Ephesus ("Ephesos")

EPHESUS ("Ephesos"). - A city on the Ionian coast of Asia Minor, of Mycenaean origin as is attested by archaeological finds, situated almost at the mouth of the Cayster and provided with an excellent harbor for the commerce that it always sustained from the sea to the Taurus mountains. Occupied successively by Croesus, king of Lydia, by the Persians (545), by the Macedonians (334), in 133 by the testament of King Attalus III it passed to the Romans, under whom it became the richest and most commercial Anatolian city.

E. was the birthplace of Heraclitus, of the iambic poet Hipponax, of the elegiac poet Callinus and of the painter Parrhasius. The principal divinity worshiped at E. was the Great Mother depicted standing with hands pressed to her sides, furnished with many breasts to signify her inexhaustible fertility. The Greeks identified her with Artemis, who was in turn identified with the Italic Diana. Her Ionic dipteral temple burned in 356 through the act of Herostratus but was rebuilt more splendidly (Strabo, XIV, 1, 22; Pausanias, IV, 31, 8; VII, 2, 6). Within the precinct of the temple a sanctuary to Augustus was built, a symbol of the union of the provincial cult with the imperial one (cf. V. Chapot, La province romaine proconsulaire d'Asie, Paris 1904). From the Ephesian sanctuary the Ephesia grammata take their name, charms endowed with magical power for the benefit of whoever pronounced them or carried them as amulets. The long [stretch] of E. that was destroyed in the Byzantine era by the Seljuk Turks (1116) corresponds to the present-day Turkish village of Ayasoluk, a contraction of ἄγιος Θεολόγος, which refers to the apostle St. John, who carried out his activity at E. and had a basilica there, now in ruins, around which the devotion of the Christian people developed, and markets were held in which Italian merchants took an intense part.

Nicola Turchi

I. EPHESUS IN THE NEW TESTAMENT

Ephesus was the scene of the activity of St. Paul, and later of St. John.

St. Paul was at Ephesus for a few days at the end of his second missionary journey (52-53). The good reception in the synagogue committed him to return. Meanwhile Aquila and Priscilla remained to prepare the Christian conquest of Ephesus (Acts 18:18-21). In the meantime the Alexandrian Apollos (v.) arrived there, an ardent soul of an apostle, but imperfectly initiated into Christianity, whom the two spouses fully instructed and baptized. In the same condition as Apollos were a dozen "disciples" when Paul returned to Ephesus in 54 (third journey): he instructed them and they were baptized and joined the nascent community (Acts 19:1-7). The break with the synagogue occurred after three months of disputes about the "kingdom of God"; Paul moved to the school of a certain Tyrannus, one of the many rhetoricians with which the major cities of the East teemed. It is not clear whether the hall, which, according to a variant of codex D in Acts 19:9, was at Paul's disposal from the fifth hour to the tenth (= 11 a.m.-4 p.m.), was lent to him free of charge. Two years of fruitful apostolic work, which, through the influx of foreigners and the probable sending of disciples to other cities of proconsular Asia (Col. 1:7; 4:13), extended far beyond the boundaries of Ephesus (Acts 19:26), aroused the jealousy of the Jews (Acts 19:13-17) and the concern of those who were economically interested in maintaining the cult of Ephesian Artemis (v. DIANA). Indeed, while Paul was preparing to leave Asia, Demetrius and the guild of the silversmiths provoked the riot, on which occasion some Asiatic friends of his also worked in Paul's favor (Acts 19:31). On the question whether Paul suffered at Ephesus a prolonged imprisonment, followed by a condemnation to the beasts (cf. 1 Cor. 15:32), and whether he wrote the captivity letters from this city, v. PRIGIONIA, EPISTOLE della.

Returning from Achaia to Jerusalem, Paul summoned the Ephesian presbyters to Miletus, to whom, in a farewell discourse, he made the apology of his own conduct (Acts 20:17-35) and announced that this would be the last meeting (Acts 20:25, 38). He returned, instead, to Ephesus between the first and second Roman imprisonment, leaving Timothy there as bishop (1 Tim. 1:3). Of Paul's last cares for the faithful of Ephesus and of the sorrows he had from them, II Tim. 1:15-18 speaks. From the second Roman imprisonment Paul (II Tim. 4:12), probably to facilitate Timothy's journey to Rome, sent to Ephesus Tychicus, who had already carried out other missions there (Eph. 6:21 ff.).

Of the monuments of Ephesus brought to light by the excavations carried out at the end of the 19th century and in the early years of the 20th, the Acts mention only the theater, where the crowd, excited by Demetrius's speech, rushed. The so-called "prison of St. Paul" can at most represent the confused memory of an imprisonment.

