John Of Antioch (3)
John of Antioch
There are four persons commonly known by this name.
I. John, Patriarch of Antioch (428-41) at the time of the Council of Ephesus. He was a friend and had been a fellow-student of Nestorius. When the trouble about the word theotokos began, he wrote and warned Nestorius not to make a disturbance, showing that this title of the Blessed Virgin had been constantly used, by orthodox Fathers. Later, Nestorius wrote to him enclosing Cyril of Alexandria’s twelve anathemas and some of his own sermons, and defending himself. John then decided for his friend against his natural rival, “the Egyptian”. He was summoned to Ephesus by the emperor in November, 430, with all the other bishops. But when the council was opened in June, 431, he had not come. The Fathers waited for him some time; then two of his metropolitans (those of Apamea and Hierapolis) declared in his name that the council was to begin without him. It was thought that he did not wish to be present at the condemnation of the friend, so the first session was held in his absence. Six days later John arrived with a great number of his bishops, refused all invitations to take part in the council, and opened at his own lodging a rival synod, which defended Nestorius and condemned Cyril. This rival assembly (in which the emperor’s commissioner, Candidian, took part) caused the great trouble at Ephesus (see EPHESUS, COUNCIL OF). From this time John took the side of Nestorius, declared his deposition unjust, refused to acknowledge the new Bishop of Constantinople, Maximian, and was in schism with Alexandria and Rome. Later, he held a synod at Antioch, in which he anathematized Cyril and all his partisans. Eventually, however, he was reconciled. Emperor Theodosius II (408-50) sent a tribune, Aristolas, to Antioch and then to Alexandria to make peace. John was persuaded to send one of his bishops, Paul of Emsa, to Alexandria with an orthodox profession of faith in 433. Cyril accepted Paul’s message and allowed him to preach at Alexandria. After a few more disputes about minor points, John, in April, 433, signed a formula, prepared by Cyril, condemning Nestorius; so that Cyril was able to write to Pope Pope Sixtus III (432-40) that peace was restored between the two Eastern patriarchates. The result of this was that many bishops in Syria declared that John had fallen away from the Faith, and broke communion with him. Towards these bishops (the first founders of the Nestorian Church in East Syria) John used a policy of moderation and concession, as far as was possible without sacrificing the Faith of Ephesus, from which he did not again swerve. On the other hand there were Catholics, such as the deacon Maximus, who thought that the patriarch was too conciliatory to the heretics, and who threatened to make a schism on their side too. Cyril wrote to warn these zealots not to cause further complications, and loyally helped John to reconcile the Nestorian party by his letters. John did not again tamper with Nestorianism. When a definite Nestorian schism organized itself at Edessa, it was by renouncing the obedience of Antioch. John even invoked the civil power to put an end to the schism, and so began the persecution of the Nestorians that ended an their escaping across the frontier to Persia. John died unimpeachably orthodox in 441. (For all this see EPHESUS, COUNCIL OF, and NESTORIANISM.) Four letters of this John of Antioch are extant (Mansi, “Conc. Coll.”, V, 813-14; cf. P.G., LXXVII, 1449-58).
II. John of Antioch, chronicler in the seventh century. He was a monk, apparently contemporary with Emperor Heraclius (610-41). He composed a chronicle (Historia chronike) from Adam to the death of Phokas (610), using for this purpose Sextus Julius Africanus, Eusebius, Ammianus Marcellinus, and other standard authorities. It is one of the many adaptations and imitations of the better knonwn chronicle of John Malalas. Only fragments of it remain. Gelzer (Sextus Julius Africanus 41) identifies the author with the Monophysite Patriarch John of Antioch, who ruled from 630 to 648. The fragments of the chronicle are contained in two collections, the Codex Parisinus, 1763, written Salmasius and the encyclopedia of history made by order of Constantine VII, Porphyrogenitus (912-59), in fifty-three chapters, or titles with different headings. Of this collection of excerpts only parts remain (Krumbacher, “Byz. Litt.”, 258-60). Two titles: “Of Virtue and Vice” and “Of Conspiracies against Emperors” contain the literary remains of John of Antioch. A difficulty arises from the fact that a great part of the extracts (from the Roman Commonwealth of Justin I) differs considerably from the corresponding quotations in the Salmasian collection. The Constantinian passages are of the nature old the old Hellenic writing of history, the Salmasian ones are rather Byzantine and Christian. The Salmasian compilation is older, and so appears to be the original text; the other is no doubt a re-arrangement made under the influence of the Hellenic Renaissance since Photius. But some authorities see in them two different originals and speak of a “Constantinian” and a “Salmasian” John of Antioch.
