hes, a monophysite abbot of Constantinople. At the
so-called "Robber Council" of Ephesus (449 A. D.) Dioscorus succeeded in
having Flavian deprived of his see. But the pope, Leo I. pronounced in
favor of the doctrine of the duality of Christ, and in 451 the new emperor
Marcian called an ecumenical council at Chalcedon which definitely
reasserted the primacy of the see of Constantinople in the East, approved
the use of _Theotokos_, and declared that Christ is of two natures. The
attempt to enforce the decisions of this council provoked disturbances in
Egypt, Palestine and the more easterly countries. In Palestine it required
the use of armed force to suppress a usurping monophysite bishop. In Egypt
the enforcement led to a split between the orthodox Greek and the
monophysite Coptic churches.

As the opposition to the decree of Chalcedon still disturbed the peace of
the church, the emperor Zeno in 482, at the instigation of the patriarchs
Acacius of Constantinople and Peter of Alexandria, sought to settle the
dispute by exercise of the imperial authority. He issued a letter to the
church of Egypt called the _Henoticon_, which, while acknowledging the
councils of Nicaea and Constantinople, condemned that of Chalcedon, and
declared that "Christ is one and not two." This doctrine was at once
condemned by the Pope Silvanus. The rupture with Rome lasted until 519,
when a reconciliation was effected at the price of complete submission by
the East and the rehabilitation of the council of Chalcedon. This in turn
antagonized the monophysites of Syria and Egypt and caused Justinian to
embark upon his hopeless task of reestablishing complete religious unity
within the empire by holding the western and winning back the eastern
church.

Justinian hoped to reconcile the monophysites by an interpretation of the
discussions of the council of Chalcedon which would be acceptable to them.
This led him, in 544, to condemn the so-called Three Chapters, which were
the doctrines of the opponents of the monophysites. And although this step
implied a condemnation of the council of Chalcedon itself, and was
consequently opposed in the West, he forced the fifth ecumenical council
of Constantinople in 553 to sanction it. However, neither this concession
nor the still greater one of the edict of 565 availed to win back the
extreme monophysites of Egypt and Syria, where opposition to the religious
jurisdiction of Constantinople had taken a national fo