powerful, and the East was distracted by the obstinate and sanguinary zeal of the Monophysites. Jerusalem was occupied by an army of monks; in the name of the one incarnate nature, they pillaged, they burnt, they murdered; the sepulchre of Christ was defiled with blood; and the gates of the city were guarded in tumultuous rebellion against the troops of the emperor. After the disgrace and exile of Dioscorus, the Egyptians still regretted their spiritual father; and detested the usurpation of his successor, who was introduced by the fathers of Chalcedon. The throne of Proterius was supported by a guard of two thousand soldiers; he waged a five years' war against the people of Alexandria; and, on the first intelligence of the death of Marcian, he became the victim of their zeal. On the third day before the festival of Easter, the patriarch was besieged in the cathedral, and murdered in the baptistery. The remains of his mangled corpse were delivered to the flames, and his ashes to the wind; and the deed was inspired by the vision of a pretended angel: an ambitious monk, who, under the name of Timothy the Cat, succeeded to the place and opinions of Dioscorus. This deadly superstition was inflamed, on either side, by the principle and the practice of retaliation: in the pursuit of a metaphysical quarrel, many thousands† were slain, and the passage, the specious colour of this double charge against Pope Leo and his synod of Chalcedon. (Bibliot. cod. 225, p. 768.) He waged a double war against the enemies of the church, and wounded either foe with the darts of his adversary—καταλλήλοις βέλεσι τοὺς ἀντιπάλους ἐπίτρωσκε. Against Nestorius he seemed to introduce the σύγχυσις of the Monophysites: against Eutyches he appeared to countenance the UTоGTαGέw diapopa of the Nestorians. The apologist claims a charitable interpretation for the saints: if the same had been extended to the heretics, the sound of the controversy would have been lost in the air.

*

*

Aλovpoc, from his nocturnal expeditions. In darkness and disguise he crept round the cells of the monastery, and whispered the revelation to his slumbering brethren. (Theodor. Lector. 1. 1.) The murder of Proterius was perpetrated in 457. The dignity into which Timotheus Ailurus had whispered himself, was taken from him, three years afterwards by the emperor Leo, who banished him to Cherson. During the usurpation of Basiliscus in 476, he was reinstated; and being then far advanced in years, was allowed peacefully to hold the patriarchate till his death in 477. (Neander, iv. 233— 236. Clinton, F. R. i, 449, ii, 544.)—ED.]

+ Φόνους τε τολμηθῆναι μυρίους, αἱμάτων πλήθει μολυνθῆναι μὴ μόνον τὴν γῆν ἀλλὰ καὶ ἀυτὸν τὸν ἄερα. Such is the hyperbolig

Christians of every degree were deprived of the substantial enjoyments of social life, and of the invisible gifts of baptism and the holy communion. Perhaps an extravagant fable of the times may conceal an allegorical picture of these fanatics, who tortured each other, and themselves. "Under the consulship of Venantius and Celer," says a grave bishop, "the people of Alexandria, and all Egypt, were seized with a strange and diabolical frenzy: great and small, slaves and freedmen, monks and clergy, the natives of the land, who opposed the synod of Chalcedon, lost their speech and reason, barked like dogs, and tore with their own teeth, the flesh from their hands and arms.

The disorders of thirty years at length produced the famous HENOTICON† of the emperor Zeno, which in his

language of the Henoticon. [While this competition for the rich prize of the Alexandrian patriarchate exhausted society by perpetuated confusion and carnage, Palestine was equally disturbed. "The fanatical monk Theodosius ruled there supreme in the cloisters, and set all in commotion by his vehement fury against such as would not reject the decrees of the council of Chalcedon. Juvenalis, the patriarch of Jerusalem, was banished, and his place filled by Theodosius, who deposed and appointed bishops at his will. Similar occurrences were witnessed in other cities. The evil could not be checked without forcible measures, and provinces were laid waste by fire and sword." (Neander, iv, 232.)—ED.]

* See the Chronicle of Victor Tununensis, in the Lectiones Antiquæ of Canisius, republished by Basnage, tom. i, p. 326.

