​From the Death of Cyril, A.D. 444, to the Trial of Eutyches, 448

​It is important to remember a major difference between the way people see the world now and the way they saw it in ancient times. Now, secular affairs have no connection to the transcendent: anything else would be regarded as mere superstition. It was quite otherwise in traditional societies: secular affairs were linked intimately to the transcendent, and to ignore it was to invite catastrophe. In pagan times, the safety of the Roman state was held to depend on the proper performance of the sacrifices to the gods. The coming of Christianity did not change anything. From the time of St Constantine the Great, the safety of the realm was linked to the orthodox worship of the Church: hence, the unity of the empire was linked necessarily to the unity of the Church.

The Emperor Theodosius the Younger called the Council of Ephesus in A.D. 431 to resolve the divisions revealed by the Nestorian heresy but, despite giving the appearance of agreement, the Council failed to unite the Church. As we saw in the previous section, after the Formula of Reunion of 433 the Church remained divided between four factions: first, some Antiochene bishops continued to support Nestorius and rejected Ephesus; second, some Antiochene Bishops accepted Ephesus and the Formula of Reunion but still professed the Antiochene distinction of the two natures in Christ; third, some bishops in other provinces rejected the Council of Ephesus because they believed that the Formula of Reunion betrayed the faith of Cyril; fourth, some bishops—the large majority—believed that the Council of Ephesus was faithful to the teachings of Cyril and accepted it, despite their doubts of the orthodoxy of the Antiochenes.

​After the Council of Ephesus, Rome, Antioch, Constantinople and Alexandria elected new bishops. Juvenal was still on the patriarchal throne of Jerusalem. In 440, Sixtus, bishop of Rome, died and was succeeded by Leo. In 443, John of Antioch died and was succeeded by Domnus. Proclus of Constantinople died in 446 and was succeeded by Flavian, a member of the clergy of the Great Church in the city. And, as we saw, St Cyril of Alexandria died on 26 June 444. He was succeeded by Dioscorus, his disciple, and devoted to his teaching, although he lacked Cyril’s theological depth.

The uneasy truce in the Church held for only a few years after Cyril’s death. It was Theodoret of Cyrrhus who sparked a renewal of hostilities. Even though he had been reconciled to Cyril in the Formula of Reunion and had accepted Cyril’s teaching that Christ’s humanity and divinity could not be treated as two persons, he never in his heart of hearts lost the conviction that the Cyrillian christology as a whole was illogical and indefensible. In the year 447, he published a major theological work in the form of a dialogue, The Eranistes, pillorying the Cyrillian christology as he understood it.

 (A critical edition of the Greek text of Theodoret of Cyrus, Eranistes, was published by Gerard H. Ettlinger, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1975, and an English translation by him was published in The Fathers of the Church series of the Catholic University of America Press in 2003. My citations are from these editions.)

​Theodoret wrote the dialogue to attack the Cyrillian christology, still convinced that it was thinly disguised Apollinarism, and interpreted it as a confusion of the divine and human in Christ and so a denial of his true humanity.

​His mouthpiece is given the name ‘Orthodox,’ whose interlocutor is a man who picks up rags of heretical teaching and patches them together into his own heresy, hence the name he is given, ‘Eranistes,’ which implies ‘rag-picker.’ His object is to demonstrate that the followers of Cyril are illogical, confused, and unorthodox on the Incarnation.

The dialogue is in three parts, addressing the three key errors that Theodoret attributed to Cyril, one to prove the immutability of the Word of God, one to prove that the human and divine natures in Christ are unmixed, and one to prove the impassibility of Christ’s divine nature. Each part concludes with a florilegium of quotations from the Fathers. He explicitly leaves Diodore of Tarsus and Theodore of Mopsuestia out of the florilegia, although he calls them ‘the triumphant fighters for religion,’ giving as his reason, ‘you [Eranistes] were badly disposed toward them and shared Apollinarius’s hatred for them.’ (Ettlinger, 2003, p. 66.) He does not include Cyril in the florilegia for Immutable and Impassible but does cite him on Unmixed, from his Second Letter to Nestorius and the Formula of Reunion, as we would expect, but also from his letter to Succensus, although not citing the passage where Cyril says ‘two natures before the union but one incarnate nature of the Word after the union.’

