Page:Nestorius and his place in the history of Christian doctrine.djvu/65

Rh himself and hailed by him with joy, led to the result that Nestorius lost the emperor's favour and his bishopric. It was the tragedy of Nestorius' life, that, in Ephesus, the question was whether he should be overthrown or Cyril, a man as unscrupulous as he was greedy of power.

After the transactions at Ephesus the tragedy of Nestorius' life came to its end in two acts, the first of which is now to be treated. I say after the transactions at Ephesus and not after the council of Ephesus, for "a council of Ephesus," an ecumenical council of Ephesus, never existed. Two party-councils had sat and cursed each other; the dogmatic question had remained undecided. The Antiochians continued to hold Nestorius in esteem and to treat as heretical the anathematisms of Cyril; the latter, for his part, regarded Nestorius as a condemned heretic and had grounds for thinking that his council had proved his anathematisms. The church of the East was divided. The emperor, assisted by Maximian, the new bishop of Constantinople, forced the parties to a peace by means of the union of 433. The document of this union between Cyril and the Antiochians is Cyril's epistola ad orientales, in which he accepted an Antiochian confession of faith,