THE MEDITERRANEAN WORLD IN LATE ANTIQUITYin 553–4. In the latter case, the proceedings lasted for many months, for most
of which Pope Vigilius, who had been earlier summoned to Constantinople
and unceremoniously treated by the emperor, refused to attend. After much
harassment, a decree of excommunication, and vacillation on his own part, he
was prevailed upon to recant his position, but he still did not attend the coun-
cil, and Justinian’s railroading of the council’s decisions failed to convince
the western church or to satisfy the east (Chapter 5).^38 After the Council of
Chalcedon in 451, the Emperor Marcian issued an edict in which he hoped to
persuade people that the controversies were fi nally settled:
At last that which he wished, with earnest prayer and desire, had come
to pass. Controversy about the orthodox religion of Christians has been
put away; remedies at length have been found for culpable error, and
diversity of opinion among the peoples has issued in common consent
and concord.
(Stevenson, Creeds, 341)Later emperors including Zeno (474–91) tried to quell disputes and bring rec-
onciliation, or by the seventh century even legislated to stop further discus-
sion; Marcian’s words were a statement of hope for the future rather than a
description of what had actually happened.
It would be a mistake to see these doctrinal confl icts as mere surrogates for
underlying ‘real’ issues of power and individual or ecclesiastical authority. Not
only was religion – pagan/polytheist, Jewish or Christian – at the centre of
the stage, but the Christian church was increasingly claiming a leading role in
political, economic and social life, and its organization and beliefs mattered.^39
Christian doctrines and the many permutations according to which Christians
could disagree, aroused the passionate feelings of contemporaries. Some of
the matters of disagreement were practical ones, as, for instance, when to
celebrate Easter, a matter on which local traditions differed, but strictly theo-
logical issues, such as the question of the divine and human natures of Christ
and the status of the Virgin Mary, were seen as being even more important.
In the early part of the period, Arianism, focusing on the relation of the Son
to the Father, was still a major issue, particularly in relation to the contempo-
rary barbarian problems, since nearly all the barbarian groups who converted
adopted an Arian form of Christianity. By the middle of the fi fth century the
key issues centred on the divine and human natures of Christ. Nestorius was
condemned by the Council of Ephesus (431), but his teachings lived on after
Chalcedon in the insistence on Christ’s humanity, which characterized the
church in east Syria and Sasanian Persia (the Church of the East).
The opposite extreme was Monophysitism, or as many prefer, Miaphysitism
(referring to those who believed that Christ had one wholly divine physis, or
‘nature’), and it was this belief which, though condemned at Chalcedon, was
to constitute the main obstacle to Christian unity in the next century and a
half. When Justinian tried to reconcile the eastern churches by proposing a