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Rh gave trouble to the Government. We see how loose was the bond which held them to the empire by the ease with which they fell a prey to the Arabs in the 7th century. In Syria and Egypt the natives welcomed, instead of resisting, these enemies of the empire. It was no doubt this same feeling of local patriotism, of anti-imperialism, which made the natives of these countries Monophysites. To Egyptians especially it was a matter of national honour. They remembered the Council of Ephesus in 431 as the great triumph of Egypt over the "East" and over Constantinople. There the Egyptian Patriarch had deposed the Bishop of Constantinople. St. Cyril was their great national hero. Understanding very little of the theological issue, the Egyptian monks, parabolani, peasants, triumphed again when at Ephesus in 449 their Patriarch once more deposed a Bishop of Constantinople. It was the same thing over again. As Cyril had defeated Nestorius, so did Dioscor, Cyril's successor, defeat Flavian, Nestorius's successor. And then Chalcedon reversed the process. There Anatolius of Constantinople and the Emperor deposed Dioscor. It was an appalling, an unheard-of outrage on Egypt that its Patriarch, its "ecclesiastical Pharaoh," should stand as a culprit before Byzantine bishops, should be deposed, excommunicated, banished. So Egypt rose to defend its Pharaoh, to defend the cause of Ephesus and Cyril, which was the cause of the old Fatherland by the Nile. It was Egyptians who first persuaded people in Syria and Palestine to join them in the common cause against the Emperor and his Government. The decrees of Chalcedon were made the law of the empire; they were enforced by Government, sometimes very cruelly. So these provinces found in resisting Chalcedon an outlet for their simmering hostility to the Emperor. What really mattered most to the great crowd of Monophysites who remained after Chalcedon was not a difficult point of metaphysics: it was that the Government wanted to enforce this teaching—therefore they were against it. The faith of Chalcedon was Cæsar's religion, therefore it was not theirs. If they could not overturn Cæsar's rule altogether, at any rate they could stir up riots in this matter and could show how they hated him by refusing to accept his theology.

Then there was the usual reversed movement. As heresy