The Council’s Report to Pope Celestine

This letter is printed in Labbe and Cossart’s collection of the councils, volume 3, column 659, and in Migne’s Latin Fathers, volume 50, letter 20, column 511, reprinted from Gallandi’s Library of the Ancient fathers, volume 9.

The report which the holy Council of Ephesus sent to Pope Celestine, explaining what was done in that holy and great council.

The holy synod, assembled by the grace of God at Ephesus, the metropolis, to the most holy Celestine, our fellow minister: greetings in the Lord. [a]

The zeal of your holiness for piety, and your care for the right faith, which are so welcome and so pleasing to God, the Savior of us all, deserve all admiration. For it is your custom in such great matters to test all things, and you have made the strengthening of the churches your own care. But since it is right that everything that has taken place should be brought to the knowledge of your holiness, we are writing of necessity to tell you this. By the will of Christ, the Savior of us all, and in keeping with the orders of the most pious and Christ-loving emperors, we gathered in the metropolis of the Ephesians from many widely scattered regions, more than two hundred bishops in all. Then, in keeping with the decrees of the Christ-loving emperors who had assembled us, we fixed the feast of holy Pentecost as the date for the meeting of the holy synod, all of us agreeing to it. We did so especially because the emperors’ letters said that anyone who did not arrive by the appointed time would be absent without a good conscience and would be without excuse before God and men. The most reverend John, bishop of Antioch, stayed behind. It was not in singleness of heart, nor because the length of the journey held him up, but because he was hiding in his mind a plan and an intention so displeasing to God, which he made plain when he reached Ephesus not long afterward. [b]

So we put off the meeting of the council for sixteen whole days after the appointed day of holy Pentecost. Meanwhile many of the bishops and clergy fell ill and were heavily burdened by the expense, and some even died. A great injury was thus being done to the great synod, as your holiness easily sees. For he used such a long delay so perversely that many who came from much farther away arrived before him. Nevertheless, after sixteen days had passed, certain of the bishops who were with him arrived ahead of him, namely two metropolitans, Alexander of Apamea and Alexander of Hierapolis. When we complained, not once but often, about how late the most reverend bishop John was in coming, we were told: “He commanded us to tell your reverence that if anything should delay him, you should not put off the synod but do what is right.” After we received this message, it was plain, both from his delay and from what we had just been told, that he refused to attend the council, whether out of friendship for Nestorius, or because Nestorius had been a cleric of a church under his authority, or out of regard for petitions some had made on his behalf. So the holy council sat in the great church of Ephesus which bears the name of Mary. [c]

When everyone had eagerly come together, Nestorius alone was found missing from the council. So the holy synod, in keeping with the canons, sent bishops to admonish him a first, a second and a third time. But he surrounded his house with soldiers and set himself against the laws of the church. He neither showed himself nor gave any answer for his wicked blasphemies. After this the letters written to him by the most holy and most reverend bishop of the church of Alexandria, Cyril, were read. The holy synod approved them as orthodox and without fault, and in no point out of agreement either with the divinely inspired Scriptures or with the faith handed down and set forth in the great synod of the holy fathers which assembled some time ago at Nicaea in Bithynia. Your holiness, too, rightly examined this and bore witness to it. [d] On the other hand, the letter of Nestorius was read, which he had written to Cyril, our most holy and reverend brother and fellow minister, already mentioned. The holy synod judged that what was taught in it was wholly foreign to the faith of the apostles and the gospel, sick with many strange blasphemies.

His most impious expositions were likewise read, and also the letter your holiness wrote to him, in which he was rightly condemned as one who had written blasphemy and had put irreligious views into his own private interpretations. After this a just sentence of deposition was pronounced against him. This sentence is all the more just because, while he still held the church of Constantinople, he was so far from repenting, or from confessing the points on which he had blasphemed, that even in the very metropolis of the Ephesians he delivered a sermon to certain of the metropolitan bishops, men not ignorant but learned and God-fearing, in which he was bold enough to say, “I do not confess a God two or three months old.” And he said other things more outrageous than this. Therefore, as an impious and most pestilent heresy, which perverts our most pure religion and overthrows from its foundation the whole plan of the mystery, that is, of the incarnation, we have cast it down, as we said above. But it was not possible, it seems, for those who have a sincere love for Christ and are zealous in the Lord not to meet with many trials. For we had hoped that the most reverend John, bishop of Antioch, would praise the careful diligence and piety of the synod, and perhaps blame the slowness of Nestorius’s deposition. But everything turned out contrary to our hope. He proved to be an enemy, and a most warlike one, to the holy synod and even to the orthodox faith of the churches, as these things show. [e]

