A.D. 381 heretics, pagans, and the dawn of the monotheistic state ( PDFDrive )

monumental disaster’. 25 The Alexandrian clergy could not believe that the
council had accepted a formula that was so close to Nestorius’ belief, and in
Egypt and Syria hardline factions emerged that firmly rejected Chalcedon. Again
monks caused disruption and in 452 Marcian had to respond: ‘Your outrageous
behaviour, in violation of the rules laid down for monks, has brought on a
regular war levied against the common good order, has collected crowds of
gangsters and other such habitual criminals; has stirred up arms for slaughter and
devastation and every ill among those resident in the countryside.’ 26 Moreover,
Marcian insisted that the monks were not capable of discussing theological
issues. But those who believed in a single nature of Christ, the Monophysites as
they later came to be known, claimed that they stood for the true Church and
insisted that they would eventually triumph over the Nestorians as the Nicenes
had done a century before over the machinations of the Arians. In the next sixty
years, emperor after emperor tried to find a formula that would reconcile them to
the Chalcedonians, but without success. With time, their intransigence became
more and more deep-rooted, and even the masses became conversant with every
word of the debate. In the 490s there were riots in Constantinople when a new
liturgy contained a phrase that appeared to tend towards Monophysitism.
In 527, the greatest emperor of late antiquity, Justinian, came to the throne of
the eastern empire. He was backed by his determined wife Theodora, whom he
had raised from a dubious past as a circus artiste. Justinian had his bad moments,
especially during the Nika riots of 532, when only the resolution of Theodora,
who sent in the troops to massacre the insurgents, saved his throne, but he
showed immense resilience in his plan for the regeneration of the empire. The
western empire had fallen with the abdication of the last emperor, Romulus
Augustulus, in 476, but Justinian reconquered northern Africa and, after a
protracted and destructive campaign, much of Italy. He now had extra grain
supplies from Africa in addition to those arriving in Constantinople from Egypt.
Unlike the fledgling successor states of the west, the Byzantine Empire was able
to sustain its trade routes, and some areas, such as the hinterland of Antioch and
Gaza, are known to have become prosperous on the export of oil and wine. City
life continued, though at a reduced level, whereas it disappeared almost
completely in the west. In short, Justinian was able to maintain a secure border,
guarded by fortresses on the eastern frontier, and still have the resources to
create one of the finest buildings of late antiquity, the church of Santa Sophia, at
a time when church building in the west had virtually ceased.