The Black Swan of Chalcedon and Dioscorus’ Deposition

Abstract

Abstract The Council of Chalcedon in 451 is accepted as the fourth ecumenical council in the western church traditions. It is usually regarded as rectifying the misdeeds of the Second Council of Ephesus, the ‘robber-council’ which took place two years earlier. But the chapter shows that the council was procedurally hardly any better handled than the ‘robber-council’. The first session might look like a heresy trial of Dioscorus at first sight but it is rather a very confused appeal hearing. The order of the following sessions has been much debated, but the present chapter offers a new hypothesis that fits the evidence better than previous reconstructions. In the third session Dioscorus was deposed—not condemned as it can still sometimes be found in the literature. Although Pope Leo and a few other dyophysites might have really regarded him as a heretic, he was deposed because a scapegoat was needed for the Second Council of Ephesus. Emperor Theodosius who had largely been responsible for the procedural framework could not be accused so that Dioscorus as former president of the council was the obvious choice. Against major resistance, the Council also endorsed Leo’s Tome and issued a dyophysite formula of faith. With Dioscorus’ deposition, the post-Chalcedonian quarrels started which were going to last until the seventh century.