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John Rufus and the World Vision
of Anti-Chalcedonean Culture
 Gorgias Studies in Early Christianity and
Patristics

In this series Gorgias publishes monographs on Christianity and

the Church Fathers in the early centuries of the Christian era.
Gorgias particularly welcomes proposals from younger scholars
whose dissertations have made an important contribution to the
field of patristics.
John Rufus and the World Vision
of Anti-Chalcedonean Culture

Second Revised Edition

Jan-Eric Steppa

9
34 2014
Gorgias Press LLC, 954 River Road, Piscataway, NJ, 08854, USA
www.gorgiaspress.com
Copyright © 2014 by Gorgias Press LLC

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright

Conventions. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a
retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic,
mechanical, photocopying, recording, scanning or otherwise without the
prior written permission of Gorgias Press LLC.

2014 ‫ܙ‬

9
ISBN 978-1-4632-0389-4 ISSN 1935-6870
Reprinted from the 2005 Gorgias Press edition.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication

Data

A Cataloging-in-Publication record is available

from the Library of Congress.
Printed in the United States of America
To Jessica
PREFACE AND ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

My first encounter with the anti-Chalcedonian movement took

place on a beautiful day in the late summer of 1994 when, as a
member of Collegium Patristicum Lundense, I had the great pleasure to
be a guest when Lars Rydbeck, my teacher in Greek and Latin,
celebrated his sixtieth birthday with a garden party. Since I was at
that time finishing my work with an undergraduate paper on
Origen’s exegesis of Romans, I spent a lovely afternoon, discussing
my future with my mentor Samuel Rubenson. When I asked him to
suggest a suitable subject for a Master’s thesis he immediately
began to describe his current work on the Egyptian influences on
Palestinian monasticism in the fourth and fifth centuries. In the
course of this conversation I heard for the very first time the
names of the great ascetic heroes of the anti-Chalcedonian
movement: Peter, the remarkable son of King Bosmarius of Iberia,
and Abba Isaiah, the Egyptian monk who settled in the wilderness
of southern Palestine and became one of the most popular spiritual
leaders in the region of Gaza. At once I accepted the challenge of
tracing the historical and ideological motives behind their hostility
against the Council of Chalcedon 451. From that point a journey
began into the world of anti-Chalcedonianism that has continually
forced me to reconsider and reshape not only my assumptions
about the Christological controversies in the fifth and sixth
century, but also my views on the history of Christianity in general.
Many are those who have accompanied me on this journey,
and hopefully will continue to do so in the future. I am especially
indebted to Samuel Rubenson, my thesis advisor, for his
enthusiasm and creative support during the whole process.
Through his unfailing participation in the project he has once more
proved himself to be a true abba for his disciples. My gratitude is
beyond measure.
The generous support and encouragement given by my
friends in the Patristic Seminar Group in Lund cannot be
exaggerated. I wish to express my thanks to them all, especially
Kristina Alveteg, Sten Hidal, Gösta Hallonsten, Anna Näppi and

ix
x JOHN RUFUS

Lars Rydbeck. I must also express my deepest gratitude to Ann

Heberlein and Henric Johnsén for heroically having read the
manuscript and contributed numerous suggestions to improve the
text.
I wish to thank Lillian Larsen (Columbia University) for
reading my drafts, and helping me to clarify my thoughts during
many probing discussions in pubs and coffeehouses in Lund and
New York. I would also like to thank Philip Rousseau (Catholic
University of America) and Witold Witakowski (Uppsala
University), for reading my Licentiate Thesis and providing me
with important suggestions for my work with the present study.
I am very grateful to Bengt Ellenberger, who has patiently
read the entire manuscript and corrected countless mistakes in the
text. It goes without saying that the remaining mistakes are
completely my own.
I wish to thank all other friends and colleagues at the
Department of Theology and Religious Studies, University of
Lund, especially Dan-Erik Andersson, Maria Ericson, Blazenka
Scheuer, and James Starr, for their immense patience when I have
bothered them with all kinds of practical questions in the final
stage of the thesis phase. I also wish to thank Johan Eriksson, who
through the whole process has supported me with the joys of
friendship in hope and despair.
I also wish to express my sincere appreciation and gratitude to
Susan Ashbrook Harvey (Brown University), who served as the
faculty opponent at my Th.D. defense in April 2001, and the
members of the examination board: Ezra Gebremedhin (Uppsala
University), Bo Holmberg (Lund University) and Reinhart Staats
(Kiel University). Their suggestions and recommendations have
been extremely helpful in the process of turning my doctoral thesis
into the present publication. Finally, I thank George Kiraz and
Gorgias Press for thoughtful support and guidance through the
publishing process.
CONTENTS

Preface and Acknowledgments ....................................... ix

Contents ............................................................................ xi
Abbreviations .................................................................. xiii
Introduction ..................................................................... xv
The Motives for the Insurrection................................................... xv
Hagiography and Culture..............................................................xxvi
1 The Stage of the Resistance ........................................... 1
The Palestinian Mutiny ...................................................................... 1
Anti-Chalcedonianism and the Region of Gaza .......................... 15
Egypt — The Bulwark of Orthodoxy ........................................... 25
Monastic Freedom and the Struggle for Orthodoxy................... 34
Compromising Orthodoxy.............................................................. 48
2 The Texts ...................................................................... 57
The Author ........................................................................................ 57
Texts and Versions ........................................................................... 61
The Life of Peter the Iberian ..................................................................... 61
The Commemoration of the Death of Theodosius........................................ 70
The Plerophories ....................................................................................... 73
3 The Images of Authority.............................................. 83
The Power of the Past...................................................................... 90
The Road of Renunciation .............................................................. 96
Charisma and Institution ...............................................................104
Conclusion .......................................................................................111
4 Signs and Revelations ................................................ 115
Visions and Signs in Eastern Monasticism .................................115
The Power over Time ....................................................................124
The Power over Nature .................................................................129
The Power of Judgement...............................................................132
The Power of the Marginalized ....................................................137
Conclusion .......................................................................................142
xi
xii JOHN RUFUS

5 The Image of the Enemies ........................................ 145

The Hagiographic role of Heretics...............................................145
The Heresy of Chalcedon..............................................................149
Heresy as a Disease.........................................................................157
Conclusion .......................................................................................162
Conclusion ..................................................................... 165
Bibliography .................................................................. 177
Primary Sources...............................................................................177
Secondary Sources ..........................................................................181
Index............................................................................... 189
ABBREVIATIONS

AB Analecta Bollandiana.
ABAW Abhandlungen der Bayerischen Akademie der
Wissenschaften. Phil.-Hist. Klasse.
ACW Ancient Christian Writers.
ACO Acta Conciliorum Oecumenicorum.
AHC Annuarium Historia Conciliorum.
AKWG Abhandlungen der Königlichen Gesellschaft der
Wissenschaften zu Göttingen. Phil.-Hist. Klasse.
AP Apophthegmata patrum, Collectio Graeca
alphabetica.
ARB Académie Royale de Belgique.
CS Cistercian Studies.
CSCO Corpus Scriptorum Christianorum Orientalium.
CSEL Corpus Scriptorum Ecclesiasticorum Latinorum.
CSHB Corpus Scriptores Historiae Byzantinae.
DOP Dumbarton Oaks Papers.
GCS Die griechischen christlichen Schriftsteller der
ersten drei Jahrhunderte.
HE Historia ecclesiastica.
HL Historia Lausiaca.
HM Historia Monachorum.
HR Historia Religiosa.
HTR Harvard Theological Review.
JA Journal Asiatique.
JECS Journal of Early Christian Studies.
JEH Journal of Ecclesiastical History.
JRS Journal of Roman Studies.
JTS Journal of Theological Studies.
KvCh Das Konzil von Chalkedon.
LA Liber Annuus.
LCL Loeb Classical Library.
OC Oriens Christianus.
OCP Orientalia Christiana Periodica.
PG Patrologia Graeca.

xiii
xiv JOHN RUFUS

PL Patrologia Latina.
Pleroph. Plerophories
PO Patrologia Orientalis.
POC Proche-Orient Chrétien.
RAM Revue d'ascétique et de mystique.
RHR Revue de l’histoire des religions.
ROC Revue de l’Orient Chretien.
SC Sources Chrétiennes.
Script. syri. Scriptores syri.
SHAW Sitzungsberichte der Heidelberger Akademie der
Wissenshaften. Phil.-Hist. Klasse
SP Studia Patristica.
StRiOC Studi e richerche sull’ oriente cristiano.
Sub. Hag Subsidia Hagiographica.
SVTQ St Vladimir's Theological Quarterly
TH Théologie Historique.
TU Texte und Untersuchungen.
V. Ant Vita Antonii.
V. Petr. Ib. Vita Petri Iberi.
INTRODUCTION

The Motives for the Insurrection

It was with an ambivalent mind that, in early 452, Pope Leo I
received the reports from his legates on what had taken place at the
Council of Chalcedon. Indignant about the twenty-eighth canon,
which confirmed the equal dignity of the patriarchal sees of Rome
and Constantinople, he held Patriarch Anatolius of Constantinople
personally responsible for this act of defiance of the apostolic
authority of Old Rome and accused him of being motivated by a
spirit of self-seeking.1 Yet Leo made it known to Emperor Marcian
that he was delighted that the bishops at the Council of Chalcedon
had finally vindicated the truth and, sustained by the right hand of
God, dispelled the last shadows of the Eutychian heresy. In spite of
his displeasure about what he regarded as unlawful claims by the
patriarchate of Constantinople, Leo was convinced that his
personal crusade against the Christology of Eutyches had now
reached a point of complete triumph.2
In the same year Leo received disturbing news from his
confidential agent in the East, Bishop Julian of Kios, news that
dampened his hopes for ecumenical recognition of the
Chalcedonian definition of faith, which proclaimed Christ to be in
his incarnate state of both divine and human nature. The
information Leo received from Julian concerned the state in the
East, particularly in Palestine, where turbulent resistance to the
doctrinal decrees of Chalcedon had broken out in the monastic
circles. As a result of this rebellion Bishop Juvenal of Jerusalem had
been forced into exile, leaving the control of his see in the hands of
monks who fiercely rejected any communion with bishops who
had subscribed to the decisions of the Council of Chalcedon. Leo
did not conceal his fury at the state of affairs in Palestine,

1
Leo, Ep. ad Marcianum (ep. 104), PL 54, 991-998. That Leo otherwise
regarded the Council of Chalcedon as a personal victory is emphasized by
T. Jalland, The Life and Times of St. Leo the Great (London 1941), 338.
2 Jalland, 338.

xv
xvi JOHN RUFUS

pronouncing a harsh verdict on the Palestinian monks in a letter to

Julian of Kios, dated November 25.
The deeds which you Fraternity mentions as being
perpetrated by crowds of false monks are serious and
to be lamented with no small grief. It is the impious
Eutyches who, through the madness of his deceivers,
wages war against the evangelical and apostolic
teachings, a war which is bound to involve him and his
associates in ruin. Through God’s patience the coming
of the ruin is delayed in order to make clear how much
the enemies of Christ’s cross are serving the Devil.
Heretical depravity now comes out from behind the
old veil of pretense and can no longer restrain itself
within the limits of hypocrisy. And all the poison which
it had kept covered for a long time has now been
poured out upon the disciples of truth, not only by the
use of the pen but even in manual violence, in order
forcibly to extort consent from men either of untutored
simplicity or of panic-stricken faith.3
To Leo the rebellious monks in Palestine were nothing but
Eutychian troublemakers, prompted by wrong-headed madness. By
taking part in the blasphemies of Eutyches and Dioscorus these
riotous monks were soldiers of Antichrist, egged on in their
simplicity by the ringleaders and pestilential teachers of heresy. If
their sedition was tolerated, or if they escaped punishment for their
insubordination, they would cause the perdition of many.4
This letter, written in the uttermost rage against what Leo
regarded as “false monks” and “sons of darkness,” ends with a
request for continual reports about the Palestinian mutiny. From
the next letter that Leo sent to Julian, dated March 11, 453, it
appears that his request for further information was not fulfilled in
a satisfactory way. Leo simply finds it necessary to repeat his
request:
But with regard to the monks of Palestine, who are said
this long time to be in a state of mutiny, I know not by
what spirit they are at present moved. Nor has any one
yet explained to me what reasons they seem to bring

3 Leo, Ep. ad Julianum (ep. 109), 1014-1015; tr. by E. Hunt, St. Leo the

Great: Letters, The Fathers of the Church 34 (Washington 1964), 194.