The only passage of the New Testament that implies a relationship between Ephesus and the apostle St. John is the first of the seven letters of the Apocalypse (2:1-7), which is addressed to the angel of the church of Ephesus. From it one can infer a directive and supervisory action exercised by the Evangelist toward this community as toward the other Asiatic communities. More clearly it emerges that, toward the end of the apostolic age, the Ephesian church was troubled by the erroneous propaganda of false apostles, and, though on the whole resisting these attacks well, was nevertheless fallen from its primitive charity. Of St. John's residence and activity at Ephesus there is a trace also in the name of the aforementioned village Ayasoluk (ἄγιος Θεολόγος).

II. COUNCIL of Ephesus

It is the third ecumenical Council, held in 431.

1. Occasion and preliminaries

The Council of Ephesus derives its origin from the controversy stirred up, at the end of 428, by Nestorius, patriarch of Constantinople, regarding the legitimacy of calling the Blessed Virgin Θεοτόκος, mother of God; a title with which, moreover, she had already long been honored especially in Egypt and in Cappadocia.

Nestorius considered the said term harmful, insofar as it could make one believe that Mary had generated the divinity. According to him it would have been better to use the term χριστοτόκος, mother of Christ, since such a specification made one think of the two natures, namely the divine and the human, of the incarnate Word.

The reason for such repugnance for the adjective Θεοτόκος on the part of Nestorius lies in the fact that he was imbued with the heterodox concept of the union of the two natures in Christ, recently elaborated by Theodore of Mopsuestia to combat the heresy of Apollinaris. According to Theodore, "Mary gave birth to Jesus, but not to the Word, the Logos; the Logos has always existed, has never had a beginning, although he dwelt in Jesus in a wholly special manner. Mary, therefore, is the mother of the Christ and not the mother of God. She can be called so in a figurative way and because God was in a wholly particular manner in Christ" (PG 66, 993).

These words in substance express the whole christological doctrine of Nestorius (v.) and constitute its heresy. He splits Jesus Christ into two subjects of attribution, into two persons, undoubtedly closely united, but at the same time coexisting distinct in the union. One can well speak of a single personality, of a single prosopon of the Word and of the man Jesus, of the divinity and of the humanity: but this single personality is of a moral and juridical order and does not suppress the duality in the physical persons; in Christ there are two beings who say: I, me, on different planes. Nestorius expressed his thought well when he said that the "Word was not born twice."

Already sufficiently visible in the homilies he delivered at the beginning of the controversy, this conception manifests itself better in his work, rediscovered in our days in the Syriac version, entitled: The Book of Heraclides of Damascus (published in the original text by P. Bedjan and in French translation by F. Nau, Paris 1910).

Nestorius's preaching against the theotokos caused much uproar and raised protests from every side, its echo reaching Rome and Alexandria at once.

Warned by the representatives he had at Constantinople, Cyril of Alexandria unmasked the new heresy without delay, at first making no allusion to its author, then addressing himself directly to him (v. CIRILLO d'ALESSANDRIA, saint). Pope Celestine, amply informed both by the African Marius Mercator, resident at Constantinople, and by Cyril and by Nestorius himself, pronounced against the innovator at the Roman Council of 11 Aug. 430, ordering him, under pain of excommunication and deposition, to retract within the ten days that would follow the notification of the Roman sentence by the bishop of Alexandria. Cyril did not hasten to carry out the delicate mission entrusted to him and greatly complicated the whole situation, submitting to Nestorius's signature a series of 12 anathematisms, in which there appeared expressions never heard until then and clashing head-on with the terminology used by the school of Antioch. The bearers of the Roman sentence and of the letter of the anathematisms arrived at Constantinople only on 7 Dec. 430. In the meantime Nestorius, foreseeing the blow that threatened him, had skillfully averted it, obtaining from the emperors Theodosius II and Valentinian III the convocation of an ecumenical council to examine his case. The edict of convocation, addressed to all the metropolitans of the empire, was issued on 19 Nov. 430. The Council was to open at E. at Pentecost of 431, which fell on 7 June. The Pontiff, for the good of peace, accepted the convocation of the Council, while he wrote to Cyril on 7 May 431 that the execution of the Roman sentence against the innovator was delayed. Moreover he appointed three legates, the two bishops Arcadius and Projectus and the deacon Philip, to represent him at the future assembly, giving them very precise instructions on the conduct to be observed. Thereby the earlier delegation of Cyril was not revoked; nevertheless the Pope exhorted him to make every effort to settle the controversy in peace, with the cooperation of the other prelates (Mansi, IV, 1292). Indeed the assembly promised to be stormy, since Cyril's anathematisms had unleashed a veritable tempest among the Orientals of the patriarchate of Antioch.

2. History of the Council

As many bishops had not yet arrived, the Council could not open on 7 June 431, the appointed day, and it waited for two weeks. Finally, on 22 June, although neither the Orientals of the patriarchate of Antioch nor the Roman legates were yet present, Cyril held the first session, disregarding the protests of the imperial magistrate, the count Candidian, and the request for a further postponement, advanced by an imposing group of more than 150 bishops. Summoned three times to appear, Nestorius refused. Then the trial was conducted, with the reading of numerous documents concerning him, letters from Rome and from Alexandria, letters and extracts of writings of Nestorius himself.

