A Dictionary of Greek and Roman biography and mythology

(Θεοδώρητος), or, as the name is sometimes written, both in ancient MSS. and in modern works, THEODORITUS, -- though the former is undoubtedly the more correct orthography, -- was one of the most eminent ecclesiastics of the fifth century; confessedly surpassing all his contemporaries in learning, and inferior to none of them in piety; while, in his public conduct, he stands conspicuous and almost alone, as a calm and moderate champion of freedom of opinion in religious matters, in an age when the orthodox and the heretics vied with one another in the bitterest intolerance and rancour. The one blot of moral weakness on the character of Theodoret is by no means so dark as some have represented, and, at all events, may be greatly extenuated, without unfairness. And yet, but for that one fault, his name would have come down to us consigned to the list of heretics, by men, such as Cyril and Dioscorus, to whose spirit, it is no small praise to Theodoret

to say, his conduct displays the most marked contrast.

Theodoret was born at Antioch towards the end of the fourth century of our era. The exact year of his birth is uncertain : from a minute examination of the fragments of evidence, which are supplied chiefly by his own works, Garnier has fixed it at A. D. 386; and Tillemont, with greater probability, at A. D. 393. (See their works, quoted at the end of this article.) Theodoret himself, who was naturally infected with the credulity, which was universal in his age,--for even the sceptics of the time were grossly credulous in some matters,--has related various marvels which attended his birth, as well as subsequent passages of his life. His parents were persons of good condition in life, and of distinguished piety; and his mother, especially, had the most profound respect for the hermits or ascetics, one of whom had healed her of a disease of the eyes by means of the sign of the cross, and had also convinced her of the sinfulness of worldly pomp and luxury. After thirteen years of sterile wedlock, during which the prayers of several of these pious men had been offered on her behalf in vain, one of them named Macedonius at length announced that a son should be granted to her, but upon the condition that he should be consecrated to the service of God. It was not, however, till three years afterwards that the child was born, and named Θεοδώρητος, as being a special gift of God. As the period of his birth approached, the holy man who had predicted it kept continually in his mother's recollection the condition attached to the gift, of which too he frequently reminded Theodoret himself in after years. The record of these circumstances, which are only a specimen of the wonders he relates, is important, on account of the influence which the belief of them exercised on the mind of Theodoret.

He was brought up, and instructed in religion, by his mother, with a care suited to his peculiar position, and which he often mentions with gratitude. At a very early age (scarcely seven years, according to an inference drawn front his 81st epistle) he was sent for his education to a celebrated monastery near Antioch, presided over by Euprepius ; and there he remained for twenty years (Ep. 81), until he left it to take charge of his diocese. He had for his instructors some of the most eminent ministers of the Eastern Church. He himself names Diodorus of Tarsus and Theodorus of Mopsuestia as his teachers; but, as the former died before the end of the fourth century, he can scarcely have instructed Theodoret, except through his writings. Still less can we take literally the statement of Nicephorus (H. E. 14.54), that Theodoret was a disciple of Chrysostom, which can only mean (and in this sense it deserves notice) that the writings of Chrysostom were studied by Theodoret as a model for his own exegetical works. Of his actual teachers, it appears that the chief was Theodore of Mopsuestia, whose memory and works he constantly defended from the charge of heterodoxy. The use which Theodoret made of those twenty-five years of study and retirement appears in the fruit which they bore at a later period, in his profoundly learned writings. During his residence in the monastery he was appointed, first a reader, and then a deacon, in the Church of Antioch, by the patriarchs Porphyry and Alexander ; and, in the latter office, he seems to have obtained considerable reputation by his sermons against the Arians, Macedonians, and especially the Apollinarists, who were the most formidable, by their numbers, among the heretics in the diocese. This matter is not very certain; but it is clear that he must in some way have obtained a public reputation, to account for his appointment to the episcopate by Theodotus, the successor of Alexander in the see of Antioch.