In typical Antiochene fashion, he opens by insisting on precise definitions. His terminology is strictly Cappadocian. Orthodox: ‘Well, just as the term ‘human being’ is a common name of this nature, we say in the same way that the divine substance [οὐσία] signifies the Holy Trinity, while the subsistent entity [ὑπόστασις, hypostasis] denotes a person [πρόσωπον], such as the Father, the Son, or the Holy Spirit. For we follow the limits set down by the holy fathers and say that subsistent entity, person and property [ἰδιότητον] all signify the same thing.’ (Ibid., 2003, p.32; Greek from Ettlinger, 1975, p. 65.)

Although he makes these distinctions with care, they scarcely ever reappear in the remainder of the dialogue, which focusses narrowly on a contrast of the human and the divine in Christ. Eranistes, in Cyrillian fashion, begins with the Gospel of John: ‘And the Word became flesh [σὰρξ ἐγένετο] and dwelt among us, full of grace and truth; we have beheld his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father.’ (Jn 1:14) Orthodox rejects the word ‘became’ as starting point: ‘While we say, then, that certain qualities are common to the Holy Trinity, while others are proper to each subsistent entity [τινὰ δὲ ἑκάστης ὑποστάσεως], do we say that the term ‘immutability’ is common to the substance [κοινὸν εἶναι τῆς οὐσίας], or proper to a certain subsistent entity?’ Eranistes accepts that it is common to the Trinity, and so agrees that the Son is immutable. Orthodox then ripostes, ‘Then why do you attribute change to the immutable nature [τῇ ἀτρέπτῳ φύσει] by introducing that Gospel text …?’ Orthodox wants to convince Eranistes to interpret ‘became flesh’ in the sense of St Paul’s ‘takes hold of the seed of Abraham [σπέρματος Ἀβραὰμ ἐπιλαμβάνεται]’ (Hb 2:16), and read it as ‘assumed flesh [σάρκα λαβών]’ (ibid., 2003, pp. 33–34, 37; 1975, pp. 66, 69). He has introduced the undefined term φύσις, ‘nature,’ and the idea that one nature assumes and a second nature is assumed. He has accepted Cyril’s criticism by not describing the human and the divine as separate persons (πρόσωπα) but still clings to the rigid Antiochene separation of the human and the divine in Christ.

In Antiochene fashion, Orthodox attributes the actions of Christ either to the human nature or to the divine nature, whichever is appropriate, and this despite the fact that the natures are no longer  represented as persons. A nature is an abstraction and, as such, cannot perform an action; to act, it must be present in a subsistent entity, an hypostasis. But Orthodox never refers to an hypostasis. The closest he comes to an explanation is: ‘… since there is admittedly a union of unlike natures, the person of Christ [τὸ πρόσωπον τοῦ Χριστοῦ] is the subject of both sets of predicates because of the union, but those that are proper to each nature are attributed to it …’ (ibid., 2003, p. 192; 1975, p. 202); and in a discussion of the Nicene Creed: ‘I have often stated that the one person [πρόσωπον] is the subject of both the divine and the human attributes … [In the Nicene Creed] they added that we must also believe in our ‘Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God.’ Now God the Word was called Christ after becoming human. This name is, therefore, the subject of all attributes, both those that pertain to the divinity and those that pertain to the humanity …’ (ibid., 2003, pp. 220–221). This is the traditional Antiochene teaching that ‘Christ’ is no more than a name for the two prosopa, human and divine, but is not itself an hypostasis.

Orthodox takes pains to rebut ‘two natures before the union,’ arguing that Eranistes is illogical when he says, ‘There were two before the union, but, when they came together, they formed one nature’ (ibid., p. 110), because the human nature did not exist before the incarnation. Eranistes also makes the claim that the human nature was transformed into the divine nature at the resurrection (p. 126), which Orthodox rebuts without difficulty. He insists on two natures after the union, including after the resurrection and ascension.

