Second Council of Constantinople

Authority level: Authoritative doctrine
Disciplinary status: Church discipline
Evidence type: Historical account
GuideAn ecumenical council acts with the Roman Pontiff as the Church's supreme Magisterium. The exact note of each decree or proposition must be identified separately; disciplinary acts and historical narrative are not thereby dogma.
Contents

The Second Council of Constantinople was the fifth ecumenical council of the Catholic Church, held in 553 to defend the personal unity of Christ, condemn the Three Chapters, and interpret Chalcedon in continuity with Saint Cyril of Alexandria.

The Second Council of Constantinople is the fifth of the first seven ecumenical councils recognized by both the Eastern Orthodox Church and the Catholic Church. It is also recognized by the Old Catholics and others. Protestant opinions and recognition of it are varied. Some Protestants, such as Calvinists, recognize the first four councils,[7] whereas Lutherans and most Anglo-Catholics accept all seven. Constantinople II was convoked by the Byzantine Emperor Justinian I under the presidency of Patriarch Eutychius of Constantinople. It was held from 5 May to 2 June 553. Participants were overwhelmingly Eastern bishops—only sixteen Western bishops were present, including nine from Illyricum and seven from Africa, but none from Italy—out of the 152 total.[8][9]

The main work of the council was to confirm the condemnation issued by edict in 551 by the Emperor Justinian against the Three Chapters. These were the Christological writings and ultimately the person of Theodore of Mopsuestia (died 428), certain writings against Cyril of Alexandria's Twelve Anathemas accepted at the Council of Ephesus, written by Theodoret of Cyrrhus (died c. 466), and a letter written against Cyrillianism and the Ephesian Council by Ibas of Edessa (died 457).[10]

The purpose of the condemnation was to make plain that the Great Church, which followed a Chalcedonian creed, was firmly opposed to Nestorianism as supported by the Antiochene school which had either assisted Nestorius, the eponymous heresiarch, or had inspired the teaching for which he was anathematized and exiled. The council also condemned the teaching that Mary could not be rightly called the Mother of God (Greek: Theotokos) but only the mother of the man (anthropotokos) or the mother of Christ (Christotokos).[10]

The Second Council of Constantinople is also considered as one of the many attempts by Byzantine Emperors to bring peace in the empire between the Chalcedonian and non-Chalcedonian factions of the church which had been in continuous conflict since the times of the Council of Ephesus in AD 431.

Chalcedon and its opponents

Chalcedon had defined the one Christ in two natures, but large parts of Egypt and Syria believed its language rehabilitated Nestorian division. The restoration of Theodoret of Cyrrhus and Ibas of Edessa at Chalcedon reinforced that suspicion because both were associated with criticism of Cyril of Alexandria. Imperial attempts to impose Chalcedon without a persuasive Cyrillian interpretation repeatedly failed and sometimes deepened separation.

Theologians now called neo-Chalcedonian emphasized that the one hypostasis is God the Word and that the two natures exist within his one personal identity. They accepted the Theopaschite formula that one of the Trinity suffered in the flesh. Properly understood, this does not make the divine nature passible. It identifies the person who underwent human suffering as the eternal Son, exactly the personal unity Ephesus had defended.

Emperor Justinian I combined intense theological engagement with an expansive view of imperial responsibility for ecclesial unity. He hoped that condemning writings especially offensive to anti-Chalcedonians would prove that Chalcedon was not Nestorian. His strategy placed real errors under scrutiny, but imperial pressure on bishops and the pope produced a severe crisis of authority and trust.

The Three Chapters

Persons and writings at issue

The Three Chapters were not three books. The first concerned Theodore of Mopsuestia and his writings; the second concerned writings of Theodoret of Cyrrhus against Cyril and Ephesus; the third concerned a letter attributed to Ibas of Edessa and addressed to Maris the Persian. Theodore had died in communion decades before Ephesus, while Theodoret and Ibas had been restored at Chalcedon after professions judged sufficient by that council.

Theodore's Christological language could divide the saving subject and exercised enormous influence in the Antiochene and East Syriac traditions. Theodoret's anti-Cyrillian works attacked the twelve anathemas and could be read against the personal unity approved at Ephesus. The letter to Maris criticized Cyril and praised Theodore while describing the reunion of 433. Condemnation therefore touched both genuine doctrinal danger and the reputation of Chalcedon's judicial settlement.

