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Notes
!. B. Pixner, “Church of the Apostles on Mount Zion,” Mishkan 13 / II (1990): 28.
2. In Acts 2:47, 5:14, and 6:7, there are other records about the growth of the Church. In 5:14, St. Luke mentions not only men but also women. In 6:7, there is a reference about some Jewish priests who converted to Christianity.
3. First, Philip went to the Samarian capital of Sebaste or Neapolis (modern Nablus) (Acts 8:5-13). Having learned that many people were baptized by Philip, Peter and John were sent there by the Apostles in order to inspect a newly founded church and pray for the coming of the Holy Spirit upon the new believers (Acts 8:14-17). On their way back to Jerusalem, they visited many Samaritan villages, where they preached the Gospel (Acts 8:25). During his second missionary journey (Acts 8:26-40), Philip went from Jerusalem along the road leading to Gaza, where he met and baptized an Ethiopian. Then he was taken by the Holy Spirit to Azotus (Ashdod). Finally, preaching the Gospel, he traveled about Jamnia, Lydda, Joppa, and Antipatris and came to Caesarea (Acts 8:40).
The ninth and tenth chapters of Acts deal with Peter's inspection and missionary journey (Acts 9:32-10:48). Having gone to see believers in Lydda, he was asked to visit Joppa and Caesarea, where a very remarkable event, the baptism of a pagan named Cornelius, took place. On his way to Caesarea, Peter might have passed Antipatris.
Eusebius Hist.Eccl. 2.1.
Ibid., 2.23.
4. Pixner, p. 32.
Eusebius H.E. 3.11 and 4.22.
Ibid., 3.5; Epiphanius Panarion 29.7 and 30.2.
5. Pixner, pp. 32-34.
Eusebius H.E. 3.32.
6. It is very likely that Judas, the last Jewish Christian Bishop of Jerusalem, who, according to tradition, suffered martyrdom, was among those Christians who were massacred by Bar-Kokhba around 134.
7. Their names were the following: Justus, Zacchaeus, Tobias, Benjamin, John, Matthias, Philip, Seneca, Justus, Levi, Ephres, Joseph, and Judas (Eusebius H.E. 4.5).
8. R. A. Pritz, “Jewish Christianity according to Eusebius,” Mishkan 13 (II/1990): 53.
Eusebius H.E. 5.12.
9. The list is as follows: Cassianus, Publius, Maximus I, Julian I, Gaius I (c. 160-163), Symmachus, Gaius II (c. 165-168), Julian II, Capiton, Maximus II, Antonine, Valens, and Dulicanus (+ 185?) (Ibid., 5.12 and Patrologia Graeca, comp. Migne, 19.565-6).
Eusebius H.E. 5.23.
Ibid., 6.9.
Fr. B. Bagatti, The Church from the Gentiles in Palestine, trans. Fr. E. Hoade, Studium Biblicum Franciscanum. Collectio Minor, no. 4 (Jerusalem: Franciscan Printing Press, 1984), p. 13.
Eusebius H.E. 6.19.
Paul of Samosata was Bishop of Antioch (260-269). He believed that there were not three different persons in God, but that the Son and the Holy Spirit were in God the Father just as spirit and mind were in a human. Thus, Paul believed that Jesus Christ was a simple man, who was inhabited by the Deity just the same as the prophets of Israel were. Since the Deity inhabited Christ to a greater extent than it did the prophets, He became the adopted Son of God. Paul's teaching was immediately refuted by the Church. Three councils (in 264, 267, and 268-269) were gathered to question him and his teaching. Only at the third one, Paul, an eminent dialectician and demagogue, was unmasked, excommunicated, and deposed.
This edict was issued by Emperors Constantine (306-337) and Licinius (308-324) in 313. It permitted Christians to profess their religion freely and ordered the authorities to return to them all their property confiscated during the persecutions.
