CHAP. scraped from her bones with sharp oyster-shells, and XLVII. her quivering limbs were delivered to the flames. The

Nestorius

of Con

A. D. 428,

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".

Superstition, perhaps, would more gently expiate the patriarch blood of a virgin, than the banishment of a saint; and Stantino- Cyril had accompanied his uncle to the iniquitous syple, nod of the Oak. When the memory of Chrysostom April 10.' 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 world28. His enmity to the Byzantine pontiffs29 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

26 Οστράκοις ανείλον, και μεληδον διασπασαντες, &c. Oyster-shells were plentifully strewed on the sea-beach before the Cæsareum. I may therefore prefer the literal sense, without rejecting the metaphorical version of tegu le, tiles, which is used by M. de Valois. I am ignorant, and the assassins were probably regardless, whether their victim was yet alive.

27 These exploits of St. Cyril are recorded by Socrates (1. vii. c. 13, 14, 15); and the most reluctant bigotry is compelled to copy an historian who coolly styles the murderers of Hypatia άνδρες το φρονημα ειθεςμοι. Αt the mention of that injured name, I am pleased to observe a blush even on the cheek of Baronius (A. D. 415. No. 48).

28 He was deaf to the entreaties of Atticus of Constantinople, and of Isidore of Pelusium, and yielded only (if we may believe Nicephorus, 1. 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 See their characters in the history of Socrates (1. vii. c. 25-28); their power and pretensions, in the huge compilation of Thomassin. Discipline de l'Eglise, tom. i. p. 80-91.

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a stranger. Nestorius, a native of Germanicia, and a CHAP. 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 Cæsar," 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 neighbouring houses, and the triumph of Nestorius was clouded by the name of incendiary. On either side of the Hellespont, his episcopal vigour 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. 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 warfare32.

A. D. 429-431.

In the Syrian school, Nestorius had been taught to His heresy abhor the confusion of the two natures, and nicely to discriminate the humanity of his master Christ from the divinity of the Lord Jesus. The Blessed Virgin he

30 His elevation and conduct are described by Socrates (1. vii. c. 29. 31); and Marcellinus seems to have applied the loquentiæ satis sapientiæ parum, of Sallust.

31 Cod Theodos. 1. 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 Isidore of Pelusium (1. iv. epist. 57.) His words are strong and scandalous-τι θαυμάζεις, ει και νυν πέρι πραγμα θείον και λογο κρειττον διαφωνείν προσποίονται υπο φιλαρχίας εκβακχευομένοι. 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.

33 La Croze (Christianisme des Indes, tom. i. p. 44-53 Thesaurus Epistolicus La Crozianus, tom, iii. p. 276-280.) has detected the use of dir

XLVII.

CHAP. revered as the mother of Christ, but his ears were offended with the rash and recent title of mother of God34, which had been inseusibly 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 unknown to the apostles, unauthorised by the church, and which could only tend to alarm the timorous, to mislead the simple, to amuse the profane, and to justify, by a seeming resemblance, the old genealogy of Olympus. 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: 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 was interested in the glory

1

Tus, and o xupios Inous, which, in the ivth, vth, and vith centuries, discrimi nate the school of Diodorus of Tarsus and his Nestorian disciples.

34 GeoToxos-Deipera: 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 Cæsarea and the Arians. The orthodox testimonies are produced by Cyril and Petavius (Dogmat. Theolog. tom. v. 1. v. c. 15. p. 254, &c.); but the veracity of the saint is questionable, and the epithet of Toxos so easily slides from the margin to the text of a Catholic MS.

35 Basnage, in his Histoire de l'Eglise, a work of controversy (tom. i. 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 The Pagans of Egypt already laughed at the new Cybele of the Christians (Isidor. 1. 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 The avridors 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. 1. iv. c. 14, 15. p. 209, &c.)

XLVII.

of their virgin patroness. The sermons of the arch- CHAP. bishop, and the service of the altar, were disturbed by seditious clamour; 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 re-echoed 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 d mnable 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 favoured 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. 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, whilst he darted the thunders of a god, exposed the errors and passions of a mortal: and his twelve anathemas 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 colours of the Apollinarian

38 See Ducange, C. P. Christiana, 1. i. p. 30, &c.

At

39 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.

XLVII.

CHAP. heresy but the serious, and perhaps the sincere, professions of Nestorius have satisfied the wiser and less partial theologians of the present times".

First Yet neither the emperor nor the primate of the Fast cocil of were disposed to obey the mandate of an Italian priest; A. D. 431, and a synod of the Catholic, or rather of the Greek June-Oc church, was unanimously demanded as the sole remedy

Ephesus,

tober.

that could appease or decide this ecclesiastical quarrel. 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 succours 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 clamours a metaphysical argument; and the people zealously asserted the honour of the Virgin, whose body reposed within the walls of Ephesus". The fleet which had

40 Such as the rational Basnage (ad tom. i. Variar. Lection. Canisii in Præfat. c. ii. p. 11–23.) and La Croze, the universal scholar (Christianisme des Indes, tom. i. p. 16-20. De l'Ethiopie, p. 26, 27. Thesaur. 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.

41 The origin and progress of the Nestorian controversy, till the synod of Ephesus, may be found in Socrates (1. vii. c. 32), Evagrius (l. i. c. 1, 2), Liberatus (Brev. c. 1-4), the original Acts (Concil. tom. iii. p. 551-991. edit. Venise, 1728), the Annals of Baronius and Pagi, and the faithful collections of Tillemont (Mem. Eccles. tom. xiv. p. 283-377).

42 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 (ενθα ο θεολόγος Ιωάννης, και η θεοτοκος παρθένος η αγία Μαρία. Concil. tom. iii.