It was in A. D. 420 or 423, according to different computations from his own writings (Epist. 81, 113, 116), that he left his monastery to succeed Isidorus as bishop of Cyrus, or Cyrrhus, a small and poor city near the Euphrates, about two days' journey from Antioch; which was, however, the capital of a district of Syria, called Cyrrhestice, and the diocese of which contained eight hundred parishes (Epist. 32, 113). We learn from his own testimony, which there is every reason to believe, that he carried into his new office the quiet spirit of the monastery, and that ecclesiastical domination was never an object of his ambition. He still practised also the greatest moderation in his own mode of life; while he improved the opportunities, presented by his office, of exercising the utmost generosity towards others. The fortune, which he had inherited on the death of his parents, he had at once divided among the poor; and his bishopric brought him no property, neither house, nor even a tomb (Epist. 113), and its annual revenues could not have been large. Yet out of these, in addition to his alms to the poor, he expended a large sum in the decoration of the city, in which he built covered porticoes, two large bridges, public baths, and an aqueduct (Epist. 79, 81, 138). He also attracted to the city artists and professional men, who were much wanted there, especially physicians ; and he interceded, both with the imperial procurator, and with the empress Pulcheria, for an alleviation of the taxes with which the people of his diocese were burthened. In the midst of these acts of his public munificence we see an instance of his generosity to individuals, in the zeal with which he pleads in several letters to his friends, on behalf of Celestiacus of Carthage, who had been stript of his all by the Vandals (Epist. 29-36). After an episcopate of five and twenty years he could declare that he had never had anything to do with a court of justice, and had never received the smallest present; and afterwards, in his adversity, he suffered extreme want rather than accept presents which would have enabled him to live in luxury. Not only did he thus conduct himself, but he succeeded, by his example and authority, in inducing his clergy to follow a similar mode of life. (Epist. 81.)

At the same time he administered the spiritual affairs of his diocese with great vigour. At that wretched period in the history of the Church, one of the chief occupations of an orthodox bishop was to maintain the contest with the so-called heretics. The diocese of Theodoret was overrun with Arians, Macedonians, and especially Marcionites ; but such was his success in converting them, that he speaks of them, in the year 449, as being all reconciled to the Catholic Church, and he declares that he had baptized ten thousand Marcionites. In this contest he ran great personal risks, having been more than once in danger of being stoned to death. Still he never, like many bishops, called in the aid of the temporal power ;

but he was assisted by a devoted band of monks, among whom one named Jacob was conspicuous ; and his zeal was inflamed by the belief that supernatural powers took part both for and against him. He tells us of devils appearing to him in the night, and demanding why he persecuted Marcion, with other marvels in the spirit of his age.

In these useful labours and clerical duties, and in the composition of his exegetical and other works, Theodoret would, in happier times, have spent a peaceful life. But in that age it was impossible for a man of any eminence to be neutral in the internecine war of the religious parties; and there were various influences at work to draw Theodoret into the vortex of the Nestorian controversy. To understand what follows, the reader not acquainted with the details of the history may read the article NESTORIUS. This part of the life of Theodoret has been grossly misrepresented by Garnier, and the writers who have followed him. If we are to believe them, he first adopted a heresy to gratify a private friendship; and afterwards, from selfish motives, recanted his heresy, and anathematized his friend. It is true that Theodoret had formed an acquaintance with Nestorius in the convent of Euprepius, where they were fellow students; but there is no proof of any great intimacy between them, and none that Theodoret ever adopted the tenets of Nestorius. His share in the contest is more that of an impartial mediator than that of a devoted friend and adherent : he acts, not with Nestorius, but with John of Antioch and the Oriental party; not in order to favour Nestorianism, but to resist the overbearing intolerance of Cyril, and to combat the errors, opposite to those of Nestorius, into which he conceived Cyril, and afterwards Eutyches, to have fallen. The proof of these statements is contained in the numerous writings in which Theodoret explains his views respecting the dispute, in all of which he appears as the champion of religious freedom, and the opponent of those authoritative statements of doctrine, which fetter private opinion without settling any controversy, or ensuring any permanent peace. To enter into the details of this subject would be inconsistent with the nature of this work, as well as impossible within the limits of the present article. We must be content to give a brief sketch of the external history of Theodoret's share in the dispute.

