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disputed the empire of the East aimed their desperate strokes at

the heart of their rival. The military force of Persia was wasted

by the marches and combats of twenty years, and many of the

veterans, who had survived the perils of the sword and the

climate, were still detained in the fortresses of Egypt and

Syria. But the revenge and ambition of Chosroes exhausted his

kingdom; and the new levies of subjects, strangers, and slaves,

were divided into three formidable bodies. 94 The first army of

fifty thousand men, illustrious by the ornament and title of the

golden spears, was destined to march against Heraclius; the

second was stationed to prevent his junction with the troops of

his brother Theodorus; and the third was commanded to besiege

Constantinople, and to second the operations of the chagan, with

whom the Persian king had ratified a treaty of alliance and

partition. Sarbar, the general of the third army, penetrated

through the provinces of Asia to the well-known camp of

Chalcedon, and amused himself with the destruction of the sacred

and profane buildings of the Asiatic suburbs, while he

impatiently waited the arrival of his Scythian friends on the

opposite side of the Bosphorus. On the twenty-ninth of June,

thirty thousand Barbarians, the vanguard of the Avars, forced the

long wall, and drove into the capital a promiscuous crowd of

peasants, citizens, and soldiers. Fourscore thousand 95 of his

native subjects, and of the vassal tribes of Gepidae, Russians,

Bulgarians, and Sclavonians, advanced under the standard of the

chagan; a month was spent in marches and negotiations, but the

whole city was invested on the thirty-first of July, from the

suburbs of Pera and Galata to the Blachernae and seven towers;

and the inhabitants descried with terror the flaming signals of

the European and Asiatic shores. In the mean while, the

magistrates of Constantinople repeatedly strove to purchase the

retreat of the chagan; but their deputies were rejected and

insulted; and he suffered the patricians to stand before his

throne, while the Persian envoys, in silk robes, were seated by

his side. “You see,” said the haughty Barbarian, “the proofs of

my perfect union with the great king; and his lieutenant is ready

to send into my camp a select band of three thousand warriors.

Presume no longer to tempt your master with a partial and

inadequate ransom: your wealth and your city are the only

presents worthy of my acceptance. For yourselves, I shall permit

you to depart, each with an under-garment and a shirt; and, at my

entreaty, my friend Sarbar will not refuse a passage through his

lines. Your absent prince, even now a captive or a fugitive, has

left Constantinople to its fate; nor can you escape the arms of

the Avars and Persians, unless you could soar into the air like

birds, unless like fishes you could dive into the waves.” 96

During ten successive days, the capital was assaulted by the

Avars, who had made some progress in the science of attack; they

advanced to sap or batter the wall, under the cover of the

impenetrable tortoise; their engines discharged a perpetual

volley of stones and darts; and twelve lofty towers of wood

exalted the combatants to the height of the neighboring ramparts.

But the senate and people were animated by the spirit of

Heraclius, who had detached to their relief a body of twelve

thousand cuirassiers; the powers of fire and mechanics were used

with superior art and success in the defence of Constantinople;

and the galleys, with two and three ranks of oars, commanded the

Bosphorus, and rendered the Persians the idle spectators of the

defeat of their allies. The Avars were repulsed; a fleet of

Sclavonian canoes was destroyed in the harbor; the vassals of the

chagan threatened to desert, his provisions were exhausted, and

after burning his engines, he gave the signal of a slow and

formidable retreat. The devotion of the Romans ascribed this

signal deliverance to the Virgin Mary; but the mother of Christ

would surely have condemned their inhuman murder of the Persian

envoys, who were entitled to the rights of humanity, if they were

not protected by the laws of nations. 97

94 (return) [ Petavius (Annotationes ad Nicephorum, p. 62, 63,

64) discriminates the names and actions of five Persian generals

who were successively sent against Heraclius.]

95 (return) [ This number of eight myriads is specified by George

of Pisidia, (Bell. Abar. 219.) The poet (50—88) clearly indicates

that the old chagan lived till the reign of Heraclius, and that

his son and successor was born of a foreign mother. Yet Foggini

(Annotat. p. 57) has given another interpretation to this

passage.]

96 (return) [ A bird, a frog, a mouse, and five arrows, had been

the present of the Scythian king to Darius, (Herodot. l. iv. c.

131, 132.) Substituez une lettre a ces signes (says Rousseau,

with much good taste) plus elle sera menacante moins elle

effrayera; ce ne sera qu’une fanfarronade dont Darius n’eut fait

que rire, (Emile, tom. iii. p. 146.) Yet I much question whether

the senate and people of Constantinople laughed at this message

of the chagan.]

97 (return) [ The Paschal Chronicle (p. 392—397) gives a minute

and authentic narrative of the siege and deliverance of

Constantinople Theophanes (p. 264) adds some circumstances; and a

faint light may be obtained from the smoke of George of Pisidia,

who has composed a poem (de Bello Abarico, p. 45—54) to

commemorate this auspicious event.]

After the division of his army, Heraclius prudently retired to

the banks of the Phasis, from whence he maintained a defensive

war against the fifty thousand gold spears of Persia. His anxiety

was relieved by the deliverance of Constantinople; his hopes were

confirmed by a victory of his brother Theodorus; and to the

hostile league of Chosroes with the Avars, the Roman emperor

opposed the useful and honorable alliance of the Turks. At his

liberal invitation, the horde of Chozars 98 transported their

tents from the plains of the Volga to the mountains of Georgia;

Heraclius received them in the neighborhood of Teflis, and the

khan with his nobles dismounted from their horses, if we may

credit the Greeks, and fell prostrate on the ground, to adore the

purple of the Caesars. Such voluntary homage and important aid

were entitled to the warmest acknowledgments; and the emperor,

taking off his own diadem, placed it on the head of the Turkish

prince, whom he saluted with a tender embrace and the appellation

of son. After a sumptuous banquet, he presented Ziebel with the

plate and ornaments, the gold, the gems, and the silk, which had

been used at the Imperial table, and, with his own hand,

distributed rich jewels and ear-rings to his new allies. In a

secret interview, he produced the portrait of his daughter

Eudocia, 99 condescended to flatter the Barbarian with the

promise of a fair and august bride; obtained an immediate succor

of forty thousand horse, and negotiated a strong diversion of the

Turkish arms on the side of the Oxus. 100 The Persians, in their

turn, retreated with precipitation; in the camp of Edessa,

Heraclius reviewed an army of seventy thousand Romans and

strangers; and some months were successfully employed in the

recovery of the cities of Syria, Mesopotamia and Armenia, whose

fortifications had been imperfectly restored. Sarbar still

maintained the important station of Chalcedon; but the jealousy

of Chosroes, or the artifice of Heraclius, soon alienated the

mind of that powerful satrap from the service of his king and

country. A messenger was intercepted with a real or fictitious

mandate to the cadarigan, or second in command, directing him to

send, without delay, to the throne, the head of a guilty or

unfortunate general. The despatches were transmitted to Sarbar

himself; and as soon as he read the sentence of his own death, he

dexterously inserted the names of four hundred officers,

assembled a military council, and asked the cadarigan whether he

was prepared to execute the commands of their tyrant. The

Persians unanimously declared, that Chosroes had forfeited the

sceptre; a separate treaty was concluded with the government of

Constantinople; and if some considerations of honor or policy

restrained Sarbar from joining the standard of Heraclius, the

emperor was assured that he might prosecute, without

interruption, his designs of victory and peace.

