Page:Catholic Encyclopedia, volume 5.djvu/562

 EFHESTTS

496

EPHESUS

Berj-tus, and Uranius of Imeria were to examine the matter. These bishops met at TjTe, removed to Bery- tus, and returned to T\Te, and eventually acquitted Ibas once more, together with his fellow-accused, Daniel, Bishop of Harran, and John of Theodosianopo- lis. This was in Febnmn.', 449. The bishops had been too kind. Cheroeas. Governor of Osrhoene was now ordered to go to Edessa to make a new inquirj'. He was received by the people on 12 April with shouts (the detailed summarj- of which took up some two or three pages of his report"), in honour of the emperor, the governor, the late Bishop Rabbula. and against Xestorius and Ibas. Cherieas sent to Constantinople, with two letters of his own, an elaborate report, de- tailing all the accusations he could manage to rake to- gether against Ibas. The emperor ordered that a new bishop should be chosen. It was this report, which provided a historj' of the whole affair, that was now read at length by order of Dioscorus. When the fa- mous letter of Ibas to Maris was read, cries arose such as "These things pollute our ears. . . C>Til is immortal. . . . Let Ibas be burnt in the midst of the city of An- tioch. . . Exile is of no use. Xestorius and Ibas should be burnt together! " A final indictment was made in a speech by a priest of Edessa named Eulogius. Sen- tence was finally given against Ibas of deposition and excommunication, without any su^estion that he ought to be cited or that his defence ought to be heard. It is scandalous to find the three bishops who had ac- quitted him but a few months previously, only anxious to show their concurrence. They even pretended to forget what had been proved at T\Te and Berv-tus. In the next case, that of Ibas's nephew, Daniel of Harran, they declared that at TjTe they had clearly seen his guilt, and had only acquitted him because of his volun- tarj- resignation. He was quickly deposed by the agreement of all the council. He was, of course, not present and could not defend himself.

It was next the turn of Irenaeus, who as an influen- tial lajnnan at the former Council of Ephesus had shown much favour to Xestorius. He had later be- come Bishop of TvTe. but theemperor had deposed him in 44S, and the miserable Photius. already mentioned, had succeeded him. The sjTiod made no difficulty in ratifying the deposition of Irena?us as a bigamist and a blasphemer. Aquilinus. Bishop of Byblus, because he had been consecrated by Irenaeus and was his friend, was next deposed. Soplironius. Bishop of Telia, was a cousin of Ibas. He was therefore accused of magic, and his case was reser%'ed for the judgment of the new Bishop of Edessa — a surprisingly mild decision. The council turned to higher game. The great Theodoret, whose learning and eloquence in the pulpit and with the pen were the terror of the party of Dioscorus, had been confined by the emperor within his own diocese in the preceding year, to prevent his preaching at Anti- och: and Theodosius had twice written to prevent his coming to Ephesus to the council. It was not diffi- cult to find reasons for deposing him in his absence. Far as he was from being a Xestorian. he had been a friend of Xestorius. and for more than three years (431—4) the most redoubtable antagonist of St. Cj-ril. But the two great theologians had come to terms and had celebrated their agreement with great joy. Theo- doret had tried to make friends with Dioscorus, but his advances had been rejected with scorn. A monk of Antioch now brought forward a volume of extracts from the works of Theodoret. First was read Theo- dorct's fine letter to the monks of the East (see Mansi, V, 1023), then some extracts from a lost " .\pologj' for Diodorus and Theodore" — the verj- name of this work sufficed in the eyes of the council for a condem- nation to l>e pronounced. Dioscorus pronounced the sentence of deposition and excommunication.

When Theodoret in his remote diocese heard of this absurd sentence on an absent man against whose repu- tation not a word was uttered, he at once appealed to

the pope in a famous letter (Ep. cxiii). He wrote also to the legate Renatus (.Ep. cxvi), being unaware that he was dead. The council had a yet bolder task before it. Domnus of .Antioch is said to have agreed in the first session to the acquittal of Eutyches. But he re- fused, on the plea of sickness, to appear any more at the council. He seems to have been disgusted, or terrified, or both, at the tj-ranny exercised by Diosco- rus. The council had sent him an account of their actions, and he replied (if we may believe the Acts) that he agreed to all the sentences that had been given and regretted that his health made his attendance impossible.

It is almost incredible that immediately after receiv- ing this message, the council proceeded to hear a num- ber of petitions from monks ami priests against Domnus liimsclf. He was accused of friendship with Theodoret and Flavian, of Xestorianism, of altering the form of the Sacrament of Baptism, of intruding an immoral bishop into Emesa, of having been uncanon- ically appointed liimself, and in fact of being an enemy of Dioscorus. Several pages of the MS. are unfortu- nately lost; but it does not seem that the unfortunate patriarch was cited to appear, or given a chance of defending himself. The bishops shouted that he was worse than Ibas. He was deposed by a vote of the council, and with this final act of injustice the Acts come to an end. The council wrote the usual letter to the emperor (see Perrj', trans., p. 431), who was charmed ^^'ith the result of the council and confirmed it with a letter (Mansi, VII, 495, and Perry, p. 364). Dioscorus sent an encyclical to the bishops of the East, with a form of adhesion to the council which they were to sign (Perry, p. 375). He went to Con- stantinople and appointed his secretary .\natolius bishop of that great see. Juvenal of Jerusalem had become his tool, he had deposed the Patriarchs of Antioch and Constantinople; but one powerful adver- sarj- yet remained. He halted at Xicea, and with ten bishops (no doubt the ten Egj^jtian metropolitans whom he had brought to Ephesus), " in addition to all his other crimes he extended liis madness against him who had been entrusted with the guardianship of the Vine by the Saviour" — in the words of the bishops at Chalcedon — and excommunicated the pope himself.

Meanwhile St. Leo had received the appeals of Theodoret and Flavian (of whose death he was un- aware), and had written to them and to the emperor and empress that all the Acts of the council were null. He excommunicated all who had taken part in it, and absolved all whom it had condemned, with the excep- tion of Domnus of Antioch, who seems to have had no wish to resume his see and retired into the monastic life which he had left many years before with regret. (For the results of the Robber Council, or Latrocinium, — the name given to it by St. Leo — see Ch.vlcedon, Eutyches, and Leo I, Pope.)

The .4r/sof the first session of the council will be found in those of the Council of Chalcedon. in Mansi, Hardocin. and the other collections. The SjTiac Acts were published in the oriffinal by Perry. Secundam ^un^uium Ephestnam necnon ex- cerpta qu(s ad earn per/iWn/ ( Oxford. 1S7.t1; tr.TnEM. The >^eci->r\d SynodofEphesusfromSyriacMSS.(DaTtioTd. 18S1). For French and German versions and other literature, see Dioscori7s. John Chapm.vn.

Ephesus, The Seven Sleepers of. — The stor>' is one of the many examples of the legend about a man who falls asleep and years after wakes up to find the world changed. It is told in Greek by Sj-meon Metaphrastes (q. v.) in his " Lives of the Saints" for the month of July. Gregory of Tours did it into Latin. There is a SjTiac version by James of Sarug (d. 521). and from the SjTiac the storj' was done into other Eastern languages. There is also an Anglo- X'orman poem. " Li set dormanz ", written by a certain Chardry. and it occurs again in Jacobus do \'oragine's "Golden Legend" (Legenda aurea) and in an Old- Korse fragment. Of all these versions and re-editions