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§ 6. From Antioch to Cyrrhus

1.

{333} THAT place is best for us where our lot is cast by Providence. This was brought home to Theodoret when, after the turmoil of the great cities and their synods, he felt himself constrained from very weariness to turn his face back again to dull, uninteresting Cyrrhus and its unintellectual people. How was it possible that he, dedicated to religion as he was front his birth, and nurtured in monasteries, could live long without gasping in the heat and noise and whirl of capital or council? Even in the first centuries, when persecution drove Christians to and fro, there was more of outward peace and bodily and mental repose in those large populous places for the Bishops of the Church than now, when Christianity was the religion of the Empire. Bishops now were great secular magistrates, and whether they would or no, were involved in secular occupations. In their several cities they had tribunals of their own, and had the task of deciding the quarrels of their subjects. They were attached to the Imperial Court, and were intrusted with many private matters by statesmen, leaders of armies, high officials, or great ladies. They went as ambassadors between sovereigns, and as mediators between prince and people. Such at least was their position in the highways and marts of the world; and, in an age when theological disputes were rife and the decisions in which they issued were state enactments, even the obscurest bishop was a public man, as having a {334} seat in the great Councils in which those decisions were made. He must take his part in momentous questions, and his line in ecclesiastical politics, amid the war of anathemas, and with the risk of incurring the greatest temporal penalties.

2.

But, apart from these extraordinary troubles, of which Theodoret had his full share, the ordinary trials, which arose out of his secular rank, were far more oppressive to him when he got into the world than his solitude at Cyrrhus. In the opening of his first work, dedicated to his friend, John, Bishop of Germanicia, he complains in remarkable language of the obstacles created by his worldly occupations to his pursuing the commentaries on Scripture, which had been demanded of him:—

3.

This was his complaint in A.D. 429, before or just upon the commencement of his ecclesiastical conflicts, two years before that Great Council of Ephesus, in which he bore so principal a part, and when his years were not more than thirty-five. What then must have been the load and the pressure of his ecumenical duties, when he was in the full swing of the Nestorian controversy! {335} Heresy is bad at all times, but at that time, if Bishops took up the cause of heresy, they possessed in their secular greatness special opportunities of propagating it, or, if they withstood it, of violent conduct, not only towards its originators, but even towards those who were gentle towards such men. Arianism came into the Church with Constantine, and the Councils which it convoked and made its tools were a scandal to the Christian name. The Council of Nicæa, which preceded them, was by rights final on the controversy, but this Constantine's successor, Constantius, and his court Bishops would not allow. They did their utmost to undo that which was done once for all and for ever. The Councils of the next century, even such as were orthodox, took their tone and temper from those which had gone before them, and even those which were ecumenical have nothing to boast of as regards the mass of the Fathers, taken individually, who composed them.

All through that time the Bishops of Christendom appear in history as a Mahanaim, the antagonist hosts in a battle, not as the Angels of their respective Churches, and the shepherds of their people. Their synodal functions encroach upon their diocesan; and their relation to their flocks is obscured by their position in the hierarchy. The great Fathers of that period give no countenance to what may be called its crying evil. St. Gregory Nazianzen declared he would never have any thing to do with Councils any more. St. Chrysostom had to protest against their conduct towards himself. St. Basil, despairing of them, looked towards the Pope and St. Athanasius. Athanasius himself took part in three in the course of forty years, but he fought the battle of the faith with his pen more than with his crosier. When the West in his latter days attempted a General {336} Council, it produced nothing better than the wretched gathering at Ariminum. The passage of Ammianus, which Gibbon has made famous, speaks of "the troops of bishops, rushing to and fro in government conveyances," and of "the public posting establishments almost breaking down under their synods." In the next generation Cyril and Theodoret would have been happier had they kept at home and settled the points in dispute, as they began them, with theological treatises, dispensing with hostile camps, party votings, and coercive acts. Their controversies, I know, were on vital subjects, the settlement of them was essential, and in settling them the Church was infallible; but in matter of fact and after all they were carried on to their irreversible issue, by the Pope and the civil power, not by the Council to which they were submitted.

4.

It grieves me to think that a man like Theodoret should have played a violent part in these meetings and altercations. I repeat it, I wish he had remained a priest; he would not have been a worse theologian, and he would have been a better man. He would have written more, and quarrelled less. His mind would not have been clouded by resentment, nor his name associated, unjustly associated, with heresy. He would not have called Cyril an Apollinarian, and then been surprised to find the epithet of "Nestorian" fastened on himself. He would not have been so prompt to plunge into hot water, so indignant to find that hot water scalded. He would not have had to learn that a man cannot have so much of fighting as he likes, and no more. He would have recollected that the beginning of strife is like the letting out of waters, and, that if he attempted to {337} thrust others out of the Church, they to a certainty would not be slow in turning out him.

