482 - Acephali
In the year AD 482, while the Monophysite and Monothelite controversies were raging, the Emperor Zeno issued his famous letter of attempted reconciliation entitled the Hexoticon. Peter Mongus, who had been the bitter opponent of, and had been excommunicated by Proterius, a former bishop of Alexandria [AD 457], was informed that he might be elevated to that see, then vacant by the expulsion of John Talaia, on the two conditions of admitting the Proterians to communion and subscribing the Henoticon. On Peter's assent to these conditions, most of the Catholics submitted to his jurisdiction.
But the Ultra-Eutychians still clinging to their denial of the two natures in Christ, and still bitterly hostile to the Council of Chalcedon, withdrew themselves, and formed a sect which, either from having no one conspicuous leader, or from the absence of bishops to head the movement, was called the sect of the Acephali. These Acephali broke up into the three secta of Antropomorphites, Barsanuphists, and Esaianists, but all remained separate from the body of the Monophysites for about three hundred years, though still retaining the distinctive name of the original sect. The Acephali were, however, gradually absorbed by the Jacobites (as the Monophysites were called in later times), and ceased to exist as a separate sect at the beginning of the ninth century.
|
NEWSLETTER
|
| Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list |
|
|
|
