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three chapters and the fifth oecumenical council 79
iv. religious policy: the three chapters and the fifth
oecumenical council
During the 540s Justinian continued his attempts to keep the eastern and
western churches in balance, a task now complicated by the fact that on the
one hand North Africa had been officially restored to the empire and its
church hierarchy released from the Arian rule of the Vandals, while on the
other the fluctuating fortunes of the war against the Goths in Italy put new
problems in the way of relations between Constantinople and the papacy
at the same time as it added urgency to Justinian’s desire for union.
Religious policy was still complicated by the apparently conflicting aims of
Justinian and Theodora. Monophysite ordinations were already being performed
by John of Tella, and a Monophysite monk from Amida, later to
be created titular bishop of Ephesus and well known as the Syriac church
historian John of Ephesus, was allowed to proselytize widely in Asia Minor;
he claimed 80,000 conversions between 535 and the end of the reign, as
well as taking credit for ninety-six churches and twelve monasteries. 98 John
of Tella died in prison in 538, just before Severus.
In 542 Theodora responded to a request for clergy from the Ghassanid
allies of Byzantium, who were Monophysite in sympathy, and Justinian was
persuaded to allow the consecration of two ‘flying bishops’, Theodore as
bishop of the nomadic Ghassanids, and Jacob Bar�Addai (Baradaeus) as
titular bishop of Edessa. 99 Of these, Theodore, also a Monophysite, had
come from a monastery in Constantinople; their activity was spread all over
the east, and John of Ephesus claims that Jacob ordained more than 100,000
clergy, as well as nearly thirty bishops. Whether this is true or not, the longterm
effects were important: the ordinations gave the Monophysites not
only a rival identity but also a rival ecclesiastical structure in the east, and
Jacob’s influence extended to the consecration of a Monophysite patriarch
of Antioch. While the initiative helped to retain the loyalty of the
Ghassanids, whose military support was essential for the defence of the
east, it made religious unity in the empire even harder to achieve.
As before, Justinian continued to search for a formula which could bring
east and west together. 100 He now evolved a policy which he was to push
through with great determination, but which was to be no more successful
in the longer term than his earlier efforts. In a long edict published in 542–3
he had taken sides with pope Pelagius in a dispute which was proving
98 The numbers are variously given by John himself: Mitchell, Anatolia ii.118–19.
99 See Harvey, Asceticism and Society in Crisis 105–6; Stein, Bas-Empire ii.624–2; Shahîd (1995) i.2,
755–92.
100 For what follows see ch. 27,p.811 below; there is an authoritative treatment of Justinian’s religious
policy in Grillmeier, Christ in the Christian Tradition ii.2, and of doctrinal division in the east in the
sixth century in ibid. ii.4.
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