Eutychianism

An influential archimandrite of Constantinople

Eutyches — in Greek Eutychês, "the fortunate" — was born around 378 and embraced monastic life very early^[9]. By the time his name bursts into history, in 448, he had long been archimandrite — that is, superior — of a great monastery of Constantinople, the imperial capital where all the destinies of the Eastern Church were then being decided^[10]. He is neither a bishop nor a professional theologian: he is a monk, surrounded by monks, listened to as a spiritual father.

His influence nevertheless reaches beyond his monastery. Eutyches is the godfather of Chrysaphius, the all-powerful eunuch grand chamberlain of Emperor Theodosius II^[11]. This patronage at court partly explains the imperial obstinacy in defending him afterwards: the Eutyches affair will never be a mere sacristy quarrel, because the palace has its own ways in.

The old archimandrite also has a past as a loyal soldier of orthodoxy. He had supported St Cyril of Alexandria against Nestorius, and here is the piquant trait of the affair: his accuser in 448, Eusebius, bishop of Dorylaeum, is himself the man who, twenty years earlier, had first publicly denounced Nestorius^[12]. Two former comrades in the anti-Nestorian struggle now confront each other — a sign that the victory of 431 had not dispelled every confusion.

An anti-Nestorian zeal that overshoots the mark

Everything about Eutyches lies in one fear: that of dividing Christ. He had seen Nestorianism make the Son into two juxtaposed subjects — a man Jesus alongside the Word — and he wants at no price to fall back into that split^[13]. So he squeezes unity until he crushes it: to be sure there is only one Christ, he no longer admits but one nature. It is the opposite error, symmetrical and equally ruinous: Nestorius separated what God had united; Eutyches confuses what God united without confusing them.

St Leo, on receiving the acts of the 448 synod, judges the man with charitable clear-sightedness: Eutyches appears to him as an old, poorly instructed man who erred through ignorance rather than malice, and who could be restored if he agreed to retract^[14]. The judgement is severe on the doctrine and merciful on the man — and it sets the tone of the whole Catholic response: condemn the error without ever tiring of calling the erring back.

"I bear them witness that they have a zeal for God, but it is not enlightened." — St Paul, Romans 10:2^[15]

This verse of the Apostle could serve as the epigraph of the whole affair: Eutyches' zeal for Christ's unity is real, and that is precisely what makes it dangerous — a crude error carried by a pious man draws more people along than a cynical thesis.

First thesis: two natures before the union, one only after

Eutyches' formula is attested by the very acts of the 448 synod, where the patriarch St Flavian and the patrician Florentius press him to explain himself^[16]. Summoned to say clearly what he confesses, the archimandrite replies:

"I confess that our Lord was of two natures before the union; but after the union, I confess one nature only." — Eutyches, at the Synod of Constantinople, November 448 (Ignispedia translation)^[17]

Everything is said. Before the Incarnation — or, in his mind, before divinity and humanity met — one may speak of two natures; but once the union is accomplished, there is only one left. Christ's humanity therefore has no permanence of its own in the union: it is absorbed there, as the image the textbooks will retain has it — a drop of vinegar or water lost in the ocean^[18].

The synod then asks him to anathematise everything contradicting the letters of St Cyril, the authority he himself invokes: Eutyches refuses^[19]. That refusal seals his condemnation: one cannot claim Cyril and reject what Cyril settled with John of Antioch in 433.

Second thesis: a flesh that is not ours

Eutyches goes further still, and this is the gravest point. Pressed to confess that Christ's body is consubstantial with ours — of the same substance as we are in his humanity — he refuses^[20]. The Saviour's flesh would thus be of a different stuff from ours: come from the Virgin Mary, admittedly — Eutyches does not deny the virginal birth — but transformed by the union to the point of no longer truly being our flesh^[21].

One can measure the disaster: if Christ did not assume our real flesh, then it is not our flesh that suffered on the cross, died and rose again. Salvation no longer touches us. It is against this consequence that the whole tradition will raise Gregory of Nazianzus' principle: what was not assumed was not healed — more on this below^[22].

To be fair, let us be precise: Eutyches is not a thoroughgoing Docetist. Ancient Docetism makes Christ a phantom without true flesh; Eutyches, for his part, confesses a real birth from Mary and a real flesh, but altered and absorbed by the divinity^[23]. His error is subtler, hence more contagious: it keeps the vocabulary of the Incarnation while emptying it of its substance.

