With Nestorius out of the picture, the council proceeded under Cyril’s choreography—as Nestorius observed, “Is it not evident even to the unintelligent that he was in everything?” Apart from Memnon, Cyril’s deputy on this occasion was Juvenal of Jerusalem, who served as vice president of the council. This choice was daring, as Juvenal was notionally a patriarch, but legally he was subject to the metropolitan of Caesarea and the patriarch of Antioch. Yet on this occasion, he was acting as the equal of any of the “real” patriarchs. This power grab was also ironic, as in earlier years Cyril himself had opposed Juvenal’s daring claims for the status of his see of Jerusalem. On this occasion, though, Juvenal was a valuable ally.52
With the Cyrillians so clearly in control, little doubt remained about the result of the proceedings. Cyril’s scribe read to the council a series of incriminating documents, including the patriarch’s earlier correspondence with Nestorius. The council had to determine which of the two was in accord with church doctrine, as expressed in Scripture and the earlier church councils. Naturally enough under the circumstances, they sided wholly with Cyril, concluding with cries of “Anathema to Nestorius!” Two alleged friends of Nestorius provided damaging reports of their recent conversations with him. One, Bishop Acacius, shocked the assembly when he reported Nestorius’s seemingly blasphemous remark that a child of two or three months could not properly be called God. The council then heard relevant passages from key scriptural texts and church authorities, all reflecting the Alexandrian standpoint.53
The council then approved the papal letter of excommunication. Besides everything else, they wrote, Nestorius has not accepted their summons, “nor to receive the most holy and god-fearing bishops whom we sent to him.” By default, then, they continued, we have been forced to examine his impieties in his absence. And based on these, “with many tears,” we have no option but to agree with the sentence of excommunication. Nestorius is therefore deposed as a bishop. Including proxies, an impressive two hundred bishops signed the document. Nestorius was notified by a letter amicably addressed to “the new Judas.”54
In Search of an Exit
Matters ran still further out of hand when John of Antioch finally arrived on June 26, with his Easterners. Candidian brought him up to date on the council, telling how he had tried to prevent it from rushing to judgment. Horrified by the state of division, John blamed Cyril wholly for the disaster. He responded by convening a council from forty-three of the bishops present, and this body now deposed Cyril and Memnon. This was not so much from any loyalty to Nestorius or his ideas, but out of John’s fury at the kangaroo-court aspect of the earlier proceedings. The Syrians also charged, rightly, that Cyril’s gold had tainted the proceedings. But Cyril’s theology was at issue, as well as his conduct, and the Syrian churchmen demanded that the council repudiate his twelve anathemas, which so stressed Christ’s unity with God. How, they asked, could Cyril possibly declare that the “Word of God” had really been crucified in the flesh? Theodoret of Cyrrhus denounced the anathemas as heretical in their own right, a revival of the opinions of Apollinarius and Arius. Ibas of Edessa, too, thought The Twelve Anathemas were “packed with every form of impiety…and contrary to the true faith.” The rival council was deeply unpopular among the people of Ephesus itself, who remained faithful to Memnon: a crowd stoned the Syrian bishops as they tried to make their way to the church. Matters now reached the point where, as Ibas complained, “no one dared to travel from city to city or from region to region, but everyone persecuted his neighbor as if he were an enemy.”55
Both sides now appealed to the emperor, who learned that what should have been a straightforward hearing was fast turning into a divisive potential schism. “In bitter regret,” Nestorius declared: “Let Mary be called Theotokos, if you will, and let all disputing cease!” But his statement came a year too late.
