04 — Defender of Chalcedon
The theologically central section of the guide: St. Euthymius the Great as a defender of the Council of Chalcedon (451) at the height of the Christological crisis. When the Palestinian monks rose against the council under the usurping “patriarch” Theodosius and drove out Juvenal of Jerusalem, Euthymius refused communion with the rebels and withdrew into the deep desert rather than join the schism — and through him, in Cyril of Scythopolis’s narrative, the Empress Eudocia was at length won back from the anti-Chalcedonian party to the orthodoxy of the council.
Tradition: Pan-Orthodox (Desert Father; father of Palestinian monasticism)
Euthymius’s chief place in the history of the Church rests on his role in the Chalcedonian crisis. The Fourth Ecumenical Council, held at Chalcedon in 451 under the Emperor Marcian and the Empress Pulcheria, defined the one Christ as acknowledged in two natures, divine and human, united without confusion, change, division, or separation in the one person and hypostasis of the Word — against Eutyches, who had confessed one nature after the union, and following the deposition of Dioscorus of Alexandria, who had presided over the “robber-synod” (Latrocinium) of Ephesus in 449 (Chalcedon 451, Definition; cf. the conciliar record). In Palestine the council met with a near-universal monastic revolt: the monks, loyal to Cyril of Alexandria and fearful that the language of “two natures” reopened the door to Nestorius, rose under the monk Theodosius, who seized the see of Jerusalem while Patriarch Juvenal was absent and persecuted the Chalcedonians until imperial troops restored Juvenal in 453.
This section presents that struggle with the conciliar accuracy and the both-sides care the controversy demands (METHODOLOGY §4): the non-Chalcedonian concern — fidelity to Cyril, dread of dividing the one Christ — is stated fairly, as the position of pious men and an pious empress within the one undivided Church, not as cynical heresy. Throughout, the section distinguishes what Cyril of Scythopolis’s Life of Euthymius claims from what the independent conciliar and imperial record confirms, and it carries structured [Disputed: ...] notes where the sources or the scholars (Honigmann, Binns, Holum, Hunt, Perrone) diverge — above all on the contested chronology of Eudocia’s return.
Files in This Section
| File | Description |
|---|---|
| against-the-monophysites.md | The Council of Chalcedon (451) and its two-natures Definition; the refusal of Eutyches and Dioscorus; the Palestinian revolt under “Theodosius the False” (451–453) and the driving-out of Juvenal; Euthymius’s refusal of communion with the rebels and his withdrawal into the deep desert; the Christology he confessed and the legacy of his stand. |
| the-empress-eudocia.md | Aelia Eudocia, widow of Theodosius II and patroness of Jerusalem, who supported the anti-Chalcedonian monks after 451; her reconciliation to Chalcedon through Euthymius (counseled, in the tradition, by Symeon the Stylite and Pope Leo); her last years, her death reconciled to the Church (460), and her burial in the basilica of St. Stephen she had built — with the contested chronology flagged. |
See Also
- Cyril of Scythopolis’s Life of Euthymius — the near-contemporary source for the whole struggle, and its reliability and limits
- The Ascetic and the Solitary — the love of the deep desert into which Euthymius withdrew from the schism
- Sabas and the Next Generation — the Sabaite heirs who made the Judean desert a Chalcedonian stronghold
- The Palestinian Monastic Trinity — Euthymius, Sabas, and Theodosius the Cenobiarch, the founding defenders of Chalcedon in the desert
- The Ecumenical Councils — Chalcedon (451) in the conciliar tradition
- Alexandria, Antioch, and Jerusalem — the patriarchates in the Christological controversy
- The Pre-Schism Church — the undivided Church of the fifth century
- St. Maximus the Confessor — the later confessor of the two natures and two wills in the same Chalcedonian line
- Master README — the full guide to St. Euthymius the Great
References
- Cyril of Scythopolis. Life of Euthymius. In R. M. Price, trans., Cyril of Scythopolis: The Lives of the Monks of Palestine (Cistercian Studies 114; Kalamazoo: Cistercian Publications, 1991), cited by the section numbering of E. Schwartz, Kyrillos von Skythopolis (1939). (The revolt of Theodosius and Euthymius’s stand at §27; Eudocia’s reconciliation at §30; her death and burial at §35; the Encyclical of Basiliscus at §43.)
- The Council of Chalcedon (451), Definition of the Faith. In Norman P. Tanner, ed., Decrees of the Ecumenical Councils (1990), vol. 1; and Richard Price and Michael Gaddis, trans., The Acts of the Council of Chalcedon (Liverpool, 2005).
- Evagrius Scholasticus. Ecclesiastical History 1.20–22; 2.5. Trans. Michael Whitby (Liverpool, 2000). (Eudocia, the revolt of Theodosius.)
- Honigmann, Ernest. “Juvenal of Jerusalem.” Dumbarton Oaks Papers 5 (1950): 209–279.
- Binns, John. Ascetics and Ambassadors of Christ: The Monasteries of Palestine 314–631. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1994.
- Chitty, Derwas J. The Desert a City. Oxford: Blackwell, 1966.
- Perrone, Lorenzo. La chiesa di Palestina e le controversie cristologiche. Brescia: Paideia, 1980.
- Flusin, Bernard. Miracle et histoire dans l’œuvre de Cyrille de Scythopolis. Paris: Études Augustiniennes, 1983.
- Holum, Kenneth G. Theodosian Empresses. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1982.
- Hunt, E. D. Holy Land Pilgrimage in the Later Roman Empire, AD 312–460. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1982.