Council of Ephesus (449)

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At the Council of Ephesus in 449 , monophysitism , that is, the Christological thesis that Jesus Christ had only one, namely divine nature, was declared a dogma. This was rejected shortly afterwards, which is why the council will not later be recognized by the imperial church as an ecumenical council . Rather, it entered church historiography under the polemical name of the robber synod .

The council was convened in the city of Ephesus by Emperor Theodosius II . Here, the Patriarch Dioscur of Alexandria enlisted the help of soldiers and militant monks to enforce the beliefs of Presbyter Eutyches , who had been excommunicated by a synod in Constantinople the year before , and to help his doctrine, monophysitism, to break through. Eutyches was fully rehabilitated, but Bishop Flavianus of Constantinople was deposed, mistreated and sent into exile, where he died on August 11, 449. Dioskoros was able to get his presbyter Anatolios to succeed him as bishop. Pope Leo I Tomus ad Flavianum , in whom Monophysitism was condemned, could not be read out at the synod; his representatives only had one option to protest: since they did so in Latin, a language that the majority of the synodians did not know their protest was ineffective.

In the Western Roman Empire , the decisions of the council caused a storm of indignation. Pope Leo called it the Latin latrocinium , robber's den, from which the expression "robber synod" goes back. After Emperor Theodosius II died in 450, his successor, Markian , convened a council in Chalkedon in 451 , which was to become the fourth ecumenical council. Here the resolutions of 449 were rejected and the doctrine of two natures elevated to dogma, which ultimately led to the separation of the Monophysite churches from the Orthodox Catholic Church.

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Henry Chadwick : The Church of the Ancient World. De Gruyter, Berlin / New York 72, p. 236 f.
  2. ^ Adolf Martin Ritter : Chalcedony. In: Evangelisches Kirchenlexikon . Vandenhoeck and Ruprecht, Göttingen 1992, Vol. 1, Sp. 639.

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