Andrew Louth - Syriac Christian Church

10 INTRODUCTION
no division, no separation’. Instead of being taken as safeguarding the
integrity of the two natures of Christ, the phrase ‘in two natures’ was
taken by many as affirming a dangerous duality in Christ, and, in
particular, as betraying the doctrine of Cyril, one of those whom the
council claimed to be following.
From the first there were many in the East who refused to accept
the Council of Chalcedon. 13 Juvenal, who had supported Dioscorus to
begin with but had eventually accepted the Council of Chalcedon,
returned to face riots in Jerusalem. In Alexandria, Proterius, who had
been appointed to replace the deposed Dioscorus, was eventually
murdered by a rioting mob. The first attempts to achieve religious
unity in the Empire attempted to lay aside, or at least ignore, the
Council of Chalcedon. In 482, for instance, the Emperor Zeno issued
the Henotikon 14 which sought to return to the authority of the first
three Ecumenical Councils, and anathematized any who think
otherwise ‘either in Chalcedon or any synod whatever’; the statement
of Christological doctrine in the Henotikon echoes the language of the
Formula of Reunion, makes explicit that the Incarnate person is ‘one
of the Trinity’, but avoids any use of the terminology of ‘nature’,
whether one or two. The Henotikon found considerable acceptance in
the East, though it failed to satisfy those who wanted Chalcedon
unambiguously condemned: as the Henotikon received the support of
all the Eastern patriarchs, this group, led by the priest Severus (later
Patriarch of Antioch: 512–18), was called the Acephaloi, the
‘headless’. But it did not find acceptance from Rome, that demanded
nothing less than endorsement of Chalcedon and the Tome of Leo.
Thus arose the Acacian Schism (so-called after the Patriarch of
Constantinople, Acacius, who was largely responsible for the document
and its acceptance throughout the East), which lasted until 518. This
schism came to an end with the accession of the Emperor Justin I,
who put the weight of imperial authority behind Chalcedon. But that
was by no means the end of attempts to secure agreement between
those who accepted Chalcedon and those who felt that it had betrayed
Cyril.
Despite the failure of the Henotikon, such attempts in the sixth
century built on that document’s estabishment of the unity of Christ
on the basis that the person of the union was the second person of the
Trinity. This was to make explicit what had been left implicit at
Chalcedon, but affirmed what had been absolutely central to Cyril’s
understanding of the unity of Christ. Around the time of Justin’s
accession, a group of Scythian monks in Rome suggested a formula
that might bridge the gap between Chalcedon and those who, in the
name of Cyril, rejected it: this was the affirmation that ‘one of the
Trinity suffered in the flesh’. 15 The Pope of the time (Hormisdas: 514–