Andrew Louth - Syriac Christian Church

LIFE AND TIMES 13
into the Imperial Church in 630, and there seems to have been some
success in Syria and Mesopotamia. But the greatest success for
Monenergism was achieved in Egypt. In the autumn of 631 Cyrus,
Metropolitan of Phasis (and thus called ‘the Caucasian’, al-Muqauqas
in Arabic), the early recruit to Monenergism, was appointed
Chalcedonian Patriarch of Alexandria and Augustal Prefect of Egypt
with the task of achieving religious unity on the basis of Imperial
orthodoxy, i.e. Monenergism. He seems to have had some success with
the Monophysites, with Monenergism being regarded as capitulation
on the part of the Chalcedonians: the Byzantine chronicler,
Theophanes, reports that the Monophysites boasted that ‘it is not we
who are accommodating to Chalcedon, rather Chalcedon is coming to
us!’ 20 In true Byzantine fashion (and following Heraclius’ example in
Syria and Mesopotamia), theological compromise was backed up by
persecution, and it is as a persecutor that Cyrus is remembered in
Coptic sources. In 633 Cyrus presided at a solemn Eucharist held in
Alexandria at which many of the ‘Theodosian’ (the Egyptian
equivalent of ‘Jacobite’) clergy were reconciled and the doctrinal
agreement achieved solemnly read from the ambo by the Patriarch.
This agreement, in nine chapters, survives, as it was cited at the sixth
Ecumenical Council in 680/1: it is a classic and carefully-phrased
statement of Monenergism, affirming the Cyrilline formula of ‘one
Incarnate nature of God the Word’, theopaschism, and the assertion of
a single ‘theandric activity’ in Christ, on the authority of Denys the
Areopagite.
Up until 633 there seems to have been no opposition from any of
those who accepted Chalcedon to the doctrine of Monenergism. But in
633, as Cyrus was celebrating his successful reconciliation of the
Egyptian Monophysites, the aged monk Sophronius was in Alexandria.
He read Cyrus’ Nine Chapters and protested that they were heretical.
Unable to prevent Cyrus from going ahead, Sophronius travelled to
the imperial capital and made his protest to the Patriarch. Sergius
respected the authority of the old monk and issued an ‘authoritative
statement’, a Psephos, in which he forbade any language of ‘one’ or
‘two’ activities in Christ, and spoke simply of one Divine subject in
Christ, which excludes there being two wills in Christ contrary to each
other. The union in Alexandria was potentially of far-reaching
importance, something that Sergius felt needed to be communicated to
his brother-bishop in Rome, Pope Honorius. He had to report,
however, that the terms of that union had provoked a protest from
Sophronius, who had now left Constantinople and gone to his original
homeland of Palestine, where he had been elected Patriarch of
Jerusalem. In his letter to the Pope, Sergius stresses the immense
significance of the union achieved in Alexandria, and expresses the