MONOPHYSITES, the name given to those who hold the doctrine that Christ had but one composite nature (4)irts) and especially to those who maintained this position in the great controversies of the 5th and 6th centuries. The synod of Chal cedon (q.v.) in 451, following the lines of Pope Leo L's famous letter, endeavoured to steer a middle course between the so-called Nestorian and Eutychian positions. But the followers of Cyril of Alexandria, and with them those of Eutyches, saw in the Chalcedon decree of two natures only another form of the "Nestorian" duality of persons in Christ, and rose everywhere in opposition. For a century they were a menace not only to the peace of the Church but to that of the empire.
During the period between the Council of Chalcedon and the death of Justinian, the movement on the whole gained in strength, especially in Egypt, and was the cause of civil disturb ances in Jerusalem, Alexandria, Antioch, Constantinople and other centres in the East. Justinian himself in his later days adopted it (see below) ; but his successor, Justin II., took no action either way for six or seven years, and then instituted a quiet but thorough system of suppression, closing monophysite churches and imprisoning their bishops and priests.
We find two principal varieties of monophysitism. (a) Severus (bishop of Antioch 513) and his followers objected to Chalcedon only because it was an innovation ; they fully acknowledged the distinctness of the two natures in Christ, insisting only that they became indissolubly united so that there was only one energy (via Katy?) Ocav6poo) iz4p-yEta) of Christ's will. Severus laid great
stress on the human infirmities of Christ as proving that His body was like ours, created and corruptible ; and some of his followers extended the argument to Christ's human soul, which they said was, like ours, limited in knowledge. (b) Julian, bishop of Halicarnassus, and his followers, held that Christ's body was so inseparably united with the Logos as not to be consubstantial with humanity; its natural attributes were so heightened as to make it sinless and incorruptible. Some even held that from the moment the Logos assumed the body the latter was uncreated, the human being transmuted into the divine nature; and the "adiaphorites" went still further, denying like Stephen Barsudaili, an Edessan abbot, all distinction of essence not even between the manhood and the Godhead in Christ, but between the divine and the human, and asserting that "all creatures are of the same essence with the Creator." The disintegration caused by monophysitism largely facilitated the rapid and easy victory of Islam in Syria and Egypt. (See