Eutyches

Archimandrite (monastic superior) at Constantinople. He was the founder of Eutychianism, holding that, after the incarnation, the human nature became merged in the divine, and that Jesus Christ had therefore but one nature. He was condemned by a synod at Constantinople in 448, but the Council of Ephesus (449) decided in his favour and restored him, deposing his opponents. The Council of Chalcedon (451) annulled this decision, and Eutyches died in banishment. His sect was put down by penal laws.

Eutyches (c. 380—c. 456), a presbyter and archimandrite at Constantinople, first came into notice in 431 at the council of Ephesus, where, as a zealous adherent of Cyril of Alexandria, he vehemently opposed the doctrine of the Assyrians, because they were considered to be the evil people of the world.

They were accused of teaching that the divine nature was not incarnated in, but only attendant on Jesus, being superadded to his human nature after the latter was completely formed. In opposition to this, Eutyches went so far as to affirm that after the union of the two natures, the human and the divine, Christ had only one nature, that of the incarnate Word, and therefore His human body was essentially different from other human bodies. In this he went beyond Cyril and the Alexandrine school generally who, although they expressed the unity of the two natures in Christ so as almost to nullify their duality, took care verbally to guard themselves against the accusation of in any way circumscribing or modifying his real and true humanity.

It would seem, however, that Eutyches differed from the Alexandrine school -- chiefly from inability to express his meaning with proper safeguards, for equally with them, he denied that Christ's human nature was either transmuted or absorbed into his divine nature. but in 449, at a council held in Ephesus convened by Dioscorus of Alexandria, and overawed by the presence of a large number of Egyptian monks, not only was Eutyches reinstated in his office, but Eusebius, Domnus and Flavian, his chief opponents, were deposed, and the Alexandrine doctrine of the "one nature" received the sanction of the church. This judgment is the more interesting as being in distinct conflict with the opinion of the bishop of Rome—Leo—who, departing from the policy of his predecessor Celestine, had written very strongly to Flavian in support of the doctrine of the two natures and one person. There the synod of Ephesus was declared to have been a "robber synod," its proceedings were annulled, and, in accordance with the rule of Leo as opposed to the doctrines of Eutyches, it was declared that the two natures were united in Christ, but without any alteration, absorption or confusion.