Nestorius warned, reasonably enough, that Cyril was going much too far in his reaction to the attempt to undercut Christ’s divinity. Reading Cyril’s letters today, we ask what remained of the human Jesus, or in what sense the God who died on the cross differed from the Father, creator of the universe? To quote one of the greatest modern scholars of this debate, W. H. C. Frend: “Cyril’s Christ remained an abstraction, his humanity so much part of the divine world as to be unrecognizable in human terms…. There was no biblical ring in his thought, for all his commentaries on the books of the Bible.”32 So determined was Cyril to show that Christ was not just a man that he stressed and overstressed the theme of Jesus as God, reviving—said Nestorius—the doctrines of Apollinarius.
As Nestorius warned, Cyril was not only wrong in his main argument, but he might have been venturing into even graver heresies involving a dualistic division of the material and spiritual worlds. He urged Cyril to realize how he might have been deceived by clandestine heretics either in Alexandria or Constantinople, including some who had been expelled as Manichaeans. Cyril was in danger of seeing Christ as a purely divine visitor with no real human qualities, a nonresident alien. Nestorius’s supporter Ibas of Edessa reported that Cyril “slipped up and was found falling into the teaching of Apollinarius.” As Ibas recalled, the Gospels spoke of Christ’s body as a temple, suggesting a distinction between a divine reality and a human frame. Cyril, however, failed to understand this. Like Apollinarius, Cyril “wrote that the very God the Word became man in such a way that there is no distinction between the Temple and the one who dwells in it.”33
Nestorius also noted how cynically Cyril and his followers misquoted him for partisan effect. The Nestorius they hated was not the real person, but a straw man constructed from passages wrenched out of context. One of Nestorius’s sermons had declared that “Mary, my friends, bore not the Godhead; she bore a man, the inseparable instrument of Godhead.” Cyril misquoted that remark to read “Mary, my friends, bore not God.” And as Nestorius objected, “Here to say God, and not to say the Godhead, makes very much difference.” It did indeed.34
Cyril’s Crusade
As is common in such pamphlet wars, each side presumably thought it had carried the day, but Cyril was not content with outarguing his opponent. Instead, Cyril now took positive steps to depose and destroy him, and entered crusading mode. The history of the Alexandrian patriarchate recalls how “Cyril availed himself of the weapons of his fathers, Alexander and Athanasius, and put on the breastplate of faith that his predecessors had handed down in the Church of Saint Mark the Evangelist; and he went out to war, as David did, with his heart strong in Christ who is God.”
He called together the Egyptian bishops, who declared that the new situation was singularly dangerous—so dangerous, in fact, as to demand extraordinary intervention in the affairs of another province. They compared Nestorius with the most notorious heretical leaders of the previous two hundred years. “For Arius and his followers, and Paul [of Samosata] and Mani and the rest of the heretics were not patriarchs, and yet they led a multitude of men astray. How then can this man remain patriarch of Constantinople?”35
Cyril mobilized support from other bishops wherever he could find them, including—critically for later history—the Roman Pope Celestine. From the Egyptian point of view, the Roman see had many advantages, particularly the enormous weight attached to the primacy of Peter, but also because it was far removed from the traditional rivalries of the Eastern churches. In early 430, Cyril sent a dossier of recent texts and correspondence to various church leaders, including Celestine. In turn, Celestine had his own interests to pursue. He made no claim to be a skilled theologian (Nestorius thought he was too gullible and simple to stand up to Cyril), but Cyril’s alarms genuinely convinced him. Moreover, he shared the familiar Roman fears about the growing status of the see of Constantinople, which could stand to be taught a lesson. Among other grievances, Nestorius had annoyed Celestine by writing to him as an ecclesiastical equal, brother to brother, boosting the claim that Old and New Rome stood on the same footing.36
