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Early Christian Schisms - IV: Ephesus, the Robbers Council, and Chalcedon - Extra Hist (Patreon)

Published:
2016-05-20 17:08:38
Edited:
2018-05-15 02:54:29
Imported:
2022-01

Content

"You can't excommunicate me! I excommunicate YOU!" And so it begins...

Files

Early Christian Schisms - IV: Ephesus, the Robber Council, and Chalcedon - Extra History

The Council of Ephesus meant to heal a rift between Nestorius of Constantinople and Cyril of Alexandria, but instead it set off a chain of ecumenical councils that disagreed with each other, excommunicated rivals, and ultimately led to more factions within the church. Support us on Patreon! http://bit.ly/EHPatreon --- (Episode details below) Grab your Extra Credits gear at the store! http://bit.ly/ExtraStore Subscribe for new episodes every Saturday! http://bit.ly/SubToEC Watch the beginning of the Early Christian Schisms! http://bit.ly/1TvNot1 Play games with us on Extra Play! http://bit.ly/WatchEXP Talk to us on Twitter (@ExtraCreditz): http://bit.ly/ECTweet Follow us on Facebook: http://bit.ly/ECFBPage Get our list of recommended games on Steam: http://bit.ly/ECCurator ____________ Disclaimer: This series is intended for students, to give them a broad overview of a complicated subject that has driven world history for centuries. Our story begins and focuses on the Romane Empire. A centuary after Constantine, the Emperor Theodosius II found himself wrapped up in yet more theological disputes. His chosen patriarch of Constantinople, Archbishop Nestorius, had angered many other church leaders with his teachings that Christ had separate human and divine natures. Cyril of Alexandria wrote to the Pope in Rome for support against Nestorius, and received permission to excommunicate him. Nestorius responded by having the emperor call an ecumenical council, at which he intended to excommunicate Cyril. But Cyril acted first, declaring for the excommunication of Nestorius and forming a majority by pushing the council to begin early before the supporters of Nestorius could gather. When they did, they formed their own council and excommunicated Cyril right back, only to be excommunicated in turn by Cyril's Council of Ephesus. Theodosius II attempted to resolve this by calling a second council, but this time none of the Western delegates had time to arrive and in their absence, monophysite leaders from the East excommunicated Nestorius again and declared monophysitism the official doctrine of the church. Those who didn't get to participate called this the Robbers Council and refused to acknowledge it. Then Theodosius II died, and this fight devolved onto his successor, Marcian. Marcian called together the Council of Chalcedon to rule on the previous councils, where it was finally decided that Christ had two unified natures, human and divine, and everyone who'd supported the Robbers Council should be excommunicated. Instead of bringing Christians together under an orthodox theology, they split the faith as those who wouldn't accept their decisions continued to preach and believe their own doctrines and a multitude of Christian sects became their own separate orders. Ultimately, these new denominations followed regional lines, which meant that different areas of the empire formed distinct cultural identities shaped in part by their faith, and these areas were less connected to Constantinople and became the first to split off as the empire weakened over the centuries. ____________ ♫ Get the intro music here! http://bit.ly/1EQA5N7 *Music by Demetori: http://bit.ly/1AaJG4H ♫ Get the outro music here! http://bit.ly/23isQfx *Music by Sean and Dean Kiner: http://bit.ly/1WdBhnm

Comments

Anonymous

I excommunicate YOUR MOTHER.

E

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Anonymous

Only episode four? So what will you be doing the next two weeks?

KvaGram
>>1836196

Humm... looked it over. Not interested. You sure it is a good idea to advertise that way?

Kira Stegner

I want so much more of this! This is great! *Watches eagerly*

ExtraCredits
>>1836202

After Lies (which is next week!), we'll be doing two one-offs. The first will be the History of Writing, and the second will be Samuel Ha-Nagid.

Anonymous

Wait a minute, you've made a series covering the early Christian schisms, and yet you've left out the Gnostic controversies? I don't know about you guys, but I think when you're making a series on these kinds of things, leaving out a controversy that the Church is still undergoing to this day is a pretty big deal.