Arius, a presbyter from Alexandria, taught that the Word (Jesus Christ) did not coexist with the Father from the eternity, but rather was created from nothing. He maintained that the Son had a different nature than the Father and that the Word began to exist only by an act of the Father's will. Since Arius believed that the nature of the Son did not proceed from that of the Father, he deduced that the Word can change, both physically and morally. Supported by many bishops, he was able to spread his teaching all over the Roman Empire. The entire fourth century was marked with the struggle of Orthodoxy against Arianism which had even become the official religion of the Roman Empire. Refuted by numerous councils and various Church Fathers, it was definitely defeated only in the fifth century.
Bagatti, p. 48.
PG 33.1165-1176.
Due to the fact that the Romans turned Jerusalem into a pagan city, it was not able to receive any privileges as the place where the Church was born. Beginning with the second century, Jerusalem was a vicar See of the Caesarean Metropolia, which itself was a part of the Antiochene Patriarchate. It is obvious that after Constantine the Great had begun to patronize Christianity and his mother had come to build several churches in Jerusalem, the prestige of the See increased. At the same time, the seventh canon of the First Ecumenical Council only states that the Jerusalem See has to be treated with special honor and that the Caesarean Metropolia must preserve the dignity it has. Since there were no official Church documents about the status of Jerusalem, Acacius decided to question Cyril's authority and to force him either to accept Arianism or to leave.
Bagatti, p. 50.
The names of the three Arian bishops who expelled Cyril from his See are preserved by St. Jerome (PG 33.295-296).
Pixner, p. 38.
PG 46.1009-10024.
Bagatti, p. 49.
Nestorius was Patriarch of Constantinople (428-431). Having been educated in the tradition of the Antiochene theological school, he became an adherent of all its unbalanced doctrines, which he took to the extreme. He taught that the Virgin Mary was not QeotokoV (God-bearing) but only CristokoV (Christ-bearing) because she bore a man who was the vehicle of Divinity, but not God. From this, he deduced that her virginity ceased when she gave birth to Jesus Christ. When Christ was thirty years old, He became God by grace, when the Logos descended upon Him and made Him His temple. Therefore, though the two natures of the incarnate Christ remained unaltered and distinct, the human Christ deserved to be worshipped along with the Word because He was “the man assumed.” Nestorius also maintained that it was merely a man who was crucified. After this teaching had been condemned at the Third Ecumenical Council, Nestorius was excommunicated, dethroned, and banished from Constantinople. Some bishops who did not agree with the counciliar decisions separated themselves from the Church. John I, Patriarch of Antioch (421-441), was one of them. The separation was healed only in 433, when John sent his creed to St. Cyril, who accepted it as fully Orthodox.
In their zeal, some disciples of St. Cyril exaggerated and developed the teaching of this great Church Father to extremes which he had never meant. In their opposition to Nestorius, the Monophysites began to teach that the human nature of Christ was absorbed by His divine nature. Thus, according to them, Jesus Christ had only one divine nature. Eutyches, superior of a monastery in Constantinople, was the first to begin to disseminate this teaching. He was supported by Dioscorus, nephew of Cyril, who after his death became the Patriarch of Alexandria in 444.
B. Bagatti., p. 87.
Ibid., p. 87.
Ibid., p. 87.
Origenism is a heresy which flourished in some Palestinian monasteries in the sixth century. Origenists believed themselves to be followers of Origen, a great Alexandrian Christian of the third century. They developed some of his ideas to the extreme and introduced many new elements into his teaching. One of the main doctrines of Origenism was apokatastasis, the teaching that in the fullness of time, everything, including the Devil, will be restored to God. In the beginning of the sixth century, there were two trends in Origenism: Protoktists, or moderate Origenists, and Isochrists, or zealous Origenists. Peter belonged to the former, and when a split occurred between the two, he and the whole party of moderate Origenists joined the Church in 547.
Many Monophysites explained their refusal to join the Church by the fact that Theodore of Mopsuestia, Theodoret of Cyr, and Ive of Edessa, who supported Nestorius, were considered to be Orthodox and were not condemned at the Fourth Ecumenical Council. Justinian decided to condemn them in order to win over the Monophysites. In reality, his edict, later called the “Three Chapters,” caused great disagreements within the Church. The Fifth Ecumenical Council was convened in Constantinople in 553 to settle the issue.