Under imperial orders to make peace, the council reconvened on July 11. The weather was now getting hotter, and the assembled bishops were growing angrier and desperate to leave Ephesus. The council reported to the pope that “many, both bishops and clergy, were both pressed by sickness and oppressed by expense, and some had even deceased.” Bishops complained, “We are being killed with the heat through the heaviness of the air, and someone is buried almost daily; so that all the servants are sent home, and all the other bishops are in the same state.”56
Only the arrival of fresh papal legates offered any hope of a chance to reconcile the impasse. So ecstatic, in fact, was the reception that when their credentials from Pope Celestine were read, the bishops responded with cries that, to a modern audience, sound disturbingly Stalinist: “This is a just judgment!” cried the bishops. “To Celestine the new Paul! To the new Paul, Cyril! To Celestine, the guardian of the Faith! To Celestine agreeing to the Synod! The Synod gives thanks to Cyril. One Celestine, one Cyril!” It was the sense of relief at finding a way out that led the council to make such florid acclamations of Roman prestige, which later papal supporters would quote when arguing for papal supremacy. St. Peter had now cast his weight entirely behind Cyril, and the envoys confirmed the sentence against Nestorius.57
Even so, the council remained deeply divided with the Syrian statement against Cyril. In turn, Cyril and Memnon persuaded a majority of the council to depose John and thirty-three of his followers. Open war loomed among the churches of the East.
On to Constantinople
Although the majority party had written their damning judgment of Nestorius, it had to be delivered and accepted, much like a modern court subpoena, and it had to be published, in the sense of being made known at the imperial court. Nestorius fought on both fronts, refusing to accept the letter. Candidian, meanwhile, suppressed popular demonstrations in favor of the council and ordered copies of the letter torn down from public walls. Alexandrian accounts report that he arrested Cyril, although the chronology of events is not clear. Candidian’s soldiers seized Cyril by night, an act that for the Alexandrians undoubtedly recalled the arrest of Christ and made even more explicit the patriarch’s messianic role.58
Although Candidian was forced to free Cyril, he kept his stranglehold on the city and on the flow of information. His control of the roads leading out of Ephesus prevented the letter reaching Constantinople until one of the bishops found his way out of the city in disguise, carrying the letter hidden inside a cane. He brought it to two anti-Nestorian monks, one of whom—Eutyches—would himself play a key role in later theological battles. Meanwhile, Nestorius and Candidian sent their own letters presenting the other side of the case and denouncing Cyril and Memnon.59
Even with the hostile letter in Constantinople, the anti-Nestorian party still had to convince a reluctant Theodosius. Critical to the change in opinion was the archimandrite Dalmatius, who pleaded Cyril’s cause. Dalmatius was a veteran soldier who had retired to a monastic cell that he never left and where he acquired a reputation for ferocious holiness and asceticism. His intervention in 431 was all the more amazing because Dalmatius had not even left his cell when the emperor had requested him to say a litany to prevent earthquakes. Now, though, “a voice came down from heaven bidding him go forth. For [God] did not will that His flock should perish utterly.” Earthquakes, the city might withstand; but not Nestorius.60
Nestorius himself—obviously, not an impartial witness—describes the tumult in Constantinople in a torrid July. “Assemblies of priests and troops of monks” condemned him. Most could not normally agree to get along with one another, but all lesser rivalries gave way to the greater purpose of bringing down their archbishop. They mobilized a threatening mass demonstration, clothed in all the available symbols of heroic piety and charismatic religious power:
And they took for themselves as organizer and chief, in order to overwhelm the Emperor with amazement, Dalmatius the archimandrite, who for many years had not left his monastery. A multitude of monks surrounded him in the midst of the city, chanting the offices, in order that all the city might be assembl
ed with them and proceed before the Emperor to be able to hinder his purpose. For they had prepared all these things in advance in order that there might not be any hindrance, and they went in with the chanting of the office even to the Emperor.61
If any emperor was strong enough to stand up convincingly against this sight, it was not the priest-ridden Theodosius.
