In 436 ce, Nestorius was finally sent into exile.Footnote 1 The issuing of this penalty by the East Roman regime of Theodosius ii (408–50) had been almost five years in the making. His precipitous resignation from the episcopate of Constantinople in September 431 had effectively confirmed the verdict of deposition issued by his opponents at the Council of Ephesus in June of that year.Footnote 2 This withdrawal was one of the reasons why Theodosius ii did not restore Nestorius to his see when the emperor granted that indulgence to his archenemy, Cyril of Alexandria (unseated by Nestorius’ allies at Ephesus). But it did have its upsides. Retirement to his former monastery in Antioch helped the erstwhile bishop of Constantinople to avoid further punishment, while allowing him to influence church politics from the capital of the diocese of the East. These activities led Theodosius ii's regime belatedly to make official Nestorius’ status as the ‘author of an unlawful heresy’ by ordering him to be transported to Petra.Footnote 3 The former bishop of Constantinople was not the only recipient of this treatment. A further law sent to the praetorian prefect Isidorus, in either 435 or 436, ordered the salutary punishment of two ‘participants in his impious worship’: the magnificentissimus comes Irenaeus and the priest Photius.Footnote 4 In the eyes of the imperial regime, Count Irenaeus was no mere follower of Nestorius. Removal of rank, dispossession and exile were only suitable for an individual ‘who not only followed the accursed sect of Nestorius, but promoted it, and took steps along with him to subvert many provinces, to the extent that he himself was at the head of this heresy’.Footnote 5 For Theodosius ii and his consistory in 435/6, this senatorial grandee was as much a heresiarch as the disgraced bishop whom he supported.
This was not the first time Irenaeus had appeared in an imperial law regarding church politics. In his edict calling the Council of Ephesus (431), Theodosius ii mentioned that the comes was travelling to the council, so as to clarify that he would be present only as a friend of Nestorius.Footnote 6 Nor was it the last: at some point in the mid-440s, Irenaeus made a comeback as bishop of Tyre.Footnote 7 This new career path met with further imperial displeasure, in the form of an order for his deposition and removal from that church on 17 February 448.Footnote 8 At some point between his first banishment in 435/6 and his death at an unknown date, Irenaeus wrote the Tragoedia: an account of how the compromises agreed by John of Antioch following Ephesus led to the betrayal of Nestorius, the Eastern bishops and the whole Antiochene doctrinal tradition.Footnote 9 The basic framework of the text survives in the sixth-century Roman deacon Rusticus’ Latin translation in the Collectio Casinensis, which quarries it for an array of original documents: laws, imperial orders and letters sent between emperors, officials and bishops – most notably, those within the diocese of the East. Rusticus rarely preserves Irenaeus’ own commentary except to rebut it as part of his efforts to salvage the reputation of Theodoret of Cyrrhus (in the new Christological context of the Three Chapters Controversy) by disentangling him from Nestorius and the wider Eastern opposition to Cyril.Footnote 10 But those passages which do survive, along with the documents which Irenaeus selected, give a vivid sense of the sort of work which the ex-comes (and, possibly, ex-bishop) wrote. As with so many late ancient works of apologetic narrative – and especially those related to ecclesiastical politics – the Tragoedia seems to have depicted Irenaeus himself as a significant participant in contemporary events.
The surviving textual references to Irenaeus suggest that he had what the kids call ‘main character energy’. Yet the comes has remained a supporting player in most modern narratives of the dramatic events of the Nestorian controversy. Irenaeus has received a single detailed study: paired with his better-known ally in a chapter on ‘State power and moral defiance’ in the late Fergus Millar's Greek Roman Empire.Footnote 11 Otherwise, he lurks in the margins (and footnotes) of accounts of the Nestorian controversy and its sequel in the late 440s. The comes necessarily features because of his presence in surviving documentation at those key moments: Ephesus (431), the proscriptions of the Nestorians and Nestorius (435/6) and the re-emergence of controversy in the Eastern Church in the run-up to Ephesus II (448–9). His episodic appearances in this extraordinarily well-documented narrative mean that individual studies rarely bring all the pieces of evidence about Irenaeus together in one place. Where historians have thought through Irenaeus’ role in greater depth, they have tended (rightly) to stress his capacity to provide Nestorius, John and their Syrian episcopal allies with privileged access to the imperial palace and the infrastructure of the Eastern state. Less persuasively – at least, to my mind – they have also emphasised his ability to exercise state-sanctioned violence in the context of Ephesus. And yet, as the edict ordering his exile in 435/6 implies, Irenaeus’ contribution to this Antiochene doctrinal faction cannot be reduced to that entrée to state power. Theodosius ii's description of Irenaeus as the leader of the Nestorian heresy suggests that the comes played a more significant part in the church politics of the Eastern Roman Empire in the early 430s than has been appreciated.