4 Leo, Ep. ad Julianum, 1015-1016.
 INTRODUCTION xvii

forward for their discontent: whether for instance, they

wish to serve the Eutychian heresy by such madness, or
whether they are irreconcilably vexed that their bishop
could have been misled into that blasphemy, whereby,
in spite of the very associations of the holy spots, from
which issued instruction for the whole world, he has
alienated himself from the Truth of the Lord’s
Incarnation, and in their opinion that cannot be venial
in him which in others had to be wiped out by
absolution. And therefore I desire to be more fully
informed about these things that proper means may be
taken for their correction; because it is one thing to
arm oneself wickedly against the Faith, and another
thing to be immoderately disturbed on behalf of it.5
Leo’s question is simple—why do the monks of Palestine set
themselves up against the Chalcedonian definition of faith? Is it
because they are Eutychians, or is it because they fear that their
bishop Juvenal at Chalcedon had made himself guilty of heresy as
he turned his back on Dioscorus, the Alexandrian patriarch, in
association with whom he had struggled for so long against
Nestorian heretics?6
We do not know whether Julian of Kios responded to Leo’s
question. But in yet another letter, written directly to the monks of
Palestine, Leo suggests that the monks were probably misled by an
inaccurate translation from Latin into Greek of his letter to Flavian,
the so-called Tome. This letter, in which he courteously described
his addresses as essentially “greater friends to truth than to
falsehood,” turns out to be a rather patronizing exposition of Leo’s
own Christological view. Having declared that the Tome in no way
departs from the catholic faith of the holy fathers and that the
condemnation of both Nestorius and Eutyches was correct, he
accuses them of lack of humility and peacefulness and reproaches
them for their violent fury. He ends his letter with an admonition
not to deny the true flesh of Christ but to accept the true nature of

5 Leo, Ep. ad Julianum (ep. 113), 1026; tr. by C. L. Feltoe, Letters and
Sermons of Leo the Great, A Select Library of the Nicene and Post-Nicene
Fathers of the Christian Church, ser. 2, vol. 12 (Grand Rapids 1983), 83.
6 See Jalland, 332, including n. 39: ‘The point is that Leo could not

make up his mind whether the monks were rioting in support of the
intruder Theodosius, or because they were dissatisfied with Juvenal’s
loyalty to the Chalcedonian “settlement.”’
xviii JOHN RUFUS

the Incarnation: “Forswear, my sons, forswear these suggestions of

the devil.”7 In the letter to the Palestinian monks Leo appears to
regard the monastic insurrection in Palestine as a result of a zealous
devotion to the truth, founded on a severe misinterpretation of the
catholic faith as pronounced in the Tome as well as by the bishops
at Chalcedon. According to Leo, it was an essential lack of
knowledge about the truth that made them dispute the faith, while
yet believing that they were acting for the faith. If only the
misunderstandings were cleared away and the monks humbly
joined the body of catholic unity, they would no longer find the
Incarnation of the Word a stumbling block to themselves.8
Pope Leo’s suggestion that the Chalcedonian controversy
could be explained in terms of an accidental misunderstanding
appears even today to be the most acknowledged way to approach
the breach between the Chalcedonian and non-Chalcedonian
Churches in the fifth and sixth centuries. But while Leo claimed
that it was the opponents of Chalcedon that had misunderstood
the truth, it is recognized today that the misunderstandings of the
expositions of an essentially shared faith were mutual. For instance,
the Joint Commission of the Theological Dialogue Between the
Orthodox Church and the Oriental Orthodox Churches in
Chambésy, 1990, agreed on the following:
We have now clearly understood that both families
have always loyally maintained the same authentic
Orthodox Christological faith, and the unbroken
continuity of the apostolic tradition, though they may
have used christological terms in different ways. It is
this common faith and continuous loyalty to the
Apostolic Tradition that should be the basis of our
unity and communion.9
This was not the first time that a joint commission between the
‘Eastern’ and the ‘Oriental’ Orthodox Churches recognized full

7 Leo, Ep. ad monachos (ep. 124), 1061-1068.

8 Leo, Ep. ad monachos, 1067-1068.
9 In C. Chaillot and A. Belopopsky (eds.), Towards Unity: The Theological

Dialogue between the Orthodox Church and the Oriental Orthodox Churches
(Geneva 1998), p. 64.
 INTRODUCTION xix

agreement as regards the Christological dogma.10 Further, several

scholarly studies published in the twentieth century, investigating
the doctrinal circumstances of the divergence between the
Chalcedonian and non-Chalcedonian Churches, have pointed out
the absence of any real difference in the views of each tradition on
the relationship between the human and divine natures in Christ.
At least theoretically, the epithets ‘monophysite’ and
‘monophysitism,’ polemically indicating the rejection of any human
element in the one person of Christ, have been proved inadequate
for a valid consideration of non-Chalcedonian Christology.
In 1909 Joseph Lebon published his pioneering study on early
non-Chalcedonian theology, focusing his attention on what he
labeled “Severian monophysitism,” that is, the mainstream non-
Chalcedonianism that reached a high-water mark with Severus of
Antioch, Patriarch of Antioch 512-518.11 Clarifying Harnack’s
distinction between real monophysitism (der Sache nach) and
nominal monophysitism (nach dem kirchlichen Sprachgebrauch),12 Lebon
suggested that the ideas that confirmed a confusion or change in
the divine and human elements in the person of Christ, or that
denied the consubstantiality of Christ with humankind, must be
distinguished from what the Chalcedonians themselves regarded as
a rejection of the human nature of Christ. The confusion between
what is real and what is nominal derives from the term
‘monophysitism’ itself, denoting the idea of ‘one physis’ but
presupposing that ‘physis’ refers to the distinct human or divine
element in the person of Christ. In the eyes of the non-
Chalcedonians themselves and in accordance with the terminology
of Cyril of Alexandria, this use of the epithet ‘monophysite’
neglects to recognize that ‘physis’ did not primarily denote the
distinct elements in the person of Christ but rather the person
itself. As a consequence, the identification made by the non-

10 See P. Gregorios, W. H. Lazareth, and N. A. Nissiotis (eds.), Does

Chalcedon Divide or Unite: Towards Convergence in Orthodox Christology (Geneva

1981).
11 J. Lebon, Le monophysisme sévérien: Étude historique, littéraire et théologique

sur la résistance monophysite au concile de Chalcédoine (Louvain 1909). See also

Lebon, ‘La Christologie du monophysisme syrien,’ in A. Grillmeier and
H. Bacht (eds.), KvCh, vol. 1 (Würzburg 1951), 425-580.
12 cf. A. Harnack, Lehrbuch der Dogmengeschichte, vol. 2 (Tübingen 1909),

352-353.
xx JOHN RUFUS

Chalcedonians between nature (physis) and person (hypostasis)

exposes the inaccuracy of the term ‘monophysitism’ as regards the
principal line of the non-Chalcedonian movement, which forcefully
rejected any idea of confusion or transformation of the human and
divine properties in Christ. Therefore, according to Lebon, the
term ‘real monophysitism’ can be used properly only when defining
the ideas of individual thinkers like Apollinaris and Eutyches, who
were rejected not only by the Chalcedonians but, in fact, also by
most non-Chalcedonians. Lebon thus reduces the use of the
epithet ‘monophysite’ as regards non-Chalcedonians like
Dioscorus, Timothy Aelurus or Severus of Antioch to a matter of
scholarly habit in the Western tradition, acknowledging that only
circumstances have saved Cyril of Alexandria from being labeled
with this epithet.13
Lebon, and with him most students of the Christological
controversies during the patristic period, thus retained the terms
‘monophysitism’ and ‘monophysite’ with reference to the prevailing
discourse of dogmatic history. However, in a monograph on the
development of the neo-Chalcedonian tradition published in 1979,
Patrick Gray pointed out the prejudicial and anachronistic
character of these terms, suggesting instead the terms ‘pro-
Chalcedonian’ (or ‘Chalcedonian’) and ‘anti-Chalcedonian’ as valid
descriptions of the Christological factions in the fifth and sixth
centuries. Further, according to Gray, these terms called attention
to the real point of controversy, that is, to the question of the
reception of Chalcedon, rather than a conflict between two
different Christological views, one of Chalcedonian orthodoxy and
the other of Monophysite heterodoxy.14
Proceeding from the statement that the Chalcedonians and
the anti-Chalcedonians essentially taught the same thing, it may
seem difficult to find any adequate reason for opposition against
Chalcedon in the East. As Johannes Karmiris stated in one of the
unofficial theological conversations between the ‘Eastern’ and the
‘Oriental’ Orthodox:
Anyone will be become perplexed who today
objectively and unbiasedly investigates the ecclesiastical

Lebon, Le monophysisme sévérien, xxii-xxv.

13

P. T. R. Gray, The Defense of Chalcedon in the East (451-553) (Leiden

14

1979), 74.
 INTRODUCTION xxi

events of the fifth century A.D. occasioned by

Monophysitism. This perplexity is due to the fact that
one can find no sufficient dogmatic-ecclesiastical
reason for their having detached themselves from the
stem of the Orthodox Catholic Church of the East to
which they still organically belong.15
We have seen that this vexation about the motives behind the rise
of the anti-Chalcedonian movement was shared by Pope Leo, who
suggested that the reason why the Palestinian monks had set
themselves up against the catholic unity was their misunderstanding
of the Tome and the Chalcedonian definition of faith. However,
Leo’s suggestion can be regarded as accurate only from a highly
superficial point of view. In fact, to explain the reasons behind the
Christological conflict merely in terms of different usages of the
concepts ‘physis’ and ‘hypostasis’ is not a sufficient approach to
elucidate the rage of controversy that shook the Eastern Empire in
the fifth and sixth centuries. It is evident that to the followers of
Chalcedon the acceptance of one nature after the Incarnation
implied approving Eutyches, and that, on the other hand, the non-
Chalcedonians recognized in the confession of two natures after
the Incarnation the Christological view defended by Nestorius.
That each faction linked different contents to the same expressions
probably gave rise to deep frustration, the non-Chalcedonians
realizing that they were accused of being Eutychians, while the
Chalcedonians knew that Chalcedon was believed by many to have
accepted the teaching of Nestorius.16 But to be content with this
analysis is to trivialize the motives behind the opposition against
Chalcedon. Fundamentally, the Chalcedonian controversy was not
a conflict merely about the semantic connections between certain

15 J. N. Karmiris, ‘The Problem of the Unification of the Non-

Chalcedonian Churches of the East with the Orthodox on the Basis of

Cyril’s Formula: Mia Physis tou Theou Logou Sesarkomene,’ in Does
Chalcedon Divide or Unite?, 29.
16 For instance, Timothy Aelurus intensely rejected rumors that

labeled him Eutychian, mentioning the promoters of such rumors as

‘deceivers,’ in Zacharias Scholasticus, HE 4.12, CSCO, Script. syri 3.5,
186. For the Chalcedonian side, see V. Euthym, 42-43, TU 49.2, where
Euthymius is reported to have defended the Chalcedonian faith against
accusations of Nestorianism.
xxii JOHN RUFUS

words and concepts but about different ways of looking upon

reality.
The question, originally posed by Pope Leo to Julian of Kios,
about the cause of the Palestinian rebellion against the Tome and
the Council of Chalcedon remains unanswered. Remarkably, only a
very few serious attempts were undertaken during the 20th century
to bring to light the basic motives behind the anti-Chalcedonian
movement. The first important contribution is Heinrich Bacht’s
lengthy article from 1953 (published in the second volume of the
standard work Das Konzil von Chalkedon) on the role of the monastic
movement for the popular resistance against Chalcedon.17
Bacht claims that the key to uncovering the motives behind
the anti-Chalcedonian movement is to be found in early Eastern
monasticism. The political dimension of monasticism, according to
Bacht, was established already during the Arian controversy in the
fourth century when, in his Life of Antony, Athanasius of Alexandria
promoted the image of the true monk as a hero for the welfare of
the Christian community. But it is only with the Chalcedonian
controversy that monks conspicuously entered into the foreground
of the theological and ecclesiastical affairs in the Eastern Empire.18
Bacht points out what Pope Leo apparently already knew, that is,
that it was monks rather than bishops who initiated the resistance
against Chalcedon, conceiving as they did the Chalcedonian
statement of faith as a revival of Nestorianism.
Drawing a detailed sketch of the ecclesiastical developments
from the Council of Ephesus in 431 to the beginning of Emperor
Justin’s reign, Bacht recognizes the prevalent force of the monastic
movement as decisive for the rise and advancement of the
Chalcedonian controversy: “Ohne ihren Beitrag wäre die
Bewegung des »Monophysitismus« wohl nie zu einer so
gefährlichen Macht geworden.”19 One major reason was, according
to Bach, the intimate connection between Egyptian monasticism
and the Patriarchs of Alexandria. Through the expansion of
monasticism in the fourth century into a veritable mass movement,
the monastic population became a valuable instrument in the hands

