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After the extinction of paganism, the Christians in peace
and piety might have enjoyed their solitary triumph. But
the principle of discord was alive in their bosom, and they
were more solicitous to explore the nature, than to practice
the laws, of their founder. I have already observed, that
the disputes of the Trinity were succeeded by those of the
Incarnation; alike scandalous to the church, alike
pernicious to the state, still more minute in their origin,
still more durable in their effects. It is my design to
comprise in the present chapter a religious war of two
hundred and fifty years, to represent the ecclesiastical and
political schism of the Oriental sects, and to introduce
their clamorous or sanguinary contests, by a modest inquiry
into the doctrines of the primitive church. (1)
I. A laudable regard for the honor of the first proselyte
has countenanced the belief, the hope, the wish, that the
Ebionites, or at least the Nazarenes, were distinguished
only by their obstinate perseverance in the practice of the
Mosaic rites. Their churches have disappeared, their books
are obliterated: their obscure freedom might allow a
latitude of faith, and the softness of their infant creed
would be variously moulded by the zeal or prudence of three
hundred years. Yet the most charitable criticism must
refuse these sectaries any knowledge of the pure and proper
divinity of Christ. Educated in the school of Jewish
prophecy and prejudice, they had never been taught to
elevate their hopes above a human and temporal Messiah. (2)
If they had courage to hail their king when he appeared in a
plebeian garb, their grosser apprehensions were incapable of
discerning their God, who had studiously disguised his
celestial character under the name and person of a mortal.
(3) The familiar companions of Jesus of Nazareth conversed
with their friend and countryman, who, in all the actions of
rational and animal life, appeared of the same species with
themselves. His progress from infancy to youth and manhood
was marked by a regular increase in stature and wisdom; and
after a painful agony of mind and body, he expired on the
cross. He lived and died for the service of mankind: but the
life and death of Socrates had likewise been devoted to the
cause of religion and justice; and although the stoic or the
hero may disdain the humble virtues of Jesus, the tears
which he shed over his friend and country may be esteemed
the purest evidence of his humanity. The miracles of the
gospel could not astonish a people who held with intrepid
faith the more splendid prodigies of the Mosaic law. The
prophets of ancient days had cured diseases, raised the
dead, divided the sea, stopped the sun, and ascended to
heaven in a fiery chariot. And the metaphorical style of the
Hebrews might ascribe to a saint and martyr the adoptive
title of Son of God.
Yet in the insufficient creed of the Nazarenes and the
Ebionites, a distinction is faintly noticed between the
heretics, who confounded the generation of Christ in the
common order of nature, and the less guilty schismatics, who
revered the virginity of his mother, and excluded the aid of
an earthly father. The incredulity of the former was
countenanced by the visible circumstances of his birth, the
legal marriage of the reputed parents, Joseph and Mary, and
his lineal claim to the kingdom of David and the inheritance
of Judah. But the secret and authentic history has been
recorded in several copies of the Gospel according to St.
Matthew, (4) which these sectaries long preserved in the
original Hebrew, (5) as the sole evidence of their faith.
The natural suspicions of the husband, conscious of his own
chastity, were dispelled by the assurance (in a dream) that
his wife was pregnant of the Holy Ghost: and as this distant
and domestic prodigy could not fall under the personal
observation of the historian, he must have listened to the
same voice which dictated to Isaiah the future conception of
a virgin. The son of a virgin, generated by the ineffable
operation of the Holy Spirit, was a creature without example
or resemblance, superior in every attribute of mind and body
to the children of Adam. Since the introduction of the
Greek or Chaldean philosophy, (6) the Jews (7) were persuaded
of the preexistence, transmigration, and immortality of
souls; and providence was justified by a supposition, that
they were confined in their earthly prisons to expiate the
stains which they had contracted in a former state. (8) But
the degrees of purity and corruption are almost
immeasurable. It might be fairly presumed, that the most
sublime and virtuous of human spirits was infused into the
offspring of Mary and the Holy Ghost; (9) that his abasement
was the result of his voluntary choice; and that the object
of his mission was, to purify, not his own, but the sins of
the world. On his return to his native skies, he received
the immense reward of his obedience; the everlasting kingdom
of the Messiah, which had been darkly foretold by the
prophets, under the carnal images of peace, of conquest, and
of dominion. Omnipotence could enlarge the human faculties
of Christ to the extend of is celestial office. In the
language of antiquity, the title of God has not been
severely confined to the first parent, and his incomparable
minister, his only-begotten son, might claim, without
presumption, the religious, though secondary, worship of a
subject of a subject world.
II. The seeds of the faith, which had slowly arisen in the
rocky and ungrateful soil of Judea, were transplanted, in
full maturity, to the happier climes of the Gentiles; and
the strangers of Rome or Asia, who never beheld the manhood,
were the more readily disposed to embrace the divinity, of
Christ. The polytheist and the philosopher, the Greek and
the Barbarian, were alike accustomed to conceive a long
succession, an infinite chain of angels or daemons, or
deities, or aeons, or emanations, issuing from the throne of
light. Nor could it seem strange or incredible, that the
first of these aeons, the Logos, or Word of God, of the same
substance with the Father, should descend upon earth, to
deliver the human race from vice and error, and to conduct
them in the paths of life and immortality. But the
prevailing doctrine of the eternity and inherent pravity of
matter infected the primitive churches of the East. Many
among the Gentile proselytes refused to believe that a
celestial spirit, an undivided portion of the first essence,
had been personally united with a mass of impure and
contaminated flesh; and, in their zeal for the divinity,
they piously abjured the humanity, of Christ. While his
blood was still recent on Mount Calvary, (10) the Docetes, a
numerous and learned sect of Asiatics, invented the
phantastic system, which was afterwards propagated by the
Marcionites, the Manichaeans, and the various names of the
Gnostic heresy. (11) They denied the truth and authenticity
of the Gospels, as far as they relate the conception of
Mary, the birth of Christ, and the thirty years that
preceded the exercise of his ministry. He first appeared on
the banks of the Jordan in the form of perfect manhood; but
it was a form only, and not a substance; a human figure
created by the hand of Omnipotence to imitate the faculties
and actions of a man, and to impose a perpetual illusion on
the senses of his friends and enemies. Articulate sounds
vibrated on the ears of the disciples; but the image which
was impressed on their optic nerve eluded the more stubborn
evidence of the touch; and they enjoyed the spiritual, not
the corporeal, presence of the Son of God. The rage of the
Jews was idly wasted against an impassive phantom; and the
mystic scenes of the passion and death, the resurrection and
ascension, of Christ were represented on the theatre of
Jerusalem for the benefit of mankind. If it were urged,
that such ideal mimicry, such incessant deception, was
unworthy of the God of truth, the Docetes agreed with too
many of their orthodox brethren in the justification of
pious falsehood. In the system of the Gnostics, the Jehovah
of Israel, the Creator of this lower world, was a
rebellious, or at least an ignorant, spirit. The Son of God
descended upon earth to abolish his temple and his law; and,
for the accomplishment of this salutary end, he dexterously
transferred to his own person the hope and prediction of a
temporal Messiah.
One of the most subtile disputants of the Manichaean school
has pressed the danger and indecency of supposing, that the
God of the Christians, in the state of a human foetus,
emerged at the end of nine months from a female womb. The
pious horror of his antagonists provoked them to disclaim
all sensual circumstances of conception and delivery; to
maintain that the divinity passed through Mary like a
sunbeam through a plate of glass; and to assert, that the
seal of her virginity remained unbroken even at the moment
when she became the mother of Christ. But the rashness of
these concessions has encouraged a milder sentiment of those
of the Docetes, who taught, not that Christ was a phantom,
but that he was clothed with an impassible and incorruptible
body. Such, indeed, in the more orthodox system, he has
acquired since his resurrection, and such he must have
always possessed, if it were capable of pervading, without
resistance or injury, the density of intermediate matter.
Devoid of its most essential properties, it might be exempt
from the attributes and infirmities of the flesh. A foetus
that could increase from an invisible point to its full
maturity; a child that could attain the stature of perfect
manhood without deriving any nourishment from the ordinary
sources, might continue to exist without repairing a daily
waste by a daily supply of external matter. Jesus might
share the repasts of his disciples without being subject to
the calls of thirst or hunger; and his virgin purity was
never sullied by the involuntary stains of sensual
concupiscence. Of a body thus singularly constituted, a
question would arise, by what means, and of what materials,
it was originally framed; and our sounder theology is
startled by an answer which was not peculiar to the
Gnostics, that both the form and the substance proceeded
from the divine essence. The idea of pure and absolute
spirit is a refinement of modern philosophy: the incorporeal
essence, ascribed by the ancients to human souls, celestial
beings, and even the Deity himself, does not exclude the
notion of extended space; and their imagination was
satisfied with a subtile nature of air, or fire, or aether,
incomparably more perfect than the grossness of the material
world. If we define the place, we must describe the figure,
of the Deity. Our experience, perhaps our vanity,
represents the powers of reason and virtue under a human
form. The Anthropomorphites, who swarmed among the monks of
Egypt and the Catholics of Africa, could produce the express
declaration of Scripture, that man was made after the image
of his Creator. (12) The venerable Serapion, one of the
saints of the Nitrian deserts, relinquished, with many a
tear, his darling prejudice; and bewailed, like an infant,
his unlucky conversion, which had stolen away his God, and
left his mind without any visible object of faith or
devotion. (13)
III. Such were the fleeting shadows of the Docetes. A more
substantial, though less simple, hypothesis, was contrived
by Cerinthus of Asia, (14) who dared to oppose the last of
the apostles. Placed on the confines of the Jewish and
Gentile world, he labored to reconcile the Gnostic with the
Ebionite, by confessing in the same Messiah the supernatural
union of a man and a God; and this mystic doctrine was
adopted with many fanciful improvements by Carpocrates,
Basilides, and Valentine, (15) the heretics of the Egyptian
school. In their eyes, Jesus of Nazareth was a mere mortal,
the legitimate son of Joseph and Mary: but he was the best
and wisest of the human race, selected as the worthy
instrument to restore upon earth the worship of the true and
supreme Deity. When he was baptized in the Jordan, the
Christ, the first of the aeons, the Son of God himself,
descended on Jesus in the form of a dove, to inhabit his
mind, and direct his actions during the allotted period of
his ministry. When the Messiah was delivered into the hands
of the Jews, the Christ, an immortal and impassible being,
forsook his earthly tabernacle, flew back to the pleroma or
world of spirits, and left the solitary Jesus to suffer, to
complain, and to expire. But the justice and generosity of
such a desertion are strongly questionable; and the fate of
an innocent martyr, at first impelled, and at length
abandoned, by his divine companion, might provoke the pity
and indignation of the profane. Their murmurs were variously
silenced by the sectaries who espoused and modified the
double system of Cerinthus. It was alleged, that when Jesus
was nailed to the cross, he was endowed with a miraculous
apathy of mind and body, which rendered him insensible of
his apparent sufferings. It was affirmed, that these
momentary, though real, pangs would be abundantly repaid by
the temporal reign of a thousand years reserved for the
Messiah in his kingdom of the new Jerusalem. It was
insinuated, that if he suffered, he deserved to suffer; that
human nature is never absolutely perfect; and that the cross
and passion might serve to expiate the venial transgressions
of the son of Joseph, before his mysterious union with the
Son of God. (16)
IV. All those who believe the immateriality of the soul, a
specious and noble tenet, must confess, from their present
experience, the incomprehensible union of mind and matter.
A similar union is not inconsistent with a much higher, or
even with the highest, degree of mental faculties; and the
incarnation of an aeon or archangel, the most perfect of
created spirits, does not involve any positive contradiction
or absurdity. In the age of religious freedom, which was
determined by the council of Nice, the dignity of Christ was
measured by private judgment according to the indefinite
rule of Scripture, or reason, or tradition. But when his
pure and proper divinity had been established on the ruins
of Arianism, the faith of the Catholics trembled on the edge
of a precipice where it was impossible to recede, dangerous
to stand, dreadful to fall and the manifold inconveniences
of their creed were aggravated by the sublime character of
their theology. They hesitated to pronounce; that God
himself, the second person of an equal and consubstantial
trinity, was manifested in the flesh; (17) that a being who
pervades the universe, had been confined in the womb of
Mary; that his eternal duration had been marked by the days,
and months, and years of human existence; that the Almighty
had been scourged and crucified; that his impassible essence
had felt pain and anguish; that his omniscience was not
exempt from ignorance; and that the source of life and
immortality expired on Mount Calvary. These alarming
consequences were affirmed with unblushing simplicity by
Apollinaris, (18) bishop of Laodicea, and one of the
luminaries of the church. The son of a learned grammarian,
he was skilled in all the sciences of Greece; eloquence,
erudition, and philosophy, conspicuous in the volumes of
Apollinaris, were humbly devoted to the service of religion.
The worthy friend of Athanasius, the worthy antagonist of
Julian, he bravely wrestled with the Arians and Polytheists,
and though he affected the rigor of geometrical
demonstration, his commentaries revealed the literal and
allegorical sense of the Scriptures. A mystery, which had
long floated in the looseness of popular belief, was defined
by his perverse diligence in a technical form; and he first
proclaimed the memorable words, "One incarnate nature of
Christ," which are still reechoed with hostile clamors in
the churches of Asia, Egypt, and Aethiopia. He taught that
the Godhead was united or mingled with the body of a man;
and that the Logos, the eternal wisdom, supplied in the
flesh the place and office of a human soul. Yet as the
profound doctor had been terrified at his own rashness,
Apollinaris was heard to mutter some faint accents of excuse
and explanation. He acquiesced in the old distinction of
the Greek philosophers between the rational and sensitive
soul of man; that he might reserve the Logos for
intellectual functions, and employ the subordinate human
principle in the meaner actions of animal life. With the
moderate Docetes, he revered Mary as the spiritual, rather
than as the carnal, mother of Christ, whose body either came
from heaven, impassible and incorruptible, or was absorbed,
and as it were transformed, into the essence of the Deity.
The system of Apollinaris was strenuously encountered by the
Asiatic and Syrian divines whose schools are honored by the
names of Basil, Gregory and Chrysostom, and tainted by those
of Diodorus, Theodore, and Nestorius. But the person of the
aged bishop of Laedicea, his character and dignity, remained
inviolate; and his rivals, since we may not suspect them of
the weakness of toleration, were astonished, perhaps, by the
novelty of the argument, and diffident of the final sentence
of the Catholic church. Her judgment at length inclined in
their favor; the heresy of Apollinaris was condemned, and
the separate congregations of his disciples were proscribed
by the Imperial laws. But his principles were secretly
entertained in the monasteries of Egypt, and his enemies
felt the hatred of Theophilus and Cyril, the successive
patriarchs of Alexandria.