The Henoticon is transcribed by Evagrius (1. 3, c. 13), and translated by Liberatus. (Brev. c. 18.) Pagi (Critica, tom. ii, p. 411) and Asseman (Bibliot. Orient. tom. 1, p. 343) are satisfied that it is free from heresy; but Petavius (Dogmat. Theolog. tom. v, 1. 1, c. 13, p. 40) most unaccountably affirms Chalcedonensem ascivit. An adversary would prove that he had never read the Henoticon. [The principal design of the Henoticon was, to tranquillize Egypt; but it was by no means generally acceptable to the people of that country.-GERMAN ED.] [This "Concordat," as it is designated by Neander (4, 239), embraced wider aims; it proposed "a basis for the peace of the whole church;" and took a middle ground, on which "neither party should stigmatize the other as heretical." But here again the angry spirits involuntarily confessed, that peace and truth were not their objects. "Far from closing the schism, the Henoticon made it wider than it was before. Instead of two parties, there were four-the zealots on either side, and the moderates on both, who accepted the compromise. On the death of Zeno, Anastasius, only desirous of preserving peace, and of silencing the heretic-makers on both sides, would not abandon the treaty of coalition. But his moderation made him an object of suspicion, and was even represented as persecution. Serious disturb

reign, and in that of Anastasius, was signed by all the bishops of the East, under the penalty of degradation and exile, if they rejected or infringed this salutary and fundamental law. The clergy may smile or groan at the presumption of a layman who defines the articles of faith: yet if he stoops to the humiliating task, his mind is less infected by prejudice or interest, and the authority of the magistrate can only be maintained by the concord of the people. It is in ecclesiastical story, that Zeno appears least contemptible; and I am not able to discern any Manichæan or Eutychian guilt in the generous saying of Anastasius, that it was unworthy of an emperor to persecute the worshippers of Christ and the citizens of Rome. The Henoticon was inost pleasing to the Egyptians; yet the smallest blemish has not been descried by the jealous and even jaundiced eyes of our orthodox schoolmen; and it accurately represents the Catholic faith of the incarnation, without adopting or disclaiming the peculiar terms or tenets of the hostile sects. A solemn anathema is pronounced against Nestorius and Eutyches; against all heretics by whom Christ is divided, or confounded, or reduced to a phantom. Without defining the number or the article of the word nature, the pure system of St. Cyril, the faith of Nice, Constantinople, and Ephesus, is respectfully confirmed; but, instead of bowing at the name of the fourth council, the subject is dismissed by the censure of all contrary doctrines, if any such have been taught either elsewhere or at Chalcedon. Under this ambiguous expression, the friends and the enemies of the last synod might unite in a silent embrace. The most reasonable Christians acquiesced in this mode of toleration; but their reason was feeble and inconstant, and their obedience was despised as timid and servile by the vehement spirit of their brethren. On a subject which engrossed the thoughts and discourses of men, it was difficult to preserve an exact neutrality; a book, a sermon, a prayer, rekindled the flame of controversy; and the bonds of communion were alternately broken and renewed by the private arimosity of the bishops. The space between Nestorius and Eutyches was filled by a thousand shades of language and

ances, proceeding from this struggle, broke out during his reigu iu Syria, Palestine, Egypt, and Constantinople."―ED]

opinion; the acephali* of Egypt, and the Roman pontiffs, of equal valour, though of unequal strength, may be found at the two extremities of the theological scale. The acephali, without a king or a bishop, were separated above three bun dred years from the patriarchs of Alexandria, who had accepted the communion of Constantinople, without exacting a formal condemnation of the synod of Chalcedon. For accepting the communion of Alexandria, without a formal approbation of the same synod, the patriarchs of Constantinople were anathematized by the popes. Their inflexible despotism involved the most orthodox of the Greek churches in this spiritual contagion, denied or doubted the validity of their sacraments,† and fomented thirty-five years, the schism of the East and West, till they finally abolished the memory of four Byzantine pontiffs, who had dared to oppose the supremacy of St. Peter. Before that period, the precarious truce of Constantinople and Egypt had been violated by the zeal of the rival prelates. Macedonius, who was suspected of the Nestorian heresy, asserted, in disgrace and exile, the synod of Chalcedon; while the successor of Cyril would have purchased its overthrow with a bribe of two thousand pounds of gold.