17 H. Bacht, ‘Die Rolle des orientalische Mönchtums in den

kirchenpolitischen Auseinandersetzungen um Chalcedon (431-519),’ in

KvCh, vol. 2 (Würzburg 1953), 193-314.
18 Bacht, 194-195.
19 Bacht, 292.
 INTRODUCTION xxiii

of the patriarchs, as well as an important force to consider in an

efficient administration. But the expansion of monasticism also
promoted “scandalous conditions,” which can be explained within
the framework of mass psychology. Many monks received the
monastic habit solely for the sake of appearance, and were not
immediately motivated by the ideals of asceticism. According to
Bacht it was the close connection between the monastic movement
and the Patriarchs of Alexandria that motivated the monks to
oppose the imperial authorities. Prompted by what Bacht
designated as the “subjectivism” of Eastern monasticism they were
at the same time sturdily loyal to the Alexandrian Patriarchs,
something that made them a particularly violent force.20 Having
emphasized the role of monastic authorities standing in the front-
line of the monastic crowds,21 Bacht concludes his argument by
drawing attention to the ecclesiastical aspect of the aim of the
monastic life, that is, the idea of active participation in the life of
the Church as an ascetic commitment. In this way the personal
struggle against demons in the desert is linked to this aim not only
for personal salvation but also for the salvation of the entire
Church.22
Bacht seems to consider monasticism as the source of a
fanatic conservatism that provided the opponents of Chalcedon
with a spiritual motivation to meddle in matters in which they had
no reason to be involved in the first place. But even if his
assessments leave much to be desired, there is no doubt that,
according to him, the essential motivation and identity of the anti-
Chalcedonian movement was based on an uncompromising
attitude possible only in a monastic setting. This argument is
followed up by William Frend, who in his survey on the emergence
of the non-Chalcedonian movement published in 1972, regarded
the monks, representing “the swelling tide of public opinion,” as
the main force behind the resistance against Chalcedon.23 On the
question why the one-nature formula attracted the monastic
population in the East, Frend suggests the contribution of a range
of motives, among them the loyalty to the Alexandrian Patriarchs

20 Bacht, 295-296.
21 Bacht, 297.
22 Bacht, 312-314.
23 W. H. C. Frend, The Rise of the Monophysite Movement: Chapters in the

History of the Church in the Fifth and Sixth Centuries (Cambridge 1979), 136.
xxiv JOHN RUFUS

and the appeal of the one-nature Christology to those simple-

minded monks who saw salvation as dependent on the undivided
incarnation of God. He also draws attention to the emphasis within
Egyptian monasticism on the Bible and the Council of Nicaea
without, however, sufficiently elucidating his argument.24
One of the most recent contributions to the seemingly elusive
relationship between anti-Chalcedonianism and Eastern
monasticism is included in Johannes Roldanus’ study of 1997 on
the monastic involvement in the Chalcedonian controversy.25 In his
attempt to solve the question why certain monks chose to reject
the Christology of Chalcedon, Roldanus begins with a presentation
of the views of Carl Mönnich on the one hand, and Francis
Murphy and Polycarp Sherwood on the other.26 As Roldanus
observes, Mönnich does not recognize any essential difference
between Chalcedonian and non-Chalcedonian Christology, and
rejects Christology as the main point of controversy. According to
Mönnich, the problem for the anti-Chalcedonian monks was rather
that the authority of Chalcedon had been defiled, as a result of the
deep involvement of the imperial authority. The widely spread
affection towards monastic authority was, in Mönnich’s opinion,
the main source for a fundamental distrust in the Emperor’s claim
for ecclesiastical leadership, particularly when effectuated through
evident despotic measures.27 Roldanus then proceeds to the views
of Murphy and Sherwood, who also emphasize piety rather than
theology as the basic motive for the opposition against Chalcedon.
Since in the two-nature formula the anti-Chalcedonian monks
recognized a reduction of Christ’s divinity, they feared that the
possibility of the human soul to unite with Christ in the final

24 Frend, The Rise of the Monophysite Movement, 136-137.

25 Roldanus, ‘Stützen und Störenfriede: Mönchische Einmischung in
die doktrinäre und kirchenpolitische Rezeption von Chalkedon,’ in J. van
Oort und J. Roldanus (eds.), Chalkedon: Geschichte und Aktualität: Studien zur
Rezeption der christologischen Formel von Chalkedon (Louvain 1997).
26 cf. C. W. Mönnich, Geding der Vrijheid, De betrekkingen der oosterse en

westerse kerken tot de val van Constantinopel (1453) (Zwolle 1976), 180-182; F.
X. Murphy and P. Sherwood, Konstantinopel II und III, in G. Dumeige and
H. Bacht (eds.), Geschichte der ökumenischen Konzilien, III (Mainz 1990), 49-
50.
27 Roldanus, ‘Stützen und Störenfriede,’ 139-140. cf. Mönnich, Geding

der Vrijheid, 180.

 INTRODUCTION xxv

process of divinization was lost. But in the end, according to

Murphy and Sherwood, it was not piety, mysticism or ascetic values
that caused the secession of the non-Chalcedonians from the
imperial Church, but simply the lack of political support from the
emperors.28
Roldanus remains skeptical to both these conclusions—that
the resistance against Chalcedon was caused by suspicion towards
the influence of worldly authorities in the establishment of
Orthodoxy, as well as that the cause can be found in the view that
the Chalcedonian dogma implied a danger to monastic piety.
Criticizing Mönnich’s simplistic view on the relation between
monastic values and worldly authorities he remarks that some
emperors clearly followed anti-Chalcedonian sentiments in their
policy. Further, he refutes the opinion of Murphy and Sherwood,
bringing in the hagiographic works of Cyril of Scythopolis as
evidence that even in ascetic circles the two-nature formula of
Chalcedon could easily be accepted without fear of jeopardizing the
worship of Christ’s divinity.29
In the following discussion Roldanus builds his argument
entirely on Bacht’s opinions from 1953, and fails to present any
new insights on the essential motives behind the anti-Chalcedonian
movement. He touches upon the close connection in the monastic
concept between ascetic retreat and involvement in the
ecclesiastical affairs that had been established by Athanasius in his
Life of Antony. This connection had made monks regard themselves
as responsible for not only their own salvation but for the salvation
of the whole Church. He also emphasizes the role of ascetic
authorities as an important force behind the emergence of the
diverging factions within the Eastern Church as these ascetic
authorities directed the attitudes towards Chalcedon from their
opinions whether Chalcedon was in accordance with the Council of
Nicaea or not.30
The preceding survey of various approaches to the causes of
the anti-Chalcedonian movement reveals a prevalent state of
confusion and a remarkable lack of sufficient and penetrating
investigations into the problem. Since Leo posed his question to

28 Roldanus, 140. cf. Murphy and Sherwood, Konstantinopel II und III,

49.
29 Roldanus, 140-141.
30 Roldanus, 142-146.
xxvi JOHN RUFUS

Julian of Kios fifteen hundred years ago, no scholar—neither

Bacht, Frend, nor Roldanus—has yet succeeded in providing a
completely convincing and satisfactory answer to the question
concerning why the monks of the East furiously opposed the
Council of Chalcedon. Except for some important remarks already
put forth by Bacht, including the monks’ loyalty towards the
Patriarchs of Alexandria, the role of the ascetic authority, and the
involvement in ecclesiastical affairs as a monastic theme, the
problem remains unsolved.

Hagiography and Culture

There seem to be at least two reasons behind the insufficient
results in earlier investigations on the emergence of anti-
Chalcedonianism. The first reason is that the inquiries, explicit or
not, still to a large extent follow confessional boundaries. The
underlying obligation to defend Chalcedon—most evident in Bacht
but present also in Roldanus—leads to a perception of the non-
Chalcedonians as obstinate enemies of orthodoxy, thus obstructing
any intentional attempt to understand the world of anti-
Chalcedonianism.
The second reason, which is in some respects associated with
the first, is found in the sources for our knowledge of the
Chalcedonian controversy. Some of the most important of these
sources belong to the literary genre of hagiography.31 For the
situation in Palestine scholars have mainly relied on the series of
hagiographies written by the Chalcedonian monk Cyril of
Scythopolis in the sixth century, which describes the lives and acts
of monastic authorities such as Euthymius and Sabas.32 But even
within anti-Chalcedonian circles hagiographic writings were
produced that are today indispensable for any balanced
consideration of the monastic resistance against Chalcedon in
Palestine. To this group of hagiographic writings belong the works
of Zacharias Scholasticus and John Rufus. Recently, in the most
fruitful contribution of the last few years to our knowledge of anti-

31 For a pioneer study of hagiography, see H. Delehaye, Cinq leçons sur

la méthode hagiographique, Sub. Hag. 21 (Bruxelles 1934). For one of the

most important contributions for the contemporary study of hagiography,
see P. Cox, Biography in Late Antiquity (Berkeley 1983).
32 Vitae, ed. by E. Schwartz, TU 49.2 (Leipzig 1939).
 INTRODUCTION xxvii

Chalcedonian literature, Bernard Flusin remarks that anti-

Chalcedonian hagiography has consistently been forced to the
periphery in studies of Palestinian monasticism, in a way that has
led to an “error of perspective.”33 One symptom of this error of
perspective, caused either by confessional considerations or by
unwillingness to take into account texts not preserved in Greek, is
the tendency to regard the Chalcedonian hagiography of Cyril of
Scythopolis as a mainstream representative of Palestinian
hagiography. Such a view is based on a disregard for the complexity
and discontinuity of the history of Palestinian hagiography, a
disregard that does not correspond with our present knowledge of
that literature in the fifth and sixth centuries. Throughout his
discussion of Palestinian hagiography Flusin makes it clear that the
Chalcedonian controversy in Palestine was essentially a struggle
about history. In this struggle hagiography was a forceful weapon,
since it had the power to reconstruct as well as rewrite history. In
Palestine, Chalcedonians and anti-Chalcedonians alike based their
own ideological preferences on the past, while discrediting their
opponents with accusations of novelty, innovation, and change. In
using hagiography as a method of reconstructing history each
faction established its own ‘facts,’ in order to identify the unbroken
line between the ancient fathers in the past and the champions of
orthodoxy in the present. In this way, by means of individual
selection and organization of these ‘facts,’ Chalcedonians and anti-
Chalcedonians created their own separate forms of cultural
identity.34
It is evident that the anti-Chalcedonian movement was deeply
motivated by concerns fundamentally associated with monasticism.
This view has been undisputed since 1912, when Eduard Schwartz,
in his pioneering study on John Rufus, declared anti-
Chalcedonianism to be a “Mönchreligion.”35 The ideological

33 B. Flusin, ‘L’hagiographie palestinienne et la réception du concile de

Chalcédoine,’ in J.-O. Rosenquist (ed.), ΛΕΙΜΩΝ: Studies Presented to

Lennart Rydén on His Sixthy-Fifth Birthday (Uppsala 1996), 26.
34 See for instance Flusin’s discussion about the idea of unbroken

continuity between the holy fathers of the Egyptian desert and the
Chalcedonian monks in Judaea; Flusin, ‘L’hagiographie palestinienne,’ 46-
47.
35 Schwartz, ‘Johannes Rufus: ein monophysitischer Schriftsteller,’ in

SHAW 3.16 (Heidelberg 1912), 13.

xxviii JOHN RUFUS

rhetoric of anti-Chalcedonian literature, as presented by such

authors as John of Ephesus, Zacharias Scholasticus, and John
Rufus, rests entirely on the notion of monastic life as the ultimate
way to reach spiritual knowledge, and certainty about the faith of
the fathers. In this way, anti-Chalcedonian literature was an integral
part of the hagiographic tradition of Eastern asceticism
The Christian discourse of Late Antiquity included a variety of
forms of verbal communication and rhetorical expression. But
among the variety of textual genres and subgenres biographical
narrative, as Averil Cameron has pointed out, enjoyed a special
preference. As a literary form, sprung from the ancient lives of
pagan philosophers, sages, and statesmen, the biographical
narrative succeeded in building up a social identity and a viable
Christian worldview.36 According to Cameron, the biographic
narrative was an integral part of the Christian discourse. In the
early history of Christianity this was manifested in at least three
different stages. The first stage represents the composing of the
Gospels and the Acts of the Apostles. The second stage coincided
with the periods of persecution and the writing of the passions of
the martyrs. The third stage, finally, represents the emergence of
the lives of Christian holy men, as a result of the development of
the ascetic movement in the fourth century. In this stage we find
the first expressions of Christian hagiography in the proper sense
of the word. These texts, with their constant emphasis on the
importance of the ascetic way of life, quickly proved to be the most
popular form of Christian discourse.
Hagiography is closely associated with the cultural climate in
the world of Late Antiquity. As a device common to pagans, Jews,
and Christians, it was born out of the meeting of various literary
and rhetorical expressions with the reality of the Late Hellenistic
world.37 A formal definition of hagiography as a specific literary
genre is not possible. Rather, it is to be regarded as an all-
embracing code-system for the articulation within a literary context
of the meeting between heaven and earth through such human
beings as were commonly recognized as ‘holy men.’ The definition

36 A. Cameron, Christianity and the Rhetoric of Empire (Berkeley and Los

Angeles 1991), 91-93.