98 (return) [ The power of the Chozars prevailed in the viith,

viiith, and ixth centuries. They were known to the Greeks, the

Arabs, and under the name of Kosa, to the Chinese themselves. De

Guignes, Hist. des Huns, tom. ii. part ii. p. 507—509. * Note:

Moses of Chorene speaks of an invasion of Armenia by the Khazars

in the second century, l. ii. c. 62. M. St. Martin suspects them

to be the same with the Hunnish nation of the Acatires or

Agazzires. They are called by the Greek historians Eastern Turks;

like the Madjars and other Hunnish or Finnish tribes, they had

probably received some admixture from the genuine Turkish races.

Ibn. Hankal (Oriental Geography) says that their language was

like the Bulgarian, and considers them a people of Finnish or

Hunnish race. Klaproth, Tabl. Hist. p. 268-273. Abel Remusat,

Rech. sur les Langues Tartares, tom. i. p. 315, 316. St. Martin,

vol. xi. p. 115.—M]

99 (return) [ Epiphania, or Eudocia, the only daughter of

Heraclius and his first wife Eudocia, was born at Constantinople

on the 7th of July, A.D. 611, baptized the 15th of August, and

crowned (in the oratory of St. Stephen in the palace) the 4th of

October of the same year. At this time she was about fifteen.

Eudocia was afterwards sent to her Turkish husband, but the news

of his death stopped her journey, and prevented the consummation,

(Ducange, Familiae Byzantin. p. 118.)]

100 (return) [ Elmcain (Hist. Saracen. p. 13—16) gives some

curious and probable facts; but his numbers are rather too

high—300,000 Romans assembled at Edessa—500,000 Persians killed

at Nineveh. The abatement of a cipher is scarcely enough to

restore his sanity]

Deprived of his firmest support, and doubtful of the fidelity of

his subjects, the greatness of Chosroes was still conspicuous in

its ruins. The number of five hundred thousand may be interpreted

as an Oriental metaphor, to describe the men and arms, the horses

and elephants, that covered Media and Assyria against the

invasion of Heraclius. Yet the Romans boldly advanced from the

Araxes to the Tigris, and the timid prudence of Rhazates was

content to follow them by forced marches through a desolate

country, till he received a peremptory mandate to risk the fate

of Persia in a decisive battle. Eastward of the Tigris, at the

end of the bridge of Mosul, the great Nineveh had formerly been

erected: 101 the city, and even the ruins of the city, had long

since disappeared; 102 the vacant space afforded a spacious field

for the operations of the two armies. But these operations are

neglected by the Byzantine historians, and, like the authors of

epic poetry and romance, they ascribe the victory, not to the

military conduct, but to the personal valor, of their favorite

hero. On this memorable day, Heraclius, on his horse Phallas,

surpassed the bravest of his warriors: his lip was pierced with a

spear; the steed was wounded in the thigh; but he carried his

master safe and victorious through the triple phalanx of the

Barbarians. In the heat of the action, three valiant chiefs were

successively slain by the sword and lance of the emperor: among

these was Rhazates himself; he fell like a soldier, but the sight

of his head scattered grief and despair through the fainting

ranks of the Persians. His armor of pure and massy gold, the

shield of one hundred and twenty plates, the sword and belt, the

saddle and cuirass, adorned the triumph of Heraclius; and if he

had not been faithful to Christ and his mother, the champion of

Rome might have offered the fourth opime spoils to the Jupiter of

the Capitol. 103 In the battle of Nineveh, which was fiercely

fought from daybreak to the eleventh hour, twenty-eight

standards, besides those which might be broken or torn, were

taken from the Persians; the greatest part of their army was cut

in pieces, and the victors, concealing their own loss, passed the

night on the field. They acknowledged, that on this occasion it

was less difficult to kill than to discomfit the soldiers of

Chosroes; amidst the bodies of their friends, no more than two

bow-shot from the enemy the remnant of the Persian cavalry stood

firm till the seventh hour of the night; about the eighth hour

they retired to their unrifled camp, collected their baggage, and

dispersed on all sides, from the want of orders rather than of

resolution. The diligence of Heraclius was not less admirable in

the use of victory; by a march of forty-eight miles in

four-and-twenty hours, his vanguard occupied the bridges of the

great and the lesser Zab; and the cities and palaces of Assyria

were open for the first time to the Romans. By a just gradation

of magnificent scenes, they penetrated to the royal seat of

Dastagerd, 1031 and, though much of the treasure had been

removed, and much had been expended, the remaining wealth appears

to have exceeded their hopes, and even to have satiated their

avarice. Whatever could not be easily transported, they consumed

with fire, that Chosroes might feel the anguish of those wounds

which he had so often inflicted on the provinces of the empire:

and justice might allow the excuse, if the desolation had been

confined to the works of regal luxury, if national hatred,

military license, and religious zeal, had not wasted with equal

rage the habitations and the temples of the guiltless subject.

The recovery of three hundred Roman standards, and the

deliverance of the numerous captives of Edessa and Alexandria,

reflect a purer glory on the arms of Heraclius. From the palace

of Dastagerd, he pursued his march within a few miles of Modain

or Ctesiphon, till he was stopped, on the banks of the Arba, by

the difficulty of the passage, the rigor of the season, and

perhaps the fame of an impregnable capital. The return of the

emperor is marked by the modern name of the city of Sherhzour: he

fortunately passed Mount Zara, before the snow, which fell

incessantly thirty-four days; and the citizens of Gandzca, or

Tauris, were compelled to entertain the soldiers and their horses

with a hospitable reception. 104

101 (return) [ Ctesias (apud Didor. Sicul. tom. i. l. ii. p. 115,

edit. Wesseling) assigns 480 stadia (perhaps only 32 miles) for

the circumference of Nineveh. Jonas talks of three days’ journey:

the 120,000 persons described by the prophet as incapable of

discerning their right hand from their left, may afford about

700,000 persons of all ages for the inhabitants of that ancient

capital, (Goguet, Origines des Loix, &c., tom. iii. part i. p.

92, 93,) which ceased to exist 600 years before Christ. The

western suburb still subsisted, and is mentioned under the name

of Mosul in the first age of the Arabian khalifs.]

102 (return) [ Niebuhr (Voyage en Arabie, &c., tom. ii. p. 286)

passed over Nineveh without perceiving it. He mistook for a ridge

of hills the old rampart of brick or earth. It is said to have

been 100 feet high, flanked with 1500 towers, each of the height

of 200 feet.]

103 (return) [ Rex regia arma fero (says Romulus, in the first

consecration).... bina postea (continues Livy, i. 10) inter tot

bella, opima parta sunt spolia, adeo rara ejus fortuna decoris.

If Varro (apud Pomp Festum, p. 306, edit. Dacier) could justify

his liberality in granting the opime spoils even to a common

soldier who had slain the king or general of the enemy, the honor

would have been much more cheap and common]

1031 (return) [ Macdonald Kinneir places Dastagerd at Kasr e

Shirin, the palace of Sira on the banks of the Diala between

Holwan and Kanabee. Kinnets Geograph. Mem. p. 306.—M.]

104 (return) [ In describing this last expedition of Heraclius,

the facts, the places, and the dates of Theophanes (p. 265—271)

are so accurate and authentic, that he must have followed the

original letters of the emperor, of which the Paschal Chronicle

has preserved (p. 398—402) a very curious specimen.]