V. The grovelling Ebionite, and the fantastic Docetes, were
rejected and forgotten: the recent zeal against the errors
of Apollinaris reduced the Catholics to a seeming agreement
with the double nature of Cerinthus. But instead of a
temporary and occasional alliance, they established, and we
still embrace, the substantial, indissoluble, and
everlasting union of a perfect God with a perfect man, of
the second person of the trinity with a reasonable soul and
human flesh. In the beginning of the fifth century, the
unity of the two natures was the prevailing doctrine of the
church. On all sides, it was confessed, that the mode of
their coexistence could neither be represented by our ideas,
nor expressed by our language. Yet a secret and incurable
discord was cherished, between those who were most
apprehensive of confounding, and those who were most fearful
of separating, the divinity, and the humanity, of Christ.
Impelled by religious frenzy, they fled with adverse haste
from the error which they mutually deemed most destructive
of truth and salvation. On either hand they were anxious to
guard, they were jealous to defend, the union and the
distinction of the two natures, and to invent such forms of
speech, such symbols of doctrine, as were least susceptible
of doubt or ambiguity. The poverty of ideas and language
tempted them to ransack art and nature for every possible
comparison, and each comparison mislead their fancy in the
explanation of an incomparable mystery. In the polemic
microscope, an atom is enlarged to a monster, and each party
was skilful to exaggerate the absurd or impious conclusions
that might be extorted from the principles of their
adversaries. To escape from each other, they wandered
through many a dark and devious thicket, till they were
astonished by the horrid phantoms of Cerinthus and
Apollinaris, who guarded the opposite issues of the
theological labyrinth. As soon as they beheld the twilight
of sense and heresy, they started, measured back their
steps, and were again involved in the gloom of impenetrable
orthodoxy. To purge themselves from the guilt or reproach
of damnable error, they disavowed their consequences,
explained their principles, excused their indiscretions, and
unanimously pronounced the sounds of concord and faith. Yet
a latent and almost invisible spark still lurked among the
embers of controversy: by the breath of prejudice and
passion, it was quickly kindled to a mighty flame, and the
verbal disputes (19) of the Oriental sects have shaken the
pillars of the church and state.
The name of Cyril of Alexandria is famous in controversial
story, and the title of saint is a mark that his opinions
and his party have finally prevailed. In the house of his
uncle, the archbishop Theophilus, he imbibed the orthodox
lessons of zeal and dominion, and five years of his youth
were profitably spent in the adjacent monasteries of Nitria.
Under the tuition of the abbot Serapion, he applied himself
to ecclesiastical studies, with such indefatigable ardor,
that in the course of one sleepless night, he has perused
the four Gospels, the Catholic Epistles, and the Epistle to
the Romans. Origen he detested; but the writings of Clemens
and Dionysius, of Athanasius and Basil, were continually in
his hands: by the theory and practice of dispute, his faith
was confirmed and his wit was sharpened; he extended round
his cell the cobwebs of scholastic theology, and meditated
the works of allegory and metaphysics, whose remains, in
seven verbose folios, now peaceably slumber by the side of
their rivals. (20) Cyril prayed and fasted in the desert, but
his thoughts (it is the reproach of a friend) (21) were still
fixed on the world; and the call of Theophilus, who summoned
him to the tumult of cities and synods, was too readily
obeyed by the aspiring hermit. With the approbation of his
uncle, he assumed the office, and acquired the fame, of a
popular preacher. His comely person adorned the pulpit; the
harmony of his voice resounded in the cathedral; his friends
were stationed to lead or second the applause of the
congregation; (22) and the hasty notes of the scribes
preserved his discourses, which in their effect, though not
in their composition, might be compared with those of the
Athenian orators. The death of Theophilus expanded and
realized the hopes of his nephew. The clergy of Alexandria
was divided; the soldiers and their general supported the
claims of the archdeacon; but a resistless multitude, with
voices and with hands, asserted the cause of their favorite;
and after a period of thirty-nine years, Cyril was seated on
the throne of Athanasius. (23)
The prize was not unworthy of his ambition. At a distance
from the court, and at the head of an immense capital, the
patriarch, as he was now styled, of Alexandria had gradually
usurped the state and authority of a civil magistrate. The
public and private charities of the city were blindly obeyed
by his numerous and fanatic parabolani, (24) familiarized in
their daily office with scenes of death; and the praefects
of Egypt were awed or provoked by the temporal power of
these Christian pontiffs. Ardent in the prosecution of
heresy, Cyril auspiciously opened his reign by oppressing
the Novatians, the most innocent and harmless of the
sectaries. The interdiction of their religious worship
appeared in his eyes a just and meritorious act; and he
confiscated their holy vessels, without apprehending the
guilt of sacrilege. The toleration, and even the privileges
of the Jews, who had multiplied to the number of forty
thousand, were secured by the laws of the Caesars and
Ptolemies, and a long prescription of seven hundred years
since the foundation of Alexandria. Without any legal
sentence, without any royal mandate, the patriarch, at the
dawn of day, led a seditious multitude to the attack of the
synagogues. Unarmed and unprepared, the Jews were incapable
of resistance; their houses of prayer were levelled with the
ground, and the episcopal warrior, after-rewarding his
troops with the plunder of their goods, expelled from the
city the remnant of the unbelieving nation. Perhaps he
might plead the insolence of their prosperity, and their
deadly hatred of the Christians, whose blood they had
recently shed in a malicious or accidental tumult. Such
crimes would have deserved the animadversion of the
magistrate; but in this promiscuous outrage, the innocent
were confounded with the guilty, and Alexandria was
impoverished by the loss of a wealthy and industrious
colony. The zeal of Cyril exposed him to the penalties of
the Julian law; but in a feeble government and a
superstitious age, he was secure of impunity, and even of
praise. Orestes complained; but his just complaints were
too quickly forgotten by the ministers of Theodosius, and
too deeply remembered by a priest who affected to pardon,
and continued to hate, the praefect of Egypt. As he passed
through the streets, his chariot was assaulted by a band of
five hundred of the Nitrian monks his guards fled from the
wild beasts of the desert; his protestations that he was a
Christian and a Catholic were answered by a volley of
stones, and the face of Orestes was covered with blood. The
loyal citizens of Alexandria hastened to his rescue; he
instantly satisfied his justice and revenge against the monk
by whose hand he had been wounded, and Ammonius expired
under the rod of the lictor. At the command of Cyril his
body was raised from the ground, and transported, in solemn
procession, to the cathedral; the name of Ammonius was
changed to that of Thaumasius the wonderful; his tomb was
decorated with the trophies of martyrdom, and the patriarch
ascended the pulpit to celebrate the magnanimity of an
assassin and a rebel. Such honors might incite the faithful
to combat and die under the banners of the saint; and he
soon prompted, or accepted, the sacrifice of a virgin, who
professed the religion of the Greeks, and cultivated the
friendship of Orestes. Hypatia, the daughter of Theon the
mathematician, (25) was initiated in her father's studies;
her learned comments have elucidated the geometry of
Apollonius and Diophantus, and she publicly taught, both at
Athens and Alexandria, the philosophy of Plato and
Aristotle. In the bloom of beauty, and in the maturity of
wisdom, the modest maid refused her lovers and instructed
her disciples; the persons most illustrious for their rank
or merit were impatient to visit the female philosopher; and
Cyril beheld, with a jealous eye, the gorgeous train of
horses and slaves who crowded the door of her academy. A
rumor was spread among the Christians, that the daughter of
Theon was the only obstacle to the reconciliation of the
praefect and the archbishop; and that obstacle was speedily
removed. On a fatal day, in the holy season of Lent,
Hypatia was torn from her chariot, stripped naked, dragged
to the church, and inhumanly butchered by the hands of Peter
the reader, and a troop of savage and merciless fanatics:
her flesh was scraped from her bones with sharp cyster
shells, (26) and her quivering limbs were delivered to the
flames. The just progress of inquiry and punishment was
stopped by seasonable gifts; but the murder of Hypatia has
imprinted an indelible stain on the character and religion
of Cyril of Alexandria. (27)
Superstition, perhaps, would more gently expiate the blood
of a virgin, than the banishment of a saint; and Cyril had
accompanied his uncle to the iniquitous synod of the Oak.
When the memory of Chrysostom was restored and consecrated,
the nephew of Theophilus, at the head of a dying faction,
still maintained the justice of his sentence; nor was it
till after a tedious delay and an obstinate resistance, that
he yielded to the consent of the Catholic world. (28) His
enmity to the Byzantine pontiffs (29) was a sense of
interest, not a sally of passion: he envied their fortunate
station in the sunshine of the Imperial court; and he
dreaded their upstart ambition. which oppressed the
metropolitans of Europe and Asia, invaded the provinces of
Antioch and Alexandria, and measured their diocese by the
limits of the empire. The long moderation of Atticus, the
mild usurper of the throne of Chrysostom, suspended the
animosities of the Eastern patriarchs; but Cyril was at
length awakened by the exaltation of a rival more worthy of
his esteem and hatred. After the short and troubled reign of
Sisinnius, bishop of Constantinople, the factions of the
clergy and people were appeased by the choice of the
emperor, who, on this occasion, consulted the voice of fame,
and invited the merit of a stranger. Nestorius, (30) native
of Germanicia, and a monk of Antioch, was recommended by the
austerity of his life, and the eloquence of his sermons; but
the first homily which he preached before the devout
Theodosius betrayed the acrimony and impatience of his zeal.
"Give me, O Caesar!" he exclaimed, "give me the earth purged
of heretics, and I will give you in exchange the kingdom of
heaven. Exterminate with me the heretics; and with you I
will exterminate the Persians." On the fifth day as if the
treaty had been already signed, the patriarch of
Constantinople discovered, surprised, and attacked a secret
conventicle of the Arians: they preferred death to
submission; the flames that were kindled by their despair,
soon spread to the neighboring houses, and the triumph of
Nestorius was clouded by the name of incendiary. On either
side of the Hellespont his episcopal vigor imposed a rigid
formulary of faith and discipline; a chronological error
concerning the festival of Easter was punished as an offence
against the church and state. Lydia and Caria, Sardes and
Miletus, were purified with the blood of the obstinate
Quartodecimans; and the edict of the emperor, or rather of
the patriarch, enumerates three-and-twenty degrees and
denominations in the guilt and punishment of heresy. (31) But
the sword of persecution which Nestorius so furiously
wielded was soon turned against his own breast. Religion
was the pretence; but, in the judgment of a contemporary
saint, ambition was the genuine motive of episcopal warfare.
(32)
In the Syrian school, Nestorius had been taught to abhor the
confusion of the two natures, and nicely to discriminate the
humanity of his master Christ from the divinity of the Lord
Jesus. (33) The Blessed Virgin he revered as the mother of
Christ, but his ears were offended with the rash and recent
title of mother of God, (34) which had been insensibly
adopted since the origin of the Arian controversy. From the
pulpit of Constantinople, a friend of the patriarch, and
afterwards the patriarch himself, repeatedly preached
against the use, or the abuse, of a word (35) unknown to the
apostles, unauthorized by the church, and which could only
tend to alarm the timorous, to mislead the simple, to amuse
the profane, and to justify, by a seeming resemblance, the
old genealogy of Olympus. (36) In his calmer moments
Nestorius confessed, that it might be tolerated or excused
by the union of the two natures, and the communication of
their idioms: (37) but he was exasperated, by contradiction,
to disclaim the worship of a new-born, an infant Deity, to
draw his inadequate similes from the conjugal or civil
partnerships of life, and to describe the manhood of Christ
as the robe, the instrument, the tabernacle of his Godhead.
At these blasphemous sounds, the pillars of the sanctuary
were shaken. The unsuccessful competitors of Nestorius
indulged their pious or personal resentment, the Byzantine
clergy was secretly displeased with the intrusion of a
stranger: whatever is superstitious or absurd, might claim
the protection of the monks; and the people were interested
in the glory of their virgin patroness. (38) The sermons of
the archbishop, and the service of the altar, were disturbed
by seditious clamor; his authority and doctrine were
renounced by separate congregations; every wind scattered
round the empire the leaves of controversy; and the voice of
the combatants on a sonorous theatre reechoed in the cells
of Palestine and Egypt. It was the duty of Cyril to
enlighten the zeal and ignorance of his innumerable monks:
in the school of Alexandria, he had imbibed and professed
the incarnation of one nature; and the successor of
Athanasius consulted his pride and ambition, when he rose in
arms against another Arius, more formidable and more guilty,
on the second throne of the hierarchy. After a short
correspondence, in which the rival prelates disguised their
hatred in the hollow language of respect and charity, the
patriarch of Alexandria denounced to the prince and people,
to the East and to the West, the damnable errors of the
Byzantine pontiff. From the East, more especially from
Antioch, he obtained the ambiguous counsels of toleration
and silence, which were addressed to both parties while they
favored the cause of Nestorius. But the Vatican received
with open arms the messengers of Egypt. The vanity of
Celestine was flattered by the appeal; and the partial
version of a monk decided the faith of the pope, who with
his Latin clergy was ignorant of the language, the arts, and
the theology of the Greeks. At the head of an Italian
synod, Celestine weighed the merits of the cause, approved
the creed of Cyril, condemned the sentiments and person of
Nestorius, degraded the heretic from his episcopal dignity,
allowed a respite of ten days for recantation and penance,
and delegated to his enemy the execution of this rash and
illegal sentence. But the patriarch of Alexandria, while he
darted the thunders of a god, exposed the errors and
passions of a mortal; and his twelve anathemas (39) still
torture the orthodox slaves, who adore the memory of a
saint, without forfeiting their allegiance to the synod of
Chalcedon. These bold assertions are indelibly tinged with
the colors of the Apollinarian heresy; but the serious, and
perhaps the sincere professions of Nestorius have satisfied
the wiser and less partial theologians of the present times.
(40)
Yet neither the emperor nor the primate of the East were
disposed to obey the mandate of an Italian priest; and a
synod of the Catholic, or rather of the Greek church, was
unanimously demanded as the sole remedy that could appease
or decide this ecclesiastical quarrel. (41) Ephesus, on all
sides accessible by sea and land, was chosen for the place,
the festival of Pentecost for the day, of the meeting; a
writ of summons was despatched to each metropolitan, and a
guard was stationed to protect and confine the fathers till
they should settle the mysteries of heaven, and the faith of
the earth. Nestorius appeared not as a criminal, but as a
judge; be depended on the weight rather than the number of
his prelates, and his sturdy slaves from the baths of
Zeuxippus were armed for every service of injury or defence.
