Mary is the Mother of God — The Council of Ephesus
On Christmas Day in the year 428, the newly consecrated patriarch of Constantinople gave a homily. Nestorius, a monk originally from Antioch, had been chosen patriarch by Emperor Theodosius II (r. 408–450) for his reputation for holiness and excellent preaching. Nestorius was particular about language, exhibiting a “semantic fussiness” and “arrogant intellectualism [that] drove him from mere idiosyncrasy into explicit heresy.”122 In his first Christmas as patriarch, Nestorius attacked the use of the word Theotokos to describe Mary as “the Mother of God”: “They ask whether Mary may be called God-bearer. But has God, then, a Mother? Mary did not bear God — the creature did not bear the Creator, but the man, who is the instrument of the Godhead. He who was formed in the womb of Mary was not God himself, but God assumed him.”123
Nestorius’s attack on the Blessed Mother was, in reality, an attack on Christ. He was fond of saying that “God is not a baby two or three months old.”124 This view was influenced by Nestorius’s Arian educational background in Antioch. Nestorius could not reconcile the fact that Jesus, as true God and true man, was born of Mary. He believed that Mary provided merely the human “fleshy garment” of Christ, since “the Eternal God cannot be born, suffer, and die.”125 Mary, according to Nestorius, was Christotokos, or “Christ-bearer” — not Theotokos, or “God-bearer.”126 When news of Nestorius’s preaching reached Saint Cyril of Alexandria (r. 412–444), the patriarch of Alexandria, he became alarmed and wrote to Nestorius: “These things I write out of love in Christ, exhorting you as a brother and calling upon you before Christ and the elect angels, to hold and teach these things with us, in order to preserve the peace of the churches and that the priests of God may remain in an unbroken bond of concord and love.”127
Known as the “guardian of exactitude,” Cyril sought to vigorously combat Nestorius’s false preaching and ensure the Church did not suffer another far-reaching and destructive heresy like Arianism. When Nestorius failed to correct his error, Cyril sent letters to the emperor and Pope Saint Celestine I (r. 422–432). Cyril wanted the pope’s opinion on Nestorius’s teaching before he publicly condemned it:
We do not openly and publicly break off communion with [Nestorius] before bringing these things to the notice of Your Holiness. Deign therefore to prescribe what you feel in the matter, so that it may be clearly known to us whether we must hold communion with him, or whether we should freely declare to him that no one can remain in communion with one who cherishes and preaches suchlike erroneous doctrine.128
Celestine responded that Nestorius’s teachings were not in conformity with the apostolic Catholic faith. As a result, Cyril condemned Nestorius’s heretical teachings about Mary, which he correctly discerned were really an attack on Christ himself, writing to his monks, “I am astonished that the question should ever have been raised as to whether the Holy Virgin should be called Mother of God, for it really amounts to asking, is her Son God, or is he not?”129 Cyril’s letters and writings were instrumental in defeating Nestorianism. They received definitive acclamation at the third ecumenical council, convened by Emperor Theodosius II at Ephesus in 431. Cyril acted as papal legate, and in short order the assembled council fathers condemned Nestorius, deposed him, and then excommunicated him. He retired to his former monastery in Antioch. The Council of Ephesus affirmed Mary as Theotokos, Mother of God, in accordance with the apostolic faith.
The First Great Pope
A decade after the Council at Ephesus, Leo I (r. 440–461) began his twenty-one-year pontificate, exerting papal supremacy throughout the Church, enforcing ecclesiastical discipline, fighting heresies, and protecting Rome. Leo had been a deacon of the Roman Church during the pontificate of Pope Celestine I and was known to be an excellent preacher. He was in Gaul, representing papal interests, when news came of Celestine’s death and his election to the papacy.
An abbot of an influential monastery in Constantinople began teaching that Jesus had only one nature, a divine one (Monophysitism). The monk, Eutyches (378–454), taught that Jesus’ human nature was absorbed by his divine nature “like a drop of water mingled in a cup of wine.”130 Eutyches’s teaching flowed from the Arian controversy concerning the nature of Christ, as theologians continued struggling to find the language to express the faith of Nicaea. In an effort to dispel any notion of Jesus being two persons, Eutyches preached Monophysitism, which essentially repudiated Christ’s humanity — if Christ is true God and true man, then it logically follows he must have both a divine and human nature. News of Eutyches’s teaching reached Rome, which prompted Pope Leo to write a theological treatise, known as the Tome, on the subject. Leo sent his book to Saint Flavian, the patriarch of Constantinople, who, in turn, excommunicated and deposed Eutyches. However, the influential monk appealed this action to the emperor and requested an ecumenical council to settle the matter. Emperor Theodosius II called a council to meet in Ephesus in 449. Leo sent representatives with a copy of his Tome, which he expected to be read and accepted as definitive teaching. Eutyches and his supporters objected to the reading of the papal document and highjacked the proceedings of the council which then ruled in favor of the heretical monk and ordered the deposition and exile of Saint Flavian! When news of the irregular proceedings at Ephesus reached Pope Leo, he condemned the council, referring to it as “non judicium, sed latrocinium” (“not a judicial gathering, but a council of thieves [or robbers]”).131
Eventually, another meeting was called at Chalcedon in 451. This gathering was the most well-attended ecumenical council to date, with more than five hundred bishops present. At this council, Leo’s Tome was read to the assembled council fathers, who, moved by the Holy Spirit, shouted with one voice after the reading: “Behold the Faith of the Fathers; the Faith of the Apostles! So do we too, all of us believe, all who are orthodox believe the same! Anathema to whoever believes otherwise! Thus through Leo has Peter spoken!”132 Leo had developed a way to express the apostolic faith concerning the nature of Jesus. In the hypostatic union, confirmed in the proceedings at Chalcedon, Leo taught that Jesus is one divine person, the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity, with two natures — divine and human. Jesus is “truly God and truly man” and must be “acknowledged in two natures, without confusion, without change, without division, without separation.”133 Leo’s contribution to theology is one of the most significant teachings of the successors of Peter.
The council also passed discipline canons, but one in particular raised the ire of Pope Leo. The (mostly eastern) bishops in attendance at Chalcedon passed a canon that equated the see of Constantinople with that of Rome. This was done for political reasons, as the city was the capital of the Empire, but it implied that the patriarch of Constantinople was equal in authority to the pope. Leo rightly understood that if this canon were accepted, the hierarchical structure of the Church established by Christ would be altered. Jesus had chosen Peter to be the visible head of the Church on earth, and his authority, power, and mission were handed down to his successors, whose identities are not based on political considerations — that is, which city is the capital of the Roman Empire — but rather on where Peter was bishop. Papal rejection of this canon continued the tension between east and west, Constantinople and Rome, which would linger for centuries.
During the pontificate of Leo, the Huns, a nomadic people, left the Mongolian steppe and began a six-thousand-mile march to Rome. The Romans were dreadfully afraid of the Huns, who were described by the Roman historian Ammianus Marcellinus as “abnormally savage [and] totally ignorant of the distinction between right and wrong [and] are under no restraint from religion or superstition.”134 The Huns were skilled horsemen, who allegedly slept in the saddle and ate half-raw meat they warmed under the saddle of their horse; excellent archers, shooting with impressive rapidity and accuracy while riding at high speed; and skilled engineers, using siege towers, battering rams, and scaling ladders in their attacks against fortified cities.
These fearsome warriors were