Why the West resisted

Justinian issued an edict against the Three Chapters around 543 or 544 and required eastern patriarchs to subscribe. Western bishops feared that posthumous condemnation of Theodore violated settled canonical expectations and that condemnation of materials associated with men restored at Chalcedon would surrender the fourth council to its opponents. Latin readers also had less access to the Greek theological distinctions and political context driving the controversy.

The African episcopate, northern Italian churches, and other western leaders resisted vigorously. Their defense of Chalcedon did not require approving Nestorian propositions, but some treated the reputations of the three chapters as inseparable from the council itself. The eventual fifth council would distinguish Chalcedon's definition and lawful restoration of persons from approval of every writing connected with them.

Pope Vigilius and Justinian

Pope Vigilius was brought from Rome to Constantinople, arriving in 547 under conditions shaped by the Gothic War and imperial power. He initially refused the condemnation, then issued the Judicatum in 548 against the Three Chapters while explicitly preserving Chalcedon. Fierce western opposition led him to withdraw or suspend that document and seek a settlement through a genuinely representative council.[1]

Relations with Justinian deteriorated. Vigilius took sanctuary more than once and suffered coercion and physical danger from imperial agents. He proposed either a council in Italy or Sicily or equal eastern and western representation; the emperor rejected those arrangements. Vigilius and Justinian exchanged pledges about handling the controversy, but mutual accusations followed when the emperor published a new confession against the chapters.

The pope agreed that specific errors of Theodore should be condemned but opposed condemning deceased persons and the disputed writings in a way that appeared to impeach Chalcedon. On 14 May 553, while the council was already meeting, he issued his first Constitutum with a small group of mostly western bishops. It condemned propositions attributed to Theodore but withheld the personal and comprehensive condemnation Justinian required.

Convocation and proceedings

The council opened on 5 May 553, probably in a hall adjoining Hagia Sophia, under Eutychius of Constantinople. Roughly 150 bishops attended, overwhelmingly from the East; ancient subscription totals vary. Vigilius declined repeated invitations because the imbalance of representation and unresolved imperial conflict made participation unacceptable to him. No papal legate presided.

Eight sessions examined earlier councils, patristic texts, Theodore's writings, Theodoret's polemics, the letter to Maris, and arguments about Chalcedon's judgments. The bishops insisted that a person once received into communion might still have particular heretical writings condemned and that the dead could be anathematized when their teaching continued to injure the Church. They cited precedents while making preservation of the first four councils an explicit criterion.[2]

In the seventh session Justinian presented evidence about Vigilius's prior commitments. The council ordered his name removed from the diptychs while declaring that communion with the Apostolic See itself remained. This distinction did not make the treatment prudent or erase coercion, but it shows that the bishops did not claim to depose Rome or constitute a universal Church apart from the Roman See.

The eighth session on 2 June pronounced sentence and issued fourteen anathemas. The council condemned Theodore and his impious writings, the specified anti-Cyrillian works of Theodoret, and the letter attributed to Ibas. It repeatedly affirmed Nicaea, Constantinople I, Ephesus, and Chalcedon and condemned anyone who used the Three Chapters to discredit the fourth council.

Christological teaching

One of the Trinity suffered in the flesh

The anathemas confess the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit as one nature or substance, power, and authority in three hypostases or persons. The person who became incarnate is one of the Trinity, God the Word. The holy Virgin is properly and truly Theotokos because she bore according to the flesh that divine person, not an ordinary man later joined to God.

Everything done and suffered in Christ's humanity belongs to the one divine subject. The Lord of glory was crucified in the flesh. The phrase does not transfer suffering into the immutable divine nature; it applies the human passion to the person who possesses that nature. This is the conciliar form of the communication of idioms defended at Ephesus.[3]

Two natures without two subjects

Constantinople II accepts Chalcedon's two natures while rejecting any interpretation that counts the natures as two persons or subsistent subjects. Distinction may be made in contemplation so that the properties of divinity and humanity are recognized, but the natures exist inseparably in the one composite hypostasis of the Word. The council's use of composite does not make the person a mixture; it indicates the personal union of complete natures.[4]

The anathemas receive Cyril's language of one incarnate nature of God the Word when understood as referring to the one incarnate hypostasis, not the absorption of humanity. They also defend Christ's complete human soul and body. The fifth council is therefore a hermeneutic of Chalcedon: the fourth council must be read as thoroughly Cyrillian and Ephesian, never as permission to confess two sons.

