from Tomi to Constantinople monks who fancied that they could
reconcile Christendom by adding to the Creed, a delusion as futile as
that of those who think they can advance towards the same end by
subtracting from it. After a debate on the matter in Constantinople,
Justinian consulted the pope. Letters passed with no result. In 533,
when the matter was revived by the Akoimetai, Justinian published an
edict and wrote letters to pope and patriarch to bring the matter to a
final decision. "If One of the Trinity did {15} not suffer in the
flesh, neither was He born in the flesh, nor can Mary be said, verily
and truly, to be His Mother." The emperor himself was accused of
heresy by the Vigilists; and at last Pope John II. declared the phrase,
"One Person of the Trinity was crucified," to be orthodox. His
judgment was confirmed by the Fifth General Council.[1]

The position which the emperor thus assumed was not one which the East
alone welcomed. Rome, too, recognised that the East had power to make
decrees, so long as they were consonant with apostolic doctrine.

[Sidenote: The Monophysites.]

Justinian now gave himself eagerly to the reconciliation of the
Monophysites. In 535 Anthimus, bishop of Trebizond, a friend of the
deposed patriarch of Antioch, Severus, who was at least
semi-Monophysite, was elected to the patriarchal throne of New Rome.
In the same year Pope Agapetus (534-6) came to Constantinople as an
envoy of a Gothic king, and he demanded that Anthimus should make
formal profession of orthodoxy. The result was not satisfactory: the
new patriarch was condemned by the emperor with the sanction of the
pope and the approval of a synod. Justinian then issued a decree
condemning Monophysitism, which he ordered the new patriarch to send to
the Eastern Churches. Mennas, the successor of Anthimus, in his local
synod, had condemned and deposed the Monophysite bishops. The
controversy was at an end.

More important in its results was the dispute with the so-called
Origenists. S. Sabas came from {16} Palestine in 531 to lay before the
emperor the sad tale of the spread of their evil doctrines, but he died
in the next year, and the Holy Land remained the scene of strife
between the two famous monasteries of the Old and the New Laura.
[Sidenote: The Origenists.] In 541 or 542 a synod at Antioch condemned
the doctrines of Origen, but the only result was that Jerusalem refused
communion with the other Eastern