Cyril's second letter to Nestorius (the one beginning with Καταφλωροῦ) was declared conformable to the Symbol of Nicaea and solemnly approved, while Nestorius's reply to it was condemned as heretical. There was also a reading of Cyril's third letter to the innovator, the one ending with the 12 anathematisms, which certainly had to be read; but nothing in the acts indicates that they obtained a special approval from the Council, as happened for the letter Καταφλωροῦ. There followed a long patristic florilegium on the union of the two natures in Christ, in which one notes certain citations of pseudepigraphic writings of Apollinarian origin. Finally came the sentence of deposition and excommunication: "Necessarily forced, said the Fathers, by the canons and the letters of our Holy Father and colleague Celestine, bishop of the Church of the Romans, we have come with tears to bring this sad sentence against Nestorius: Our Lord Jesus Christ, whom he has blasphemed, decides with the present most holy Council, that he is excluded from the dignity of bishop and from the whole priestly college" (Mansi, IV, 1212). The people of E., most devoted to the Virgin Mary, welcomed with enthusiasm the condemnation of the adversary of the Θεοτόκος: the city was illuminated and the bishops were accompanied to their dwellings with torchlight processions and incense burners (cf. the letter by Cyrilli ad clerum populumque alexandrinum: PG 77, 138).

In this way the triumph of orthodoxy was obtained in a single day. But the formalities had not been observed. The precipitation could only arouse a schism among the bishops. On 26 June John of Antioch arrived with his followers. Put in the know of what had happened and invited to subscribe to the deposition of Nestorius, the Orientals refused. Indeed they gathered in a conciliabulum, deposed as guilty of Arian and Apollinarian heresy Cyril and Memnon bishop of E., and excommunicated their partisans.

In the meantime the Roman legates also arrived, who handed to the Cyrillian Council a letter of Pope Celestine, while they asked for communication of the acts of the first session. With them four sessions were held (10, 11, 16 or 17 July) and in the last of 17 July, which was the fifth in the series, John of Antioch with his followers was excommunicated, since they had refused to appear and explain themselves. Thus it came about that there were two opposing groups, which anathematized each other. Each of them was diligent in informing the emperor, to draw him to its side. The latter, quite displeased, ordered each party to send some delegates to Constantinople to discuss before him, who would then decide accordingly. Thus it was done. The two delegations met not at Constantinople, but at Chalcedon without reaching an understanding, while Theodosius II, annoyed, declared the Council dissolved (end of Oct. 431). Far from restoring concord, this had brought a schism to maturity, and the union could be re-established only after two years, through long and tedious negotiations. Finally in Aug. 433 there was subscribed by one side and the other that formula of compromise, which was called the act of union. In conclusion the decisions of the first session remained established: the proclamation, that is, of the divine motherhood of Mary and the deposition of Nestorius, that is, what Pope Celestine had already decided before the Council, which could have been dispensed with.

3. Principal decisions

The principal decision of the Council of E. was evidently the proclamation of the divine motherhood of Mary, the canonization, that is, of the theotókos, which undermined at its base what was called the Nestorian heresy.

Another decision, destined to become famous in the history of the controversy over the Filioque between Greeks and Latins, and which also had importance in the Monophysite controversy, is the one presented at the sixth session (22 July 431) on the composition of formulas of faith different from the Symbol of Nicaea: "The holy Council has decided that no one will be permitted to present, to write or to compose a formula of faith different (ἐνῶραν πίστιν) from that which was fixed by the Holy Fathers, gathered with the Holy Spirit at Nicaea..." (Mansi, IV, 1361 ff.). On this decree and its importance in the history of theological controversies cf. M. Jugie, Le décret d'Éphèse sur les formules de foi et la polémique anticatholique en Orient in Echos d'Orient, 30 (1931), pp. 257-70.

From the very complicated and eventful history of this Council, the Roman primacy, the superiority of the Pope over the ecumenical council and rather the impotence of the whole Council without the participation and the presidency of the Pope, are brought into vivid light.

Ultimately the Council was the executor of the Roman decisions. For everything it did outside the program traced by the Pope, even with the approval of his legates, in the end became void, since neither Celestine nor his successor Sixtus III approved the anathemas that the two opposing groups hurled at each other.

