Nestorius and the road to Ephesus

Dates: c. 386–c. 451 (patriarch of Constantinople 428–431) · Wikipedia
Summary: Nestorius was an Antiochene monk and preacher fetched to Constantinople for his eloquence, whose objection to the title Theotokos ignited the crisis and destroyed him. This page tells the quarrel from his side: the first sermon that promised the emperor a purge of heretics; the defence of “Christ-bearer” over “God-bearer”; the dueling letters with Cyril and the misjudged appeals to Rome; his refusal to answer a council convened by his own prosecutor before his defenders had arrived; his deposition, retirement, and long exile to the Egyptian desert; and the extraordinary self-defence he wrote there, the Bazaar of Heracleides, lost for fifteen centuries and recovered in 1910 — which reopened the question whether he ever held the heresy that bears his name.

The Antiochene brought to the capital (428)

Nestorius was a presbyter and monk of Antioch, trained in the Antiochene school that guarded the distinction of Christ's two natures, and famous as a preacher. Fetched to Constantinople and consecrated on 10 April 428, he opened his episcopate with a sermon before the emperor that has defined his reputation ever since:

— quoted in Socrates, Church History VII.29, source. Socrates, who is often sympathetic to him, still judged the words to betray “levity of mind, and violent and vainglorious temperament” — the zeal that would soon be turned against himself.¹

“Mother of Christ,” not “Mother of God” (428–430)

The dispute began when his chaplain Anastasius preached against calling the Virgin Theotokos, and Nestorius defended him. His fear was that “God-bearer” either made the eternal Godhead take its origin from a creature or fused the natures in the manner of Apollinaris; he attributed the birth and the suffering to the humanity, and preferred a title that named the united Christ:

— Second Letter to Cyril, source. His sharper formulations were less careful — “I could never be induced to call that God which admitted of being two months old or three months old” — and these his enemies quoted against him as a denial of the Incarnation. His fuller position is on his christology page and the Theotokos timeline.²

Misjudging Rome (430)

Nestorius wrote to Pope Celestine as an equal, raising the case of Pelagian refugees he was sheltering and treating Cyril's protests as an obstruction to be brushed aside — he charged that his rival was “hunting for subterfuges to avoid a holy synod.” But Cyril had already sent Rome a Latin dossier of Nestorius's own sermons, and Celestine read Alexandria's brief. The Roman synod of August 430 condemned him and, fatefully, deputed Cyril to execute the sentence.³

Ephesus: the council he would not attend (June 431)

At Ephesus, Nestorius found himself summoned before a council opened by his own prosecutor before his defenders — John of Antioch and the Syrian bishops — had arrived. He refused to appear, and said the guard at his lodging was for his protection, not an obstruction:

— Bazaar of Heracleides, Book 2, part 1, source. Summoned three times and three times refusing, he was deposed in a single day. To the synod's messengers, Socrates reports, he said: “I cannot term him God who was two and three months old… I am therefore clear of your blood, and shall in future come no more among you.”⁴

The counter-council, and the gold (June 431–432)

Nestorius's vindication came — and evaporated. Five days after his deposition John of Antioch arrived and, under the protection of the count Candidian, held a counter-council that deposed Cyril and Memnon; the emperor at first confirmed both sentences. But Cyril slipped his guard and reached Alexandria, and his agents spent an extraordinary sum in gold at the imperial court. Nestorius, watching his cause bought out from under him, named the transaction plainly:

— Bazaar of Heracleides, Book 2, part 1, source. The list of gifts was real — it survives in Cyril's own chancery memorandum — and it bought the palace's acquiescence in the verdict already passed.⁵

Retirement, exile, and the desert (431–451)

Abandoned at court and by the Formula of Reunion that reconciled Cyril and John in 433, Nestorius asked to return to his old monastery near Antioch, and did. It was not the end. A first edict confined him there; a second, in 435, banished him far into Upper Egypt, to the Great Oasis of the western desert. Socrates, writing while he still lived, closes: “he was banished to the Oasis, where he still remains.” He was carried off in a desert raid and released, moved under guard from place to place, and died in the Thebaid about 451.⁶

The Bazaar of Heracleides, and the reopening (c. 450 — twentieth century)

In his last years in the desert Nestorius wrote a sustained defence of his whole career and doctrine, the Bazaar of Heracleides, protesting that he had never taught two sons but had been condemned for a Christology he did not hold:

— Bazaar of Heracleides, fragment 292. The work was lost for fifteen centuries; when its Syriac text was published in 1910, a run of scholars — Bethune-Baker, Loofs, and later McGuckin — reopened the question whether Nestorius was ever really a “Nestorian.” That question is weighed on its own page.⁷

Notes

Sources

Socrates Scholasticus, Church History VII.29 (NPNF² vol. 2) — the consecration on 10 April 428, the address to the emperor, and the judgement of “levity of mind, and violent and vainglorious temperament.” Nestorius's Antiochene formation, dates (c. 386–c. 451), and birth at Germanicia in Syria: Nestorius, Wikipedia. ↩
Nestorius, Second Letter to Cyril — “the holy virgin is more accurately termed mother of Christ than mother of God.” The “two or three months old” form is quoted in Evagrius, Church History I.2 and Socrates VII.32 (with Anastasius's original sermon). His fuller position is on the christology timeline. ↩
Nestorius, Two Letters to Pope Celestine (trans. M. DelCogliano) — the charge that Cyril was “hunting for subterfuges to avoid a holy synod”; also at tertullian.org. Celestine's Roman synod of August 430 and its commission to Cyril: the Ephesus acts (NPNF² vol. 14) and P. Schaff, History of the Christian Church, vol. 3, §138. ↩
Nestorius on the soldiers at his door (“not that they might do any wrong unto you but that they might hinder you from doing wrong unto me”): Nestorius, Bazaar of Heracleides, Book 2, part 1. His outburst to the messengers and the deposition of “the 28th of June”: Socrates, Church History VII.34; the decree at the Ephesus acts. ↩
John of Antioch's counter-council under Candidian: Evagrius, Church History I.5; Schaff, vol. 3, §138. Nestorius's charge (“the gold of iniquity was exacted”) and Cyril's escape: Bazaar of Heracleides, Book 2, part 1. The gift-list is Cyril's own Letter 96 (ACO 1.4, pp. 224–225), translated by R. Pearse; studies: P. Batiffol (1911) and V. Menze, “Blessings, Bribes, and Bishops.” ↩
The Formula of Reunion (433) abandoning Nestorius: Cyril, Letter 39. The exile edicts and the Great Oasis: Evagrius, Church History I.7 (“by a second edict of Theodosius, he is banished to the place called Oasis”) and Socrates VII.34 (“he was banished to the Oasis, where he still remains”). The 3 August 435 edict, the transfer to the Great Oasis (c. 436), and death c. 451: Nestorius, Wikipedia. ↩
Nestorius, Bazaar of Heracleides, fragment 292 — “we have not two Christs or two sons.” The work (Syriac ed. Bedjan, 1910; English trans. G. R. Driver & L. Hodgson, Oxford, 1925; intro at tertullian.org) reopened the question of his orthodoxy, pressed by J. F. Bethune-Baker, Nestorius and His Teaching (1908), F. Loofs (1914), and J. A. McGuckin, St. Cyril of Alexandria and the Christological Controversy (1994). Weighed at “Was Nestorius misrepresented?” ↩