Apollinarios, the Chalcedonian Theodosian

Abstract

This paper argues that the Chronicle of John, the bishop of Nikiu, in Egypt, a late seventh-century world chronicle, preserves two passages that suggest the Egyptian Chalcedonian patriarch Apollinarios (551–570 CE) was chosen by a coalition of Chalcedonians and anti-Chalcedonian Severan-Theodosians as a bulwark against the growing popularity of the aphthartist Gaianites during the reign of Justinian I. The accidental preservation of this memory in a rather unpopular text suggests that the lines separating the Severan-Theodosian (or proto-Coptic) miaphysite church from its doctrinal rivals were contingent and often remarkably blurry.