Page:Nestorius and his place in the history of Christian doctrine.djvu/54

42 adversus Nestorium, a work which opposed and denounced as heretical 43 quotations from the sermons of Nestorius, which partly he had previously adapted to suit his polemical ends. Then he sent this work, translated into Latin, to the bishop of Rome together with a letter as untrue as it was clever. About the same time he wrote three doctrinal letters really against Nestorius, but without mentioning his name, and addressed these to the emperor, to the empress and to the sister of the emperor, the "Augusta" Pulcheria. With the first of these actions which opens the second act of our tragedy Cyril was astonishingly fortunate. I say astonishingly fortunate, for it is a riddle that Rome, whose dogmatic traditions were nearer to those of the Antiochians than to those of Cyril, let herself be guided by Cyril. In order to explain this riddle we can point to the fact that Rome had taken it amiss of Nestorius that he had received in Constantinople some banished western adherents of Pelagius. One could even say that Rome took up her position against