This article proceeds from the premise that Irenaeus’ role in the fifth-century Christological controversies deserves a new treatment. It builds on a series of excellent recent studies which have put our understanding of the Council of Ephesus (431) and its aftermath on a new footing. Drawing on these sophisticated accounts of church councils and their documentation, the role of the imperial palace and the influence of elite patrons within ecclesiastical politics, I argue that Irenaeus was more directly involved in doctrinal debate and the maintenance of ecclesiastical alliances than has been appreciated. The first part of this article analyses his attested contributions to church politics from his first appearance in surviving texts in the winter of 430. It tracks his role as an advocate, first for the Antiochene church faction at Ephesus, and then for Nestorius and his hardline supporters within the diocese of the East up until his exile, with a coda on his doctrinal positioning at the outbreak of new controversy in 448–9. Close attention to his own self-presentation and contemporary descriptions of his agency (including those of his enemies) suggest his significant role in mediating these theological debates and encouraging bishops, officials and the emperor himself to adopt the Christological precepts of Nestorius. The second part then sets these acts of doctrinal persuasion and ecclesiastical advocacy in the context of the wider engagement of the Constantinopolitan elite and bureaucracy with church politics in the reign of Theodosius ii. Irenaeus emerges as unusual for his willingness to ‘freelance’ (in the terms of modern cabinet government): to diverge openly from the imperial line in ecclesiastical policy to support his episcopal ally, as opposed to merely seeking to shape that policy while the regime remained open to different courses of action. The count-turned-heresiarch-turned-bishop nevertheless appears as a typical product of an era when, in the words of Millar, ‘State and church existed in a permanent condition of mutual dependence, concern, conflict – and commitment to the unattainable ideal of unity and harmony.’Footnote 12
Irenaeus and church politics, 430–435/6
Irenaeus’ first appearance is as an intermediary between John of Antioch and Nestorius in the winter of 430.Footnote 13 John had received letters from Cyril of Alexandria and Celestine of Rome informing him that an ultimatum was on its way to Nestorius.Footnote 14 A synod in Rome that August had decreed that Nestorius should be deposed if he did not recant his heretical views; after his own synod in Alexandria, Cyril sent on Celestine's notice of this verdict along with his Third letter to Nestorius and his Twelve anathemas, giving the bishop of Constantinople ten days to respond.Footnote 15 John wrote to Nestorius to advise him to yield on the probity of the term Theotokos for the Virgin (presented as an uncontroversial part of Christian tradition) so as to ensure the peace of the Church.Footnote 16 John sent this letter ‘through my lord the in all respects most magnificent Count Irenaeus’.Footnote 17 His choice of letter carrier was likely determined, in part, by the need for speed: as George Bevan has suggested, it is likely that this use of Irenaeus (and his agents?) brought with it access to the public post. Certainly, it is noteworthy that John's letter (appending Celestine and Cyril's missives) got to Nestorius in Constantinople before Cyril's own agents arrived.Footnote 18 John's recourse to Irenaeus for this sensitive mission also suggests that the comes was already known to, and a trusted ally of, both parties by the winter of 430. The tone of the bishop of Antioch's letter suggests an awareness that his advice to compromise for the sake of peace would not be entirely welcome.Footnote 19 The opening to John's letter anticipates that Irenaeus will have cleared the ground for this case with his oral remarks. ‘With complete sincerity I have made known to your religiousness my intentions towards you through my lord the in all respects most magnificent Count Irenaeus, and since, as I believe, I have now a true defence and am exempt from suspicion, I shall now address frank advice to your sincerity.’Footnote 20 Already in winter 430, Irenaeus had established himself as a figure trusted by both Nestorius and John accurately to represent them within the controversy which was beginning to engulf the Church of the Eastern Empire.
