THE EASTERN MEDITERRANEAN – A REGION IN FERMENTChurch councils and religious divisionsMonasteries and asceticism also crossed religious boundaries. The mainte-
nance of Chalcedonian orthodoxy is a main theme in Cyril’s Lives. Euthymius
is credited with bringing the independent Empress Eudocia back to ortho-
doxy, and had earlier instructed the bishop of the Saracens who attended the
Council of Ephesus to follow Cyril of Alexandria and Acacius of Melitene in
everything.^54 It was part of the agenda of hagiography to insist on the right
doctrine of its subject, and Cyril provides a list of the heresies opposed by
Euthymius; Euthymius supported the Council of Chalcedon (451), and Pal-
estinian monasteries remained centres of Chalcedonianism (and, after the
Council of 553, ‘Neo-Chalcedonianism’), but Cyril’s narrative reveals both
the extent of anti-Chalcedonianism and the risk from his point of view that
this opposition might prevail in the province.^55
The struggle on the ground between pro- and anti-Chalcedonians occupied
monks and bishops in the east throughout the late fi fth and sixth centuries and
later; the eastern provinces on the eve of Islam are often represented as if they
were uniformly anti-Chalcedonian, but Sophronius and Maximus Confessor
were only the most prominent among the defenders of Chalcedonian ortho-
doxy in the seventh century in the very years of the Arab conquests (Chapter
9). The struggle involved local loyalties as well as relations with the imperial
church. Bishops were required by the major councils to remove the names of
those condemned as non-orthodox from the liturgical diptychs, as happened
after the council of 553, but they also took independent action, and one of
the central fi elds of dispute (and of confusion for ordinary people) was that of
the sharing or denial of communion.^56 Monasteries and bishoprics and their
people were also split, or, as we have seen, changed their positions, but the key
moment came with the ordinations of bishops for the anti-Chalcedonians,
and then by them of further anti-Chalcedonian bishops. Some were conse-
crated in Constantinople and sent to Egypt, while others were given dioceses
in other parts of the East but had to adopt an itinerant mode in the prevailing
climate.^57 The sympathetic Empress Theodora and the Ghassanid phylarch
al-Harith are credited with having fostered this initiative. A new hierarchy was
thus initiated and was to last through periods of repression and even persecu-
tion by the Chalcedonian government later in the sixth century. However, nei-
ther Syria nor Palestine were by any means wholly anti-Chalcedonian, and in
some cities, including Antioch and Edessa, and indeed Alexandria, there were
competing groups and rival bishops; naturally personal rivalries and local fol-
lowings were also involved. Justinian and his successors in Constantinople
went on attempting to square the circle, and Heraclius was still trying to do
the same in the seventh century with a new initiative – Monotheletism. This
was, however, bitterly opposed by Chalcedonians in Palestine and led to the
imperial condemnation and eventual deaths of Pope Martin I and Maximus
Confessor (Chapter 9). But there were also divisions among the anti-Chalce-
donians, and these often expressed themselves most bitterly within a single