, but flourished in Egypt, which was far behind the East in civilization, and among the native Syrians. Nestorianism, like Arianism[317:1] before it, was a cold religion, and more fitted for the schools than for the many; but the Monophysites carried the people with them. Like modern Jansenism, and unlike Nestorianism, the Monophysites were famous for their austerities.

They have, or had, five Lents in the year, during which laity as well as clergy abstain not only from flesh and eggs, but from wine, oil, and fish.[317:2] Monachism was a characteristic part of their ecclesiastical system: their Bishops, and Maphrian or Patriarch, were always taken from the Monks, who are even said to have worn an iron shirt or breastplate as a part of their monastic habit.[317:3]

20.

Severus, Patriarch of Antioch at the end of the fifth century, has already been mentioned as an exception to the general character of the Monophysites, and, by his learning and ability, may be accounted the founder of its theology. Their cause, however, had been undertaken by the Emperors themselves before him. For the first thirty years after the Council of Chalcedon, the protesting Church of Egypt had been the scene of continued tumult and bloodshed. Dioscorus had been popular with the people for his munificence, in spite of the extreme laxity of his morals, and for a while the Imperial Government failed in obtaining the election of a Catholic successor. At length Proterius, a man of fair character, and the Vicar-general of Dioscorus on his absence at Chalcedon, was chosen, consecrated, and enthroned; but the people rose against the civil authorities, and the military, coming to their defence, were attacked with stones, and pursued into a church, where they were burned alive by the mob. Next, the popular leaders prepared to intercept the supplies of grain which were destined for Constantinople; and, a defensive retaliation taking place, Alexandria was starved. Then a force of two thousand men was sent for the restoration of order, who permitted themselves in scandalous excesses towards the women of Alexandria. Proterius's life was attempted, and he was obliged to be attended by a guard. The Bishops of Egypt would not submit to him; two of his own clergy, who afterward succeeded him, Timothy and Peter, seceded, and were joined by four or five of the Bishops and by the ma.s.s of the population;[318:1] and the Catholic Patriarch was left without a communion in Alexandria. He held a council, and condemned the schismatics; and the Emperor, seconding his efforts, sent them out of the country, and enforced the laws against the Eutychians. An external quiet succeeded; then Marcian died; and then forthwith Timothy (the Cat) made his appearance again, first in Egypt, then in Alexandria. The people rose in his favour, and carried in triumph their persecuted champion to the great Caesarean Church, where he was consecrated Patriarch by two deprived Bishops, who had been put out of their sees, whether by a Council of Egypt or of Palestine.[318:2] Timothy, now raised to the Episcopal rank, began to create a new succession; he ordained Bishops for the Churches of Egypt, and drove into exile those who were in possession. The Imperial troops, who had been stationed in Upper Egypt, returned to Alexandria; the mob rose again, broke into the Church, where St. Proterius was in prayer, and murdered him. A general ejectment of the Catholic clergy throughout Egypt followed. On their betaking themselves to Constantinople to the new Emperor, Timothy and his party addressed him also. They quoted the Fathers, and demanded the abrogation of the Council of Chalcedon. Next they demanded a conference; the Catholics said that what was once done could not be undone; their opponents agreed to this and urged it, as their very argument against Chalcedon, that it added to the faith, and reversed former decisions.[319:1] After a rule of three years, Timothy was driven out and Catholicism restored; but then in turn the Monophysites rallied, and this state of warfare and alternate success continued for thirty years.

21.