It is this position of trust which led Irenaeus to travel to Ephesus in spring 431 as a friend of Nestorius. His presence at the council as such is specifically mentioned in the imperial sacra convoking the council. Theodosius ii informed the assembled bishops ‘that the most magnificent Irenaeus has travelled with the most holy and most God-beloved Nestorius, bishop of this renowned city, out of friendship alone, and is not on any account to take part in the business of your most holy council or in the matters entrusted to the most glorious Candidianus whom we have sent’.Footnote 21 The emperor explicitly spelled out that Irenaeus was not present in an official capacity, implying potential concerns that he would attempt to influence proceedings by presenting his actions as imperially sanctioned, and perhaps even by claiming to share the authority of the comes domesticorum Candidianus, the actual officer commissioned to preside over the council.Footnote 22 In fact, it is possible that Irenaeus had been mentioned in dispatches at court for this role.Footnote 23 The Coptic acts of Ephesus, produced in Alexandria most likely in the middle decades of the fifth century, include a supposed memorandum from Cyril to a monk named Victor providing instructions for a mission to the court in Constantinople in early 431.Footnote 24 Amongst the many ways the bishop of Alexandria wished Victor to persuade the emperor to shape the conduct of the council, he is supposed to have asked him to work against any request from Nestorius that Irenaeus preside, since the latter would be biased. Victor should instead ask for the cubicularius Lausus – elsewhere presented by Cyril's archdeacon Epiphanius as an ally – or, at worst, that the two be sent together.Footnote 25 The precise historicity of this memorandum is difficult to judge: the long narrative which precedes the actual minutes of the first session in the surviving portion of the text includes a teasing mixture of obvious hagiographical falsification and plausible documentary detail.Footnote 26 It is most probably – like Victor's mission itself – a later narrative invention, built out of the terms of the sacra itself, to provide that document and the proceedings of the council with a retrospective Cyrilline logic.Footnote 27 Whether or not this fear of Irenaeus’ candidacy draws on actual contemporary discussions, a concern of this sort must lie behind the inclusion of this specific stipulation in the final sentence of the imperial sacra.
Such a concern is plausible given what transpired during the council. The presence of a figure of Irenaeus’ stature in the imperial hierarchy provided benefits to Nestorius and the Easterners above and beyond the state support granted to other major participants.Footnote 28 George Bevan has hypothesised that Irenaeus helped his allies get information back to court.Footnote 29 As part of the mutual recriminations between the rival councils, the comes was also accused of intimidation tactics on behalf of Nestorius and John. The memorandum sent by Cyril and Memnon of Ephesus’ council to Theodosius ii through the agens in rebus Palladius on 1 July painted a stark picture of Irenaeus’ treatment of its members. ‘But we, being under constraint, have not been able to inform your authority in a few words of the extent of our sufferings at the hands of the most magnificent Count Irenaeus, who has harassed the entire holy council and terrorised the most holy bishops by tumult and by external canvassing, with the result that many of us are in fear for our very lives.’Footnote 30 In an (undated) letter from summer 431, Memnon similarly requested the help of the clergy of Constantinople in persuading the emperor to remove Irenaeus from Ephesus along with Candidianus, ‘lest the faith be corrupted by their brigandage’.Footnote 31 Both passages convey the impression that Irenaeus brought with him threats of physical violence, whether overt or simply implied by his rank and position of political influence. Modern scholars have often built out of these intimations a developed role for the comes as an individual either fulfilling an imperial request or usurping the authority of the conciliar president to conduct police actions. Most noteworthy in this regard are the accounts of John McGuckin and George Bevan, in which Irenaeus brought a private force of bodyguards, co-ordinated with Candidianus and his imperial soldiers, and used both contingents to defend John and Nestorius and attack Memnon, Cyril and their allies.Footnote 32 Whenever soldiers are described around the residences of the bishops of Constantinople and Antioch, these narratives ascribe their actions to Irenaeus’ attitudes and commands in concert with the comes domesticorum.Footnote 33
