S. Cyril uses the word habitually e.g. it occurs five times in his Treatise to the Princesses Arcadia and Marina on the right faith: he uses also other like expressions, true union, true and Natural Union, inseverable, indissoluble. S. Eulogius, one of S. Cyril's successors in his see (A. D. 581) and a contemporary of Pope S. Gregory, in his famous explanation that the Council of Ephesus forbad oppositions to, not definitions of, the Faith, alludes to this expression and says, For it [the Council of Ephesus] does define what none before it defined. Nay its ἡ καθ' ὑπόστασιν ἕνωσις is a definition not made by the elder Synods. (S. Eulogius in Phot. Bibl. cod. 230 translated in the above-cited On the clause, And the Son in regard &c. p. 80.)
7. i. e. Nestorius is citing S. Cyril himself in his letter to the monks ; see Epp. p. 3 d, and S. Cyril's reply just below, is that blamed by you which has been said by us ?
8. The Roman Editors of the Concilia, who first published this treatise in 1608, conjectured that οὐδεὶς , no one, might be a slip for οὐδὲν , nothing, translating, But with no thought of how base these things are. Perhaps some words have slipped out.
9. See S. Ath. against Arians, iii. § 29 p. 410. O.T. note e. where this passage is translated. S.Cyril in his 16th Paschal homily, about this same time (A.D. 430) says, "Yet He was (as I said) God in the manhood too, allowing to the nature that is ours to advance through its own laws, yet along therewith preserving the genuineness of the Godhead: for thus and no otherwise will both the bairn ( τὸ τεχθὲν ) be conceived of as by Nature God, and the Virgin which bare will be said to be mother, not of flesh and blood simply, like the mothers with us, but of the Lord and of God Who hath hidden Himself under our likeness." . . . "For as the Precious and all-holy Flesh which was forth of the holy Virgin hath become the own of the Word who is forth of God the Father, so too all things beseeming the flesh save only sin: but chiefly and before all else will birth of a woman beseem the flesh. Hence the Godhead by Itself if it be conceived of apart from flesh will be 'without mother' and that full rightly: but when the mystery Christ-ward is brought forward, the truth as to this will be other and subtil exceedingly. For we shall deem, if we choose to think aright and go the most unerring way, that the Virgin bare not bare ( γυμνὸν ) Godhead but rather the Word from forth of God the Father, Incarnate and United to flesh, she who was taken to aid in bearing after the flesh Him who was united to flesh. Emmanuel therefore is God: and mother of God will she too be called who bare after the flesh God who for our sakes appeared in flesh." t. v. ii. pp. 227. 228.
10. i. e. S. Cyril's Letter to the Monks, above-cited, which Nestorius was in part contradicting in the sermon to which the extract belongs.
11. S. Cyril uses exactly the same expression in his Letter to the Monks (Epp. 8 c) and in the first of the chapters that he appended to his great Letter to Nestorius (see note k), "If any confess not that Emmanuel is God in truth and consequently the holy Virgin Mother of God: for she hath borne after the flesh the Word from forth of God made flesh, be he anathema." But the word carnally or after the flesh was not understood by many: e. g. Andrew Bishop of Samosata thought that it contradicted the miraculous Birth from a virgin. S. Cyril explains his meaning in his reply to Andrew; " we said that the Virgin bare the Word of God made flesh according to the Scriptures, i. e, Man: bare Him carnally, i.e. according to the flesh. . . . Saying according to the flesh is not taking away the miraculousness of the Birth .... but teaches that as God begets Divinely or in God-befitting manner according to His own Nature, so too man humanly or flesh carnally." Def. xii capp. adv. Episc. orient, cap. 1. p. 100 d e. See also below Schol. §31.& above p. 22. note o. Theodoret's objection to S. Cyril's first chapter is of a different kind and is identical with that of Nestorius (above p. 7, below p. 33 and note b): the notion that γεγέννηκε , she hath borne, necessitates the conversion of the Godhead into flesh. In Andrew's case, the meaning of the word carnally was misunderstood, in Theodoret's, the word was apparently unnoticed.