But his adversary Cyril was more powerful in the weapons
both of the flesh and of the spirit. Disobedient to the
letter, or at least to the meaning, of the royal summons, he
was attended by fifty Egyptian bishops, who expected from
their patriarch's nod the inspiration of the Holy Ghost. He
had contracted an intimate alliance with Memnon, bishop of
Ephesus. The despotic primate of Asia disposed of the ready
succors of thirty or forty episcopal votes: a crowd of
peasants, the slaves of the church, was poured into the city
to support with blows and clamors a metaphysical argument;
and the people zealously asserted the honor of the Virgin,
whose body reposed within the walls of Ephesus. (42) The
fleet which had transported Cyril from Alexandria was laden
with the riches of Egypt; and he disembarked a numerous body
of mariners, slaves, and fanatics, enlisted with blind
obedience under the banner of St. Mark and the mother of
God. The fathers, and even the guards, of the council were
awed by this martial array; the adversaries of Cyril and
Mary were insulted in the streets, or threatened in their
houses; his eloquence and liberality made a daily increase
in the number of his adherents; and the Egyptian soon
computed that he might command the attendance and the voices
of two hundred bishops. (43) But the author of the twelve
anathemas foresaw and dreaded the opposition of John of
Antioch, who, with a small, but respectable, train of
metropolitans and divines, was advancing by slow journeys
from the distant capital of the East. Impatient of a delay,
which he stigmatized as voluntary and culpable, (44) Cyril
announced the opening of the synod sixteen days after the
festival of Pentecost. Nestorius, who depended on the near
approach of his Eastern friends, persisted, like his
predecessor Chrysostom, to disclaim the jurisdiction, and to
disobey the summons, of his enemies: they hastened his
trial, and his accuser presided in the seat of judgment.
Sixty-eight bishops, twenty-two of metropolitan rank,
defended his cause by a modest and temperate protest: they
were excluded from the councils of their brethren.
Candidian, in the emperor's name, requested a delay of four
days; the profane magistrate was driven with outrage and
insult from the assembly of the saints. The whole of this
momentous transaction was crowded into the compass of a
summer's day: the bishops delivered their separate opinions;
but the uniformity of style reveals the influence or the
hand of a master, who has been accused of corrupting the
public evidence of their acts and subscriptions. (45) Without
a dissenting voice, they recognized in the epistles of Cyril
the Nicene creed and the doctrine of the fathers: but the
partial extracts from the letters and homilies of Nestorius
were interrupted by curses and anathemas: and the heretic
was degraded from his episcopal and ecclesiastical dignity.
The sentence, maliciously inscribed to the new Judas, was
affixed and proclaimed in the streets of Ephesus: the weary
prelates, as they issued from the church of the mother of
God, were saluted as her champions; and her victory was
celebrated by the illuminations, the songs, and the tumult
of the night.
On the fifth day, the triumph was clouded by the arrival and
indignation of the Eastern bishops. In a chamber of the
inn, before he had wiped the dust from his shoes, John of
Antioch gave audience to Candidian, the Imperial minister;
who related his ineffectual efforts to prevent or to annul
the hasty violence of the Egyptian. With equal haste and
violence, the Oriental synod of fifty bishops degraded Cyril
and Memnon from their episcopal honors, condemned, in the
twelve anathemas, the purest venom of the Apollinarian
heresy, and described the Alexandrian primate as a monster,
born and educated for the destruction of the church. (46) His
throne was distant and inaccessible; but they instantly
resolved to bestow on the flock of Ephesus the blessing of a
faithful shepherd. By the vigilance of Memnon, the churches
were shut against them, and a strong garrison was thrown
into the cathedral. The troops, under the command of
Candidian, advanced to the assault; the outguards were
routed and put to the sword, but the place was impregnable:
the besiegers retired; their retreat was pursued by a
vigorous sally; they lost their horses, and many of their
soldiers were dangerously wounded with clubs and stones.
Ephesus, the city of the Virgin, was defiled with rage and
clamor, with sedition and blood; the rival synods darted
anathemas and excommunications from their spiritual engines;
and the court of Theodosius was perplexed by the adverse and
contradictory narratives of the Syrian and Egyptian
factions. During a busy period of three months, the emperor
tried every method, except the most effectual means of
indifference and contempt, to reconcile this theological
quarrel. He attempted to remove or intimidate the leaders
by a common sentence, of acquittal or condemnation; he
invested his representatives at Ephesus with ample power and
military force; he summoned from either party eight chosen
deputies to a free and candid conference in the neighborhood
of the capital, far from the contagion of popular frenzy.
But the Orientals refused to yield, and the Catholics, proud
of their numbers and of their Latin allies, rejected all
terms of union or toleration. The patience of the meek
Theodosius was provoked; and he dissolved in anger this
episcopal tumult, which at the distance of thirteen
centuries assumes the venerable aspect of the third
oecumenical council. (47) "God is my witness," said the pious
prince, "that I am not the author of this confusion. His
providence will discern and punish the guilty. Return to
your provinces, and may your private virtues repair the
mischief and scandal of your meeting." They returned to
their provinces; but the same passions which had distracted
the synod of Ephesus were diffused over the Eastern world.
After three obstinate and equal campaigns, John of Antioch
and Cyril of Alexandria condescended to explain and embrace:
but their seeming reunion must be imputed rather to prudence
than to reason, to the mutual lassitude rather than to the
Christian charity of the patriarchs.
The Byzantine pontiff had instilled into the royal ear a
baleful prejudice against the character and conduct of his
Egyptian rival. An epistle of menace and invective, (48)
which accompanied the summons, accused him as a busy,
insolent, and envious priest, who perplexed the simplicity
of the faith, violated the peace of the church and state,
and, by his artful and separate addresses to the wife and
sister of Theodosius, presumed to suppose, or to scatter,
the seeds of discord in the Imperial family. At the stern
command of his sovereign. Cyril had repaired to Ephesus,
where he was resisted, threatened, and confined, by the
magistrates in the interest of Nestorius and the Orientals;
who assembled the troops of Lydia and Ionia to suppress the
fanatic and disorderly train of the patriarch. Without
expecting the royal license, he escaped from his guards,
precipitately embarked, deserted the imperfect synod, and
retired to his episcopal fortress of safety and
independence. But his artful emissaries, both in the court
and city, successfully labored to appease the resentment,
and to conciliate the favor, of the emperor. The feeble son
of Arcadius was alternately swayed by his wife and sister,
by the eunuchs and women of the palace: superstition and
avarice were their ruling passions; and the orthodox chiefs
were assiduous in their endeavors to alarm the former, and
to gratify the latter. Constantinople and the suburbs were
sanctified with frequent monasteries, and the holy abbots,
Dalmatius and Eutyches, (49) had devoted their zeal and
fidelity to the cause of Cyril, the worship of Mary, and the
unity of Christ. From the first moment of their monastic
life, they had never mingled with the world, or trod the
profane ground of the city. But in this awful moment of the
danger of the church, their vow was superseded by a more
sublime and indispensable duty. At the head of a long order
of monks and hermits, who carried burning tapers in their
hands, and chanted litanies to the mother of God, they
proceeded from their monasteries to the palace. The people
was edified and inflamed by this extraordinary spectacle,
and the trembling monarch listened to the prayers and
adjurations of the saints, who boldly pronounced, that none
could hope for salvation, unless they embraced the person
and the creed of the orthodox successor of Athanasius. At
the same time, every avenue of the throne was assaulted with
gold. Under the decent names of eulogies and benedictions,
the courtiers of both sexes were bribed according to the
measure of their power and rapaciousness. But their
incessant demands despoiled the sanctuaries of
Constantinople and Alexandria; and the authority of the
patriarch was unable to silence the just murmur of his
clergy, that a debt of sixty thousand pounds had already
been contracted to support the expense of this scandalous
corruption. (50) Pulcheria, who relieved her brother from the
weight of an empire, was the firmest pillar of orthodoxy;
and so intimate was the alliance between the thunders of the
synod and the whispers of the court, that Cyril was assured
of success if he could displace one eunuch, and substitute
another in the favor of Theodosius. Yet the Egyptian could
not boast of a glorious or decisive victory. The emperor,
with unaccustomed firmness, adhered to his promise of
protecting the innocence of the Oriental bishops; and Cyril
softened his anathemas, and confessed, with ambiguity and
reluctance, a twofold nature of Christ, before he was
permitted to satiate his revenge against the unfortunate
Nestorius. (51)
The rash and obstinate Nestorius, before the end of the
synod, was oppressed by Cyril, betrayed by the court, and
faintly supported by his Eastern friends. A sentiment or
fear or indignation prompted him, while it was yet time, to
affect the glory of a voluntary abdication: (52) his wish, or
at least his request, was readily granted; he was conducted
with honor from Ephesus to his old monastery of Antioch;
and, after a short pause, his successors, Maximian and
Proclus, were acknowledged as the lawful bishops of
Constantinople. But in the silence of his cell, the
degraded patriarch could no longer resume the innocence and
security of a private monk. The past he regretted, he was
discontented with the present, and the future he had reason
to dread: the Oriental bishops successively disengaged their
cause from his unpopular name, and each day decreased the
number of the schismatics who revered Nestorius as the
confessor of the faith. After a residence at Antioch of four
years, the hand of Theodosius subscribed an edict, (53) which
ranked him with Simon the magician, proscribed his opinions
and followers, condemned his writings to the flames, and
banished his person first to Petra, in Arabia, and at length
to Oasis, one of the islands of the Libyan desert. (54)
Secluded from the church and from the world, the exile was
still pursued by the rage of bigotry and war. A wandering
tribe of the Blemmyes or Nubians invaded his solitary
prison: in their retreat they dismissed a crowd of useless
captives: but no sooner had Nestorius reached the banks of
the Nile, than he would gladly have escaped from a Roman and
orthodox city, to the milder servitude of the savages. His
flight was punished as a new crime: the soul of the
patriarch inspired the civil and ecclesiastical powers of
Egypt; the magistrates, the soldiers, the monks, devoutly
tortured the enemy of Christ and St. Cyril; and, as far as
the confines of Aethiopia, the heretic was alternately
dragged and recalled, till his aged body was broken by the
hardships and accidents of these reiterated journeys. Yet
his mind was still independent and erect; the president of
Thebais was awed by his pastoral letters; he survived the
Catholic tyrant of Alexandria, and, after sixteen years'
banishment, the synod of Chalcedon would perhaps have
restored him to the honors, or at least to the communion, of
the church. The death of Nestorius prevented his obedience
to their welcome summons; (55) and his disease might afford
some color to the scandalous report, that his tongue, the
organ of blasphemy, had been eaten by the worms. He was
buried in a city of Upper Egypt, known by the names of
Chemnis, or Panopolis, or Akmim; (56) but the immortal malice
of the Jacobites has persevered for ages to cast stones
against his sepulchre, and to propagate the foolish
tradition, that it was never watered by the rain of heaven,
which equally descends on the righteous and the ungodly. (57)
Humanity may drop a tear on the fate of Nestorius; yet
justice must observe, that he suffered the persecution which
he had approved and inflicted. (58)
The death of the Alexandrian primate, after a reign of
thirty-two years, abandoned the Catholics to the
intemperance of zeal and the abuse of victory. (59) The
monophysite doctrine (one incarnate nature) was rigorously
preached in the churches of Egypt and the monasteries of the
East; the primitive creed of Apollinarius was protected by
the sanctity of Cyril; and the name of Eutyches, his
venerable friend, has been applied to the sect most adverse
to the Syrian heresy of Nestorius. His rival Eutyches was
the abbot, or archimandrite, or superior of three hundred
monks, but the opinions of a simple and illiterate recluse
might have expired in the cell, where he had slept above
seventy years, if the resentment or indiscretion of Flavian,
the Byzantine pontiff, had not exposed the scandal to the
eyes of the Christian world. His domestic synod was
instantly convened, their proceedings were sullied with
clamor and artifice, and the aged heretic was surprised into
a seeming confession, that Christ had not derived his body
from the substance of the Virgin Mary. From their partial
decree, Eutyches appealed to a general council; and his
cause was vigorously asserted by his godson Chrysaphius, the
reigning eunuch of the palace, and his accomplice Dioscorus,
who had succeeded to the throne, the creed, the talents, and
the vices, of the nephew of Theophilus. By the special
summons of Theodosius, the second synod of Ephesus was
judiciously composed of ten metropolitans and ten bishops
from each of the six dioceses of the Eastern empire: some
exceptions of favor or merit enlarged the number to one
hundred and thirty-five; and the Syrian Barsumas, as the
chief and representative of the monks, was invited to sit
and vote with the successors of the apostles. But the
despotism of the Alexandrian patriarch again oppressed the
freedom of debate: the same spiritual and carnal weapons
were again drawn from the arsenals of Egypt: the Asiatic
veterans, a band of archers, served under the orders of
Dioscorus; and the more formidable monks, whose minds were
inaccessible to reason or mercy, besieged the doors of the
cathedral. The general, and, as it should seem, the
unconstrained voice of the fathers, accepted the faith and
even the anathemas of Cyril; and the heresy of the two
natures was formally condemned in the persons and writings
of the most learned Orientals. "May those who divide Christ
be divided with the sword, may they be hewn in pieces, may
they be burned alive!" were the charitable wishes of a
Christian synod. (60) The innocence and sanctity of Eutyches
were acknowledged without hesitation; but the prelates, more
especially those of Thrace and Asia, were unwilling to
depose their patriarch for the use or even the abuse of his
lawful jurisdiction. They embraced the knees of Dioscorus,
as he stood with a threatening aspect on the footstool of
his throne, and conjured him to forgive the offences, and to
respect the dignity, of his brother. "Do you mean to raise
a sedition?" exclaimed the relentless tyrant. "Where are the
officers?" At these words a furious multitude of monks and
soldiers, with staves, and swords, and chains, burst into
the church; the trembling bishops hid themselves behind the
altar, or under the benches, and as they were not inspired
with the zeal of martyrdom, they successively subscribed a
blank paper, which was afterwards filled with the
condemnation of the Byzantine pontiff. Flavian was
instantly delivered to the wild beasts of this spiritual
amphitheatre: the monks were stimulated by the voice and
example of Barsumas to avenge the injuries of Christ: it is
said that the patriarch of Alexandria reviled, and buffeted,
and kicked, and trampled his brother of Constantinople: (61)
it is certain, that the victim, before he could reach the
place of his exile, expired on the third day of the wounds
and bruises which he had received at Ephesus. This second
synod has been justly branded as a gang of robbers and
assassins; yet the accusers of Dioscorus would magnify his
violence, to alleviate the cowardice and inconstancy of
their own behavior.
