Chalcedonians and Non-Chalcedonians
The Council of Chalcedon (cf. p. 164) in 451 was a turning-point in the development of Christianity. For those who would come to be known as Orthodox it provided the basic dogma of the nature of Jesus Christ as both God and Man, united ‘unconfusedly, unchangeably, indivisibly, inseparably’.
It also marked the decisive victory of the imperial capital Constantinople in its struggle for supremacy in church affairs over its chief rival in the East, Alexandria. Constantinople was to be henceforth the centre of both Church and Empire, the symbol of their unity and the focus of the Christian universe.But it was also the cause of the first major and lasting schism in the Church. For those who were to be termed by their opponents Monophysite, the dogmatic definition of 451 was unacceptable both as doctrine and as symbolic of the predominance of Greek culture over the other cultural traditions included within the Roman Empire. The Christians of Egypt, and in particular the numerous monks, saw the council as a betrayal of the teaching of Cyril of Alexandria. Christians in Syria detected in it signs of Nestorius’ doctrine (p. 163). In both countries the monks were the spearhead of the defence of the local theological tradition against the domination of Hellenistic culture. The result was a powerful separatist movement inspired by both religious conviction and national sentiment which the Empire was unable either to contain or to suppress.
For two hundred years the struggle between Chalcedonians and non-Chalcedonians dominated imperial politics and church life. The Emperor Marcian tried to impose the Chalcedonian dogma on the Empire by force. After his death in 457 attempts were made to reach a compromise with the Monophysites. In 482 the Emperor Zeno promulgated the Henoticon, or Act of Union, devised by Acacius of Constantinople and Peter Mongus, Patriarch of Alexandria.
It condemned Nestorius and Eutyches, affirmed the Creed of Nicea-Constantinople and the teaching of Cyril of Alexandria. It avoided any reference to the crucial question as to whether there were two natures or one in the Incarnate Christ. Rejected by Rome, it failed ultimately to satisfy either Chalcedonians or Monophysites, and caused a schism between Rome and Constantinople which lasted until 519. The churches in Egypt and Syria chose Monophysites as Patriarchs of Alexandria and Antioch. Constantinople often appointed Chalcedonian patriarchs, who were not accepted by the vast majority in those churches. The few who adhered to them were called Melkites—emperor’s men—by the rest. State persecution only reinforced anti-imperial sentiment in Egypt and Syria. The last attempt to impose Chalcedonian bishops there was made by the Emperor Justinian (527-65), whose overriding ambition was to restore the unity of the universal Roman Empire. Its failure was followed by the development of an independent Monophysite episcopate alongside the imperial Orthodox episcopate. The schism between the Jacobite (Syria) and Coptic (Egypt) churches, and the Church of the Empire, became final. Such was the religious and political hostility of these churches towards the Empire that when the armies of Muhammad overran Syria and Egypt in the seventh century they were welcomed almost as liberators.