Dioscorus, patriarch of Alexandria from 444 until his deposition at the Council of Chalcedon in 451, is among the late antique bishops most consequential for the history of the Church but has until recently lacked a dedicated monograph on his career with sufficient scholarly rigor. Fortunately, this is no longer the case thanks to the insightful and ground-breaking study by Volker L. Menze, which will now be required reading for anyone interested in ecclesiastical and doctrinal history between the Councils of Ephesus and Chalcedon. Menze’s book consists of four chapters setting forth the narrative arc of Dioscorus’ rise and fall over this period. If prior scholarship has tended to view the Alexandrian bishop as a politically inept leader who ruled the Second Council of Ephesus in 449 with an iron fist and received due retribution at Chalcedon two years later (in keeping with Pope Leo’s description of him as secundi Pharaonis), the figure that emerges from Menze’s study is more sympathetic, though not more astute.
The traditional image of Dioscorus is inevitably coloured by the fact that Chalcedon established itself as the fourth ecumenical council while Ephesus II became infamous as the latrocinium (to once more quote Pope Leo). Menze proposes that prior narratives have largely taken a ‘theological approach’ in light of such conciliar judgements, which is ‘unsatisfactory for the historian, inasmuch as it fails to take into account (ecclesiastical) politics and the problem of contingency in history’ (p. 3). His own treatment of this topic is, therefore, based upon two premises: first, a rejection of the teleological account that views Chalcedon as the inevitable culmination of prior doctrinal developments; and, second, the claim that ‘politics is more relevant than theology to understanding the causality of events’ that resulted in the council at which Dioscorus was deposed (p. 4). The book stays true to these two premises throughout.
Chapter i provides the backstory to Dioscorus’ episcopate by recounting the legacy left to him by his predecessor, Cyril. Menze agrees with the standard view that Cyril ‘is the prime example of a theologically versed patriarch and able politician’ (p. 13) whose savvy allowed him to survive the displeasure of Emperor Theodosius ii and emerge victorious in the negotiations that followed the failed Council of Ephesus in 431. Cyril’s enemies accused him of securing this outcome by bribing the court and one of the most remarkable documents to survive from the period is a letter written by his archdeacon detailing the ‘blessings’ that were to be given to the various individuals able to influence imperial policy. The bulk of Menze’s chapter is dedicated to analysing these bribes, specifically their value and intended recipients, and provides the most thorough treatment of them to date. By comparing the value of the gifts with an estimate of the annual income of the entire Egyptian Church, Menze concludes that Cyril must have used up savings that had accumulated over decades and left the Church with ‘considerable debt’ (p. 22). This outlay of financial resources effectively purchased a recognition of Cyril as an orthodox theologian, with the result that ‘Cyril’s perspective became the official ecclesiastical narrative’ (p. 37). This last part of the argument is compelling, though Menze’s argument that it must have bankrupted the Egyptian Church is more uncertain since it relies upon an estimate of the annual income of the Church and does not take account of other factors that are harder to quantify, such as the fact that only a few decades prior the Church had acquired the Serapeum, said to be the second grandest temple in the entire empire. As lavish and probably unprecedented as Cyril’s gifts may have been, we simply have no way of confirming the degree to which they impoverished the Church.
Chapter ii picks up the story in 444 with Cyril’s death and carries it up to the renewal of Christological debate in 448. Thanks to a paucity of sources, this chapter is the most speculative of the book, though Menze does a good job of illuminating the few pieces of information we do have by situating them within the wider historical context. One of the few reliable facts about Dioscorus’ prior life is that before becoming bishop he had been the archdeacon in Alexandria. According to Menze, the holder of this office was ‘the most prominent cleric after the bishop’ (p. 43) and in fact enjoyed his own base of power as the chief administrator of the diocese and the ‘union leader’ of the deacons and the ‘whole chapter’ (p. 47). Menze therefore reasons that Dioscorus was elected because he was perceived as having the institutional know-how necessary to clean up the ‘mismanagement and poor governance’ that marked Cyril’s tenure (p. 55). After examining Dioscorus’ interactions with the Church of Alexandria, the famous abbot Shenoute, and the rest of the Egyptian Church, Menze concludes that he was a ‘fastidious bureaucrat’ who ‘successfully micromanaged a church administration’ but ‘was no charismatic leader’ like his predecessor (p. 73). In terms of his approach to international relations in this period, Menze proposes that Dioscorus was hardly a theological zealot and only reluctantly became involved in Christological debates after the emperor Theodosius ii had made a renewed effort to stamp out ‘Nestorianism’ and monks had arrived to pressure him to take up the cause of Cyrillian orthodoxy. As a result, the bishop elected on a platform of opposition to Cyril’s episcopacy at the local level had no choice but to become the leading advocate for his theological legacy on the international stage, though his initial engagements with the clerics of other leading sees showed him to be ‘a self-confident but aloof patriarch with no sense of diplomatic tit for tat’ (p. 84).