Origen and the council

Justinian's reign also saw controversy over teachings attributed to Origen and later Origenist monks. A set of anathemas against Origenist propositions was issued in connection with a synod at Constantinople before the ecumenical council, and the name of Origen appears in the fifth council's condemnation of earlier heresiarchs in the transmitted text. Fifteen anti-Origenist anathemas are often printed with conciliar materials.

The exact relationship of those fifteen anathemas to the formal acts of the council remains disputed because they do not appear in the surviving session record as part of the council's final fourteen anathemas. It is therefore too simple either to say that Constantinople II had nothing to do with Origenist controversy or to attribute every anti-Origenist proposition automatically to its ecumenical definition. The secure doctrinal center of the council is the Three Chapters and the unity of Christ.[5]

Papal confirmation

Vigilius did not initially receive the council. Continued pressure, further study of the documentary evidence, and concern for unity preceded a change. In a letter to Eutychius dated 8 December 553 and in a second Constitutum of 23 February 554, the pope condemned the Three Chapters and confirmed the substance of the conciliar judgment while maintaining Chalcedon's authority.

Catholic recognition of Constantinople II as ecumenical rests on that papal confirmation and the Church's subsequent reception. The gathering did not possess final universal force by imperial convocation alone or by acting against the pope. Nor does Vigilius's reversal prove that the pope defined error and later corrected an ex cathedra act. His earlier positions were contested disciplinary and doctrinal judgments issued amid incomplete evidence and coercion, without the form or intent of a definitive papal definition for the universal Church.

The episode displays the difference between indefectibility and easy governance. A pope can deliberate badly, communicate inconsistently, suffer unjust pressure, and revise a non-definitive judgment. Bishops can defend a true council through mistaken prudence. The final Catholic act is the confirmed conciliar condemnation read in continuity with Chalcedon, not every document produced along the road to it.

Western resistance and reception

Reception in the West was painful. Bishops in Africa, northern Italy, Illyricum, and elsewhere suspected betrayal of Chalcedon. Milan and Aquileia broke communion with Rome; the schism associated with the Three Chapters lasted for decades and in parts of Aquileia into the late seventh century. Political fragmentation under Lombard rule helped preserve the division after the original theological stakes had changed.

The hoped-for reunion of anti-Chalcedonian communities did not occur. Condemning the Three Chapters removed one serious obstacle but could not overcome accumulated distrust, rival hierarchies, imperial coercion, and divergent reception of Chalcedon itself. A council can teach true doctrine even when its immediate political purpose fails.

Catholics and Eastern Orthodox receive Constantinople II as the fifth ecumenical council. Oriental Orthodox churches do not receive it as a council because they do not receive Chalcedon, although the fifth council's Cyrillian Christology often stands close to their theological concerns. Its careful study therefore has ecumenical value beyond its formal reception.

Authority and legacy

The council's definitive Christological teaching belongs to the solemn Magisterium as papally confirmed and received. Its condemnations identify real errors about the person of Christ. Historical claims about authorship, individual guilt, coercion, the authenticity of the letter to Maris, and the anti-Origenist dossier require ordinary scholarly judgment. The authority of the council does not require defending Justinian's methods or every procedural act.

The Catechism summarizes the fifth council by confessing one hypostasis, our Lord Jesus Christ, one of the Trinity. That sentence protects the unity of the Gospel: the one who works miracles is the one who hungers; the one who is immortal in divinity is the one who truly dies in humanity; the one born of Mary is the eternal Son. The unity is personal, not a blending of natures.

Constantinople II also established a durable rule for conciliar interpretation. Later councils do not cancel earlier dogma when they make its necessary meaning explicit. Chalcedon is read through Nicaea, Ephesus, Cyril, and Leo; its restoration of individuals is not approval of every writing; its two-nature formula is inseparable from one hypostasis. The fifth council's difficult history thus serves a precise doctrinal legacy: continuity is achieved through truthful distinction, not denial of conflict.[6]

Proceedings

The council was presided over by Eutychius, Patriarch of Constantinople, assisted by the other three eastern patriarchs or their representatives.[11] Pope Vigilius was also invited; but even though he was at this period resident in Constantinople (to avoid the perils of life in Italy, convulsed by the war against the Ostrogoths), he declined to attend, and even issued a document forbidding the council from proceeding without him (his 'First Constitutum'). For more details see Pope Vigilius.[12]

