Alexander Schmemann

3. The Age Of The Ecumenical Councils (50 pages)

From Schmemann's A History of the Orthodox Church

Page 30

Finally the pope gave in and agreed to condemn the Three Heads. But now a further storm arose in the West, where Pope Vigilius was regarded as an apostate and betrayer of Chalcedon. The well-known African theologian, Facundus of Hermiane, published a book In Defense of the Three Heads, which produced a sensation. Locally council after council opposed the condemnation, and in Africa matters went so far that the pope himself was solemnly anathematized. Justinian realized that the pope’s signature decided nothing in this case. The frightened Vigilius begged him to review the whole matter and to summon an ecumenical council for this purpose. After the emperor had obtained from the pope a written condemnation of the Three Heads, he ordered preparations for the council. All that had taken place previously was officially annulled.

Justinian understood the preparation for a council in his own way. In Africa, for example, where opposition to the edict was particularly strong, the main bishops were arrested at the emperor’s order, including the archbishop of Carthage, and replaced by others. Still the outcome of the council seemed unclear. The emperor decided to alter the initial plan.
Instead of reviewing the whole matter again, as he had promised Vigilius, it was much simpler to demand of the assembled bishops their signatures on a document already prepared. A new edict, with detailed theological argumentation, was issued and distributed to all the churches. The patriarch of Alexandria, who refused to accept it, was immediately exiled and replaced by a new one.

Vigilius refused to recognize this edict, by which the emperor had broken his promise. Justinian was beginning to lose his temper; sensing the danger, Vigilius and Datius of Milan decided to seek sanctuary in an inviolable refuge, the Church of St. Peter in the papal Palace of Hormisdas. Here a disgraceful scene took place. On the emperor’s orders the police broke into the church to arrest the pope. He resisted so energetically that the columns over the altar collapsed and almost crushed him. The assembled crowd began stormily to express their outrage, and the police were obliged to withdraw ineffectively. Again there were threats, slander, and petty but hourly insults and humiliation. In the end several years passed in this way, in the course of which a vacuum developed around the pope; Datius of Milan died, and the circle of Western clerics melted away. Still the pope had apparently achieved his goal, the emperor’s rejection of the edicts and a free solution of the question.

After endless wavering, the council finally opened in Constantinople on May 5, 553. It began with a solemn condemnation of Origenism, which still continued to disturb Palestine. The pope informed the council that while he would not be personally present at the deliberations, he would send his opinion on the problem of the Three Heads in written form. This lengthy document, filled with detailed argument, opened with an unconditional condemnation of the theology of Theodore of Mopsuestia. As for the man himself, the pope referred to an ancient practice of the Church not to condemn those who had died at peace with it, leaving this to the judgment of Christ. The pope refused to condemn Theodoret and Ibas, who had been defended by the Council of Chalcedon.

This document never reached the bishops.
Instead, Justinian presented to the council Vigilius’ written condemnation of the Three Heads, which he had given the emperor at the beginning of the dispute. Caught in a contradiction, the pope was excluded from the diptychs (his name no longer mentioned in the liturgy). On June 2 the council finished the condemnation of the Three Heads by signing fourteen anathemas. No one really defended the documents concerned, and the Eastern Church painlessly accepted the decree of the ecumenical council as something self-evident.

In the end Vigilius, too, signed. He was not destined to return to Rome, but died on the way in Syracuse in 555. In the West the council was accepted with difficulty. The main role in its acceptance was played by Vigilius’ successor, Pelagius, who had been for many years one of the main opponents of the condemnation of the Three Heads. His long stay in Constantinople had taught him much, however — perhaps most of all to penetrate behind the historical covering to the essence of things, and to distinguish the temporal from the eternal.

 

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