account given about John of Antioch in both sources is derived from Nestorius. His banishment according to this account took place in the year 4351. In the same year, on the 30th of July, Theodosius, the emperor, issued an edict which ordered the impious books of the detestable Nestorius against the orthodox piety and against the decrees of the synod of Ephesus to be burnt, and which gave the name of Simonians (that of an ancient heretical party) to his adherents. The wording of this edict and the account of Evagrius that Nestorius had not ceased his blasphemy in Antioch could make possible the conjecture3 that the banishment of Nestorius and this edict against his books were caused by what he had written in Antioch, especially by his Tragedy which dealt with the decrees of the synod of Ephesus. But this conjecture has its difficulties*. We are, therefore, obliged to take the edict as referring to the earlier books of Nestorius and the account of Evagrius to spoken blasphemies. All the more important in this connection must have been the instigatory efforts of John of Antioch. Pope Celestine, too, petitioned the emperor as early as 432 for the exile of Nestorius5, and Cyril was probably working with

1 Four years after the synod of Ephesus, comp. above, p. 57, note 3. 2 Mansi, v, 413 f.; cod. Theodosianus, 16, 5, 66.

3 Nestoriana, p. 88.

For according to Evagrius (1. c. p. 13, 15 f.) Nestorius mentioned in his Tragedy his banishment to Oasis.

5 Mansi, v, 271 B.

the same end in view. These latter are not much to be blamed for this wish. It is not the same with John of Antioch. He may have had, even if jealousy was out of the question, many grounds for finding the stay of Nestorius in Antioch disagreeable-his mere presence, after the union, was a reproach to him—but he has much impaired his good renown by this Judas-deed. And for Nestorius it was the consummation of his tragic fortune that his final banishment was caused by his former friend.

How rich the years of exile were in tragic events we have seen already in the first lecture1. I merely remark here that Nestorius in these years was even before his death a dead man for the world-I mean the orthodox church. He now was nothing but the condemned heretic, nothing but the cause of offence thrust out from the people of God.

He was really not dead: he hailed with joy the change of the situation after the robber-synod, hailed with joy Leo's letter to Flavian, hailed with joy the new council he saw in prospect2. He did not live to experience the fact that this council, too, condemned him and that also Theodoret, who even up to his death held to him, was forced to consent to this condemnation3. With this the tragedy of Nestorius' life came to an end. Now he was regarded by all in the church as a cursed heretic; now for him came to pass what,

1 Above, p. 17 f. 2 Comp. above, p. 25 f. 3 Mansi, vi, 188 f.

according to the edict of 435, was to be the fortune of his adherents: he had not only supported the punishment of being covered with ignominy during his lifetime, but also after his death did not escape from ignominy1.

The orthodox saw in his sufferings nothing but a just penalty: Nestorius himself called his life a tragedy. I, too, used the same expression. But his life was a tragedy only if he was guiltless. The question as to whether he was guiltless shall occupy us in the next two lectures.

III

In the last lecture we spoke about the tragedy of the life of Nestorius. Was it really a tragedy? His enemies regarded his sufferings as deserved punishment for his impiety. Were they wrong? Was Nestorius really the guiltless victim of a tragic fortune? He was. It is this which I wish to prove in this and the next lecture.

I do not mean that Nestorius was altogether guiltless in his life's misfortune. He was incautious, passionate and reckless, and this, as we saw in the preceding lecture, was not without unfavourable influence upon the course

1 Mansi, v, 413Β: μήτε ζῶντας τιμωρίας, μήτε θανόντας ἀτιμίας ἐκτὸς ὑπάρχειν.

of events. But no hero of a tragedy is quite guiltless. And we Christians know that we all have the old Adam in us as long as we live.

Only by understanding the word "guiltless" in a broader sense I am able to say that Nestorius was guiltless. His guilt was very slight in comparison with the heavy weight of his sufferings.

Socrates, the church historian, regarded, as we saw1, the dogmatic charges against Nestorius as essentially unfounded. He thought the fault of Nestorius was his lack of knowledge2. But I must decline to accept for Nestorius this privilegium ignorantiae. It is true that Nestorius at first did not know that the term corÓKOS was used by some of the orthodox Fathers of the fourth century. But this lack of knowledge is not a sign of ignorance. I won't say that Nestorius was a learned man. Neither the fragments of his works nor his Treatise of Heraclides show patristic or philosophical erudition. But his education was not in any way a merely rhetorical one. The Treatise of Heraclides and many of the earlier known fragments of Nestorius prove that, in spite of some inaccuracies in his terminology3, he was a theologian well educated in dogmatics.

Luther thought that, besides his want of learning, it was fatal for Nestorius that he was a boorish and proud

1 Above, p. 20.

2 h. e. 7, 32, 8: ἀγνοοῦντα ἐφευρίσκω τὸν ἄνδρα.

3 Comp. below, p. 90, note 1.

man1. This judgment was based on a very insufficient knowledge of the sources. But it may give us occasion to enquire whether the personal character of Nestorius was the cause of his tragic fortune.

Nestorius was passionate and dogmatic. John of Antioch reminds him in a letter of a scene from their earlier life in common, which may prove this2. And even an account, which is friendly to Nestorius, tells about him, that he was lacking in courtesy and amiability. This characteristic is really shown in his letters to Cyril. Also his letters to Rome are not exactly models of courtesy. And even from the pulpit he sometimes declaimed against his enemies in a rough and passionate manner1.

The account, which denied him amiability, points in explanation of this characteristic to the fact that Nestorius, as a monk, had no experience of worldly affairs. Indeed, it was an unpolished nature he showed. But the merits of this naturalness came out as clearly as the demerits. Even now we see something straight and open in the letters and in the polemics of Nestorius. And comparing his writings