Second Council of Constantinople
| The Second Council of Constantinople in a medieval manuscript
The Second Council of Constantinople in a medieval manuscript
| |
| Convoked | Emperor Justinian I, with eventual papal confirmation |
|---|---|
| Dates | 5 May–2 June 553 |
| Location | Constantinople |
| Pope | Vigilius |
| President | Eutychius of Constantinople |
| Attendance | About 150 bishops; traditional subscription totals vary |
| Principal acts | Sentence on the Three Chapters and fourteen Christological anathemas |
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.
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]
References
- Back to citation 1913 Catholic Encyclopedia: Second Council of Constantinople — Historical treatment of Justinian, Vigilius, the Constituta, eight sessions, Three Chapters, confirmation, and western resistance.
- Back to citation 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.
- Back to citation International Theological Commission, Select Questions on Christology — Catholic theological account of the one hypostasis, two natures, communication of idioms, and conciliar development after Chalcedon.
- Back to citation Catechism of the Catholic Church, 464–483 — Catholic synthesis of the Christological definitions of Ephesus, Chalcedon, and Constantinople II.
- Back to citation 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.
- Back to citation 1913 Catholic Encyclopedia: General Councils — Catholic principles of ecumenical authority and the traditional enumeration and purpose of Constantinople II.