The faith of Egypt had prevailed: but the vanquished party
was supported by the same pope who encountered without fear
the hostile rage of Attila and Genseric. The theology of
Leo, his famous tome or epistle on the mystery of the
incarnation, had been disregarded by the synod of Ephesus:
his authority, and that of the Latin church, was insulted in
his legates, who escaped from slavery and death to relate
the melancholy tale of the tyranny of Dioscorus and the
martyrdom of Flavian. His provincial synod annulled the
irregular proceedings of Ephesus; but as this step was
itself irregular, he solicited the convocation of a general
council in the free and orthodox provinces of Italy. From
his independent throne, the Roman bishop spoke and acted
without danger as the head of the Christians, and his
dictates were obsequiously transcribed by Placidia and her
son Valentinian; who addressed their Eastern colleague to
restore the peace and unity of the church. But the pageant
of Oriental royalty was moved with equal dexterity by the
hand of the eunuch; and Theodosius could pronounce, without
hesitation, that the church was already peaceful and
triumphant, and that the recent flame had been extinguished
by the just punishment of the Nestorians. Perhaps the
Greeks would be still involved in the heresy of the
Monophysites, if the emperor's horse had not fortunately
stumbled; Theodosius expired; his orthodox sister Pulcheria,
with a nominal husband, succeeded to the throne; Chrysaphius
was burnt, Dioscorus was disgraced, the exiles were
recalled, and the tome of Leo was subscribed by the Oriental
bishops. Yet the pope was disappointed in his favorite
project of a Latin council: he disdained to preside in the
Greek synod, which was speedily assembled at Nice in
Bithynia; his legates required in a peremptory tone the
presence of the emperor; and the weary fathers were
transported to Chalcedon under the immediate eye of Marcian
and the senate of Constantinople. A quarter of a mile from
the Thracian Bosphorus, the church of St. Euphemia was built
on the summit of a gentle though lofty ascent: the triple
structure was celebrated as a prodigy of art, and the
boundless prospect of the land and sea might have raised the
mind of a sectary to the contemplation of the God of the
universe. Six hundred and thirty bishops were ranged in
order in the nave of the church; but the patriarchs of the
East were preceded by the legates, of whom the third was a
simple priest; and the place of honor was reserved for
twenty laymen of consular or senatorian rank. The gospel
was ostentatiously displayed in the centre, but the rule of
faith was defined by the Papal and Imperial ministers, who
moderated the thirteen sessions of the council of Chalcedon.
(62) Their partial interposition silenced the intemperate
shouts and execrations, which degraded the episcopal
gravity; but, on the formal accusation of the legates,
Dioscorus was compelled to descend from his throne to the
rank of a criminal, already condemned in the opinion of his
judges. The Orientals, less adverse to Nestorius than to
Cyril, accepted the Romans as their deliverers: Thrace, and
Pontus, and Asia, were exasperated against the murderer of
Flavian, and the new patriarchs of Constantinople and
Antioch secured their places by the sacrifice of their
benefactor. The bishops of Palestine, Macedonia, and
Greece, were attached to the faith of Cyril; but in the face
of the synod, in the heat of the battle, the leaders, with
their obsequious train, passed from the right to the left
wing, and decided the victory by this seasonable desertion.
Of the seventeen suffragans who sailed from Alexandria, four
were tempted from their allegiance, and the thirteen,
falling prostrate on the ground, implored the mercy of the
council, with sighs and tears, and a pathetic declaration,
that, if they yielded, they should be massacred, on their
return to Egypt, by the indignant people. A tardy
repentance was allowed to expiate the guilt or error of the
accomplices of Dioscorus: but their sins were accumulated on
his head; he neither asked nor hoped for pardon, and the
moderation of those who pleaded for a general amnesty was
drowned in the prevailing cry of victory and revenge. To
save the reputation of his late adherents, some personal
offences were skilfully detected; his rash and illegal
excommunication of the pope, and his contumacious refusal
(while he was detained a prisoner) to attend to the summons
of the synod. Witnesses were introduced to prove the
special facts of his pride, avarice, and cruelty; and the
fathers heard with abhorrence, that the alms of the church
were lavished on the female dancers, that his palace, and
even his bath, was open to the prostitutes of Alexandria,
and that the infamous Pansophia, or Irene, was publicly
entertained as the concubine of the patriarch. (63)
For these scandalous offences, Dioscorus was deposed by the
synod, and banished by the emperor; but the purity of his
faith was declared in the presence, and with the tacit
approbation, of the fathers. Their prudence supposed rather
than pronounced the heresy of Eutyches, who was never
summoned before their tribunal; and they sat silent and
abashed, when a bold Monophysite casting at their feet a
volume of Cyril, challenged them to anathematize in his
person the doctrine of the saint. If we fairly peruse the
acts of Chalcedon as they are recorded by the orthodox
party, (64) we shall find that a great majority of the
bishops embraced the simple unity of Christ; and the
ambiguous concession that he was formed Of or From two
natures, might imply either their previous existence, or
their subsequent confusion, or some dangerous interval
between the conception of the man and the assumption of the
God. The Roman theology, more positive and precise, adopted
the term most offensive to the ears of the Egyptians, that
Christ existed In two natures; and this momentous particle
(65) (which the memory, rather than the understanding, must
retain) had almost produced a schism among the Catholic
bishops. The tome of Leo had been respectfully, perhaps
sincerely, subscribed; but they protested, in two successive
debates, that it was neither expedient nor lawful to
transgress the sacred landmarks which had been fixed at
Nice, Constantinople, and Ephesus, according to the rule of
Scripture and tradition. At length they yielded to the
importunities of their masters; but their infallible decree,
after it had been ratified with deliberate votes and
vehement acclamations, was overturned in the next session by
the opposition of the legates and their Oriental friends.
It was in vain that a multitude of episcopal voices repeated
in chorus, "The definition of the fathers is orthodox and
immutable! The heretics are now discovered! Anathema to the
Nestorians! Let them depart from the synod! Let them repair
to Rome." (66) The legates threatened, the emperor was
absolute, and a committee of eighteen bishops prepared a new
decree, which was imposed on the reluctant assembly. In the
name of the fourth general council, the Christ in one
person, but in two natures, was announced to the Catholic
world: an invisible line was drawn between the heresy of
Apollinaris and the faith of St. Cyril; and the road to
paradise, a bridge as sharp as a razor, was suspended over
the abyss by the master-hand of the theological artist.
During ten centuries of blindness and servitude, Europe
received her religious opinions from the oracle of the
Vatican; and the same doctrine, already varnished with the
rust of antiquity, was admitted without dispute into the
creed of the reformers, who disclaimed the supremacy of the
Roman pontiff. The synod of Chalcedon still triumphs in the
Protestant churches; but the ferment of controversy has
subsided, and the most pious Christians of the present day
are ignorant, or careless, of their own belief concerning
the mystery of the incarnation.
Far different was the temper of the Greeks and Egyptians
under the orthodox reigns of Leo and Marcian. Those pious
emperors enforced with arms and edicts the symbol of their
faith; (67) and it was declared by the conscience or honor of
five hundred bishops, that the decrees of the synod of
Chalcedon might be lawfully supported, even with blood. The
Catholics observed with satisfaction, that the same synod
was odious both to the Nestorians and the Monophysites; (68)
but the Nestorians were less angry, or less powerful, and
the East was distracted by the obstinate and sanguinary zeal
of the Monophysites. Jerusalem was occupied by an army of
monks; in the name of the one incarnate nature, they
pillaged, they burnt, they murdered; the sepulchre of Christ
was defiled with blood; and the gates of the city were
guarded in tumultuous rebellion against the troops of the
emperor. After the disgrace and exile of Dioscorus, the
Egyptians still regretted their spiritual father; and
detested the usurpation of his successor, who was introduced
by the fathers of Chalcedon. The throne of Proterius was
supported by a guard of two thousand soldiers: he waged a
five years' war against the people of Alexandria; and on the
first intelligence of the death of Marcian, he became the
victim of their zeal. On the third day before the festival
of Easter, the patriarch was besieged in the cathedral, and
murdered in the baptistery. The remains of his mangled
corpse were delivered to the flames, and his ashes to the
wind; and the deed was inspired by the vision of a pretended
angel: an ambitious monk, who, under the name of Timothy the
Cat, (69) succeeded to the place and opinions of Dioscorus.
This deadly superstition was inflamed, on either side, by
the principle and the practice of retaliation: in the
pursuit of a metaphysical quarrel, many thousands (70) were
slain, and the Christians of every degree were deprived of
the substantial enjoyments of social life, and of the
invisible gifts of baptism and the holy communion. Perhaps
an extravagant fable of the times may conceal an allegorical
picture of these fanatics, who tortured each other and
themselves. "Under the consulship of Venantius and Celer,"
says a grave bishop, "the people of Alexandria, and all
Egypt, were seized with a strange and diabolical frenzy:
great and small, slaves and freedmen, monks and clergy, the
natives of the land, who opposed the synod of Chalcedon,
lost their speech and reason, barked like dogs, and tore,
with their own teeth the flesh from their hands and arms."
(71)
The disorders of thirty years at length produced the famous
Henoticon (72) of the emperor Zeno, which in his reign, and
in that of Anastasius, was signed by all the bishops of the
East, under the penalty of degradation and exile, if they
rejected or infringed this salutary and fundamental law.
The clergy may smile or groan at the presumption of a layman
who defines the articles of faith; yet if he stoops to the
humiliating task, his mind is less infected by prejudice or
interest, and the authority of the magistrate can only be
maintained by the concord of the people. It is in
ecclesiastical story, that Zeno appears least contemptible;
and I am not able to discern any Manichaean or Eutychian
guilt in the generous saying of Anastasius. That it was
unworthy of an emperor to persecute the worshippers of
Christ and the citizens of Rome. The Henoticon was most
pleasing to the Egyptians; yet the smallest blemish has not
been described by the jealous, and even jaundiced eyes of
our orthodox schoolmen, and it accurately represents the
Catholic faith of the incarnation, without adopting or
disclaiming the peculiar terms of tenets of the hostile
sects. A solemn anathema is pronounced against Nestorius
and Eutyches; against all heretics by whom Christ is
divided, or confounded, or reduced to a phantom. Without
defining the number or the article of the word nature, the
pure system of St. Cyril, the faith of Nice, Constantinople,
and Ephesus, is respectfully confirmed; but, instead of
bowing at the name of the fourth council, the subject is
dismissed by the censure of all contrary doctrines, if any
such have been taught either elsewhere or at Chalcedon.
Under this ambiguous expression, the friends and the enemies
of the last synod might unite in a silent embrace. The most
reasonable Christians acquiesced in this mode of toleration;
but their reason was feeble and inconstant, and their
obedience was despised as timid and servile by the vehement
spirit of their brethren. On a subject which engrossed the
thoughts and discourses of men, it was difficult to preserve
an exact neutrality; a book, a sermon, a prayer, rekindled
the flame of controversy; and the bonds of communion were
alternately broken and renewed by the private animosity of
the bishops. The space between Nestorius and Eutyches was
filled by a thousand shades of language and opinion; the
acephali (73) of Egypt, and the Roman pontiffs, of equal
valor, though of unequal strength, may be found at the two
extremities of the theological scale. The acephali, without
a king or a bishop, were separated above three hundred years
from the patriarchs of Alexandria, who had accepted the
communion of Constantinople, without exacting a formal
condemnation of the synod of Chalcedon. For accepting the
communion of Alexandria, without a formal approbation of the
same synod, the patriarchs of Constantinople were
anathematized by the popes. Their inflexible despotism
involved the most orthodox of the Greek churches in this
spiritual contagion, denied or doubted the validity of their
sacraments, (74) and fomented, thirty-five years, the schism
of the East and West, till they finally abolished the memory
of four Byzantine pontiffs, who had dared to oppose the
supremacy of St. Peter. (75) Before that period, the
precarious truce of Constantinople and Egypt had been
violated by the zeal of the rival prelates. Macedonius, who
was suspected of the Nestorian heresy, asserted, in disgrace
and exile, the synod of Chalcedon, while the successor of
Cyril would have purchased its overthrow with a bribe of two
thousand pounds of gold.
In the fever of the times, the sense, or rather the sound of
a syllable, was sufficient to disturb the peace of an
empire. The Trisagion (76) (thrice holy,) "Holy, holy, holy,
Lord God of Hosts!" is supposed, by the Greeks, to be the
identical hymn which the angels and cherubim eternally
repeat before the throne of God, and which, about the middle
of the fifth century, was miraculously revealed to the
church of Constantinople. The devotion of Antioch soon
added, "who was crucified for us!" and this grateful
address, either to Christ alone, or to the whole Trinity,
may be justified by the rules of theology, and has been
gradually adopted by the Catholics of the East and West.
But it had been imagined by a Monophysite bishop; (77) the
gift of an enemy was at first rejected as a dire and
dangerous blasphemy, and the rash innovation had nearly cost
the emperor Anastasius his throne and his life. (78) The
people of Constantinople was devoid of any rational
principles of freedom; but they held, as a lawful cause of
rebellion, the color of a livery in the races, or the color
of a mystery in the schools. The Trisagion, with and
without this obnoxious addition, was chanted in the
cathedral by two adverse choirs, and when their lungs were
exhausted, they had recourse to the more solid arguments of
sticks and stones; the aggressors were punished by the
emperor, and defended by the patriarch; and the crown and
mitre were staked on the event of this momentous quarrel.
The streets were instantly crowded with innumerable swarms
of men, women, and children; the legions of monks, in
regular array, marched, and shouted, and fought at their
head, "Christians! this is the day of martyrdom: let us not
desert our spiritual father; anathema to the Manichaean
tyrant! he is unworthy to reign." Such was the Catholic cry;
and the galleys of Anastasius lay upon their oars before the
palace, till the patriarch had pardoned his penitent, and
hushed the waves of the troubled multitude. The triumph of
Macedonius was checked by a speedy exile; but the zeal of
his flock was again exasperated by the same question,
"Whether one of the Trinity had been crucified?" On this
momentous occasion, the blue and green factions of
Constantinople suspended their discord, and the civil and
military powers were annihilated in their presence. The
keys of the city, and the standards of the guards, were
deposited in the forum of Constantine, the principal station
and camp of the faithful. Day and night they were
incessantly busied either in singing hymns to the honor of
their God, or in pillaging and murdering the servants of
their prince. The head of his favorite monk, the friend, as
they styled him, of the enemy of the Holy Trinity, was borne
aloft on a spear; and the firebrands, which had been darted
against heretical structures, diffused the undistinguishing
flames over the most orthodox buildings. The statues of the
emperor were broken, and his person was concealed in a
suburb, till, at the end of three days, he dared to implore
the mercy of his subjects. Without his diadem, and in the
posture of a suppliant, Anastasius appeared on the throne of
the circus. The Catholics, before his face, rehearsed their
genuine Trisagion; they exulted in the offer, which he
proclaimed by the voice of a herald, of abdicating the
purple; they listened to the admonition, that, since all
could not reign, they should previously agree in the choice
of a sovereign; and they accepted the blood of two unpopular
ministers, whom their master, without hesitation, condemned
to the lions. These furious but transient seditions were
encouraged by the success of Vitalian, who, with an army of
Huns and Bulgarians, for the most part idolaters, declared
himself the champion of the Catholic faith. In this pious
rebellion he depopulated Thrace, besieged Constantinople,
exterminated sixty-five thousand of his fellow-Christians,
till he obtained the recall of the bishops, the satisfaction
of the pope, and the establishment of the council of
Chalcedon, an orthodox treaty, reluctantly signed by the
dying Anastasius, and more faithfully performed by the uncle
of Justinian. And such was the event of the first of the
religious wars which have been waged in the name and by the
disciples, of the God of peace. (79)
Justinian has been already seen in the various lights of a
prince, a conqueror, and a lawgiver: the theologian (80)
still remains, and it affords an unfavorable prejudice, that
his theology should form a very prominent feature of his
portrait. The sovereign sympathized with his subjects in
their superstitious reverence for living and departed
saints: his Code, and more especially his Novels, confirm
and enlarge the privileges of the clergy; and in every
dispute between a monk and a layman, the partial judge was
inclined to pronounce, that truth, and innocence, and
justice, were always on the side of the church. In his
public and private devotions, the emperor was assiduous and
exemplary; his prayers, vigils, and fasts, displayed the
austere penance of a monk; his fancy was amused by the hope,
or belief, of personal inspiration; he had secured the
patronage of the Virgin and St. Michael the archangel; and
his recovery from a dangerous disease was ascribed to the
miraculous succor of the holy martyrs Cosmas and Damian.