Nestorius reported the dialogue between the emperor and Dalmatius in terms that are explicitly designed to remind the reader of the trial of Christ, with himself representing Jesus. Here, more than anywhere in Nestorius’s account, we can be sure that he is spinning a tale. Dalmatius is given the part of the Jewish priests constantly demanding punishment, while the good Theodosius washes his hands of the matter. And just as the Jews at the trial of Jesus reportedly cried, “his blood be on us and our children,” so Dalmatius allegedly offers to take eternal blame for the evil and impious actions being taken against Nestorius. But once Theodosius had received this vindication, he accepted and confirmed the sentence.62
The mob then launched a citywide demonstration, an outburst of popular passion that in other circumstances could very easily have turned into a riot to threaten the empire itself.
They carried Dalmatius around, reclining on a couch which was spread with coverlets, and mules bore him in the midst of the streets of the city, so that everyone knew that a victory had been gained over the purpose of the Emperor, amidst great assemblies of the people and of the monks, who were dancing and clapping their hands, and crying out the things that can be said against one who has been deprived for iniquity.
Reportedly—and this time, plausibly—the happy throng was swelled by many of Nestorius’s old enemies, including the heretics and schismatics he had himself treated so roughly when he held the upper hand. All joined in the demonstration, clapping their hands and shouting over and over the memorable slogan of the day, the proclamation of the unity of persons in Christ: “God the Word died! God the Word died!”63
At the end of July, the council reaffirmed the decrees against Nestorius, and that ended the gathering. All that now remained was for the emperor to sort out the mess within the Eastern churches. Initially, he tried to accept the acts of both rival councils, favoring the depositions of John, Cyril, and Memnon, as well as Nestorius. Such a clean sweep of high offices must have seemed very tempting in the circumstances. Eventually, though, the emperor reinstated all the protagonists except Nestorius. After a brief incumbency in the see, Constantinople’s bishopric passed to Proclus, a strong Cyrillian and Pulcheria’s favored cleric. The crisis left Pulcheria even more firmly in control than hitherto and ready to pursue her scheme of making Constantinople the capital of a great empire dedicated to the Theotokos.
Alexandria and Antioch now had to patch up a truce. Long negotiations followed until, by 433, under heavy pressure from the emperor, Cyril and John recognized each other’s claim to his patriarchate. They also reached a historic pact on doctrinal issues, the Formula of Reunion, which was near-miraculous to the extent that it reflected a common ground between the two irreconcilable cities. This agreement—probably put together by Theodoret—marked a major step toward the formula that would eventually win at Chalcedon, “the unconfused union of two natures.” Jesus Christ was acknowledged as
perfect God and perfect man, composed of a rational soul and a body, begotten before the ages from the Father in respect of His divinity, but likewise in these last days for us and our salvation from the Virgin Mary in respect of His manhood, consubstantial with the Father in respect of His divinity and at the same time consubstantial with us in respect of His manhood. For the union [henosis] of two natures has been accomplished.
As Ibas was delighted to report, the document acknowledged two natures, both “the temple and the one who dwells in it.”64
Speaking of the two natures marked a real concession to Antioch, but Alexandria also won victories. Antioch distanced itself from Nestorius and explicitly accepted the word Theotokos:
In virtue of this conception of a union without confusion, we confess the holy Virgin as Theotokos because the divine Word became flesh and was made man, and from the very conception united to Himself the temple taken from her.
The two churches acknowledged a difference of opinion among theologians in how they interpreted the biblical and patristic statements about these issues. They “employ some indifferently in view of the unity of person [prosopon] but distinguish others in view of the duality of natures.”65
Both politically and theologically, this was a huge achievement. Cyril announced the pact with words of high celebration: “Let the heavens rejoice, and let the earth be glad!”