When the ambition of Chosroes was reduced to the defence of his

hereditary kingdom, the love of glory, or even the sense of

shame, should have urged him to meet his rival in the field. In

the battle of Nineveh, his courage might have taught the Persians

to vanquish, or he might have fallen with honor by the lance of a

Roman emperor. The successor of Cyrus chose rather, at a secure

distance, to expect the event, to assemble the relics of the

defeat, and to retire, by measured steps, before the march of

Heraclius, till he beheld with a sigh the once loved mansions of

Dastagerd. Both his friends and enemies were persuaded, that it

was the intention of Chosroes to bury himself under the ruins of

the city and palace: and as both might have been equally adverse

to his flight, the monarch of Asia, with Sira, 1041 and three

concubines, escaped through a hole in the wall nine days before

the arrival of the Romans. The slow and stately procession in

which he showed himself to the prostrate crowd, was changed to a

rapid and secret journey; and the first evening he lodged in the

cottage of a peasant, whose humble door would scarcely give

admittance to the great king. 105 His superstition was subdued by

fear: on the third day, he entered with joy the fortifications of

Ctesiphon; yet he still doubted of his safety till he had opposed

the River Tigris to the pursuit of the Romans. The discovery of

his flight agitated with terror and tumult the palace, the city,

and the camp of Dastagerd: the satraps hesitated whether they had

most to fear from their sovereign or the enemy; and the females

of the harem were astonished and pleased by the sight of mankind,

till the jealous husband of three thousand wives again confined

them to a more distant castle. At his command, the army of

Dastagerd retreated to a new camp: the front was covered by the

Arba, and a line of two hundred elephants; the troops of the more

distant provinces successively arrived, and the vilest domestics

of the king and satraps were enrolled for the last defence of the

throne. It was still in the power of Chosroes to obtain a

reasonable peace; and he was repeatedly pressed by the messengers

of Heraclius to spare the blood of his subjects, and to relieve a

humane conqueror from the painful duty of carrying fire and sword

through the fairest countries of Asia. But the pride of the

Persian had not yet sunk to the level of his fortune; he derived

a momentary confidence from the retreat of the emperor; he wept

with impotent rage over the ruins of his Assyrian palaces, and

disregarded too long the rising murmurs of the nation, who

complained that their lives and fortunes were sacrificed to the

obstinacy of an old man. That unhappy old man was himself

tortured with the sharpest pains both of mind and body; and, in

the consciousness of his approaching end, he resolved to fix the

tiara on the head of Merdaza, the most favored of his sons. But

the will of Chosroes was no longer revered, and Siroes, 1051 who

gloried in the rank and merit of his mother Sira, had conspired

with the malcontents to assert and anticipate the rights of

primogeniture. 106 Twenty-two satraps (they styled themselves

patriots) were tempted by the wealth and honors of a new reign:

to the soldiers, the heir of Chosroes promised an increase of

pay; to the Christians, the free exercise of their religion; to

the captives, liberty and rewards; and to the nation, instant

peace and the reduction of taxes. It was determined by the

conspirators, that Siroes, with the ensigns of royalty, should

appear in the camp; and if the enterprise should fail, his escape

was contrived to the Imperial court. But the new monarch was

saluted with unanimous acclamations; the flight of Chosroes (yet

where could he have fled?) was rudely arrested, eighteen sons

were massacred 1061 before his face, and he was thrown into a

dungeon, where he expired on the fifth day. The Greeks and modern

Persians minutely describe how Chosroes was insulted, and

famished, and tortured, by the command of an inhuman son, who so

far surpassed the example of his father: but at the time of his

death, what tongue would relate the story of the parricide? what

eye could penetrate into the tower of darkness? According to the

faith and mercy of his Christian enemies, he sunk without hope

into a still deeper abyss; 107 and it will not be denied, that

tyrants of every age and sect are the best entitled to such

infernal abodes. The glory of the house of Sassan ended with the

life of Chosroes: his unnatural son enjoyed only eight months the

fruit of his crimes: and in the space of four years, the regal

title was assumed by nine candidates, who disputed, with the

sword or dagger, the fragments of an exhausted monarchy. Every

province, and each city of Persia, was the scene of independence,

of discord, and of blood; and the state of anarchy prevailed

about eight years longer, 1071 till the factions were silenced

and united under the common yoke of the Arabian caliphs. 108

1041 (return) [ The Schirin of Persian poetry. The love of Chosru

and Schirin rivals in Persian romance that of Joseph with Zuleika

the wife of Potiphar, of Solomon with the queen of Sheba, and

that of Mejnoun and Leila. The number of Persian poems on the

subject may be seen in M. von Hammer’s preface to his poem of

Schirin.—M]

105 (return) [ The words of Theophanes are remarkable. Young

princes who discover a propensity to war should repeatedly

transcribe and translate such salutary texts.]

1051 (return) [ His name was Kabad (as appears from an official

letter in the Paschal Chronicle, p. 402.) St. Martin considers

the name Siroes, Schirquieh of Schirwey, derived from the word

schir, royal. St. Martin, xi. 153.—M.]

106 (return) [ The authentic narrative of the fall of Chosroes is

contained in the letter of Heraclius (Chron. Paschal. p. 398) and

the history of Theophanes, (p. 271.)]

1061 (return) [ According to Le Beau, this massacre was

perpetrated at Mahuza in Babylonia, not in the presence of

Chosroes. The Syrian historian, Thomas of Maraga, gives Chosroes

twenty-four sons; Mirkhond, (translated by De Sacy,) fifteen; the

inedited Modjmel-alte-warikh, agreeing with Gibbon, eighteen,

with their names. Le Beau and St. Martin, xi. 146.—M.]

107 (return) [ On the first rumor of the death of Chosroes, an

Heracliad in two cantos was instantly published at Constantinople

by George of Pisidia, (p. 97—105.) A priest and a poet might very

properly exult in the damnation of the public enemy but such mean

revenge is unworthy of a king and a conqueror; and I am sorry to

find so much black superstition in the letter of Heraclius: he

almost applauds the parricide of Siroes as an act of piety and

justice. * Note: The Mahometans show no more charity towards the

memory of Chosroes or Khoosroo Purveez. All his reverses are

ascribed to the just indignation of God, upon a monarch who had

dared, with impious and accursed hands, to tear the letter of the

Holy Prophet Mahomed. Compare note, p. 231.—M.]

1071 (return) [ Yet Gibbon himself places the flight and death of

Yesdegird Ill., the last king of Persia, in 651. The famous era

of Yesdegird dates from his accession, June 16 632.—M.]

108 (return) [ The best Oriental accounts of this last period of

the Sassanian kings are found in Eutychius, (Annal. tom. ii. p.

251—256,) who dissembles the parricide of Siroes, D’Herbelot

(Bibliotheque Orientale, p. 789,) and Assemanni, (Bibliothec.

Oriental. tom. iii. p. 415—420.)]

As soon as the mountains became passable, the emperor received

the welcome news of the success of the conspiracy, the death of

Chosroes, and the elevation of his eldest son to the throne of

Persia. The authors of the revolution, eager to display their

merits in the court or camp of Tauris, preceded the ambassadors

of Siroes, who delivered the letters of their master to his

brother the emperor of the Romans. 109 In the language of the

usurpers of every age, he imputes his own crimes to the Deity,

and, without degrading his equal majesty, he offers to reconcile

the long discord of the two nations, by a treaty of peace and

alliance more durable than brass or iron. The conditions of the

treaty were easily defined and faithfully executed. In the

recovery of the standards and prisoners which had fallen into the

hands of the Persians, the emperor imitated the example of

Augustus: their care of the national dignity was celebrated by

the poets of the times, but the decay of genius may be measured

by the distance between Horace and George of Pisidia: the

subjects and brethren of Heraclius were redeemed from

persecution, slavery, and exile; but, instead of the Roman

eagles, the true wood of the holy cross was restored to the

importunate demands of the successor of Constantine. The victor

was not ambitious of enlarging the weakness of the empire; the

son of Chosroes abandoned without regret the conquests of his

father; the Persians who evacuated the cities of Syria and Egypt

were honorably conducted to the frontier, and a war which had

wounded the vitals of the two monarchies, produced no change in

their external and relative situation. The return of Heraclius

from Tauris to Constantinople was a perpetual triumph; and after

the exploits of six glorious campaigns, he peaceably enjoyed the

Sabbath of his toils. After a long impatience, the senate, the

clergy, and the people, went forth to meet their hero, with tears

and acclamations, with olive branches and innumerable lamps; he

entered the capital in a chariot drawn by four elephants; and as

soon as the emperor could disengage himself from the tumult of

public joy, he tasted more genuine satisfaction in the embraces

of his mother and his son. 110

109 (return) [ The letter of Siroes in the Paschal Chronicle (p.