It is important to stress that Memnon, Cyril and their council do not make these connections themselves. There is no indication in their letters of Irenaeus exercising a formal role in charge of imperial soldiers in Ephesus. This recurring hypothesis may result, in part, from earlier misunderstandings of the implications of Irenaeus’ title. Some modern treatments have assumed that his title indicated his exercise of a military command.Footnote 34 Yet this is only one possible interpretation of his position as a magnificentissimus comes. All that can be known for certain from this titulature is that Irenaeus was a member of the Constantinopolitan Senate with the rank of uir illustris.Footnote 35 The tenor of his various interventions in ecclesiastical politics on behalf of his episcopal allies suggests considerable experience in navigating the imperial palace and consistory. This capacity for independent influence belies the suggestion in the Coptic acts of Ephesus that Irenaeus owed his status as an illustris to a request from Nestorius; at the very least, it suggests that any such intercession built on a pre-existing imperial career.Footnote 36 Pinning down the precise position (current or former) within the imperial state which might have brought him his titles and established him as a figure of political significance is difficult. The problem is that, despite the likelihood of a distinguished career in imperial service, Irenaeus is known only through reports on his ecclesiastical freelancing and subsequent episcopal career. Various suggestions have been made, including that he was comes Orientis,Footnote 37 comes rei militaris Footnote 38 or ex comite domesticorum.Footnote 39 Given his travel to, or residence in, Constantinople in the winter of 430, an ongoing tenure as head of the civil administration of the diocese of the East seems implausible. His private visit to Ephesus in spring/summer 431 suggests something similar for a current role as commander of an army unit. It seems much more likely that Irenaeus was either a count of the consistory, or had received an honorary comitiua (of which there were several) through imperial appointment or through previous possession of high office within the Eastern civil or military hierarchy.Footnote 40 Whatever his precise position, its functional significance for our understanding of his role in these ecclesiastical politics remains the same: as a figure of significance in the imperial palace.Footnote 41 Most importantly, there is no indication that Theodosius ii intended Irenaeus to travel to Ephesus as a military guard for Nestorius; indeed, the edict of convocation seeks to prevent the potential misunderstanding that he be seen as a representative of imperial authority.Footnote 42 He is not attested as bringing a military command or receiving a special investment with imperial forces. At most, he would have brought the small but ‘skilled military force’ which, as McGuckin neatly puts it, ‘no Byzantine aristocrat would have travelled across the provinces without’.Footnote 43 Accusations of ‘brigandage’ and threats to life imply an armed entourage of this sort, which may or may not have been involved in the various moments of mistreatment documented in the Acts and petitions of Cyril's council. They cannot sustain reconstructions of an overarching police command during the council.
Of course, Irenaeus could still have usurped this military role through collusion with the actual officer assigned to fulfil it. Yet the reports of the Cyrilline council are similarly unhelpful for a reconstruction which has Irenaeus and Candidianus collude in turning the latter's security detail into a means to suppress and coerce Cyril and his allies. In his letter to the clergy of Constantinople decrying the actions of Nestorius and John of Antioch, Memnon of Ephesus explicitly separates the crimes of Irenaeus from the parallel sets of actors engaged in intimidation of the Cyrilline council: imperial soldiers under Candidianus, Constantinopolitan bath attendants and peasants in receipt of ecclesiastical charity.
