Talk:Eutyches

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This article incorporates text from the Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition, now in the public domain.

I happened across this quote, while reading "History of the Wars, Books III and IV (of 8), by Procopius, Translated by H. B. Dewing".

Available from Project Gutenberg:

It is referring to events in Byzantium around 471 AD.

"And Basiliscus, deserted by all, fled for refuge to the same sanctuary as formerly. And Acacius, the priest of the city, put him into the hands of Zeno, charging him with impiety and with having brought great confusion and many innovations into the Christian doctrine, having inclined toward the heresy of Eutyches."

The Oriental Orthodox Churches do not follow Eutyches and never have, and neither could they rightly be referred to as "Monophysite." (unsigned)

Correct, but read carefully the material you tried to blank out:

"After his death his doctrines obtained the support of the Empress Eudocia and made considerable progress in Syria. In the 6th century, they received a new impulse from a monk of the name of Jacob, who united the various divisions into which the Eutychians, or Monophysites, had separated into one church, which exists at the present time under the name of the Jacobite Church, and has few adherents today, but many adherents of the similar miaphysite doctrine in Armenia, Egypt and Ethiopia."

I think it could be clarified by adding a verb to the last clause, but this is not contradicting what you wrote above. ፈቃደ (ውይይት) 13:43, 1 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Sources

It's always difficult to figure out to what extent figures from the Christological Controversies (e.g. Nestorius, Apollinaris, Theodore, Eutyches, etc.) were actually unorthodox versus to what extent they were simply part of the Alexandrine-Antiochene politics, rivalry, etc. Harnack, however, is a terrible source for information on these questions. He's part of an era of German scholarship which was radical and saw conflict and Hegelian dialectic hiding behind every bush. While I kind of like Harnack personally, he always takes radical views (including on this question--especially as regards Cyril of Alexandria).