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| Retirement after Chalcedon, and Death.
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VI.—Retirement after
Chalcedon, and Death.
Some doubt hangs over the
question whether after his vindication at Chalcedon Theodoret resumed
his labours at Cyrus, or occupied himself with literary work in the
congenial seclusion of Nicerte. Garnerius makes it about the time of
his quitting Chalcedon that Sporacius charged him with the duty of
writing on the Heresies,86
and if so his five
books on this subject would seem to have constituted the first fruit of
his comparative leisure. Sporacius87
he styles his
“Christ-loving Son,” and no doubt owed something to the aid
of the influential “Comes domesticorum,” who was present at
Chalcedon, when the question of his admission to the Council was being
agitated. To this period has also been referred his commentary on the
Octateuch.88
| 88 Photius Cod. 204. The Octateuch comprises the first eight books of
the Old Testament. | On Dr. Newman’s statement
that Theodoret made over the charge of his diocese to Hypatius (one of
his chorepiscopi, who had been entrusted with his appeal to Pope Leo)
and retired into his monastery, and there regaining the peace which he
had enjoyed in youth, passed from the peace of the Church to the peace
of eternity, Canon Venables89
| 89 Dict.
Christ. Biog. iv. 916. | remarks that there
is no authority for so pleasing a picture, and that Tillemont90
contradicts it altogether. Garnerius quotes
his congratulation to Sabinianus91
on leaving Perrha as
suggestive of what conduct he might have preferred.
It is at least certain that
during this period he received a long and sympathetic letter
from Leo,
from which it is clear that the Roman bishop reposed great confidence
in him.92
| 92 Leo.
Ep. cxx., and Migne Theod. iv. 1193. Chagrined at the decision of the
Council that Constantinople was to enjoy honorary precedence next after
old Rome and practical equality and independence, in that the
metropolitans of Pontus, Asia, and Thrace were to be ordained by the
patriarch of Constantinople, Leo manages to write to Theodoret, par
parenthèse, of the Roman See as one “quam
cœteris omnium Dominus statuit prœsidere.” If in
“statuit” Leo had meant to refer to a Divine
Providence overruling history, and in
“prœsidere” to the fact that Rome was for many
years the capital of the world, his remark would have been open to
little objection. But he meant something quite different. | It is characteristic of one in whom the mere
man was merged in the theologian and ecclesiastic that, as of the year
of his birth, so of the year of his death, we have no specific
information, and are compelled to form our conclusions on evidence
which though valuable, is not overwhelming. Theodorus Lector, the
composer of the Historia Tripartita, in the 6th century, states93
| 93 Collect. Book i. Ed. Migne p. 566. | that Theodoret prepared a sepulchral urn
for the burial of the famous ascetic Jacobus; that he predeceased
Jacobus; but that Jacobus was buried in it.94
| 94 There
seems no authority for the statement of Garnerius (Hist. Theod. xiii)
repeated in Smith’s Dict. Chris. Biog. that Jacobus and Theodoret
shared it. |
Evagrius95
mentions Jacobus Syrus as still living when
the Emperor Leo sent his Circular Letter to the bishops in 458, though
then he must have been in extreme old age. And Gennadius, who lived not
long after Theodoret, says that he died in the reign of Leo. The
evidence is not strong. Theodoret may have died some years before
Jacob. But Gennadius probably knew. On the whole we may conclude that
there is some probability that Theodoret survived till 458; none that
he lived longer. Like Lucius Cary, Viscount Falkland, to whom, in his
isolation, Dean Stanley96
compares him,
Theodoret must have expired with the cry of “Peace, Peace,”
in his heart, if not on his lips. Garnerius is careful to prove that he
died in “the peace of the Church,” and appeals in support
of this contention to the laudatory testimony of Popes Vigilius,
Pelagius I., Pelagius II., and Gregory the Great. The peace of the
Church, in the narrower sense, has not always been accorded to holy men
and women who have assuredly departed this life in the faith and fear
of their Lord. In its truer and holier connotation it coincides with a
state in which we trust we may contemplate the godly old man of Cyrus,
forgetting the storms that had beaten now and again on the life he was
leaving behind him, and stepping quietly into the calm of the windless
haven of souls,—the Peace not of man, but of God.E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
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