At one time the most magnificent Count Candidianus set soldiers upon us, filled the city with tumult, used a guard to prevent delivery of all the necessities, and allowed many people to rain violence upon us and the entire holy council, since those of Zeuxippus stood fast by the deposed Nestorius, and in addition fed a large number of rustics at the church's expense, and used them to rain down violence upon us. The disorder just described, and also the daily deceit of the more gullible by the most magnificent Count Irenaeus, were followed by the arrival of the bishop of Antioch.Footnote 44
Memnon did not ascribe responsibility for any of these attacks to Irenaeus; they merely ran in parallel to his fraudulent efforts to persuade some of the conciliar Fathers on behalf of Nestorius. In a key passage later in the same text, the bishop of Ephesus does depict Irenaeus’ involvement in a specific act of violence. Memnon describes how his envoys spent hours waiting and suffering harassment before John of Antioch finally granted them entrance to his residence. ‘When they relayed to him the message from the holy council, he [John] allowed the most magnificent Irenaeus and the bishops and clerics with him to inflict insufferable blows on our fellow minsters and the clerics, with the result that they were in real danger.’Footnote 45 This accusation looks like many other claims of physical intimidation at late ancient church councils. The resemblance is telling. When we finally see Irenaeus in (violent) action, there is no mention of guards or soldiers accompanying him: a notable feature in a letter filled with references to various sorts of armed bands whom Memnon could easily have redeployed here (soldiers, attendants from the Baths of Zeuxippus, rustics). Instead, we find the comes alone amongst bishops and clerics, conducting the sort of violence that churchmen did (or were alleged to do) at church councils.
If the reports on Irenaeus’ involvement at Ephesus simply ascribed to him these acts of violence, he would, paradoxically, be a less challenging figure to pin down. The comes would simply be one of the many wielders of imperial authority in late antiquity accused of using coercion to bring recalcitrant bishops into line. Yet the complaints of Cyril's party instead make references to more subtle efforts to shape the views and allegiances of the episcopal attendees. To reiterate: they suggested that Irenaeus had attempted ‘daily deceit of the more gullible’ and disturbed the bishops with ‘external canvassing’.Footnote 46 Accusations of tricking the simple-minded were a standard recourse for those seeking to delegitimate ‘heretical’ opponents in theological argumentation.Footnote 47 For the Cyrillians, this rhetorical violence was as important as the physical kind supposedly inflicted by the count. In this sense, the problem with Irenaeus’ participation at Ephesus does not seem to have been that of improper use of imperial forces. Rather, it seems to have been that of an influential layman inappropriately interfering in the doctrinal discussions of priests – and bringing the implied threat of his influence within the imperial palace to bear as he did so.
In the aftermath of the rival conciliar meetings in late June, and a mission from the agens in rebus Palladius to assess the resulting damage, Irenaeus’ doctrinal and ecclesiastical expertise was pressed into service once again as the mouthpiece of the Eastern bishops.Footnote 48 Irenaeus was sent to Constantinople in the middle of July with two letters to the emperor, alongside missives to the empresses and to prominent members of the consistory (the praetorian prefect and the master of offices) and bedchamber (the praepositus sacri cubiculi and the cubicularius Scholasticius).Footnote 49 The second letter to the emperor which John and the council included in this packet explained that their exclusion from services held by Memnon and Cyril in the city's cathedral alongside the Cyrillines’ persistent refusal to meet had forced them to send a petition through the comes. Irenaeus had ‘accurate knowledge of what has taken place, and we have taught him many remedies that could restore peace to the holy churches of God; we entreat your clemency to learn these remedies patiently from him and to give orders that the decisions of your piety be put speedily into effect’.Footnote 50 The stress in the council's letter on the bishops’ instruction of the count implies a certain unease over the appointment of a layperson for this mission. Nevertheless, as in the letter from John to Nestorius in winter 430, the role envisaged for Irenaeus was faithfully to represent a doctrinal and ecclesiastical position in a moment of crisis.