For these acts of mistaken zeal Theodoret received a retributive chastisement from an All-loving Hand. He who had been unjust to a Saint, fell into the clutches of an heresiarch. Theodoret anathematized Cyril, and was anathematized and deposed by Dioscorus. Then he seemed to have forfeited peace for ever: for to Cyril he might have yielded, but to Dioscorus, a teacher of heresy, he could not yield religiously. With a full appreciation of this difficulty, he wrote a letter to his metropolitan, Alexander of Hierapolis. He says:—

Who then should restore Theodoret to himself, to Cyrrhus and to peace? Dioscorus himself cut the knot of the dilemma for him. In high favour with the Emperor, he obtained a decree for the confinement of Theodoret, first within the walls of Cyrrhus, next to his monastery near Apamea. The civil power, thinking to punish him, rescued him from the scene of strife, to which he found himself committed. And when, shortly afterwards, St. Leo vindicated his orthodoxy at Chalcedon, nothing was wanting to his peace, as far as outward circumstances could be the guarantee of it. {338}

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§ 7. His Ecclesiastical Relations

1.

{338} I AM bound, before concluding, to speak more distinctly of those ecclesiastical acts of Theodoret, to which I have made such frequent allusion in the foregoing Sections, though in doing so I shall have to pass from his own history to that of the Church, in which I do not wish to get entangled. Still I cannot escape a task which is necessary for the due understanding of what I have been already saying of him. I have to tell how he made a good fight in the controversies in which he was engaged, though not always a prudent or a skilful one, how Nestorius was known to him, and he would not for a long time anathematize him, how he took up a hostile position, first wrongly, afterwards rightly, against Egypt and Alexandria, how he came into collision with the third Ecumenical Council held at Ephesus, how he discerned and discovered the nascent heresy of Eutyches, how, as I have already said, he was shut up in a monastery as a turbulent busy body, how he was deposed by the second great Ephesian Council, called in the event the "Gang of Thieves," how he was at length vindicated by St. Leo, and taken into his confidence, thus ending his ecclesiastical career. I am tempted to believe (speaking under correction) that St. Leo, if he were alive, would not find any great fault in my view of these matters; but, in order to do justice to it, I must be allowed to go back into the history of the Antiochene and Alexandrian Churches in the foregoing centuries. {339}

2.

There was a remarkable contrast between the ecclesiastical organisation of Syria and of Egypt. The Syrian Church contained within its territory various large cities of high pretensions, intellectual and social, and was rich in centres of thought and learning: on the other hand, when Alexandria was named, the main, if not the only ground was assigned why Egypt claimed to take a leading part in Catholic theological teaching. It followed that the Bishop of Antioch was comparatively a little man, because he had so many rivals, whereas the successor of St. Mark, St. Dionysius, and St. Athanasius, had a sovereign, because a solitary greatness. He came next in ecclesiastical precedence to the Bishop of Rome; he specially was the "Papas" or Pope of the Eastern world, and from an early date he wielded a power in his own patriarchate which, in times of external prosperity and in ordinary hands, was too great for human nature. Such times and such hands were for a long time unknown to the Alexandrian See; the heathen persecutions in Egypt had been succeeded by the Arian; and Athanasius, who was patriarch almost from the fall of heathenism to the fall of the heresy, had too much good sense and too much magnanimity, too much of supernatural sanctity, too much experience of suffering, too much gentleness and large sympathy for others, to abuse his power. But, when he was gone and persecution ceased, and his place was filled by men of coarser grain, who had the inheritance of his name without the control of his presence, and retained his alliance with the West without his tenderness towards the East, it is not wonderful that for the demoralized Churches of Syria, Asia Minor, and Thrace, {340} in which Arianism had run riot, evil days were at hand.

No Church in the breadth of Christendom had had such glorious memories as Alexandria. Its theologians, and its alone (putting aside the occupant of the See of St. Peter), had in the Ante-Nicene times explicitly and consistently maintained our Lord's Eternal Sonship, which Arianism formally denied. And, when Arianism broke out, it was Athanasius and the Egyptians who were "faithful found among the faithless." Even the Infallible See had not been happy in the man who filled it. Liberius had anathematized Athanasius, on a point on which Athanasius was right and Liberius was wrong [Note 1]. Liberius had got the worst of it; and his successors compensated for his great mistake by continuing in the firm friendship of Alexandria. But the time came when the Pope of the day was called on to dissolve that friendship, which zeal and sanctity had originated.

3.

Almost from the death of Athanasius began the {341} spiritual declension of his see and Church. He had named Peter as his successor; but Peter had died prematurely. Then came Timothy; and Timothy and his suffragans are known in history as the fierce adversaries, in the Council of Constantinople, of the peace-loving and accomplished Gregory of Nazianzus, and as co-operating with the conforming Arianizers in driving him off into Cappadocia.

