The one-time bishop of Constantinople who was condemned for the heresy that bears his name that the incarnate Christ had two natures, one human and one divine.
A monk from the church in Antioch who, as a result of his reputation as a pious and able preacher, was appointed bishop of Constantinople, the capital of the Byzantine Empire by Theodosius II in 428. His teaching—that came to be labelled Nestorianism—that there were two separate persons in the Incarnate Christ, one divine and one human, instead of the orthodox belief that the Incarnate Christ was a single person, at once divine and human, provoked violent opposition. The teaching was condemned by the Council of Rome in 430 and, when Nestorius refused to recant, he was condemned of heresy, stripped of his office, his literary works burned and he was exiled by the Council of Ephesus in 431. He spent the next twenty years in the regions of Nabatea and the Libyan Desert before dying about 451.
Many of his followers migrated from Antioch to in Edessa, the intellectual centre of the Syriac Church, and then to other parts of the Persian Sassanid Empire. In this way the Syriac and Assyrian Churches came often to be associated as the Nestorian Church, even though, officially, neither church adopted Nestorius' doctrinal position. This so-called Nestorian Church, however, was missionary-minded and, within 300 years, had founded communities in India, Turkestan, Manchuria, Siberia and China.
See also Council of Ephesus, 431
Further Reading:
Friedrich Loofs, Nestorius and His Place in the History of Christian Doctrine. Whitefish, MY: Kessinger Publishing, 2004.
Susan Wessel, Cyril of Alexander and the Nestorian Controversy: The Making of a Saint and a Heretic. New York: Oxford University Press, 2004.
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