402) unfortunately ends before he proceeds to business. The

treaty appears in its execution in the histories of Theophanes

and Nicephorus. * Note: M. Mai. Script. Vet. Nova Collectio, vol.

i. P. 2, p. 223, has added some lines, but no clear sense can be

made out of the fragment.—M.]

110 (return) [ The burden of Corneille’s song, “Montrez Heraclius

au peuple qui l’attend,” is much better suited to the present

occasion. See his triumph in Theophanes (p. 272, 273) and

Nicephorus, (p. 15, 16.) The life of the mother and tenderness of

the son are attested by George of Pisidia, (Bell. Abar. 255, &c.,

p. 49.) The metaphor of the Sabbath is used somewhat profanely by

these Byzantine Christians.]

The succeeding year was illustrated by a triumph of a very

different kind, the restitution of the true cross to the holy

sepulchre. Heraclius performed in person the pilgrimage of

Jerusalem, the identity of the relic was verified by the discreet

patriarch, 111 and this august ceremony has been commemorated by

the annual festival of the exaltation of the cross. Before the

emperor presumed to tread the consecrated ground, he was

instructed to strip himself of the diadem and purple, the pomp

and vanity of the world: but in the judgment of his clergy, the

persecution of the Jews was more easily reconciled with the

precepts of the gospel. 1113 He again ascended his throne to

receive the congratulations of the ambassadors of France and

India: and the fame of Moses, Alexander, and Hercules, 112 was

eclipsed in the popular estimation, by the superior merit and

glory of the great Heraclius. Yet the deliverer of the East was

indigent and feeble. Of the Persian spoils, the most valuable

portion had been expended in the war, distributed to the

soldiers, or buried, by an unlucky tempest, in the waves of the

Euxine. The conscience of the emperor was oppressed by the

obligation of restoring the wealth of the clergy, which he had

borrowed for their own defence: a perpetual fund was required to

satisfy these inexorable creditors; the provinces, already wasted

by the arms and avarice of the Persians, were compelled to a

second payment of the same taxes; and the arrears of a simple

citizen, the treasurer of Damascus, were commuted to a fine of

one hundred thousand pieces of gold. The loss of two hundred

thousand soldiers 113 who had fallen by the sword, was of less

fatal importance than the decay of arts, agriculture, and

population, in this long and destructive war: and although a

victorious army had been formed under the standard of Heraclius,

the unnatural effort appears to have exhausted rather than

exercised their strength. While the emperor triumphed at

Constantinople or Jerusalem, an obscure town on the confines of

Syria was pillaged by the Saracens, and they cut in pieces some

troops who advanced to its relief; an ordinary and trifling

occurrence, had it not been the prelude of a mighty revolution.

These robbers were the apostles of Mahomet; their fanatic valor

had emerged from the desert; and in the last eight years of his

reign, Heraclius lost to the Arabs the same provinces which he

had rescued from the Persians.

111 (return) [ See Baronius, (Annal. Eccles. A.D. 628, No. 1-4,)

Eutychius, (Annal. tom. ii. p. 240—248,) Nicephorus, (Brev. p.

15.) The seals of the case had never been broken; and this

preservation of the cross is ascribed (under God) to the devotion

of Queen Sira.]

1113 (return) [ If the clergy imposed upon the kneeling and

penitent emperor the persecution of the Jews, it must be

acknowledge that provocation was not wanting; for how many of

them had been eye-witnesses of, perhaps sufferers in, the

horrible atrocities committed on the capture of the city! Yet we

have no authentic account of great severities exercised by

Heraclius. The law of Hadrian was reenacted, which prohibited the

Jews from approaching within three miles of the city—a law,

which, in the present exasperated state of the Christians, might

be a measure of security of mercy, rather than of oppression.

Milman, Hist. of the Jews, iii. 242.—M.]

112 (return) [ George of Pisidia, Acroas. iii. de Expedit. contra

Persas, 415, &c., and Heracleid. Acroas. i. 65—138. I neglect the

meaner parallels of Daniel, Timotheus, &c.; Chosroes and the

chagan were of course compared to Belshazzar, Pharaoh, the old

serpent, &c.]

113 (return) [ Suidas (in Excerpt. Hist. Byzant. p. 46) gives

this number; but either the Persian must be read for the Isaurian

war, or this passage does not belong to the emperor Heraclius.]

Chapter XLVII: Ecclesiastical Discord.—Part I.

Theological History Of The Doctrine Of The Incarnation.—The Human And

Divine Nature Of Christ.—Enmity Of The Patriarchs Of Alexandria And

Constantinople.—St. Cyril And Nestorius. —Third General Council Of

Ephesus.—Heresy Of Eutyches.—Fourth General Council Of Chalcedon.—Civil

And Ecclesiastical Discord.—Intolerance Of Justinian.—The Three

Chapters.—The Monothelite Controversy.—State Of The Oriental Sects:—I.

The Nestorians.—II. The Jacobites.—III. The Maronites.—IV. The

Armenians.—V. The Copts And Abyssinians.

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

1 (return) [ By what means shall I authenticate this previous

inquiry, which I have studied to circumscribe and compress?—If I

persist in supporting each fact or reflection by its proper and

special evidence, every line would demand a string of

testimonies, and every note would swell to a critical

dissertation. But the numberless passages of antiquity which I

have seen with my own eyes, are compiled, digested and

illustrated by Petavius and Le Clerc, by Beausobre and Mosheim. I

shall be content to fortify my narrative by the names and

characters of these respectable guides; and in the contemplation

of a minute or remote object, I am not ashamed to borrow the aid

of the strongest glasses: 1. The Dogmata Theologica of Petavius

are a work of incredible labor and compass; the volumes which

relate solely to the Incarnation (two folios, vth and vith, of

837 pages) are divided into xvi. books—the first of history, the

remainder of controversy and doctrine. The Jesuit’s learning is

copious and correct; his Latinity is pure, his method clear, his

argument profound and well connected; but he is the slave of the

fathers, the scourge of heretics, and the enemy of truth and

candor, as often as they are inimical to the Catholic cause. 2.

The Arminian Le Clerc, who has composed in a quarto volume

(Amsterdam, 1716) the ecclesiastical history of the two first

centuries, was free both in his temper and situation; his sense

is clear, but his thoughts are narrow; he reduces the reason or

folly of ages to the standard of his private judgment, and his

impartiality is sometimes quickened, and sometimes tainted by his

opposition to the fathers. See the heretics (Cerinthians, lxxx.

Ebionites, ciii. Carpocratians, cxx. Valentiniins, cxxi.

Basilidians, cxxiii. Marcionites, cxli., &c.) under their proper

dates. 3. The Histoire Critique du Manicheisme (Amsterdam, 1734,

1739, in two vols. in 4to., with a posthumous dissertation sur

les Nazarenes, Lausanne, 1745) of M. de Beausobre is a treasure

of ancient philosophy and theology. The learned historian spins

with incomparable art the systematic thread of opinion, and

transforms himself by turns into the person of a saint, a sage,

or a heretic. Yet his refinement is sometimes excessive; he

betrays an amiable partiality in favor of the weaker side, and,

while he guards against calumny, he does not allow sufficient

scope for superstition and fanaticism. A copious table of

contents will direct the reader to any point that he wishes to

examine. 4. Less profound than Petavius, less independent than Le

Clerc, less ingenious than Beausobre, the historian Mosheim is

full, rational, correct, and moderate. In his learned work, De

Rebus Christianis ante Constantinum (Helmstadt 1753, in 4to.,)

see the Nazarenes and Ebionites, p. 172—179, 328—332. The

Gnostics in general, p. 179, &c. Cerinthus, p. 196—202.

