Page:Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire vol 5 (1897).djvu/147

OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE some personal offences were skilfully detected: his rash and illegal excommunication of the pope, and his contumacious refusal (while he was detained a prisoner) to attend the  summons of the synod. Witnesses were introduced to prove the special facts of his pride, avarice, and cruelty; and the fathers heard with abhorrence that the alms of the church were lavished on the female dancers, that his palace, and even his bath, was open to the prostitutes of Alexandria, and that the infamous Pansophia, or Irene, was publicly entertained as the concubine of the patriarch."

For these scandalous offences Dioscorus was de])osed by the synod and banished by the emperor; but the purity of his faith was declared in the presence, and with the tacit approbation, of the fathers. Their prudence supposed rather than pronounced the heresy of Eutyches, who was never summoned before their tribunal; and they sat silent and abashed, when a bold Monophysite, casting at their feet a volume of Cyril, challenged them to anathematize in his person the doctrine of a saint. If we fairly peruse the acts of Chalcedon as they are recorded by the orthodox party, we shall find that a great majority of the bishops embraced the simple unity of Christ; and the ambiguous concession, that he was formed  or  two natures, might imply either their previous existence, or their subsequent confusion, or some dangerous interval between  the conception of the man and the assumption of the God. The Roman theology, more positive and precise, adopted the