Third thesis: Cyril as surety, misread

Like all partisans of "one nature", Eutyches appeals to St Cyril of Alexandria and his formula: "one nature of the incarnate Word" — in Greek, mia physis tou theou logou sesarkômenê^[24]. Cyril had forged this watchword against Nestorius, to hammer home that the subject born of Mary and crucified is one and the same Son, the Word himself.

But Eutyches reads Cyril backwards, and doubly so. First because the Cyrillian formula targets the unity of the subject — one Son — and not the fusion of the natures: Cyril never denied that this unique Son is both true God and true man^[25]. Then because the watchword circulated in a corrupted form: the sentence attributed to St Athanasius, which Cyril had used in good faith, was in reality a forgery by Apollinarius of Laodicea, as the article Apollinarianism explains^[26]. A whole generation thus brandished an Apollinarian formula against Nestorius without knowing it — and Eutyches draws the conclusion Apollinarius himself would have drawn.

Yet the true Cyril, the Cyril of the reconciliation with John of Antioch in 433, explicitly confesses Christ "consubstantial with us in his humanity" — homoousion hêmin kata tên anthrôpotêta^[27]. It is this Formula of Union of 433, not the battle slogans, that expresses Cyril's mature thought: one Son, in whom the divinity consubstantial with the Father and the humanity consubstantial with us both remain entire. Eutyches keeps the slogan and forgets the precision — exactly the opposite of serious theological work.

What Eutychianism is not: three misconceptions to set aside

The following table fixes the distinctions, because three confusions keep recurring among hasty readers^[28]:

First misconception: Eutychianism is not Nestorianism — it is its reverse. Nestorius divides Christ into two subjects; Eutyches melts the two natures into one. The two errors answer each other like two contrary excesses, and the Church condemns both^[29].

Second misconception: Eutychianism is not the whole of Monophysitism. After 451, the anti-Chalcedonian party will produce learned theologians such as Severus of Antioch, who explicitly reject Eutyches while refusing Chalcedon^[30]. Reducing all Monophysitism to Eutyches would be unfair to its most serious opponents — and the article Monophysitism distinguishes the faces of the error.

Third misconception: Eutychianism is not Docetism. Eutyches confesses a true birth from Mary; what he denies is the permanence and consubstantiality of that flesh after the union^[31]. A capital nuance: his error concerns the duration of Christ's humanity, not its initial existence.

The accusation of Eusebius of Dorylaeum

It is Eusebius, bishop of Dorylaeum, who brings the accusation before a local synod assembled at Constantinople under the presidency of the patriarch St Flavian^[32]. Recall the paradox: Eusebius had been, in 428, the first to protest publicly against a sermon by Nestorius; twenty years later, the slayer of the divider denounces the confounder^[33]. Orthodoxy is no party's monopoly: it stands in the middle, and it is sometimes the same men who defend it in turn against both excesses.

Eutyches, summoned several times, delays appearing and finally presents himself before the synod^[34]. The interrogation, preserved in the acts, is a model of precision: Flavian and the bishops ask him neither to philosophise nor to renounce Cyril, but to confess two clear things — Christ in two natures after the Incarnation, and his flesh consubstantial with ours^[35]. Eutyches refuses, as we have seen, and even refuses to anathematise the contrary of Cyril's letters.

The deposition and the appeal

The synod then pronounces sentence: Eutyches is deposed from his office of archimandrite and excommunicated^[36]. The sanction is disciplinary as much as doctrinal: a superior of monks who publicly teaches against the faith cannot keep charge of souls.

But the condemned man does not submit: he appeals at once to Rome, to Alexandria, to Jerusalem and to Thessalonica^[37]. Flavian, for his part, transmits the synod's acts to St Leo the Great, who will answer with the most famous document of the whole crisis^[38]. Meanwhile, at the imperial court, his godson Chrysaphius manoeuvres for his godfather: Emperor Theodosius II imposes the convocation of a new council to revise the judgement^[39]. The drama can begin: it will be Ephesus II.

A dogmatic letter become a rule of faith

On 13 June 449, St Leo the Great addresses to Flavian his twenty-eighth letter, which entered history under the name of the "Tome to Flavian"^[40]. The pope has received the acts of the 448 synod and Eutyches' confession; he answers with a complete exposition of the faith: one and the same Christ, true God and true man, each nature keeping its property in the unity of the person^[41].

The text, preserved in the Acts of the Council of Chalcedon^[42], refutes the two symmetrical errors in a single movement: against Nestorius, it affirms the unity of the subject — it is the same who is God and who suffers; against Eutyches, it affirms the permanent duality of the natures — divinity does not absorb humanity^[43]. Two years later, the bishops assembled at Chalcedon will acclaim it with a formula that remained famous: "Peter has spoken through Leo"^[44]. Rarely has a pontifical letter been so received as the expression of the apostles' faith.