Basilides, p. 352—361. Carpocrates, p. 363—367. Valentinus, p.

371—389 Marcion, p. 404—410. The Manichaeans, p. 829-837, &c.]

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.

2 (return) [ Jew Tryphon, (Justin. Dialog. p. 207) in the name of

his countrymen, and the modern Jews, the few who divert their

thoughts from money to religion, still hold the same language,

and allege the literal sense of the prophets. * Note: See on this

passage Bp. Kaye, Justin Martyr, p. 25.—M. Note: Most of the

modern writers, who have closely examined this subject, and who

will not be suspected of any theological bias, Rosenmüller on

Isaiah ix. 5, and on Psalm xlv. 7, and Bertholdt, Christologia

Judaeorum, c. xx., rightly ascribe much higher notions of the

Messiah to the Jews. In fact, the dispute seems to rest on the

notion that there was a definite and authorized notion of the

Messiah, among the Jews, whereas it was probably so vague, as to

admit every shade of difference, from the vulgar expectation of a

mere temporal king, to the philosophic notion of an emanation

from the Deity.—M.]

3 (return) [ Chrysostom (Basnage, Hist. des Juifs, tom. v. c. 9,

p. 183) and Athanasius (Petav. Dogmat. Theolog. tom. v. l. i. c.

2, p. 3) are obliged to confess that the Divinity of Christ is

rarely mentioned by himself or his apostles.]

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.

4 (return) [ The two first chapters of St. Matthew did not exist

in the Ebionite copies, (Epiphan. Haeres. xxx. 13;) and the

miraculous conception is one of the last articles which Dr.

Priestley has curtailed from his scanty creed. * Note: The

distinct allusion to the facts related in the two first chapters

of the Gospel, in a work evidently written about the end of the

reign of Nero, the Ascensio Isaiae, edited by Archbishop

Lawrence, seems convincing evidence that they are integral parts

of the authentic Christian history.—M.]

5 (return) [ It is probable enough that the first of the Gospels

for the use of the Jewish converts was composed in the Hebrew or

Syriac idiom: the fact is attested by a chain of fathers—Papias,

Irenaeus, Origen, Jerom, &c. It is devoutly believed by the

Catholics, and admitted by Casaubon, Grotius, and Isaac Vossius,

among the Protestant critics. But this Hebrew Gospel of St.

Matthew is most unaccountably lost; and we may accuse the

diligence or fidelity of the primitive churches, who have

preferred the unauthorized version of some nameless Greek.

Erasmus and his followers, who respect our Greek text as the

original Gospel, deprive themselves of the evidence which

declares it to be the work of an apostle. See Simon, Hist.

Critique, &c., tom. iii. c. 5—9, p. 47—101, and the Prolegomena

of Mill and Wetstein to the New Testament. * Note: Surely the

extinction of the Judaeo-Christian community related from Mosheim

by Gibbon himself (c. xv.) accounts both simply and naturally for

the loss of a composition, which had become of no use—nor does it

follow that the Greek Gospel of St. Matthew is unauthorized.—M.]

6 (return) [ The metaphysics of the soul are disengaged by Cicero

(Tusculan. l. i.) and Maximus of Tyre (Dissertat. xvi.) from the

intricacies of dialogue, which sometimes amuse, and often

perplex, the readers of the Phoedrus, the Phoedon, and the Laws

of Plato.]

7 (return) [ The disciples of Jesus were persuaded that a man

might have sinned before he was born, (John, ix. 2,) and the

Pharisees held the transmigration of virtuous souls, (Joseph. de

Bell. Judaico, l. ii. c. 7;) and a modern Rabbi is modestly

assured, that Hermes, Pythagoras, Plato, &c., derived their

metaphysics from his illustrious countrymen.]

8 (return) [ Four different opinions have been entertained

concerning the origin of human souls: 1. That they are eternal

and divine. 2. That they were created in a separate state of

existence, before their union with the body. 3. That they have

been propagated from the original stock of Adam, who contained in

himself the mental as well as the corporeal seed of his

posterity. 4. That each soul is occasionally created and embodied

in the moment of conception.—The last of these sentiments appears

to have prevailed among the moderns; and our spiritual history is

grown less sublime, without becoming more intelligible.]

9 (return) [ It was one of the fifteen heresies imputed to

Origen, and denied by his apologist, (Photius, Bibliothec. cod.

cxvii. p. 296.) Some of the Rabbis attribute one and the same

soul to the persons of Adam, David, and the Messiah.]

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.

10 (return) [ Apostolis adhuc in seculo superstitibus, apud

Judaeam Christi sanguine recente, Phantasma domini corpus

asserebatur. Hieronym, advers. Lucifer. c. 8. The epistle of

Ignatius to the Smyrnaeans, and even the Gospel according to St.

John, are levelled against the growing error of the Docetes, who

had obtained too much credit in the world, (1 John, iv. 1—5.)]

11 (return) [ About the year 200 of the Christian aera, Irenaeus

and Hippolytus efuted the thirty-two sects, which had multiplied

to fourscore in the time of Epiphanius, (Phot. Biblioth. cod.

cxx. cxxi. cxxii.) The five books of Irenaeus exist only in

barbarous Latin; but the original might perhaps be found in some

monastery of Greece.]

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

12 (return) [ The pilgrim Cassian, who visited Egypt in the

beginning of the vth century, observes and laments the reign of

anthropomorphism among the monks, who were not conscious that

they embraced the system of Epicurus, (Cicero, de Nat. Deorum, i.

18, 34.) Ab universo propemodum genere monachorum, qui per totam

provinciam Egyptum morabantur, pro simplicitatis errore susceptum

est, ut e contraric memoratum pontificem (Theophilus) velut

haeresi gravissima depravatum, pars maxima seniorum ab universo

fraternitatis corpore decerneret detestandum, (Cassian,

Collation. x. 2.) As long as St. Augustin remained a Manichaean,

he was scandalized by the anthropomorphism of the vulgar

Catholics.]

13 (return) [ Ita est in oratione senex mente confusus, eo quod

illam imaginem Deitatis, quam proponere sibi in oratione

consueverat, aboleri de suo corde sentiret, ut in amarissimos

fletus, crebrosque singultus repente prorumpens, in terram

prostratus, cum ejulatu validissimo proclamaret; “Heu me miserum!

tulerunt a me Deum meum, et quem nunc teneam non habeo, vel quem

adorem, aut interpallam am nescio.” Cassian, Collat. x. 2.]

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

14 (return) [ St. John and Cerinthus (A.D. 80. Cleric. Hist.

Eccles. p. 493) accidentally met in the public bath of Ephesus;

but the apostle fled from the heretic, lest the building should

tumble on their heads. This foolish story, reprobated by Dr.

Middleton, (Miscellaneous Works, vol. ii.,) is related, however,

by Irenaeus, (iii. 3,) on the evidence of Polycarp, and was

probably suited to the time and residence of Cerinthus. The

obsolete, yet probably the true, reading of 1 John, iv. 3 alludes

to the double nature of that primitive heretic. * Note: Griesbach

asserts that all the Greek Mss., all the translators, and all the

Greek fathers, support the common reading.—Nov. Test. in loc.—M]

15 (return) [ The Valentinians embraced a complex, and almost

incoherent, system. 1. Both Christ and Jesus were aeons, though

of different degrees; the one acting as the rational soul, the

other as the divine spirit of the Savior. 2. At the time of the

passion, they both retired, and left only a sensitive soul and a

human body. 3. Even that body was aethereal, and perhaps

apparent.—Such are the laborious conclusions of Mosheim. But I

much doubt whether the Latin translator understood Irenaeus, and

whether Irenaeus and the Valetinians understood themselves.]