​Theodoret evidently took these to be Cyril’s teachings, but they were not. We human beings could think of two natures, human and divine, before the union, but, Cyril said, this is merely in thought; how the incarnation took place is beyond our ability to comprehend. After the union, there was only one entity, God the Word incarnate. And on the divinization of the body, Cyril in his letter to Succensus said that, after the resurrection, Christ’s body was ‘made resplendent with the glory most proper to his divinity, and known to be the body of God,’ but that none of the holy Fathers has ever thought or said that it was changed into the nature of divinity, ‘nor are we of this opinion either.’

Theodoret also took issue with Cyril’s 12th anathema, against those denying that God the Word tasted death in the flesh. He has Eranistes say, ‘The immortal nature was, therefore, united to the mortal nature, in order to taste death through it’ (ibid., p. 179). He has Orthodox give the standard Antiochene account: ‘Our Lord Jesus Christ is, therefore, truly God and truly a human being, for he always possessed one of these natures and truly took the other … So he suffered the passion as a human being, but remained beyond suffering as God’ (ibid., p. 187). He is contemptuous of the contrary opinion: ‘Let those who maintain that God the Word suffered in the flesh be asked what their words mean. And if they should dare to say that the divine nature suffered pain of the body when it was crucified, let them learn that the divine nature did not fulfill the function of a soul [the Apollinarian heresy, which he suspected Cyril to have held]. For God the Word also assumed a soul with the body. But if they were to reject this statement as blasphemous and say that the flesh suffered by nature, while God the Word took the suffering as his own because it belonged to his own flesh, they should not speak in riddles and obscure language, but should state clearly the meaning of the ill-sounding phrase’ (ibid., p. 263).

The text makes it clear that Theodoret was aware of the letters that Cyril had circulated after the Council of Ephesus, as in the case of the letter to Succensus above. Also, Cyril had written to Acacius of Scythopolis (Epistle 41) to give an exegesis of the sacrificial goat and scapegoat in Leviticus 16, stating that both are a type of Christ because both have the same nature. Orthodox, without citing the letter, offers the Antiochene exegesis of the same passage: ‘… [I] shall only recall that sacrifice that consists in the offering of two goats, one to be sacrificed, and the other to be set free, for they prefigure the image of the savior’s two natures: the one that is freed [prefigures the image of] the impassible divinity, and the one that is slaughtered [prefigures the image of] the passible humanity’ (ibid., p. 201).

The Eranistes would not convince any follower of Cyril, but it would certainly make them suspect Theodoret of Nestorianism. The uneasy truce that had persisted since 433 had collapsed. Events now moved swiftly.

(In this section I have used the earlier sources cited, and in addition Patrick T.R. Gray, Claiming the mantle of Cyril: Cyril of Alexandria and the road to Chalcedon (2021) and George A. Bevan and Patrick T.R. Gray, ‘The Trial of Eutyches: A New Interpretation,’ Byzantinische Zeitschrift, 2008, 617-657, both of which I warmly recommend to the reader.)

​A monk of Constantinople plays a large but inadvertent role in the events now taking place. Eutyches was an archimandrite and priest, and the head of a monastery outside the walls of Constantinople. He was elderly and well-respected but not theologically trained and no longer as mentally alert as he had once been. He was well known as a firm supporter of Cyril of Alexandria, and had organised demonstrations in his support in Constantinople during the Council of Ephesus. Early in 448, he wrote a letter to Pope Leo of Rome, accusing Theodoret of reviving Nestorius’s teaching of two Sons. Leo would take a lively interest in subsequent events, but not one that would favour Eutyches.