12. Eusebius an Advocate at Constantinople; he afterwards put out a protest addressed to the Clergy and Laity of that City (Conc. Eph. part. i. cap. 13 t. iii. 888 ed. Col.) that Nestorius was reviving the false teaching of Paul of Samosata, condemned nearly two centuries before (Marius Mercator, whose translation into Latin of S. Cyril's Defences of his 12 chapters or Anathemas against Nestorius' errors and of his Scholia on the Incarnation, has come down to us, likewise put out a paper of like kind, Opera pp. 50 sqq. ed. Baluz 1684). Many years on we read of Eusebius, as Bishop of Dorylaeum in Phrygia, as a friend of Eutyches, but after fruitless efforts to reclaim him, also his accuser before S. Flavian, Archbishop of Constantinople. In November 448, a Synod was called of Bishops who chanced from one cause or another to be there: these amounted to thirty. The circumstance of Constantinople being the capital of the Eastern Empire occasioned Bishops to be often there. (The Archbishop of Alexandria though apparently he had habitually one of nis Deacons there, as a sort of deputy, or Proctor, in the Imperial City, seems on more especial occasions to have had a Bishop there: e.g. S.Cyril sent his great Synodal Letter to Nestorius by four Bishops, Theopemptus, Daniel, Potamon and Comarius: of these Theopemptus Bishop of Cabasa and Daniel Bishop of Darnis, went to Ephesus and voted in the Council: Potamon and Comarius remained at Constantinople, for one of S. Cyril's earliest Letters after the Council (Epp. p. 81) was directed to them conjointly with the great Archimandrite Dalmatius, the Priest Eulogius, S. Cyril's Proctor, and another. A brief letter of S. Cyril's written a few days later (pp. 91 sq.) when he was in ward at Ephesus, is directed to Theopemptus, Potamon and Daniel. Fleury (bk. 26 § 3) suggests that Theopemptus and Daniel went back to Constantinople with Letters from the Council.) Before this Synod the Bishop Eusebius accused Eutyches, who was condemned. The August of the next year, 449, the Robber-Council of Ephesus deposed S.Flavian (whose Martyrdom followed immediately for he was driven into exile to Epipa in Lydia and died there) and Eusebius. Eusebius was likewise ejected from his See and stayed at Rome as Pope S. Leo tells the Empress Pulcheria in a letter (S. Leo ad Pulch. 59 [79 col. 1037 ed. Ball.] cited by Fleury 27, 49 english translation): Eusebius was at the Council of Chalcedon, he was vindicated at the close of the 1st Session (t. iv. 1189 Col). In the third Session he presents to the Council a petition against Dioscorus (ib. 1249,1251). In the fifth Session he was one of those engaged in the handling concerning the holy faith, τρακται̣σάντων περὶ τῆς ἁγίας πίστεω (ib. 1452): he signs in the sixteenth session (ib. 1737). A rescript of the Emperor Marcian annuls all that had been done against him. This Rescript addressed to Palladius, Praetorian Prefect, Valentinian, Praefect of Illyria, Tatian Praefect of the City, Vincomalus Master of the offices (see Theod. Ep. 140 tit.) and Consul-designate, is given as a sequel to the Acts of the Council of Chalcedon (part. 3 cap. xi. t. iv. 1809 ed. Col.). See Fleury Eccl. Hist. Books xxv. xxvii.and xxviii. in the English translation edited by Dr. Newman, Oxford, 1844.
Eusebius' brave and loyal conduct on this present occasion while yet a layman, is mentioned in the Council of Chalcedon itself; for when that Council had heard the Letter of S. Cyril to John Archbishop of Antioch to which they gave the Ecumenical sanction of the Church, some of the Bishops called out, ..., Eusebius deposed Nestorius. It is likewise mentioned by Evagrius (Eccl. Hist. i. 9) who says, ... , exercising the Bishop's office at Dorylaeum, who while yet an advocate first convicted the blasphemy of Nestorius. Leontius (in the 7th century) writing against Nestorius and Eutyches (contra Nest. et Eutych. lib. 3 in Galland. Bibl. Vet. Patrum xii. 697) speaks of it too.
13. The people's applause during the sermons of S. Augustine and S. Chrysostom are often mentioned: Nestorius alludes to the applause of his own sermons a little above, p. 11. Two or three years later when the troubles which followed on the council through the Eastern Bishops misunderstanding S. Cyril and his language, were beginning to be allayed, and one of them, the pious and aged Paul Bishop of Emesa, was preaching at Alexandria before the Archbishop, the very words that the people uttered in their delight are preserved to us (concilia t. iii. 1617, 1621 ed. Col.). Here Eusebius' cry was one of zeal for the Faith, contradicting the denial of Truth which he heard.
14. i.e. Eusebius afterwards bishop of Dorylaeum.
See the same objection brought forward in the treatise Quod Unus Christus, given below.
16. see Book 2, beginning of Book 5 and §§ 4.5. Def. xii capp. contr.Theod. cap. 7 init. de recta fide to the Emperor, pp. 32, 37, 38, to the Princesses, 47 b 70 e 85 c 115 c d 120 d, to the Empresses Pulcheria and Eudoxia 131 b & § 18 p. 148 b Quod Unus Christus see below. See also Theodoret in his letter to Bishop Timothy (Ep.130).
17. Here the MS. leaves a blank of about 12 letters: these blanks sometimes indicate that the scribe could not decipher the word in the ms. which he was copying.