Irenaeus’ conduct of his embassy to the court explored the outer reaches of the latitude which the council's instructions had given him. The comes recounted the mission in a letter whose tone of barely concealed self-aggrandisement might give us some indication of what is missing from the skeletal surviving version of the Tragoedia.Footnote 51 The Egyptian bishops sent by Cyril had arrived three days previously, leaving Irenaeus with an uphill struggle in his representations; through their lies, they had managed to convince ‘the great officials, those holding dignities, and those in various government positions’ (τοὺς μεγάλους ἄρχοντας και τοὺς ἐν ἀξιώμασι τελοῦντος καὶ τοὺς ἐν στρατείαις διαφόροις) that due process had been followed in the deposition of Nestorius.Footnote 52 The cubicularius Scholasticius, an erstwhile ally of Nestorius, had been told that the bishop had spoken categorically against Theotokos while in Ephesus.Footnote 53 Despite these unpropitious circumstances, ‘through the irresistible power of truth and your prayers’ and ‘by God's mercy’, Irenaeus got an audience with ‘the most magnificent officials’; he was thus able to make ‘all the offences violently committed by the Egyptian and his supporters’ known to ‘those in authority’.Footnote 54 These preliminary meetings gained him an audience where he would argue against the Egyptian bishops before the emperor and consistory. Irenaeus stressed his reluctance to assume the prosecution in this hearing given that, as a mere letter bearer, he had not received specific instructions from the bishops as to how to proceed. The potential awkwardness of a layman and imperial official arguing against bishops about doctrine and ecclesiastical procedure is vitiated by a combination of imperial coercion (his expression of reluctance almost had him ‘torn to pieces’ [διεσπάσθην]) and divine providence (which ‘pointed the heart of the ruler to the truth’ [τὴν τοῦ κρατοῦντος πρὸς τὸ ἀληθὲς ἰθυνάσης καρδίαν]).Footnote 55 Irenaeus won the argument, and the depositions of Cyril and Memnon were in train until the arrival of Cyril's doctor and syncellus, John, suddenly and suspiciously, changed minds at court. The comes seems to have continued to seek meetings with various officials after the hearing before the emperor, but he found them ‘different people’ (ἑτέρους ὥσπερ γεγενημένους); they refused to discuss the ruling which had resulted. Irenaeus’ soundings identified conflicting strains of opinion about what should happen next: Cyril, Memnon and Nestorius should all be deposed, or none of them should be deposed; representatives of both parties should be summoned to Constantinople, or a new mission should go to Ephesus to resolve the dispute.Footnote 56 Irenaeus gives an admittedly self-dramatising, but none the less highly circumstantial account of his mission to the court. His letter narrates a campaign of doctrinal persuasion of imperial officials by a (current or former) imperial official.
After this letter of July 431, Irenaeus disappears until either 435 or 436, when Theodosius ii ordered that he should be banished to Petra and lose his property and status. The comes had clearly continued to work on Nestorius’ behalf: as previously noted, Theodosius charged that he had ‘not only followed the accursed sect of Nestorius, but promoted it, and took steps along with him to subvert many provinces, to the extent that he himself was at the head of this heresy’.Footnote 57 Any reconstruction of these activities is necessarily speculative: it is possible that Irenaeus had pressed the retired bishop's case in Constantinople, or that he had joined Nestorius in monastic retirement in Antioch. Certainly, the presence of a party in Constantinople calling for the bishop's return after the death of Maximian in 434 seems to have been part of the reason for Proclus’ speedy consecration, for renewed demands for statements of communion and conformity from recalcitrant Eastern bishops, and, eventually, for imperial legislation against ‘Nestorians’ and Nestorius himself. At the same time, these measures also stemmed directly from the efforts of John of Antioch to suppress dissent within the diocese of the East towards his agreement with Cyril (the Formula of Reunion of 433).Footnote 58 Theodosius’ reference to the subversion of provinces most likely implies Irenaeus’ continuing influence within the network of Syrian bishops who opposed acceptance of Nestorius’ deposition and reconciliation with his enemies.Footnote 59 Various pieces of circumstantial evidence suggest regular residence in Syria and perhaps even Antioch itself.Footnote 60 Above all, Irenaeus had access to a substantial body of often highly sensitive letters between bishops of John and Nestorius’ Syrian ecclesiastical network which he reproduced in his Tragoedia, as part of what must have been a detailed narrative of the internal wranglings between the bishops of the diocese of the East. The date of this text is uncertain, although there are good reasons to place it soon after his exile in 435/6.Footnote 61 Whenever he wrote the Tragoedia, Irenaeus’ ability to collect these letters, including texts written by and to bishops who were ejected from their sees in 434/5,Footnote 62 suggest that he must have been active in Syria in the first half of the 430s. Indeed, his privileged access to these letters could imply that he continued to facilitate communications within this network.