Jim McGeehin

It's absolutely true that the schism took on political dimensions, including one that plagued our old friends, Belisarius and Theodora. When Belisarius received papal sanction for his Roman campaign that got him to take back the eternal city, this schism reared its ugly head, and what followed was a tangled mess of politics. The pope at the time, Silverius, was beforehand, a lowly subdeacon, who was appointed to be the Pope by Theodahad, as the Ostrogoths did not trust the diaconate and hoped that a lower ranked man being named the Pope would instill loyalty and pro-Gothic sentiment. However, Silverius sanctioned Belisarius's campaign into Rome, lending him much popular support. When Witiges laid siege to Rome, Belisarius ousted Silverius and appointed his successor, Pope Vigilius, the legate to Constantinople, as the new Pope. According to some sources, Silverius, perhaps fearing for his life or anticipating a Gothic success in the siege, had conspired with the Goths to open the gate, the plot was discovered, and Belisarius kicked him out for treachery. Other sources suggest that Vigilius had promised Theodora that he would restore Anthimus, a pro-Monophysite ex-Patriarch of Constantinople, to his position. Vigilius then promptly went back on his word and continued promulgating the Chalcedonian doctrine and creed. Another tale suggests that Vigilius was sent by Theodora to persuade Silverius to restore Anthimus, but Silverius refused to do so. Vigilius then tricked Belisarius into believing that Silverius was conspiring against his army by producing phony witnesses to testify, and Belisarius sent him to a monastery in Greece. Yet another tale offers a simpler solution, that Justinian desired installing a pro-Roman and anti-Gothic pope to replace Silverius. This pro-Roman Pope was Vigilius, due to his position in Constantinople, and that all of the other tales were told by biased authors or derived from biased sources. Whatever the truth, Byzantine emperors (or their delegates) would be naming popes for the next two hundred years or so, until Pepin the Short. One thing to be sure to separate is monophysitism from miaphysitism. They seem similar but are distinct. Monophysitism, as best I understand it, is that there is a single nature, where miaphysite position is that Jesus has a human and a divine nature that are distinct, but united into a single being without confusion, and the Chalcedonian perspective is that there are two natures, human and divine, that exist as part of a hypostasis of Logos.

Anonymous

I wonder what the modern equivalent of all these philosophical conflicts would be the equivalent to this? Abortion maybe? Debate in the comments! Preferably after you've put your daggers away.

Anonymous

Theology person here! For those who would like to know more in detail, the Nestorian controversy was so controversial because it emphasised Christ's natures (humanity and divinity) as separate to one another. What this effectively implied was that Jesus, as he was walking on the earth was a schizophrenic: he had a human mind similar to ours and a separate divine mind that gave him + infinity faith for healing and spells. This further implies that there were really two persons on that cross, some human bloke and God.

paul staber
>>1837253

The closest today in America would probably be Republicans vs Democrats they both consistently wind up doing the same thing (mostly hoard money and power) but will endlessly argue about who is correct for doing so. Though american politics are for more entrenched than religion has been in recent history.

ExtraCredits
>>1836654

Wellll. I hate to tell you, but this is the last one for this series! Of course we'll have Lies to look forward to next week. :)

ExtraCredits
>>1836796

Leaving out the Gnostic controversies was a conscious choice that James is gonna talk about in the Lies episode. I don't wanna put words in his mouth, so I'll leave it to him.

ExtraCredits
>>1836919

And that, right there, is why we wanted to do this series. Adds so much mroe depth to Justinian and Theodora! ...Not that we got to talk about it at the time, but you've done an excellent job here.

ExtraCredits
>>1837469

Ooh! I might point someone up here as they had a question earlier that I wasn't able to answer, and this might help.

Anonymous

You're giving me very little to write about, EH. This was well done, as I am characteristically having to tell you. Something I should mention about Monophysites, on the subject, is that it was a lot like Arianism. They were actually implying that Christ was neither human nor divine, a sort of demigod. This, like Arianism, has some very serious ramifications, and so it was a big issue. It wasn't a small nitpick, but a hugely important matter. Under the circumstances, it actually went surprisingly well. Thanks again for making this series. It has been a lot of fun to delve into this subject. The episode on writing should be similarly interesting.

ExtraCredits
>>1838502

Someone informed me of that in response to the art preview! I wish I'd seen their comment sooner, though I'm not entirely sure I'd have been able to get it into the post-production changelist on time. Ah well. Another note for Lies, perhaps!

Anonymous

I had been hoping for the Modalists/Sabellists but I can see why they did not make the cut.

Hasan Mahmood

Insert 40K Inquisitorial joke here.

Anonymous

Aaaaaand now my little kitty head hurts.... * sad kitty face *

Anonymous

I must say I really loved the cartoons in this episode. Even more than normal!

Anonymous

Those beards are gorgeous &lt;3

Anonymous

Good job this week laying out the political implications of the splits in Christianity. I especial liked the portrayal of the Council of Ephesus. When I was recently reading up on it in my church's book club, I was really surprised at how underhanded the whole thing was. I can really see how Cyril made the whole thing worse since he didn't even make an attempt to reconcile. I do have one question though: in explaining the differences between these Christian groups, why did you avoid the use of the term, "person?" I understand that you're trying to avoid extra terms. But when we get to this stage of Christian history, I think it's really the only way to understand the different distinctions these groups make between the unity and dualities in Christ. (Defined by the Catholics and Orthodox as one person uniting two natures.) But still, it all ended well. Good job!

Anonymous

I was wondering: on a scale from academics only to Protestant Reformation, how much did these controversies affect the average person?

Anonymous

Despite the serious nature of the business, I can't help but laugh out loud when they all started to go "No you!". Great episode and thank you for the introduction of how f**ked up this church politics is.

Anonymous

wow your patreon site is.. WOW.. and mine.. LOW xDDD. so amazing &lt;3

Anonymous

Hundreds of years later and low and bed people are people and will argue things to death. This is exactly what's going on in the American Congress right now but with different subject matter. Replace the nature of Jesus with LGBT disputes and here we are. I love how no matter what you guys seem to cover there is correlation to modern events.