Also early in 448, the Emperor Theodosius was considering how to restore the necessary peace and good order to the Church. He consulted the Archbishop of Constantinople, Flavian, and Flavian suggested a plan which, carried out with sufficient adroitness, might succeed in reconciling the Alexandrians and the Antiochenes. Flavian himself held the Antiochene christology, sharply distinguishing the human nature and the divine nature in Christ, but he believed that the teachings of Cyril could be reconciled with it, provided that they were limited to specific texts. One was Cyril’s Second Letter to Nestorius, where he said, ‘… the difference of the natures is not taken away by the union, but rather the divinity and the humanity make perfect for us the one Lord Jesus Christ by their ineffable and inexpressible union.’ The other was the Formula of Reunion, the final paragraph of the confession of faith: ‘… theologians divide others of the sayings as pertaining to two natures and refer those proper to God to the divinity of Christ, but the lowly ones to his humanity.’ Of course these were the words of John of Antioch, not Cyril, and Cyril had recorded his disagreement with them, but these inconvenient facts could be ignored. What had to be done was to emphasise Cyril’s letters up to and including the Formula of Reunion, and to rule out Cyril’s letters after the Formula of Reunion, in which he insisted on one nature of the Word of God in the flesh after the union.

​What was needed was a scapegoat, someone well known for his support for the one-nature Cyrillianism, someone not too powerful, someone not theologically adept and not too sharp mentally, someone who could be branded with heresy and so serve as a warning to others. Of course, Eutyches was the perfect goat.

The Emperor, determined to unify the church at any cost, fell in with this plan: two natures after the union would be proclaimed officially as the true teaching of Cyril, of Ephesus and of the Church, one nature after the union would be condemned as a heresy. Early in 448, Theodosius promulgated a law forbidding any christology except that of the Nicene Creed, Cyril’s Second Letter to Nestorius and the Formula of Reunion. To show that Nestorianism itself was still out of bounds, he renewed the ban on Nestorius’s writings, deposed the Nestorian Irenæus as bishop of Tyre, and confined Theodoret to his see.

Later in the spring of 448, Dioscorus of Alexandria, disturbed by the signs of Nestorian revival,  wrote to Domnus of Antioch, asking him to censure Theodoret and demanding that both of them subscribe to Cyril’s Twelve Anathemas in the Third Letter to Nestorius. Domnus refused, asserting that what he and Theodoret professed was in accord with the Formula of Reunion of 433.

The Trial of Eutyches

​On Monday, 8 November 448, the Emperor’s plan was put into effect. He had found the perfect prosecutor: Eusebius, the bishop of Dorylæum in Phrygia, had impeccable anti-Nestorian credentials and so would be acceptable to the Cyrillians. He had also been a lawyer before he was made a bishop. At a meeting of the permanent synod of Constantinople that day, Eusebius tabled a bill accusing Eutyches of heresy, although without specifying what the heresy was. Flavian, presiding, ordered a trial.

Because it was a trial for heresy, Eusebius devoted the next session, on 12 November, to defining orthodoxy: in addition to Nicæa and Ephesus, it was the Second Letter to Nestorius and the Formula of Reunion, both guaranteed by Cyril’s authorship and their connection to the Council of Ephesus, even though this was a fiction for the Formula of Reunion. There was no allusion to the Third Letter to Nestorius with its anathemas, nor to any later writings of Cyril.

At the end of the session, Flavian summed it up: ‘We confess that the Christ is from two natures after the incarnation, confessing in a single hypostasis and in a single person a single Christ, a single Son, a single Lord.’ (Bevan and Gray, op. cit., p. 631) The bishops agreed.

Eutyches was summoned to appear before the synod in person but pleaded illness and old age. He asked to submit a written confession of faith instead but this was peremptorily refused. One of the delegates visiting him asked him, ‘If then he is perfect God and perfect man, what stands in the way of our saying that the Son is one out of two natures? Two perfect elements make up one single Son.’ To which Eutyches replied, ‘God forbid that I should say Christ is out of two natures or explain my God through notions about nature … I hold firm in the faith I have received, and I want to die in it.’ (Ibid., pp. 637–8)

​His presence was compelled and he duly appeared on Monday, 22 November. But he arrived under an escort of high officials and soldiers, who bore a message from the emperor making the unusual request that the Patrician Florentius take part in his examination. The Emperor did not want any slip-ups at this crucial moment of the proceedings.