The heart of the Tome: each nature performs what is proper to it

The decisive passage lies in one sentence, which Chalcedon will make its own and which Constantinople III will still quote two centuries later^[45]:

"For each form performs, in communion with the other, what is proper to it: the Word, what belongs to the Word, and the flesh, what belongs to the flesh." — St Leo the Great, Tome to Flavian, § 4 (Ignispedia translation)^[46]

Against Eutyches, the point is clear: if the flesh still performs, after the union, "what belongs to the flesh" — being born, growing, suffering, dying — then it truly subsists in the union instead of dissolving there^[47]. An absorbed nature no longer acts; yet the Christ of the Gospels acts humanly to the very end, even in his death and resurrection. The Eutychian absorption is thus contradicted by the Gospel itself.

Why the Tome settles Eutyches' case

Leo does not merely expound: he demonstrates that Eutyches' error empties salvation. By refusing flesh consubstantial with ours, the archimandrite refuses that it be our humanity that was borne, crucified and raised^[48]. Yet according to the faith received from the apostles, the Son made himself consubstantial with us precisely to make us partakers of his divinity: if he did not take our flesh, we do not receive his life. Christology commands soteriology — whoever mutilates Christ mutilates salvation.

And yet the Tome is no hateful indictment. Leo keeps the door open for the old man: let Eutyches acknowledge his ignorance, let him confess the faith of the Fathers, and he will be restored^[49]. This hand held out in the midst of the century's harshest doctrinal combat is a lesson in itself: firmness on doctrine never excludes the call to return.

The detailed narrative belongs to The Monophysite Crisis: we retain here only what touches Eutyches. Thanks to Chrysaphius' manoeuvres, Emperor Theodosius II convokes an ecumenical council at Ephesus to revise the judgement of 448, and entrusts its presidency to Dioscorus, patriarch of Alexandria, Eutyches' protector^[50].

What happens there in August 449 will justify the infamous nickname St Leo will give it: the "robbery" — latrocinium — of Ephesus^[51]. The Roman legates are reduced to silence, Leo's Tome is not even read, Eutyches is declared orthodox and rehabilitated, while St Flavian and Eusebius of Dorylaeum are deposed^[52]. The violence goes as far as blood: Flavian, brutalised by Dioscorus' partisans, dies a few days later from his injuries — on 11 August 449 according to tradition^[53].

Thus, less than a year after his condemnation, Eutyches triumphs: rehabilitated by a council, supported by Alexandria and the court, his accuser deposed, his judge dead. The triumph will be brief. The accidental death of Theodosius II in 450 changes everything: his successor Marcian and Empress Pulcheria convoke a new council to repair the "robbery"^[54]. It will be Chalcedon.

From October to November 451 — the decisive sessions open on 8 October — more than five hundred bishops assemble at Chalcedon, on the Asian shore of the Bosphorus, facing Constantinople^[55]. The council begins by trying the case of Ephesus II: the acts of the "robbery" are read, the violence established, and the decisions of 449 annulled^[56]. Leo's Tome, finally read in public, raises the acclamation: "Peter has spoken through Leo"^[57].

Then comes the Definition of Faith, which takes up the Tome and the Formula of Union of 433 to fix Catholic language for ever^[58]:

"One and the same Christ, Son, Lord, Only-begotten, acknowledged in two natures, without confusion, without change, without division, without separation, the distinction of the natures being in no way abolished by the union, but rather the property of each being safeguarded and concurring in one person and one hypostasis." — Definition of Chalcedon, 451 (standard English rendering)^[59]

Each word targets an error. "Without confusion, without change": Eutyches is targeted — the union neither mingles nor transforms the natures^[60]. "Without division, without separation": Nestorius — the union does not cut Christ into two subjects. "In two natures" — and not merely "of two natures": duality remains after the union, which ruins Eutyches' very formula^[61]. The council condemns the archimandrite by name alongside Nestorius, deposes Dioscorus, and asks the emperor for Eutyches' exile^[62].

Note in passing the 28th canon, which grants the see of Constantinople, the "New Rome", privileges equal to those of the old: the Roman legates protest and St Leo will refuse to ratify it^[63]. The episode recalls that Chalcedon, ecumenical as it is, did not settle everything at once — and that a council's reception belongs to its history.

For what follows — the resistance of Egypt and Syria, Zeno's Henotikon, the Acacian schism, Severus of Antioch, Constantinople II and the 20th-century dialogues — see The Monophysite Crisis and Monophysitism.