37 M. van Uytfanghe, ‘L’Hagiographie: un ‘genre’ chrétien ou antique

tardif,’ AB 111 (1993), 147-149.

 INTRODUCTION xxix

of hagiography in Late Antiquity, therefore, presupposes a proper

definition of the late antique notion of the holy man.
At the heart of late antique hagiography rests the notion of
the holy man as a mediator between heaven and the material world.
The holy man was not a mere oracle, mediating such knowledge of
the future of ordinary men as he had received through some kind
of ecstatic experience. Instead, the holy man was an expression of
the late antique hope for a staircase between this world and the
other, based on the hope that there were individuals who, in their
own person, had been transformed into loci for the direct encounter
with divine providence.38 The holy man was the voice of God, a
position received through years of ascetic wrestling with the
powers of materiality. He was an active force in society, a living
idea of the interplay between the divine and material realities
founded on the paideia of early Christian asceticism. But he was also
a man cocooned in stories that helped preserve his post-mortal
memory. These stories were not only a device for remembrance of
the holy men but also a device for imitation.39 In their lives holy
men had showed the way for the personal realization of holiness
for everyone. Thus hagiography showed the way for every human
to reach divinification, to be a man of God.
To write and to mediate stories of holy men was one of the
features of ascetic life. It was a labor not reserved for learned and
sophisticated men gifted with literary articulation (in spite of the
humble remarks on their lack of every talent and knowledge in the
prefaces of their works). It was a labor that involved every member
in the monastic community. Hagiography was more than edifying
stories, written by a few for the entertainment of the many. Above
all, as in the case of folklore, it was an instrument for organizing
the collective memory of monastic culture.40

38 P. Brown, ‘The Rise and Function of the Holy Man in Late

Antiquity,’ JRS 61 (1971), 80-85.

39 See Cameron, Christianity and the Rhetoric of Empire, 56: ‘written Lives

provided the guidelines for the construction of a Christian life, and the
ascetic model (…) provided the guidelines for the construction of a
specifically Christian self. (…) Written Lives were mimetic; real ascetic
discipline in turn imitated the written Lives.’
40 There are surprisingly few studies on Christian hagiography as a

discourse for the preservation of ideological and cultural structures. P.

Rousseau comes particularly close to a consideration of this perspective,
xxx JOHN RUFUS

The need within the monastic communities to maintain the

idea of discipleship, even when the great ascetic masters had long
since departed, was the immediate motive behind the production
of hagiographic writing. In order to give meaning to the yearly
remembrances of the holy men’s deaths and to preserve their
memory for coming generations of monks, their deeds and words
had to be recounted. The memories of holy men were preserved
through literary devices commonly recognized all over the late
Roman Empire as adequate ways to describe them as historical
facts. It was essential that the stories of the saints were based on
events that were considered to have occurred in historic times and
therefore true. Thus, hagiography was closely connected with
history and truth. In hagiography, where the claim for truth was
put in the context of a historical narrative, the interaction between
truth and narrative was essential for any report of the life and
actions of a holy man.41
Closely connected to this interaction between truth and
narrative, hagiography was also a communal report, reflecting the
views of the local Christian community. Hagiography presented
itself as a genre of monastic discourse implicitly directed towards
the conservation of the traditional structures and ideals of a proper
ascetic conduct. Often motivated by disputes with other
communities and beliefs, the lives of holy men served as written or
orally transmitted manifestations of a culture considered spiritually
superior to that of the men of the world. In the lives of the holy
men the controversies of the days were considered according to

see Ascetics, Authority and the Church: In the Age of Jerome and Cassian (Oxford
1978), 68-76, and Pachomius: The Making of a Community in Fourth-Century
Egypt (Berkeley 1985), 44-55. For the relation between hagiography and
ideology in the Western tradition, see R. Van Dam, Saints and their Miracles
in Late Antique Gaul (Princeton 1993), and T. Head, Hagiography and the
Cult of Saints: The Diocese of Orléans, 800-1200 (Cambridge 1990).
41 See Cameron, Christianity and the Rhetoric of Empire, 93. For the

relationship between fiction and history in Late Antique biography, see

Cox, Biography in Late Antiquity, xi-xiv. Late Antique biography, according
to Cox, implied a constant ‘play’ between history and fiction that brought
meaning to a hero’s life through the blurring out of the limits between
imagination and historical facts. Biography is characterized as not a mere
representation of the hero’s life, but a manifestation of his inner qualities
through the personal conceptions of the biographer.
 INTRODUCTION xxxi

well-tried rhetorical strategies and solved against the background of

fixed ideological conventions. In early monasticism these strategies
and conventions were assumed as ways of contemplating ancient
ideas of ascetic purity. Thus, they functioned as normative
emblems in the framework of hagiographic literature. In the form
of hagiographic narrative, the early Christian concepts of poverty,
humility, and alienation were realized in history through the stories
of certain individuals believed to have fulfilled the common
expectations of the meaning of Christian discipleship. Through
these holy persons the hagiographic narratives expressed what the
Christian communities saw as the inner meaning of Christian life.42
But, as in most kinds of communicative situations, the
hagiographer had to stick to what was recognized as truth in the
community of readers. In order to be understood, and to fulfill the
hagiographic aim of edifying the community of readers, the
hagiographer had to proceed from the field of discursive practice,
or the horizon of expectations, of the community. Hagiography
not only involves the author’s creative imagination of holy men but
also encompasses the whole process of transference between
addresser and the addressee of the hagiographic message. As Averil
Cameron concludes in her discussion on why early Christian
authors express their ideals in mainly biographical narrative:
It built its own symbolic universe by exploiting the kind
of stories that people liked to hear, and which in their
turn provided a mechanism by which society at large
and the real lives of individuals might be regulated. The
better these stories were constructed, the better they
functioned as structure-maintaining narratives and the
more their audiences were imposed to accept them as
true. 43
Although based on the same rhetorical elements, hagiography was
used as vehicle for the maintenance of pre-established ideologies.
Thus, proceeding from the inviolability of the system of rhetorical

42 Cameron, Christianity and the Rhetoric of Empire, 115-119. For the

relation between hagiography and history, see J. Børtnes, Visions of Glory:
Studies in Early Russian Hagiography (Oslo 1988), 27, where he suggests that
the legends of the saints are ‘clearly defined in space and time and by
being put forward as true.’ cf. Cox, Biography in Late Antiquity, 65.
43 Cameron, Christianity and the Rhetoric of Empire, 93.
xxxii JOHN RUFUS

expectations, hagiography represented a persuasive or ‘consolatory’

form of communication, since it led its readers to accept what was
already accepted in the community in a basically emotional way.44
In order to produce a specific set of emotional responses,
techniques were borrowed from the conventional store of pre-
established rhetorical devices and archetypes.
Recognition of hagiography as a mechanism for the creation
of monastic culture is one way of eliminating the dangers of the
error of perspective that Flusin pointed out to us. It invites the
historian to read and interpret hagiographic texts, Chalcedonian as
well as anti-Chalcedonian, as the result of textual actions within
historically demarcated universes of structured knowledge and
memory.45 The methodological perspective of the present study
acknowledges that, in order to receive historical knowledge
through hagiographic texts, the historian may consider the complex
network of relations between texts and the processes of text
production in terms of a specific cultural vision of the world. He
can approach a hagiographic work as a cultural event, a textual sign
interpretable only in terms of the contextual network of other
textual signs. It was through this network of textual signs that the
text was once recognized as a meaningful act of communication.
This network constitutes the cultural framework, outside which
there can be no language and communication. It forms a
heterogeneous totality of texts and codes properly described as a
forest of signs in which culture comes to birth, lives, and
develops.46 However, this forest of signs is to be considered not
only as the cause and condition for the existence of culture. In fact,

44 cf. U. Eco, La struttura assente: introduzione alla ricerca semiologica

(Milano 1971), 89, where this kind of persuasive communication is
characterized as ‘deposito di forme morte e ridondanti, che è retorica consolatoria,
e mira a riconfermare le opinioni del destinatario, fingendo di discutere
ma in effetti risolvendosi in mozione degli affetti.’
45 cf. the methodological approach of R. Darnton in The Great Cat

Massacre and Other Episodes in French Cultural History (New York 1984), 4-7,
esp. 259-262. For a discussion, see J. E. Toews, ‘The Historian in the
Labyrinth of Signs: Reconstructing Cultures and Reading Texts in the
Practice of Intellectual History,’ Semiotica 83.3 (1991), 351-384.
46
Eco, A Theory of Semiotics, (Bloomington 1976), 26-29. See also
Lotman, Universe of Mind: A Semiotic Theory of Culture (London 1990), 123-
126.
 INTRODUCTION xxxiii

it is the site for the communication and creation of world visions; it

is culture. If we want to learn its different aspects, we simply have
to enter into it. In such a definition of culture as a web of signs and
significance, accepted not only by semioticians by also by
anthropologists such as Clifford Geertz,47 culture is not conceived
as something beforehand given. Rather, it is created by human
beings to make communicative interaction possible.48
Aimed at the preservation of Christian worldviews in the form
of popular narrative, hagiography was especially suitable for times
of transition and crisis. Since it allowed for multiple manipulations
and articulations, hagiography was especially profitable for
propagandistic purposes, not least in the context of doctrinal
controversies during the fifth and sixth centuries. After Chalcedon
it became the main form of literary medium in the anti-
Chalcedonian movement. The earliest extant anti-Chalcedonian
hagiography is a panegyrical account of Dioscorus, originally
written by his disciple Theopistus before the patriarchate of Peter
Mongus, and preserved in Syriac.49 Covering the time from the
prelude to the Council of Chalcedon to the death of Dioscorus at
Gangra in Paphlagonia in 454, the text presents the protagonist as a
charismatic opponent of Chalcedonianism, gifted with visionary
and thaumaturgic powers. In the course of its history the text has
been revised, and later material has been incorporated into its
corpus.