At length the Imperial Government, wearied out with a dispute which was interminable, came to the conclusion that the only way of restoring peace to the Church was to abandon the Council of Chalcedon. In the year 482 was published the famous _Henoticon_ or Pacification of Zeno, in which the Emperor took upon himself to determine a matter of faith. The Henoticon declared that no symbol of faith but that of the Nicene Creed, commonly so called, should be received in the Churches; it anathematized the opposite heresies of Nestorius and Eutyches, and it was silent on the question of the "One" or "Two Natures" after the Incarnation. This middle measure had the various effects which might be antic.i.p.ated. It united the great body of the Eastern Bishops, who readily relaxed into the vague profession of doctrine from which they had been roused by the authority of St. Leo. All the Eastern Bishops signed this Imperial formulary. But this unanimity of the East was purchased by a breach with the West; for the Popes cut off the communication between Greeks and Latins for thirty-five years. On the other hand, the more zealous Monophysites, disgusted at their leaders for accepting what they considered an unjustifiable compromise, split off from the Eastern Churches, and formed a sect by themselves, which remained without Bishops (_acephali_) for three hundred years, when at length they were received back into the communion of the Catholic Church.

22.

Dreary and waste was the condition of the Church, and forlorn her prospects, at the period which we have been reviewing. After the brief triumph which attended the conversion of Constantine, trouble and trial had returned upon her. Her imperial protectors were failing in power or in faith. Strange forms of evil were rising in the distance and were thronging for the conflict. There was but one spot in the whole of Christendom, one voice in the whole Episcopate, to which the faithful turned in hope in that miserable day. In the year 493, in the Pontificate of Gelasius, the whole of the East was in the hands of traitors to Chalcedon, and the whole of the West under the tyranny of the open enemies of Nicaea. Italy was the prey of robbers; mercenary bands had overrun its territory, and barbarians were seizing on its farms and settling in its villas. The peasants were thinned by famine and pestilence; Tuscany might be even said, as Gelasius words it, to contain scarcely a single inhabitant.[320:1] Odoacer was sinking before Theodoric, and the Pope was changing one Arian master for another. And as if one heresy were not enough, Pelagianism was spreading with the connivance of the Bishops in the territory of Picenum. In the North of the dismembered Empire, the Britons had first been infected by Pelagianism, and now were dispossessed by the heathen Saxons. The Armoricans still preserved a witness of Catholicism in the West of Gaul; but Picardy, Champagne, and the neighbouring provinces, where some remnant of its supremacy had been found, had lately submitted to the yet heathen Clovis. The Arian kingdoms of Burgundy in France, and of the Visigoths in Aquitaine and Spain, oppressed a zealous and Catholic clergy, Africa was in still more deplorable condition under the cruel sway of the Vandal Gundamond: the people indeed uncorrupted by the heresy,[321:1] but their clergy in exile and their worship suspended.

While such was the state of the Latins, what had happened in the East?

Acacius, the Patriarch of Constantinople, had secretly taken part against the Council of Chalcedon and was under Papal excommunication.

Nearly the whole East had sided with Acacius, and a schism had begun between East and West, which lasted, as I have above stated, for thirty-five years. The Henoticon was in force, and at the Imperial command had been signed by all the Patriarchs and Bishops throughout the Eastern Empire.[321:2] In Armenia the Churches were ripening for the pure Eutychianism which they adopted in the following century; and in Egypt the Acephali, already separated from the Monophysite Patriarch, were extending in the east and west of the country, and preferred the loss of the Episcopal Succession to the reception of the Council of Chalcedon. And while Monophysites or their favourers occupied the Churches of the Eastern Empire, Nestorianism was making progress in the territories beyond it. Barsumas had held the See of Nisibis, Theodore was read in the schools of Persia, and the successive Catholici of Seleucia had abolished Monachism and were secularizing the clergy.

23.

If then there is now a form of Christianity such, that it extends throughout the world, though with varying measures of prominence or prosperity in separate places;--that it lies under the power of sovereigns and magistrates, in various ways alien to its faith;--that flourishing nations and great empires, professing or tolerating the Christian name, lie over against it as antagonists;--that schools of philosophy and learning are supporting theories, and following out conclusions, hostile to it, and establishing an exegetical system subversive of its Scriptures;--that it has lost whole Churches by schism, and is now opposed by powerful communions once part of itself;--that it has been altogether or almost driven from some countries;--that in others its line of teachers is overlaid, its flocks oppressed, its Churches occupied, its property held by what may be called a duplicate succession;--that in others its members are degenerate and corrupt, and are surpa.s.sed in conscientiousness and in virtue, as in gifts of intellect, by the very heretics whom it condemns;--that heresies are rife and bishops negligent within its own pale;--and that amid its disorders and its fears there is but one Voice for whose decisions the peoples wait with trust, one Name and one See to which they look with hope, and that name Peter, and that see Rome;--such a religion is not unlike the Christianity of the fifth and sixth Centuries.[322:1]