The renewal of controversy in the late 440s culminated in the second Council of Ephesus, the subject of chapter iii. Menze paints a picture of an increasingly autocratic Theodosius who sought to root out Nestorian sympathisers who resisted the imperially sanctioned Cyrillian orthodoxy, identified above all with Cyril’s (in)famous twelve chapters. Menze argues that Theodosius’ motivation for summoning the council was not simply a desire to overturn the condemnation of Eutyches but an attempt to resist a mounting dyophysite narration of the history of orthodoxy that appealed not only to Nicaea in 325 and Ephesus in 431 but also, for the first time, to Constantinople in 381, effectively decentring Alexandria and promoting Antioch. Although later sources alleged that Dioscorus persuaded the emperor to convoke a new ecumenical council, Menze argues that Theodosius came up with the idea and put it into action on his own, selecting the bishop of Alexandria to preside over it as his ‘henchman’. This hypothesis has the effect of absolving Dioscorus of responsibility for the disreputable way in which the council was conducted, but implies that he was a dimwitted stooge who had no idea how to manage such complex and powerful political forces. It was his ‘unsophisticated sincerity’ (p. 140) that led him to carry out the emperor’s orders to the letter even though they did not follow canonical precedent and resulted in a subordination of episcopal prerogatives to imperial power. This lack of ‘concern for his own public image’ (p. 139) meant that Dioscorus was set up to serve as the perfect ‘scapegoat’ (p. 150) for those who later rejected the council.
Menze finally comes to Chalcedon itself in his fourth chapter, which he aptly terms a ‘black swan’ event. The death of Theodosius in a riding accident resulted in an unexpected and swift shift in imperial policy on the question of Christology, leading to a further council with universal ambitions only two years after Dioscorus had presided over the Second Council of Ephesus. His conduct in the events leading up to Chalcedon and at the council itself once more suggests that he was naive and inept at managing the situation in which he found himself. He so badly underestimated his weak base of support that he excommunicated Pope Leo before the council began, despite the fact that Emperor Marcian had publicly endorsed Leo’s Christology. At the council Dioscorus seemed to imagine himself to be on trial for the orthodoxy of Cyril’s Christology, which he valiantly sought to defend, but the council, led by the papal delegates in attendance, refrained from conducting a heresy trial, opting instead for deposition on grounds of his misconduct at Ephesus two years prior.
In short, this book leaves us with a Dioscorus who failed as a bishop because he simply was too faithful to his own moral principles and unable to understand the wider networks of power in which he operated. Because he filled important positions ‘with candidates according to their abilities and merits, not according to their loyalty’ (p. 187) he failed to cultivate a network of support he could rely upon in his unexpected reversal of fortunes after the death of Theodosius. Consequently, even his ‘reforms for good governance’ in the Alexandrian Church probably had no ‘lasting results’ (p. 197). Whatever else the reader takes from this book, one clear lesson is that serving as a bishop of a powerful see in late antiquity was a high stakes game and not everyone elected to the role had the skill set required for success.
Menze’s book succeeds in presenting us with a Dioscorus who is less a caricatured villain and more of a fully rounded character. His narrative stays within the realm of plausible reconstruction but at times is more speculative than at others. For example, as evidence for the supposed mismanagement of the Egyptian Church by Cyril, Menze relies heavily on the accusations of self-enrichment Dioscorus brought against members of Cyril’s extended family shortly after his election. He largely accepts these accusations at face value, overlooking the fact that they served Dioscorus’ own interests, while taking a more sceptical stance towards the charges brought against Dioscorus at Chalcedon of showing ‘greed and despotism’ in managing the Church. Similarly, the fact that a succession of at least three figures can be identified as serving as oikonomos of the Alexandrian church during his short tenure is taken by Menze to indicate his ‘swift and decisive action’ in removing from the post individuals who did not adequately bring about the reforms he desired (p. 60), though such a turnover might also be a sign of a leader unable to manage his staff and select persons appropriate for the job.
Finally, Menze’s contention that politics rather than theology is the more important causal factor explaining the developments of Dioscorus’ career remains a bold and thought-provoking premise that is never quite substantiated in the book. This reviewer remains sceptical. It seems that a full accounting for the Council of Chalcedon would have to take into account both the complexities of the political factors elucidated so well in this volume, as well as the internal dynamics of the theological arguments that the actors in these debates took to be central. For example, Dioscorus’ inability (and perhaps lack of desire?) to reconcile the Cyrillian theological heritage with the Christology of Leo’s Tome was as much a precondition for the council and its outcome as Theodosius’ accidental death. Moreover, it was that factor, as much as any other, that ensured that he would be remembered as a heretic by some later Christians and a saint by others.