"Impelled by the letter of Celestine," the Fathers pronounced, during the first session, the deposition of Nestorius; just as it is read in the acts, at the beginning of each session, that Cyril of Alexandria "holds the place of the bishop of the Church of the Romans." The Roman legates, who arrived late, wished the first session to be repeated before them, and they were obeyed. And when everything was finished, one of them, the deacon Philip, made the following solemn declaration, which the assembly received with its probative silence: "No one doubts, or rather, it is a fact known in all the centuries that the holy and blessed Peter, the fisherman and head of the Apostles, the pillar of the faith, the foundation of the Catholic Church, received from Our Lord Jesus Christ, the Savior and Redeemer of the human race, the keys of the Kingdom and that the power to bind and loose sins was given to him; he himself even to this day and forever lives and judges in his successors" (Mansi, IV, 1296). The Vatican Council, as is well known, made its own the words of the legate of E., inserting them just as they were into the fabric of chap. 2 of the constitution Pastor externus.

Among the decisions of the Council, the following should also be noted: the condemnation of the Pelagians and in particular of Celestine, whose name is coupled with that of Nestorius, in canons I and IV, presented at the seventh session of Aug. 30 (Mansi, IV, 1471; but the acts give no particulars on this condemnation, cf. M. Th. Disdier, Le pélagianisme au Concile d'Éphèse in Echos d'Orient, 30 (1931), pp. 314-33); the declaration of autonomy of the Church of Cyprus with respect to the patriarchate of Antioch, ratified in the same seventh and last session (Mansi, IV, 1465-70).

The memory of the Council of E. is perpetuated in Rome by the great basilica of St. Mary Major, which Pope Sixtus III (432) had built after the Council and dedicated to the Mother of God, adorning it with precious mosaics, which have recently been restored; and also by the inscription that one of Celestine's legates, the deacon Philip, had engraved in the church of St. Peter in Chains. (cf. G. B. De Rossi, Inscriptiones Christ., II, Rome 1887, p. 110).

The fifteenth centenary of the Council was solemnly celebrated in Rome in 1931. For the occasion Pope Pius XI published the encyclical Lux veritatis of Dec. 25, 1931, with which he extended to the universal Church, under the double rite of the second class, the feast of the divine maternity of the Blessed Virgin fixed for Oct. 11.

Bist... The acts relating to the Council have come down to us in various collections, unequal in value and content. The whole enormous mass of documents can be classified into three groups: before the council; the meetings of E.; the meetings of Chalcedon and the conversations that led to the signing of the act of union in 433. The first edition of the Greek acts was that of Commelinus, Heidelberg 1591. It was carried out by the Editio Vaticana, Rome 1608, by order of Paul V, an edition reproduced, with more or less considerable additions, in the later collections of the Councils by Labbe, Hardouin and Mansi. With the bizarre title Synodicon adversus tragoediam Irenaei, E. Baluze (Nova collectio Conciliorum, I, Paris 1683) published a collection of 233 documents relating to every kind of event, from 431 to the middle of the 6th century, among which the controversies immediately following the Council occupy the greatest space. It was drawn up in Latin by Rusticus, deacon of Pope Vigilius and his traveling companion to Constantinople, and contains many documents known only thanks to this Latin translation. All these collections and Latin versions, more or less fragmentary, have recently been published in critical form by Ed. Schwartz, Acta conciliorum oecumenicorum, I, Concilium Ephesinum, 5 fasc., Leipzig 1922-29, an edition not easy to consult, since the documents have not been classified. Authentic fragments of the Coptic Acts of the Council, mixed with apocryphal pieces, were published by U. Bouriant, with a not very faithful French translation, in Mémoires de la mission archéologique française au Caire, 8 (1892), and by W. Kraatz, with critical method and German translation: Koptische Akten zum ephesinischen Konzil vom Jahre 431, Leipzig 1904. On the Armenian and Georgian Acts cf. A. Rücker, Ephesinische Konzilsakten in armenisch-georgischer Überlieferung, in Sitzungsberichte der bayer. Akad. der Wissenschaft, Munich 1930; by the same author: Ephesinische Konzilsakten in lateinischer Überlieferung, Ozenbronn 1931.

Ancient sources: Socrates, Hist. eccl., VII, 20-34; Evagrius, Hist. eccl., I, 2-7; Theodoret, Haereticarum fabularum compendium, IV, 12; Liberatus, Breviarium causae Nestorianorum et Eutychianorum, 2-9. Other sources recently edited and completed: F. Loofs, Nestoriana, Die Fragmente des Nestorius gesammelt, untersucht und herausgegeben. Halle 1905; Nestorius, Il libro di Ebedjesu di Damasco, edited by P. Bedjan with French translation by F. Nau, Paris 1910. On the number of members of the Council: E. Gerland and V. Laurent, Corpus notitiarum episcopatuum Ecclesiae orientalis graecae, I: Le liste conciliari, fasc. 2, Cildi-Kity 1936; Barbadababbâ (Nestorian bishop of the beginning of the 7th century), Storia dei SS. Padri perseguitati per causa della verità: PO 9, 439-531.