The capital and the provinces of the East were decorated
with the monuments of his religion; (81) and though the far
greater part of these costly structures may be attributed to
his taste or ostentation, the zeal of the royal architect
was probably quickened by a genuine sense of love and
gratitude towards his invisible benefactors. Among the
titles of Imperial greatness, the name of Pious was most
pleasing to his ear; to promote the temporal and spiritual
interest of the church was the serious business of his life;
and the duty of father of his country was often sacrificed
to that of defender of the faith. The controversies of the
times were congenial to his temper and understanding and the
theological professors must inwardly deride the diligence of
a stranger, who cultivated their art and neglected his own.
"What can ye fear," said a bold conspirator to his
associates, "from your bigoted tyrant? Sleepless and
unarmed, he sits whole nights in his closet, debating with
reverend graybeards, and turning over the pages of
ecclesiastical volumes." (82) The fruits of these
lucubrations were displayed in many a conference, where
Justinian might shine as the loudest and most subtile of the
disputants; in many a sermon, which, under the name of
edicts and epistles, proclaimed to the empire the theology
of their master. While the Barbarians invaded the
provinces, while the victorious legion marched under the
banners of Belisarius and Narses, the successor of Trajan,
unknown to the camp, was content to vanquish at the head of
a synod. Had he invited to these synods a disinterested and
rational spectator, Justinian might have learned, "that
religious controversy is the offspring of arrogance and
folly; that true piety is most laudably expressed by silence
and submission; that man, ignorant of his own nature, should
not presume to scrutinize the nature of his God; and that it
is sufficient for us to know, that power and benevolence are
the perfect attributes of the Deity." (83)
Toleration was not the virtue of the times, and indulgence
to rebels has seldom been the virtue of princes. But when
the prince descends to the narrow and peevish character of a
disputant, he is easily provoked to supply the defect of
argument by the plenitude of power, and to chastise without
mercy the perverse blindness of those who wilfully shut
their eyes against the light of demonstration. The reign of
Justinian was a uniform yet various scene of persecution;
and he appears to have surpassed his indolent predecessors,
both in the contrivance of his laws and the rigor of their
execution. The insufficient term of three months was
assigned for the conversion or exile of all heretics; (84)
and if he still connived at their precarious stay, they were
deprived, under his iron yoke, not only of the benefits of
society, but of the common birth-right of men and
Christians. At the end of four hundred years, the Montanists
of Phrygia (85) still breathed the wild enthusiasm of
perfection and prophecy which they had imbibed from their
male and female apostles, the special organs of the
Paraclete. On the approach of the Catholic priests and
soldiers, they grasped with alacrity the crown of martyrdom
the conventicle and the congregation perished in the flames,
but these primitive fanatics were not extinguished three
hundred years after the death of their tyrant. Under the
protection of their Gothic confederates, the church of the
Arians at Constantinople had braved the severity of the
laws: their clergy equalled the wealth and magnificence of
the senate; and the gold and silver which were seized by the
rapacious hand of Justinian might perhaps be claimed as the
spoils of the provinces, and the trophies of the Barbarians.
A secret remnant of Pagans, who still lurked in the most
refined and most rustic conditions of mankind, excited the
indignation of the Christians, who were perhaps unwilling
that any strangers should be the witnesses of their
intestine quarrels. A bishop was named as the inquisitor of
the faith, and his diligence soon discovered, in the court
and city, the magistrates, lawyers, physicians, and
sophists, who still cherished the superstition of the
Greeks. They were sternly informed that they must choose
without delay between the displeasure of Jupiter or
Justinian, and that their aversion to the gospel could no
longer be distinguished under the scandalous mask of
indifference or impiety. The patrician Photius, perhaps,
alone was resolved to live and to die like his ancestors: he
enfranchised himself with the stroke of a dagger, and left
his tyrant the poor consolation of exposing with ignominy
the lifeless corpse of the fugitive. His weaker brethren
submitted to their earthly monarch, underwent the ceremony
of baptism, and labored, by their extraordinary zeal, to
erase the suspicion, or to expiate the guilt, of idolatry.
The native country of Homer, and the theatre of the Trojan
war, still retained the last sparks of his mythology: by the
care of the same bishop, seventy thousand Pagans were
detected and converted in Asia, Phrygia, Lydia, and Caria;
ninety-six churches were built for the new proselytes; and
linen vestments, Bibles, and liturgies, and vases of gold
and silver, were supplied by the pious munificence of
Justinian. (86) The Jews, who had been gradually stripped of
their immunities, were oppressed by a vexatious law, which
compelled them to observe the festival of Easter the same
day on which it was celebrated by the Christians. (87) And
they might complain with the more reason, since the
Catholics themselves did not agree with the astronomical
calculations of their sovereign: the people of
Constantinople delayed the beginning of their Lent a whole
week after it had been ordained by authority; and they had
the pleasure of fasting seven days, while meat was exposed
for sale by the command of the emperor. The Samaritans of
Palestine (88) were a motley race, an ambiguous sect,
rejected as Jews by the Pagans, by the Jews as schismatics,
and by the Christians as idolaters. The abomination of the
cross had already been planted on their holy mount of
Garizim, (89) but the persecution of Justinian offered only
the alternative of baptism or rebellion. They chose the
latter: under the standard of a desperate leader, they rose
in arms, and retaliated their wrongs on the lives, the
property, and the temples, of a defenceless people. The
Samaritans were finally subdued by the regular forces of the
East: twenty thousand were slain, twenty thousand were sold
by the Arabs to the infidels of Persia and India, and the
remains of that unhappy nation atoned for the crime of
treason by the sin of hypocrisy. It has been computed that
one hundred thousand Roman subjects were extirpated in the
Samaritan war, (90) which converted the once fruitful
province into a desolate and smoking wilderness. But in the
creed of Justinian, the guilt of murder could not be applied
to the slaughter of unbelievers; and he piously labored to
establish with fire and sword the unity of the Christian
faith. (91)
With these sentiments, it was incumbent on him, at least, to
be always in the right. In the first years of his
administration, he signalized his zeal as the disciple and
patron of orthodoxy: the reconciliation of the Greeks and
Latins established the tome of St. Leo as the creed of the
emperor and the empire; the Nestorians and Eutychians were
exposed. on either side, to the double edge of persecution;
and the four synods of Nice, Constantinople, Ephesus, and
Chalcedon, were ratified by the code of a Catholic lawgiver.
(92) But while Justinian strove to maintain the uniformity of
faith and worship, his wife Theodora, whose vices were not
incompatible with devotion, had listened to the Monophysite
teachers; and the open or clandestine enemies of the church
revived and multiplied at the smile of their gracious
patroness. The capital, the palace, the nuptial bed, were
torn by spiritual discord; yet so doubtful was the sincerity
of the royal consorts, that their seeming disagreement was
imputed by many to a secret and mischievous confederacy
against the religion and happiness of their people. (93) The
famous dispute of the Three Chapters, (94) which has filled
more volumes than it deserves lines, is deeply marked with
this subtile and disingenuous spirit. It was now three
hundred years since the body of Origen (95) had been eaten by
the worms: his soul, of which he held the preexistence, was
in the hands of its Creator; but his writings were eagerly
perused by the monks of Palestine. In these writings, the
piercing eye of Justinian descried more than ten
metaphysical errors; and the primitive doctor, in the
company of Pythagoras and Plato, was devoted by the clergy
to the eternity of hell-fire, which he had presumed to deny.
Under the cover of this precedent, a treacherous blow was
aimed at the council of Chalcedon. The fathers had listened
without impatience to the praise of Theodore of Mopsuestia;
(96) and their justice or indulgence had restored both
Theodore of Cyrrhus, and Ibas of Edessa, to the communion of
the church. But the characters of these Oriental bishops
were tainted with the reproach of heresy; the first had been
the master, the two others were the friends, of Nestorius;
their most suspicious passages were accused under the title
of the three chapters; and the condemnation of their memory
must involve the honor of a synod, whose name was pronounced
with sincere or affected reverence by the Catholic world.
If these bishops, whether innocent or guilty, were
annihilated in the sleep of death, they would not probably
be awakened by the clamor which, after the a hundred years,
was raised over their grave. If they were already in the
fangs of the daemon, their torments could neither be
aggravated nor assuaged by human industry. If in the
company of saints and angels they enjoyed the rewards of
piety, they must have smiled at the idle fury of the
theological insects who still crawled on the surface of the
earth. The foremost of these insects, the emperor of the
Romans, darted his sting, and distilled his venom, perhaps
without discerning the true motives of Theodora and her
ecclesiastical faction. The victims were no longer subject
to his power, and the vehement style of his edicts could
only proclaim their damnation, and invite the clergy of the
East to join in a full chorus of curses and anathemas. The
East, with some hesitation, consented to the voice of her
sovereign: the fifth general council, of three patriarchs
and one hundred and sixty-five bishops, was held at
Constantinople; and the authors, as well as the defenders,
of the three chapters were separated from the communion of
the saints, and solemnly delivered to the prince of
darkness. But the Latin churches were more jealous of the
honor of Leo and the synod of Chalcedon: and if they had
fought as they usually did under the standard of Rome, they
might have prevailed in the cause of reason and humanity.
But their chief was a prisoner in the hands of the enemy;
the throne of St. Peter, which had been disgraced by the
simony, was betrayed by the cowardice, of Vigilius, who
yielded, after a long and inconsistent struggle, to the
despotism of Justinian and the sophistry of the Greeks. His
apostasy provoked the indignation of the Latins, and no more
than two bishops could be found who would impose their hands
on his deacon and successor Pelagius. Yet the perseverance
of the popes insensibly transferred to their adversaries the
appellation of schismatics; the Illyrian, African, and
Italian churches were oppressed by the civil and
ecclesiastical powers, not without some effort of military
force; (97) the distant Barbarians transcribed the creed of
the Vatican, and, in the period of a century, the schism of
the three chapters expired in an obscure angle of the
Venetian province. (98) But the religious discontent of the
Italians had already promoted the conquests of the Lombards,
and the Romans themselves were accustomed to suspect the
faith and to detest the government of their Byzantine
tyrant.
Justinian was neither steady nor consistent in the nice
process of fixing his volatile opinions and those of his
subjects. In his youth he was, offended by the slightest
deviation from the orthodox line; in his old age he
transgressed the measure of temperate heresy, and the
Jacobites, not less than the Catholics, were scandalized by
his declaration, that the body of Christ was incorruptible,
and that his manhood was never subject to any wants and
infirmities, the inheritance of our mortal flesh. This
fantastic opinion was announced in the last edicts of
Justinian; and at the moment of his seasonable departure,
the clergy had refused to subscribe, the prince was prepared
to persecute, and the people were resolved to suffer or
resist. A bishop of Treves, secure beyond the limits of his
power, addressed the monarch of the East in the language of
authority and affection. "Most gracious Justinian, remember
your baptism and your creed. Let not your gray hairs be
defiled with heresy. Recall your fathers from exile, and
your followers from perdition. You cannot be ignorant, that
Italy and Gaul, Spain and Africa, already deplore your fall,
and anathematize your name. Unless, without delay, you
destroy what you have taught; unless you exclaim with a loud
voice, I have erred, I have sinned, anathema to Nestorius,
anathema to Eutyches, you deliver your soul to the same
flames in which they will eternally burn." He died and made
no sign. (99) His death restored in some degree the peace of
the church, and the reigns of his four successors, Justin
Tiberius, Maurice, and Phocas, are distinguished by a rare,
though fortunate, vacancy in the ecclesiastical history of
the East. (100)
The faculties of sense and reason are least capable of
acting on themselves; the eye is most inaccessible to the
sight, the soul to the thought; yet we think, and even feel,
that one will, a sole principle of action, is essential to a
rational and conscious being. When Heraclius returned from
the Persian war, the orthodox hero consulted his bishops,
whether the Christ whom he adored, of one person, but of two
natures, was actuated by a single or a double will. They
replied in the singular, and the emperor was encouraged to
hope that the Jacobites of Egypt and Syria might be
reconciled by the profession of a doctrine, most certainly
harmless, and most probably true, since it was taught even
by the Nestorians themselves. (101) The experiment was tried
without effect, and the timid or vehement Catholics
condemned even the semblance of a retreat in the presence of
a subtle and audacious enemy. The orthodox (the prevailing)
party devised new modes of speech, and argument, and
interpretation: to either nature of Christ they speciously
applied a proper and distinct energy; but the difference was
no longer visible when they allowed that the human and the
divine will were invariably the same. (102) The disease was
attended with the customary symptoms: but the Greek clergy,
as if satiated with the endless controversy of the
incarnation, instilled a healing counsel into the ear of the
prince and people. They declared themselves Monothelites,
(asserters of the unity of will,) but they treated the words
as new, the questions as superfluous; and recommended a
religious silence as the most agreeable to the prudence and
charity of the gospel. This law of silence was successively
imposed by the ecthesis or exposition of Heraclius, the type
or model of his grandson Constans; (103) and the Imperial
edicts were subscribed with alacrity or reluctance by the
four patriarchs of Rome, Constantinople, Alexandria, and
Antioch. But the bishop and monks of Jerusalem sounded the
alarm: in the language, or even in the silence, of the
Greeks, the Latin churches detected a latent heresy: and the
obedience of Pope Honorius to the commands of his sovereign
was retracted and censured by the bolder ignorance of his
successors. They condemned the execrable and abominable
heresy of the Monothelites, who revived the errors of Manes,
Apollinaris, Eutyches, &c.; they signed the sentence of
excommunication on the tomb of St. Peter; the ink was
mingled with the sacramental wine, the blood of Christ; and
no ceremony was omitted that could fill the superstitious
mind with horror and affright. As the representative of the
Western church, Pope Martin and his Lateran synod
anathematized the perfidious and guilty silence of the
Greeks: one hundred and five bishops of Italy, for the most
part the subjects of Constans, presumed to reprobate his
wicked type, and the impious ecthesis of his grandfather;
and to confound the authors and their adherents with the
twenty-one notorious heretics, the apostates from the
church, and the organs of the devil. Such an insult under
the tamest reign could not pass with impunity. Pope Martin
ended his days on the inhospitable shore of the Tauric
Chersonesus, and his oracle, the abbot Maximus, was
inhumanly chastised by the amputation of his tongue and his
right hand. (104) But the same invincible spirit survived in
their successors; and the triumph of the Latins avenged
their recent defeat, and obliterated the disgrace of the
three chapters. The synods of Rome were confirmed by the
sixth general council of Constantinople, in the palace and
the presence of a new Constantine, a descendant of
Heraclius. The royal convert converted the Byzantine
pontiff and a majority of the bishops; (105) the dissenters,
with their chief, Macarius of Antioch, were condemned to the
spiritual and temporal pains of heresy; the East
condescended to accept the lessons of the West; and the
creed was finally settled, which teaches the Catholics of
every age, that two wills or energies are harmonized in the
person of Christ. The majesty of the pope and the Roman
synod was represented by two priests, one deacon, and three
bishops; but these obscure Latins had neither arms to
compel, nor treasures to bribe, nor language to persuade;
and I am ignorant by what arts they could determine the
lofty emperor of the Greeks to abjure the catechism of his
infancy, and to persecute the religion of his fathers.
