spontaneous conviction. A determined mob from Constantinople from Syria - from Egypt - pressed upon them from without. It was like the tyranny which the Clubs exercised over the Convention in the time of the French Revolution. The monks were for the most part laymen, but laymen charged with all the passions of clergy. The religious orders of the West have never been used for such purposes, nor, it must be added, subjected to such treatment. We are told at the beginning of the conflict that Nestorius himself was the aggressor. The monks, who were the first to catch any scent of heresy, were in the first instance stripped and lashed with loaded whips laid on the ground and beat as they lay. But these passions and penalties were not confined to one party. Cyril brought with him from Alexandria the savage guard of his palace, the Parabolani, or "Deathdefiers," whose original function was to bury the dead, but whose duty it now became to protect the Archbishop against all enemies; the sailors, whose rough life laid them open to any one who hired them; the sturdy porters and beggars, and the bathing-men from the public. baths. These men sate at the doors of the Council, and the streets ran red with the blood which they shed without scruple.

Barsumas, the fierce monk with his band of anchorites as fierce as himself, came thither with his reputation ready made for knocking heretics on the head with the huge maces which he and his companions wielded with terrible force on any one who opposed them. The whole was crowned at the critical moment by the entrance of a body of soldiers with drawn swords and charged lances, or with chains to carry off the refractory members to prison. Some hid themselves under the benches; some were compelled to sign the decrees in blank. Flavian, Archbishop of Constantinople, lay watching for the mo

ment of escape, when Dioscorus, the Archbishop of Alexandria, perceiving him, struck him in the face with his fist; the two deacons, one of them afterwards himself Archbishop of Alexandria, seized him round the waist and dashed him to the ground. Dioscorus kicked the dying man on the sides and chest. The monks of Barsumas struck him with their clubs as he lay on the ground. Barsumas himself cried out in the Syrian language, "Kill him, kill him." He expired from this savage treatment in the course of a few days.

Such were the scenes of disorder, reaching their height in the Council, afterwards called the Robber Council at Ephesus,1 but of which the indications spread through the whole period. Dioscorus's violence differed from that of Cyril in degree only, not in kind. The same crowd of ruffians were in all these assemblies, and the fate which threatened the hesitating bishops was similar.

Another influence, more gentle and more orderly but equally potent, was that of the Imperial Court. Theodosius II. and his wife Eudocia Marcian, the honest soldier, and his wife Pulcheria were never absent from the thoughts of the leaders of the assemblies. To persuade, cajole, circumvent the Imperial emissaries was the incessant effort of either side. It was not by accident that the decision of each of these assemblies coincided with the opinions of the high personages then reigning in the court. The wavering mind of Theodosius II. was the point to be won at the Council of Ephesus. Chrysaphius, the great courtier, was the chief supporter of the Robber Council. Marcian and Pulcheria received the tumultuous acclamations of the Council of Chalcedon. "To Marcian the new Constantine to Pulcheria the new Helena." The personal motives of each of these

1 The decrees of the Council were directed to be revised at Chalcedon, but the Imperial Government declined to condemn the Council itself.

high personages entered deeply into the controversy. Theodosius was the enemy of any one who brought him into trouble. Chrysaphius was the enemy of Archbishop Flavian, who had refused him the accustomed fees at Easter. Pulcheria was influenced by jealousy of her sister-in-law Eudocia and her hatred of Chrysaphius. The letters of the Emperors were reckoned as "sacred." The Councils were convoked entirely at their summons.

Another baser element in these considerations was the gross bribery practised by Cyril. Together with this acted the influences, not unusual in such controversies the desertion of the unpopular cause by half-hearted friends; Nestorius abandoned by those who had looked up to him as their oracle — Dioscorus left alone in the Council of Chalcedon by those who had followed him through all his violences in the Robber Council. There was also that which always produces an effect on a mixed assembly the horror expressed by weak-minded disciples, who profess to be and are really shocked by some rash expression on the part of their master, and speaking Iwith bated breath and tears in their Acacius of Mitylene and Theodotus of Ancyra; or again some argumentative dialectician who wishes to push all arguments to their extremities, such as Eusebius of Dorylæum, the old advocate who never would leave the simple Eutyches to himself.

