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

Chalcedonian formula had achieved a sacred status in the west, and there was no
support there for changing it, especially as this meant condemning works by
those who had been assumed to be orthodox Christians. The western bishops
were furious that Vigilius had betrayed them, and the North African bishops
even united to excommunicate him. When Justinian called a council to
Constantinople in 553, it proved a disaster. Pope Vigilius, caught between the
emperor and the western bishops, found an excuse for not attending. His absence
was concealed in the final edition of the Acts of the Council so that his
opposition to Justinian was not made public, but the Three Chapters were
condemned at the council. The hapless Vigilius later announced that he did
support the condemnation, but he had misjudged the anger of his fellow western
bishops at his betrayal. After he died, on his way back to Rome, his body was
refused burial in St Peter’s. In response to the council’s decision, the anti-
Chalcedonians now set up their own Churches, resulting in the Coptic Church in
Egypt and the Jacobite Church in Syria. They preached that Jesus had only one
nature, even though this contained both divine and human elements, in contrast
to the ‘two nature’ formula of Chalcedon. 30
Although the Council of Constantinople of 553 had failed in its aim of
bringing peace between the factions, among its acts was a statement of how
Christian orthodoxy was to be judged. The council pledged its allegiance to ‘the
things we have received from Holy Scripture and from the teachings of the Holy
Fathers and from the definitions of one and of the same faith by four sacred
councils’. In addition, all these so-called councils - the Council of Nicaea of 325,
the Council of Constantinople of 381, the Council of Ephesus in 431 and the
Council of Chalcedon of 431 - which had been subject to imperial pressures and
in many cases had been unrepresentative of the Church as a whole, were now
given special status as ecumenical, i.e. of the whole Church, councils. By 600, in
Rome, Pope Gregory the Great was equating these four councils with the four
gospels as the cornerstones of Christian orthodoxy.
But with the possible exception of Ephesus in 431, when the machinations and
bribery of Cyril shaped the proceedings and led the way to his desired outcome,
it was the emperors who had actually defined Christian doctrine. This definition
was then incorporated into the legal system so that orthodoxy was upheld by
both secular and Church law, and heretics were condemned by the state. It is
important to reiterate just how radical a development this was and the degree to
which it diminished intellectual life. There were still those who stood apart from
the Church - the Monophysites in the east, the Donatists and the Arian Goths in