Exile and an obscure end

After his condemnation by name at Chalcedon, Eutyches is exiled by imperial authority^[64]. And that is about all history knows of him with certainty: the old archimandrite disappears from the sources, and his death — in exile, on an unknown date, after 451 — left neither famous tomb nor organised disciples^[65]. Born around 378, he lived long enough to see his doctrine successively condemned, triumph through violence, then condemned for ever: a dizzying trajectory for a monk who had only wanted to defend Christ's unity.

This final obscurity is itself a lesson. Great heresiarchs sometimes leave Churches — Arius emperors won over, Nestorius a Church of the East, Severus six Churches still alive today. Eutyches leaves nothing but a name, because his formula was too crude to found anything lasting: even his objective heirs will dissociate themselves from it^[66].

From a proper name to a label

"Eutychian" quickly becomes a handy polemical insult: anyone partisan of "one nature" is called Eutychian, including those who expressly reject Eutyches^[67]. Severus of Antioch, the doctor of the anti-Chalcedonian party, explicitly condemns the archimandrite while refusing Chalcedon — proof that refusing the council does not reduce to the thesis of 448^[68].

A capital precision for today's reader: the non-Chalcedonian Eastern Orthodox Churches — Coptic, Syriac, Armenian, Ethiopian — are not "Eutychian" in the sense of 448^[69]. They confess a Christ perfect God and perfect man, and the modern dialogue — notably the joint declaration of Paul VI and Shenouda III in 1973 — solemnly established this^[70]. Sticking Eutyches' label on these sister Churches would be a historical injustice and an ecumenical obstacle: the whole dossier is set forth in Monophysitism.

A good intention is not enough to make sound doctrine

Eutyches wanted to protect Christ: that is why he is dangerous. The history of heresies shows that the most contagious errors rarely spring from cynicism; they spring from a truth grasped by one end and squeezed until it is smothered — here, Christ's unity^[71]. Apollinarius, too, wanted to protect Christ's divinity against Arianism, and he removed his soul from him; Eutyches wants to protect his unity against Nestorianism, and he removes his flesh from him. In both cases, to protect Christ by trimming away the man is to lose Christ himself.

"What was not assumed was not healed"

St Gregory of Nazianzus had forged against Apollinarius the principle that condemns Eutyches in advance^[72]:

"What was not assumed was not healed; but what was united to God is saved as well." — St Gregory of Nazianzus, Letter 101 to Cledonius (Ignispedia translation)^[73]

If Christ's flesh is not consubstantial with ours, then our flesh was not assumed — hence not healed, not saved. The stakes of 448–451 are not a quarrel over Greek words: it is whether salvation truly reaches us, in our mortal flesh, or remains suspended above us^[74]. Monophysitism in all its forms empties redemption of its grip on man; Chalcedon restores it to it.

Firmness that leaves the door open

Last lesson, and not the least: the manner. St Leo condemns the error without closing the door to the erring — a repentant Eutyches would have been restored^[75]. St Flavian pays with his life, but as a martyr of a council of brigands, not as a persecutor^[76]. And the Church, after defining, never ceases to dialogue: from the Formula of Union of 433 to the declaration of 1973, she tirelessly seeks the words that allow the separated to recognise the same faith^[77]. Truth without arrogance, firmness without hatred: the Eutyches dossier remains a model of Catholic controversy.

• Monophysitism — the doctrine of "one nature" in general: formulas, the four faces of the error, the Eastern Churches, the modern dialogue.
• The Monophysite Crisis — the full narrative: Ephesus II, Chalcedon, the Henotikon, the Acacian schism, Constantinople II.
• Nestorianism — the opposite error: dividing Christ into two subjects, refuted at Ephesus (431).
• The Nestorian Crisis — the narrative of the crisis that precedes and explains Eutyches' fear.
• Apollinarianism — Christ amputated of his rational soul, and the forged Athanasius fraud that poisoned Cyril himself.
• Docetism — the phantom Christ, without true flesh: more radical than Eutyches, who confesses a real birth from Mary.
• Arianism — the earlier great crisis, over the divinity of the Son.
• The Council of Ephesus (431) — the council where Eutyches still stood among the defenders of orthodoxy.
• St Leo the Great (390–461) — the author of the Tome, doctor of Christ's unity in two natures.
• St Cyril of Alexandria (376–444) — the authority invoked by Eutyches, and the true meaning of his formula.
• Nestorius (c. 386–c. 451) — the heresiarch whose dread drove Eutyches into the opposite excess.
• The Heresies of the First Centuries — the overall panorama of the ancient errors.