The Nestorian heresy and controversy was one of several significant Eastern schisms, one which had a lasting effect on eastern Christianity as a whole. Like many of the important Christological controversies of the first five centuries CE, western Christendom was involved in it only to a limited degree, and nearly all of western Christendom remained mostly unaware of it. The Roman Pontiff was involved, to be sure, but in a more marginal way than he’d like to have admitted.
Patriarch Nestorius was a respected cleric and hierarch who had come, originally, from Syria; he retained strong ties to that region even after his elevation as the hierarch of the imperial capital. This kept him somewhat detached from most of what was going on around him in what was, at the time, a “center” of Christianity. In short order he managed to turn a fine-pointed doctrinal debate into a struggle over the makeup of the Church itself.
At the time of his elevation in 428 CE, Jesus’ mother Mary had increasingly been known by the epithet θεοτοκος (theotokos), meaning “Bearer of God”. Rather early in his tenure, Nestorius appears to have taken offense at this and refused to use this title. He used, instead, the epithet ξριστοκος (christokos), meaning “Bearer of Christ.” Nestorius believed that theotokos compromised Jesus’ divinity; asserting that God had been born of a woman made him a mere human being, rather than God.
Nestorius had been a prominent theologian in the See of Antioch, a student of Theodore of Mopsuestia and later a teacher, alongside him, in Antioch’s catechetical school. So Nestorius definitely knew his material. In raising this distinction (i.e. using christokos in place of theotokos) he’d intended to thread the needle between arguing factions that had arisen in the decades following the Councils of Nicaea in 325 (which established the unity of Son and Father) and Constantinople in 381 (which established the unity of Son, Father, and Holy Spirit, aka the Trinity).
For Nestorius, calling Mary christokos instead of theotokos was a small matter, because it was completely accurate: She had, after all, borne Christ — who was also Jesus who was also God. But reverence for Mary was strong, especially in the environs of Constantinople, western Anatolia, and northern Egypt. His fellow theological thinkers from Antioch, a long way to the east, may not have had any issue with it, but many others felt Nestorius had dissed Mary.
His opponents, ultimately led by Cyril, Patriarch of Alexandria, grew more fervent over his first two years as Patriarch of Constantinople. Their objection eventually was that — by doing this — Nestorius created a false distinction between Jesus the human and Jesus the divine. In other words, they concluded, Nestorius was dividing Jesus into two beings. They regarded this as little different from what the heretic Arius of Alexandria had taught, long before, along with other various adoptionist heretics who’d popped up elsewhere.
This Christological debate became rather heated, and bishops adhering to either side tried to jockey into position against the other. Some were driven out of office, wherever they were (locally at least) in the minority. A good deal of hierarchical wrangling took place, and it threatened to make a bad situation even worse.
Byzantine Emperor Theodosius II invoked a council to be held at Ephesus in 431. He supported his own appointee, Nestorius, but became increasingly concerned about the controversy. This was especially the case because many of the monks and clergy in and around Constantinople were opposed to Nestorius’s formulation.
The choice of Ephesus as the site for a Council proved fortuitous for Nestorius’s enemies. It was a coastal city, easily reached by anyone from another coastal community who could afford passage by ship. And right there, I just described Cyril, Patriarch of Alexandria, perhaps the preeminent port of the East and one of the largest — and wealthiest — cities in the entire Roman Empire.
What’s more, Ephesus happened to be a center for devotion to Mary. The locals, especially the clergy in that region, had been particularly incensed that Nestorius had dissed Mary as badly as he had. This fact, also, worked against Nestorius.
Cyril and his battalion of Egyptian bishops reached Ephesus relatively quickly. They also accorded rather easily with the locals devoted to Mary.
On the other hand, Nestorius’s support was mainly back in Syria, and at the time led by Patriarch John, an old associate of his. While Antioch and Alexandria were each nearly the same distance from Ephesus as the crow flies (around 500 miles), the former may as well have been a world away, by comparison. Antioch had no quick access to any port, and in any event, its Patriarch, John, and his bishops didn’t have the funds to book passage on ships. John and his company of bishops were forced to take an overland route, along the entire length of southern Anatolia. Bad weather stalled them at several points along the way.