47
See Geertz, The Interpretation of Cultures (New York 1973), 4-5: ‘The
concept of culture I espouse […] is essentially a semiotic one. Believing,
with Max Weber, that man is an animal suspended in webs of significance
he himself has spun, I take culture to be those webs, and the analysis of it
to be therefore not an experimental science in search of law but an
interpretative one in search of meaning.’ cf. Eco, A Theory of Semiotics, 28:
‘In culture every entity can become a semiotic phenomenon. The laws of
signification are the laws of culture. For this reason culture allows a
continuous process of communicative exchanges, in so far as it subsists as
a system of systems of signification. Culture can be studied completely under a
semiotic profile.’
48
See Creating Culture: Profiles in the Study of Culture, ed. D. J. Austin-
Broos, (Sydney and Boston 1987), xix-xx.
49 Theopistus of Alexandria, Vita Dioscori, ed. and tr. by F. Nau, JA,

ser. 10, vol. 1-2 (Paris 1903), 5-108, 241-310.

xxxiv JOHN RUFUS

At the end of the fifth century, concurrently with the triumph

of anti-Chalcedonianism in Egypt, anti-Chalcedonian hagiography
moved its center to Palestine. At this point the resistance against
Chalcedon was faced with an increasing danger of annihilation. For
several reasons the anti-Chalcedonian movement in Palestine was
particularly vulnerable. First, the holy places in Jerusalem made
Palestine the stage for considerable international interaction. The
never-ceasing flow of pilgrims from the most distant parts of the
Empire forced anti-Chalcedonians into contact with
Chalcedonians. This made the religious situation in Palestine
extremely complicated for the anti-Chalcedonian side. In addition,
the holy places, attracting pilgrims from east and west, invested
Jerusalem with a symbolic power that imbued the city with a
political significance on which the stability of the Eastern Empire
rested. In the fifth century Jerusalem became one of the most
important battlefields in the Empire between the Chalcedonian and
anti-Chalcedonian factions, where victory was largely determined
by the current ecclesiastical policies of the emperors.50 One of the
most plausible explanations of the marginalization of the anti-
Chalcedonian movement in Palestine may thus be traced to the
imperial pressures on the ecclesiastical potentates of Jerusalem to
keep the city in doctrinal unity with the rest of the Empire.
Secondly, the Chalcedonian faith became firmly rooted in
Palestine as a result of the influence of Chalcedonian monasteries
such as the Great Lavra or Mar Saba at the Kedron River.
Furthermore, there was at the turn of the sixth century an increase
in the collaboration between the Chalcedonian monks in Palestine
and the ecclesiastical administration in Jerusalem.51 During the
patriarchate of Elias (494-516), this alliance between hierarchy and

50 R. L. Wilken, The Land Called Holy: Palestine in Christian History and

Thought (New Haven and London 1992), 114. E. D. Hunt, Holy Land
Pilgrimage in the Later Roman Empire AD 312-460 (Oxford 1982), 247-248.
In particular relation to the writings of John Rufus, see A. Kofsky, ‘Peter
the Iberian: Pilgrimage, Monasticism and Ecclesiastical Politics in
Byzantine Palestine,’ LA 47 (1997), 209-222.
51 J. Binns, Ascetics and Ambassadors of Christ: The Monasteries of Palestine,

314-631 (Oxford 1994), 191-199. S. Rubenson, ‘The Egyptian Relations of

Early Palestinian Monasticism,’ in A. O’Mahoney, G. Gunner, and K.
Hintlian (eds.), The Christian Heritage in the Holy Land (London 1995), 44-
46.
 INTRODUCTION xxxv

monasticism was especially prominent when both sides united their

forces against the anti-Chalcedonian monasteries. At the time of
the deposal of Severus of Antioch in 518 Palestinian resistance
against Chalcedon had ended.
Yet, during this very period of crisis anti-Chalcedonian
hagiography enjoyed its heyday. Having completed, in the form of
a biography, a refutation of Chalcedonian accusations directed
against his old fellow-student Severus of Antioch,52 Zacharias
Scholasticus, eventually bishop of Mitylene, wrote a series of lives
of the anti-Chalcedonian champions Isaiah of Beth Daltha, Peter
the Iberian (of which only a few lines have been preserved), and
Theodore of Antinoe (which is completely lost).53 Two
philosophical treatises by Zacharias have also been preserved: the
Antirrhesis, which is a refutation of the Manichaean heresy, and the
Ammonius, which is an imitation of the Theophrastus by Aeneas of
Gaza.54 The most well-known of Zacharias’ works, however, is his
so-called Church History, which has been preserved as books 3-6 in
an anonymous Syriac Chronicle written around the year 569, and
which is of considerable importance for our knowledge about the
period from the Council of Chalcedon to the early reign of
Emperor Anastasius.55
In a Palestinian monastery, during the same period, the monk
and priest John Rufus wrote a biography on Peter the Iberian, an

52 Zacharias Scholasticus, V. Severi, ed. and tr. by M.-A. Kugener, PO

2.1, 5-115.
53 Zacharias Scholasticus, Vita Isaiae Monachi, ed. and tr. by Brooks,

CSCO, Script. syri 3.25, 1-16; Historia de Petro Ibero, ed. and tr. by Brooks,
CSCO, Script. syri 3.25, 17-18 [Fragment].
54 Zacharias Scholasticus, Ammonius sive de mundi opificio disputatio, PG

85, 1012-1144; Antirrhesis, PG 85, 1143-1144. Aeneas of Gaza, Theophrastus

siue de immortalitate et corporum resurrectione dialogus, PG 85, 872-1003.
55
Zacharias Scholasticus, HE, ed. and tr. by Brooks, CSCO, Script.
syri, 3.5-6 (Paris 1919-24); eng. tr. by F. J. Hamilton and Brooks, The Syriac
Chronicle Known as that of Zachariah of Mitylene (London 1899). For a
discussion about the identity of the ecclesiastical historian known as
Zacharias Rhetor, Bishop of Mitylene, with Zacharias Scholasticus, author
of the Life of Severus and the brother of Procopius of Gaza, see E.
Honigmann, ‘Zacharias of Mitylene,’ in Patristic Studies, Studi e testi 173
(Vatican City 1953), 198-199; Frend, The Rise of the Monophysite Movement,
202 n. 5; P. Allen, ‘Zacharias Scholasticus and the Historia Ecclesiasica of
Evagrius Scholasticus,’ JTS N.S. 31.2 (1980), 471-488.
xxxvi JOHN RUFUS

account of the death of Theodosius of Jerusalem, and a collection

of propagandistic anecdotes known as the Plerophories.56 In the
works of John Rufus the element of persuasion, which forms an
intrinsic part of hagiographic discourse, is extremely prominent.
The reader is confronted with repeated condemnations of the
Council of Chalcedon that reveal John as primarily a polemicist.
His purpose is not merely to depict the ascetic charisma of holy
persons but, above all, to place the reader in the midst of the
conflict between the true faith of the holy fathers and the apostasy
of the Chalcedonian bishops.
The aim of the present study is to bring forth the
characteristic features in the preserved texts of John Rufus in order
to explore the motive force behind the opposition against
Chalcedon in the Palestinian monastic tradition. By following the
lead of hagiographic themes—such as the idea of the holy man, the
rhetorical power of miracles and visions, and the representation of
heresy—I hope to contribute to our understanding of the manner
in which the anti-Chalcedonian population in the Eastern Empire
constructed reality.
This study assumes that the hagiography of John Rufus
represents a specific anti-Chalcedonian culture that involves a
conception of the world as the arena of a cosmological war
between God and the evil powers of the material world,
represented by Chalcedonian heretics. It is argued that John Rufus’
works uncover a world vision that is focused on the notion of the
absolute initiative of God, whereas the holy men are reduced to
merely being instruments for God’s announcement of his
judgement upon Chalcedon. In the cosmological battle between
good and evil the orthodox community is characterized as the last
stronghold of truth in a world otherwise distorted by global
apostasy. The close connection between preserved orthodoxy and
the ascetic renunciation from worldly matters will be demonstrated
as an inherent part of anti-Chalcedonian mentality that forms the

56 John Rufus, V. Petr. Ib., ed. and tr. by R. Raabe, Petrus der Iberer. Ein
Charakterbild zur Kirchen- und Sittengeschichte des fünften Jahrhunderts (Leipzig
1895); Narr. de ob. Theod., ed. and tr. by Brooks, Narratio de Obitu Theodosii
Hierosolymorum et Romani Monachi, CSCO, Script. syri 3.25, 19-27; Pleroph.,
ed and tr. by F. Nau, Jean Rufus, évêque de Maïouma, Plérophories. Témoignages
et révélations contre le concile de Chalcédoine, PO 8.1 (Paris 1911), 5-208.
 INTRODUCTION xxxvii

ideological background to the evident sectarian tendencies in

John’s texts.
In the reconstruction of the world vision of anti-Chalcedonian
culture from the hagiographic writings of John Rufus our
investigation proceeds from four main questions: 1) What is the
main outline of the historical and geographical context behind John
Rufus’ texts? 2) What fundamental ideas characterize the
hagiography of John Rufus and the culture that he represents? 3)
What is the immediate historical situation in which John composed
his texts? 4) What argumentative strategies may be revealed in the
texts?
The study falls into three sections—first, a few general
observations about the historical and cultural background to the
monastic culture of John Rufus, secondly an inventory of the texts
and, finally, an analysis of a selection of hagiographic themes
contained in the texts. The first section, which coincides with
Chapter One, has the purpose of providing effective ‘building
blocks’ through which anti-Chalcedonian writers such as John
Rufus constructed a literary history of the events that shook the
Eastern Empire in the fifth century. The section is divided into
five parts, treating in the following order the events in Palestine
immediately after the Council of Chalcedon in 451: the monastic
milieu at Gaza as the center of anti-Chalcedonianism in Palestine;
the idea of Egypt as the bulwark of orthodoxy and the birthplace
of monasticism; the ideological tension between ascetic retreat and
monastic involvement in the destiny of the church; and the
problem of orthodoxy and compromise as expressed in the debate
on the Henotikon of Emperor Zeno.
The second section, which coincides with Chapter Two,
includes an investigation of the sources, beginning with a
discussion of the available evidence on the life of John Rufus. The
third section, which covers Chapters Three, Four, and Five, is
devoted entirely to the analysis of a selection of hagiographic
themes central to the anti-Chalcedonian polemics of John Rufus.
Chapter Three takes as its point of departure the question of the
words and actions of holy men in relation to the absolute divine
initiative of God. It will be shown that the hagiographic role of
holy men is dependent on John Rufus’ purpose to point out the
ultimate verdict against Chalcedon delivered by God, the holy men
themselves having no importance of their own as human beings in
xxxviii JOHN RUFUS

the world. The individual ascetic, as a receiver of charismatic

virtues, is reduced to the position of a mere mediator of God’s
claim to complete obedience to his unambiguous declaration of the
falsity of Chalcedon. Chapter Four will deal with the frequent
stories about visions and miracles in the works of John Rufus. It
will be argued that these visions and miracles are important as
express confirmations of God’s verdict against the Chalcedonian
bishops rather than as rhetorical markers of the virtuous qualities
of the saintly protagonists. Chapter Five, finally, focuses on the role
of the ‘enemies’ in John’s anti-Chalcedonian hagiography. Here the
discussion is focused on the relation between heresy and orthodoxy
as an important part of the cosmological struggle between the
world of the divine realities and the human world of corruption
and defilement. This chapter will also address the underlying
dogmatic presumptions of John Rufus, placing him in the doctrinal
tradition designated by Lebon as “Severian monophysitism.”
Following this format of study, I hope to bring into some
light the specific characteristics of anti-Chalcedonian culture that
motivated the furious resistance against Chalcedon, thus making a
general contribution to the understanding of the early history of the
non-Chalcedonian Churches.
1 THE STAGE OF THE
RESISTANCE

The Palestinian Mutiny

What occupied the mind of Juvenal, Bishop of Jerusalem, on his
way back to Palestine after the closing of the great Council of
Chalcedon? Was he satisfied with his achievements at the Council?
Was it only on returning to Palestine that he realized that his
activities at the council had provoked “unexpected fury,” as
suggested by Ernest Honigmann?1 Of course we cannot know
what Juvenal was thinking when he left Chalcedon after the closing
session on November 10, 451. But against the background of the
expectations of his people that accompanied him to Chalcedon it is
not likely that, during his journey home, Juvenal was unaware that
his conduct at the Council was to be turbulently questioned by
many monks and clergymen in his diocese. The fury that met
Juvenal at his return to Palestine could not have been unexpected.
For twenty years Juvenal had been an ardent supporter of the
patriarchs of Alexandria in their struggles against the dyophysitic
tendencies of the Antiochene Christological tradition. At the
Council of Ephesus in 431 he was a staunch ally of Cyril of
Alexandria, being the first to declare that anyone who held the
views of Nestorius should be anathematized.2 Eighteen years later,
at the second Council of Ephesus in 449, his loyalty to the head of
the Alexandrian Church remained as strong as ever. It is difficult to
make light of the leading role he played as a supporter of Cyril’s
successor, Dioscorus. As the first among 113 bishops to vote for
the rehabilitation of Eutyches he declared him to be “most
orthodox.”3 Further, having signed the resolutions regarding the
depositions of Flavian and Eusebius of Dorylaeum, he declared the

1 Honigmann, ‘Juvenal of Jerusalem,’ DOP 5 (1950), 247.

2 ACO 1.1.2, 31.
3 ACO 2.1.1, 182.

1
2 JOHN RUFUS

deposition of Ibas of Edessa and took active part in the trial of

Theodoret of Cyrrhus.4 The reward for these actions was not long
in coming. According to the will of Emperor Theodosius, three
provinces that had been administered by the Patriarch of
Antioch—Phoenicia I and II, and Arabia—were transferred to the
jurisdiction of the bishop of Jerusalem, thus fulfilling what Juvenal
had desired from the very beginning of his episcopacy.5
The new political situation that followed on Emperor
Theodosius’ death in the summer of 450 does not seem to have
brought about any immediate change in Juvenal’s relations with
Dioscorus and the Alexandrians. When, in October 450, Anatolius,
Flavian’s successor on the patriarchal throne of Constantinople,
had signed the Tome of Leo and sent it out to be subscribed by all
the metropolitan bishops, Juvenal is said to have publicly refused to
sign it. According to John Rufus,
before his departure for the council, he rejected the so-
called Tome of Leo and ridiculed its blasphemies. And
he testified before all the clerics and monks of Palestine
that it was Jewish, worthy of Simon Magus, and that
anyone who agreed to it deserved to be circumcised.6
It may be doubted that this account from the turn of the sixth
century actually states Juvenal’s own feelings about Pope Leo and
his Tome during the two years that followed the second Council of
Ephesus. Honigmann considers it unlikely that Juvenal did not sign
the Tome of Leo at this point, but provides no argument for this
assumption.7 However, it is reasonable to suggest that, immediately
after the Council of 449, Juvenal’s opinions about the Tome of Leo
were in concord with those of Dioscorus who, before the opening
session of the Council of Chalcedon, excommunicated Leo as a
dyophysite infected with the teaching of Nestorius.8 In the eyes of

4 ACO 2.1.1, 192; Akten der Ephesinischen Synode vom Jahre 449, ed. by J.

Flemming, in AKWG 15 (Göttingen 1917), 84, 108.

