06 — Defender of Chalcedon
Beyond the desert and the cell, Sabbas the Sanctified (439–532) was drawn twice into the high politics of the empire as the spokesman of Palestinian monasticism and of the Council of Chalcedon. This section treats the two great public struggles of his old age: the defence of the two-natures Christology of Chalcedon (451) against the anti-Chalcedonian pressure of the emperor Anastasius I and during the controversy over the Henotikon, culminating in his embassies to Constantinople in c. 511/512 and 531; and the Second Origenist Controversy in the Palestinian lauras, in which Sabbas opposed the speculative theology spreading among some learned monks of the New Lavra. Both episodes are reconstructed chiefly from Cyril of Scythopolis, whose partisanship is itself part of the record.
Tradition: Pan-Orthodox (Desert Father; founder of the Great Lavra)
It is one of the surprises of Sabbas’s life that a man who had fled the world for the dry ravine of the Kidron should end as a public figure whose word carried weight in the imperial palace. The same monastic constituency that he led — the lauras and coenobia of the Judean desert — was, by the early sixth century, a decisive force in the religious politics of the patriarchate of Jerusalem, and Sabbas, as its most venerable representative, twice travelled to Constantinople to plead the cause of Palestine and of orthodoxy before the emperor. John Binns has shown how thoroughly the desert and the city were intertwined in this period: the monk and the ambassador were, in Sabbas, the same person (Binns, Ascetics and Ambassadors of Christ, Oxford 1994, esp. chs. 6–8).
Two distinct but overlapping struggles define this section. The first is Christological: the defence of the Definition of Chalcedon (451) and its confession of Christ “in two natures” against the Miaphysite (anti-Chalcedonian) reaction that the Henotikon of 482 had failed to heal and that the emperor Anastasius I (491–518) actively favoured. The Palestinian monks under Sabbas and Theodosius were a bulwark of the Chalcedonian definition within the patriarchate of Jerusalem, and Sabbas’s embassy of c. 511/512 and the great monastic demonstration at Jerusalem around 516 belong to this story, as does his second embassy to Justinian in 531. The second is the Second Origenist Controversy, the conflict over speculative “Origenist” theology in the lauras — above all in the New Lavra — which Sabbas resisted in his lifetime and which escalated after his death into imperial condemnations and the anti-Origenist anathemas associated with the Fifth Ecumenical Council (553).
Both topics are handled here with the both-sides care the methodology requires for disputed and sensitive matters (METHODOLOGY §4): the Chalcedonian and non-Chalcedonian (Miaphysite) positions are named fairly and without anachronistic polemic, while Sabbas’s own Chalcedonian commitment is stated plainly; and the genuinely contested questions surrounding sixth-century “Origenism” are flagged as disputes rather than resolved by assertion.
Files in This Section
| File | Description |
|---|---|
| The Christological Struggles | Sabbas as champion of Chalcedon (451) against the anti-Chalcedonian pressure under Anastasius I and the Henotikon; the Palestinian monks as a bulwark of orthodoxy; his embassy to Constantinople c. 511/512 on behalf of the patriarch Elias and of Chalcedon; the great demonstration of monks at Jerusalem c. 516; the second embassy to Justinian in 531 after the Samaritan revolt; and his death on 5 December 532. |
| The Second Origenist Controversy | The spread of speculative “Origenist” theology among learned monks of the New Lavra and elsewhere; Sabbas’s opposition; the New Lavra as a centre of the movement; Nonnus and his circle; Sabbas’s warning to Justinian in 531; and the escalation after his death to the edict of 543, the anathemas associated with Constantinople II (553), and the expulsion of the Origenist monks in 555 — handled with careful attention to the scholarly debate over what this “Origenism” actually was. |
See Also
- The Founding of Mar Saba (483) — the monastery from which Sabbas led the Chalcedonian monks of the desert
- The Lavra and the Cenobium — the New Lavra arose as a breakaway from this lavra-and-cenobium system
- The Seven Ecumenical Councils — Chalcedon (451) and Constantinople II (553), the conciliar frame of both struggles
- Alexandria, Antioch, and Jerusalem — the patriarchate of Jerusalem, whose Chalcedonian cause Sabbas represented
- St. Maximus the Confessor — the later defender of Chalcedonian Christology against Monothelitism
References
- Cyril of Scythopolis. Life of Sabas, in The Lives of the Monks of Palestine. Trans. R. M. Price, intro. and notes John Binns. Cistercian Studies 114. Kalamazoo: Cistercian Publications, 1991.
- Binns, John. Ascetics and Ambassadors of Christ: The Monasteries of Palestine 314–631. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1994.
- Hombergen, Daniël. The Second Origenist Controversy: A New Perspective on Cyril of Scythopolis’ Monastic Biographies as Historical Sources for Sixth-Century Origenism. Studia Anselmiana 132. Rome: Pontificio Ateneo S. Anselmo, 2001.
- Patrich, Joseph. Sabas, Leader of Palestinian Monasticism. Dumbarton Oaks Studies 32. Washington, D.C.: Dumbarton Oaks, 1995.
- Chitty, Derwas J. The Desert a City. Oxford: Blackwell, 1966.
- Council of Chalcedon (451), Definition of Faith; Council of Constantinople II (553), Fifth Ecumenical Council. In Tanner, Norman P., ed. Decrees of the Ecumenical Councils. 2 vols. Washington, D.C.: Georgetown University Press, 1990.