16 (return) [ The heretics abused the passionate exclamation of

“My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” Rousseau, who has

drawn an eloquent, but indecent, parallel between Christ and

Socrates, forgets that not a word of impatience or despair

escaped from the mouth of the dying philosopher. In the Messiah,

such sentiments could be only apparent; and such ill-sounding

words were properly explained as the application of a psalm and

prophecy.]

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.

17 (return) [ This strong expression might be justified by the

language of St. Paul, (1 Tim. iii. 16;) but we are deceived by

our modern Bibles. The word which was altered to God at

Constantinople in the beginning of the vith century: the true

reading, which is visible in the Latin and Syriac versions, still

exists in the reasoning of the Greek, as well as of the Latin

fathers; and this fraud, with that of the three witnesses of St.

John, is admirably detected by Sir Isaac Newton. (See his two

letters translated by M. de Missy, in the Journal Britannique,

tom. xv. p. 148—190, 351—390.) I have weighed the arguments, and

may yield to the authority of the first of philosophers, who was

deeply skilled in critical and theological studies. Note: It

should be Griesbach in loc. The weight of authority is so much

against the common reading in both these points, that they are no

longer urged by prudent controversialists. Would Gibbon’s

deference for the first of philosophers have extended to all his

theological conclusions?—M.]

18 (return) [ For Apollinaris and his sect, see Socrates, l. ii.

c. 46, l. iii. c. 16 Sazomen, l. v. c. 18, 1. vi. c. 25, 27.

Theodoret, l. v. 3, 10, 11. Tillemont, Memoires Ecclesiastiques,

tom. vii. p. 602—638. Not. p. 789—794, in 4to. Venise, 1732. The

contemporary saint always mentions the bishop of Laodicea as a

friend and brother. The style of the more recent historians is

harsh and hostile: yet Philostorgius compares him (l. viii. c.

11-15) to Basil and Gregory.]

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 misled 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.

19 (return) [ I appeal to the confession of two Oriental

prelates, Gregory Abulpharagius the Jacobite primate of the East,

and Elias the Nestorian metropolitan of Damascus, (see Asseman,

Bibliothec. Oriental. tom. ii. p. 291, tom. iii. p. 514, &c.,)

that the Melchites, Jacobites, Nestorians, &c., agree in the

doctrine, and differ only in the expression. Our most learned and

rational divines—Basnage, Le Clerc, Beausobre, La Croze, Mosheim,

Jablonski—are inclined to favor this charitable judgment; but the

zeal of Petavius is loud and angry, and the moderation of Dupin

is conveyed in a whisper.]

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

20 (return) [ La Croze (Hist. du Christianisme des Indes, tom. i.

p. 24) avows his contempt for the genius and writings of Cyril.

De tous les on vrages des anciens, il y en a peu qu’on lise avec

moins d’utilite: and Dupin, (Bibliotheque Ecclesiastique, tom.

iv. p. 42—52,) in words of respect, teaches us to despise them.]

21 (return) [ Of Isidore of Pelusium, (l. i. epist. 25, p. 8.) As

the letter is not of the most creditable sort, Tillemont, less

sincere than the Bollandists, affects a doubt whether this Cyril

is the nephew of Theophilus, (Mem. Eccles. tom. xiv. p. 268.)]

22 (return) [ A grammarian is named by Socrates (l. vii. c. 13).]

23 (return) [ See the youth and promotion of Cyril, in Socrates,

(l. vii. c. 7) and Renaudot, (Hist. Patriarchs. Alexandrin. p.

106, 108.) The Abbe Renaudot drew his materials from the Arabic

history of Severus, bishop of Hermopolis Magma, or Ashmunein, in

the xth century, who can never be trusted, unless our assent is

extorted by the internal evidence of facts.]

Chapter XLVII: Ecclesiastical Discord.—Part II.

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 præfects 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 præfect 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 præfect 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

24 (return) [ The Parabolani of Alexandria were a charitable

corporation, instituted during the plague of Gallienus, to visit

the sick and to bury the dead. They gradually enlarged, abused,

and sold the privileges of their order. Their outrageous conduct

during the reign of Cyril provoked the emperor to deprive the

patriarch of their nomination, and to restrain their number to

five or six hundred. But these restraints were transient and

ineffectual. See the Theodosian Code, l. xvi. tit. ii. and

Tillemont, Mem. Eccles. tom. xiv. p. 276—278.]

25 (return) [ For Theon and his daughter Hypatia. see Fabricius,

Bibliothec. tom. viii. p. 210, 211. Her article in the Lexicon of

Suidas is curious and original. Hesychius (Meursii Opera, tom.

vii. p. 295, 296) observes, that he was persecuted; and an

epigram in the Greek Anthology (l. i. c. 76, p. 159, edit.

Brodaei) celebrates her knowledge and eloquence. She is honorably

mentioned (Epist. 10, 15 16, 33—80, 124, 135, 153) by her friend

and disciple the philosophic bishop Synesius.]

26 (return) [ Oyster shells were plentifully strewed on the

sea-beach before the Caesareum. I may therefore prefer the

literal sense, without rejecting the metaphorical version of

tegulae, tiles, which is used by M. de Valois ignorant, and the

assassins were probably regardless, whether their victim was yet

alive.]

27 (return) [ These exploits of St. Cyril are recorded by

Socrates, (l. vii. c. 13, 14, 15;) and the most reluctant bigotry

is compelled to copy an historian who coolly styles the murderers

of Hypatia. At the mention of that injured name, I am pleased to

observe a blush even on the cheek of Baronius, (A.D. 415, No.

48.)]

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

28 (return) [ He was deaf to the entreaties of Atticus of

Constantinople, and of Isidore of Pelusium, and yielded only (if

we may believe Nicephorus, l. xiv. c. 18) to the personal

intercession of the Virgin. Yet in his last years he still

muttered that John Chrysostom had been justly condemned,

(Tillemont, Mem. Eccles. tom. xiv. p. 278—282. Baronius Annal.

Eccles. A.D. 412, No. 46—64.)]

29 (return) [ See their characters in the history of Socrates,

(l. vii. c. 25—28;) their power and pretensions, in the huge

compilation of Thomassin, (Discipline de l’Eglise, tom. i. p.

80-91.)]

30 (return) [ His elevation and conduct are described by

Socrates, (l. vii. c. 29 31;) and Marcellinus seems to have

applied the eloquentiae satis, sapi entiae parum, of Sallust.]

31 (return) [ Cod. Theodos. l. xvi. tit. v. leg. 65, with the

illustrations of Baronius, (A.D. 428, No. 25, &c.,) Godefroy, (ad

locum,) and Pagi, Critica, (tom. ii. p. 208.)]

32 (return) [ Isidore of Pelusium, (l. iv. Epist. 57.) His words

are strong and scandalous. Isidore is a saint, but he never

became a bishop; and I half suspect that the pride of Diogenes

trampled on the pride of Plato.]

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

misled 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

33 (return) [ La Croze (Christianisme des Indes, tom. i. p.

44-53. Thesaurus Epistolicus, La Crozianus, tom. iii. p. 276—280)

has detected the use, which, in the ivth, vth, and vith

centuries, discriminates the school of Diodorus of Tarsus and his

Nestorian disciples.]

34 (return) [ Deipara; as in zoology we familiarly speak of

oviparous and viviparous animals. It is not easy to fix the

invention of this word, which La Croze (Christianisme des Indes,

tom. i. p. 16) ascribes to Eusebius of Caesarea and the Arians.