FOOTNOTES:

[208:1] [This juxtaposition of names has been strangely distorted by critics. In the intention of the author, Guizot matched with Pliny, not with Frederick.]

[213:1] Vid. Muller de Hierarch. et Ascetic. Warburton, Div. Leg. ii. 4.

Selden de Diis Syr. Acad. des Inscript. t. 3, hist. p. 296, t. 5, mem.

p. 63, t. 16, mem. p. 267. Lucian. Pseudomant. Cod. Theod. ix. 16.

[214:1] Acad. t. 16. mem. p. 274.

[215:1] Apol. 25. Vid. also Prudent. in hon. Romani, circ. fin. and Lucian de Deo Syr. 50.

[215:2] Vid. also the scene in Jul. Firm. p. 449.

[216:1] Tac. Ann. ii. 85; Sueton. Tiber. 36.

[216:2] August. 93.

[216:3] De Superst. 3.

[216:4] De Art. Am. i. init.

[217:1] Sat. iii. vi.

[217:2] Tertul. Ap. 5.

[218:1] Vit. Hel. 3.

[219:1] Vid. Tillemont, Mem. and Lardner's Hist. Heretics.

[221:1] Bampton Lect. 2.

[222:1] Burton, Bampton Lect. note 61.

[223:1] Burton, Bampton Lect. note 44.

[223:2] Montfaucon, Antiq. t. ii. part 2, p. 353.

[223:3] Haer. i. 20.

[223:4] De Praescr. 43.

[225:1] Vid. Kortholt, in Plin. et Traj. Epp. p. 152. Comment. in Minuc.

F. &c.

[228:1] "Itaque imposuistis in cervicibus nostris sempiternum dominum, quem dies et noctes timeremus; quis enim non timeat omnia providentem et cogitantem et animadvertentem, et omnia ad se pertinere putantem, curiosum, et plenum negotii Deum?"--_Cic. de Nat. Deor._ i. 20.

[228:2] Min. c. 11. Lact. v. 1, 2, vid. Arn.o.b. ii. 8, &c.

[228:3] Origen, contr. Cels. i. 9, iii. 44, 50, vi. 44.

[229:1] Prudent. in hon. Fruct. 37.

[229:2] Evan. Dem. iii. 3, 4.

[229:3] Mort. Peregr. 13.

[229:4] c. 108.

[229:5] i. e. Philop. 16.

[229:6] De Mort. Pereg. ibid.

[229:7] Ruin. Mart. pp. 100, 594, &c.

[230:1] Prud. in hon. Rom. vv. 404, 868.

[230:2] We have specimens of _carmina_ ascribed to Christians in the Philopatris.

[230:3] Goth. in Cod. Th. t. 5, p. 120, ed. 1665. Again, "Qui malefici vulgi consuetudine nuncupantur." Leg. 6. So Lactantius, "Magi et ii quos vere maleficos vulgus appellat." Inst. ii. 17. "Quos et maleficos vulgus appellat." August. Civ. Dei, x. 19. "Quos vulgus mathematicos vocat."

Hieron. in Dan. c. ii. Vid. Gothof. in loc. Other laws speak of those who were "maleficiorum labe polluti," and of the "maleficiorum scabies."

[230:4] Tertullian too mentions the charge of "hostes principum Romanorum, populi, generis humani, Deorum, Imperatorum, legum, morum, naturae totius inimici." Apol. 2, 35, 38, ad. Scap. 4, ad. Nat. i. 17.