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Rh have always been ordained, and who looked to the Patriarch of that city as their chief too. Egypt was also full of monks who were as ready as the bishops at any time to strike a blow for their Patriarch. And so in all the disputes in the Eastern Church, at all the councils the "ecclesiastical Pharaoh" appeared leading a compact band of Egyptians, ready to show the national feeling, which the Empire had crushed politically, by voting in Church matters like one man for their chief. Before Constantinople arose the successors of St. Mark were without question the mightiest bishops in the East. As their rivals on the Bosphorus were working their way up, the opponent they had most to fear was Alexandria. Whenever the See of Constantinople was vacant Alexandria was ready with a candidate to represent her interests, on whose side she could throw the enormous weight of all Egypt. Three times she deposed a Bishop of Constantinople—St. John Chrysostom in 403, Nestorius in 431, Flavian in 449; each time the other Eastern bishops meekly accepted her decision. Doubtless the Christian Pharaoh would have remained the head of the Eastern Churches, and all the development of their history would have been different, had not heresy broken his power and given Constantinople her chance. And then the flood of Islam completed his ruin. It was Monophysism that crushed both Alexandria and Antioch, to leave Constantinople without a real rival in the East. Monophysism to the Egyptians stood for a national cause against the Emperor's Court. They thought it had been the teaching of their national hero, St. Cyril. Dioscur, Patriarch of Alexandria (444–451), St. Cyril's successor, took up its cause hotly. But it was rejected by the universal Church; with it fell Dioscur, and with him the glory of his see. In 451 at Chalcedon he had to stand before the Fathers as a