Celestine ordered an inquiry into Cyril’s charges, to be headed by his deacon Leo. After convening a synod, in August 430 the pope gave Nestorius an ultimatum, with a specific deadline. Nestorius had just ten days to “annul by an open confession in writing that faithless novelty which undertakes to sever what holy Scripture unites,” and agree to teach the same doctrines about Christ that the churches of Rome and Alexandria held, and that Constantinople had before his time. Otherwise, he would be excommunicated.37
That November, with Rome firmly behind him, Cyril wrote a third letter to Nestorius, which presented his views in a more aggressive and extreme style than ever. Cyril was declaring war:
Who can help us in the Day of Judgment, or what kind of excuse shall we find for thus keeping silence so long, with regard to the blasphemies made by you against [Christ]? If you injured yourself alone, by teaching and holding such things, perhaps it would matter less; but you have greatly scandalized the whole Church, and have cast among the people the leaven of a strange and new heresy.38
In this much-quoted third letter, Cyril was demanding that all Christians accept his doctrine of the hypostatic union, rejecting any separation of the human and divine. Appended to the letter were twelve anathemas, each describing a theological error, and ending with the note that if anyone believes this, “let him be anathema.” (See appendix to this chapter, The Twelve Anathemas.) These anathemas would serve as a charter for orthodoxy for decades afterward and helped shape what became the church’s official Christology. But they were also open to other interpretations. So resolutely did Cyril oppose Nestorius that he now restated his doctrines in terms that could easily be cited in support of One Nature theory. Most egregious was the twelfth anathema, which condemned anyone who denied that “the Word of God suffered in the flesh and was crucified in the flesh and tasted death in the flesh.” The anathemas were a frontal attack on Antiochene theology as much as on Nestorius himself.39
Together with other bishops, Cyril wrote to the emperor begging him to hold a council to enquire into Nestorius’s beliefs and conduct. This was a delicate matter, given the possible implication that Theodosius II had chosen a thoroughly flawed archbishop. Nor could it be argued that Nestorius had been a fine choice when originally appointed but had somehow drifted into heresy while in office. He had held the job for only two years, and Theodosius should, in theory, have taken some responsibility for his beliefs. But Cyril played expertly on Theodosius’s famous piety and his role as guardian of the church. Reinforcing Cyril’s message was his envoy at the imperial court, Abbot Victor, whom Theodosius venerated for his holiness and asceticism. Also, Theodosius must have known just how disturbed the capital city was, so that some kind of urgent action had to be taken. In November 430 the emperor convened a council to be held in the ancient city of Ephesus, in western Asia Minor. The date would be June 7, 431, the feast of Pentecost that commemorated the original descent of the Spirit upon the apostles. Adding to the appropriateness of the date—and redounding to imperial glory—this would be just fifty years after the earlier Theodosius I had called his own great council, in Constantinople.40
But it was far from obvious that the new Theodosius had agreed to the kind of hostile tribunal that Cyril was demanding. If Nestorius had infuriated the court, then Cyril had also alienated the emperor by generating the present mess. A rough paraphrase of Theodosius’s letter to Cyril would run as follows: You should have known that I take good care of these religious matters. Why on earth, then, did you choose to try and settle things yourself, spreading confusion and chaos everywhere in the church? Whatever happened to caution, prudence, restraint, good sense? Just know that, whatever happens, you are to blame for all this.41 The emperor went on to complain about Cyril’s attempts to win favor in the court and the royal family. When the council actually did meet, Cyril should turn up promptly and not expect to take any furthe
r liberties or to speak more freely than he was allowed. Reading such a letter today, it looks as if Theodosius expected the coming gathering to lead to an absolute defeat of Cyril, who should in theory have faced the new year in fear and trembling.