The council, however, proceeded without the pope to condemn the Three Chapters. And during the seventh session of the council, the bishops had Vigilius stricken from the diptychs for his refusal to appear at the council and approve its proceedings, effectively excommunicating him personally but not the rest of the Western Church. Vigilius was then imprisoned in Constantinople by the emperor and his advisors were exiled. After six months, in December 553, he agreed, however, to condemn the Three Chapters, claiming that his hesitation was due to being misled by his advisors.[10] His approval of the council was expressed in two documents, (a letter to Eutychius of Constantinople on 8 December 553, and a second "Constitutum" of 23 February 554, probably addressed to the Western episcopate), condemning the Three Chapters,[13] on his own authority and without mention of the council.[9]

In Northern Italy the ecclesiastical provinces of Milan and Aquileia broke communion with Rome. Milan accepted the condemnation only toward the end of the sixth century, whereas Aquileia did not do so until about 700.[9][14] The rest of the Western Church accepted the decrees of the council, though without great enthusiasm. Though ranked as one of the ecumenical councils, it never attained in the West the status of either Nicaea or Chalcedon.

In Visigothic Spain (Reccared having converted a short time prior) the churches never accepted the council;[15] when news of the later Third Council of Constantinople was communicated to them by Rome it was received as the fifth ecumenical council,[16] not the sixth. Isidore of Seville, in his Chronicle and De Viris Illustribus, judged Justinian a tyrant and persecutor of the orthodox[17] and an admirer of heresy,[18] contrasting him with Facundus of Hermiane and Victor of Tunnuna, who was considered a martyr.[19]

Despite the conflict between the council and the pope, and the inability to reconcile Chalcedonians and non-Chalcedonians, the council still made a significant theological contribution. The canons condemning the Three Chapters were preceded by ten dogmatic canons which defined Chalcedonian Christology with a new precision, bringing out that Christ has two natures, the human and the divine, in one person. The 'two natures' defined at Chalcedon were now clearly interpreted as two sets of attributes possessed by a single person, Christ God, the Second Person of the Trinity.[20] Later Byzantine Christology, as found in Maximus the Confessor and John of Damascus, was built upon this basis. It might have proved sufficient, moreover, to bring about the reunion of Chalcedonians and non-Chalcedonians, had it not been for the severance of connections between the two groups that resulted from the Muslim conquests of the next century.

Acts

The original Greek acts of the council are lost,[21] but an old Latin version exists, possibly made for Vigilius, of which there is a critical edition[22] and of which there is now an English translation and commentary,[23] and a modern Greek translation and commentary.[24] It has been alleged (probably falsely) that the original Acts of the Fifth Council had been tampered with[25] in favour of Monothelitism.[9] It used to be argued that the extant acts are incomplete, since they make no mention of the debate over Origenism. However, the solution generally accepted today is that the bishops signed the canons condemning Origenism before the council formally opened.[26] This condemnation was confirmed by Pope Vigilius and the subsequent ecumenical council (Third Council of Constantinople) gave its "assent" in its Definition of Faith to the five previous synods, including "... the last, that is the Fifth holy Synod assembled in this place, against Theodore of Mopsuestia, Origen, Didymus, and Evagrius ...";[27] its full conciliar authority has only been questioned in modern times.[28]

There is a Syriac account of the council in the Melkite Chronicle of 641.[29]

Also, one of the Acts of the Council at Constantinople, were the Anathemas issued against those who rejected the Perpetual Virginity of Mary.[30]

Aftermath

Justinian hoped that this would contribute to a reunion between the Chalcedonians and non-Chalcedonians in the eastern provinces of the Empire. Various attempts at reconciliation between these parties within the Byzantine Empire were made by many emperors over the four centuries following the Council of Ephesus, none of them successful. Some attempts at reconciliation, such as this one, the condemnation of the Three Chapters, and the unprecedented posthumous anathematization of Theodore—who had once been widely esteemed as a pillar of orthodoxy—caused further schisms and heresies to arise in the process, such as the aforementioned schism of the Three Chapters and the emergent semi-monophysite compromises of monoenergism and monotheletism. These propositions assert, respectively, that Christ possessed no human energy but only a divine function or principle of operation (purposefully formulated in an equivocal and vague manner, and promulgated between 610 and 622 by the Emperor Heraclius under the advice of the Patriarch Sergius I of Constantinople) and that Christ possessed no human will but only a divine will, "will" is understood to mean the desires and appetites in accord with nature (promulgated in 638 by the same and opposed most notably by Maximus the Confessor).[10]