Ironically, it had been none other than Nestorius who’d encouraged Theodosius to call this council. He’d believed they would meet, everyone would hear him out, understand what he’d been trying to do, everyone would agree they’re cool with it, and that’d be the end of the controversy.
Ah, the fool.
He turned out to have been astoundingly and tragically wrong about it. In just about every possible way.
I’ll just say it: The manner in which the Council of Ephesus progressed, could have been a Hollywood script. Every trick in the book was called into play. There were even fistfights, at some points, a few of them even involving bishops, no less (they were almost all middle-aged or elderly men, mind you).
I assure you, Dear Reader: Nothing that I report here is an exaggeration. What follows is how real, live, breathing Men of God dealt with the Nestorian Controversy.
Before John’s plodding delegation from Syria could reach Ephesus, Cyril arrived and took charge in short order. He gathered his own bishops, the local hierarchs (led by Memnon, Patriarch of Ephesus), and a few others who also managed to arrive early, calling on their Marian allegiances and in some cases anti-Imperial sentiment, to convince them to denounce the Emperor’s “pet.” They did so, condemning Nestorius and his formula.
Nestorius and his small cadre of bishops from Constantinople had actually been the first to arrive, but they may as well not even have been there. No one else paid much attention to them, and sadly, they themselves didn’t pay much attention to what was going on. They believed their fellow hierarchs from around Christendom would behave honorably, and as the men of the cloth that they were.
Ah, the fools.
The manner in which Cyril and his crew went about taking over this affair was a bit roundabout. Cyril had, some time before, contacted Celestine I in Rome in an effort to get support for his anti-Nestorian position, and the Pope was only too happy to oblige. Celestine had summarily denounced Nestorius, and Cyril had used Celestine’s denunciation to excommunicate Nestorius and his followers. (That he likely didn’t even have the authority to do so, was not something that concerned him.)
When Theodosius called the Council, Celestine sent a delegation who would function as judges. Naturally, they worked together with Cyril’s faction. They’d promised Theodosius they’d be impartial; but needless to say, they were not. The result — given that Nestorius had virtually no one in his corner, prior to the arrival of John of Antioch and his cadre — was never in doubt.
Almost before Nestorius knew what had happened, the Council had met (before all the planned attendees could arrive), denounced him, and bereft him of his office. To be clear, he was aware Cyril had convened the meeting, but he didn’t take it seriously since he didn’t think it’d be considered “official” until everyone had arrived.
Ah, the fool.
John and his company arrived, however, and were shocked to find themselves late to the game. He and his bishops, along with some other late arrivals — as well as a small number who’d been involved in Cyril’s earlier meeting and weren’t necessarily happy with the result — gathered a counter-Council of their own. That convocation condemned Cyril as well as his local ally Memnon, and pronounced Nestorius’s formulation acceptable.
A short time after this, Theodosius finally caught wind of the brewing antics in Ephesus. He reportedly concurred with the decision of John’s session, then hoped the full Council, with all attendees in the hall, would begin a more serious discussion.
Ah, the fool.
Cyril and Company responded to John’s counter-Council by gathering in Memnon’s own residence and convening a counter-counter-Council of their own. This one was headed up by the papal delegation, as had been the very first session. They opened with the position that, since Pope Celestine had already denounced Nestorius as a heretic, he was in fact a heretic, and all that remained for this counter-counter-Council (which at the moment included only the followers of Cyril and Memnon) was to decide how best, and how quickly, to carry out the Pope’s pronouncement and sack Nestorius.
That went about as well for Nestorius as one might expect. There was yet another session including more or less the same group. This time, they read out the results of the very first early meeting (the one before John’s faction had arrived). They also read out the results of a claimed synod that had previously been held in Rome that also denounced Nestorius.