5 Honigmann suggests that Juvenal received these three provinces

through a local synod in Constantinople in 450, ‘Juvenal of Jerusalem,’

238. cf. ACO 2.2.2, 21.
6 V. Petr. Ib., 52.
7 Honigmann, ‘Juvenal of Jerusalem,’ 240.
8 Sacrorum conciliorum nova et amplissima collectio, ed. by Mansi, vol. 4,

1009.
 THE STAGE OF THE RESISTANCE 3

Pope Leo himself, Juvenal was simply a Eutychian in need of a

severe reproach for having “harassed innocent catholics” at the
Council of 449, which he saw as a latrocinium, that is, a council of
robbers. In a letter to Anatolius, dated April 13, 451, he strongly
advised him to exclude the names of Dioscorus and Juvenal from
the diptychs, so that their names would not be “mingled
indiscriminately with the names of the saints.”9 The future was in
Leo’s hands. The new Emperor approved his request for a new
council, and decided that it would be held at Nicaea in September
451. The date was eventually postponed to October, and the
location was changed to Chalcedon.10
Zacharias Scholasticus reports that Juvenal, as soon as he had
been summoned to attend the Council of Chalcedon, gathered the
monks and people of Palestine and instructed them to withdraw
from his communion in case his faith was perverted at the
Council.11 If this report is historically accurate we cannot know, but
in any case Juvenal must have realized that it was Leo and
Anatolius who were now in control of the situation. Perhaps he
even anticipated that they would make efforts to turn the Council
into a trial of Dioscorus and the other bishops who, at the Council
of 449, had voted for the deposition of Flavian. As regards his own
position, Juvenal had probably made up his mind during the days
immediately preceding the opening session of the Council.
On October 8, arriving at Chalcedon accompanied by
nineteen bishops under his jurisdiction, Juvenal joined over five
hundred other bishops in the basilica of St. Euphemia. According
to the preserved acts from the council, he and his bishops were
obliged to take their seats on the right side of the imperial
commissioners, together with Dioscorus and the bishops from
Egypt and Illyricum, while the supporters of Leo and Anatolius
took their places at the left side.12 Dioscorus was, however, soon
ordered to take his seat in the midst of the assembled bishops,
accused by the delegates from Rome of having acted without papal

9 Leo, Ep. ad Anatolium (ep. 80), 914-915.

10 According to anti-Chalcedonian historiography, the change of
location was a result of providential intervention, so that Nicaea, the city
of the three hundred and eighteen fathers, would not be a meeting-place
of rebels. Zacharias Scholasticus, HE, 3.1, 148-149.
11 Zacharias Scholasticus, HE 3.3, 156-7.
12 ACO 2.1.1, 65.
4 JOHN RUFUS

authority at the previous council. Immediately, one after the other

of the leaders of the Council of Ephesus—Thalassius of Caesarea
in Cappadocia, Eusebius of Ancyra, Basil of Seleucia, and
Eustathius of Beirut—came forward as Dioscorus’ accusers,
assuring the assembly that they had taken no part in the activities at
that council, or that the role they had played was only secondary.
This was a time for many excuses and confessions: “I let myself be
deceived,” Eustathius of Beirut said, having declared Flavian’s
orthodoxy.13 Even Juvenal averred that he found Flavian’s
confession of faith to be in agreement with the words of Cyril of
Alexandria. He then rose from his chair and went over to the left
side, together with the other bishops of Palestine, the bishops of
Illyricum and four of the seventeen bishops who had accompanied
Dioscorus from Egypt.14 Completely abandoned by his former
brothers-in-arms, Dioscorus was now left alone to defend his case
before the assembled bishops. In the third session on October 13
the Council finally declared him guilty of breaking ecclesiastical law,
and deprived him of his episcopal office.15
As a result of his volte-face, Juvenal had managed to escape a
destiny similar to that of Dioscorus. Although he was deprived of
his episcopal dignity during the second and third sessions, he was
readmitted in the fourth session, having given a sworn statement
that the Tome of Leo was in accord with the faith established at the
Councils of Nicaea and Constantinople. From the fifth session, on
October 22, he was admitted to the honorable seat next to the
Patriarch of Antioch, and during the same session he was chosen as
a member of the committee assigned to the task of composing the
first draft of the Council’s definition of faith.16 Three days later, in
the sixth session on October 25, a revised form of this document
was brought before the assembled bishops who, in the presence of
the Emperor himself, received it with acclamation and appended
their signatures to it.17

13 ACO 2.1.1, 112-113.

14 ACO 2.1.1., 115.
15 Sacrorum conciliorum nova et amplissima collectio, ed. Mansi, vol. 4, 1048-

50.
ACO 2.1.2, 121, 125.
16

ACO 2.1.2, 130-139. The names of four hundred and fifty-two

17

bishops who subscribed the document of faith are preserved in the acts,
141-154.
 THE STAGE OF THE RESISTANCE 5

Juvenal was obviously determined to survive the Council of

Chalcedon as Bishop of Jerusalem. To secure his position at the
Council he voluntarily returned to the Patriarch of Antioch the
three provinces that he had received at the second Council of
Ephesus.18 Further, in matters of doctrine Juvenal seems to have
been ready to affirm almost any of the resolutions required by the
leading members of the Council. However, some inward struggle in
Juvenal’s mind is indicated during the discussion about the
rehabilitation of Ibas of Edessa on October 27. Without any sign
that his condemnation of Ibas in 449 was not justified, he approved
the rehabilitation of Ibas, with an argument based on nothing more
than pity for old men who had converted:
The Holy Scripture teaches us to admit the converted;
therefore we admit even former heretics. For this
reason I also agree with you that pity [‘philanthropy’]
has been allotted to the venerable bishop Ibas, because
he is an old man, with the idea that he shall have the
episcopal dignity, since he is [now] orthodox.19
It is doubtful that Juvenal could have felt any satisfaction with his
accomplishments at the Council. Probably he was relieved that he
had been able to cope with the turning tides of doctrinal
controversy and that he could return to Palestine still being Bishop
of Jerusalem. But the price for his successful adjustment to the new
political situation was high. With his freedom of action constrained
by the condemnation of the proceedings at the previous council, he
had been forced to contradict everything he had believed in 449,
supported only by the general opinion that Pope Leo taught the
same as Cyril.20 But it seems likely that, on his departure from
Chalcedon, he was aware that the actual accounting for his actions
at Chalcedon would be realized to its fullest extent only with his
return to Jerusalem. Perhaps he anticipated the threatening clouds
already during his stay at Chalcedon, through the furious reaction
of a group of Palestinian monks who, led by a certain Theodosius,

18 ACO 2.2.2, 20.

19 ACO 2.1.3, 40; tr. by Honigmann, in ‘Juvenal of Jerusalem,’ 246-
247.
20 ACO 2.1.1, 81. According to the acts, this was what the bishops

exclaimed after the reading of the formula of faith on October 25: ‘Leo
and Cyril taught alike,’ ACO 2.1.2, 124.
6 JOHN RUFUS

had on their own undertaken the journey to that city in order to

observe the proceedings of the Council.21
Theodosius and his companions must have left Chalcedon
soon after the sixth session of the Council on October 25. It is
reasonable to suggest that, before their departure, they had made
serious attempts to persuade Juvenal to manifest the same passion
for orthodoxy as he had in 449, by defending Dioscorus before the
Council and rejecting the Tome of Leo. They seem, however, to
have left the city in great haste, undoubtedly filled with
disappointment and rage. Immediately after their return to
Palestine, they informed their compatriots and fellow monks about
their bishop’s unexpected apostasy. Shaken by these reports, the
monks hurried from their monasteries to meet him on his way to
Jerusalem, and to correct him for his unorthodox activities at the
Council.22
The disturbing news about Juvenal’s apostasy also reached the
monks who lived in a monastery at Maiuma close to Gaza, headed
by the archimandrite Irenion.23 This monastery was the dwelling of
a highly respected ascetic, the only son of King Bosmarius, who
ruled the kingdom of Iberia in Caucasus. At his birth he was given
the name Nabarnugius, but his reputation as a great monastic
leader and an ardent champion for orthodoxy was to survive long
after he had died under the name of Peter the Iberian.24 As the son
of a king from a country that was politically little more than a
buffer state between the empires of Rome and Sassanian Iran he
became, even as a young boy, a victim of the endless hostilities
between the two empires. At the age of twelve, as the kingdom of
Iberia was caught in the midst of war between Rome and Persia, he
was dispatched to the imperial court in Constantinople as hostage,
so that Emperor Theodosius II would be able to prevent
Bosmarius from allying himself with the Sassanians. Living for

21 Zacharias Scholasticus, HE 3.3; Evagrius Scholasticus HE 2.5, ed.

by Bidez and Parmentier (London 1898); tr by Festugière, in Byzantion 45

(1975), 187-488.
22 Zacharias Scholasticus, HE 3.3.
23 Pleroph. 56.
24 For the sources to Peter the Iberians life, see Lang, ‘Peter the

Iberian and his Biographers,’ JEH 2 (1951), 158-168. For Peter’s life,
there are no evident reasons to doubt the main biographical outline
presented in John Rufus’ Life of Peter the Iberian.
 THE STAGE OF THE RESISTANCE 7

several years as a prisoner at the imperial palace, he was very well

treated by the Emperor but his life was constantly threatened by
his servants. He is said never to have ceased to long for the
monastic life close to the ascetic fathers in Palestine. After many
attempts at escape, Nabarnugius finally succeeded in leaving the
palace together with his companion, the court eunuch Mithridates,
and reached Jerusalem, where they entered the monastery of
Melania the Younger on the Mount of Olives. Receiving their
monastic habits from Melania’s foster-son Gerontius, the head of
her monastery, the two fugitives assumed the names of Peter and
John.25 Troubled by daily contact with the world, and by Juvenal’s
repeated attempts to ordain them as priests, Peter and John
eventually settled in Irenion’s monastery at Maiuma, from where
they frequently visited the cell of the famous Abba Zeno at the
village of Kefar Se‚arta, fifteen miles from Gaza. Finally Bishop
Paul of Maiuma, who was Juvenal’s nephew, managed to ordain
them, in spite of their unyielding resistance, which was motivated
by profound feelings of unworthiness. However, after his
ordination, Peter did not exercise his priestly office a single time
during the seven years that went by between his ordination and
Juvenal’s return from Chalcedon.26
In the Plerophories, John Rufus reports that Peter, when he
heard about Juvenal’s apostasy and was asked to join the other
monks in confronting him, refused to break off his ascetic retreat
to consort with courtiers and the people of the world, that is, with
Juvenal’s imperial escort. But having received a vision in which
God rebuked him for seeking peace for himself at a moment when
the orthodox faith was at stake, he immediately left his cell and
went off with the other monks to meet Juvenal.27 When the monks
arrived at Caesarea the governor stopped them from entering the
city because of their large number. Instead they gathered in the
Church of the Apostles, close by Caesarea, where they celebrated
the Holy Communion while waiting for Juvenal’s ship to arrive
from Chalcedon. During this celebration of the Eucharist, the
priest Maxus later attested, the bread and wine miraculously were
transformed into real flesh and blood, an unambiguous