Eutyches wanted his statement of faith to be read but this was again refused. Under cross-examination, he would not confess that the body of Christ is consubstantial with that of human beings. Florentius: ‘Do you, or do you not, say that our Lord who is from the virgin is consubstantial by reason of both natures after the incarnation?’ Eutyches confessed two natures before the union but one nature afterwards. Flavian then demanded, according to the minutes of the synod, ‘You must make a clear confession of faith and anathematize everything contrary to the doctrines that have been read.’ But when Theodosius caused the minutes to be reexamined the following April, it turned out that what he actually demanded was, ‘Say two natures after the union, and anathematize those who do not say it.’ Anathematizing St Athanasius the Great and St Cyril was a step too far. Eutyches refused: ‘Woe is me if I anathematize the holy fathers.’ (Richard Price and Michael Gaddis, trans., The Acts of the Council of Chalcedon, 2005, I. pp. 223, 260)

​Sentence was pronounced without giving Eutyches any further chance to defend himself: deposition as head of his monastery, defrocking as a priest and excommunication.

​So a new heresy, ‘Eutychianism’ or ‘monophysitism,’ was born, the doctrine that the human and divine natures in Christ are so mixed and confused as no longer to be what they had been. It is possible that, at this stage of the controversy, no one held it, although it emerged later. Certainly Eutyches himself was not guilty of it.

Flavian’s plan did not have the success that Theodosius had hoped for. Rather the opposite: the reaction of the majority of the bishops, who venerated Cyril and realised that they were the targets of Flavian’s anathemas, was so immediate and so vehement that Theodosius reversed course immediately. If the Antiochenes could not be placated without driving the Cyrillian majority into schism, then the opposite plan would be tried. On 30 March 449, just four months after Eutyches was deposed, the emperor issued the sacra for an œcumenical council to examine the proceedings of the permanent synod, and to restore order in the Church—order this time on the basis of Cyril’s one-nature christology.

To go back to the events immediately following Eutyches’ deposition: Eutyches himself appealed to the emperor and to Pope Leo of Rome against the sentence; at the same time, Flavian wrote to Leo defending the permanent synod’s actions. Leo spent the time between November 448 and February 449 trying to get better information on what had happened, but it was a letter from Flavian that finally convinced him. Flavian had evidently written it when the emperor’s decision to call a new council was already known, and he may well have suspected that this time it was he who was to be made the goat, since he sought Leo’s help to head it off: ‘For thus both the heresy which has arisen, and the disorder it has excited, will easily be appeased by God’s assistance through a letter from you: and the rumoured synod will also be prevented.’ (Letters of Leo, Ep. 26.)

Leo now drafted a lengthy letter to Flavian, dated 13 June 449, giving a rebuttal of what he understood to be Eutyches’ heresy, together with an exposition of the christology current in the Latin-speaking church, a letter subsequently famous—or notorious—as the Tome of Leo. For reasons that will appear, this was not to play a role in the council just summoned, but it would be at the centre of the controversy afterward, and we will return to it then.

The 'Latrocinium', A.D. 449

​The council opened at Ephesus in Asia Minor on Monday, 8 August 449. A few days before, Theodosius had appointed Dioscorus of Alexandria to preside, a clear message as to its purpose. It was made still clearer by the imperial rescript read by Count Elpidius, overseeing the council, to the assembled bishops:

​‘Those [Flavian of Constantinople and Eusebius of Dorylæum] who previously judged the trial of the most pious archimandrite Eutyches will be present and will keep silent, without having the rank of judges, but will await the joint vote of all the most holy Fathers, since it is the judgement rendered by them that is now being examined.’ (Evagrius Scholasticus, H.E. I.10. French trans. A.-J. Festugière, Bernard Grillet and Guy Sabbah, Sources Chrétiennes 542, p. 147)

​The Emperor also excluded Theodoret of Cyrrhus from the assembly.