By the way, if that’s news to you, there’s a reason for that. It was also news to pretty much everyone else in the room except for Cyril and the Roman delegation. But I digress.
The result of all that was a pronouncement that the Entirety Of All Christendom had supposedly condemned Nestorius, excommunicated him, and hurled him from office, along with a note to Theodosius that they’d concluded their business and would it be possible for them to leave Ephesus? (Yes, technically, they were required to remain in Ephesus and continue Counciling until the Emperor granted them permission to leave.)
This cadre of sacred men hadn’t even received a reply from Theodosius when they ratcheted things up even more. They protested John’s counter-Council (which they’d effectively ignored, so one wonders why they objected to it so fervently) and demanded he stand before them to be judged for that “crime.” The basis for John’s comdemnation was that, he’d convoked his counter-Council with the guidance of Nestorius, who was at that time a “heretic”; therefore, John and his crew had conspired with a heretic and, thus, promoted heresy themselves. John would have nothing to do with Cyril and Company’s demand, of course; he wouldn’t even allow entry to the messengers who carried the summons.
What John did was to post a sign announcing that the Council (meaning, Cyril, Memnon, and the papal legates who’d taken control of it) had fallen to the Apollinarian heresy. That was a Christological belief that Jesus had both the body and soul of a human being but a divine mind. That “heresy” had been dying for years by that time, but John had cleverly pulled it from the ashes of its demise as a figurative massive middle finger thrown at his enemies. No doubt he thought it was clever and hoped it’d put off Cyril and his minions.
Ah, the fool.
The Council (meaning whatever functionaries Memnon and Cyril could gather to do their bidding) continued meeting in a number of additional sessions, but even from the start, Nestorius and John and their followers had been outnumbered. And most of the time, they were barred from these sessions, fended off by local Ephesian toughs, likely in the pay of Memnon.
It turned out there was a reason Cyril and Company weren’t getting too much information from Theodosius; he’d also sent a small contingent of soldiers to help keep order. They were loyal to Nestorius, for the most part. It was their report of the results of John’s counter-Council that had encouraged Theodosius to accept it, then (perhaps) with John’s guidance in the hall, get back to work in a meaningful way. When the Emperor’s men realized some of their charges (i.e. Nestorius’s own companions) had been kept out of some sessions, they got into the fray several times. And once they heard skirmishing outside their doors, a few of the more hale bishops in attendance got into it, with the Emperor’s men.
Owing to John’s insolent refusal to be put on ecclesiastical trial before the Council for his “crime” of holding a counter-Council, Cyril and Memnon finally had to settle for stripping his patriarchal See of oversight of the churches of Cyprus. (The Patriarchs of Antioch had also traditionally been metropolitans over that island.)
Faced with the vehemence of the bishops, once he finally caught wind of the shenanigans going on in Ephesus, Theodosius changed his tune; he withdrew his support for Nestorius and agreed to remove him from office. Even the Byzantine Emperor knew a lost cause when he saw one. He was reportedly furious that the Council hadn’t resumed its work as an entire body, but there was little he could do, from his throne in Constantinople far away.
The Emperor further pressured Nestorius’ supporters into changing their teachings or resigning. Ultimately, Nestorius’ chief supporter, John Patriarch of Antioch, also caved in and renounced Nestorius.
Eventually, after Cyril hounded the Emperor enough, Nestorius was exiled to a religious community by an oasis in Egypt and fell out of memory. The vast majority of the eastern Church had denounced Nestorius as a heretic; but the Syrian Church had not, and never would. Essentially, the See of Antioch became its own distinct Church with its own distinct doctrines.
This Syriac Church’s Nestorian teachings would, however, be later modified by another respected Syrian cleric, Babai the Great, to something much closer to the “conventional” Christology of the east.
Pope Celestine did not attend this Council, but his delegation did. He, and they, believed themselves to have been the deciding factor, with their authority over all of Christendom confirmed by the results of the Council. He had, after all, condemned Nestorius a few months prior to the Council even being convened. And the Council had ended up ratifying his pronouncement.
