CHAPTER V

RECEPTION OF THE CIRCULAR

ACCORDING to Zacharias, the rhetorician, Timotheus, who, as I said, was just returned from banishment, agrees to these circular letters; as does also Peter, president of the church of Antioch, surnamed the Fuller, who also attended Timotheus at the imperial city. After these proceedings, they also determined that Paul should occupy the archiepiscopal throne of the church of Ephesus. This author also says, that Anastasius, the successor of Juvenalis as president of Jerusalem, subscribes the circular, and very many others; so that those who repudiated the tome of Leo and the synod of Chalcedon, amounted to about five hundred: and also that a written petition was addressed to Basiliscus by the Asiatic bishops, assembled at Ephesus, a part of which is couched in the following terms: “To our entirely pious and Christ-loving lords, Basiliscus and Marcus, ever victorious emperors.” Presently it proceeds: “Whenever the faith has been hated and assailed, you, all pious and Christ-loving sovereigns, have made it manifest throughout that you were equally assailed.” And further on: “A certain fearful retribution of judgment and fury of divine fire and the just wrath of your serenity shall suddenly involve the adversaries, those who endeavour with vauntful assault to battle down the mighty God and your sovereignty fortified by the faith; who also in various ways have not spared our humble selves, but have continually slandered and belied us, as having subscribed to your sacred and apostolic circular letters by compulsion and violence, which we, in fact, subscribed with all joy and readiness.” And further on: “Let it therefore be your pleasure, that nothing be put forward otherwise than as accords with your sacred circular, being assured that, as we have before said, the whole world will be turned upside down, and the evils which have proceeded from the synod at Chalcedon will be found trifling in comparison, notwithstanding the innumerable slaughters which they have caused, and the blood of the orthodox which they have unjustly and lawlessly shed.” And further on: “We conjure your piety, in the presence of our Lord Jesus Christ, to maintain the just and canonical and ecclesiastical condemnation and deposition which has been inflicted on them, and especially on him who has been on many points convicted of having unduly exercised the episcopate of the imperial city.” The same Zacharias also writes as follows: “On the issuing of the imperial circulars, those in the capital who were infected with the phantasy of Eutyches, and followed the monastic rule, believing themselves to have chanced on a prize in the person of Timotheus, and hoping by the circulars to catch their own profit, flock to him with all speed, and again retire, as if convinced by Timotheus that the Word of God is consubstantial with ourselves as to flesh, and consubstantial with the Father as respects the Godhead.”