Personal influences.

eyes

There were also the rivalries of the great sees; Alexandria, twice over, in the person of Cyril and in the person of Dioscorus, irritated by the preponderance of Constantinople and of Antioch Rome, at the Robber Council, irritated in the person of its legates, who vainly endeavored to get a hearing for their master's letter. There was the opening for every kind of private rancor discontented deacons, ambitious priests, denouncing their bishops when the occasion offered, before

the commissioners sent down by the Imperial Government. There was the pardonable weakness of the bishops, afraid of their constituencies, afraid of their congregations, afraid of their clergy. There were aged prelates prostrate on the floor, with their faces on the ground, crying, "Have mercy upon us; have pity upon us." "They will kill us at home." "Have pity on our gray hairs." There were also the bishops of Asia, alarmed for their popularity if they sacrificed the privileges of the see of Ephesus. "Have pity upon us; they will murder our children; have pity on our children; have pity on us.' It is a scene which reminds us of the most pitiable scenes in the elections of some of our modern representative assemblies.

fluences.

A curious circumstance must be noticed as confirming the decisions of both assemblies. The claim of Ephesus was suggested on the ground of its accessibility Local inby land and sea, and its ample supply of provisions in the wide plain of the Cayster. But there was a further cause not mentioned, not perhaps occurring to those who summoned the Council, but which materially contributed to its final result. Ephesus was the burialplace, according to tradition, of the Virgin Mother, who with John the Evangelist had taken refuge there in the close of the first century. The church in which the assembly was to be held was the only one in the world as yet dedicated to the Virgin Mary. In the mind of the Ephesian populace she had taken the place of the sacred image of Diana which had so excited them four centuries earlier. The passions of the people, as described in the nineteenth chapter of the Acts, might seem to have been recalled in some of the scenes of the Council. All these circumstances contributed to the success of the anti-Nestorian cause, and, although the honor of the Virgin was not the primary cause of the agitation of the question,

the triumph of Cyril's party in Ephesus was celebrated as such.

1

The reasons for the selection of Chalcedon were still more remarkable. It was the nearest approach to Constantinople without being in the city itself. Chalcedon was Scutari. It was that splendid promontory dear to Englishmen, dear to all who have ever from its height contemplated that glorious view. Even in that age the beauty of the situation attracted the admiration of spectators. But it was yet more than this. The church in which the Council was to be held was that which contained the remains 1 of the virgin martyr St. Euphemia. She was the oracle, the miracle-worker, of the neighborhood. The Archbishop of Constantinople on great emergencies entered the shrine, and (like the Bishop of Petra on like occasions with the sacred fire at Jerusalem) inserted a sponge into the tomb, which he drew out filled with the martyr's blood, which was then distributed, as a cure for all evils, to all parts of the empire. It was in this same tomb that at the close of the Council the magistrates and bishops placed the disputed documents which contained the faith of the assembly; and tradition added that the dead woman raised in her hand the roll which contained the true doctrine,2 and that the roll which contained the heretical doctrine lay dishonored at her feet.

The whole proceedings of the Council of Ephesus have been summarized by an eminent personage who knew what he was saying, and said what he meant.

"Even those Councils which were œcumenical have nothing to boast of in regard to the Fathers, taken individually, which compose them. They appear as the antagonist host in a battle, not as the shepherds of their people.

1 They were afterwards transferred to Saint Sophia, and subsequently to the Abbey of Saint Euphemia in Calabria.

2 I have seen pictures at Athos representing this tradition.

8 Cardinal Newman's Historical Sketches, pp. 335-337, 350, 351.