The second triumph of the Egyptians was about sixteen years later, when, without the pretence of an Ecumenical Council, their unscrupulous patriarch, Theophilus, came up to Constantinople with some of his partizans, and, with Court assistance, managed to oust from his see a second Saint, St. John Chrysostom. Here they were even more successful than in their campaign against Gregory; for Chrysostom they sent off not simply into obscurity, but to wither and die in the furthest wilds of Asia Minor.

Next came Cyril, the nephew of the Theophilus aforesaid; he had taken part with his uncle in the persecution of St. Chrysostom; and, when made Patriarch of Alexandria, he did not hesitate, in a letter still extant, to compare the great Confessor to Judas, and to affirm that the restoration of his name to the episcopal roll would be like paying honour to the traitor instead of recognizing Matthias. For twelve years did he and the Egyptians persist in this course, and that in direct opposition to the Holy See, and were in consequence for that long period separate from apostolic communion. Cyril, I know, is a Saint; but it does not follow that he was a Saint in the year 412. I am speaking historically, and among the greatest Saints are to be found those who in early life were committed to very un-saintly doings. I don't think Cyril himself would like his historical acts {342} to be taken as the measure of his inward sanctity; and it is not honest to distort history for the sake of some gratuitous theory. Theologically he is great; in this respect Catholics of all succeeding times have been his debtors: David was the "man after God's own heart;" but as this high glory does not oblige us to excuse his adultery or deny his treachery to his friend, so we may hold St. Cyril to be a great servant of God without considering ourselves obliged to defend certain passages of his ecclesiastical career. It does not answer to call whity-brown, white. His conduct out of his own territory, as well as in it, is often much in keeping with the ways of the uncle who preceded him in his see, and his Archdeacon who succeeded him in it,—his Archdeacon Dioscorus, who, after his elevation showing himself to be, not only a man of violence, but an arch-heretic, brought down upon him the righteous vengeance of St. Leo.

High-handed proceedings are sure to come to grief sooner or later; "a haughty spirit goes before a fall." So had it been with Nestorius, the foremost object of Cyril's zeal. When raised to the see of Constantinople, he had said to the Emperor in his consecration sermon, "Help me to subdue the heretics, and I will help you to conquer the Persians." "All that take the sword," says the Divine Teacher, "shall perish with the sword." The man who made this boast was himself degraded from his high estate, and equitably, for heresy, and died an exile's miserable death in the Egyptian Oasis. Pride is not made for man; not for an individual Bishop, however great, nor for an episcopal dynasty. Sins against the law of love are punished by the loss of faith. The line of Athanasius was fierce and tyrannical, and it fell into the Monophysite heresy. There it remains to this day. A prerogative of infallibility in doctrine, which it had {343} not, could alone have saved the see of Alexandria from the operation of this law.

4.

If such be the judgment which we are led at the distance of fourteen centuries to pass on Alexandrian unscrupulousness, what must have been the indignation of Theodoret and his Syrian party, the loyal adherents to the high line of St. Peter and St. Ignatius, St. Theophilus and St. Babylas, when they either witnessed themselves or heard their fathers tell of these reiterated haughty and imperious acts of a rival patriarchate? How intolerable would be a coarse Egyptian, Theophilus or Dioscorus, in bodily presence, to his refined contemporaries at Antioch or Constantinople! "What right," they would say, "had Egyptians to interfere with Syria, especially in the case of questions in which faith did not enter?" Gregory and Chrysostom were then, as now, the shining lights, the special boast, of oriental Christendom. Gregory is par excellence "the theologian;" Chrysostom is the unrivalled preacher. Inferior men, rushing from Alexandria to Constantinople, had extinguished them both. "Nestorius," they would continue, "is distinctly and dangerously wrong; but we can deal with him ourselves, without help from Egypt. The interference of foreigners will cause a reaction into opposite errors, and kindle a fatal conflagration in Christendom. Nestorius is a proud man. Be gentle with him, and you will manage him; be violent, and you inaugurate a fatal schism. We know how to bring him round or to set him aside with the charity and with the gravity which becomes men of education and religion; but here is this Egyptian, the nephew and pupil of that Theophilus, threatening us, writing to Rome against {344} us, and bringing the Pope down upon us. The partizans of Chrysostom, the Joannites, still exist as a sect among us; who brought this about? We owe this to the violence of Cyril and the like of him; and, if he has his way, we shall soon hear of 'Nestorians.' How can the Roman Pontiff at the distance of 2,000 miles be a better judge what is to be done than we on the spot. He does not understand one word of Greek; he will be dependent on Cyril's translations; and this, when the very gist of the controversy depends on the sense to be assigned to certain Greek and Syriac terms."