The Salmasian excerpts are edited by Cramer, “Anecdota Graeca e cod. mss. regiae Parisiensis”, II, Oxford 1839, 383-401. Both series of fragments are in C. Muller, “Fragmenta Historicorum Graecorum”, IV Paris, 1883, 535-622; V, 27-8.
III. John Scholasticus of Antioch, the canonist, afterwards Patriarch of Constantinople (565-77). (See JOHN SCHOLASTICUS.)
IV. John of Antioch, Orthodox patriarch at the time of Alexius I Comnenus (1081-1118), formerly a monk in Oxia one of the Echinades Islands in the Ionian Sea. He was a reformer of monasticism and a deserving ascetic writer. Towards the end of the tenth century a custom grew up in the East of bequeathing property to a monastery on condition that some prominent layman should be its patron or guardian (ephoros). The monastery then owed something like feudal service to its protector. Such benefices were called charistikaria. The result was that frequently the lay “ephoros” misused the property of the monastery for his own enrichment. Against this abuse John wrote a work “Of the (true) Teaching concerning Monasteries” (peri monastikes didaskalias), in which he shows its evils in a tone of dignified indignation. Theodore Balsamon in the twelth century refers to this work in his commentary on the “Nomocanon”. John also wrote a work of anti-Latin controversy, “Of Azymes”, that is still unedited. Leo Allatius quotes a passage frown a letter from John of Antioch to Theodore of Ephesus (“De aetate et interstitiis in collatione ordinum etiam apud Graecos servandis”, Rome, 1638, 215). The work about monasteries is in P.G., CXXXII, 1117-49.
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II. GELZER, Sextus Julius Africanus (Leipzig 1898); IDEM in Byzantinische Zeitschrift (1894), 394; KOCHER, De Joannis Antiocheni fontium auctoritate (Bonn 1871); KRUMBACHER, Byzantinische Litteraturgebchichte (Munich, 1897), 334-36. For his identification with the Monophysite patriarch, see GELZER, Die politische and kirchliche Stellung und Byzans (Proceeding of the thirty-third congress of German philologists at Gera) (Leipzig, 1879), 47 sq.
IV. KRUMBSCHER, Byzantinische Litteraturgeschichte (Munich, 1897), 156.
ADRIAN FORTESCUE Transcribed by Joseph P. Thomas
The Catholic Encyclopedia, Volume VIIICopyright © 1910 by Robert Appleton CompanyOnline Edition Copyright © 2003 by K. KnightNihil Obstat, October 1, 1910. Remy Lafort, S.T.D., CensorImprimatur. +John Cardinal Farley, Archbishop of New York
Fuente: Catholic Encyclopedia
John Of Antioch (1)
a prelate of the early Greek Church, distinguished for the part he took in the controversy between Cyril and Nestorius, flourished in the first half of the 5th century, and succeeded Theodotus in the patriarchate of Antioch about A.D. 427. Favorably disposed towards Nestorius, who is said to have been a schoolmate of his in the monastery of St. Euprepius, near Antioch, he was forced to take decided ground against Cyril by the impolitic conduct of the latter at the Council of Ephesus (q.v.). Among the Eastern bishops who came with John of Antioch to attend the council, he was the acknowledged leader, and we need not wonder, therefore, that he swayed them all in favor of Nestorius, when, on arriving at Ephesus, they learned that the sessions had not only commenced, but that Nestorius had already been actually condemned without their sanction. As long as Irenaeus (q.v.) and Candidius succeeded in maintaining the Nestorians at the court of the emperor Theodosius, John proved faithful to his course taken at Ephesus; but when he found the Cyrillian party gaining the upper hand, he slowly modified his position until a reconciliation with Cyril followed (A.D. 432). He now turned actually against his former friend Nestorius, and after much trouble and opposition, which he vanquished, partly