On the other side, Nestorius was surprisingly pleased by the turn of events—so much so, perhaps, as to give further evidence of just how out of touch he was. He had himself requested a meeting of scholars and theologians to discuss the controversy, but a general council was not necessarily bad news. In fact, he hoped that the outcome would be the condemnation of Cyril rather than himself, as Cyril had expressed views that (in his view) were clearly Apollinarian. Pope Celestine marveled that Nestorius should rejoice at such an imminent battle. Partly, Nestorius knew that he had the sympathy of Theodosius, but he also had other powerful allies, especially Bishop John of Antioch. The empire now faced an alarming confrontation between Alexandria and Rome on the one hand, versus Constantinople and Antioch on the other. In fact, John was much more cautious in light of the overwhelming forces now arrayed against Nestorius, and he urged his friend to make an accommodation. The word Theotokos was not really that unacceptable, he said, when so many earlier Fathers has used it. But Nestorius pressed ahead.42
A Hot Summer in Ephesus
We can know the ins and outs of these events, all the gruesome details and sordid deals, with as much certainty as we can approach, for instance, backroom American politics of a century ago. In the fifth century, too, accounts of councils were preserved in exact detail because of the legalistic mind-set of the participants and the near certainty that the records would provide the basis of a later appeal.43
The council drew on a wide cross section of the Eastern church, with a token presence from Africa and the West. In some ways, Ephesus was an excellent meeting place, because it was an important communication hub by land and sea. But the city’s associations worked against Nestorius’s side. Ephesus boasted astonishing claims to connections with the apostolic age. One lively tradition claimed that St. John had brought the Virgin Mary there after the crucifixion, making it an appropriate site for discussions of the Virgin’s status in heaven. Choosing Ephesus also raised delicate issues of church politics, as the bishop, Memnon, had long-standing grievances against Constantinople and had every reason to want to see Nestorius ruined.44
A phrase like “the Council of Ephesus” suggests a degree of structure and organization that was far removed from the reality. For one thing, it conjures visions of a body of clergy meeting on a set day, gathering under one roof, debating and voting. In practice, the hardest thing was actually getting all the people together, a process that literally cost lives. Partly as a result of travel difficulties, different groups arrived piecemeal over a period of some weeks. Some set out around Easter, but many others were still arriving after Pentecost, seven weeks later. Cyril arrived with a formidable contingent of fifty bishops, against sixteen for Nestorius, and other bishops brought their own phalanxes—Juvenal of Jerusalem with the clergy of Palestine, Flavian of Philippi with his Macedonians.45
By the end of the proceedings, perhaps 250 bishops had attended at some point, each accompanied by two priests and a deacon. That suggests a total attendance of at least a thousand, although those figures would not include servants, slaves, bodyguards, and general hangers-on, nor the secular military forces intended to keep order. The city’s population that summer probably found itself swollen by at least several thousand. In modern American terms, that would be equivalent to the impact of a very large convention on a major city, although Ephesus would have been far more stressed to provide accommodations.
But travel issues alone did not fully explain the patchy arrivals. Bishops were genuinely concerned about a range of threats they might face—risks of making a political misstep or of alienating powerful court factions. Some, too, had real fears for their lives and safety at a time of such heightened tensions. Cyril’s Egyptian record showed just how willing he was to resort to mob rule, while his entourage included some ferocious Egyptian monks, like the doughty followers of Aba Shenoute. The threat of violence is stressed in the official history of the Alexandria patriarchate, which has nothing but good to say of Cyril. According to this account, Nestorius reputedly pleaded with the emperor, “The bishops are many, and I fear that they will kill me.” (In 449, murder at a council was exactly the fate that would befall Flavian, Nestorius’s successor at Constantinople). Anti-Nestorian bishops pledged themselves to defend orthodoxy to the death if necessary.46