Thus Theodoret might argue; and then on the other hand he would be cast down at the thought that, though he was master of Greek, Syriac, and Hebrew, Latin he did not know; perhaps his partizans knew no more of it than he did. Rome was already committed to Cyril, and was instructed by Cyril; and neither he nor they could have fair play. Theodoret's temper was hot, and showed itself in the language which he used of Cyril. He did not indeed call him Judas; but he called him the "Egyptian." He did not rightly estimate the spiritual keenness and the theological power which were in the depths of Cyril's nature. He judged of him by his acts. "Cyril was always attacking some one or other," he would say; "Pagans, or Philosophers, or Novatians, or Jews, or Joannites. Yesterday it had been Chrysostom, today it was Nestorius. Nestorius was intractable certainly, but he did not really hold what was imputed to him. Those should not throw stones who lived in glass-houses. Cyril was an Apollinarian, beyond a doubt; if Nestorius was accused of ascribing to our Lord a double personality, Cyril had actually avowed and maintained that our Lord had but one nature, and tried to persuade the world that St. Athanasius had said the same. He was {345} bound to recant his own heresy before he fell so savagely on Nestorius."

5.

Thoughts such as these, as far as they were indulged in any quarter, were a great injustice to Cyril. Cyril was a clear-headed, constructive theologian. He saw what Theodoret did not see. He was not content with anathematizing Nestorius; he laid down a positive view of the Incarnation, which the Universal Church accepted and holds to this day as the very truth of Revelation. It is this insight into, and grasp of the Adorable Mystery, which constitutes his claim to take his seat among the Doctors of Holy Church. And he traced the evil, which he denounced, higher up, and beyond the person and the age of Nestorius. He fixed the blame upon Theodore of the foregoing generation, "the great commentator," the luminary and pride of the Antiochene school, the master of Theodoret; and he was right, for the exegetical principles of that school, as developed by Theodore, became little less than a system of rationalism.

I have a further quarrel with Theodoret. I wish I could be sure that a spirit of nationalism had not more to do than I have implied above with his theological antagonism to Cyril. While he shows his national jealousy by calling him the "Egyptian," he shows his national esprit de corps by excusing great offences, when the offender is a Syrian. At least I call the persecutors of St. Chrysostom great offenders. Such was his neighbour, Acacius of Berœa, whom he nevertheless praises as "a great prelate," an "apostolical man," as "great, illustrious, renowned," and even as being "his master." Acacius, instead of showing any signs whatever of self-reproach for his cruel opposition to the living Saint, still {346} persecuted the Saint's memory. He had doubtless "the venerableness of a great age;" but what is so dreadful to look upon as a hard-hearted old man? How was it that Theodoret could overlook worse things in Acacius than he denounced in Cyril? {347}

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§ 8. At Ephesus

1.

IT was under such circumstances, and in such a frame of mind as I have described, that Theodoret, together with his Asiatic compatriots, far and near, were called upon by Cyril, under orders from the Roman See, to meet in Ecumenical Council at Ephesus, and to condemn Nestorius, Patriarch of Constantinople, for a great heresy against the Catholic Faith. I am not going to give the history of this Council, but I shall mention some of its salient points and characteristic features, lest on the one hand I should seem to slur over the faults of Theodoret, and lest on the other I should not make clear the extenuating circumstances under which those faults were committed. What occurred indeed at Ephesus is a scandal to the humble Christian, and was as superfluous as it was blameable. The Church did not initiate the Council, nor is it at all clear that a Council was then needed. Cyril had appealed to the Pope against Nestorius; the Pope in Council had taken the side of Cyril. Then the Pope had written round to the principal Bishops of the East, and they in answer had accepted and given their adherence to the faith of Cyril. Even John, Patriarch of Antioch, the friend of Nestorius, had returned this answer to Pope Celestine. In consequence, the Pope had allowed Nestorius just ten days for his recantation, and that interval was long past. In vain had been the entreaties of his own party, urging him to submit to the judgment of the Catholic world. Inclosing letters from {348} the Pope and Cyril, John and the Bishops who acted with him had said, "Read these over carefully; although the period of ten days is none of the longest, you may do all that is needful in one day, or in a few hours. You ought not to refuse the term, Theotocos, as if it were dangerous. If you agree in sentiment with the Fathers, why should you scruple to avow your sound and right belief? The whole Church is unsettled with the question." Theodoret, too, who is even said to have actually composed this remonstrance, little as he liked Cyril, speaks in the same sense, in various of his writings and letters. If the votes of Christendom had been taken, there would have been some dissentients from the expedience of adopting the Theotocos as a symbol of orthodoxy; there would have been none from the doctrine which that symbol enforced. Nestorius then, being contumacious, was to be deposed: to Cyril was committed by the Pope the execution of the sentence; and there was the end of the whole matter. What was the need of a Council? and this, I conceive, was Cyril's judgment.

2.

