Ecumenical Councils
The Antiochian Patriarch Kalandion did not want to receive Henoticon. He was temporarily protected by political circumstances. Patricius Illus received an honorable departure from the court to the East. The Thracian general Leontius also arrived there. Illus nominated him as a rival to Zeno to take the throne. For this intrigue, the stay in Isauria of Zeno's mother-in-law, Empress Verina, was used. Ill brought her to Tape and persuaded her to crown Leonty. The hierarchs of the East had to recognize Leontius. But when Zeno defeated Leontius, Calandion was exiled to an oasis. Peter Gnafevs was summoned from exile and installed for the fourth time on the Antiochian cathedra. He accepted the Henoticon. But he, like Peter Mong in Alexandria, also formed an opposition of extreme ...
It was Peter Gnathebus (Cloth) who introduced the reading of the Nicene Creed at the Liturgy with a tendency against the Council of Chalcedon. He also introduced additions in the Trisagion Hymn: "Crucified for us." This was a substitute for the formula "God suffered", an allusion to the "one nature". This "crucified for us" became the slogan, the "war cry" of Monophysitism, as in its time with the Donatists: "Deo laudes!"
The other Syrian bishops in the majority signed the Henoticon and entered into communion with the patriarchs of Antioch and Alexandria.
In Palestine, the successor of Juvenal, Anastasius, with a council of his bishops, had previously received Enuklion Basiliscus. Martyrius, who succeeded Anastasius in 478, also accepted the Henoticon and renounced Chalcedon. But here, too, as in Alexandria and Antioch, the opposition of the extremes (monks) was opposed to all compromises and was not satisfied with the Henoticon.
35 years of separation of the churches (484-519) due to the Henoticon.
Pope Simplicius kept begging the capital to expel Peter Mongus. Imagine his amazement when, in 482, he received the news of the non-recognition of John Talai, who had been elected to the see of Alexandria, and the promotion of Peter Mongus in his place. The Pope wrote to the Emperor about the cancellation of such an appointment and to Acacius about informing him: what is the matter?
Akakiy did not answer a word (!). Pope Simplicius was ill and soon died, in 483. At this time, John Talaia arrived in Rome and submitted a formal complaint against Acacius to the pope. The new pope, Felix III, reacted in a purely Roman spirit. He sent to Constantinople two bishops and one lawyer (defensor Tutus) with a letter to the emperor and Acacius. The embassy was instructed to keep in touch with the akimites, as staunch defenders of Chalcedon. The legates were taken under honorable arrest immediately upon arrival in Constantinople. The letters were taken away from them, and they were persuaded to give them up voluntarily. Te surrendered and agreed to concelebrate with Akakii. In their presence, Acacius entered the name of Peter Mong in the diptychs. This meant that the Roman Church publicly recognized the position created by the Henoticon. But the Akimites were indignant at this diplomacy and reported to Rome. The returning legates found the pope already aware and angry. On July 28, 484, the Roman Council of 77 bishops deposed the legates and excommunicated them, and also deposed the impudent Patriarch Acacius. Acacius was accused of allowing the imperial power to dispose of the fate of the Council of Chalcedon without notifying the pope, who was one of the founders of this council. In addition, Acacius is to blame for not responding to the pope's request and for abusing the credulity of the papal ambassadors. "Multarum transgressionum reperivis obnoxius," the pope wrote in a letter of excommunication. "You are deprived of the priesthood, excommunicated from catholic communion and from the number of the faithful. You no longer have the right to the name of a hierarch or to sacred actions. Such is the condemnation that is imposed on you by the judgment of the Holy Spirit and by the apostolic authority, of which we are the bearers."
But in the East it was difficult to carry out this harsh sentence. This was a break not with Akakii, but with the entire Eastern Church. But, of course, it was not Pope Felix who created it. He only revealed it. It was secretly created by Akakii. He united with the Monophysites, despised the Council of Chalcedon, and just as secretly despised Rome. He did not report anything to Rome and did not even respond to his direct request. And the troubles arising from this rupture were shifted to the Pope.