At an early stage of the controversy (A. D. 430), he wrote a letter to the monks of Syria and the neighbouring countries, in reply to the twelve capitula of Cyril, the patriarch of Alexandria, in whose representations he detects, of course by inference only, Apollinarianism, Arianism, and other errors at the opposite extreme to those of Nestorius, especially the confusion of the two natures in the person of Christ, by so representing the hypostatical union as to make them only one. At the council of Ephesus (A. D. 431) he arrived earlier than the great body of the Eastern bishops, for whose presence he, with others, in vain urged the assembly to wait before condemning Nestorius; and, upon their arrival, he took part with them in the separate synod which condemned the proceedings of the council, and decreed the deposition of Cyril. The council of Ephesus having thus only widened the breach, it remained for the feeble emperor, Theodosius II., to decide which party he would support. At first he warmly espoused the cause of Nestorius, but soon afterwards, falling under the influence of certain monks of Cyril's party, he summoned the African and Oriental bishops to send seven representatives each, to explain to him the proceedings of the council of Ephesus. Theodoret was one of the seven delegates of the Oriental party. On their arrival at Chalcedon, they were ordered to wait there for an audience with the emperor; and meanwhile Theodoret, being excluded from the Church by the influence of Cyril's party, preached to immense audiences, and celebrated the sacraments, in a large court surrounded by porticoes. On the emperor's arrival, Theodoret pleaded the cause of the Oriental bishops before him with great eloquence and courage; but the mind of Theodosius was already surrendered to the other party, and the ambassadors of the Eastern churches were dismissed to their homes. On his return to Cyrus, Theodoret composed an elaborate work on the Incarnation, in five books (πενταλόγιον ἐνανθρωπώσεως), in order fully to explain his own views upon the question, to guard himself against the accusation of sharing in the opinions of Nestorius, and to expose the heretical tendencies of Cyril's tenets, and the unjust conduct of his party at the council of Ephesus. Of this work we only possess a few fragments, and those chiefly from the Latin translation of Marius Mercator, a bigotted adherent of the Cyrillian party, who declares his belief that Theodoret wrote the book at the instigation of the devil. About the same time, also, Theodoret came forward in defence of the memory of his master, Theodore of Mopsuestia, whose works had been denounced by Cyril and his friend Proclus of Constantinople, as the poisonous source of the Nestorian heresy. In a work which is now lost, Theodoret replied in detail to all the arguments advanced by Cyril against the works of Theodore; and attacked Cyril with considerable bitterness, as we see from some fragments of the book, which are preserved in the acts of the fifth oecumenical council. (Hardouin, Act. Concil. vol. iii. pp. 106, &c.)

Of the transactions of the following years, until the death of Cyril, it must suffice to say that Theodoret acquiesced in the peace effected by the intercession of the emperor between the parties of Cyril and of John, in so far as its doctrinal basis was concerned; and he even submitted, and urged the friends of Nestorius to submit, to the deposition of Nestorius. But he always protested against that deposition; and, when it became evident that no limits were assigned to the severity with which the Nestorians were to be treated (A. D. 435), he threw aside all pretence of peace, and stood forth as the decided opponent of Cyril, who, on his part, displayed the bitterest enmity against Theodoret. It is alleged that, when Cyril died (A. D. 444), Theodoret so far forgot himself as to express his exultation at the event. Such conduct might be excused on the plea, that his joy was for the deliverance of the Church from a source of bitterness ; but the truth is, that the charge rests on passages in two works which it is probable that Theodoret never wrote, while, in other works, which are undoubtedly genuine, he refers to Cyril's death in quite a different spirit.