18. The Creed that S. Cyril (here as elsewhere) recites above is the Nicene Creed, as actually put forth by that Council: Nestorius, being Archbishop of Constantinople, had (not unnaturally) been quoting from that of Constantinople, which is the Nicene Creed in the form in which it was afterwards put forth by the Council of Constantinople (A. D. 381), and in which it is familiar to us. See the two in Rev. Dr. Heurtley's De Fide et symbolo, pp. 5 and 17 ed. 18G9. and translated in parallel columns with the variations marked in my Father's, The Councils of the Church to the close of the second general Council of Constantinople, A. D. 381, 1857 pp. 312 sqq. For the very slow steps by which the Creed of Constantinople became well-known beyond the more immediate neighbourhood of Constantinople itself see "On the clause, And the Son, in regard &c." pp. 37 sqq; for the beginnings of its Liturgical use, in Spain, pp. 49, 65; in France p. 66; Germany, Rome p. 66; the East, note 2 pp. 184, 185. Even John Archbishop of Antioch in his Letter to S. Proclus written a few years after this treatise of S. Cyril, inserts the Creed of Nicea, Synodicon cap. 196. Conc. iv. 452 Col. Diogenes bishop of Cyzicus, in the Council of Chalcedon, said, "The holy fathers who were afterwards, explained the, was Incarnate, which the holy fathers in Nicea said, by 'From forth the Holy Ghost and Mary the Virgin.'" The Egyptians and the most pious Bishops with them called out, No one admits addition (Conc. Chalc. Act 1.1. iv. 913 ed. Col. quoted On the &c. p. 40.): probably with a keen recollection of what their great Archbishop had here said, objecting to Nestorius as adding them: for the Council was holden in 451, only 7 years after he had departed to his rest.
On the antiquity of these words though not in the actual Nicene Creed, see my Father's note P to Tertullian in the Library of the Fathers, pp. 503, 504.
19. Theodoret, having lived amid the same school of thought as Nestorius, shares with him the dread of the Divine Nature being imagined to be changed into flesh. In his objection to S. Cyril's first chapter (see above p. 24 note q) Theodoret says, "It is plain then from what has been said that the form of God was not turned into servant's form but remaining what it was, took servant's form.....having moulded Himself a Temple in the Virgin's womb, He was co-with that which was moulded and conceived and formed and borne: wherefore we style that holy Virgin too, Mother of God, not as having borne God by Nature but man united to God Who moulded him(p. 204 c d e)." In his Letter to the Monks of the province he says, "For in his first chapter he casts out the economy that was wrought for our sakes, teaching that God the Word hath not taken human nature but was Himself changed into flesh," Ep. 151 p. 1292; Migne, t. 83. col. 1417. In his letter to the Monks of Constantinople written in his later years (Tillemont Art. xi. fin. thinks about 451) he says that SS.Basil, Gregory, Amphilochius, Pope Damasus, Ambrose, Cyprian, Athanasius, Alexander his teacher, Meletius, Flavian, lights of the East, Ephraim the lyre of the Spirit; John [Chrysostom], Atticus, Ignatius, Polycarp, Irenaeus, Justin, Hippolytus, and (he then Bishop of Rome, the most holy Leo, all taught that "One Son is the Only-Begotten Son of God and God before the ages Begotten ineffably from out the Father, and that after the Incarnation He is called both Son of man and man, not turned hereinto but assuming what is ours." Ep. 145 p. 1253. Further on in the same Epistle Theodoret speaks also of the Manhood remaining: he says that whereas our Lord raised other bodies free from all blemish, "in His own He left the tokens of sufferings that He might through the sufferings convict of erring those who deny the assumption of His Body, and through the print of the nails might teach them who imagined that the Body had been changed into another nature, that it had remained in its proper form." ib p. 1254.
20. This addition occurs in the same words on S. John i. 13 p. 107 O.T. (cf. an allusion on S.John xiv. 24) and in Scholia, § 18.
21. διαμεμήνυκεν . This emendation of the Roman editors for διαμεμένηκεν is confirmed to us by citations of Niketas in his catena on S. John. (This Niketas was Archbishop of Heraklea in Thrace in the xith century, he compiled ample Commentaries on Holy Scripture made up of copious extracts from the Fathers: those on the Psalms, SS. Matthew, Luke, John, the Epistle to the Hebrews, perhaps a fragment of that to the Romans have reached us either published or in MSS.: for the psalms and S. John at least Niketas made use of the labours of those who before him had constructed catenae of Fathers and he had besides access to works of the Fathers now lost, of which he has thus preserved something.)
22. This passage is given rather fuller, and at greater length by Mercator, with the title, Also in the nineteenth quire, when he is speaking as it were against Arius. (p. 112, Bal.)
This text was transcribed by Roger Pearse, 2005. All material on this page is in the public domain - copy freely.
Greek text is rendered using unicode .