RELIGIOUS ENCYCLOPEDIA
Monophysites
path and maintain the Henoticon and the same unyielding attitude toward Rome. Personally a convinced Monophysite, he was led, especially toward the end of his reign, into unreasoning subjection to the extreme wing of the party. But at first Euphemius opposed his elevation to the imperial throne, and succeeded in forcing him to sign an undertaking to introduce no innovations and to recognize the decisions of Chalcedon. During the Isaurian war, the patriarch entered into treasonable communications with the enemy, and thus gave the emperor an excuse to depose him and banish him to Euchaita in Pontus (probably in the summer of 496). The new patriarch was Macedonius, a grandson of Gennadius. He was compelled to sign the Henoticon, but his heart was on the other side, and it took only a little pressure from the orthodox monks to range him definitely with them.
The struggle entered a new stage when, about the same time, the Syrian Monophysites attempted to go beyond the Henoticon as an inadequate concession. Flavian, bishop of Antioch from 9. Radical 498 (or 499), had been approved by Mono- the emperor and had signed [the Henphysitism. oticon, while apparently at heart favoring the orthodox creed. The Monophysites of his province rose in revolt against him under the leadership of Philoxenus (q.v.), made bishop of Hierapolis by Peter the Fuller, and succeeded in inducing him to condemn (in a synod at Antioch 508-509) Diodorus, Theodore, and others of the same group, and to express his own belief in four distinctly Monophysite propositions. Not contented even with this, in a synod held at Sid on, 511-512, Philoxenus demanded the explicit repudiation of the Council of Chalcedon. Flavian, however, strengthened by the presence of the less flexible Elias, patriarch of Jerusalem, refused to do this in the synod, but later yielded to imperial and popular pressure and anathematized the Council of Chalcedon. His submission profited him little, for in 512 he was banished by the emperor to Petra in Arabia. The change in the policy of Anastasius is assigned by Theodorus Lector (ii. 20) to the period following the end of the Persian war in 506, by which time he had come under the personal influence not only of Philoxenus but of John III. (Niceta), patriarch of Alexandria 505-515, and still more of the clever Severus, who from 510, with many other monks of Palestine, was present in the capital. The position of Macedonius became increasingly difficult; his opponents were continually finding new causes of complaint against him, and the end was that he was banished (Aug. 7, 511) to Euchaita, like his predecessor. His place was taken by Timotheus Litrobulbes or Celon, who interpreted the Henoticon in a Monophysite sense; but the unrest was not appeased, and finally a fierce revolt broke out over the Monophysite interpolation into the Trisagion, when Anastasius grew timid. Yet the Monophysite party in the East was on the eve of its triumph. Flavian was succeeded by Severus on Nov. 6, 512. He called a synod at Tyre in 513 (or 515, according to Diekamp), at which Chalcedon
was repudiated and the Henoticon, with the Monophysite exposition of Philoxenus and himself, affirmed. Soon afterward (in 514 according to the usually accepted chronology; in Aug., 516, according to Diekamp), Elias of Jerusalem was banished to Alia on the Red Sea, where he died in 518; and his successor, John, was kept in check by the work of Sabas, the pillar of Palestinian orthodoxy. In Egypt, under the illegally chosen Patriarch Dioscurus II., Monophysitism kept the upper hand; and at the death of Anastasius (July 9, 518) the moderate party of the strict adherents of the Henoticon had practically disappeared.
No real change took place in the relations with
the Roman see under Anastasius. Pope Gelasius I.
(492-496) had been known before his
10. Attempts elevation as a determined opponent of
at Recon- Monophysitism and of the policy of
ciliation. Acacius, and as pope he maintained the same attitude. His successor Anastasius II. (496-498) was a man of a different temper. He notified the emperor of his election, which Gelasius had neglected to do, and he must in other ways have shown a desire for reconciliation, or the patricius Festus could not have sent an embassy to the emperor hinting at the possibility of winning his assent to the Henoticon. His pontificate was too short for the development of these hopes; but in spite of the efforts of Festus to secure the election of his candidate, the orthodox majority chose Symmachus (498-514), who wrote to the emperor in energetically uncompromising terms. That it was too late for any thought of subjecting the papacy to the ideals of eastern imperialism is shown very plainly by the first proceedings in the pontificate of Hormisdas (514-523). At this time the position of Anastasius was seriously endangered by the revolt of Vitalian, who put forward the protection of the orthodox faith as a pretext for his movement. In the negotiations between them, the emperor expressed his readiness to seek the mediation of the pope with a view to the termination of religious controversy. In two letters (Dec. 28, 514, and Jan. 12, 515) he formally invited Hormisdas to a synod to be held at Heraclea. Hormisdas returned a courteous answer, expressing his benevolent interest in the proposal, but instructed his envoys to do nothing which might seem to involve a resumption of communion. He required a full recognition of the Council of Chalcedon and a repudiation of Acacius; on these conditions he was willing to attend in person. Anastasius was not, however, prepared to go so far in the direction of submission, and sent the legates back with a letter denying that he had ever repudiated the decrees of Chalcedon, but saying that he was unable to give way on the question of Acacius, since to do so would be to provoke serious trouble among his subjects. In two other letters he expressed a wish for reconciliation, but Hormisdas remained firm, and the emperor broke off the negotiations in a letter of July 11, 517
On the death of the emperor a year later, the throne was seized by Justin, captain of the guard, a rough, uneducated man, full of zeal for orthodoxy, and from the beginning a mere tool in the
Monophysites