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Leo's decision to write letters offering theological teaching was a new departure for the papacy. The Tome was his most ambitious theological project; arguments against his authorship are weak. It is uncharacteristic of the main emphases of his theological development in previous years, where he had sought to coordinate rather than distinguish the two natures of Christ. It can best be understood as a response to what he thought to be the opposite errors of Eutyches and Nestorius. He revised his understanding of Nestorius when he was accused of Nestorianism in the aftermath of Chalcedon, and produced a more characteristic and satisfactory Christological statement in the Letter to the Palestininan monks.

This chapter finds that Theodore of Mopsuestia and Nestorius understand salvation as the human ascent from the current imperfect age to a perfect future age (the second katastasis), and grace is God's gift of indwelling, aid, and co‐operation in that ascent. Christ is the supreme example of this co‐operative grace and is divine in the sense that he is indwelt by God the Son in a unique way. As this uniquely graced man, Christ is the one who blazes the trail for Christians, who then follow him in the ascent to the future age.

Having briefly surveyed various inadequate approaches to the Nestorian controversy, the author shows that the protection of the unqualified divine impassibility from being compromised by any involvement in suffering was at the heart of Theodore’s and Nestorius’ christology. Nestorians charged Cyril with being an advocate of theopatheia. In response, Cyril developed a doctrine of God’s appropriation of human suffering and insisted upon the divine self-emptying in the incarnation.

This chapter examines several homilies that Nestorius delivered during his controversy with Cyril, in the light of Nestorius' biblical interpretative method and his early rhetorical training in the city of Antioch. His homilies presented his christological views by carefully explicating the biblical text. Though his style differed from that of Cyril, his homilies displayed his rhetorical skill, which was more learned and studied than the homespun rhetoric of his adversary. Like his Antiochene counterparts, Nestorius believed that homilectic discourse, supported by good exegetical method, could resolve all the difficult doctrinal questions facing the churches.

Places Cyril in historical context, and outlines the theme of the appropriation of divine life in Cyril’s narrative of salvation. Through this narrative of divine life, Cyril links the inter-trinitarian life of God to the human reception of that life through the Incarnate Word and the Spirit. A concise account of Cyril as biblical exegete is offered, and the overall aims of the study are enumerated.

Discusses the debate about the nature of Christ and its repercussions from its origins to the Council of Ephesus in 431. Divisions on the question were by no means clear‐cut in their relation to Nicene orthodoxy. The major division became defined around the figures of Nestorius of Constantinople and Cyril of Alexandria. At the Council of Ephesus, Cyril's ‘Twelve Anathemas’ condemned Nestorius and in the long run they were to gain the backing of Rome.

Continues the history of the Christological debate from the Formulary of Reunion in 433 to the break down of unity and deposition of Flavian, bishop of Constantinople in 449. The western emperor Valentinian III and his powerful and fervently anti‐Nestorian elder sister Pulcheria worked for union, but met opposition in the east. Cyril of Alexandria remained a dominant figure until 444, but the churches in the major eastern sees were still divided, with conflicts often degenerating into disorder. The occasion for the break down was provided by the views of the archimandrite Eutyches, whose ideas on the one nature of Christ were in some respects outside the Formulary of Reunion.

This study explains the paradox regarding Cyril and Nestorius in the Eastern church history by situating the Nestorian controversy within a broader historical and cultural context. It examines how Cyril of Alexandria emerged as one of the most revered and influential church fathers of Byzantine history, his orthodox credentials intact, while Nestorius became one of the archetypal heretics of the Eastern church. It explores this question in relation to a broader literary context by examining the full range of literary genre, including letters, homilies, conciliar acts, exegetical and Christological treatises, and ecclesiastical narratives.

After Chalcedon, Cyril's Twelve Chapters, which he had composed in opposition to Nestorius and which the Antiochenes had said were heretical, were finally reaffirmed at the Fifth Ecumenical Council that the emperor Justinian convened in 533. By the seventh century, Cyril was considered to be one of the greatest church fathers of Eastern Christianity, while Nestorius emerged as second only to Arius, the quintessential heretic of the Eastern church. Cyril's complete rhetorical victory implies that his success was not simply a political accomplishment based on the alliances he fashioned. Instead, it was his strategy in identifying himself with the orthodoxy of Athanasius in his victory over Arianism, and in skillfully using the tropes and figures of the second sophistic that elevated Cyril to orthodox status.

