convocation that had been signed by the late Emperor
Theodosius, neither did anyone say that the Emperors of
the Orient only could authorise such Council
convocation.^40 Marcianus sat silently listening though he
had insisted on fixing the time and place of that very
council wherein such prevarication was uttered. One of
the dismayed bishops simply remarked: “If you are come
to judge, why do you, then, accuse?”
To maintain peace and evade a needless
disturbance, “the Godfearing”^41 Dioscorus left his place,
and sat beside the civil judges in the midst of the church.^42
- The Roman delegates persisted in carrying out
their plan. They accused Abba Dioscorus of breaking the
canons, to which he replied: “Who of us is the law
breaker: I, who responded to the request of Emperor
Theodosius by sitting at the second Ephesian council and
by refusing admittance to Theodoret the Nestorian bishop
of Cyrrhus in deference to the verdict passed upon him by
the third ecumenical council, or you, who have permitted
this same Nestorian to sit among you, when he has been
cut off from the church Body and has not repented since
his disposition?”^43
This query of Abba Dioscorus was left
unanswered. Dissembling it, Eusebius of Doryloeum
stood up assuming the role of accuser: he pretended that
he and his colleagues had been unjustly condemned by
Dioscorus at Ephesus. Following this verbal accusation,
he handed a written one in which he stated that Dioscorus
was Eutychian. This accusation was accepted
unquestioningly by the council which had declared, at the
same time, its formal acceptance of the membership of
Theodoret Bishop of Cyrrhus.