Report to the Emperor, Deposing Cyril and Memnon a Second Time

Your piety, which shines out for the good of the empire and of the churches of God, commanded us to assemble at Ephesus in order to bring peace and benefit to the church, not to confuse and disturb it. The commands of your majesty plainly and clearly show your pious and peaceful intentions toward the churches of Christ. But Cyril of Alexandria, a man who seems to have been born and bred for the ruin of the churches, took the reckless Memnon of Ephesus as his partner. First of all he has broken your calming and pious decree, and so has shown his general wickedness. Your majesty had ordered that an inquiry and a careful testing be made concerning the faith, and that with the consent and agreement of all. Cyril has been challenged on the charge of holding the doctrines of Apollinarius, or rather he has convicted himself, by the letter with anathemas that he recently sent to the imperial city; by it he is shown to share the views of the impious heretic Apollinarius. Yet he pays no attention to this state of affairs, and, as though we were living with no emperor to govern us, he is going on to every kind of lawlessness. He himself ought to be called to account for his unsound opinion about our Lord Jesus Christ. Instead, seizing an authority given him neither by the canons nor by your edicts, he is rushing headlong into every kind of disorder and illegality. [a]

Moved by these things, the holy synod, which has refused to accept his schemes for damaging the faith, deposes him for the reasons given above. It also deposes Memnon, who has been his adviser and accomplice throughout. Memnon has kept up constant agitation against the most holy bishops for refusing to agree to Cyril’s ruinous false teaching. He has shut the churches and every place of prayer, as though we were living among the pagans and the enemies of God. He has brought in the mob of Ephesus, so that every day we are in the greatest danger, while we give no thought to defending ourselves but attend to the right doctrines of true religion. For the overthrow of these men is one and the same thing as the establishing of orthodoxy. [c] From his own Chapters your majesty will have no difficulty in seeing his impious mind. He stands convicted of trying, so to speak, to raise from Hades the impious Apollinarius, who died in his heresy, and of attacking the churches and the orthodox faith. His published writings show him anathematizing at one stroke the evangelists, the apostles, and those who came after them as forefathers of the church. These men, moved not by their own imaginings but by the Holy Spirit, preached the true faith and proclaimed the gospel. That faith and that gospel are indeed opposed to what this man holds and teaches, and by drumming his teaching into people he wants to make his own private wickedness master of the world. Since this is intolerable to us, we have taken the proper course, relying at once on the grace of God and on your majesty’s goodwill. [d]

We know that you honor nothing more highly than the sacred faith in which you and your thrice-blessed forefathers were brought up. From them you have received the lasting scepter of empire, and you have always put down those who oppose the apostolic doctrines. Such an opponent is Cyril, named above. With the help of Memnon he has captured Ephesus as he might some fortress, and he justly shares the sentence of deposition with his ally. Justly, because besides all that has been said, they have boldly tried every kind of assault and every violence against us, who, in order to meet in council in fulfillment of your edict, have set aside every claim of home, of country and of self. We are now the prey of tyranny, unless your piety steps in and orders us to assemble in some other place near at hand. There we will be able, from the Scriptures and from the writings of the Fathers, to refute beyond contradiction both Cyril and those whom his cleverness has made his victims. We have mercifully expelled these men from communion, holding out the hope of salvation if they repent. Yet, as though they were on some campaign of an uncivilized soldiery, they have up to this moment supplied him with the means for his lawlessness. Some of them were deposed long ago and have been restored by Cyril. Some were excommunicated by their own metropolitans and have been admitted again into communion by him. Others have been pinned by various charges and have been promoted by him to honor. All through, the main motive of what he has done has been the effort to achieve his heretical purpose by force of numbers. He does not reckon, as he ought, that in matters of true religion what is needed is not numbers but correct doctrine and the truth of the apostles’ teaching. What is needed are men who are able to establish these points, not by recklessness and domineering self-assertion, but by the reverent use of the testimony and example of the apostles. [e]

For all these reasons we beg and implore your majesty to bring prompt help to the truth under attack, and to put a stop without delay to the domineering eagerness of these men. Like a hurricane, it is sweeping the less moderate among us into ruinous heresy. Your piety has cared for the churches in Persia and among the barbarians. It is only right that you should not neglect those that are tossed by the storm within the borders of the Roman empire. [f]