Sedulius is a rather shadowy figure, though he himself describes a circle of Christian devotees, probably in Italy, to which he belongs. Almost exactly one hundred years later than Juvencus – this chapter includes a brief survey of the significant developments in Christian poetry in that time – Sedulius differs notably from him, concentrating for the most part on the New Testament miracles, which he elaborates with powerful rhetoric. Each of his five books is examined in turn, with particular attention to the first, introductory book, in which his ingenious and obviously admiring uses of Vergil are prominent. Sedulius's strong theological position centres on his attacks on the controversial Nestorius, but it is also clear throughout the work, that he too engages thoughtfully with the diction and artistry of Vergil (though not, it is argued, with his hero Aeneas).

This chapter addresses the social roots and effects of doctrinal conflict during the Nestorian controversy. It examines the dispute over Nestorius from the perspective of the Antiochene network that supported and then abandoned him and describes the social actions of Antiochene clerics as they fractured and reassembled their network. It suggests that Theodoret of Cyrrhus' successful mediation in this controversy can be credited to a well-timed rationale for reforming his community.

The Imperial “laws” or letters concerning Nestorius and Irenaeus, addressed to major Prefects and the edicts that in their turn were broadcasted to the public, represent the best evidence for the coexistence of Latin and Greek in the Theodosian Empire. Nestorius's highly personal work was preserved only in a Syriac translation, apparently made in the sixth century, and known through a single medieval manuscript. In connection to this matter, Irenaeus composed a history in Greek of the aftermath of the First Council of Ephesus up to 435 or 436. The entire story that Irenaeus told in his Tragoedia was an act of moral defiance, and assertion of the validity and consistency of his own position. Nestorius gave an even more overtly polemical reinterpretation of events.

This chapter examines the role of the cult of the Virgin in the controversies leading up to the Council of Ephesus as well as its outcome. Toward the end of the twentieth century, a number of studies addressed the impact that an already vibrant Marian piety seems to have had in galvanizing the resistance to Nestorius in Constantinople and elsewhere. These studies also often identify the Empress Pulcheria as an instrumental figure who was particularly responsible for deploying Marian devotion to orchestrate Nestorius’s downfall. More recent scholarship, however, has cast some doubt on the extent of Pulcheria’s involvement in both the promotion of the early Marian cult and Nestorius’s demise. This chapter first considers the controversy involving Nestorius stemming from the issue of Marian veneration before discussing his rift with Pulcheria. It then looks at Pulcheria’s relationship with Proclus, along with her participation in the cult of the Virgin and personal devotion to Mary. It also considers how much popular devotion to Mary in Constantinople and elsewhere may have actually contributed to Nestorius’s ultimate demise.

The first chapter opens an argument about Cassian’s pneumatological project by addressing three aspects of his ascetic pneumatology. Cassian’s theology of the Holy Spirit is orthodox according to the Nicene Catholic position in the 5th century. He applies this belief in the full divinity of the Holy Spirit to the ascetic traditions he knew well to argue that the Holy Spirit is the guide for reading scripture and that the Holy Spirit is the former of virtues in monks.

Melania the Younger died more than a decade before the Council of Chalcedon (451 CE) and the ensuing bitter conflicts between Chalcedonian and miaphysite Christians. Nevertheless, the Greek Vita by Gerontius portrays her as actively involved in numerous religious and political controversies surrounding bishop Nestorius preceding her death. This chapter argues that the historicity of her alleged anti-Nestorian activities in the Vita must remain in doubt. The anti-Nestorian Melania of the Greek Vita appears to support Gerontius’s miaphysite condemnation of the politically dominant Chalcedonian Christians, providing him with a useful weapon in the pressing Christological battles he faced following her death. While the anti-Nestorian stance Gerontius attributed to Melania remained orthodox in Greek Christianity, his anti-Chalcedonian views, which he considered the natural extension of Melania’s, did not. Gerontius’s Vita Melania thus serves as a microcosm of the complex and highly politicized fifth-century disputes over the definition of Christian orthodoxy.