me, however, the labors of the three great
Cappadocians,--Basil of Caesarea, Gregory of Nazianzus and Gregory of
Nyssa--had already done much to reconcile the eastern bishops to the
Nicaean confession and, with the accession of Theodosius I, the fate of
Arianism was sealed. A council of the eastern church met at Constantinople
in 381 and accepted the Nicene creed. The Arian bishops were deposed and
assemblies of the heretics forbidden by imperial edicts. Among the
subjects of the empire Arianism rapidly died out, although it existed for
a century and a half as the faith of several Germanic peoples.

*The monophysite controversy.* While the point at issue in the dogmatic
controversies of the fourth century was the relation of God to the Son and
the Holy Spirit, the burning question of the fifth and sixth centuries was
the nature of Christ. And, like the former, the latter dispute arose in
the East, having its origin in the divergent views of the theological
schools of Antioch and Alexandria. The former laid stress upon the two
natures in Christ--the divine and the human; the latter emphasized his
divinity to the exclusion of his humanity, and hence its adherents
received the name of monophysites. The Antiochene position was the
orthodox or traditional view of the church, and was held universally in
the West, where the duality of Christ was accepted without any attempt to
determine the relationship of his divine and human qualities. Beneath the
doctrinal controversy lay the rivalry between the patriarchates of
Alexandria and Constantinople, and the awakening national antagonism of
the native Egyptian and Syrian peoples towards the Greeks. The conflict
began in 429 with an attack of Cyril, patriarch of Alexandria, upon the
teachings of Nestorius, the patriarch of Constantinople. Cyril, taking the
view that the nature of Christ was human made fully divine, justified the
use of the word _Theotokos_ (Mother of God), which was coming to be
applied generally to the Virgin Mary. Nestorius criticized its use, and
argued in favor of the term Mother of Christ. In the controversy which
ensued, Cyril won the support of the bishop of Rome, who desired to weaken
the authority of the see of Constantinople, and Nestorius was condemned at
the council of Ephesus in 431.

The next phase of the struggle opened in 448, when Dioscorus, the occupant
of the Alexandrine see, assailed Flavian, the patriarch of the capital,
for having deposed Eutyc