CHAP. XI. Illyrian 549. Facundus. African Council, 550. A synod in Illyria sent to the emperor a set defence of the writings which he had impugned'. In Africa the condemned writings were defended by one of the ablest men of the time, Facundus of Hermiane, who wrote in a fearless and candid spirit without regard to temporary popularity. He saw clearly the evils which sprang from the constant hair-splitting of the Greeks, from the tendency of ignorant persons to pronounce arrogant judgments, and from the interference of the civil government, which, after all, cannot coerce men's thoughts. Guided by him, the African bishops not only controverted the emperor's views, but also formally excommunicated Vigilius. Under this pressure the unlucky pope summoned courage to refuse to accept a dogmatic statement, embodying the condemnation of the Three Articles, which the emperor put forth in the year 551. Justinian, much Ecumeni perplexed, summoned a council at Constantinople, known as the Fifth Ecumenical, which Vigilius refused to attend; he even defended the condemned writings in a formal ordinance". The council thereupon, under the emperor's influence, approved all the edicts on matters of dogma which he had put forth, and directed the name of Vigilius to be removed from the list of those commemorated in the Eucharist. While these things were done at Constantinople, Narses had restored the imperial authority in Italy, and the pope saw with dismay that even in Rome he would not be out of the reach of the emperor's arm. It was perhaps this consideration which induced him to accept the decrees of the council, which he did in 5547. In the following year he left Constantinople to return to Rome, but died on his journey at Syracuse. Pelagius, who was chosen as his successor by those who favoured the emperor's proceedings, ignoring cal Council at Constantinople, 553. Vigilius dies, 555. 1 Victor Tunun. Chronicon, p. 332. 2 See his Defensio, XII. 4; quoted by Neander, Iv. 274 f. 3 Victor Tunun. u. s., quoted by Gieseler, K.-G. 1. 643, note p. 4 Ομολογία πίστεως Ἰουστ. Αὐτοῦ Kрáтopos, in Chron. Alexandr. p. 344 ff. (ed. Dufresne); in Mansi ix. 537 ff. On Vigilius's conduct, see the Epistola Clericorum Italiæ (A.D. 551) in Mansi ix. 151 ff.; Hardouin III. 47. 5 Mansi IX. 61 ff.; Hardouin III. 10 ff. 6 The Acta of this Council are in Mansi IX. 157 ff.; Hardouin III. 51 ff. 7 See his Epist. ad Eutychium, in Mansi ix. 413 ff.; Hardouin III. 213 ff. his own previous declarations, at once accepted the decrees CHAP. XI. of the Fifth Council1. 564, Justinian was even still not weary of interfering in Justinian's theological controversies, and shortly before his death, last effort, in his eagerness at all costs to bring the Monophysites back to the Church, he declared the views of the Aphthartodocetæ to be orthodox2. Eutychius, patriarch of Constantinople, was banished for refusing to accept this, and Anastasius Sinaita, patriarch of Antioch, only escaped a similar fate by the death of the emperor. His successor, Justin II., did not attempt to carry out his policy. death, 565. Justinian's attempts to regulate the dogma of the Schisms Church, while it alienated the Western Church, did not arise. win the Monophysites. On the contrary, it was in his reign that they drew together and formed separate communities. Few of the Egyptians accepted the Patriarch of Alexandria who had been appointed under the influence of Justinian; the great majority chose a Patriarch of their Alexanown, and so formed a schismatical church which was never dria. reconciled; and the Ethiopic Church cast in its lot with Ethiopia. the Alexandrian. In Armenia also the Monophysite Armenia. party, favoured by the Persian rulers of the country, gained the upper hand towards the end of the fifth century. Early in the sixth the synod of Theoria declared itself in favour of Monophysite views, and about the year six hundred the Armenian Church ceased to be in communion with the Iberian, which adhered to the decrees of Chalcedon. In Syria and Mesopotamia the Monophysites, perse- Syria and cuted and forsaken, seemed on the point of disappearing Mesopota altogether, when they were revived by the extraordinary energy of Jacob Baradai, and in consequence came to be Jacob called Jacobites. In the West too there arose a longenduring schism in consequence of the acceptance by the 1 Victor Tunun., Chronicon, an. 555, quoted by Gieseler 1. 