But that had nothing whatsoever to do with Papal authority or primacy over the Church. He and his delegates to the Council merely happened to be stooges, conveniently used by Cyril of Alexandria, to be used as weapons against his foe (initially, Nestorius, but later, John of Antioch as well). One can be sure that, had he not gone along with Cyril originally, there’s no way Celestine or his legates would ever have been involved; or even if they had, they’d never have been called upon as its putative “referees.”
In truth, the Roman Church was largely left out of the great Christological controversies that seesawed and surged through eastern Christendom from the 4th through 8th centuries. The Popes did occasionally weigh in on them from time to time. There might actually have been maybe as many as a dozen western Christian thinkers, at any given moment, who even understood any of them even to the smallest degree. But that was about it.
Also, while the Roman Popes viewed themselves as preeminent patriarchs over all of Christendom, no one outside of the West believed that. For the most part, all the bishops — arranged within groups governed by metropolitans and/or patriarchs — were their own authorities. Patriarchs were a collective of relative equals. They deferred somewhat to the Patriarch of Constantinople due to his proximity to the Imperial court, but at best, he was merely “the first among equals.”
The notion of the Roman See’s primacy was something that would end up being addressed centuries later. But in the 5th century, though, the Roman Popes were deluding themselves, to think they were primary above all others in the Church.
Although Theodosius had soured on Nestorius, his own hand-picked Patriarch, it can’t be said that the Byzantine Emperor had been completely fooled by the results of this disastrous Council. He blamed all of its major players for the disaster it became; he deposed Cyril, Memnon, and even John because of it. Although Cyril had been officially deposed, he subsequently returned to Alexandria and was more or less acclaimed its Patriarch, still. To make that stick, be bribed local imperial officials. It’s hard, at this point, to know whom Theodosius thought was actually in charge of the See of Alexandria after he’d ostensibly removed Cyril, but Cyril in fact remained in control. Even though it cost him dearly in ongoing bribes.
Cyril died a little over 10 years later. This Council, and his subsequent tacit reclaiming of office after his official ouster, was the capper on a long and corrupt career that included a years-long vicious feud with the Roman prefect of Egypt. As part of that feud, Cyril had arranged the murder of Hypatia, a well-known pagan scholar and teacher who’d insolently defied him over the years. She’d been a strong ally of the Prefect. Her assassination had been Cyril’s way of making clear who was actually in charge of Alexandria.
A man of God, indeed. He was later was sainted, in spite of all of that. Or perhaps, because of it!
Ironically, Cyril’s own Christological formulation, which he’d cooked up in opposition to Nestorius, would be affirmed in a later, Second Council of Ephesus in 449, but unraveled at the Council of Chalcedon just 2 years after, in 451. His position would later be labeled “miaphysite” or Miaphysitism, and subsequently that would be linked with yet another related “heresy,” Monophysitism.
The heresy-denouncer had met his enemy … and he was it!
Although it later veered back doctrinally toward prevailing eastern Christianity, organizationally, the Syriac Church would never be integrated into the larger eastern Church again. It remained apart — in the same way, for example, as the Armenian Church has, through the centuries — and had a life all its own.
The Assyrian Church of the East (as it came to be known) developed a certain missionary zeal. It also became a haven for the few Nestorians and other assorted outcast Christians who’d lived to the west, especially in and around Constantinople. Assyrian missionaries traveled through Persia, penetrated central Asia, and eventually reached China and even Korea by the 8th century!
Marco Polo wrote that there were “Nestorian” churches in China and other parts of Asia, which western Christians found rather astounding. (In this case the term Nestorian is a misnomer, since as noted, the Assyrian Church’s Christology had changed after Nestorius’s time.)
The Nestorian schism is yet another example of a Christological conflict. As with the Samosatene/Arian and Monophysite controversies, it’s obvious that understanding the nature of Christ proved extremely difficult. Time and again we see that those who attempt to understand Christology, invariably run up against the notions of others.
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