Finding Nestorius’s fears plausible, Theodosius II sent with him Candidian, a patrician, together with the powerful official Count Irenaeus, supported by a military force, while the archbishop also brought “a great crowd of his adherents.” Candidian’s role would be controversial. Although he was acting under imperial orders to observe strict neutrality, some accounts portray Candidian as a friend and partisan of Nestorius, always looking out for his interests. His soldiers, meanwhile, showed little respect for the bishops following Cyril and Memnon. In fact, most of Candidian’s controversial decisions genuinely seem to have been undertaken in the cause of neutrality, as he tried to avoid seeing the proceedings turning into a rout stage managed by the Egyptians. Alexandrians, in turn, viewed him as the familiar kind of secular official who had blocked the church’s ambitions back home and who eventually succumbed to enough bluster. They remembered the prefect Orestes, whom Cyril had thoroughly bested some years earlier. They were duly shocked when Candidian failed to cave in, and demonized him accordingly. Charges of Candidian’s bias would be important in later councils, as the Egyptians would bring their own armed strength, notionally to provide self-defense.47
By far the most important of the reluctant participants was John of Antioch himself, whose long-anticipated arrival dominated the early proceedings. On June 6 he sent messengers promising that he would be there within five days, or at worst six, but he was still conspicuously absent on June 21, and so were most of his bishops. His absence gave Nestorius an excellent excuse for refusing to go ahead with the hearings: how could any council claim to speak for the church if it lacked the chief representative of Syria and the East? Candidian agreed that no valid council could be held without the key Eastern dioceses, so they must delay.48
Yet hanging on indefinitely in Ephesus was intolerable for so many bishops, so far from their dioceses, and having to cope with unfamiliar and unhygienic food and water. This was what we would today call southwestern Turkey in June, in the middle of a heat wave, and bishops were literally starting to die off. In imagining the scene, we also recall that this was just the era when the well-bathed and scented Roman world was giving way to an ascetic Christianity in which the holiest and most committed believers, as a matter of pious principle, refused to wash. Especially when gathered in large groups, monks must have stunk to a degree that a modern Westerner would find inconceivable. As pro-and anti-Nestorius factions glared at each other, it was an open question which side would crack first. Participants were beginning to place John’s arrival in an indefinite future, rather like that of the second coming of Christ himself.
By June 22 the anti-Nestorius forces achieved their goal, by actually beginning the hearings without John. Participating were 155 bishops, while sixty-eight others signed a petition pleading with Cyril not to start without Antioch. But the majority claimed higher authority. They met in the presence of the Gospels, which were placed on the main throne to symbolize Christ’s presence. In worldly terms, the real head was Cyril, serving as president in his own name and that of the Roman pope, who had authorized proceedings against Nestorius. And as before, Cyril had secured his position with generous gifts to all concerned.49
But the proceedings raised multiple legal problems, quite apart from the continued absence of most Syrian bishops. While the pope’s order gave some authority, the imperial summons had superseded it, and even the most ambitious claims for church power agreed that emperors still trumped popes. Nor was there any p
retence of any balance between pro-and anti-Nestorian parties. This was in no sense a contest between two competing forces, each with a valid position that needed to be presented and duly judged. Technically, Nestorius himself was already excommunicated, as he had not fulfilled the conditions laid out in the pope’s letter the previous year. His opinions did not count, and (at least according to the strictest interpretation) he should certainly not be seated at the council. Memnon of Ephesus had already closed the city’s churches to the Nestorians, who were not to be treated as Christians in good standing.50
Ideally, though, Nestorius and his allies should at least be present to make the proceedings look properly judicial; but they refused to play along. Nestorius and his friends withdrew from most of the council, refusing to acknowledge its validity without the presence of the Antioch clergy and of some more representatives from the West. They tried to ensure that it would be regarded as a purely partisan, local event. Candidian also lodged a protest and registered a complaint with the emperor.
The game continued awhile, with Nestorius and allies ensconced in his house, being approached repeatedly by delegations from the council. His critics suggest that he was hiding behind fortified walls and Candidian’s armed soldiery, as if he were in arms against the council and the world, but it all depended on where you stood. As Nestorius himself said, the soldiers were not to threaten the council, but to defend himself. “I needed to post soldiers around my house to guard myself, that they might not come against me with violence and destroy me!”51
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