Among the numerous studies and monographs relating to the Nestorian question and the Council of E. cf. for the ancients: Hefele-Leclercq, II, pp. 234-48, 295, 379. For the recent ones: M. Jugie, La primauté romaine au Concile d'Éphèse, in Echos d'Orient, 14 (1911), pp. 130-46; id., Nestorius et la controverse nestorienne, Paris 1912; F. Loofs, Nestorius und his place in the history of christian doctrine, Cambridge 1914; R. Devreesse, Les actes du Concile d'Éphèse, in Revue de sciences philosophiques et théologiques, 18 (1920), pp. 233-42, 408-31; id., Après le Concile d'Éphèse: Le retour des Orientaux à l'unité, in Echos d'Orient, 30 (1931), pp. 271-92; E. Amann, Nestorius, in DThC, XI, coll. 76-157; A. d'Alès, Le dogme d'Éphèse, Paris 1931; V. Grumel, Le Concile d'Éphèse: le Pape et le Concile, in Echos d'Orient, 30 (1931), pp. 293-313; M. Th. Disdier, Le pélagianisme au Concile d'Éphèse, ibid., pp. 314-33; H. du Manoir, Le Symbole de Nicée au Concile d'Éphèse, in Gregorianum, 12 (1931), pp. 104-37; P. Galtier, Le centenaire d'Éphèse: Rome et le Concile, in Recherches de science religieuse, 21 (1931), pp. 160-190; J. Lebon, Autour de la définition de foi du Concile d'Éphèse, in Ephemerides theologicae Lovanienses, 8 (1931), pp. 393-412; A. Bernareggi, S. Ambrogio davanti al Concilio di E., in Scuola cattolica, 2 (1931), pp. 42-57; E. Stephenson, L'Église orthodoxe et la primauté romaine à Éphèse, in Echos d'Orient, 32 (1933), pp. 57-78, 203-217; Fliche-Martin-Prates, IV, pp. 175-201. Martin Jugie

III. ROBBERY OF EPHESUS

Pope St. Leo I gave this appellation to the Council held at E. from 8 to 22 August 449, presided over by Dioscorus, bishop of Alexandria. The assembly had been convoked by Theodosius II on 30 March 449, to re-examine the trial of Eutyches, archimandrite of a monastery of Constantinople, condemned as a heretic in the permanent Synod of Constantinople (November 448), presided over by Flavian, bishop of the city. According to the Emperor's idea, this Council was to be ecumenical. Pope St. Leo, although he had already approved the sentence of the Council of Constantinople, after examining the acts and the letter of convocation sent by Eutyches himself, consented to be represented at the future council by three legates: Julius, bishop of Pozzuoli, the priest Renatus, who died on the journey, and the deacon Hilary. Among the letters entrusted to the legates was that for bishop Flavian, which later became famous under the title of the Tome of Leo or Letter to Flavian. In it the Catholic doctrine on the Incarnation was masterfully set forth, setting aside the Eastern terminologies concerning the mystery. The legates had orders to read it at the plenary meeting.

For the court, dominated by the eunuch Chrysaphius, a favorite of Theodosius II and great protector of Eutyches his godfather, the first thing was to obtain the rehabilitation of the condemned archimandrite. Dioscorus of Alexandria was to preside over the Council. The prelates who had condemned Eutyches were to take part as simple spectators, without the right to vote. The great theologian of the Antiochene school, Theodoret of Cyrrhus, was not to present himself unless summoned by the Fathers. This exclusivism is explained by the fact that Eutyches was a fervent supporter of the Monophysite formulae, the one preferred by St. Cyril of Alexandria, even after his reconciliation with the Orientals of Antioch, which took place in 432. The old archimandrite had been incapable of correctly explaining these formulae at the Constantinopolitan Council of 448, according to which anyone who had spoken of two natures, 8ὼ φύσεις, in Jesus Christ, after their union, was a Nestorian. He had then taken advantage of his influence with Chrysaphius to have many bishops who favored the Dyophysite formulae deposed or suspected. Dioscorus of Alexandria desired nothing other than to work for the triumph of the Cyrillian formulae; and for this he had been chosen by the Emperor to preside over the Council. He would exercise this office as a true tyrant. On 8 August 449, Dioscorus assembled at E., in the church of St. Mary (precisely where Cyril in 431 had opened the first Council of E.) the 130 bishops present, for the most part chosen from among the friends of Eutyches. They began with the reading of the imperial letters convoking the Council. They should have continued with the reading of the Pope's letters; but Dioscorus opposed this and kept them for himself. Eutyches was then brought in, and he presented a vague profession of faith with which he anathematized all heresies, especially those of Valentinus and of Apollinaris, of which he was accused, and declared that he adhered to the Nicene Creed, according to the decree issued at E. in 431. After the reading of the acts of the Council of 448, which had condemned him, 114 bishops declared him orthodox. Some belated protests were overwhelmed by the cry: "If anyone says two natures, 8ὼ φύσεις, let him be anathema." Dioscorus voted last. After this he put to the vote the condemnation of Flavian of Constantinople and of Eusebius of Dorylaeum, guilty of having excommunicated Eutyches and of having affirmed two natures after the union, thus somewhat modifying the Nicene Creed.

