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Updated: May 11, 2025
One of the Simeons is said by Moschus to have been struck by lightning, and his death to have been miraculously revealed to Julian the Stylite, who lived twenty-four miles off. More than one Stylite, belonging to the Monophysite heresy of Severus Acephalus, was to be found, according to Moschus, in the East at the beginning of the seventh century.
It was zeal for the honour of the Son of God that induced them to deny Him all contact with humanity. Their good intentions, however, could not permanently counteract the evil inherent in their system. In later generations the evil came to the surface. Theopaschitism, the doctrine that openly denies the impassibility of the godhead, flourished in the monophysite churches.
Recollect, also, that now in his old age he had just witnessed the same iniquities again rending the Eastern Empire; the old Emperor Anastasius hunted to death by armies of mad monks about the Monophysite Heresy; the cities, even the holiest places of the East, stained with Christian blood; everywhere mob-law, murder, treachery, assassination even in the house of God; and now the new Emperor Justin was throwing himself into the party of the Orthodox with all the blind rage of an ignorant peasant; persecuting, expelling, shutting up the Arian Churches of the Goths, refusing to hear Dietrich's noble appeals; and evidently organizing a great movement against those peaceable Arians, against whom, during the life-time of Dietrich, their bitterest enemies do not allege a single case of persecution.
This addition to the Trisagion was officially condemned at the close of the 7th century owing to its monophysite associations. "Chronicle of Zachariah of Mitylene," translated by Hamilton and Brooks, ii. 2, p. 21. The question of Justinian's orthodoxy has been debated by Bury and Hutton. See Guardian, March 4th and April 15th, 1896. Monophysitism originated in a monastery.
We shall deal with those Christological errors, which, whether part of the official monophysite creed or not, are logical results of the monophysite formula. Unreality may be predicated of Christ's human nature as a whole, or in respect of its parts.
That Christ took matter up into His being as a permanent element, that He dignified the body and glorified human faculties, these facts seemed to the monophysite mind improbable, and, if true, devoid of religious significance. It came natural to him to explain Christ's body as a phantom. He was prepared to regard the human nature as unsubstantial.
Monophysitism considers only the religious nature of man, and takes no account of his other needs. We must therefore characterise the system as unsocial, unlovely, unsympathetic. The uncompromising attitude of the individual monophysites was reflected in their ecclesiastical polity. We cannot but admire their sturdy independence. The monophysite church stood for freedom from state control.
For religion, again, protection was more easily obtained in that day from the Arab, who made war on Christianity, than from the Byzantine emperor, who was its champion. What were the different sects and subdivisions of Christianity to the barbarian? Monophysite, Monothelite, Eutychian, or Jacobite, all were to him as the scholastic disputes of noble and intellectual Europe to the camps of gypsies.
Blent with that doctrine was the attempt of three emperors to substitute themselves as judges of doctrine for the Apostolic See and the bishops in union with it. At the moment when John Talaia was expelled from Alexandria, the Monophysite heresy, espoused by Acacius and imposed by Zeno, would have triumphed, save for the Popes Simplicius and Felix.
Incensed at what he considered the slight offered to him by John Talaia, he took up, with the utmost keenness against him, the cause of a rival, Peter the Stammerer, who had been elected by the Eutychean party. He worked upon the emperor's mind in favour of the Monophysite pretender.
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