References

  1. 1.1913 Catholic Encyclopedia: Second Council of Constantinople — Historical treatment of Justinian, Vigilius, the Constituta, eight sessions, Three Chapters, confirmation, and western resistance
  2. 2.Saint Gregory the Great, Letter 1.25 — Early papal reception of the first four councils and condemnation of the Three Chapters in defense of the fifth
  3. 3.International Theological Commission, Select Questions on Christology — Catholic theological account of the one hypostasis, two natures, communication of idioms, and conciliar development after Chalcedon
  4. 4.Catechism of the Catholic Church, 464–483 — Catholic synthesis of the Christological definitions of Ephesus, Chalcedon, and Constantinople II
  5. 5.Decrees of the Ecumenical Councils — The sentence against the Three Chapters, fourteen anathemas, and surviving conciliar material of Constantinople II; English text based on Norman Tanner's critical edition
  6. 6.1913 Catholic Encyclopedia: General Councils — Catholic principles of ecumenical authority and the traditional enumeration and purpose of Constantinople II
  7. 7.See, e.g. Lutheran–Orthodox Joint Commission, Seventh Meeting, The Ecumenical Councils, Common Statement, 1993, available at Lutheran–Orthodox Joint Commission (B. I. 5a. "We agree on the doctrine of God, the Holy Trinity, as formulated by the Ecumenical Councils of Nicaea and Constantinople and on the doctrine of the person of Christ as formulated by the first four Ecumenical Councils.").
  8. 8."NPNF2–14. The Seven Ecumenical Councils, Introduction". CCEL. Retrieved 2014-08-23. (3 names, 3 bishops and 145 other, plus 1 pope, total 152)
  9. 9.[9.2][9.3][9.4]One or more of the preceding sentences incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Thomas J. Shahan (1913). "Councils of Constantinople". In Herbermann, Charles (ed.). Catholic Encyclopedia. New York: Robert Appleton Company.
  10. 10.[10.2][10.3][10.4]Leo Donald Davis (1983), "Chapter 6 Council of Constantinople II, 553", The First Seven Ecumenical Councils (325–787): Their History and Theology, Collegeville, Minnesota: The Liturgical Press, pp. 242–248, ISBN 978-0814656167, retrieved 2014-08-23
  11. 11.Meyendorff 1989, pp. 241–243.
  12. 12."Vigilius | pope | Britannica". www.britannica.com. Retrieved 2022-06-15.
  13. 13.Mansi, Sacrorum Conciliorum nova et amplissima collectio, vol. IX, pp. 414–420, 457–488; cf. Hefele, Conciliengeschichte, vol. II, pp. 905–911.
  14. 14.Hefele, Conciliengeschichte, vol. II, pp. 911–927. (For an equitable appreciation of the conduct of Vigilius see, besides the article VIGILIUS, the judgment of Bois, in Diet. de theol. cath., II, 1238–39.)
  15. 15.Herrin (1989) pp. 240–241
  16. 16.Herrin (1989) p. 244
  17. 17.Herrin (1989) p. 241 and the references therein
  18. 18.Isidore of Seville, Chronica Maiora, no. 397a
  19. 19.Herrin (1989) p. 241
  20. 20.Price (2009) vol. I, p. 73–75
  21. 21."NPNF2–14. The Seven Ecumenical Councils, Excursus on the Genuineness of the Acts of the Fifth Council". Christian Classics Ethereal Library. 1 June 2005. Retrieved 2014-08-23.
  22. 22.Straub, Johannes (1971), Acta Conciliorum Oecumenicorum. Tomus IV, volumen I, Berlin: Walter de Gruyter
  23. 23.Price (2009)
  24. 24.Kalamaras, Meletios (1985), The 5th Ecumenical Council [in Greek], Athens, Greece: Holy Diocese of Nicopolis
  25. 25.Hefele, Conciliengeschichte, vol. II, pp. 855–858
  26. 26.Price (2009) vol. 2, pp. 270–286.
  27. 27."NPNF2–14. The Seven Ecumenical Councils, The Definition of Faith". Christian Classics Ethereal Library. 1 June 2005. Retrieved 2014-08-23.
  28. 28.Price (2009) vol. 2, pp. 270ff.
  29. 29.Hubert Kaufhold (2012), "Sources of Canon Law in the Eastern Churches", in Wilfried Hartmann; Kenneth Pennington (eds.), The History of Byzantine and Eastern Canon Law to 1500, Catholic University of America Press, p. 223.
  30. 30."Perpetual Virginity: Dogmatic Status and Meaning: University of Dayton, Ohio". Archived from the original on 2021-04-19.