Dioscorus, the successor of Cyril in the see of Alexandria, pursued his predecessor's line of conduct, with even greater bitterness, and Theodoret soon found himself forced into a more prominent and

disastrous position in the controversy, through the necessity of resisting the renewed diffusion of the opinions of Cyril by the efforts of a party of Syrian monks, and still more by those of the celebrated Eutyches of Constantinople, with whose name the Cyrillian doctrine became identified. [EUTYCHES.] Dioscorus supported the party of Eutyches with all his might; and, besides this ground of opposition, he had a personal motive of dislike to Theodoret, because the latter had signed a synodical epistle of Proclus, the bishop of Constantinople, implying thereby, as Dioscorus maintained, the superiority of that patriarch to those of Alexandria and Antioch. In fact, the conduct of Dioscorus throughout the whole Eutychian controversy betrays at least as much care for the aggrandizement of his own see as for the cause of truth. Through the influence of this prelate at the imperial court, Theodosius, who made no secret of the dislike he bore to Theodoret for his opposition to Cyril, was induced to issue a command to the bishop of Cyrus to confine himself within the limits of his own diocese, A. D. 448. At the same time that he obeyed the mandate, Theodoret addressed letters to some of the principal men of the empire, in vindication of his conduct; and in these letters we find some of the most interesting particulars of his previous life (Epist. 79-82). He had already done his best to appease the enmity of Dioscorus by a letter, explaining his opinions, and adducing, as a proof of his orthodoxy, his acceptance of the statement of doctrine agreed upon by John and Cyril. Dioscorus, however, replied in the most violent language, plainly calling Theodoret a Nestorian. As a last attempt to pacify the proud patriarch, Theodoret went so far, in a second letter, as to declare those accursed who said that the Virgin was not the mother of God, or that Christ was a mere man, or who would represent the Only-begotten as if in his person there were two Sons of God; Dioscorus cut short the correspondence, by pronouncing a public anathema upon Theodoret in the church of Alexandria; and soon afterwards, in A. D. 449, he assembled under his own presidency the second Council of Ephesus, justly called the robber-synod, which pronounced the deposition both of Theodoret, and of Flavian, patriarch of Constantinople, Domnus, patriarch of Antioch, and the other bishops who had condemned Eutyches at the synod of Constantinople in the preceding year.

Theodoret had been excluded from the synod which deposed him by the express wish of the emperor, who now commanded him to retire to a monastery at Apamea; his enemies even threatened him with banishment. He bore his fall with dignity and cheerfulness, and preferred rather to suffer want than to accept the presents which were offered to him on every hand. Still neither he nor Flavian felt themselves bound to leave their enemies to enjoy their triumph and to domineer over the Church. They turned to the only remaining quarter in which there was any power to help them, the Roman bishop, Leo the Great, to whom Theodoret wrote a letter (Epist. 113), celebrating the renown of the apostolic see, praising the virtues and religious zeal of Leo, defending his own orthodoxy by quotations from his writings, and requesting permission to come to Rome, provided that the emperor should give his consent, to submit the whole case to the judgment of Leo and the Western bishops; at the same time he requested to be advised whether he should submit to his deposition. Leo, who had already pronounced against the Eutychians, accepted Theodoret's confession of faith as satisfactory, and declared him absolved from all ecclesiastical censure : but the proposal for an oecumenical council in Italy was negatived by the emperor.