But so it pleased not the high powers of the state: and it was their interference which brought about a more grievous collision of opinions and parties. It was the Emperor, distrustful of St. Cyril, who insisted on a Council. Theodosius disliked Cyril; he thought him proud and overbearing, a restless agitator and an intriguer; and he told him so in a letter which has come down to us. Next, Nestorius of course was eager for a Council; for it was his only chance of rallying a party in his defence, and of defeating the Pope and Cyril. Also, some pugnacious Catholics at Constantinople, {349} enemies of Nestorius, wanted a Council, as if the suppression of a heresy was not any great gain, unless it was accompanied with noise and confusion, by a combat and a victory. So a Council there was to be, and to the annoyance, I suppose, and displeasure of Cyril. "What is the good of a Council," he would say, "when the controversy is already settled without one?" in something like the frame of mind of the great Duke of Wellington years ago, when he spoke in such depreciatory terms of a "County meeting."

If I may consider this to be St. Cyril's feeling, it will serve to account for his subsequent conduct at Ephesus. "What could a Council do, which had not been done already? its convocation was a mere act of the civil power; it would be little better than a form. What could be stronger than a decision at Rome, followed up by the assent to it of the Catholic world? What was there for the Fathers to debate upon? they would only have to register the conclusions which had already been reached without their meeting. However, if a Council was to be, Nestorius, he might take his word for it, should not have the benefit of it. Cyril was to be president; Memnon, Bishop of Ephesus, was his fast friend; it was hard, if between them Nestorius succeeded in playing any trick." Cyril had on his side the Pope, the monks, the faithful everywhere, Tradition, and the Truth; and he had not much tenderness for the scruples of literary men, for the rights of Councils, or for episcopal minorities.

Accordingly, when he arrived at Ephesus, he took good care that every one should understand that he considered the controversy already at an end, and sentence pronounced, and execution all that then remained to do. In a sermon, which he proceeded to deliver, he spoke of Nestorius as the enemy of the Truth {350} and an outcast from the Church, and then he gave his authority for so speaking of him. He adduced what he called "a sure witness," even the judgment of "the most holy Archbishop of the world," (that is, in other words, the Ecumenical Bishop,) "the Father and Patriarch, Celestine, of Old Rome." He came to Ephesus, not to argue, but to inflict an anathema, and to get over the necessary process with as much despatch as possible.

3.

How the Emperor fixed the meeting of the Council for Pentecost, June 7;—how Nestorius made his appearance with the protection of a body guard and of two Imperial Counts;—how Cyril brought up his fifty Egyptian Bishops, staunch and eager, not forgetting to add to them the stout seamen of his transports;—how Memnon had a following of forty Bishops, and reinforced them with a like body of sturdy peasants from his farms;—how the assembled Fathers were scared and bewildered by these preparations for battle, and, wishing it all over, waited with great impatience a whole fortnight for the Syrian Bishops, while Cyril preached in the churches against Nestorius;—how in the course of that fortnight some of their number fell sick and died;—how the Syrians, on the other hand, were thrown out by the distance of their sees from Antioch, (their place of rendezvous,) by the length of the land journey thence to Ephesus, by the wet weather and the bad roads, by the loss of their horses, and by the fatigue of their forced marches;—how they were thought by Cyril's party to be unpunctual on purpose, but by themselves to be most unfortunate in their tardiness, because they wished to shelter Nestorius;—how, when they were now a few days journey from Ephesus, they sent on thither an express {351} to herald their approach, but how Cyril would not wait beyond the fortnight, though neither the Western Bishops nor even the Pope's Legates had yet arrived;—how on June 22 he opened the Council, in spite of a protest from sixty-six out of 150 Bishops then assembled;—how within one summer's day he cited, condemned, deposed, and degraded Nestorius, and passed his twelve Theses of doctrine called "Anathematisms," which the Pope apparently had never seen, and which the Syrian Bishops, then on their way to Ephesus, had in the year before repudiated as Apollinarian;—how, as if reckless of this imputation, he suffered to stand among the formal testimonies, to guide the Bishops in their decision, gathered from the writings of the Fathers, and still extant, an extract from a writing of Timotheus, the Apollinarian, if not of Apollinaris himself, ascribing this heretical document to Pope Julius, the friend of Athanasius [Note 2];—how in the business of the Council he showed himself confidential with Eutyches, afterwards the author of that very Monophysite heresy, of which Apollinaris was the forerunner;—how, on the fifth day after these proceedings, the Syrian Bishops arrived, and at once, with the protection of an armed force, and without the due forms of ecclesiastical law, held a separate Council of forty-three Bishops, Theodoret {352} being one of them, and anathematized Cyril and Memnon, and their followers;—and how the Council terminated in a disunion, which continued for nearly two years after it, till at length Cyril, John, and Theodoret, and the others on either side, made up the quarrel with mutual explanations;—all this appears matter of history.