Acacius, of course, thought of himself as the head of the entire imperial church. Having received the formal right to rule in Pontus, Asia and Thrace, he did not hesitate to interfere in the affairs of the Illyrian diocese and even Antioch. He appointed John Codonatus as metropolitan of Tyre. The patriarchs of both Antioch and Alexandria were confirmed by his will. For Rome, this was a new system of church unity, eliminating Roman primacy. and in the East they lived without thinking about Rome. In the West, the "Easterners" contemplated a kind of eschatological picture: the establishment of a multitude of barbarian states, and heretical Arian states at that. The only Christian empire was thought to be the Eastern Empire with its center in Constantinople and did not need to be ruled from the West.
Defensor Tutus was commissioned by Rome to bring the merciless papal sentence to Constantinople. Tutus managed to secretly slip through the straits and secretly convey the sentence to the Akimites. The brave Akimites contrived to pin a copy of the sentence to the omophorion [45] of the Patriarch during his service in the Holy Synod. Sofia. Acacius punished the guilty and crossed out the name of Pope Felix from the diptychs. Thus began the 35-year rupture of the churches.
When the leaders of the rupture left the scene, a current immediately emerged in Constantinople that sought to smooth it out.
During this period, the popes and archbishops of Constantinople sometimes exchanged letters, diplomatically cold, reminding them of their mutual wrongness. Emperor Zeno died in 491, and was succeeded by the Silentiarius Anastasius (491-518), a pious man. Empress Ariadne married him and crowned him. Anastasius had sympathy for Monophysitism and hoped to resolve the imperial difficulties by compromises with it, i.e., in essence he continued the line of Zeno and Henoticon, all the while strengthening it against the Council of Chalcedon.
Growth of Monophysitism in Constantinople. Severus.
At this time, an outstanding man among the Monophysites, the monk Severus, appeared on the scene. A native of Sozopol (Pisidia), he attended a literary school in Alexandria and a law school in Virita (Beirut). He was baptized as an adult in Tripoli (488), taking the Henoticon. He took monastic vows in a monastery among the Acephalians [46] in Mayum near Gaza, where the tradition of Peter the Iberian was maintained. Severus indulged in cruel asceticism to the point of undermining his health. Then he founded his monastery and received the priesthood at the hands of Bishop Epiphanius of Pamphylia, who was deprived of his place for rejecting the Henoticon on Monophysite grounds. The monks of Mayuma, however, lived in peace with the clergy of the Church of Jerusalem, who had accepted the Henoticon. But they were essentially Monophysites. Bishop Elias of Jerusalem began to press them for this. Knowing the atmosphere of the Constantinople court, Severus and 200 of his brethren came to Constantinople with complaints. They found protection here and settled down to live for three whole years. In Constantinople a dull dissension arose between the court and Patriarch Macedonius. The Orthodox people supported the rumor that the emperor's mother was a "Manichaean" (Monophysite), and the emperor himself was of the same mind with her. Indeed, the court proposed to Macedonia to convene a council and reject the Chalcedonian oros. Macedonius replied that he agreed to the council, but under the presidency of the eldest bishop, that is, the bishop of Rome. Macedonius was a man of holy life and was very popular. His enemies even threatened to kill him. Such was the intensity of passions when Severus arrived here with his entourage. All the Monophysitism of Constantinople was concentrated around Severus, letting everyone know that the emperor's sympathies were with them. Severus, as a scholar and theologian, demonstratively multiplied his literary work, wrote against crude extremes: against the Eutyches and against the Messalians, but at the same time he developed Monophysite arguments against Nestorius and the Council of Chalcedon. and the monks of Sevirov, who had wormed their way into the court church, introduced there the famous "Trisagion" with "crucified for us." An attempt was made to do this in the Holy Synod. Sofia. But the people, offended by their insulted patriarch, rebuffed. A crowd of women and children, led by Orthodox monks, marched through the streets to the palace, shouting: "Christians! The time of martyrdom has come. Let us not abandon our father!"