9. Radical Monophysitism

The struggle entered a new stage when, about the same time, the Syrian Monophysites attempted to go beyond the Henoticon as an inadequate conces- sion. Flavian, bishop of Antioch from 498 (or 499), had been approved by the emperor and had signed the Hen oticvn, while apparently at heart favoring the orthodox creed. The Monophysites of his province rose in revolt against him under the leadership of Philoxenus (q.v.), made bishop of Hierapolis by Peter the Fuller, and succeeded in inducing him to condemn (in a synod at Antioch 508-509) Diodorus, Theodore, and others of the same group, and to express his own belief in four distinctly Monophysite propositions. Not contented even with this, in a synod held at Sidon, 511-512, Philoxenus demanded the explicit repudiation of the Council of Chalcedon. Flavian, however, strengthened by the presence of the less flexible Elias, patriarch of Jerusalem, refused to do this in the synod, but later yielded to imperial and popular pressure and anathematized the Council of Chalcedon. His submission profited him little, for in 512 he was banished by the emperor to Petm in Arabia. The change in the policy of Anastasius is assigned by Theodorus Lector (ii. 20) to the period following the end of the Persian war in 506, by which time he had come under the personal influence not only of Philoxenus but of John III. (Niceta), patriarch of Alexandria 505-515, and still more of the clever Severna, who from 510, with many other monks of Palestine, was present in the capital. The position of Macedonius became increasingly difficult; his opponents were continually finding new causes of complaint against him, and the end was that he was banished (Aug. 7, 511) to Euchaita, like his predecessor. His place was taken by Timotheus Litrobulbes or Celon, who interpreted the Henoticon in a Monophysite sense; but the unrest was not appeased, and finally a fierce revolt broke out over the Monophysite interpolation into the Trisa gion, when Anastasius grew timid. Yet the Monophysite party in the East was on the eve of its triumph. Flavian was succeeded by Severus on Nov. 6, 512. He called a synod at Tyre in 513 (or 515, according to Diekamp), at which Chalcedou was repudiated and the Henoticon, with the Monophysite exposition of Philoxenus and himself, affirmed. Soon afterward (in 514 according to the usually accepted chronology; in Aug., 516, according to Diekamp), Elias of Jerusalem was banished to Aga on the Red Sea, where he died in 518; and his successor, John, was kept in check by the work of Sabas, the pillar of Palestinian orthodoxy. In Egypt, under the illegally chosen Patriarch Dioscurus II., Monophysitism kept the upper hand; and at the death of Anastasius (July 9, 518) the moderate party of the strict adherents of the Henoticon had practically disappeared.

No real change took place in the relations with the Roman see under Anastasius. Pope Gelasius 1.