During the very long session held on the first day, Eutyches’ appeal was first received, then the statement of faith was recited: the Nicene Creed, the acts of the Council of Ephesus and Cyril’s Second Letter to Nestorius. At this point the Roman legates, Julius, bishop of Pouzzoles, and the deacon Hilary, demanded that the Tome of Leo be read. Dioscorus, knowing that it would appear to contradict Cyril’s one-nature christology, put them off, saying that the minutes of the permanent synod in November 448 should be read first. In fact the council never returned to the Tome of Leo.

When Eusebius of Dorylæum’s version of Cyril at the permanent synod, the Second Letter to Nestorius and the Formula of Reunion, was read, there were protests from the assembled bishops. Eustathius of Beirut, long a defender of Cyril’s legacy, offered a different version: in addition to these, the letters to Acacius of Melitene, Valerian of Iconium and Succensus of Diocæsarea in Isauria, affirming ‘one incarnate nature of the Word confirmed by the testimony of the blessed Athanasius’ (Gray, 2021, op. cit., p. 176). This was acclaimed by the bishops as the faith of the fathers.

​Since at the permanent synod, Eusebius and Flavian had attempted to add ‘two natures after the union’ to the faith of Nicæa, and so were in violation of Canon 7 of Ephesus, they were deposed and anathematized. Eutyches was restored to his position. Flavian refused to back down and tried to appeal to Hilary but the session ended without this being allowed.

​There were a few more sessions, mostly to depose some of the bishops of Oriens, including Domnus of Antioch, Theodoret of Cyrrhus and Ibas of Edessa, then the council closed.

​Eusebius fled to Rome while Flavian was sent into exile but, mistreated by the soldiers of his escort, he died on the way. Pope Leo was outraged when he learned of the proceedings at Ephesus and called it a ‘Latrocinium,’ a robber council, and this is the judgement that has rested on it to this day.

​Anatolius, who was from Alexandria and had been Dioscorus’s representative in Constantinople, succeeded Flavian as bishop of Constantinople, while Maximus succeeded Domnus in Antioch. The Church was united—apart from a few disgruntled bishops in the province of Oriens and an outraged Leo in Rome.

​However, as in the past, events in the state were about to change everything in the Church, and that, less than a year after the Latrocinium closed.

Marcian becomes Emperor

​On 28 July 450, the Emperor Theodosius the Younger fell from his horse in a hunting accident and was killed. He had no heir, so the choice of his successor fell to his formidable sister, the Augusta Pulcheria. She chose a popular general from Thrace, Marcian, and the senate elected him Augustus on 25 August 450. Pulcheria subsequently entered into a symbolic marriage with him to further legitimise his position.

However, Marcian as an outsider needed more support than Pulcheria alone could provide. He needed the confirmation of Pulcheria’s cousin, the Augustus Valentinian in Ravenna, and to that end he sought the support of Pope Leo in Rome. But what Leo wanted above all was the annulment of the Latrocinium, the condemnation of Dioscorus and Eutyches, and the recognition by the eastern bishops of his Tome as canonical. Marcian determined that he should have them all.

The Tome of Leo was to play an important role now and in the events that followed right up to the 5th Œcumenical Council in Constantinople in 553. Written as a letter to Flavian in 449 after Flavian’s permanent synod deposed Eutyches but before the Latrocinium, it condemned what Leo took to be the heresy of Eutyches: the teaching that the Son of God in the incarnation took on the form of a man but not the reality, because the nature he took on was not truly a human nature. At the same time, Leo was prepared to pardon Eutyches if he showed true repentance. Most of the Tome, however, was devoted to an exposition of the Roman doctrine of the incarnation of Christ.

It should be remembered that the church in the West at the time was smaller than the church in the East and that theology in Latin was less sophisticated than in Greek. The Roman christology was still basically that of Tertullian of two centuries earlier. Tertullian taught that Christ Jesus is the Son of God incarnate, perfect God and perfect man, with no suggestion of the Antiochene doctrine of the assumed man as a separate person. All the actions of Christ and all the sufferings of Christ were the actions and sufferings of the Son of God incarnate. At the same time, unlike the Cyrillian christology, he emphasised the two natures in Christ: ‘We see plainly the twofold state, which is not confounded, but conjoined in One Person—Jesus, God and Man … [in which] the property of each nature is so wholly preserved, that the Spirit on the one hand did all things in Jesus suitable to Itself, such as miracles, and mighty deeds, and wonders; and the Flesh, on the other hand, exhibited the affections which belong to it.’ (De Praxeas, 27; from Alexander Roberts et al., eds., trans. Peter Holmes, Ante-Nicene Fathers, III, 1885, from the New Advent website, ed. Kevin Knight.)

