CHRISTIANIZATION AND ITS CHALLENGESmodifi cation of the decrees of Chalcedon, he succeeded only in offending the
west. Some indication of the strength of opinion can be judged from the fact
that before Chalcedon, Eutyches, a priest of Constantinople taken to be an
extreme ‘one-nature’ advocate, had been condemned by a local synod (448)
and immediately reinstated by a rival council (the Second Council of Ephe-
sus or ‘Robber Council’, 449) (Chapter 1). The new emperor Marcian and
his pious wife Pulcheria were instrumental in bringing it about that the full
Council of Chalcedon issued on 25 October 451 a decree affi rming the two
natures of Christ.^40 Discussion of the so-called ‘Tome’ (letter) of Pope Leo I,
which laid emphasis on two natures (substantiae) (Chapter 1), occupied a great
deal of the council’s time. The Tome was regarded with suspicion by the fol-
lowers of Cyril of Alexandria, and many easterners regarded the outcome of
Chalcedon as a betrayal of the latter’s principles. The difference was fi nally
to crystallize into outright schism when, under Justinian the Miaphysite,
Jacob Bar’adai, was ordained bishop of Edessa and proceeded to ordain non-
Chalcedonian clergy throughout Syria, thus paving the way for a separatist
church (known as ‘Jacobite’, after Jacob, or as ‘Syrian Orthodox’) which
was to survive the Arab conquest, and which still exists today (Chapters 5
and 8).^41
Thus despite the enormous effort and intense feelings which went into the
councils, religious divisions were not healed; both the church of Rome and
the catholic church of North Africa, which survived persecution during the
Vandal period to re-emerge as a strong force after the Byzantine reconquest
in 534, were strongly Chalcedonian, whereas the council met with opposition
by many in the east. The emperors of the late fi fth and sixth centuries found
it increasingly diffi cult to achieve the ecclesiastical unity which was politically
so necessary. Zeno (474–91) attempted to calm down the reaction to Chal-
cedon with a letter known as the Henotikon, and this held for a while, with the
Emperor Anastasius (491–518) leaning towards the Miaphysites, but Justini-
an’s uncle and predecessor Justin I (518–27) turned instead to the persecution
of non-Chalcedonians, thus ending a breach between Constantinople and the
strongly Chalcedonian papacy known as the ‘Acacian schism’ (484–518). Jus-
tinian’s attempted reconquest of the west, conducted in the name of the res-
toration of orthodoxy, made these problems even more acute. In the seventh
century the papacy was again set on collision course with the new religious
policies of mononergism (‘one energy’) and monotheletism (‘one will’) pro-
moted under Heraclius (610–41) and opposed both in Rome and in the east
(Chapter 9).
Emperors and the churchThe emperors who followed Constantine were all Christian except for Julian
(361–3) and all followed Constantine’s example of active participation in
church affairs. However, the actual situation was much less clear-cut. Euse-
bius of Caesarea developed a political theory which saw Constantine as God’s