NESTO'RIUS, a native of Germanicia, a city of northern Syria, in the patriarchate of Antioch, was probably a disciple of the celebrated Theodore of Mopsuestia; and having received priest's orders at Antioch, became so eminent for his fluency, if not eloquence, as a preacher, and for grave demeanor and exemplary life, that on occasion of a dispute about the election of a patriarch of Constantinople he was selected by the emperor, in 428 A.D., to fill the vacant see. Soon after his consecration a controversy arose as to the divine and human natures of our Lord, in which Nestorius took a leading part. One of the priests, who followed Nestorius to Constantinople, Anastasius, having in a sermon, which was by some ascribed to Nestorius himself, denied that the virgin Mary could be truly called the " toothier of God," being only in truth the mother of the man Christ, Nestorius war:1113- defended Anastasius, espoused this view, and elaborated it into the theory whieb has since been known by his name, and which equivalently, if not in formal terms, exaggerated the distinction of two natures in our Lord into a distinction of two persons—the human person of Christ and the Divine Person of the Word. An animated controversy ensued, which extended from Constantinople to the other patriarehates, and drew from Cyril, patriarch of Alexandria, a formal condemnation of the doctrine of Nestorius in twelve anathemas, still preserved, and a similar condemnation, accompanied by a threat of deposition and excommunication, from Celestine, bishop of Rome, unless he would withdraw the obnoxious doctrine. .Nestorius remaining firm in his opinions,
a general council was convened at Ephesus in 431, at which Cyril took the most active and prominent part, and in which. notwithstanding the absence of the patriarch of Anti och and his bishops, Nestorius was condemned and deposed. Considerable opposition was offered to this judgment for a time, but ultimately Nestorius was confined in a monastery near Constantinople, whence, after four years, still persisting in his views, he was banished to the greater oasis in upper Egypt, and after several changes of his place of confinement, died in exile. The account given by Evageius, that his death was caused by a disease in which his tongue was eaten by worms, rests, according to Evageius him self, on a single and unnamed authority. The more probable narratives ascribe his death to the effects of a fall. The date of this event is uncertain. It was after 439, when Socrates wrote his history (Mist. Ecc. vii. 34), but there is little doubt that he was already dead in 450, when the Eutyehian controversy first began to attract notice.