Both the surviving fragments of Irenaeus’ Tragoedia and reports on his episcopal career suggest his continued theological advocacy and doctrinal acumen. Drawing on Rusticus’ summaries and likely preservation of the original ordering of the documents, recent studies have persuasively suggested that Irenaeus’ original text stressed the significance of Cyril's bribes and John and Theodoret's betrayal in Nestorius’ defeat.Footnote 63 But it is important to note that the Tragoedia's interpretation of the church politics of the 430s was not simply about personal moral failings. Surviving passages of Irenaeus’ own words (as well as Rusticus’ paraphrases) also suggest he made the doctrinal case that Nestorius was not an innovator, but rather represented the mainstream of Antiochene tradition. Rusticus responds to passages where Irenaeus charged John and Theodoret with hypocrisy for abandoning Nestorius when they agreed with his teachings.Footnote 64 In defence of Theodoret, the Roman deacon invoked Irenaeus’ own apparent ability to trim his sails. Rusticus claimed that Irenaeus had anathematised Nestorius in return for his consecration by Domnus of Antioch.Footnote 65 Some such finessing of his public doctrinal position in episcopal office can be seen in a missive which Theodoret sent to Irenaeus in 448. Theodoret's letter implies that Irenaeus had picked him up on his inattention to the distinction between the titles of Theotokos and Anthropotokos and failure to include Diodore of Tarsus and Theodore of Mopsuestia in a list of church Fathers. In response to Irenaeus’ criticisms, the bishop of Cyrrhus pointed out that his colleague in Tyre had also left out Anthropotokos and Diodore and Theodore in his preaching.Footnote 66 Of course, Irenaeus’ criticisms of his colleague (however hypocritical) also suggest the continued significance of a foundational premise – Nestorius as faithful interpreter of Antiochene doctrinal tradition – during his episcopate. This continued commitment to the cause of his deposed ally is likewise suggested by Irenaeus’ appointment of another Nestorian sympathiser, Aquilinus, as bishop of Byblus.Footnote 67 Such attempts to push the diocese of the East and the wider Church in a Nestorian direction represent a recurring theme of his career. Irenaeus was repeatedly entrusted with, or took upon himself, the role of advocating for the Christological precepts of his ally Nestorius, whether at the Council of Ephesus, in the imperial consistory, or within the diocese of the East. In this regard, Irenaeus cannot simply be regarded as an individual providing a helpful connection to the world of the consistory and the perks of the imperial bureaucracy. Through these attempts to persuade bishops, officials and the emperor, the comes was directly involved in debates over the shape of orthodoxy in the Eastern Church in the 430s.
Officials and church politics under Theodosius ii
Irenaeus played a recurring role in the formulation of orthodoxy (or, if preferred, Nestorian heresy). This should not be surprising. The significance of aristocratic support in late ancient doctrinal controversy has long been recognised,Footnote 68 and numerous studies have stressed the outsized importance of elite patronage in shaping the Church of Constantinople in the first decades of the fifth century.Footnote 69 More than that, the unusually rich documentation for the Nestorian controversy allows us to see the regular involvement of the Eastern imperial state in church politics under Theodosius ii.Footnote 70 This routine role offered opportunities for particular Constantinopolitan elites and officials to intervene on behalf of their preferred churchmen, ecclesiastical factions and doctrinal positions. The approaches to the court made by the warring councils in the summer of 431 take for granted such an interest in these problems of Christological speculation and ecclesiastical dispute. In his letter back to the Easterners at Ephesus in August 431, Irenaeus noted that various officials were canvassing to be sent to Ephesus to resolve matters (with a strong implication that these were figures sympathetic to Cyril).Footnote 71 The count's soundings within court society are echoed by attempts by both parties to gauge and influence opinion within the imperial consistory and bedchamber once they had been summoned by the emperor for talks in Chalcedon that autumn.Footnote 72 Even the infamous schedule of ‘blessings’ offered to key members of the court by Cyril in winter 431 attest to this Christological interest when mapping the patterns of sympathy and antagonism which might require more remunerative forms of persuasion.Footnote 73 The bishop of