Aftermath
Once removed from the archbishopric of Constantinople, Nestorius retired into a comfortable exile in a monastery near his old home of Antioch, where he “received all sorts of honors and respectful presents.” However, that was too close to the world of intellectual debate to be comfortable for his critics. They sought a more lasting removal, which would leave him unable to spread his heresies. In 435, the emperor banished him for life, sending him to Arabia—roughly to what we might call Jordan or eastern Syria. The sentence was then changed to a life sentence in Upper Egypt. Egyptian residence was a particular insult since that land was the heart of the anti-Nestorian true believers. Also in 435, the emperor denied Nestorians the right to call themselves Christians.66
If Nestorius was the villain in a pious legend, then the rest of his life should have been spent in agony and disgrace, culminating in a suitably gruesome finale—his bowels split asunder, perhaps, or death in a snake pit. Some accounts do offer such a saga of misery, but the reality was more complex. One story comes from the historian Evagrius, who loathed “Nestorius, that God-assaulting tongue, that second conclave of Caiaphas, that workshop of blasphemy.”67 Evagrius tells how barbarian nomad raiders overwhelmed Nestorius’s refuge, and in the process they unwittingly inflicted upon him the ultimate atrocity, of setting him free and moving him to another city. Although this act may not sound too savage, the consequences were potentially devastating. Apart from the privations and hardships of the journey, they had caused Nestorius to break imperial law by leaving his place of banishment, and he wrote at length to excuse his misdeed:
I was conducted by barbarous soldiers from Panopolis to Elephantine, a place on the verge of the province of the Thebaid, being dragged thither by the aforesaid military force; and when, sorely shattered, I had accomplished the greater part of the journey, I am encountered by an unwritten order to return to Panopolis. Thus, miserably worn with the casualties of the road, with a body afflicted by disease and age, and a mangled hand and side, I arrived at Panopolis in extreme exhaustion, and further tormented with cruel pains: whence a second written injunction from you, speedily overtaking me, transported me to its adjacent territory. While I was supposing that this treatment would now cease, and was awaiting the determination of our glorious sovereigns respecting me, another merciless order was suddenly issued for a fourth deportation.
All this for a man past fifty, who according to the standards of the time was entering extreme old age. Evagrius gloatingly concludes that “when his tongue had been eaten through with worms, he departed to the greater and everlasting judgment which awaited him.”68
Evagrius was wrong. Nestorius lived on well into his seventies, probably until around 452, which allowed him to hear news of the Council of Chalcedon and the ruin of all his old enemies. If he was not actually vindicated, his long life must have given him some grounds for satisfaction, not to mention teaching important lessons about the transience of human affairs. Not only did Nestorius live on for twenty years after his ruinous defeat in 431, but he survived to write a scurrilous commentary, an account that almost literally tells us where the bodies were buried. He wrote this lengthy memoir, The Bazaar of Heracleides, in order to justify himself and damn his foes, and although edited and interpolated over the centuries, it clearly reflects his own positions. The work surv
ived in Syriac translation in a monastery in what later became Kurdistan, where European scholars rediscovered it in the late nineteenth century. It finally appeared in English translation as late as 1925.
Whatever we may think of his theological views, it is not easy to find much good to say about Nestorius. He was arrogant, he was intolerant of other believers, Christian and otherwise, and his political skills were abysmal. Yet we should admire his bullheaded determination never to surrender, even in the face of overwhelming odds. Such a position might have been plausible when he was backed by soldiers, but he kept it up even in exile, when he had no hopes of regaining favor.
One story tells how a royal chamberlain conducted him into exile in Egypt. At one point, Nestorius pleaded for rest, but the official said, “The Lord also was weary when he walked until the sixth hour, and he is God. What do you say about that?” Nestorius answered: “Two hundred bishops got together to make me confess that Jesus is God Incarnate, but I wouldn’t do it. Am I then going to admit to you that God was tired?” Perhaps he left the chamberlain struggling for an answer, as the man grappled with the wrenching question: did God really get tired? Was it in his nature?69
Appendix to Chapter Five: The Twelve Anathemas, Proposed by Cyril and Accepted by the Council of Ephesus (431)
If anyone does not confess that Emmanuel is God in truth, and therefore that the holy virgin is the mother of God (for she bore in a fleshly way the Word of God become flesh), let him be anathema.
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