At this precise juncture, however, the whole state of affairs was suddenly changed by the death of Theodosius II., A. D. 450, and the accession of Pulcheria and Marcianus, who were unfavourable to the Eutychians. Theodoret and the other deposed bishops were recalled from retirement, on the condition that they should be reinstated in their sees by the decision of an oecumenical council; and Theodoret himself joined in the demand for such a council, as necessary to restore peace to the Church. It assembled, first at Nicaea, and afterwards at Chalcedon, in A. D. 451. At its eighth session the petition of Theodoret for restoration to his bishopric was discussed, and he himself appeared to plead his cause. He was most enthusiastically received by his friends, but the party of his enemies was still powerful, at least in clamour. When he attempted to give an account of his opinions, he was interrupted by the cry, "Curse Nestorius, his doctrines, and his adherents!" In vain did he represent that he cared far less for restoration to his see than for permission to clear himself from the misrepresentations to which he had been subjected : the generous answer to his appeal was the renewed cry, " He is a heretic himself : he is a Nestorian : thrust out the heretic ! " Yielding at last to the clamour, he exclaimed, " Anathema on Nestorius, and on every one who denies that Mary is the mother of God, and who divides the Only-begotten into two Sons. I have subscribed the confession of faith, and the letter of the bishop Leo; and this is my faith.--Farewell." This declaration was received with the applause of the whole assembly, and their unanimous vote restored Theodoret to his bishopric. (Harduin. Concil. vol. ii. pp. 496, foll.)

Whatever weakness Theodoret displayed on this occasion consisted, not in the sacrifice of any religious conviction, but in suffering himself to be deprived of the opportunity of explaining his real opinions. He was no Nestorian; and, though his whole character forbids us to suppose that he was a believer in anathemas, yet he had the misfortune to live in an age when the anathema was esteemed the natural and proper form for a declaration of religious belief, and when no man was deemed sincere in the faith which he professed, until lie was also prepared to declare the doctrines from which he differed accursed. Theodoret himself, as we have seen, had already condemned the tenets of Nestorius in nearly the very words which he uttered at the council; and if he hesitated to repeat them then, it was only as a protest against the spirit in which the declaration was sought to be extorted from him; a protest which, we think, is implied in the " farewell," by which he appears to utter his resolution never more to mix in such scenes of strife. That resolution he kept. After sharing in the subsequent proceedings of the council, which compensated to some degree for its conduct towards him by pronouncing the condemnation of Eutyches, Theodoret returned to his home at Cyrus, where he devoted the rest of his life to literary labours, committing the charge of his diocese to Hypatius. He appears to have died

in A. D. 457 or 458. (Gennad. de Vir. Illustr. 89.) His remains were deposited in the same urn with those of his stedfast supporter, the monk Jacobus Thaumaturgus, who died shortly after him.

Since his death his memory has met with the same varied fortune that he himself suffered during life. The emperor Justin honoured his statue with a solemn installation in his episcopal throne; but the various Monophysite sects continued their opposition to his writings, and twice procured the condemnation of them by ecclesiastical synods during the reign of Anastasius, in A. D. 499, and 512. Marius Mercator, the bitter opponent of everything connected with Nestorianism, represents Theodoret as one of the worst of heretics; and lie is followed by Garnier, the completer of Sirmond's edition of Theodoret, the value of whose very learned and elaborate treatise on the life of Theodoret is seriously diminished by the recklessness with which he not only adopts the calumnies of Mercator, but even falsifies facts in order to support them. Cave has been to some degree misled by these writers; but yet he gives us so warm and just a eulogy of the character of Theodoret as to make one smile at the words with which he introduces it : " Meliori quidem fato, et molliori censura dignus erat Theodoritus." Tillemont has refuted many of Garnier's misrepresentations; but he sometimes defends the orthodoxy of Theodoret by arguments which the bishop of Cyrus himself would scarcely have adopted. For the complete vindication of Theodoret's character we are indebted to the German church historians, Schröckh and Neander.

A strong encomium upon his learning and his style will be found in Photius (Bibl. Cod. 46), who describes his language as pure and well-chosen, and his composition as clear, rhythmical, and altogether pleasing. In other passages Photius notices several of the works of Theodoret (Cod. 31, 56, 203-205, 273); and an incomplete list of them is given by Nicephorus Callistus (H. E. 14.54). Many of them are mentioned by Theodoret himself, in his letters (Epist. 82, 113, 116, 145). The fullest account of them is contained in Garnier's second Dissertation, de Libris Theodoreti.

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