Alexandria identified officials and attendants who could be trusted to try to make a case on his behalf (the praepositus Paul, the tribunus et notarius Aristolaus, the cubiculariae Marcella and Droseria), and those who would need persuading to abandon entrenched views (the cubicularii Chryseros and Scholasticius).Footnote 74 As Daniëlle Slootjes has neatly put it, Cyril ‘tried to leverage a range of relationships – the chamberlain and his assistant, the Augusta and her cubicularia, the praetorian prefect and his wife – in order to ensure that arguments in his favour would be made in personal and professional interactions at court’.Footnote 75 One of those allies, the tribunus et notarius Aristolaus, would in fact be chosen as the emperor's representative for reconciliation talks between Cyril and John of Antioch the following year; the letters of the bishop of Alexandria indicate a similar trust in his piety and orthodoxy as that expressed by Nestorius and John with regard to Irenaeus.Footnote 76 These officials are just some of many who can be spotted in the thick institutional documentation of the controversy expressing particular doctrinal views or showing ecclesiastical allegiances.Footnote 77 For all that the interpenetration of Church and State in late antiquity is now taken for granted, there is still a tendency (at least in accounts explaining the course of the Nestorian controversy) to pivot from these official opinions and loyalties to the claims of sharp political practice articulated by its warring factions (and not least by Irenaeus himself). Yet such accusations of corruption and inappropriate lay interference are misleading as a guide to normal practice in church politics. In 430s Constantinople, all parties took for granted the involvement of senators, courtiers, generals and bureaucrats in mediating, advocating and amplifying the doctrinal positions of churchmen.
Irenaeus’ contributions to the Nestorian controversy fit within this wider context of elite patronage and official engagement. Yet his commitment to ecclesiastical freelancing also goes beyond these cultural norms. Irenaeus was unusual in continuing these efforts at persuasion past the point at which the emperor and his inner circle seemed amenable to a policy change. In his excellent prosopographical account of the Eastern senatorial aristocracy in a slightly later period, Christoph Begass has stressed the permissive attitude of later fifth- and early sixth-century imperial regimes regarding the range of Christological views and allegiances within their administration. What was less negotiable was the need for the emperor's appointees to adhere publicly to the imperial definition of orthodoxy.Footnote 78 Similar features can be seen in the age of Theodosius ii and Irenaeus. The Easterners at Chalcedon found that a previously pliable consistory had closed ranks once the decision against Nestorius had been made; Aristolaus was remarkably even-handed in the negotiations of 432–3 once he had received imperial instructions to that end.Footnote 79 Irenaeus’ marked investment in Nestorius’ cause despite increasing imperial hostility also looks odd in terms of wider patterns of elite engagement. Recent work has stressed the asymmetrical relationship between elites and the churchmen who offered them doctrinal and spiritual advice. The latter were not authoritative ‘Fathers’ chastising their pastoral charges, but rather clients seeking patronage from social superiors happy to turn elsewhere for more amenable guidance.Footnote 80 In his much closer ongoing identification with Nestorius, Irenaeus departs from this customary aristocratic hauteur. Part of the explanation may be that we are seeing in the early 430s the beginnings of his later career transition. Recalling the period of the First Council of Ephesus in the Book of Heraclides, Nestorius hinted that Irenaeus had already undertaken acts of renunciation and ascetic practices at that time. The erstwhile bishop of Constantinople rebuked his opponents for attacking ‘a man who lived in God and served him with his possessions and with his soul and with his body’.Footnote 81 It is possible that, like more celebrated aristocratic drop-outs of the early fifth century, Irenaeus combined doctrinal patronage with pursuit of an ascetic lifestyle.Footnote 82 Whatever his precise status or source of his commitment, Irenaeus’ engagement in ecclesiastical politics remains a fascinating outgrowth of the Christian cultural assumptions of the fifth-century Constantinopolitan elite and palatine bureaucracy. It is this world which allowed an imperial comes to become a heresiarch.
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