Perhaps the monks and people of Constantinople (106) were
favorable to the Lateran creed, which is indeed the least
reasonable of the two: and the suspicion is countenanced by
the unnatural moderation of the Greek clergy, who appear in
this quarrel to be conscious of their weakness. While the
synod debated, a fanatic proposed a more summary decision,
by raising a dead man to life: the prelates assisted at the
trial; but the acknowledged failure may serve to indicate,
that the passions and prejudices of the multitude were not
enlisted on the side of the Monothelites. In the next
generation, when the son of Constantine was deposed and
slain by the disciple of Macarius, they tasted the feast of
revenge and dominion: the image or monument of the sixth
council was defaced, and the original acts were committed to
the flames. But in the second year, their patron was cast
headlong from the throne, the bishops of the East were
released from their occasional conformity, the Roman faith
was more firmly replanted by the orthodox successors of
Bardanes, and the fine problems of the incarnation were
forgotten in the more popular and visible quarrel of the
worship of images. (107)
Before the end of the seventh century, the creed of the
incarnation, which had been defined at Rome and
Constantinople, was uniformly preached in the remote islands
of Britain and Ireland; (108) the same ideas were
entertained, or rather the same words were repeated, by all
the Christians whose liturgy was performed in the Greek or
the Latin tongue. Their numbers, and visible splendor,
bestowed an imperfect claim to the appellation of Catholics:
but in the East, they were marked with the less honorable
name of Melchites, or Royalists; (109) of men, whose faith,
instead of resting on the basis of Scripture, reason, or
tradition, had been established, and was still maintained,
by the arbitrary power of a temporal monarch. Their
adversaries might allege the words of the fathers of
Constantinople, who profess themselves the slaves of the
king; and they might relate, with malicious joy, how the
decrees of Chalcedon had been inspired and reformed by the
emperor Marcian and his virgin bride. The prevailing
faction will naturally inculcate the duty of submission, nor
is it less natural that dissenters should feel and assert
the principles of freedom. Under the rod of persecution,
the Nestorians and Monophysites degenerated into rebels and
fugitives; and the most ancient and useful allies of Rome
were taught to consider the emperor not as the chief, but as
the enemy of the Christians. Language, the leading principle
which unites or separates the tribes of mankind, soon
discriminated the sectaries of the East, by a peculiar and
perpetual badge, which abolished the means of intercourse
and the hope of reconciliation. The long dominion of the
Greeks, their colonies, and, above all, their eloquence, had
propagated a language doubtless the most perfect that has
been contrived by the art of man. Yet the body of the
people, both in Syria and Egypt, still persevered in the use
of their national idioms; with this difference, however,
that the Coptic was confined to the rude and illiterate
peasants of the Nile, while the Syriac, (110) from the
mountains of Assyria to the Red Sea, was adapted to the
higher topics of poetry and argument. Armenia and Abyssinia
were infected by the speech or learning of the Greeks; and
their Barbaric tongues, which have been revived in the
studies of modern Europe, were unintelligible to the
inhabitants of the Roman empire. The Syriac and the Coptic,
the Armenian and the Aethiopic, are consecrated in the
service of their respective churches: and their theology is
enriched by domestic versions (111) both of the Scriptures
and of the most popular fathers. After a period of thirteen
hundred and sixty years, the spark of controversy, first
kindled by a sermon of Nestorius, still burns in the bosom
of the East, and the hostile communions still maintain the
faith and discipline of their founders. In the most abject
state of ignorance, poverty, and servitude, the Nestorians
and Monophysites reject the spiritual supremacy of Rome, and
cherish the toleration of their Turkish masters, which
allows them to anathematize, on the one hand, St. Cyril and
the synod of Ephesus: on the other, Pope Leo and the council
of Chalcedon. The weight which they cast into the downfall
of the Eastern empire demands our notice, and the reader may
be amused with the various prospect of, I. The Nestorians;
II. The Jacobites; (112) III. The Maronites; IV. The
Armenians; V. The Copts; and, VI. The Abyssinians. To the
three former, the Syriac is common; but of the latter, each
is discriminated by the use of a national idiom. Yet the
modern natives of Armenia and Abyssinia would be incapable
of conversing with their ancestors; and the Christians of
Egypt and Syria, who reject the religion, have adopted the
language of the Arabians. The lapse of time has seconded
the sacerdotal arts; and in the East, as well as in the
West, the Deity is addressed in an obsolete tongue, unknown
to the majority of the congregation.
I. Both in his native and his episcopal province, the
heresy of the unfortunate Nestorius was speedily
obliterated. The Oriental bishops, who at Ephesus had
resisted to his face the arrogance of Cyril, were mollified
by his tardy concessions. The same prelates, or their
successors, subscribed, not without a murmur, the decrees of
Chalcedon; the power of the Monophysites reconciled them
with the Catholics in the conformity of passion, of
interest, and, insensibly, of belief; and their last
reluctant sigh was breathed in the defence of the three
chapters. Their dissenting brethren, less moderate, or more
sincere, were crushed by the penal laws; and, as early as
the reign of Justinian, it became difficult to find a church
of Nestorians within the limits of the Roman empire. Beyond
those limits they had discovered a new world, in which they
might hope for liberty, and aspire to conquest. In Persia,
notwithstanding the resistance of the Magi, Christianity had
struck a deep root, and the nations of the East reposed
under its salutary shade. The catholic, or primate, resided
in the capital: in his synods, and in their dioceses, his
metropolitans, bishops, and clergy, represented the pomp and
order of a regular hierarchy: they rejoiced in the increase
of proselytes, who were converted from the Zendavesta to the
gospel, from the secular to the monastic life; and their
zeal was stimulated by the presence of an artful and
formidable enemy. The Persian church had been founded by the
missionaries of Syria; and their language, discipline, and
doctrine, were closely interwoven with its original frame.
The catholics were elected and ordained by their own
suffragans; but their filial dependence on the patriarchs of
Antioch is attested by the canons of the Oriental church.
(113) In the Persian school of Edessa, (114) the rising
generations of the faithful imbibed their theological idiom:
they studied in the Syriac version the ten thousand volumes
of Theodore of Mopsuestia; and they revered the apostolic
faith and holy martyrdom of his disciple Nestorius, whose
person and language were equally unknown to the nations
beyond the Tigris. The first indelible lesson of Ibas,
bishop of Edessa, taught them to execrate the Egyptians,
who, in the synod of Ephesus, had impiously confounded the
two natures of Christ. The flight of the masters and
scholars, who were twice expelled from the Athens of Syria,
dispersed a crowd of missionaries inflamed by the double
zeal of religion and revenge. And the rigid unity of the
Monophysites, who, under the reigns of Zeno and Anastasius,
had invaded the thrones of the East, provoked their
antagonists, in a land of freedom, to avow a moral, rather
than a physical, union of the two persons of Christ. Since
the first preaching of the gospel, the Sassanian kings
beheld with an eye of suspicion a race of aliens and
apostates, who had embraced the religion, and who might
favor the cause, of the hereditary foes of their country.
The royal edicts had often prohibited their dangerous
correspondence with the Syrian clergy: the progress of the
schism was grateful to the jealous pride of Perozes, and he
listened to the eloquence of an artful prelate, who painted
Nestorius as the friend of Persia, and urged him to secure
the fidelity of his Christian subjects, by granting a just
preference to the victims and enemies of the Roman tyrant.
The Nestorians composed a large majority of the clergy and
people: they were encouraged by the smile, and armed with
the sword, of despotism; yet many of their weaker brethren
were startled at the thought of breaking loose from the
communion of the Christian world, and the blood of seven
thousand seven hundred Monophysites, or Catholics, confirmed
the uniformity of faith and discipline in the churches of
Persia. (115) Their ecclesiastical institutions are
distinguished by a liberal principle of reason, or at least
of policy: the austerity of the cloister was relaxed and
gradually forgotten; houses of charity were endowed for the
education of orphans and foundlings; the law of celibacy, so
forcibly recommended to the Greeks and Latins, was
disregarded by the Persian clergy; and the number of the
elect was multiplied by the public and reiterated nuptials
of the priests, the bishops, and even the patriarch himself.
To this standard of natural and religious freedom, myriads
of fugitives resorted from all the provinces of the Eastern
empire; the narrow bigotry of Justinian was punished by the
emigration of his most industrious subjects; they
transported into Persia the arts both of peace and war: and
those who deserved the favor, were promoted in the service,
of a discerning monarch. The arms of Nushirvan, and his
fiercer grandson, were assisted with advice, and money, and
troops, by the desperate sectaries who still lurked in their
native cities of the East: their zeal was rewarded with the
gift of the Catholic churches; but when those cities and
churches were recovered by Heraclius, their open profession
of treason and heresy compelled them to seek a refuge in the
realm of their foreign ally. But the seeming tranquillity
of the Nestorians was often endangered, and sometimes
overthrown. They were involved in the common evils of
Oriental despotism: their enmity to Rome could not always
atone for their attachment to the gospel: and a colony of
three hundred thousand Jacobites, the captives of Apamea and
Antioch, was permitted to erect a hostile altar in the face
of the catholic, and in the sunshine of the court. In his
last treaty, Justinian introduced some conditions which
tended to enlarge and fortify the toleration of Christianity
in Persia. The emperor, ignorant of the rights of
conscience, was incapable of pity or esteem for the heretics
who denied the authority of the holy synods: but he
flattered himself that they would gradually perceive the
temporal benefits of union with the empire and the church of
Rome; and if he failed in exciting their gratitude, he might
hope to provoke the jealousy of their sovereign. In a later
age the Lutherans have been burnt at Paris, and protected in
Germany, by the superstition and policy of the most
Christian king.
The desire of gaining souls for God and subjects for the
church, has excited in every age the diligence of the
Christian priests. From the conquest of Persia they carried
their spiritual arms to the north, the east, and the south;
and the simplicity of the gospel was fashioned and painted
with the colors of the Syriac theology. In the sixth
century, according to the report of a Nestorian traveller,
(116) Christianity was successfully preached to the
Bactrians, the Huns, the Persians, the Indians, the
Persarmenians, the Medes, and the Elamites: the Barbaric
churches, from the Gulf of Persia to the Caspian Sea, were
almost infinite; and their recent faith was conspicuous in
the number and sanctity of their monks and martyrs. The
pepper coast of Malabar, and the isles of the ocean,
Socotora and Ceylon, were peopled with an increasing
multitude of Christians; and the bishops and clergy of those
sequestered regions derived their ordination from the
Catholic of Babylon. In a subsequent age the zeal of the
Nestorians overleaped the limits which had confined the
ambition and curiosity both of the Greeks and Persians. The
missionaries of Balch and Samarcand pursued without fear the
footsteps of the roving Tartar, and insinuated themselves
into the camps of the valleys of Imaus and the banks of the
Selinga. They exposed a metaphysical creed to those
illiterate shepherds: to those sanguinary warriors, they
recommended humanity and repose. Yet a khan, whose power
they vainly magnified, is said to have received at their
hands the rites of baptism, and even of ordination; and the
fame of Prester or Presbyter John (117) has long amused the
credulity of Europe. The royal convert was indulged in the
use of a portable altar; but he despatched an embassy to the
patriarch, to inquire how, in the season of Lent, he should
abstain from animal food, and how he might celebrate the
Eucharist in a desert that produced neither corn nor wine.
In their progress by sea and land, the Nestorians entered
China by the port of Canton and the northern residence of
Sigan. Unlike the senators of Rome, who assumed with a
smile the characters of priests and augurs, the mandarins,
who affect in public the reason of philosophers, are devoted
in private to every mode of popular superstition. They
cherished and they confounded the gods of Palestine and of
India; but the propagation of Christianity awakened the
jealousy of the state, and, after a short vicissitude of
favor and persecution, the foreign sect expired in ignorance
and oblivion. (118) Under the reign of the caliphs, the
Nestorian church was diffused from China to Jerusalem and
Cyrus; and their numbers, with those of the Jacobites, were
computed to surpass the Greek and Latin communions. (119)
Twenty-five metropolitans or archbishops composed their
hierarchy; but several of these were dispensed, by the
distance and danger of the way, from the duty of personal
attendance, on the easy condition that every six years they
should testify their faith and obedience to the catholic or
patriarch of Babylon, a vague appellation which has been
successively applied to the royal seats of Seleucia,
Ctesiphon, and Bagdad. These remote branches are long since
withered; and the old patriarchal trunk (120) is now divided
by the Elijahs of Mosul, the representatives almost on
lineal descent of the genuine and primitive succession; the
Josephs of Amida, who are reconciled to the church of Rome:
(121) and the Simeons of Van or Ormia, whose revolt, at the
head of forty thousand families, was promoted in the
sixteenth century by the Sophis of Persia. The number of
three hundred thousand is allowed for the whole body of the
Nestorians, who, under the name of Chaldeans or Assyrians,
are confounded with the most learned or the most powerful
nation of Eastern antiquity.
According to the legend of antiquity, the gospel was
preached in India by St. Thomas. (122) At the end of the
ninth century, his shrine, perhaps in the neighborhood of
Madras, was devoutly visited by the ambassadors of Alfred;
and their return with a cargo of pearls and spices rewarded
the zeal of the English monarch, who entertained the largest
projects of trade and discovery. (123) When the Portuguese
first opened the navigation of India, the Christians of St.
