The Church and the Barbarians: Being an Outline of the History of the Church from A.D. 461 to A.D. 1003Hutton, William Holden
History
The Church and the Barbarians: Being an Outline of the History of the Church from A.D. 461 to A.D. 1003
Hutton, William Holden
Church history -- Middle Ages, 600-1500
and separation, it was essential that the Church should proclaim and
cherish.
In Constantinople, a city always keen to debate theology in the
streets, the divergence was plainly manifest; and a document which was
"subtle to escape subtleties" was not likely to be satisfactory to the
subtlest of controversialists. The Henotikon was accepted at Antioch,
Jerusalem, and Alexandria, but it was rejected by Rome and by the real
sense of Constantinople. In Alexandria the question was only laid for
a time, and when a bishop who had been elected was refused recognition
by Acacius the Patriarch of Constantinople and Peter "the Stammerer,"
who accepted the Henotikon, preferred to his place, a reference to Rome
led to a peremptory letter from Pope Simplicius, to which Acacius paid
no heed whatever. Felix II. (483-92), after an ineffectual embassy,
actually declared Acacius excommunicate and deposed. The monastery of
the Akoimetai at Constantinople ("sleepless ones," who kept up
perpetual intercession) threw itself strongly on to the side of the
advocates of Chalcedon. Acacius, then excommunicated by Rome because
he would not excommunicate the Monophysite patriarch of Alexandria,
retorted by striking out the name of Felix from the diptychs of the
Church.
{9}
[Sidenote: Schism between East and West.]
It was the first formal beginning of the schism which,--temporarily,
and again and again, healed,--was ultimately to separate East and West;
and it was due, as so many misfortunes of the Church have been, to the
inevitable divergence between those who thought of theology first as
statesmen and those who thought first as inquirers after the truth.
The schism spread more widely. In Syria Monophysitism joined
Nestorianism in the confusion of thought: in Egypt the Coptic Church
arose which repudiated Chalcedon: Abyssinia and Southern India were to
follow. Arianism had in the East practically died away; Nestorianism
was powerful only in far-away lands, but Monophysitism was for a great
part of the sixth century strong in the present, and close to the
centre of Church life. The sixth century began, as the fifth had
ended, in strife from which there seemed no outway. Nationalism, and
the rival claims of Rome and Constantinople, complicated the issues.
Under Anastasius, the convinced opponent of the Council of Chalcedon
and himself to all intents a Monophysite in opinion, some slight
negotiations were begun with Rome, while the streets of Constantinople
ran with blood poured out by the hot advocates of theological dogma.
In 515 legates from Pope Hormisdas visited Constantinople; in 516 the
emperor sent envoys to Rome; in 517 Hormisdas replied, not only
insisting on the condemnation of those who had opposed Chalcedon, but
also claiming from the Caesar the obedience of a spiritual son; and in
that same year Anastasius, "most sweet-tempered of emperors," died,
rejecting the papal demands.
{10}
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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