"... talk itsef is a sort of spiritualized action; and conversation is one of the loveliest of the arts."
Martin reigned because of the council’s action. Yet as soon as he was pope, he repudiated all acts of the council, except the one by which he ruled. The legal mind of the Roman church had never encountered so great a contradiction not of theory but of practice. Martin had good reason to deny the work of the council, for it raised an important question: Who is greater, a general council that creates the pope, or the pope who claims supremacy over councils?
Reklam
As though choreographed, he stopped. I floundered in my tracks, nettled that I’d allowed him to take the lead in the first place. “By the way, that—” he circled his index finger between us, “—was a dance.”
“It does not count. I was not concentrating.”
“Precisely. That’s the reason it worked.” He tilted his head, layers of dark, disheveled hair slanting with the action.
To counter Alaric’s threat to Italy, the Romans had withdrawn most of their troops from the Rhine frontier in 406 and from Britain the following year. The momentous consequence of this action was a flood of Germanic tribes across the defenseless frontiers. The Vandals pushed their way through Gaul to Spain and, after pressure from the Visigoths, moved on to Africa. In 455 a Vandal raiding force sailed over from Africa, and Rome was sacked a second time.
At the General Council of Ephesus (431), called by Emperor Theodosius II, who had until then supported Nestorius, Cyril got Nestorius deposed before the late arrival of his Syrian supporters. When the Syrians arrived, under the leadership of John, patriarch of Antioch, they proceeded to condemn Cyril and his followers. Finally, the Roman legates arrived and approved Cyril’s action. The whole affair was disgustingly riddled with power politics.
Eventually Theodosius II surrendered to pressure and expelled Nestorius from the capital. He died around 450, an exile in Egypt. Most of his supporters, however, refused to accept his excommunication. Nestorius’s followers fled to Persia and founded there the Nestorian Church, which soon enjoyed an active life.
“Just because someone hurts you doesn't mean you can simply stop loving them. It's not a person's actions that hurt the most. It's the love. If there was no love attached to the action, the pain would be a little easier to bear.”
Reklam
Reklam