Thomas had been seated for ages on the coast of Malabar, and
the difference of their character and color attested the
mixture of a foreign race. In arms, in arts, and possibly
in virtue, they excelled the natives of Hindostan; the
husbandmen cultivated the palm-tree, the merchants were
enriched by the pepper trade, the soldiers preceded the
nairs or nobles of Malabar, and their hereditary privileges
were respected by the gratitude or the fear of the king of
Cochin and the Zamorin himself. They acknowledged a Gentoo
of sovereign, but they were governed, even in temporal
concerns, by the bishop of Angamala. He still asserted his
ancient title of metropolitan of India, but his real
jurisdiction was exercised in fourteen hundred churches, and
he was intrusted with the care of two hundred thousand
souls. Their religion would have rendered them the firmest
and most cordial allies of the Portuguese; but the
inquisitors soon discerned in the Christians of St. Thomas
the unpardonable guilt of heresy and schism. Instead of
owning themselves the subjects of the Roman pontiff, the
spiritual and temporal monarch of the globe, they adhered,
like their ancestors, to the communion of the Nestorian
patriarch; and the bishops whom he ordained at Mosul,
traversed the dangers of the sea and land to reach their
diocese on the coast of Malabar. In their Syriac liturgy
the names of Theodore and Nestorius were piously
commemorated: they united their adoration of the two persons
of Christ; the title of Mother of God was offensive to their
ear, and they measured with scrupulous avarice the honors of
the Virgin Mary, whom the superstition of the Latins had
almost exalted to the rank of a goddess. When her image was
first presented to the disciples of St. Thomas, they
indignantly exclaimed, "We are Christians, not idolaters!"
and their simple devotion was content with the veneration of
the cross. Their separation from the Western world had left
them in ignorance of the improvements, or corruptions, of a
thousand years; and their conformity with the faith and
practice of the fifth century would equally disappoint the
prejudices of a Papist or a Protestant. It was the first
care of the ministers of Rome to intercept all
correspondence with the Nestorian patriarch, and several of
his bishops expired in the prisons of the holy office. The
flock, without a shepherd, was assaulted by the power of the
Portuguese, the arts of the Jesuits, and the zeal of Alexis
de Menezes, archbishop of Goa, in his personal visitation of
the coast of Malabar. The synod of Diamper, at which he
presided, consummated the pious work of the reunion; and
rigorously imposed the doctrine and discipline of the Roman
church, without forgetting auricular confession, the
strongest engine of ecclesiastical torture. The memory of
Theodore and Nestorius was condemned, and Malabar was
reduced under the dominion of the pope, of the primate, and
of the Jesuits who invaded the see of Angamala or Cranganor.
Sixty years of servitude and hypocrisy were patiently
endured; but as soon as the Portuguese empire was shaken by
the courage and industry of the Dutch, the Nestorians
asserted, with vigor and effect, the religion of their
fathers. The Jesuits were incapable of defending the power
which they had abused; the arms of forty thousand Christians
were pointed against their falling tyrants; and the Indian
archdeacon assumed the character of bishop till a fresh
supply of episcopal gifts and Syriac missionaries could be
obtained from the patriarch of Babylon. Since the expulsion
of the Portuguese, the Nestorian creed is freely professed
on the coast of Malabar. The trading companies of Holland
and England are the friends of toleration; but if oppression
be less mortifying than contempt, the Christians of St.
Thomas have reason to complain of the cold and silent
indifference of their brethren of Europe. (124)
II. The history of the Monophysites is less copious and
interesting than that of the Nestorians. Under the reigns
of Zeno and Anastasius, their artful leaders surprised the
ear of the prince, usurped the thrones of the East, and
crushed on its native soil the school of the Syrians. The
rule of the Monophysite faith was defined with exquisite
discretion by Severus, patriarch of Antioch: he condemned,
in the style of the Henoticon, the adverse heresies of
Nestorius; and Eutyches maintained against the latter the
reality of the body of Christ, and constrained the Greeks to
allow that he was a liar who spoke truth. (125) But the
approximation of ideas could not abate the vehemence of
passion; each party was the more astonished that their blind
antagonist could dispute on so trifling a difference; the
tyrant of Syria enforced the belief of his creed, and his
reign was polluted with the blood of three hundred and fifty
monks, who were slain, not perhaps without provocation or
resistance, under the walls of Apamea. (126) The successor of
Anastasius replanted the orthodox standard in the East;
Severus fled into Egypt; and his friend, the eloquent
Xenaias, (127) who had escaped from the Nestorians of Persia,
was suffocated in his exile by the Melchites of Paphlagonia.
Fifty-four bishops were swept from their thrones, eight
hundred ecclesiastics were cast into prison, (128) and
notwithstanding the ambiguous favor of Theodora, the
Oriental flocks, deprived of their shepherds, must
insensibly have been either famished or poisoned. In this
spiritual distress, the expiring faction was revived, and
united, and perpetuated, by the labors of a monk; and the
name of James Baradaeus (129) has been preserved in the
appellation of Jacobites, a familiar sound, which may
startle the ear of an English reader. From the holy
confessors in their prison of Constantinople, he received
the powers of bishop of Edessa and apostle of the East, and
the ordination of fourscore thousand bishops, priests, and
deacons, is derived from the same inexhaustible source. The
speed of the zealous missionary was promoted by the fleetest
dromedaries of a devout chief of the Arabs; the doctrine and
discipline of the Jacobites were secretly established in the
dominions of Justinian; and each Jacobite was compelled to
violate the laws and to hate the Roman legislator. The
successors of Severus, while they lurked in convents or
villages, while they sheltered their proscribed heads in the
caverns of hermits, or the tents of the Saracens, still
asserted, as they now assert, their indefeasible right to
the title, the rank, and the prerogatives of patriarch of
Antioch: under the milder yoke of the infidels, they reside
about a league from Merdin, in the pleasant monastery of
Zapharan, which they have embellished with cells, aqueducts,
and plantations. The secondary, though honorable, place is
filled by the maphrian, who, in his station at Mosul itself,
defies the Nestorian catholic with whom he contests the
primacy of the East. Under the patriarch and the maphrian,
one hundred and fifty archbishops and bishops have been
counted in the different ages of the Jacobite church; but
the order of the hierarchy is relaxed or dissolved, and the
greater part of their dioceses is confined to the
neighborhood of the Euphrates and the Tigris. The cities of
Aleppo and Amida, which are often visited by the patriarch,
contain some wealthy merchants and industrious mechanics,
but the multitude derive their scanty sustenance from their
daily labor: and poverty, as well as superstition, may
impose their excessive fasts: five annual lents, during
which both the clergy and laity abstain not only from flesh
or eggs, but even from the taste of wine, of oil, and of
fish. Their present numbers are esteemed from fifty to
fourscore thousand souls, the remnant of a populous church,
which was gradually decreased under the impression of twelve
centuries. Yet in that long period, some strangers of merit
have been converted to the Monophysite faith, and a Jew was
the father of Abulpharagius, (130) primate of the East, so
truly eminent both in his life and death. In his life he
was an elegant writer of the Syriac and Arabic tongues, a
poet, physician, and historian, a subtile philosopher, and a
moderate divine. In his death, his funeral was attended by
his rival the Nestorian patriarch, with a train of Greeks
and Armenians, who forgot their disputes, and mingled their
tears over the grave of an enemy. The sect which was
honored by the virtues of Abulpharagius appears, however, to
sink below the level of their Nestorian brethren. The
superstition of the Jacobites is more abject, their fasts
more rigid, (131) their intestine divisions are more
numerous, and their doctors (as far as I can measure the
degrees of nonsense) are more remote from the precincts of
reason. Something may possibly be allowed for the rigor of
the Monophysite theology; much more for the superior
influence of the monastic order. In Syria, in Egypt, in
Ethiopia, the Jacobite monks have ever been distinguished by
the austerity of their penance and the absurdity of their
legends. Alive or dead, they are worshipped as the
favorites of the Deity; the crosier of bishop and patriarch
is reserved for their venerable hands; and they assume the
government of men, while they are yet reeking with the
habits and prejudices of the cloister. (132)
III. In the style of the Oriental Christians, the
Monothelites of every age are described under the
appellation of Maronites, (133) a name which has been
insensibly transferred from a hermit to a monastery, from a
monastery to a nation. Maron, a saint or savage of the
fifth century, displayed his religious madness in Syria; the
rival cities of Apamea and Emesa disputed his relics, a
stately church was erected on his tomb, and six hundred of
his disciples united their solitary cells on the banks of
the Orontes. In the controversies of the incarnation they
nicely threaded the orthodox line between the sects of
Nestorians and Eutyches; but the unfortunate question of one
will or operation in the two natures of Christ, was
generated by their curious leisure. Their proselyte, the
emperor Heraclius, was rejected as a Maronite from the walls
of Emesa, he found a refuge in the monastery of his
brethren; and their theological lessons were repaid with the
gift a spacious and wealthy domain. The name and doctrine
of this venerable school were propagated among the Greeks
and Syrians, and their zeal is expressed by Macarius,
patriarch of Antioch, who declared before the synod of
Constantinople, that sooner than subscribe the two wills of
Christ, he would submit to be hewn piecemeal and cast into
the sea. (134) A similar or a less cruel mode of persecution
soon converted the unresisting subjects of the plain, while
the glorious title of Mardaites, (135) or rebels, was bravely
maintained by the hardy natives of Mount Libanus. John
Maron, one of the most learned and popular of the monks,
assumed the character of patriarch of Antioch; his nephew,
Abraham, at the head of the Maronites, defended their civil
and religious freedom against the tyrants of the East. The
son of the orthodox Constantine pursued with pious hatred a
people of soldiers, who might have stood the bulwark of his
empire against the common foes of Christ and of Rome. An
army of Greeks invaded Syria; the monastery of St. Maron was
destroyed with fire; the bravest chieftains were betrayed
and murdered, and twelve thousand of their followers were
transplanted to the distant frontiers of Armenia and Thrace.
Yet the humble nation of the Maronites had survived the
empire of Constantinople, and they still enjoy, under their
Turkish masters, a free religion and a mitigated servitude.
Their domestic governors are chosen among the ancient
nobility: the patriarch, in his monastery of Canobin, still
fancies himself on the throne of Antioch: nine bishops
compose his synod, and one hundred and fifty priests, who
retain the liberty of marriage, are intrusted with the care
of one hundred thousand souls. Their country extends from
the ridge of Mount Libanus to the shores of Tripoli; and the
gradual descent affords, in a narrow space, each variety of
soil and climate, from the Holy Cedars, erect under the
weight of snow, (136) to the vine, the mulberry, and the
olive-trees of the fruitful valley. In the twelfth century,
the Maronites, abjuring the Monothelite error were
reconciled to the Latin churches of Antioch and Rome, (137)
and the same alliance has been frequently renewed by the
ambition of the popes and the distress of the Syrians. But
it may reasonably be questioned, whether their union has
ever been perfect or sincere; and the learned Maronites of
the college of Rome have vainly labored to absolve their
ancestors from the guilt of heresy and schism. (138)
IV. Since the age of Constantine, the Armenians (139) had
signalized their attachment to the religion and empire of
the Christians. (A) The disorders of their country, and their
ignorance of the Greek tongue, prevented their clergy from
assisting at the synod of Chalcedon, and they floated
eighty-four years (140) in a state of indifference or
suspense, till their vacant faith was finally occupied by
the missionaries of Julian of Halicarnassus, (141) who in
Egypt, their common exile, had been vanquished by the
arguments or the influence of his rival Severus, the
Monophysite patriarch of Antioch. The Armenians alone are
the pure disciples of Eutyches, an unfortunate parent, who
has been renounced by the greater part of his spiritual
progeny. They alone persevere in the opinion, that the
manhood of Christ was created, or existed without creation,
of a divine and incorruptible substance. Their adversaries
reproach them with the adoration of a phantom; and they
retort the accusation, by deriding or execrating the
blasphemy of the Jacobites, who impute to the Godhead the
vile infirmities of the flesh, even the natural effects of
nutrition and digestion. The religion of Armenia could not
derive much glory from the learning or the power of its
inhabitants. The royalty expired with the origin of their
schism; and their Christian kings, who arose and fell in the
thirteenth century on the confines of Cilicia, were the
clients of the Latins and the vassals of the Turkish sultan
of Iconium. The helpless nation has seldom been permitted to
enjoy the tranquillity of servitude. From the earliest
period to the present hour, Armenia has been the theatre of
perpetual war: the lands between Tauris and Erivan were
dispeopled by the cruel policy of the Sophis; and myriads of
Christian families were transplanted, to perish or to
propagate in the distant provinces of Persia. Under the rod
of oppression, the zeal of the Armenians is fervent and
intrepid; they have often preferred the crown of martyrdom
to the white turban of Mahomet; they devoutly hate the error
and idolatry of the Greeks; and their transient union with
the Latins is not less devoid of truth, than the thousand
bishops, whom their patriarch offered at the feet of the
Roman pontiff. (142) The catholic, or patriarch, of the
Armenians resides in the monastery of Ekmiasin, three
leagues from Erivan. Forty-seven archbishops, each of whom
may claim the obedience of four or five suffragans, are
consecrated by his hand; but the far greater part are only
titular prelates, who dignify with their presence and
service the simplicity of his court. As soon as they have
performed the liturgy, they cultivate the garden; and our
bishops will hear with surprise, that the austerity of their
life increases in just proportion to the elevation of their
rank. In the fourscore thousand towns or villages of his
spiritual empire, the patriarch receives a small and
voluntary tax from each person above the age of fifteen; but
the annual amount of six hundred thousand crowns is
insufficient to supply the incessant demands of charity and
tribute. Since the beginning of the last century, the
Armenians have obtained a large and lucrative share of the
commerce of the East: in their return from Europe, the
caravan usually halts in the neighborhood of Erivan, the
altars are enriched with the fruits of their patient
industry; and the faith of Eutyches is preached in their
recent congregations of Barbary and Poland. (143)
V. In the rest of the Roman empire, the despotism of the
prince might eradicate or silence the sectaries of an
obnoxious creed. But the stubborn temper of the Egyptians
maintained their opposition to the synod of Chalcedon, and
the policy of Justinian condescended to expect and to seize
the opportunity of discord. The Monophysite church of
Alexandria (144) was torn by the disputes of the corruptibles
and incorruptibles, and on the death of the patriarch, the
two factions upheld their respective candidates. (145) Gaian
was the disciple of Julian, Theodosius had been the pupil of
Severus: the claims of the former were supported by the
consent of the monks and senators, the city and the
province; the latter depended on the priority of his
ordination, the favor of the empress Theodora, and the arms
of the eunuch Narses, which might have been used in more
honorable warfare. The exile of the popular candidate to
Carthage and Sardinia inflamed the ferment of Alexandria;
and after a schism of one hundred and seventy years, the
Gaianites still revered the memory and doctrine of their
founder. The strength of numbers and of discipline was
tried in a desperate and bloody conflict; the streets were
filled with the dead bodies of citizens and soldiers; the
pious women, ascending the roofs of their houses, showered
down every sharp or ponderous utensil on the heads of the
enemy; and the final victory of Narses was owing to the
flames, with which he wasted the third capital of the Roman
world. But the lieutenant of Justinian had not conquered in
the cause of a heretic; Theodosius himself was speedily,
though gently, removed; and Paul of Tanis, an orthodox monk,
was raised to the throne of Athanasius. The powers of
government were strained in his support; he might appoint or
displace the dukes and tribunes of Egypt; the allowance of
bread, which Diocletian had granted, was suppressed, the
churches were shut, and a nation of schismatics was deprived
at once of their spiritual and carnal food. In his turn,
the tyrant was excommunicated by the zeal and revenge of the
people: and none except his servile Melchites would salute
him as a man, a Christian, or a bishop. Yet such is the
blindness of ambition, that, when Paul was expelled on a
charge of murder, he solicited, with a bribe of seven
hundred pounds of gold, his restoration to the same station
of hatred and ignominy. His successor Apollinaris entered
the hostile city in military array, alike qualified for
prayer or for battle. His troops, under arms, were
distributed through the streets; the gates of the cathedral
were guarded, and a chosen band was stationed in the choir,
to defend the person of their chief. He stood erect on his
throne, and, throwing aside the upper garment of a warrior,
suddenly appeared before the eyes of the multitude in the
robes of patriarch of Alexandria. Astonishment held them
mute; but no sooner had Apollinaris begun to read the tome
of St. Leo, than a volley of curses, and invectives, and
stones, assaulted the odious minister of the emperor and the
synod. A charge was instantly sounded by the successor of
the apostles; the soldiers waded to their knees in blood;
and two hundred thousand Christians are said to have fallen
by the sword: an incredible account, even if it be extended
from the slaughter of a day to the eighteen years of the
reign of Apollinaris. Two succeeding patriarchs, Eulogius
(146) and John, (147) labored in the conversion of heretics,
with arms and arguments more worthy of their evangelical
profession. The theological knowledge of Eulogius was
displayed in many a volume, which magnified the errors of
Eutyches and Severus, and attempted to reconcile the
ambiguous language of St. Cyril with the orthodox creed of
Pope Leo and the fathers of Chalcedon. The bounteous alms
of John the eleemosynary were dictated by superstition, or
benevolence, or policy. Seven thousand five hundred poor
were maintained at his expense; on his accession he found
eight thousand pounds of gold in the treasury of the church;
he collected ten thousand from the liberality of the
faithful; yet the primate could boast in his testament, that
he left behind him no more than the third part of the
smallest of the silver coins. The churches of Alexandria
were delivered to the Catholics, the religion of the
Monophysites was proscribed in Egypt, and a law was revived
which excluded the natives from the honors and emoluments of
the state.