Dioscorus, pretending to be threatened, asked for the help of the two imperial magistrates assigned to the policing of the Council, who brought in the soldiers, the parabolani, the Egyptian sailors and the monks of Barsumas, and these hurled themselves against the recalcitrant. Flavian in particular was treated with brutality and died three days later on the road to exile. Eusebius of Dorylaeum managed to flee and take refuge in Rome, where he delivered to Pope St. Leo the appeal of Flavian and his own. Following this scene of violence the doors of the Basilica were closed. Flavian and Eusebius were deposed by the 135 bishops present, and Domnus of Antioch himself subscribed to it.

The second and last session took place on 22 August and was reserved for settling accounts with the Dyophysite bishops of the patriarchate of Antioch, particularly odious to Dioscorus. Ibas of Edessa, Daniel of Harran, Irenaeus of Tyre, already struck by the imperial sentences, were again deposed. Domnus of Antioch and Theodoret of Cyrrhus were similarly struck, while Dioscorus, exalted to the skies, closed the meeting by having the twelve anathematisms of St. Cyril against the Nestorian heresy acclaimed.

This last act reveals very well the aim set by Dioscorus: to make triumph the special terminology adopted by St. Cyril since 430 to refute Nestorius, and absolutely to banish the Dyophysite terminology which Cyril himself had accepted for the good of peace, by signing the Symbol of union in 433: terminology of the Latin West and of the Orientals of the patriarchate of Antioch. Here it is a question first of all of terminology and not of doctrine properly so called. It is a question of the meaning of the term physis (φύσεις) in the theology of the Incarnation, which the Alexandrians and their followers understood in the sense of concrete subject, of nature-person, of hypostasis, while the Latins, the Antiochene Orientals, Flavian and Eusebius understood it in the sense of nature properly so called, that is, considered as distinct from the person. With the robber council of E. begins the long Monophysite logomachy, which then swept Egypt, Ethiopia, Syria, Armenia into schism and heresy.

For a fuller bibliography v. CALCEDONIA, CONCILIO di; DIOSCORO, EUTICHE.

Martino Jugie

IV. CHRISTIAN MONUMENTS of E

The excavations conducted for many years, beginning in 1895, by the Austrian Archaeological Institute, while they have brought to light a great part of the Hellenistic-Roman city with monuments remarkable for architectural beauty and richness of decoration (among them may be remembered the theater, the agora, the library, the baths and the portico of Verulanus, the gymnasium of Vedius Antoninus, the great street called the Arcadiana, the sculptures of a great honorary monument of Marcus Aurelius, etc.), have also made known the two principal Christian buildings, of which there is a memory in the literary sources, and precisely in the letter of the Council of E. to the clergy and the people, namely the church of the Virgin, which was the very seat of that Council, and that of St. John the Evangelist.

The first, also known by the name of "double church," is situated in the flat part of the city, between the hills and the port, to the north of the baths and of the portico of Verulanus. The church arose on a previous building of the classical age (beginning of the 2nd century A.D.), of a very elongated rectangular shape (865 x 30 m.), consisting of a broad space, perhaps uncovered, surrounded by columns, in the center, on the two sides of which there are, to the east an apsidal hall, to the west another similar hall, but divided into three naves: the building is known by the name of monasion, but what use it was put to is anything but certain: it has been thought to be a kind of market, with the two halls at the ends serving as annexes: the western one could have been a kind of basilica, the other serving for bargaining.

A fire, perhaps the one caused by the sack of the Goths in 263 A.D., severely damaged the building, which was no longer restored: the decline of the city and of its economy perhaps made it by then superfluous. In it, instead, around the middle of the 4th century, a church found a place, the first of those that then succeeded one another there through various modifications. It occupied only the western part of the previous building, for a length of about 150 m., while the rest of the building was used as an atrium: given its arrangement, only very slight modifications were necessary for this purpose. The church, with three naves divided by columns, had a length of 74.50 m. (without the apse) and a width of 25.70 m.; singular is the fact that, since the colonnades of the naves were not parallel to one another, the naves themselves did not turn out to be of equal length throughout their development; the capitals of the columns were for the most part those of the previous building. The apse, which had a diameter of 11.90 m., was flanked by two halls or chapels, the prothesis and the diaconicon, not perfectly symmetrical with each other.

The church was preceded by a narthex (28 x 9.63 m.) paved with mosaic, and before the narthex by the atrium. From this one also had access to the north to the baptistery, built completely 60-1000, and consisting of a building with a central plan, circular on the inside and dodecagonal on the outside, in turn enclosed in a quadrangular building; the inner hall had four entrances and niches in the spaces between them: the basin was circular in shape, with two stairs opposite each other at the ends of one of the diameters. In elevation the baptistery must have presented a ring of windows, below a brick dome: the walls were revetted with slabs of marble adorned with carved crosses, and the basins of the niches with stuccoes.