​Leo in the Tome followed this closely, emphasising the union of the human and divine in one person but at the same time making statements that appeared to separate them:

‘He took the form of a slave without stain of sin, increasing the human and not diminishing the divine: because that emptying of Himself whereby the Invisible made Himself visible and, Creator and Lord of all things though He be, wished to be a mortal, was the bending down of pity, not the failing of power. Accordingly He who, while remaining in the form of God [in forma Dei] made man was also made man in the form of a slave [in forma servi]. For both natures retain their own proper character without loss [Tenet enim sine defectu proprietatem suam utraque natura]: and as the form of God did not do away with the form of a slave, so the form of a slave did not impair the form of God.’ (Tome of Leo, 3; Schaff and Wace, Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, XII, trans. Charles Lett Feltoe, 1895, from New Advent website, ed. Kevin Knight; Latin from Early Church Texts website.)

‘For as God is not changed by the showing of pity, so man is not swallowed up by the dignity. For each form does what is proper to it with the co-operation of the other; that is the Word performing what appertains to the Word, and the flesh carrying out what appertains to the flesh. One of them sparkles with miracles, the other succumbs to injuries … For although in the Lord Jesus Christ God and man is one person, yet the source of the degradation, which is shared by both, is one, and the source of the glory, which is shared by both, is another. For His manhood, which is less than the Father, comes from our side: His Godhead, which is equal to the Father, comes from the Father.’ (Tome of Leo, 4; ibid.)

​These would later be a source of controversy.

Marcian lost no time. Within a month of his accession, he had written to Pope Leo of Rome announcing his purpose: ‘by the removal of every impious error through holding a council on your authority, perfect peace should be established among all the bishops.’ (Price and Gaddis, op. cit., I. pp. 92-93)

​Leo reacted immediately by sending envoys to Marcian, also having them carry a letter to Pulcheria. He was not in favour of holding a council, arguing that the barbarian incursions made travel too hazardous in Italy, so that the western bishops would be unable to attend. In any case, as far as he was concerned, all the doctrinal issues had been resolved by his Tome and there was no need to reopen them.

But Marcian wrote to him again on 22 November 450 to tell him that, if he could not attend in person, ‘[then] … our sacred letters may be sent to all the east and to Thrace and Illyricum … [summoning bishops to a council so they may] declare by their own statements what may benefit the Christian religion and the catholic faith, as your holiness has defined in accordance with the ecclesiastical canons.’ (Ibid., I. p. 93)

Pulcheria wrote to him on the same day to tell him that Archbishop Anatolius of Constantinople, whom Leo had suspected of Eutychianism because of his association with Dioscorus, ‘has subscribed without any procrastination to the letter on the catholic faith sent by your beatitude to Bishop Flavian of holy memory.’ Also the remains of Flavian had been returned to Constantinople and interred in the Church of the Twelve Apostles, and Marcian had restored the bishops deposed at the Latrocinium, including Theodoret of Cyrrhus (ibid., I. pp. 93-94).

​Despite Leo’s view that his Tome was enough and all that Marcian had to do was issue a decree giving it effect, Marcian was too well aware that the bishops of the eastern church would be unimpressed and unconvinced. Theodosius had needed an œcumenical council to depose Flavian and mandate a Cyrillian christology, and this even though he could count on general support in the eastern church. Marcian faced a far harder task. He would not only need an œcumenical council, he would need careful stage-managing and an iron grip. Marcian had no choice—there would have to be a new council scarcely more than two years after Dioscorus’s ‘Robber Council.’

