S. Cyril and the Council of Chalcedon, and
the attempt has been made to prove that Cyril himself was a
Monophysite.[9] The best refutation of this view is the perfect
harmony of the decisions of the Fifth General Council with those of the
previous Oecumenical assemblies, and the fact that no novelty could be
discovered to have been added to "the Faith" when the "Three Chapters"
were condemned.

With the close of the Council the definition of Christian doctrine
passes into the background till the rise of the Monothelite
controversy. When its decisions were accepted, the labours of
Justinian had given peace to the churches.

[Sidenote: and his successors.]

From 565, when Justinian died, to 628, when Heraclius freed the Empire
from the danger of Persian conquest, were years of comparative rest in
the Church. It was a period of missionary extension, of quiet
assertion of spiritual authority, in the midst of political trouble and
disaster. Gibbon, who asserts that Justinian died a heretic, adds,
"The reigns of his four successors, Justin, Tiberius, Maurice, and
Phocas, are distinguished by a rare, though fortunate, vacancy in the
ecclesiastical history {23} of the East"; and the sarcasm, though not
wholly accurate, may serve to express the gradual progress of unity
which marked the years up to the accession of Heraclius. The history
of religion is concerned rather with those outside than those within
the Church. That history we need not follow, and we may pass over this
period with only a brief allusion to the development of independence
outside the immediate range of the ecclesiastical power of New Rome.
[Sidenote: Rise of separated bodies.] Heresies grew as an expression of
national independence. The Chaldaean Church, which stretched to Persia
and India, was Nestorian. The Monophysites won the Coptic Church of
Egypt, the Abyssinian Church, the Jacobites in Syria, the Armenians in
the heart of Asia Minor. In the mountains of Lebanon the
Monothelites--of whom we have to speak shortly--organised the Maronite
Church; and in Georgia the Church was aided by geographical conditions
as well as historical development to ignore the overlordship of the
Church of Antioch. So in Europe grew up with the new States, the
Bulgarian, the Serbian, and the Wallachian Churches.

[Sidenote: Missions and failures.]

It was thus that, alike as statesmen and Christians, the emperors were
devoted advocates of missions. Their wars