25 V. Petr. Ib., 15-37.

26 V. Petr. Ib., 47-52.
27 Pleroph. 56.
8 JOHN RUFUS

demonstration of God’s presence among those who ardently

resisted the doctrinal falsifications produced by the Chalcedonian
bishops.28
It is likely that Juvenal, as soon as he had arrived at Caesarea,
was informed, perhaps by the governor in person, of the immense
crowd of monks, clergymen, and lay people that had assembled
outside the city to correct him for his activities at the Council.
While he can hardly have been surprised by the fury caused by his
sudden change of policy he may yet have been overwhelmed by the
zealous initiative that had made a large number of people march to
Caesarea to tell him a few home truths immediately at his landing
on Palestinian soil. Presumably, Juvenal soon realized that his
control of the diocese was in danger, unless he could persuade the
demonstrators that at the Council he had acted in accordance with
both canonical law and the orthodox faith. If he failed, there would
be no benefit in continuing the journey up to Jerusalem. The
sources indicate that he must have left Caesarea hastily, together
with his company, in order to meet and confer with the monks and
their leaders at the Church of the Apostles, a confrontation vividly
described by John Rufus:
During the discussion between the fathers and the
godless Juvenal, the blessed monk Theodosius, whom
the believers were to call Patriarch of Jerusalem, openly
condemned the apostasy at Chalcedon. For he had
been present there the whole time and knew about
everything that happened there, and he had exposed
the hypocrisy and apostasy of the synod. Juvenal was
enraged, and ordered a ducenarius, a man in his escort,
to manhandle him, as a disturber of the peace and an
adversary to the will of the Emperor. As this was about
to be done, the blessed Peter, who was still a monk and
had not yet received the episcopate, was filled with
burning zeal. Knowing this man since his stay at the
court, he threw his stole around his neck and said to
him in a prophetic tone of voice: ‘You who dare to
interfere in a question of faith and to turn everything
upside down, did you not do such and such thing that
night? I am the least of all the holy men, but if you wish
I will speak, and at once fire will come down from the
sky that will consume you and those who are in your

28 Pleroph. 10.
 THE STAGE OF THE RESISTANCE 9

company!’ Trembling with fear the ducenarius

recognized him. Throwing himself at his feet he said
before everyone: ‘Forgive me, lord Nabarnugi, I did
not know that your holiness was here.’ Thus the
ducenarius left the blessed Theodosius in peace. After
that he did not dare to say or do anything more against
the holy men. He led Juvenal from there and returned
to Caesarea.29
Juvenal’s efforts to defend and explain his conduct at Chalcedon
were as vain as the attempts of the monks to make him withdraw
his acceptance of the Tome of Leo and anathematize the Council.
Using Pilate’s words “What I have written I have written,” Juvenal
rejected the demands of the monks, who, consequently, refused to
accept him as their bishop.30 Having thus unsuccessfully faced the
most influential part of the Palestinian people, that is, the monks,
who revered Dioscorus as the most brilliant champion against
Nestorian heresy since Cyril of Alexandria, Juvenal found himself
forced to leave Palestine for a life in exile in Constantinople. In his
place, the monk Theodosius was appointed as the new head of the
Palestinian Church. Several other bishops who had subscribed to
the faith of Chalcedon were deposed, and replaced by the followers
of Theodosius with monks and clerics from their own ranks.31 In
Maiuma Bishop Paul was deposed and replaced by Peter the
Iberian, who from that moment became one of the most
prominent champions of the anti-Chalcedonian movement in
Palestine.32
As soon as the new ecclesiastical order had been established in
Palestine, the monks must have realized the importance of
maintaining friendly relations with the imperial power. But having
asked Pulcheria to put in a good word for them with Emperor
Marcian,33 they were warned not to persist in their rebellion against
the Chalcedonian creed and requested to reunite with the orthodox
Churches. In exchange, the Emperor would prove his benevolence

29Pleroph. 56.
30Zacharias Scholasticus, HE 3.5.
31 Zacharias Scholasticus, HE 3.3.
32 Zacharias Scholasticus, HE 3.4.
33 This is indicated through a letter from Emperor Marcian to the

monks in Jerusalem. The text is preserved in ACO 2.1.3, 125. See

Honigmann, ‘Juvenal of Jerusalem,’ 251.
10 JOHN RUFUS

and reduce the presence of military units in the Palestinian

monasteries.34 The efforts to obtain Marcian’s support were,
however, rendered more difficult by the series of violent incidents
that shook Palestine in the name of anti-Chalcedonian orthodoxy,
in particular the brutal murder of Severianus, Bishop of
Scythopolis.35 In the eyes of Marcian, the monks were themselves
responsible for these crimes of violence, in spite of their assurances
that these crimes had been caused by strangers and extremist
elements among the people of Jerusalem. Thus, the new leaders of
the Palestinian Church found themselves in the highly precarious
situation of being accused both as Eutychians and instigators of
violent acts, and at the same time completely denied any imperial
support or sympathy. Yet, as a result of the Emperor’s cautious
approach to the situation in Palestine, it was not until the summer
of 453 that Juvenal, after twenty months in exile and with the
support of imperial troops, was finally restored as the effective
bishop of Jerusalem.
In February 453, Marcian had decreed the deposition of all the
bishops appointed by Theodosius, while Theodosius himself was
sentenced to death.36 As the military intervention in Palestine was
about to be carried out during the summer it was ordered that only
Peter the Iberian was to enjoy amnesty.37 Nevertheless, Peter
preferred to escape, together with Theodosius and several other
anti-Chalcedonian bishops, to Egypt, where he remained for about
twenty years before returning to Palestine, perhaps during the short
reign of Basiliscus.38
Turmoil and bloodshed seem to have accompanied Juvenal’s
return to Palestine. At Neapolis Juvenal is said to have ordered a
massacre of monks who refused to hold communion with him.
The anti-Chalcedonians perpetuated the memory of this event in a
legendary story about a blind Samaritan who received his sight after
he had smeared his eyes with the blood of these monks, shed by
Juvenal’s escort of Roman soldiers and their Samaritan auxiliaries.39

ACO 2.1.3, 127.

34

ACO 2.1.3, 125.

35
36 V. Petr. Ib., 57.
37 According to Zacharias Scholasticus, Peter’s life was spared by the

decision of Empress Pulcheria, HE 3.5.

38 V. Petr. Ib., 57; Zacharias Scholasticus, HE 3.5.
39 Zacharias Scholasticus, HE 3.5-6; Pleroph. 10.
 THE STAGE OF THE RESISTANCE 11

However, in another anti-Chalcedonian story that deals with the

situation in Palestine after Juvenal’s return, Juvenal is depicted as a
penitent and merciful Church leader. Zacharias tells us about the
monk Solomon, who emptied a basket filled with dust and ashes
over Juvenal’s head, saying: “Shame on you, shame on you, you liar
and persecutor!” Moved by his words, Juvenal prevented the
Roman guard from intervening, offering him instead a sum of
money in exchange for his immediate departure from Palestine.
However, the holy man left the country voluntarily, having refused
any money from Juvenal’s hands.40
Thus, the anti-Chalcedonians in Palestine had created their
own legends of martyrs, set in the basic narrative of a conflict
between charismatic monasticism and ecclesiastical hierarchy. In
opposition to the purity of the ascetic virtues nurtured by the
monastic supporters of Cyril of Alexandria and his deposed
successor Dioscorus, Juvenal became the archetype of any bishop
who trusted to the powers of this world rather than to the true
philosophy of asceticism. Before Chalcedon, Juvenal was
commonly recognized as a patron of the monks, observing the
practices of ascetic life in his monastery at Siloe and struggling for
the faith at the second Council of Ephesus. After Chalcedon his
monastery was left deserted, which was recognized by the anti-
Chalcedonians as an obvious sign that Juvenal, because of his
treachery to Dioscorus, was another Judas: “Let his homestead
become desolate, and let there be no one to live in it” (Acts 1:20).41
Instead of being carried in triumph by the monks and the clergy, as
he had been after the Council of Ephesus, he was now carried by
Roman soldiers and demons.42 In a culture that saw true faith as
essentially dependent upon an ascetic lifestyle, Juvenal was an
apostate monk-bishop who had abandoned the ascetic ideals for
worldly ambitions. Thus he represented the antithesis of
Theodosius the monk, Peter the Iberian, and other holy ascetics
who had maintained their renunciation of the world and the purity
of their ascetic virtues.
It was not an easy task for Juvenal to convince the Palestinian
monks that Chalcedon had proclaimed the same teaching as Cyril.

40 Zacharias Scholasticus, HE 3.8.

41 Pleroph. 16.
42 Pleroph. 4.
12 JOHN RUFUS

Further, among the minority of Chalcedonians in Palestine the

attitudes towards Juvenal may have been the same as those of Pope
Leo, according to whom Juvenal had only himself to blame for the
furious rejection of Chalcedon. In the eyes of Leo, Juvenal would
never be anything but a converted heretic, struggling with the
weeds of heresy he had himself sown because of his previous
ignorance of the true faith.43 Surely the monks and clergy of
Palestine had simply been influenced by his own conduct at
Ephesus in 449.
It is likely that Juvenal finally gave up his hopes of a general
acceptance of Chalcedon in Palestine. Instead, his patriarchal policy
seems to have been redirected at improving the conditions for
peaceful co-existence between the slowly increasing Chalcedonian
population and the still solid majority of anti-Chalcedonians. From
John Rufus we learn that Juvenal appealed to the Emperor to let
the celebrated monk Romanus, one of the anti-Chalcedonian
monastic leaders, return to Palestine from his exile. Juvenal hoped
to re-establish peace in his patriarchal see.44 After Juvenal’s death in
458, this policy was inherited by his successors, Anastasius and
Martyrius, to such a degree that sixth-century chroniclers and
hagiographers are highly ambivalent in their judgements of them.
As a result of their close relations with Euthymius the monk, both
Anastasius and Martyrius were held in high esteem by the
Chalcedonian hagiographer Cyril of Scythopolis.45 Zacharias
Scholasticus, in turn, revered Anastasius because of his
subscription of the Encyclical of Basiliscus, hence rejecting both
Chalcedon and the Tome of Leo.46 Zacharias also seems to have
thought highly of Martyrius, not only for his insistence on the
Encyclical but also for his decree that any teaching, whether
promoted in Rimini, in Sardica, in Chalcedon, or in any other place,
was to be condemned if contrary to the faith of the three hundred
and eighteen holy fathers of Nicaea.47 Hence, doctrinal unity
among the people of Palestine should not be founded on
Chalcedon but on the purity of the orthodox tradition from
Nicaea, as explicated by the Councils of Constantinople and

43 Leo, Ep. ad Juvenalem (ep. 139), 1103-1104.

44 Narr. de ob. Theod., 25-26.
45 See i.a. V. Euthym, 51-52, 54-55.
46 Zacharias Scholasticus, HE 5.5.
47 Zacharias Scholasticus, HE 5.6.
 THE STAGE OF THE RESISTANCE 13

Ephesus. Evidently the same policy of doctrinal unity guided the

Eastern Empire for thirty-six years through Emperor Zeno’s
Henotikon, bringing the confronting factions together on the basis
of a formal denial of Chalcedon as a point of controversy.
The sources lead us to the assumption that during the years
immediately following Chalcedon the anti-Chalcedonian monks
constituted such a powerful political force that they met with no
difficulties in ousting Juvenal and taking ecclesiastical control over
Palestine. After Juvenal’s return the patriarchal acceptance of
Chalcedon was merely formal, while realist politics were guided by
tolerance and indulgence towards the anti-Chalcedonians. But
towards the end of the fifth century the attitudes of the Patriarchs
of Jerusalem towards the anti-Chalcedonians became tougher. In
the early sixth century the anti-Chalcedonian monks in Palestine
were for the first time actively opposed by Patriarch Elias, as
described by Zacharias Scholasticus in his Life of Severus.48
This persecution seems to have been simultaneous with a
decrease in the anti-Chalcedonian influence in Palestine. Having
previously been able to force the patriarchal policy into what
Lorenzo Perrone designed as a state of “minimal
Chalcedonianism” in the period from Juvenal’s expulsion to the
death of Martyrius in 486,49 the anti-Chalcedonians now faced the
turning tides of doctrinal opinion in the Palestinian provinces. One
obvious sign of this change of opinion is the emergence of
Chalcedonian monasticism in the Judaean wilderness east of
Jerusalem associated with the distinguished ascetics Euthymius and
Sabas. While anti-Chalcedonianism in Egypt and Syria maintained
sufficient strength to force the imperial authorities to redirect their
original call for acceptance of the Chalcedonian formula of faith to
the conciliatory policy expressed in Emperor Zeno’s Henotikon in
482, the development in Palestine moved in the opposite direction.
Why this was so is not evident from the sources, though there are a
number of plausible explanations, connected with the religious and
symbolic importance of Jerusalem.
The holy places in Jerusalem attracted Christians from all over
the Empire and made Palestine particularly cosmopolitan in