The orthodox testimonies are produced by Cyril and Petavius,

(Dogmat. Theolog. tom. v. l. v. c. 15, p. 254, &c.;) but the

veracity of the saint is questionable, and the epithet so easily

slides from the margin to the text of a Catholic Ms]

35 (return) [ Basnage, in his Histoire de l’Eglise, a work of

controversy, (tom l. p. 505,) justifies the mother, by the blood,

of God, (Acts, xx. 28, with Mill’s various readings.) But the

Greek Mss. are far from unanimous; and the primitive style of the

blood of Christ is preserved in the Syriac version, even in those

copies which were used by the Christians of St. Thomas on the

coast of Malabar, (La Croze, Christianisme des Indes, tom. i. p.

347.) The jealousy of the Nestorians and Monophysites has guarded

the purity of their text.]

36 (return) [ The Pagans of Egypt already laughed at the new

Cybele of the Christians, (Isidor. l. i. epist. 54;) a letter was

forged in the name of Hypatia, to ridicule the theology of her

assassin, (Synodicon, c. 216, in iv. tom. Concil. p. 484.) In the

article of Nestorius, Bayle has scattered some loose philosophy

on the worship of the Virgin Mary.]

37 (return) [ The item of the Greeks, a mutual loan or transfer

of the idioms or properties of each nature to the other—of

infinity to man, passibility to God, &c. Twelve rules on this

nicest of subjects compose the Theological Grammar of Petavius,

(Dogmata Theolog. tom. v. l. iv. c. 14, 15, p 209, &c.)]

38 (return) [ See Ducange, C. P. Christiana, l. i. p. 30, &c.]

39 (return) [ Concil. tom. iii. p. 943. They have never been

directly approved by the church, (Tillemont. Mem. Eccles. tom.

xiv. p. 368—372.) I almost pity the agony of rage and sophistry

with which Petavius seems to be agitated in the vith book of his

Dogmata Theologica]

40 (return) [ Such as the rational Basnage (ad tom. i. Variar.

Lection. Canisine in Praefat. c. 2, p. 11—23) and La Croze, the

universal scholar, (Christianisme des Indes, tom. i. p. 16—20. De

l’Ethiopie, p. 26, 27. The saur. Epist. p. 176, &c., 283, 285.)

His free sentence is confirmed by that of his friends Jablonski

(Thesaur. Epist. tom. i. p. 193—201) and Mosheim, (idem. p. 304,

Nestorium crimine caruisse est et mea sententia;) and three more

respectable judges will not easily be found. Asseman, a learned

and modest slave, can hardly discern (Bibliothec. Orient. tom.

iv. p. 190—224) the guilt and error of the Nestorians.]

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; he 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.

41 (return) [ The origin and progress of the Nestorian

controversy, till the synod of Ephesus, may be found in Socrates,

(l. vii. c. 32,) Evagrius, (l. i. c. 1, 2,) Liberatus, (Brev. c.

1—4,) the original Acts, (Concil. tom. iii. p. 551—991, edit.

Venice, 1728,) the Annals of Baronius and Pagi, and the faithful

collections of Tillemont, (Mem. Eccles. tom. xiv p. 283—377.)]

42 (return) [ The Christians of the four first centuries were

ignorant of the death and burial of Mary. The tradition of

Ephesus is affirmed by the synod, (Concil. tom. iii. p. 1102;)

yet it has been superseded by the claim of Jerusalem; and her

empty sepulchre, as it was shown to the pilgrims, produced the

fable of her resurrection and assumption, in which the Greek and

Latin churches have piously acquiesced. See Baronius (Annal.

Eccles. A.D. 48, No. 6, &c.) and Tillemont, (Mem. Eccles. tom. i.

p. 467—477.)]

43 (return) [ The Acts of Chalcedon (Concil. tom. iv. p. 1405,

1408) exhibit a lively picture of the blind, obstinate servitude

of the bishops of Egypt to their patriarch.]

44 (return) [ Civil or ecclesiastical business detained the

bishops at Antioch till the 18th of May. Ephesus was at the

distance of thirty days’ journey; and ten days more may be fairly

allowed for accidents and repose. The march of Xenophon over the

same ground enumerates above 260 parasangs or leagues; and this

measure might be illustrated from ancient and modern itineraries,

if I knew how to compare the speed of an army, a synod, and a

caravan. John of Antioch is reluctantly acquitted by Tillemont

himself, (Mem. Eccles. tom. xiv. p. 386—389.)]

45 (return) [ Evagrius, l. i. c. 7. The same imputation was urged

by Count Irenaeus, (tom. iii. p. 1249;) and the orthodox critics

do not find it an easy task to defend the purity of the Greek or

Latin copies of the Acts.]

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.

46 (return) [ After the coalition of John and Cyril these

invectives were mutually forgotten. The style of declamation must

never be confounded with the genuine sense which respectable

enemies entertain of each other’s merit, (Concil tom. iii. p.

1244.)]

47 (return) [ See the acts of the synod of Ephesus in the

original Greek, and a Latin version almost contemporary, (Concil.

tom. iii. p. 991—1339, with the Synodicon adversus Tragoediam

Irenaei, tom. iv. p. 235—497,) the Ecclesiastical Histories of

Socrates (l. vii. c. 34) and Evagrius, (l i. c. 3, 4, 5,) and the

Breviary of Liberatus, (in Concil. tom. vi. p. 419—459, c. 5, 6,)

and the Memoires Eccles. of Tillemont, (tom. xiv p. 377-487.)]

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

48 (return) [ I should be curious to know how much Nestorius paid

for these expressions, so mortifying to his rival.]

49 (return) [ Eutyches, the heresiarch Eutyches, is honorably

named by Cyril as a friend, a saint, and the strenuous defender

of the faith. His brother, the abbot Dalmatus, is likewise

employed to bind the emperor and all his chamberlains terribili

conjuratione. Synodicon. c. 203, in Concil. tom. iv p. 467.]

50 (return) [ Clerici qui hic sunt contristantur, quod ecclesia

Alexandrina nudata sit hujus causa turbelae: et debet praeter

illa quae hinc transmissa sint auri libras mille quingentas. Et

nunc ei scriptum est ut praestet; sed de tua ecclesia praesta

avaritiae quorum nosti, &c. This curious and original letter,

from Cyril’s archdeacon to his creature the new bishop of

Constantinople, has been unaccountably preserved in an old Latin

version, (Synodicon, c. 203, Concil. tom. iv. p. 465—468.) The

mask is almost dropped, and the saints speak the honest language

of interest and confederacy.]

51 (return) [ The tedious negotiations that succeeded the synod

of Ephesus are diffusely related in the original acts, (Concil.

tom. iii. p. 1339—1771, ad fin. vol. and the Synodicon, in tom.

iv.,) Socrates, (l. vii. c. 28, 35, 40, 41,) Evagrius, (l. i. c.

6, 7, 8, 12,) Liberatus, (c. 7—10, 7-10,) Tillemont, (Mem.

Eccles. tom. xiv. p. 487—676.) The most patient reader will thank

me for compressing so much nonsense and falsehood in a few

lines.]

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 of 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

52 (return) [ Evagrius, l. i. c. 7. The original letters in the

Synodicon (c. 15, 24, 25, 26) justify the appearance of a

voluntary resignation, which is asserted by Ebed-Jesu, a

Nestorian writer, apud Asseman. Bibliot. Oriental. tom. iii. p.

299, 302.]

53 (return) [ See the Imperial letters in the Acts of the Synod

of Ephesus, (Concil. tom. iii. p. 1730—1735.) The odious name of

Simonians, which was affixed to the disciples of this. Yet these

were Christians! who differed only in names and in shadows.]

