The Synod of Hatfield
The Roman Emperor offered to unite the world’s squabbling churches – but it was the kind of offer you can’t refuse.
680
Anglo-Saxon Britain 410-1066
The Roman Emperor offered to unite the world’s squabbling churches – but it was the kind of offer you can’t refuse.
680
Anglo-Saxon Britain 410-1066
English bishops met at Hatfield in 680, on the eve of a major Church Council at Constantinople. In the Imperial capital, the talk was all of uniting the world’s churches, but Pope Agatho wanted Britain’s support for something more radical: he meant to declare the gospel, even if he went the way of his predecessor, Martin.
IN 628, the Roman Emperor Heraclius tried his hand at ecumenical reunion. Syria and Egypt had briefly been overrun by Persia, and he was convinced that a united empire needed a united church; however, the churches there had broken away in 451, claiming that by talking of Christ’s ‘two natures’, divine and human, Constantinople’s bishops split him into two people. Solemnly affirming that he was one person had not satisfied them.*
Encouraged by Patriarch Sergius, Heraclius now proposed saying that Christ has only one will,* as something everyone could get behind. Some were pleased, but others protested that Scripture clearly shows Christ disciplining his human impulses with divine determination, implying two wills.* Un-repentant, the Imperial throne persevered; even after Syria and Egypt were lost to the Arabs twenty years later, rendering the debate largely academic, Emperor Constans and Patriarch Paul brooked no dissent. A monk named Maximus was cruelly mutilated, and banished to Georgia;* even Pope Martin of Rome was tortured, and died of his wounds in the Crimea, defiant to the last.*
It is true that back in 428 Patriarch Nestorius had spoken rashly, saying that Mary was the mother of the man Christ but not of God. It was a position incompatible with Scripture, and implied that God never really became man; but the Greek Church had condemned Nestorius’s doctrine at the Council of Chalcedon in 451. See How St Euphemia Saved Christmas.
A position known as Monothelitism, from the Greek mono (single) and thélima (will).
The Epistle to the Hebrews testifies that Christ had to exercise self-discipline at some considerable cost, though in doing so he never once sinned. See Hebrews 2:16-18, Hebrews 4:15-16 and Hebrews 5:7-9. Christ’s whole life shows the same struggle. See e.g. Luke 22:39-46.
St Maximus the Confessor (?580-662). Maximus gave a helpful analogy for Christ’s two wills: just as a sword in the fire burns like fire but still cuts like a sword, so too Christ’s human freewill became divinely strong but remained human. It was with such arguments that Maximus brought St Martin’s predecessor Pope Theodore (r. 642-649) over to the Orthodox side. His feast day is August 13th.
St Martin I of Rome (r. 649-655). He summoned the Lateran Council of 649 which, with St Maximus among those present, condemned monothelitism (the ‘one will’ doctrine) along with Patriarchs of Constantinople Sergius and Paul, and the Emperors Heraclius and Constans II. In fairness to Paul, who by then was both very ill and very repentant, his intervention saved Martin from public execution. Martin’s feast day is kept on April 13th, though he died on September 16th.
Suggest answers to this question. See if you can limit one answer to exactly seven words.
Why did Emperor Heraclius intervene in a church dispute in 638?
Because he thought Imperial unity was threatened.