PG 86.2773.
Patrologia Latina, comp. Migne, 77.468-479.
PG 87.3013.
Patrologia Orientale, comp. R. Graffin and F. Nau, 8.713, 720 and PG 97.1609-1610.
Eutychii Annals 2.212 (The Library of the Palestine Pilgrims' Text Society, vol. 2 [London, 1895; repr., New York: AMS Press, 1971], p. 36).
L. Davenport, “Persian Massacre Uncovered in Jerusalem,” Holy Land, Summer 1994, pp. 97-98.
By 638, Sergius developed this doctrine into Monothelitism, a heresy according to which, having both human and Divine natures, Christ had only one divine will. In 680, this heresy was refuted and condemned at the Sixth Ecumenical Council.
B. Bagatti., pp. 134-135.
Fr. A. Mertens, OFM. The Centuries through the Basilica of the Holy Sepulchre at the End of Via Dolorosa, ed. by Notre Dame of Jerusalem Center and Help for Individual Pilgrims and Hulp aan Losse Pelgrime (Mechelen, Belgium: St. Franciscus Drukkerij, n. d.), p. 12.
Ibid., p. 12.
St. John Damascene is one of the most prominent Eastern Church Fathers. He is also known as an eminent theologian, historian, and Biblical interpreter. Taking advantage of living outside the Byzantine Empire (in Damascus), he harshly criticized the Byzantine emperors for iconoclasm. Sometime towards the end of the seventh century, he left Syria for Palestine, where he became a monk in St. Sabas' Monastery.
PG 109.11-12 and 507-20; 96.1347-1362.
PG 108.805-806. On October 21, the Church commemorates Georgius, Johannes, Julianus, and fifty-seven companions who suffered martyrdom in Jerusalem in 723.
B. Bagatti, p. 136.
PG 108.865-866 and 899-902.
G. Garitte, Le Calendrier palestino-g$orgien du Sinaiticus 34 (Xe cent.) (Brussels, 1958), 143.
After this first delegation, George sent another embassy to Charlemagne. The Muslim rulers also sent their embassies to Charlemagne, wishing to establish good relations with this powerful Western king. For a detailed description of these different embassies, see B. Bagatti, pp. 130-131 and 137.
PG 111.1129-1131.
PG 97.1503-1522. In 451, when the Fourth Ecumenical council was convened in Chalcedon, the Armenians could not send their legates to it because the country was under attack by the Persians. Since some Monophysites who were condemned by this council escaped to Armenia, they persuaded the Armenian Church that the heresy of Nestorius was restored in Chalcedon. Thus, the Armenians refused to approve the counciliar decisions and separated themselves from the rest of the Church. At the same time, their theology was rather more pre-Chalcedonian than Monophysitic.
B. Bagatti., p. 138.
Eutychii Annals 2.276-279, pp. 62-64.
This council dealt with the issue of who should be the Patriarch of Constantinople. When Emperor Michael III (842-867) deposed the Constantinople Patriarch Ignatius and made Photius the new Patriarch, Ignatius appealed to Rome. Pope Nicholas I (858-867) declared that Ignatius must be returned to his See. Photius then began anti-Latin polemics, accusing Rome of numerous “heresies.” A disgraceful quarrel between the two Sees followed. The council had to decide whether Ignatius or Photius had more right to be the Patriarch of Constantinople.
H. Vincent and F. M. Abel, J$rusalem nouvelle (Paris, 1914-1926), p. 939.
PL 126.829-830.
B. Bagatti., p. 140.
PG 111.1132.
PG 111.1145-1146.
B. Bagatti, p. 140.
G. Garitte, 183.
B. Bagatti, p. 141.
PO 18.726-727.
PO 18.799-802.
PG 122.108.
B. Bagatti, p. 142.
Ibid., p. 143.
PO 23.481-485.
PL 201.218-220).
B. Bagatti, p. 145.
Ibid., p. 145.
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