The Ecclesiastical History of Evagrius Scholasticus - Coptic ...

250
EVAGRIUS
39 At that time, 136 Justinian, after abandoning the correct highway of
doctrine and travelling a path untrodden by the Apostles and Fathers,
fell among thistles and thorns. Although he wished to ¢ll the Church
too with these, he failed in his objective since the Lord protected the
royal road with unbroken fences, lest murderers might leap onto a
leaning wall, as it were, or an overturned barrier, in ful¢lment of the
prediction of the prophet. 137 And so after Vigilius John, who is also
called Catelinus, was bishop of elder Rome, of New Rome John from
Seremis, of the city of the Alexandrians Apollinarius, while Anastasius
was bishop of the city of the Theopolitans after Domninus, and at Jerusalem
Macarius was returned again to his own see since, after the
deposition of Eustochius, he had anathematized Origen and Didymus
and Evagrius. 138 Justinian issued what is called by the Romans an
edict, in which he described the body of Christ as incorruptible and
not susceptible to the natural and blameless passions, thus stating that
the Lord ate before the Passion just as He ate after the resurrection,
and that from the time of its formation in the womb His all-holy body
did not experience any change or variation in respect to the voluntary
and natural passions, not even after its resurrection; 139 he compelled
136 AD 564. In the last years of his reign, Justinian pursued his quest for religious uni-
¢cation, ¢rst through a meeting with the unnamed Julianist bishop of Joppa soon after 560
(Michael the Syrian ix.34, II. p. 272), and then through discussions with the Nestorian Paul
of Nisibis (Guillaumont, ‘Justinian’; Lee, ‘Paul’ 476^9). These e¡orts may have aroused
suspicions about Justinian’s doctrinal position, which then received con¢rmation in the
Aphthartodocete initiative.
137 The ‘royal road’ of orthodoxy: Lampe, s.v. basiliko¤ B I.A.1; ‘leaning wall’: Psalms
61 (62).3^4.
138 Episcopal synchronism. At Rome Vigilius, who died in Sicily in 555 while returning
from his long absence in Constantinople, was succeeded by Pelagius (555^60), who in turn
was succeeded by John III Catelinus in 561; at Antioch (Theopolis) Domninus died in 559.
At Jerusalem Eustochius had been responsible for repressing the Origenist monks, whose
ideas had caused such trouble earlier in Justinian’s reign; this included the mass expulsion of
monks from the New Lavra and their replacement by orthodox Chalcedonians, but it was
these o⁄cially sanctioned measures which led to his downfall (Theophanes 242:29). Justinian
may have been in£uenced into taking his Aphthartodocetist measure by the Julianist
bishop of Joppa (see next note), and Stein plausibly speculated that this individual might
have suggested to Justinian that his patriarchal superior in Palestine should be replaced
(Bas-Empire II. 685).
139 The Aphthartodocete initiative is another example of the intellectual closeness of
neo-Chalcedonian and Monophysite positions, which could not, however, be bridged in
practice. The heretical view had been propagated by Julian, the early sixth-century bishop