645, note x. 2 Evagrius, H. E. iv. 39-41. 3 See Taki-Eddini Makrizi, Hist. Coptitarum Christianorum, Arabic and Latin, ed. H. J. Wetzer (Sulzbach 1828); E. Renaudot, Hist. Patriarch. Alexandr. Jacobit.; M. Le Quien, Oriens Christianus, II. 357 ff. (ed. Paris 1740). 4 J. Ludolph, Hist. Æthiopica; M. Veyssier La Croze, Hist. du Christianisme d'Ethiopie et d'Arménie (La Haye, 1739). 5 Saint-Martin, Mémoires sur l'Arménie (Paris, 1828); Clem. Galanus, Hist. Armena Eccl. et Politica; Le Quien, O. C. 1. 136 ff. 6 Assemani, Biblioth. Orient., tom. 2. mia. Baradai, 541-578. Western schism. CHAP. XI. Roman pontiff of the decrees of Constantinople. The churches which acknowledged Aquileia as their metropolis renounced communion with the Roman Church, as did also the western portion of Northern Italy under the authority of Milan. Never perhaps was the dignity of the see of Rome in so great peril as in the days when the weakest of the popes was brought into collision with the strongest of the emperors. The papacy lost for the time the prestige of independence which was its proudest prerogative. The strong hand of Gregory the Great brought back Milan and the greater part of Northern Italy to the Roman obedience, but it was at the cost of ignoring the Fifth Ecumenical Council1. Origen's IV. The Origenistic Controversy. Origen was, as we have seen, in the third century the great teacher of theology in the Christian Church. The time however came when they who had followed in his footsteps turned against their guide. Origen's teaching was that of a time of seeking and forming, and seemed to some of those who looked back to it from the stand-point of a more definite system to transgress the bounds of orthodoxy. All the great party-leaders of the fourth century had appealed to him. The Arians claimed his support for their doctrine that the Lord was a created being and subordinate to the Father; their opponents found in his works the assertion that the Son was begotten of the Father from all eternity. He had, in fact, for several generations many distinguished adherents both in Antioch and in 1 See his Epistolæ, Iv. 2-4, 38, 39. He accepts the first four Ecumenical Councils, and is silent about the Fifth. 2 The principal original authorities are, for the first part, Socrates VI. 7 ff., Sozomen VIII. 11 ff., and Jerome's letters of the period; for the second, the Life of St Sabas by Cyril of Scythopolis (in Cotelerii Monum. Eccl. Græca, iii. 220 ff.); Liberati Breviarium (in Galland, Biblioth. Patrum, xii. 119 ff.; and in Migne, Patrol. Lat. lxviii.); and Evagrius H. E. iv. 38.-More recent works on the subject are Huet's Origeniana, in his edition of the Commentaries, reprinted in Migne, Patrol. Gr. tom. 17; C. W. F. Walch, Hist. der Ketzereien, VII. 333 ff.; VIII. 280 ff.; Vincenzi, St Greg. Nyss. et Origenis Nova Defensio (Rome 1865), criticised in Theol. Quartalschrift (Tübingen) 1867, p. 331 ff.; Hefele in Wetzer and Welte's Kirchen-Lexikon, vII. 844 ff.; A. W. W. Dale in Smith and Wace's Dict. Chr. Biogr. Iv. 142 ff. ian Ori genists. Alexandria. These no doubt studied and understood him; CHAP. XI. but many joined in the fray who did not. Men whose conceptions of God and of the soul of man were-however little they were conscious of it-materialistic, naturally hated his spiritual teaching, and regarded him as the most subtle and the most dangerous of heretics. Many of the monks were of this anthropomorphic school; yet it was among monks and hermits that Epiphanius detected what he thought a heresy derived from the teaching of Origen, and he felt himself bound, as the champion of orthodoxy, to try to close the source of error'. His first steps with this view were taken on a visit which he paid to Jerusalem. Here in the later years of