Andrew Louth - Syriac Christian Church

14 INTRODUCTION
nature of the theological agreement achieved in terms drawn from the
Psephos, with its uncontroversial assertion of the unity of Christ’s
divine subject, which excluded two contrary wills, and in fact made it
unnecessary to count the ‘activities’ of Christ. In his reply, Honorius
warmly congratulated those who had achieved such reconciliation in
the East, and went on to clarify the nature of the theological
agreement achieved, concluding with a confession of ‘the one will of our
Lord Jesus Christ’: the refinement of Monenergism known as
‘Monothelitism’. It was the doctrine of Monothelitism that was
enshrined in the imperial edict, drafted by Sergius and signed by
Heraclius in 638: the Ecthesis. In that same year Sergius died, to be
succeeded by Pyrrhus, who, as abbot of the monastery of Chrysopolis,
had helped in the drafting of the Ecthesis.
Elected Patriarch of Jerusalem in 634, Sophronius, following custom,
issued a Synodical Letter to be sent to the other patriarchs as evidence
of his orthodoxy. Although this letter accepts the authority of the
Psephos in so far as it does not literally ‘count’ the activities of Christ,
it argues against Monenergism, as entailing Monophysitism. The
Ecthesis, in fact, served as a response to Sophronius’ Synodical Letter
which Sergius refused to accept. In Rome, however, Sophronius seems
to have found a more sympathetic ear: only fragments of the Pope’s
second letter to Sergius have survived, and it seems that there is a
retreat from Monothelitism. Honorius died in 638, before he had a
chance to accept or reject the Ecthesis. It was more than a year before
his immediate successor, Severinus, was consecrated, owing to his
resistance to accepting the Ecthesis: the brutal treatment he received
from the imperial exarch was doubtless the reason why his reign in
640 lasted barely a few months. Popes John IV (640–2) and Theodore
I (642–9) both rejected the Ecthesis.
But Heraclius’ efforts to consolidate his reconquest of the Byzantine
provinces in the Middle East were frustrated even as it seemed that
he was succeeding. For, as we have already seen, in the course of the
630s and 640s both the Byzantine and the Persian Empires were
shaken by an invasion from the south, from the deserts of Arabia.
What lay behind this invasion from the south is shrouded in mystery.
The conventional story is that many of the Bedouin tribes of the
Arabian desert had found a militant unity under the new religion of
Islam, preached by Muhammed, who died in 632. Be that as it may,
one by one the cities of the Middle East fell to the Arab armies:
Damascus in 635, Jerusalem in 638 (surrendered by the Patriarch
Sophronius), the Persian Empire crumbled in the 640s, Alexandria
was taken in 642 and despite several attempts the Byzantines were
never able to regain it. In a very few years the Eastern provinces of
the Byzantine Empire were lost for good.