27. The ciborium was properly a covering built over the altar, and supported by four pillars at the corners; and in this sense S. Chrysostom uses it to explain the 'silver shrines of Diana,' in the Acts. Subsequently the name was also given to the pyx erected under it for the reservation of the host.
28. Amasea is in Pontus, and Eutychius had been apocrisiarius there before his elevation to the see, and had retired to his old monastery upon his deposition.
29. [Syriac] literally means, that John was an impostor, e0piqe/thj , his appointment being uncanonical, and therefore invalid.
30. This simply means that he drew up a Catena, or string of passages from the fathers in support of his views.
31. Or, perhaps, 'but are made into others.' Eustathius, in his life of Eutychius, gives no explanation of John's assertion, that originally he was a follower of Paul of Samosata, if such is the meaning of [Syriac]: but he refers to this charge of his being an Athanasian, and says that he held no more than the fathers generally, in whose writings he was deeply versed, and of whom Gregory said, 'Despise the flesh, which passes away; care for the soul, which is immortal.' And Basil, 'Would that I might put off this heavy cloak, and receive a lighter one.'
The ill fate of Eutychius' books evidently was a favourite topic with our author, as he tells the whole story again in lib. iii. cc. 17, 18.
32. [Syriac] evidently is for Xlanidwtoi\ , but who are meant by the term is uncertain: as Chlanis, teste Du Cange, is however used for Chlamys, I imagine they may possibly be the young officers of the royal bodyguard, generally called Chlamydati.
33. The change of Flavianus to Fravianus is not unusual in the Graecising of Roman names. Thus in the lists of the patriarchs of Constantinople we find Phravitas, i. e. Flavitas, still better known as Flavianus II., patriarch A. D. 488-490.
34. The Trishagion was a hymn originally taken from Is. vi. 3, but subsequently remodelled till its words were, 'O holy God, holy mighty One, holy Immortal, have mercy upon us.' Into this Peter the fuller, patriarch of Antioch in A. D. 460, introduced the words, 'that wast crucified for us;' with the express purpose of supporting the views of the Monophysites, and succeeded in the patriarchate of Antioch, when their views were for many years in the ascendant.
35. The a!rtoi politikoi\ are fully explained below in III. 14.
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