THE NEW SCHAFF-HERZOG
However that may be, he appeared at a local synod held by Flavian of Constantinople in Nov., 44S, with a charge against Eutyches which named him in general terms as a heretic. Eusebius succeeded in forcing the synod to summon Eutyches before it. He returned answer that he was unwilling to leave his monastery; that he adhered to the decrees of Nicsea and Ephesus; but that he declined to be bound by expressions taken at random from the Fathers, preferring to follow the Scripture, which was a more certain rule of faith than all of them. He denied ever having taught that the Divine Word had brought his body with him from heaven; he acknowledged " one nature of God made flesh," and that Christ was at once perfect God and perfect man, though his body was not homoousios with ours. The synod now sent a more formal summons to Eutyches, which had to be twice repeated before, on Nov. 22, he at last appeared, escorted by a military guard and a large number of monks. His heterodoxy was not long in manifesting itself to the assembly. Attempts were made to find a way out of the difficulty, and for a moment he seemed to yield; but his settled conviction was expressed in the words " I confess that our Lord was born of two natures before the union." The council found Apollinarianism and Valentinianism in his admission, deposed him from his priestly and monastic offices, and excommunicated him. This condemnation, of course, did not touch the Christology of Cyril himself; but many of the Alexandrians thought as Eutyches did. The blow was thus a heavy one for them and there is no doubt that it was the cause of the energetic counterstroke represented by the Synod of Ephesus in 449. Of the intervening events it is known only that Eutyches attempted to set aside the condemnation and to win to his defense a number of prominent bishops, including Leo of Rome and Peter Chrysologus of Ravenna, and probably Dioscurus and others in the East; that he made the most of his favor at court; and that he asserted a falsification of the acts of the Constantinopolitan synod and induced the emperor to order an investigation of his charge. Flavian, who was forced to satisfy the emperor of his orthodoxy by a special confession of faith, also sought help abroad, and Leo of Rome took a decisive stand on his side in a brief of May 21, 449. The discontent of the Alexandrians, however, was so decided that they induced the emperor to call a new ecumenical council at Ephesus for Aug. 1, of the same year. Everything was prepared for a triumph of Dioscurus, whom the 3. The emperor designated to preside over Robber the council; but the completeness of Synod of his triumph was impaired by Pope Ephesus, Leo, who developed in a famous 449. letter to Flavian of June 13, sent by his legates with another to the council, the Western doctrine of the two natures in its essential variation from the Alexandrian with a clearness that was fatal to the permanent maintenance of the latter. The number of participants in the " Robber Synod " of Ephesus was never higher than 138. Two imperial commissaries were present; Eusebius of Dorylffium and Flavian of Con-
stantinople found themselves placed by the emperor himself in the position of accused parties while Eutyches was summoned almost as accuser The first period of the synod's session, Aug. 8-18 was occupied with the rehabilitation of Eutyches and the deposition of Eusebius and Flavian Among the tolerably certain facts are the unsuccessful demand of the Roman legates to be allowed to preside, and their failure to have the epistle of Leo to Flavian even read; their repeated protests against this so-called invasion of the rights of the Roman see; and the unsparingly masterful manner in which Dioscurus conducted the whole affair. The tumultuous scene described by Gibbon, which had given its opprobrious name to the synod rests upon partizan accounts and can be shown inaccurate in detail. The proceedings of the second period, Aug. 20-22 (?) from which not only Eusebius and Flavian but also the Roman legates were absent, resulted in a number of depositions. Among others Ibas, Irenseus of Tyre, Theodoret, and even Domnus of Antioch were deposed and excommunicated as Nestorians.
The decision of the synod was received with approval at court, but by no means wholly so throughout the East. Yet Dioscurus had on his side, besides court favor, the sympathies of most of the Eastern bishops, and Flavian's place at Constantinople was soon taken by Anatolius, an Alexandrian partizan. The only hope for a revision of the settlement lay in the West, whither Theodoret and Flavian now turned. But for the moment even the influence of Rome was un- 4. The availing. The synod in Rome on Council Oct. 15, 449, rejected the decrees of of Chalce- Ephesus, and Leo attempted in vain, don, 451. through his own letters and those of the Western emperor to procure from Theodosius II. the calling of a new synod in Italy. The death of Theodosius in the next year brought about great changes. The power was now in the hands of Pulcheria, who had already been won over to Leo's side. Anatolius held a synod the same autumn at Constantinople which declared its agreement with Leo's epistle to Flavian, which had already found increasing assent in the East. Leo was not able, however, to secure that the new general council should be held in the West; and it finally sat at Chalcedon, across the Bosphorus from Constantinople, Oct. 8 to Nov. 1, 451, attended by about 600 bishops. The presidency, in a parliamentary sense, was held by the imperial commissaries; but the papal legates, recognized by the council as representing the spiritual head of the Church, took the lead among the ecclesiastics and presided formally when the imperial commissaries were absent.
Dioscurus had secured his triumph at Ephesus largely through the strength of his Egyptian following; the emperor guarded against a repetition of this by ordering him to come alone to Constantinople. He had a private audience with the new emperor, Marcian, Pulcheria's husband, in the presence of Anatolius and others, which was intended to bring him to an accommodation — but without success. He soon recognized that the cause was