the fourth century had been formed a group of men devoted equally to ascetic life and Palestinto the study of theology. The centre of this group was John, the Bishop of Jerusalem, himself an ardent admirer of Origen. Among its members were Rufinus, who during his stay in Egypt had been a pupil of the Origenist Didymus; and Jerome, then an eager student of the works of Origen, whose fame, whether as a theologian or as an expositor of Scripture, he desired to emulate. He had already begun to make his master known to the West by means of Latin translations, when murmurs against his orthodoxy reached his ears, and soon afterwards Epiphanius came Epiphainto his neighbourhood and preached against his errors. nius in Epiphanius was generally reverenced as a saint, and great regard was paid to his opinions. Bishop John however, who seems to have regarded him as a narrow-minded fanatic, was not won over. Epiphanius thereupon broke off communion with him, and required Jerome and his monks at Bethlehem to do the same. He himself, ignoring the episcopal rights of John, ordained Jerome's brother, Paulinianus, to the priesthood. Jerome now found many errors in the author whom he had lately admired, and so severed himself from his old friend Rufinus, who could not so readily leave his first love. Palestine, By the intervention of Theophilus of Alexandria the strife in Palestine was for the time appeased. But Rufi-Rufinus's nus after his return to the West published a translation of TranslaPamphilus's Defence of Origen, in the preface to which he 1 The Origenists form the 64th heresy in Epiphanius's Panarion. 2 Jerome, Epistt. 59-63; 111 ed. Vallarsi); [al. 86—96]. tions, 398. CHAP. XI. Jerome's objections to Origen. glanced at his detractors, but at the same time guarded himself against the supposition that he himself shared the opinions attributed to him on the Trinity and on the Resurrection. These opinions, he contended, were not Origen's, but interpolated by heretics into his works. Further, in the preface to his translation of Origen De Principiis he attempted to defend his practice of toning down certain risky expressions of his author, alleging that Jerome in his Origenistic period had done the same. Jerome, greatly provoked, replied', denying the truth of some of Rufinus's allegations, and trying by all means to clear himself of the charge of Origenism. The principal false opinions which he attributed to the incriminated teacher were these. Origen declares that as it is improper to say that the Son can see the Father, so it is unbefitting to suppose that the Spirit can see the Son; and that souls are in this body bound as in a prison-house, while before man was created, they were among the blessed beings in heavenly places. He asserts that the devil and the evil spirits will sometime repent and be numbered among the blessed ones. He interprets the "coats of skins" which were given to Adam and his wife after the Fall to mean human bodies. He denies the resurrection of the flesh. He allegorizes Paradise in such a way as to deprive it of all historical reality, making the trees angels and the rivers the heavenly virtues. The waters which were above the heavens he understands to be divine and supernal powers, the waters on and under the earth devilish and infernal powers. He asserts that man, after his expulsion from Paradise, lost the image and likeness of God in which he had been made. Thereupon arose a painful literary contest between Jerome and Rufinus, exasperated probably by the former friendship of the combatants. The Roman bishop Anastasius, instigated by Marcella and other friends Anastasius of Jerome, summoned Rufinus to appear and answer for himself before his tribunal. Rufinus however, though he sent a written defence, did not appear, and Anastasius proceeded to condemn Origen, of whose works he avowedly knew nothing, and to express strong disapproval of Rufinus3. summons Rufinus, 399. 1 Epist. 41 [al. 84]. 2 On one side, Rufini Apologia in Hieron.; on the other, Hieronymi Apologia adv. Rufinum; in Hieron. 3 Anastasii Epist. ad Joannem |