The struggle, however, was by no means over, for the Nicene creed found many opponents among the eastern bishops who did not wish to exclude the Arians from the church. The leader of this party was Eusebius of Caesarea. In 335 they brought about the deposition of Athanasius, who had been bishop of Alexandria since 328. After the death of Constantine, Athanasius was permitted to return to his see, only to be expelled again in 339 by Constantius, who was under the influence of Eusebius. He took refuge in the West, where the Pope Julius gave him his support. At a general council of the church held at Serdica (Sofia) in 343 there was a sharp division between East and West, but the supporters of Athanasius were in the majority, and he and the other orthodox eastern bishops were reinstated in their sees (345 A. D.).
When Constantius became sole ruler of the empire (353 A. D.) the enemies of Athanasius once more gained the upper hand. The emperor forced a general council convoked at Milan in 353 to condemn and depose Athanasius, while the Pope Liberius, who supported him, was exiled to Macedonia. A new council held at Sirmium in 357 tried to secure religious peace by forbidding the use of the word “substance” in defining the relation of the Father and the Son, and sanctioned only the term homoios (like). The adherents of this creed were called Homoeans. Although they were not Arians, their solution was rejected by the conservatives in both East and West. In 359 a double council was held, the western bishops meeting at Ariminum, the eastern at Seleucia. The result was the acceptance of the Sirmian creed, although the western council had to be almost starved before it yielded. Under Julian and Jovian the Arians enjoyed full toleration, and while Valentinian I pursued a similar policy, Valens went further and gave Arianism his support.
In the meantime, however, the labors of the three great Cappadocians,—Basil of Caesarea, Gregory of Nazianzus and Gregory of Nyssa—had already done much to reconcile the eastern bishops to the Nicaean confession and, with the accession of Theodosius I, the fate of Arianism was sealed. A council of the eastern church met at Constantinople in 381 and accepted the Nicene creed. The Arian bishops were deposed and assemblies of the heretics forbidden by im[pg 393]perial edicts. Among the subjects of the empire Arianism rapidly died out, although it existed for a century and a half as the faith of several Germanic peoples.
The monophysite controversy. While the point at issue in the dogmatic controversies of the fourth century was the relation of God to the Son and the Holy Spirit, the burning question of the fifth and sixth centuries was the nature of Christ. And, like the former, the latter dispute arose in the East, having its origin in the divergent views of the theological schools of Antioch and Alexandria. The former laid stress upon the two natures in Christ—the divine and the human; the latter emphasized his divinity to the exclusion of his humanity, and hence its adherents received the name of monophysites. The Antiochene position was the orthodox or traditional view of the church, and was held universally in the West, where the duality of Christ was accepted without any attempt to determine the relationship of his divine and human qualities. Beneath the doctrinal controversy lay the rivalry between the patriarchates of Alexandria and Constantinople, and the awakening national antagonism of the native Egyptian and Syrian peoples towards the Greeks. The conflict began in 429 with an attack of Cyril, patriarch of Alexandria, upon the teachings of Nestorius, the patriarch of Constantinople. Cyril, taking the view that the nature of Christ was human made fully divine, justified the use of the word Theotokos (Mother of God), which was coming to be applied generally to the Virgin Mary. Nestorius criticized its use, and argued in favor of the term Mother of Christ. In the controversy which ensued, Cyril won the support of the bishop of Rome, who desired to weaken the authority of the see of Constantinople, and Nestorius was condemned at the council of Ephesus in 431.
The next phase of the struggle opened in 448, when Dioscorus, the occupant of the Alexandrine see, assailed Flavian, the patriarch of the capital, for having deposed Eutyches, a monophysite abbot of Constantinople. At the so-called “Robber Council” of Ephesus (449 A. D.) Dioscorus succeeded in having Flavian deprived of his see. But the pope, Leo I. pronounced in favor of the doctrine of the duality of Christ, and in 451 the new emperor Marcian called an ecumenical council at Chalcedon which definitely reasserted the primacy of the see of Constantinople in the East, approved the use of Theotokos, and declared that Christ is of two natures. The attempt [pg 394]to enforce the decisions of this council provoked disturbances in Egypt, Palestine and the more easterly countries. In Palestine it required the use of armed force to suppress a usurping monophysite bishop. In Egypt the enforcement led to a split between the orthodox Greek and the monophysite Coptic churches.
As the opposition to the decree of Chalcedon still disturbed the peace of the church, the emperor Zeno in 482, at the instigation of the patriarchs Acacius of Constantinople and Peter of Alexandria, sought to settle the dispute by exercise of the imperial authority. He issued a letter to the church of Egypt called the Henoticon, which, while acknowledging the councils of Nicaea and Constantinople, condemned that of Chalcedon, and declared that “Christ is one and not two.” This doctrine was at once condemned by the Pope Silvanus. The rupture with Rome lasted until 519, when a reconciliation was effected at the price of complete submission by the East and the rehabilitation of the council of Chalcedon. This in turn antagonized the monophysites of Syria and Egypt and caused Justinian to embark upon his hopeless task of reëstablishing complete religious unity within the empire by holding the western and winning back the eastern church.
Justinian hoped to reconcile the monophysites by an interpretation of the discussions of the council of Chalcedon which would be acceptable to them. This led him, in 544, to condemn the so-called Three Chapters, which were the doctrines of the opponents of the monophysites. And although this step implied a condemnation of the council of Chalcedon itself, and was consequently opposed in the West, he forced the fifth ecumenical council of Constantinople in 553 to sanction it. However, neither this concession nor the still greater one of the edict of 565 availed to win back the extreme monophysites of Egypt and Syria, where opposition to the religious jurisdiction of Constantinople had taken a national form, and the religious disunion in the East continued until these lands were lost to the empire.
IV. Monasticism
The origin of monasticism. Monasticism (from the Greek monos, “single”), which became so marked a feature of the religious life of the Middle Ages, had its origin in the ascetic tendencies of the early Christian church, which harmonized with the eastern religious [pg 395]and philosophic ideal of a life of pure contemplation. The chief characteristics of early Christian asceticism were celibacy, fasting, prayer, surrender of worldly goods, and the adoption of a hermit’s life. This renouncement of a worldly life was practised by large numbers of both men and women, especially in Egypt. It was there that organized monastic life began early in the fourth century under the influence of St. Anthony in northern and Pachomius in southern Egypt.