asised by the decree of 666 which declared Ravenna free from papal
jurisdiction, and in the condemnation of Honorius by the Sixth General
Council. [Sidenote: The Trullian Council, 691.] So, again, the Council
at Constantinople called _in Trullo_ (691), directed canon after canon
against the customs and claims of the Roman Church. This independence
was emphasised by the compilation of a _Syntagma_, or collection of
canons, parallel to the much later collection in the West. These
canons, it may be remarked in passing, throw most interesting light on
the customs of the Greek Church--on clerical marriage, for example,
which was allowed to be dissolved only by the clergy of the recently
converted barbarous tribes, among whom a return to celibate life might
sometimes be advisable.

So much for the general characteristics of the period 628-725. We may
now turn to the critical point of theology on which the ecclesiastical
history of the time turned.

Monophysitism was not dead in spite of Chalcedon {86} or
Constantinople. [Sidenote: The Aphthartodocetic controversy.] The
Fourth and Fifth General Council had still left points of debate for
those within as well as those without the Church. In the form which it
was asserted that Justinian had himself come to accept, it asserted the
Lord's Body to be incapable of sin or corruption, and only subject to
suffering by the voluntary exercise of His divine power. While the
accusations against Justinian in John of Nikiu and Nicetius of Trier
are contradictory to each other, and make it clear that he did not
accept the opinion of Julian of Halicarnassus, they may serve to
illustrate the confusion of thought with which these subjects were
handled. The followers of Julian, whose view has here been summarised,
were nicknamed by those of the famous monk Severus (Monophysite
patriarch of Antioch in 513), "Aphthartodocetes" or "Phantasiasts."
Those who followed Severus, while they were prepared to recognise two
natures in Christ, yet dwelt strongly on their union, and especially on
the "one energy" of the Lord's will. From this a further step was to
be taken. There were some who believed in the transformation of the
human nature into the Divine, and who came to be called _Aktistetes_,
and, in a still further extreme, _Adiaphorites_, when they denied any
distinction between the Godhead and manhood in Christ. The error at
the root of all these contentions seems to have been the dwellin