Certainly, it is matter of ecclesiastical history; but I should not introduce it here, except for its bearing upon the personal history of Theodoret. As to the dogmatic authority of the doctrine which was defined in the Council, it is not at all affected by the scandals I have been recounting, because it is the law of Divine Providence, both in the world and in the Church, that truth is wrought out by the indirect operation of error and sin, and that the supernatural gifts of the Gospel are held in "earthen vessels," and do not guarantee moral perfection in their possessors. So much in general:—As to the particular case, it must be observed, 1. as I have said already, that the question of doctrine was virtually decided before the Council met; 2. that the quarrel, when its Fathers met, was not about the doctrine itself, but about the Council's proceedings and the conduct of Cyril; and 3. that the party of Bishops, who were so angry with Cyril and the Council, were reconciled to him in the event, and accepted his formula of faith, by which Nestorians were excluded from the Church.

As to Theodoret, we now see what it is that sullies his ecclesiastical reputation, his refusal to condemn Nestorius his acquaintance. We have learned, too, how far this fault bears upon his habitual saintliness. If Cyril was a Saint in spite of his violent acts and his intimacy with Eutyches, Theodoret does not forfeit his claim to be accounted such, by being hot in his resentments and obstinate in his protection of Nestorius. {353}

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§ 9. His Great Opponent

1.

"ALL'S well that ends well." The incipient schism, if it must be so called, began to heal as soon as it began to be. Cyril made an explanation of his belief,—which John and Theodoret accepted; John made a profession of faith, which Cyril accepted. Theodoret made peace with Cyril and Cyril with him, though Theodoret would not accept Cyril's twelve Theses, or anathematize Nestorius. There was a greater Presence in the midst of them than John, Theodoret, or Cyril, and He carried out His Truth and His will, in spite of the rebellious natures of His chosen ones.

It may be asked, however, what are we to think about St. Cyril? It is true that Theodoret may be a Saint, if Cyril is a Saint, but is Cyril a Saint? how can he be a Saint, if what has been said above is matter of historical truth? I answer as follows:—Cyril's faults were not inconsistent with great and heroic virtues, and these he had. He had faith, firmness, intrepidity, fortitude, endurance, perseverance; and these virtues, together with contrition for his failings, were efficacious in blotting out their guilt and saving him from their penal consequences. If martyrs have all their sins forgiven by virtue of their martyrdom, there is nothing strange in saying that there may be other specific sacrifices or exploits of faith or charity, which, when found in combination, have an equivalent claim on the Divine Mercy. Moreover, it is natural to think that Cyril {354} would not have been divinely ordained for so prominent an office in the establishment of dogmatic truth, unless there were in him moral endowments which the surface of history does not reveal to us. And above all, Catholics must believe that Providence would have interposed to prevent his receiving the honours of a Saint in East and West, unless he really was deserving of them.

2.

But I will say something more. We sometimes find in the Lives of the Saints that, though they have already turned to God, and begun that course of obedience and self-sacrifice in which they persevere, nevertheless for a while, nay for a considerable time, they have many serious defects and faults, and a standard of duty which might be higher; and then again, a time comes when they are startled and frightened at themselves, and begin anew with great fervour, as if they had never been converted, and accuse themselves of great ingratitude to their Almighty Benefactor, and of long years of inconsistency on a retrospect of their past years. And this we may suppose was the case with St. Cyril.

For instance, St. Thomas of Canterbury was, even when the King's Chancellor, as Butler tells us, "humble, modest, mortified, recollected, compassionate, charitable to the poor, and chaste;" yet we know that he was at that time a pluralist in Church preferments, Archdeacon of Canterbury, Provost of Beverley, with several prebendal stalls, and a good many livings [Note 3]. Also, he was Warden of the Tower of London, and chatelain of Berk-hampstead. In keeping with these ample sources of income, he was sumptuous in his habits, and magnificent {355} in his retinue, beyond the Norman nobles. Also, though in Deacon's orders, he went to the wars, at the head of 700 knights, and returned thence at the head of 1,200. Moreover, he engaged in single combat with a knight of great distinction, attacked castles, and razed cities to the ground. Great then and many as were his virtues at that time, there was room for a thorough change of life; and such a change took place on his becoming Archbishop. Yet the Lesson in the Breviary views him, before and after this change, as one and the same faithful servant of God. "Whereas," it says, "he had greatly distinguished himself in the Chancellorship, he displayed unconquerable fortitude in his episcopal office." It is possible then for men to have become in the event great Saints, who, even after their conversion, in the early stages of their course, did not correspond to that standard of religious perfection which we expect to see fulfilled in those who are singled out by the Church for canonization.