See Renaudot. (Hist. Patriarch. Alex. p. 123, 131, 145, 195, 247.) They were reconciled by the care of Mark I (A.D. 799—819); he promoted their chiefs to the bishoprics of Athribis and Talba (perhaps Tava, see D'Anville, p. 82), and supplied the sacraments, which had failed for want of an episcopal ordination. [The Acephaloi, or "headless sect," were so denominated, because they had no chief or leader. (Neander, 4, 239.) They were the most zealous of the Monophysite party, and demanded an unqualified renunciation of the Chalcedonian council. There was method in their madness, and system in their extravagance; or, it might be supposed, that they had received their name from wanting the seat of reason.-ED.]

De his quos baptizavit, quos ordinavit Acacius, majorum traditione confectam et veram, præcipue religiosa solicitudini congruam præbemus sine difficultate medicinam. (Gelasius, in epist. 1, ad Euphemium, Concil. tom. v, 286.) The offer of a medicine proves the disease, and numbers must have perished before the arrival of the Roman physician. Tillemont himself (Mém. Ecclés. tom. xvi, p. 372, 642, &c.) is shocked at the proud uncharitable temper of the popes; they are now glad, says he, to invoke St. Flavian of Antioch, St. Elias of Jerusalem, &c. to whom they refused communion whilst upon earth. But cardinal Baronius is firm and hard as the rock of St. Peter.

Their names were erased from the diptych of the church: ex venerabili diptycho, in quo piæ memoriæ transitum ad cœlum haben

In the fever of the times, the sense, or rather the sound of a syllable, was sufficient to disturb the peace of an empire. The TRISAGION* (thrice holy), "Holy, holy, holy, Lord God of Hosts!" is supposed, by the Greeks, to be the identical hymn which the angels and cherubim eternally repeat before the throne of God, and which, about the middle of the fifth century, was miraculously revealed to the church of Constantinople. The devotion of Antioch soon added, “who was crucified for us!" and this grateful address, either to Christ alone, or to the whole Trinity, may be justified by the rules of theology, and has been gradually adopted by the Catholics of the East and West. But it had been imagined by a Monophysite bishop :† the gift of an enemy was at first. rejected as a dire and dangerous blasphemy, and the rash innovation had nearly cost the emperor Anastasius his throne and his life. The people of Constantinople was devoid of any rational principles of freedom; but they held, as a lawful cause of rebellion, the colour of a livery in the races, or the colour of a mystery in the schools. The Trisagion, with and without this obnoxious addition, was chanted in the cathedral by two adverse choirs, and when their lungs were exhausted, they had recourse to the more solid arguments of sticks and stones: the aggressors were punished by the emperor, and defended by the patriarch ; tium episcoporum vocabula continentur. (Concil. tom. iv, p. 1846.) This ecclesiastical record was therefore equivalent to the book of life. * Petavius (Dogmat. Theolog. tom. v, 1. 5, c. 2-4, p. 217-225) and Tillemont (Mém. Ecclés. tom. xiv, p. 713, &c. 799) represent the history and doctrine of the Trisagion. In the twelve centuries between Isaiah and St. Proclus's boy, who was taken up into heaven before the bishop and people of Constantinople, the song was considerably improved. The boy heard the angels sing "Holy God! Holy Strong! Holy Immortal!" + Peter Gnapheus, the

fuller (a trade which he had exercised in his monastery), patriarch of Antioch. His tedious story is discussed in the Annals of Pagi (A.D. 477-490), and a dissertation of M. de Valois at the end of his Evagrius. [The elevation of Peter "the fuller" is wrongly attributed to Zeno by John Malalas and Nicephorus. He was appointed by the usurper Basiliscus in 476, and displaced on the return of Zeno in 477. After a succession of four patriarchs, he was restored in 485, and died in 488. (Clinton, H. R. ii. 553-555.)-ED.]

The troubles under the reign of Anastasius must be gathered from the chronicles of Victor, Marcellinus, and Theophanes. As the last was not published in the time of Baronius, his critic Pagi is more copious, as well as more correct,