On 23 May 451 Marcian issued the sacra summoning the bishops of the East, Thrace and Illyricum: ‘… because certain doubts appear to have arisen about our orthodox religion, as is indeed shown by the letter of Leo … [therefore] a holy council should be convened in the city of Nicæa in the province of Bythynia, in order that … our true faith may be recognized more clearly for all time, so that henceforth there can be no doubting or disagreement.’ (Ibid., I. p. 98) The bishops were to arrive on the first of September, and Marcian intended to be there in person. Summoning the council to the same city as the revered council of St Constantine the Great underlined the importance Marcian attached to it.

Leo named as his representatives to the council Paschasinus, bishop of Lilybæum in Sicily, Lucentius, bishop of Asculum in Italy, and the priest Boniface, together with Bishop Julian of Cos in the Dodecanese, his permanent representative to the emperor. He assumed that they would preside over the council and he sent instructions accordingly to Paschasinus on 24 June 451: ‘Although I have no doubt that the whole cause of the scandals that have arisen in the eastern churches concerning the incarnation of our Lord Jesus Christ is fully known to your fraternity, nevertheless, lest anything may by chance have eluded your care, I have despatched for your attentive review and study our letter, which we sent to Flavian of holy memory as a very full treatment of the matter, and which the universal church embraces … You should also know that the whole church of Constantinople, with all the monasteries and many bishops, have declared their assent and by their subscription have anathematized Nestorius and Eutyches together with their doctrines … the bishop of Antioch and, after the sending of missives throughout his provinces, all the bishops have demonstrated their assent to my letter and condemned Nestorius and Eutyches with the same subscription.’ (Ibid., I. pp. 101-02) Leo’s belief that the eastern church was fully in accord with his Tome would prove too sanguine.

​To understand the place of the Council of Chalcedon in the history of the councils, a few general remarks are in order.

​The councils were concerned with the doctrinal purity of the Church. From the Council of Nicæa, in which Constantine the Great played an important role, to Flavian’s synod in 448 and the Latrocinium, where Theodosius the Younger was instrumental, to the 2nd Council of Constantinople in 553, where Justinian played a role, it is possible to get the impression that the requirements of the emperor determined the course of events in the Church, but this is misleading. The imperial demand for uniformity certainly put pressure on the Church, but the gradual process of doctrinal clarification continued in tandem with it on its own terms, reaching conclusions on theological, not political, grounds.

​The problem individual bishops faced was how to meet the emperor’s expectations. A bishop knew that deposition and exile would be his fate if he defied a direct imperial command, and the question he faced was how to avoid that fate without compromising his convictions. On the other hand, no emperor wished to alienate the bishops without necessity. It was a delicate balancing act.

Given the events since the Council of Ephesus in 431, with the sudden attack on the one-nature Cyrillians at Flavian’s synod in 448, then the abrupt reversal and the deposition of Flavian at Dioscorus’s Latrocinium in 449, and now Marcian’s council just two years later, bishops were justified in feeling unsure of their position. It must have been clear to all, given the return of Flavian’s remains to Constantinople and their solemn reinterment, the terms of Marcian’s sacra, and still more the campaign to request—or just as often to compel—bishops and archimandrites to subscribe to the Tome of Leo, that Dioscorus was now to be the scapegoat, but no one could be certain how this would work out in practice, or who else would be held to account. Of the 145 bishops who had been present at Dioscorus’s council and had acclaimed one nature after the union, 119 were to be at Marcian’s council, about a third of all the bishops who would be present at that council, and they must have feared that they would now be made to eat crow.

Marcian knew that the proceedings would have to be controlled tightly. The basic plan was to have three sessions. In the first, the minutes of Dioscorus’s Latrocinium would be read. This would provide openings to discredit Dioscorus, who would then be quietly deposed by the emperor. Second, the bishops would be invited to draft a new creed incorporating the Tome of Leo. Third, the bishops associated with Dioscorus would be rehabilitated but not Dioscorus himself, and the Church would once again be united and at peace. Events were not to turn out quite like this, but Marcian did his best.