St. Theresa will supply us with another instance to my purpose, though of a different sort. Butler says she was in the way of holiness from her "infancy;" at the age of seven she ran away from home to preach the Gospel and to die a martyr's death among the Moors. At twelve she devoted herself to the Blessed Virgin. Yet, both before and after she was a professed nun, she had to struggle with a state of lukewarmness and frivolity, and that with but poor success, for a long eighteen years. "At the end of that time," says Butler, "the Saint found a happy change in her soul." But here again, as in the case of St. Thomas, the Breviary does not separate off her years of imperfection from her career of holy living as it does on the contrary separate the first years of St. Augustine or St. Ignatius from their years of divine {356} service. It recognizes the idea of a sanctity, heroic but not faultless, and enables us to discriminate between the person and certain acts of a Saint. "For eighteen years," it says, "harassed by the most serious maladies and with various temptations, Theresa persevered in serving as a good soldier of Christian penance." If then, Theresa's life, looked at as a whole, is truly one of saintliness, though for many years she indulged in careless practices, what difficulty is there in considering that the latter years of Cyril's life were far more pleasing to Divine Sanctity than the earlier?

3.

Thus it is, then, that I read his life:—he grew up among holy men, and at an early age entered upon the clerical, if not the monastic state. Then perhaps he relaxed his strictness; for to him apparently is addressed a letter of St. Isidore, reproaching him with having lost his religious fervour, and entangling himself in secular troubles. Then he went off to the Bosphorus with his uncle, an expedition which was not likely to teach him charity, or increase his merit. When he became Patriarch himself, and transferred his acrimony from Chrysostom to Nestorius, Isidore again interposed with a remonstrance, conjuring him not to make the quarrel eternal under pretext of religion. "Sympathy," he says (such as Theodoret's), "may not see clearly, but antipathy" (such as Cyril's) "does not see at all." He continues:—

"Many of those who are assembled at Ephesus accuse you of seeking to revenge a private quarrel of your own, in preference to striving sincerely to promote the interests of Jesus Christ. He is nephew, they say, to Theophilus; he desires to be thought a man of consequence like his uncle, who wreaked his fury upon the Blessed John, though, to be sure, there is a great difference between the accused parties."—Ep. i. 310. {357}

St. Isidore wrote another letter, with equal plainness:

Isidore prophesied too truly; the schism lasts to this day. The Arians persecuted, and they came to nought: the Nestorians were persecuted, and they expanded into a large communion, which in the middle ages reached from Syria to China; and they keep up their opposition to the Church still. Cyril's policy of violence has not even had the recommendation of success; though St. Isidore takes a higher ground than that of expediency.

4.

However, we must believe that Cyril cancelled at length whatever was wrong in his words or his deeds by good works in compensation; and the last thirteen years of his life give us grounds for this confidence. After the banishment of Nestorius no violent act is recorded of Cyril. He wrote much, but he used no coercion, ecclesiastical or secular. In one of his letters which has been preserved to us, we find him advising his correspondent to accept the orthodox profession of those who came to him without rousing them to opposition by inquisitorial examinations. When he found that he could not gain over the Eastern Churches to his {358} own view of Theodore, he gave over his attacks on Theodore's writings and memory, leaving it for time to justify forebodings, which neither by force nor by controversy he could prevail on his contemporaries to share with him. During the last six years of his life his seclusion is so complete that he, the ruling spirit of the preceding twenty, adds not a page to the history of his times. Such a silence is eloquent; and at this day we enjoy what he did well, and should thank God for it. {359}

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§ 10. The Last Years of Theodoret

1.

BUT it is of Theodoret, not of Cyril, that I am relating the history. He outlived his opponent many years: and so entirely had he made up his quarrel with him that, in his "Eranistes," written about A.D. 447, against the then nascent Eutychianism, which he had so long been foretelling, he quotes as many as nine passages from Cyril among the testimonies to Catholic truth contained in the writings of preceding Fathers, "the great lights of the world," as he calls them, "and noble champions of the Faith." [Note 4] And it was this persevering zeal against that form of error, which (after the Gnostics) first Apollinaris and then Eutyches taught, which brought him under the heavy hand of the heretical Dioscorus. Then followed that series of trials from the heretical party, which embittered his latter years, and to which allusion has so many times been made in the portions of his letters which I have above quoted. At length the blow fell upon him, which his orthodoxy had provoked. In that Council, held at Ephesus in the year {360} 449, since called for its combined heresy and cruelty the "Gang of Thieves," a Council of 150 Bishops, and professing to be Ecumenical, and containing among its members the Patriarchs of Alexandria and Jerusalem, the Exarchs of Ephesus, Cæsarea, Heraclea, and Thessalonica, besides the Bishops of other great Eastern sees, Theodoret, without being heard in his defence, and without a protesting voice even from the Bishops of Syria, was formally condemned and deposed as an heresiarch, his doctrine anathematized, the faithful warned against holding converse with him, lodging him, feeding him, or even giving him water, while the Imperial government back up this stern sentence by stripping him of the revenues of his see.