48 Zacharias Scholasticus, V. Severi, 102-103.

49 Perrone, La Chiesa di Palestina e le controversie cristologiche (Brescia
1980), 138-139.
14 JOHN RUFUS

character. Since the majority of the Emperor’s subjects accepted

Chalcedon, Palestine became fertile soil for the consolidation of
Chalcedonianism among laity as well as monks.50 Forced to share
the holy shrines with crowds of pilgrims in communion with the
Chalcedonian patriarchs of the Holy City, many anti-Chalcedonians
must have had problems with the rigorous demand to refuse
communion with Chalcedonian bishops. It is reasonable to suggest
that this situation led to a vast number of conversions to the
Chalcedonian side among the anti-Chalcedonians. This is probably
also what forms the immediate background to John Rufus’
recurrent admonitions to his readers to remain in their cells, in full
assurance that they were joined in the communion of the saints by
preserving the purity of their faith, rather than to put themselves at
risk by sharing communion with Chalcedonian heretics.51 For strict
anti-Chalcedonians like John Rufus the proximity of the Holy
Places seems to have been one of the most dangerous obstacles for
the strict preservation of the faith. The risk of polluting the faith of
their fathers through association with Chalcedonian pilgrims could
be averted only by strictly avoiding the Holy Places. One of the
most striking expressions of these sentiments is found in the story
told by John Rufus of the priest Zosimus, who went to settle at the
holy place of Bethel, where Jacob had seen the ladder leading up to
heaven. One night he saw Jacob himself sitting on a horse,
reproaching him:
How is it that you, who are orthodox and share the
communion with the orthodox, wish to settle here? Do
not stray from the faith for my sake but hate the
company of the apostates, and you will never lack what
is good or tranquility or anything you need.52
The scattered remains of anti-Chalcedonianism in Palestine
towards the end of the fifth century maintained their position in
communities centered mainly along the coast of Palestina Prima,
close to cities well known for commercial and intellectual activity,
such as Caesarea, Jamnia, Ascalon, and Gaza. Here the anti-

50 The importance of the holy places is pointed out by Binns as a

predominant cause for the consolidation of Chalcedonianism in Palestine,

see Ascetics and Ambassadors of Christ, 197-199.
51 For further discussion, see below, chapter 5, 179-184.
52 Pleroph. 30, 79-80
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 The Wrecker

Correspondence, as a rule, he found but an irksome affair; unless

conducted upon his own whimsical lines. "I deny that letters should contain
news—I mean mine—those of other people should," was his theory; and he
boasted himself of a "willingness to pour forth unmitigated rot, which
constitutes in me the true spirit of correspondence." For all that, his letters,
grave or gay, remain among the most delightful reading in existence;
flavoured with his quaintest conceits, endowed with his most delicate turns
of phrase, and often tempered with that "something of the Shorter Catechist"
to which Henley had alluded.

For, undoubtedly, as time went on, although Stevenson continued to

"combine the face of a boy with the distinguished bearing of a man of the
world," he was gradually exchanging the "streak of Puck" and the capricious
unconventions of the born Bohemian, for something graver and more
mature,—a tendency almost towards the didactic. "'Tis a strange world
indeed," he had commented, "but there is a manifest God for those who care
to look for Him." And now, "with the passing of years," he observed, "there
grows more and more upon me that belief in the kindness of this scheme of
things, and the goodness of our veiled God, which is an excellent and
pacifying compensation." He was suffering, and in all probability would
perpetually suffer, from "that sharp ferule of calamity under which we are all
God's scholars till we die": but his patience was impregnable, and his desire
to leave a brave example bore him constant company. "To suffer," said he,
"sets a keen edge on what remains of the agreeable," and he prepared to
enjoy with equal zest all pleasures which were still permitted to him.

As he put away his writing materials, and descended once more to his
beloved piano, his father and mother came in. They were living in
Bournemouth to be near their only son. The old lighthouse engineer, whose
father had built the Bell Rock, who had served under his brother Alan in the
building of Skerryvore, "the noblest of all extant sea-lights," who had
himself erected Dhu Heartach, was now palpably failing. The spectacle of a
stern and honest man slowly evacuating all that he had held of personal
strength, was, to his son Louis, a poignantly pathetic one. Their
disagreements had been very many and deep-rooted, dating from even
before that "dreadful evening walk" in Stevenson's youth, when, "on being
tightly cross-questioned," the lad who had been trained for a civil engineer,
and had "worked in a carpenter's shop and had a brass foundry, and hung
about wood-yards and the like," confessed that he cared for nothing but
literature,—"no profession!" as his father contemptuously replied. They had
differed on almost every conceivable topic open to their discussion,—yet
here, in the fulness of time, they were at peace together,—the austere old
man in his second childhood, and the chronic invalid who "must live as
though he were walking on eggs." Innumerable ineffaceable traits of
similarity bound one to the other; at bottom of all the bygone angers lay a
permanent bedrock of mutual love. And perhaps the nearing vision of death
which terminated all vistas for both of them, exercised its usual effect, of
calm, and laisser-faire, and the equalisation of things: for it is probable that
no man has a just sense of proportionate values until he stands in the
presence of death.

Stevenson had often alluded, as a matter of personal knowledge, to his

constant prescience of mortality, and how it affected a man's thoughts of life.
Very seldom has the view of the confirmed invalid, the doomed
consumptive, been put forth to the world with the frankness with which
Stevenson invested it. He has been sometimes charged with a certain lack of
reticence: but in this matter, unquestionably, his candour was to the
benefitting of mankind: to whom these close views of the inevitable end are
rarely possible under such deliberate and clear-headed conditions.

There is nothing maudlin, nothing hypochondriacal, about Stevenson's

treatment of this subject: the same cheerful philosophy bears him up, the
same vitality of joy. It is hardly to be wondered at, that some critics handled
him seriously, on account of his lightheartedness in the august shadow of the
last enemy,—and his inveterate optimism in the face of all calamities. "He
jests at scars who never felt a wound," they practically told him,—and could
hardly be persuaded to credit the paradox that the man who preached in
season and out of season, the gospel of that "cheery old Pagan, Hope," was
not a denizen of the open-air,—healthy, athletic, vigorous, incapable of
realising the maladies incident to man,—instead of an emaciated, bed-ridden
creature, whose smallest pleasures must be measured, so to speak, in a
medicine-glass. But, "It is something after all," he has said, "to leave a brave
example": and in that he triumphantly succeeded. For the opportunities of
meteoric heroisms are few and far between; but every hour beholds the need
of those obscurer braveries which may be born of pain and suffering....

In Ordered South and other well-known essays, he shows the gradual

relaxation of the ties which bind a man to terrestrial things,—and the
curiously significant alteration in his regard for the facts of life,—from the
sower in the dank spring furrows, to the sight of little children with their
long possibilities before them.

Stevenson had no children of his own. His stepson, Lloyd Osbourne, then
at school in Bournemouth, was destined to become his friend and
collaborator: but it is doubtful that he cared for children as such. The average
small folk, "dragged about in a pleasing stupor by nurses," were very far
remote from that superabundant vitality nursed in an attenuated physique,
which had sat up with a shawl over its shoulders, so many tedious months in
childhood, when its principal habitat was "The Land of Counterpane" and
other regions mapped out in the great and glorious world of Make-Believe.

Painting by W. Hatherell.

ST. IVES DESCENDS FROM EDINBURGH CASTLE.

"The whole forces of my mind were so consumed

with losing hold and getting it again, that I
could scarce have told whether I was going up
or coming down."

St. Ives.
 St. Ives

For this reason, the Child's Garden of Verses is not, in any real sense of
the word, a child's book at all. It contains the exquisite imaginations of
childhood as the grown-up man remembers them: to him they have the
charm of the vanished past, they are the utterances of one who has also lived
in Arcadia. But to the child, they are the very commonplaces of existence. To
sway to and fro in a swing, "the pleasantest thing a child can do,"—to bring
home treasures from field and wood, nuts and wooden whistles, and some
all-precious unidentifiable stone, "though father denies it, I'm sure it is
gold,"—these are everyday affairs to the country-child,—just as watching
the lamplighter is to the town child. To read verses about them is but a waste
of time, when one might be actively engaged in similar avocations. But to
the grown-man who can never play with wooden soldiers in the garden,
never be a pirate any more,—these reminiscences of Stevenson's are a
delight unfailing. No one else has ever worded them quite so accurately,
quite so simply: and, taken all for all, they are in themselves a summing-up
of that most excellent philosophy of this author, "The world is so full of a
number of things, I'm sure we should all be as happy as kings!" The world
was indeed full of a number of things to R.L.S. and,—passed through the
crucible of his own astonishing personality,—they were all, bad or good,
transmogrified into things that make for joy.

After eight o'clock dinner was over, the old folks bade good-night,—the
father, with touching affection, kissing Louis as though he were a child, and
murmuring, "You'll see me in the morning, dearie," as if still addressing that
little feeble creature who had been kept alive with such difficulty in the old
days at Edinburgh.

The younger man returned to the piano-forte; it drew him like a magnet.
For a short time he indulged in his desultory music-making, relishing to the
uttermost every success of sound which he achieved: and the happiness,
which was his theory of life, radiated in warm abundance from his richly-
tinted face and glowing eyes. "It's a fine life," he exclaimed.
 At last the day's supply of energy succumbed before the imperious
demands of this "fiery threadpaper of a man," and in deference to his wife's
suggestion he betook himself to bed. Not necessarily to rest; for even in his
dreams his busy brain was working, and his "Brownies," as he termed them,
bringing him fresh material for plots. Dr. Jekyll had been thus evolved from
three scenes dreamed successively in detail, from which the dreamer waked
with cries of horror.

But he did not flinch before the coming night, and anything that it might
bring of sickness or unrest. He thought alone upon the past delightful day,
fraught with strenuous work and simple pleasures; and he petitioned, in his
own words:

"If I have faltered more or less

In my great task of happiness;
If I have moved along my race
And shown no glorious morning face;
If beams from happy human eyes
Have moved me not; if morning skies,
Books, and my food, and summer rain
Knocked on my sullen heart in vain:—
Lord, Thy most pointed pleasure take
And stab my spirit broad awake!"
(Underwoods.)

His wife hovered around him with gentle ministrations, as suddenly out-
wearied, Robert Louis Stevenson extended his long, lean form to a possible
repose. There was not, perhaps, a cheerfuller man that night in England.

The sea hummed at the foot of the chine, with that soft and dove-like
purring of the South-coast sea; the doves made answer with a vibrant cooing
in the middle distance of the twilight garden. Spring buds of pear-trees and
cherry-trees globed themselves stealthily into blossom; a delicate latent
energy was consciously present in the air—the rising of sap and
revivification of seed, all the mysterious hidden progresses of April. And the
man whose ways were set in a perpetual convergence towards the doors of
death, waved, so to speak, a blithe recognition to the myriad hosts of life.

"O toiling hands of mortals! O unwearied feet, travelling ye know not

whither! Soon, soon, it seems to you, you must come forth on some
conspicuous hilltop, and but a little way further, against the setting sun,
descry the spires of El Dorado. Little do ye know your own blessedness; for
to travel hopefully is a better thing than to arrive, and the true success is
labour." (Virginibus Puerisque.)

The author desires to acknowledge the kindness of Messrs. Cassell &

Co., in allowing short extracts to be made from The Master of Ballantrae,
The Wrecker, and Catriona; also to thank Mr. William Heinemann for a
similar courtesy with regard to St. Ives, and Messrs. Chatto & Windus for
their permission to include various quotations from Virginibus Puerisque,
Underwoods, and Prince Otto.

Printed by The Bushey Colour Press (André & Sleigh, Ltd.),

Bushey, Herts., England.
Rear cover
 *** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A DAY WITH
ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON ***

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