Page:Dictionary of Christian Biography and Literature (1911).djvu/771

 of the president Pollio, who tortured and then crucified him. The martyr's answer to the president's queries sufficiently indicate his theological position. Pollio said to him, "Are you willing to take part with us or with Christ?" To which Nestor replied, "Cum Christo meo et eram, et sum, et ero"; to which the president replied that as he was devoted to Jesus Who was crucified under Pontius Pilate, he should be crucified like his God. The Acts say his martyrdom was on the 5th day of the week at the third hour, Le Blant (Actes des Martyrs, p. 46) points out the accuracy of the details.

[G.J.S.]

Nestorius (3) and Nestorianism. One of the most far-reaching controversies in the history of the church is connected with the name of Nestorius, who became patriarch of Constantinople in 428, in succession to Sisinnius. So protracted has it been that even to the present day Nestorian churches, as they are called, exist in Assyria and India, and their members are not in communion with those of the other Christian churches in the East. The history of the form of thought which produced such far-reaching results must be interesting to every student of theology. Nestorius himself was brought up in the cloister, and had, as Neander remarks, imbibed the tendencies to narrowness, partisanship, impatience, and ignorance of mankind which are not unfrequently found among those who have been educated apart from their fellows. He was brought from Antioch, we are told—a fact of which the significance will presently be seen. He appears to have been eloquent and sincere, and his austerity of life had won for him the admiration of man. Socrates, a specially well-informed contemporary, and a layman of judgment and fairness, speaks with some severity of his first steps after he became patriarch (H. E. vii. 29). He is described as addressing the emperor (Theodosius II.) immediately after his appointment, "before all the people," with the words, "Give me, O prince, a country purged of heretics, and I will give you heaven as a recompense. Assist me in destroying heretics, and I will assist you in vanquishing the Persians." Such language was more enthusiastic than wise. It was no doubt pleasing to the multitude, but (Socr. l.c.) it made a very bad impression on thoughtful hearers. "Before he had tasted of the waters of the city," the historian proceeds, using a proverbial phrase, he had flung himself headlong into acts of violence and persecution. On the fifth day after his consecration, he resolved to destroy the oratory in which the Arians were wont to celebrate their worship, and thereby he not only drove them to desperation, but, as Socrates adds, he alienated thinking men of his own communion. He next attacked the Quartodecimans and the Novatianists with equal violence, although neither sect was involved in heresy by its schism from the church, and the Novatianists had steadily supported the church in its controversy with the Arians. He then turned his attention to the Macedonians. [.] For his treatment of this sect there is more excuse. The bp. of Germa, on the Hellespont, had treated them with such severity that, driven to desperation, they had sent two assassins to murder him. For this rash act they were deprived of their churches in Constantinople and the neighbourhood. It was at least unwise to convert the members of four "denominations," as we should now call them, into bitter antagonists, and it was not very long before an occasion arose for them to display their hostility.

The development of theology in Syria had for some time taken a different direction from that which it had taken in Egypt, where the tendency had been to lay stress on the divine, and therefore mysterious, side of Christianity. But in Syria a school had arisen, of which Diodorus of Tarsus and the celebrated Theodore of Mopsuestia were the leaders, which devoted itself to the critical interpretation of Scripture, and favoured the application of logical investigation to the facts and doctrines of Christianity. These two tendencies were certain some day to come into collision, and when reinforced by the personal jealousy felt by successive patriarchs of Alexandria at the elevation in 381 of Constantinople, as New Rome, to the second place among the patriarchates, over the head of a church which could boast of St. Mark as its founder, there was plenty of material for a conflagration. Already premonitions of the approaching conflict between Alexandria and Constantinople had appeared in the successful intrigues of, patriarch of Alexandria, against the renowned , patriarch of Constantinople. The violence of Nestorius and his supporters set fire to the material already provided; the immediate occasion being the sermon of a presbyter named Anastasius, whom Nestorius had brought with him from Antioch, and in whom he reposed much confidence. Anastasius is said to have used the words (Socr. H. E. vii. 32), "Let no man call Mary θεοτόκος, for Mary was human, and it is impossible that God could be born from a human being." This utterance naturally caused amazement and distress, for the word θεοτόκος had been applied to the Virgin by authorities as high as Origen, Athanasius, and Eusebius of Caesarea, and it was insisted on with some vehemence by Gregory of Nazianzus. It is also found in the letter of Alexander of Alexandria to Alexander of Constantinople. [.] Nestorius supported his protégé, and delivered several discourses, in which he maintained the thesis of his subordinate with ability and energy, and with some heat. He was promptly charged with having involved himself in the heresies of Photinus or Paul of Samosata. Socrates denies that this was the case. But he remarks on the unreasonable antipathy of Nestorius to a word to which orthodox churchmen were well accustomed. This antipathy may partly, perhaps, be explained by a dislike on the part of Nestorius to the tendency to undue honour to the Virgin which had already displayed itself. But it was still more due to the teaching of Theodore of Mopsuestia and his school, which had laid undue stress on the humanity of Christ, and had not shrunk from representing the inhabitation of the Man Christ Jesus by the Divine Logos as differing rather in degree than