This church, with columns, was at a certain moment modified, not so much in the atrium and in the baptistery, as in its main body, in that in its western part a second church was built, about 46 m. long, also with three naves, with an apse to the east, and a narthex to the west: the original narthex thus became an esonarthex. The new church, instead of being roofed like the first, was domed, and this was set on four large piers built in the middle of the central nave; by means of the insertion between these larger piers of smaller piers, there were created, on one side and the other of the main nave, so that they might serve as communication between it and the side naves, openings with a triple bay. In this second church too there was repeated the peculiarity, noted for the first, of the different width of the side naves. The old narthex was modified by means of the addition, in front of the walls, of four pairs of columns and two pairs of piers: columns, capitals and marble slabs of the pavement were taken from earlier buildings. An important element for establishing the chronology of the monument is the carved architrave placed on a new door opened between the old narthex (now esonarthex) and the atrium: it indeed bears the name of a bishop John, who must be assigned to the second half of the 5th century.

At an even later time, the church with dome and piers just described (the second) having been destroyed, for causes that cannot be determined, a new church (the third) was made in that part of the primitive church with columns, which remained to the east of the church with piers. The latter became the atrium of the new building, with which it communicated by means of a door opened at the center of the apse. The new church likewise had a narthex, three naves divided by piers, and an apse, the latter corresponding to the apse of the primitive church. In the middle of the nave the presbytery was built, with a projecting ambo, and in the center of the apse a memorial set on a quadrangular base and adorned with eight columns. Matronea ran above the side naves and above the narthex. To the basilica there was attached on the south side a small apsidal chapel, perhaps sepulchral; the apse of the chapel, as likewise the walls of the church, were adorned with paintings.

Further changes were still undergone by the second church (the one with dome and piers) in a later period.

To the building of worship there were joined on the east side constructions of a civil character (large hall with columns and basin, smaller halls, etc.), in which, in all likelihood, one must recognize the dwelling palace of the bishop.

When the whole grandiose monumental complex fell into ruin, and ceased to serve for worship, profane constructions were first adapted within it, then tombs were superimposed over everything.

The churches described all follow, as has been seen, the original basilical type and longitudinal development, with naves divided by columns.

Elements of greater originality are presented instead by the second great Christian building of E.; the church of St. John the Evangelist on the hill of Ayasoluk (corruption of Ἄγιος Θεολόγος).

Begun to be excavated in 1921-22 during the Greek occupation of Anatolia by G.A. Sotiriou, it was then completely explored between 1927 and 1930 by J. Keil, Fr. Miltner and H. Hörmann; of the building and of the excavation, however, there exist so far only the plans and the summary notices given in the brief reports of the Beiblatt of the Jahreshefte of the Austrian Archaeological Institute.

In the 4th, if not still in the 2nd century A.D., above a group of underground chambers, in which tradition evidently venerated the place of the Apostle's burial (a well almost in the middle of them was to serve for drawing the hand, and a large terracotta pithos a little way off was to contain the water which the proximity of the tomb made sacred), a square memoria was built (18 m. on a side), covered by a groin vault set on four columns and with four doors on the sides; at a later stage the door on the eastern side was replaced by an apse. The type of construction is still perfectly in line with the classical tradition: that above the vault there rose a pyramidal crowning is only a hypothesis dictated by the analogy of the monument with mausoleums of the classical age. At the beginning of the 5th century the memoria was enclosed within a broad cruciform basilica, of which it constituted the centre and one might say the reason for being. The basilica, oriented east-west with its front to the west, had a forward body with three naves, preceded by a narthex, an exonarthex and a deep portico marked at the entrance by two columns; the lateral arms of the cross were likewise three-naved; five naves, on the other hand, had the eastern wing of the memoria, what one might call the presbytery, which naturally ended with an apse: the form of the building is linked to that of others known in Syria and Palestine, built like this one around a monument which for one reason or another enjoyed particular veneration. Of considerably greater dimensions and of a far more complex plan, with elements that constitute as it were a transitional link from the early Christian basilica to the Byzantine church of St. Sophia, was the building constructed by Justinian above the 5th-century church. Maintaining the same orientation, the new church was likewise in the form of a Latin cross, with the memoria of the Saint at the crossing of the arms, but no longer, as in the preceding church, enclosed within its original walls, but rather completely open and therefore in direct relation with the whole rest of the building. This was preceded by a quadrangular atrium surrounded by columns on three sides, the front of the church proper facing freely on the fourth: at a later stage an exonarthex was placed in front of this. Before the construction of this, three doors led into the narthex, covered by barrel vaults, or perhaps also by small domes (tradition attributed eleven domes to the church), and from the narthex five doors, three corresponding to the central nave and two to the side naves, gave into the church; other doors were opened in the long southern and northern walls. The hall was over 93 m. long, and had a maximum width (at the arms of the cross) of over 62 m. In the front part, on six piers, the two central ones thicker, rested two elliptical domes, corresponding to two wide bays of the central nave: four columns on each side of each of these bays divided the central nave from the side ones: some of the recovered capitals of these columns still preserve traces of gilding and colour and bear the monogram of Justinian and Theodora. An analogous system occurred both in the two arms of the cross and in the space east of the central crossing towards the apse, with the sole difference that the domes covering those and this were perfectly circular and not elliptical; another similar dome covered the central crossing above the bema and the memoria of the Saint. The arms of the cross and the presbytery were therefore also three-naved. At the sides of the presbytery, closed by the apse, were two quadrangular chambers (modified by later additions), behind which stairs led up to the galleries. The walls were revetted below with marble, above with mosaics, as were the vaults: decorative elements have been found in the excavation, but in rather limited measure. This may be explained by supposing that the building, though no longer used for worship, did not immediately fall into ruin, but was gradually stripped of its ornaments.