A more important conquest still remained, of the patriarch,
the oracle and leader of the Egyptian church. Theodosius
had resisted the threats and promises of Justinian with the
spirit of an apostle or an enthusiast. "Such," replied the
patriarch, "were the offers of the tempter when he showed
the kingdoms of the earth. But my soul is far dearer to me
than life or dominion. The churches are in the hands of a
prince who can kill the body; but my conscience is my own;
and in exile, poverty, or chains, I will steadfastly adhere
to the faith of my holy predecessors, Athanasius, Cyril, and
Dioscorus. Anathema to the tome of Leo and the synod of
Chalcedon! Anathema to all who embrace their creed! Anathema
to them now and forevermore! Naked came I out of my mother's
womb, naked shall I descend into the grave. Let those who
love God follow me and seek their salvation." After
comforting his brethren, he embarked for Constantinople, and
sustained, in six successive interviews, the almost
irresistible weight of the royal presence. His opinions
were favorably entertained in the palace and the city; the
influence of Theodora assured him a safe conduct and
honorable dismission; and he ended his days, though not on
the throne, yet in the bosom, of his native country. On the
news of his death, Apollinaris indecently feasted the nobles
and the clergy; but his joy was checked by the intelligence
of a new election; and while he enjoyed the wealth of
Alexandria, his rivals reigned in the monasteries of
Thebais, and were maintained by the voluntary oblations of
the people. A perpetual succession of patriarchs arose from
the ashes of Theodosius; and the Monophysite churches of
Syria and Egypt were united by the name of Jacobites and the
communion of the faith. But the same faith, which has been
confined to a narrow sect of the Syrians, was diffused over
the mass of the Egyptian or Coptic nation; who, almost
unanimously, rejected the decrees of the synod of Chalcedon.
A thousand years were now elapsed since Egypt had ceased to
be a kingdom, since the conquerors of Asia and Europe had
trampled on the ready necks of a people, whose ancient
wisdom and power ascend beyond the records of history. The
conflict of zeal and persecution rekindled some sparks of
their national spirit. They abjured, with a foreign heresy,
the manners and language of the Greeks: every Melchite, in
their eyes, was a stranger, every Jacobite a citizen; the
alliance of marriage, the offices of humanity, were
condemned as a deadly sin the natives renounced all
allegiance to the emperor; and his orders, at a distance
from Alexandria, were obeyed only under the pressure of
military force. A generous effort might have edeemed the
religion and liberty of Egypt, and her six hundred
monasteries might have poured forth their myriads of holy
warriors, for whom death should have no terrors, since life
had no comfort or delight. But experience has proved the
distinction of active and passive courage; the fanatic who
endures without a groan the torture of the rack or the
stake, would tremble and fly before the face of an armed
enemy. The pusillanimous temper of the Egyptians could only
hope for a change of masters; the arms of Chosroes
depopulated the land, yet under his reign the Jacobites
enjoyed a short and precarious respite. The victory of
Heraclius renewed and aggravated the persecution, and the
patriarch again escaped from Alexandria to the desert. In
his flight, Benjamin was encouraged by a voice, which bade
him expect, at the end of ten years, the aid of a foreign
nation, marked, like the Egyptians themselves, with the
ancient rite of circumcision. The character of these
deliverers, and the nature of the deliverance, will be
hereafter explained; and I shall step over the interval of
eleven centuries to observe the present misery of the
Jacobites of Egypt. The populous city of Cairo affords a
residence, or rather a shelter, for their indigent
patriarch, and a remnant of ten bishops; forty monasteries
have survived the inroads of the Arabs; and the progress of
servitude and apostasy has reduced the Coptic nation to the
despicable number of twenty-five or thirty thousand
families; (148) a race of illiterate beggars, whose only
consolation is derived from the superior wretchedness of the
Greek patriarch and his diminutive congregation. (149)
VI. The Coptic patriarch, a rebel to the Caesars, or a
slave to the khalifs, still gloried in the filial obedience
of the kings of Nubia and Aethiopia. He repaid their homage
by magnifying their greatness; and it was boldly asserted
that they could bring into the field a hundred thousand
horse, with an equal number of camels; (150) that their hand
could pour out or restrain the waters of the Nile; (151) and
the peace and plenty of Egypt was obtained, even in this
world, by the intercession of the patriarch. In exile at
Constantinople, Theodosius recommended to his patroness the
conversion of the black nations of Nubia, from the tropic of
Cancer to the confines of Abyssinia. (152) Her design was
suspected and emulated by the more orthodox emperor. The
rival missionaries, a Melchite and a Jacobite, embarked at
the same time; but the empress, from a motive of love or
fear, was more effectually obeyed; and the Catholic priest
was detained by the president of Thebais, while the king of
Nubia and his court were hastily baptized in the faith of
Dioscorus. The tardy envoy of Justinian was received and
dismissed with honor: but when he accused the heresy and
treason of the Egyptians, the negro convert was instructed
to reply that he would never abandon his brethren, the true
believers, to the persecuting ministers of the synod of
Chalcedon. (153) During several ages, the bishops of Nubia
were named and consecrated by the Jacobite patriarch of
Alexandria: as late as the twelfth century, Christianity
prevailed; and some rites, some ruins, are still visible in
the savage towns of Sennaar and Dongola. (154) But the
Nubians at length executed their threats of returning to the
worship of idols; the climate required the indulgence of
polygamy, and they have finally preferred the triumph of the
Koran to the abasement of the Cross. A metaphysical
religion may appear too refined for the capacity of the
negro race: yet a black or a parrot might be taught to
repeat the words of the Chalcedonian or Monophysite creed.
Christianity was more deeply rooted in the Abyssinian
empire; and, although the correspondence has been sometimes
interrupted above seventy or a hundred years, the
mother-church of Alexandria retains her colony in a state of
perpetual pupilage. Seven bishops once composed the
Aethiopic synod: had their number amounted to ten, they
might have elected an independent primate; and one of their
kings was ambitious of promoting his brother to the
ecclesiastical throne. But the event was foreseen, the
increase was denied: the episcopal office has been gradually
confined to the abuna, (155) the head and author of the
Abyssinian priesthood; the patriarch supplies each vacancy
with an Egyptian monk; and the character of a stranger
appears more venerable in the eyes of the people, less
dangerous in those of the monarch. In the sixth century,
when the schism of Egypt was confirmed, the rival chiefs,
with their patrons, Justinian and Theodora, strove to
outstrip each other in the conquest of a remote and
independent province. The industry of the empress was again
victorious, and the pious Theodora has established in that
sequestered church the faith and discipline of the
Jacobites. (156) Encompassed on all sides by the enemies of
their religion, the Aethiopians slept near a thousand years,
forgetful of the world, by whom they were forgotten. They
were awakened by the Portuguese, who, turning the southern
promontory of Africa, appeared in India and the Red Sea, as
if they had descended through the air from a distant planet.
In the first moments of their interview, the subjects of
Rome and Alexandria observed the resemblance, rather than
the difference, of their faith; and each nation expected the
most important benefits from an alliance with their
Christian brethren. In their lonely situation, the
Aethiopians had almost relapsed into the savage life. Their
vessels, which had traded to Ceylon, scarcely presumed to
navigate the rivers of Africa; the ruins of Axume were
deserted, the nation was scattered in villages, and the
emperor, a pompous name, was content, both in peace and war,
with the immovable residence of a camp. Conscious of their
own indigence, the Abyssinians had formed the rational
project of importing the arts and ingenuity of Europe; (157)
and their ambassadors at Rome and Lisbon were instructed to
solicit a colony of smiths, carpenters, tilers, masons,
printers, surgeons, and physicians, for the use of their
country. But the public danger soon called for the instant
and effectual aid of arms and soldiers, to defend an
unwarlike people from the Barbarians who ravaged the inland
country and the Turks and Arabs who advanced from the
sea-coast in more formidable array. Aethiopia was saved by
four hundred and fifty Portuguese, who displayed in the
field the native valor of Europeans, and the artificial
power of the musket and cannon. In a moment of terror, the
emperor had promised to reconcile himself and his subjects
to the Catholic faith; a Latin patriarch represented the
supremacy of the pope: (158) the empire, enlarged in a
tenfold proportion, was supposed to contain more gold than
the mines of America; and the wildest hopes of avarice and
zeal were built on the willing submission of the Christians
of Africa.
But the vows which pain had extorted were forsworn on the
return of health. The Abyssinians still adhered with
unshaken constancy to the Monophysite faith; their languid
belief was inflamed by the exercise of dispute; they branded
the Latins with the names of Arians and Nestorians, and
imputed the adoration of four gods to those who separated
the two natures of Christ. Fremona, a place of worship, or
rather of exile, was assigned to the Jesuit missionaries.
Their skill in the liberal and mechanic arts, their
theological learning, and the decency of their manners,
inspired a barren esteem; but they were not endowed with the
gift of miracles, (159) and they vainly solicited a
reenforcement of European troops. The patience and
dexterity of forty years at length obtained a more favorable
audience, and two emperors of Abyssinia were persuaded that
Rome could insure the temporal and everlasting happiness of
her votaries. The first of these royal converts lost his
crown and his life; and the rebel army was sanctified by the
abuna, who hurled an anathema at the apostate, and absolved
his subjects from their oath of fidelity. The fate of
Zadenghel was revenged by the courage and fortune of
Susneus, who ascended the throne under the name of Segued,
and more vigorously prosecuted the pious enterprise of his
kinsman. After the amusement of some unequal combats between
the Jesuits and his illiterate priests, the emperor declared
himself a proselyte to the synod of Chalcedon, presuming
that his clergy and people would embrace without delay the
religion of their prince. The liberty of choice was
succeeded by a law, which imposed, under pain of death, the
belief of the two natures of Christ: the Abyssinians were
enjoined to work and to play on the Sabbath; and Segued, in
the face of Europe and Africa, renounced his connection with
the Alexandrian church. A Jesuit, Alphonso Mendez, the
Catholic patriarch of Aethiopia, accepted, in the name of
Urban VIII., the homage and abjuration of the penitent. "I
confess," said the emperor on his knees, "I confess that the
pope is the vicar of Christ, the successor of St. Peter, and
the sovereign of the world. To him I swear true obedience,
and at his feet I offer my person and kingdom." A similar
oath was repeated by his son, his brother, the clergy, the
nobles, and even the ladies of the court: the Latin
patriarch was invested with honors and wealth; and his
missionaries erected their churches or citadels in the most
convenient stations of the empire. The Jesuits themselves
deplore the fatal indiscretion of their chief, who forgot
the mildness of the gospel and the policy of his order, to
introduce with hasty violence the liturgy of Rome and the
inquisition of Portugal. He condemned the ancient practice
of circumcision, which health, rather than superstition, had
first invented in the climate of Aethiopia. (160) A new
baptism, a new ordination, was inflicted on the natives; and
they trembled with horror when the most holy of the dead
were torn from their graves, when the most illustrious of
the living were excommunicated by a foreign priest. In the
defense of their religion and liberty, the Abyssinians rose
in arms, with desperate but unsuccessful zeal. Five
rebellions were extinguished in the blood of the insurgents:
two abunas were slain in battle, whole legions were
slaughtered in the field, or suffocated in their caverns;
and neither merit, nor rank, nor sex, could save from an
ignominious death the enemies of Rome. But the victorious
monarch was finally subdued by the constancy of the nation,
of his mother, of his son, and of his most faithful friends.
Segued listened to the voice of pity, of reason, perhaps of
fear: and his edict of liberty of conscience instantly
revealed the tyranny and weakness of the Jesuits. On the
death of his father, Basilides expelled the Latin patriarch,
and restored to the wishes of the nation the faith and the
discipline of Egypt. The Monophysite churches resounded
with a song of triumph, "that the sheep of Aethiopia were
now delivered from the hyaenas of the West;" and the gates
of that solitary realm were forever shut against the arts,
the science, and the fanaticism of Europe. (161)