54 (return) [ The metaphor of islands is applied by the grave

civilians (Pandect. l. xlviii. tit. 22, leg. 7) to those happy

spots which are discriminated by water and verdure from the

Libyan sands. Three of these under the common name of Oasis, or

Alvahat: 1. The temple of Jupiter Ammon. 2. The middle Oasis,

three days’ journey to the west of Lycopolis. 3. The southern,

where Nestorius was banished in the first climate, and only three

days’ journey from the confines of Nubia. See a learned note of

Michaelis, (ad Descript. Aegypt. Abulfedae, p. 21-34.) * Note: 1.

The Oasis of Sivah has been visited by Mons. Drovetti and Mr.

Browne. 2. The little Oasis, that of El Kassar, was visited and

described by Belzoni. 3. The great Oasis, and its splendid ruins,

have been well described in the travels of Sir A. Edmonstone. To

these must be added another Western Oasis also visited by Sir A.

Edmonstone.—M.]

55 (return) [ The invitation of Nestorius to the synod of

Chalcedon, is related by Zacharias, bishop of Melitene (Evagrius,

l. ii. c. 2. Asseman. Biblioth. Orient. tom. ii. p. 55,) and the

famous Xenaias or Philoxenus, bishop of Hierapolis, (Asseman.

Bibliot. Orient. tom. ii. p. 40, &c.,) denied by Evagrius and

Asseman, and stoutly maintained by La Croze, (Thesaur. Epistol.

tom. iii. p. 181, &c.) The fact is not improbable; yet it was the

interest of the Monophysites to spread the invidious report, and

Eutychius (tom. ii. p. 12) affirms, that Nestorius died after an

exile of seven years, and consequently ten years before the synod

of Chalcedon.]

56 (return) [ Consult D’Anville, (Memoire sur l’Egypte, p. 191,)

Pocock. (Description of the East, vol. i. p. 76,) Abulfeda,

(Descript. Aegypt, p. 14,) and his commentator Michaelis, (Not.

p. 78—83,) and the Nubian Geographer, (p. 42,) who mentions, in

the xiith century, the ruins and the sugar-canes of Akmim.]

57 (return) [ Eutychius (Annal. tom. ii. p. 12) and Gregory

Bar-Hebraeus, of Abulpharagius, (Asseman, tom. ii. p. 316,)

represent the credulity of the xth and xiith centuries.]

58 (return) [ We are obliged to Evagrius (l. i. c. 7) for some

extracts from the letters of Nestorius; but the lively picture of

his sufferings is treated with insult by the hard and stupid

fanatic.]

Chapter XLVII: Ecclesiastical Discord.—Part III.

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.

59 (return) [ Dixi Cyrillum dum viveret, auctoritate sua

effecisse, ne Eutychianismus et Monophysitarum error in nervum

erumperet: idque verum puto...aliquo... honesto modo cecinerat.

The learned but cautious Jablonski did not always speak the whole

truth. Cum Cyrillo lenius omnino egi, quam si tecum aut cum aliis

rei hujus probe gnaris et aequis rerum aestimatoribus sermones

privatos conferrem, (Thesaur. Epistol. La Crozian. tom. i. p.

197, 198) an excellent key to his dissertations on the Nestorian

controversy!]

60 (return) [ At the request of Dioscorus, those who were not

able to roar, stretched out their hands. At Chalcedon, the

Orientals disclaimed these exclamations: but the Egyptians more

consistently declared. (Concil. tom. iv. p. 1012.)]

61 (return) [ (Eusebius, bishop of Dorylaeum): and this testimony

of Evagrius (l. ii. c. 2) is amplified by the historian Zonaras,

(tom. ii. l. xiii. p. 44,) who affirms that Dioscorus kicked like

a wild ass. But the language of Liberatus (Brev. c. 12, in

Concil. tom. vi. p. 438) is more cautious; and the Acts of

Chalcedon, which lavish the names of homicide, Cain, &c., do not

justify so pointed a charge. The monk Barsumas is more

particularly accused, (Concil. tom. iv. p. 1418.)]

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

62 (return) [ The Acts of the Council of Chalcedon (Concil. tom.

iv. p. 761—2071) comprehend those of Ephesus, (p. 890—1189,)

which again comprise the synod of Constantinople under Flavian,

(p. 930—1072;) and at requires some attention to disengage this

double involution. The whole business of Eutyches, Flavian, and

Dioscorus, is related by Evagrius (l. i. c. 9—12, and l. ii. c.

1, 2, 3, 4,) and Liberatus, (Brev. c. 11, 12, 13, 14.) Once more,

and almost for the last time, I appeal to the diligence of

Tillemont, (Mem. Eccles. tom. xv. p. 479-719.) The annals of

Baronius and Pagi will accompany me much further on my long and

laborious journey.]

63 (return) [ (Concil. tom. iv. p. 1276.) A specimen of the wit

and malice of the people is preserved in the Greek Anthology, (l.

ii. c. 5, p. 188, edit. Wechel,) although the application was

unknown to the editor Brodaeus. The nameless epigrammatist raises

a tolerable pun, by confounding the episcopal salutation of

“Peace be to all!” with the genuine or corrupted name of the

bishop’s concubine: I am ignorant whether the patriarch, who

seems to have been a jealous lover, is the Cimon of a preceding

epigram, was viewed with envy and wonder by Priapus himself.]

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.

64 (return) [ Those who reverence the infallibility of synods,

may try to ascertain their sense. The leading bishops were

attended by partial or careless scribes, who dispersed their

copies round the world. Our Greek Mss. are sullied with the false

and prescribed reading of (Concil. tom. iii. p. 1460:) the

authentic translation of Pope Leo I. does not seem to have been

executed, and the old Latin versions materially differ from the

present Vulgate, which was revised (A.D. 550) by Rusticus, a

Roman priest, from the best Mss. at Constantinople, (Ducange, C.

P. Christiana, l. iv. p. 151,) a famous monastery of Latins,

Greeks, and Syrians. See Concil. tom. iv. p. 1959—2049, and Pagi,

Critica, tom. ii. p. 326, &c.]

65 (return) [ It is darkly represented in the microscope of

Petavius, (tom. v. l. iii. c. 5;) yet the subtle theologian is

himself afraid—ne quis fortasse supervacaneam, et nimis anxiam

putet hujusmodi vocularum inquisitionem, et ab instituti

theologici gravitate alienam, (p. 124.)]

66 (return) [ (Concil. tom. iv. p. 1449.) Evagrius and Liberatus

present only the placid face of the synod, and discreetly slide

over these embers, suppositos cineri doloso.]

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

67 (return) [ See, in the Appendix to the Acts of Chalcedon, the

confirmation of the Synod by Marcian, (Concil. tom. iv. p. 1781,

1783;) his letters to the monks of Alexandria, (p. 1791,) of

Mount Sinai, (p. 1793,) of Jerusalem and Palestine, (p. 1798;)

his laws against the Eutychians, (p. 1809, 1811, 1831;) the

correspondence of Leo with the provincial synods on the

revolution of Alexandria, (p. 1835—1930.)]

68 (return) [ Photius (or rather Eulogius of Alexandria)

confesses, in a fine passage, the specious color of this double

charge against Pope Leo and his synod of Chalcedon, (Bibliot.

cod. ccxxv. p. 768.) He waged a double war against the enemies of

the church, and wounded either foe with the darts of his

adversary. Against Nestorius he seemed to introduce Monophysites;

against Eutyches he appeared to countenance the Nestorians. The

apologist claims a charitable interpretation for the saints: if

the same had been extended to the heretics, the sound of the

controversy would have been lost in the air]

The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire Table of Contents with links in the HTML file to the two Project Gutenberg editions (12 volumes) · 第 52 / 79 章

Instead of skirmishing on the frontier, the two monarchs who