Other minor Christian monuments of the city are: a small apsidal chapel, hardly earlier than the 5th century, fitted into a private house, situated on the terrace above the theatre; a Byzantine fountain with carved plutei (6th century), and a group of four columns, perhaps originally supporting statues, on the road to the Arcadiana, which rest on polygonal bases adorned with shell niches, according to the scheme known from the ambo of Thessalonica, likewise probably of the 6th century.

Of the Christian cemeteries, the one situated on the eastern slope of Panajir Dag has been extensively explored, near the cave where tradition localized the legend of the Seven Sleepers. The cemetery developed above and around a kind of catacomb consisting of a series of ten vaulted chambers distributed along the sides of a corridor, which evidently passed for those in which the seven martyrs would have rested: but if they served from the beginning as a place of burial, this must have been without any casket or coffin, that is, with the use of the embalmed corpse: of caskets, in fact, there is no trace except for the later depositions, when masonry tombs were built above the floor and against the original walls of many of these chambers. One of the chambers, however, seems to have remained as a chapel: its walls were adorned with paintings, probably representing the martyrs. A niche on the side of the stairway that descended to the catacomb, likewise decorated with paintings, perhaps contained the tomb venerated as that of Mary Magdalene. Above the catacomb there arose, probably around the middle of the 5th century, when the legend of the Seven Sleepers was formed, the first nucleus of the cemetery, consisting of a building partly under construction, in rubble masonry and brick, partly cut from the rock of the mountain itself, and formed by a quadrangular room, flanked on two sides, east and west, by two smaller rooms of the same shape, of which the eastern one, ending in an apse, was particularly destined for worship. All the rooms, including this one, were occupied by casket and niche tombs, built into the floor or hollowed out below it or in the walls. A broad quadrangular space towards the west served almost as an atrium, and was likewise occupied by tombs, as were the two large and irregular niches opening on the southern side.

Adjacent to the north, on the other hand, was a kind of quadrangular mausoleum with a central plan and three niches in its walls. Subsequently, little by little, the cemetery expanded onto the terraces around the original nucleus, eventually containing about seven hundred tombs. The last part of it is represented by the so-called mausoleum of Abradze, named after the name of this personage, inscribed on an architrave, who is called ἀργυροφόλῳ, and who would have had it prepared. This mausoleum too, like all the other elements of the burial complex, partly in masonry and partly cut into the rock, is distinguished from the earliest ones because, whereas these are all inspired by the concept of an elongated building covered with a vault, it instead presents a central-plan scheme. The possibility that the adoption of this scheme was inspired by the Justinianic Basilica of St. John would lead one to attribute this mausoleum to around the middle of the 6th century, or to the following decades. All the buildings were generally paved with marble slabs, and had walls and vaults covered in plaster, sometimes decorated with paintings and mosaics. In the excavation of the cemetery were collected vessels of coarse terracotta and above all a very great number of lamps; relatively few were the sepulchral inscriptions. From the descriptions of travelers and from the inscriptions of visitors on the walls it can be established that the cemetery remained visible until the 15th century. Some paintings at the entrance of the catacomb are still to be attributed to the 13th century: on the vault, Christ the Benefactor within a mandorla medallion supported by two Angels, and on the western wall the Virgin and Saints.

The name of "tomb of St. Luke" that the first excavator of Ephesus, J. T. Wood, gave to a monument situated to the south-east of the odeon is absolutely arbitrary: it is a monument of the classical age, of circular form, which in the Christian age was adapted into a church.

A ruined Byzantine chapel is situated about 15 km. from the city on the Ala Dağ, in the place called Panagia Kapuli: a local tradition, devoid of historical foundation, and supported by the visions of Catherine Emmerich, would claim to recognize here the site of the house of the Virgin and the place of her death.

Pietro Romanelli