by persuasion, partly by deposing the pertinacious, the other Eastern bishops also in provincial councils held at Antioch (A.D. 432), Anazarbus (A.D. 433), and Tarsus (A.D. 434) declared for Cyril and the decrees of the third Ecumenical Council. Nay, it is said that John of Antioch was even the man who instigated the emperor to make the banishment of Nestorius perpetual; no doubt actuated by a desire to convince the Cyrillians of the truthfulness of his conversion. In the controversy with Theodore of Mopsuestia he took more liberal ground, declining, at a council held in 438, to condemn the writings and opinions of Theodore; according to Liberatus, he even appeared in his defense. John died in 441 or 442. He is spoken of by Gennadius (De Viris Illustribus, c. 54) as possessed of great rhetorical power. He wrote
(1) (Epistoloe) and (Relationes) respecting the Nestorian controversy and the Council of Ephesus, of which several are contained in the various editions of the Concilia: (2) (Homilia), the homily or exhortation delivered at Chalcedon, just after the Council of Ephesus, to the people of Constantinople, with the aim to animate them to continue steadfast in their adherence to the old Nicene Confession; a fragment of it we have in the Concilia:
(3) (De Messalianis), a letter to Nestorius, enumerated by Photius (Bibl. Cod. 32) among the episcopal and synodical papers against that heretical body, contained in the history or acta of the Council of Side (A. D. 383):
(4) Contra eos qui una tantum substantia asserunt adorandum Christum (only known to us by Gennadius; probably the work from which the passages are taken with which Eulogius credits John of Antioch). See Smith, Dict. Gr. and Rom. Biog. 2, 586 sq.; Tillemont, Memoires, vol. 14; Mansi, Concilia, 4, 1259 sq.; Neale, Hist. East. Ch. (Alexandria), 1, bk. 2, sect. 2 and 3; Hefele, Conciliengesch. 2, 178 sq.: Schaff, Ch. Hist. Ai, 138-140; Milman, Latin Christianity, 5, 224 sq.; Gibbon, Decl. and Fall Rom. Emp. ch. 47.
Fuente: Cyclopedia of Biblical, Theological and Ecclesiastical Literature
John Of Antioch (2)
surnamed Codonatus, the successor of Petrus Gnapheus, or Fullo (the Fuller), after his deposition, in the patriarchate of Antioch, A.D. 447. John had previously been bishop of Apamea; but, after holding the patriarchate three months, he was deposed by a synod of Eastern bishops, and succeeded by Stephen. Theophanes incorrectly places the appointment of John after Stephen’s death. Both John and his predecessor Petrus had been, at the instigation of Acacius of Constantinople, excommunicated by the pope; yet, after the deposition of John, the same Acacius procured his elevation to the bishopric of Tyre. Theophanes incorrectly ascribes this appointment to Calendion of Antioch. See Theophanes, Chronog. p. 110, etc., ed. Paris (p. 88, etc., ed. Venice; p. 199, etc., ed. Bonn); Valesius, Not. ad Evagrii H.E. 3, 15, and Observationes, Eccles. ad Evagrium, 2, 8. Smith, Dict. Greek and Roman Biog. 2, 586.
Fuente: Cyclopedia of Biblical, Theological and Ecclesiastical Literature
John Of Antioch (3)
surnamed Scholasticus, an eminent Greek legist, flourished in the 6th century. He entered the Church, and became patriarch of Constantinople (564-578). He compiled a collection of ecclesiastical laws, which greatly surpassed in extent and method those which preceded it, and which has remained the basis of canon law in the Greek Church. Another of his works, entitled Nomocanon, was an attempt to harmonize Justinian’s constitutions relating to the Church with the older rules. Both works were for many centuries held in high estimation, and were inserted in Voell and Justel’s Bibl. juris canonici veteris (Paris, 1961), 2, 603-789. See Fabricius, Bibl. Groeca. 11, 100; Hoefer, Nouv. Biog. Genesis 26:530. (J.N.P.)