As soon as he reached Ephesus, before he had even shaken off the dust of the journey or changed his traveling clothes, he gathered those who had sided with Nestorius, who had uttered blasphemies against their head and all but mocked the glory of Christ. He gathered to himself, as a body, thirty men, I suppose, who bore the name of bishops. Some of them had no sees and wandered about without dioceses; others had for many years been deposed from their metropolitan cities for serious reasons; and with them were Pelagians and followers of Celestius, and some of those who had been driven out of Thessaly. With these he presumed to commit a wickedness no one had ever done before. All by himself he drew up a paper which he called a deposition, and in it he reviled and reproached the most holy and reverend Cyril, bishop of Alexandria, and the most reverend Memnon, bishop of Ephesus, our brother and fellow minister. None of us knew anything about it, and not even those who joined in the reviling knew what was being done, or for what reason they had presumed to do it. Ignoring the anger of God at such conduct, disregarding the canons of the church, and forgetting that by such a course they were hurrying to their own destruction, they then reviled the whole synod under the name of an excommunication. They put up these acts of theirs on the public notice boards and set them out to be read by anyone who wished, posting them on the outside of the theaters so as to make a spectacle of their impiety. Nor was even this the limit of their audacity: as if they had done something in keeping with the canons, they dared to bring what they had done to the ears of the most pious and Christ-loving emperors. Things being so, the most holy and reverend Cyril, bishop of Alexandria, and the most reverend Memnon, bishop of the city of Ephesus, presented written statements of their own composing, accusing the most reverend bishop John and those who had done this with him. They begged our holy synod to summon John and those with him according to the canons, so that they might answer for their daring acts, and, if they had any complaints to make, might state and prove them. For in their written deposition, or rather their sheet of abuse, they had given this as a pretext: “They are Apollinarians, and Arians, and Eunomians, and that is why they have been deposed by us.” So, with those who had suffered their abuse present, we necessarily assembled again in the great church, more than two hundred bishops, and by a first, second and third summons on two days we called John and his companions to the synod. We did this so that they might examine those they had reviled, give their explanations, and state the causes that had led them to draw up the sentence of deposition. But he did not dare to come. [f]

If he could truly prove that the holy men named above were heretics, it was right that he should come and prove the truth of the charge which, taken as a real and certain crime, had led to his rash sentence against them. But condemned by his own conscience, he did not come. What he had planned was this: he thought that when that groundless and most unjust abuse was done away with, the just vote which the synod had cast against the heretic Nestorius would be undone along with it. Being justly provoked, therefore, we resolved to inflict on him and those with him, according to law, the same penalty which he, against the law, had pronounced on men convicted of no fault. But although he would have suffered this punishment most justly and lawfully, we have reserved it for the decision of your holiness, in the hope that his rashness might be overcome by our patience. In the meantime we have cut them off from communion and taken from them all priestly power, so that they may not be able to do harm by their opinions. For those who are in the habit of rushing so savagely, cruelly and against the canons into such dreadful and most wicked deeds, how could it not be necessary to strip them of the power to do harm, a power which in fact they did not possess? [h]

We are all in communion with our brothers and fellow ministers, Cyril the bishop and Memnon, who had suffered abuse at their hands. Since that rash act of their accusers we have performed, and still perform, the liturgy in common, all of us celebrating the synaxis together. So we have made their game on paper void and shown that it had no validity or force at all. For it was mere abuse and nothing else. What kind of synod could thirty men hold, some of them marked with the stamp of heresy and some without sees and driven out of their dioceses? Or what strength could it have against a synod gathered from the whole world? For there sat with us the most reverend bishops Arcadius and Projectus, and with them the most holy presbyter Philip, all sent by your holiness. They gave us your presence and filled the place of the Apostolic See. So let your holiness be angered at what took place. But suppose license were granted to any who wished to heap abuse on the greater sees, and so, unlawfully and against the canons, to pass sentence, or rather to utter abuse, against those over whom they have no power, against those who for the sake of religion have endured such great struggles, through which piety now shines forth by the prayers of your holiness. If all this, we say, were tolerated, the affairs of the church would fall into the greatest confusion. But when those who dare to do such things have been rightly punished, all disturbance will cease, and the reverence due to the canons will be kept by all. [i]

When the acts concerning the deposition of the most irreligious Pelagians and Celestians had been read in the holy synod, those against Celestius, Pelagius, Julian, Praesidius, Florus, Marcellian, Orontius, and those inclined to the same errors, we too judged it right that what your holiness had determined about them should stand strong and firm. We were all of the same mind, holding them deposed. And so that you may know fully everything that has been done, we have sent you a copy of the Acts and of the signatures of the synod. We pray that you, dearly beloved and most longed for, may be strong and mindful of us in the Lord. [j]