2.

This brings us to the last act of his history; he had but one refuge; the See of St. Peter had had no part in this atrocious proceeding. To Pope Leo he then appealed, and some extracts from his letter to him will bring us close upon the end of this memoir.

He tells St. Leo that, in his long episcopate of twenty-six years,

He continues:—

"I await then the decision of your Apostolic See, and I supplicate {361} and beseech your holiness to succour me, who invoke your righteous and just tribunal, and to order me to hasten to you, and to explain to you my teaching, which follows the steps of the Apostles. I have written books, some twenty years ago, some eighteen, others fifteen, against Arians and Eunomians, against Jews and Gentiles, against the Persian Magi; moreover, concerning the Universal Divine Providence, and other works upon the Divine Being, and about the Incarnation. And, by God's grace, I have expounded both the Apostolical writings and the Prophets. It is easy to ascertain by means of these writings whether I have maintained strictly the rule of faith, or have swerved from it.

3.

St. Leo acted towards Theodoret according to the claims he had upon the justice and charity of the Supreme Pontiff. He effected his reconciliation with the Egyptian and Oriental Bishops in the great Ecumenical Council of Chalcedon, held in 452; in which Dioscorus and Eutyches were deservedly cast out of the Church. Theodoret, on his part, felt he had defended Nestorius too long; twenty years had passed since he refused to anathematize him; but now, as considering him to have died in obstinate heresy, he no longer persisted in his refusal.

Pope Leo proceeded to ask his services in repressing {362} both Nestorian and Eutychian errors in the East. A letter is extant, in which he addresses him as his fellow-labourer, and makes him, as if officially, his informant and adviser as to the course of theological thought in that part of Christendom. However, few years remained of life to Theodoret. He does not seem to have taken upon himself the duties or the distinction of the function with which Leo intrusted him. He made over the charge of his diocese to Hypatius, and retired into the monastery, in which forty years before he had prepared himself for such work as it might please Providence to put upon him. There at length he regained that peace which he had enjoyed in youth, and had ever coveted. There he passed from the peace of the Church to the peace of eternity. His death took place about A.D. 457.

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Notes

1. It is astonishing to me how any one can fancy that Liberius, in subscribing the Arian confession, promulgated it ex cathedrâ, considering he was not his own master when he signed it, and it was not his drawing up. Who would say that it would be a judgment of the Queen's Bench, or a judicial act of any kind, if ribbon-men in Ireland, seized on one of her Majesty's judges, hurried him into the wilds of Connemara, and there made him, under terror of his life, sign a document in the very teeth of an award which he had lately made in court in a question of property. Surely for an ex cathedrâ decision of the Pope is required his formal initiation of it, his virtual authorship in its wording, and his utterance amid his court, with solemnities parallel to those of an Ecumenical Council. It is not a transaction that can be done in his travelling dress, in some road-side inn, or town-tavern, or imperial servants'-hall. Liberius's subscription can only claim a Nag's Head's sort of infallibility.
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2. Epistolæ hujus fragmentum habemus, tum græcè in Concil. Ephes. Act i., in Apologet. Cyrill. adv. Orientales, ad Anathem. 6. apud Photium cod. 230, tum latinè ap. Marium Mercatorem, et apud Facundum.

Quod autem in Ephesino Concilio prolatum est, à Cyrillo excerptum esse, Hypatius Ephesinus in Collat. cum Severianis, necnon Eulogius Alexandrinus, testantur ...

… Leontius, de Sect. 8, ex plurium exemplarium fide, asserere non dubitavit, non Julii, sed Timothei, qui Apollinarium præceptorem ac magistrum habuit, esse epistolam illam, ex quâ descriptum fuit.

Ex quo M. Lequien epistolam integram nobiscum communicavit, Leontii censuræ prorsus subscribendum duximus, nisi quis eam Apollinario ipsi, non ejus discipulo Timotheo, adjudicare malit.—Coustant. Epist. Rom. Pontif, Appendix p. 71.
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3. Vid. Milman's Latin Christianity.
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4. With Baronius (ann. 444, n. 13), Tillemont, etc. I utterly scout the idea that the atrocious letter on Cyril's death, ascribed to Theodoret in the fifth Ecumenical Council, is really his writing. If a man of fifty, a Bishop, and an ascetic, could allow himself to write such a letter, he would be unworthy of recognition or respect of any kind. The Fathers of the Council are no authority in such a matter. If the Fathers of the third Council took a letter of the heresiarch Apollinaris to be the authoritative composition of a Pope and a Saint, certainly the Fathers of the fifth may have committed the lesser blunder, especially at a time when party spirit burned so fiercely, of imputing to Theodoret a private letter which was not his writing.
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