Condemned the Three Chapters and read Chalcedon in Cyril's sense, trying to win back the East it had lost — with a pope held in the city under pressure.
- Where
- Constantinople — Istanbul, Turkey
- Convoked by
- The emperor Justinian I, who had been trying to reconcile the anti-Chalcedonians for twenty years
- Pope
- Vigilius, who was in Constantinople but refused to attend, and whose judgment the council proceeded without
- Emperor
- Justinian I
- Sat
- Summoned for 5 May 553; eight sessions through the summer
- Sessions
- Held in the secretarium of Hagia Sophia, under the presidency of the patriarch Eutychius
- Bishops present
- About 160 bishops subscribed the decrees, of whom only a handful — eight — were from the Latin West and Africa
What it faced
A century after Chalcedon, Egypt and Syria were still out of communion, and Justinian wanted them back — for the faith, and because an empire at war with Persia could not afford disaffected provinces. His diagnosis was that Chalcedon had been tainted by association with three Antiochene figures whose writings sounded Nestorian: Theodore of Mopsuestia, some works of Theodoret against Cyril, and a letter of Ibas of Edessa to Maris the Persian. Condemn those, he reasoned, and the anti-Chalcedonians would see that Chalcedon was Cyrilline after all.
The trouble was that Chalcedon had received both Theodoret and Ibas as orthodox after they anathematised Nestorius. To condemn their writings now looked, to Western eyes, like reopening a closed council under imperial pressure. The African bishops resisted fiercely; so, at first, did Rome.
Vigilius had been in Constantinople since 547, effectively unable to leave. He wavered for six years — condemning the Three Chapters, withdrawing the condemnation, then on 14 May 553 issuing a Constitutum that condemned sixty propositions of Theodore but forbade the council to condemn Theodore himself or to censure Theodoret and Ibas, since Chalcedon had not. Justinian refused to receive it, had Vigilius's name struck from the diptychs, and let the council proceed.
What it defined
- ✠Fourteen anathemas restating Chalcedonian Christology in Cyril's vocabulary, including the hypostatic union and the legitimacy of saying that one of the Trinity suffered in the flesh.
- ✠The condemnation of the Three Chapters: the person and writings of Theodore of Mopsuestia, the writings of Theodoret against Cyril, and the letter of Ibas to Maris.
- ✠The condemnation of Origenism — of the pre-existence of souls, the final restoration of all things, and related propositions.
- ✠That there is one Christ, consubstantial with the Father in his divinity and with us in his humanity: Chalcedon affirmed, not amended.
In its own words
“If anyone will not confess that the Father, Son and holy Spirit have one nature or substance, that they have one power and authority, that there is a consubstantial Trinity, one Deity to be adored in three subsistences or persons: let him be anathema.”
“…there is only one Christ, God and man, the same being consubstantial with the Father in respect of his divinity, and also consubstantial with us in respect of our humanity.”
“If anyone defends the heretical Theodore of Mopsuestia, who said that God the Word is one, while quite another is Christ… let him be anathema.”
Its anathemas
The council legislated no discipline; its acts are fourteen anathemas defining the faith.
- Anathemas 1–10Restate the faith of Nicaea, Constantinople, Ephesus and Chalcedon in the language of the hypostatic union.
- Anathema 10Confesses that 'one of the holy Trinity' was crucified in the flesh — the theopaschite formula Justinian had long promoted.
- Anathemas 12–14Condemn the Three Chapters: Theodore of Mopsuestia, Theodoret's writings against Cyril, and the letter of Ibas to Maris.
- ✕It did not overturn Chalcedon. It condemned three sets of writings while explicitly reaffirming the council that had received two of their authors — a distinction between a man's works and his person that the West found hard to swallow and that the council pressed hard.
- ✕It did not condemn Origen personally in its formal anathemas as printed with the council. The fifteen anathemas against Origenism are associated with the council and were issued in this period under Justinian; whether they belong to the council's own acts or to a synod immediately before it is disputed by scholars, and the entry says so rather than choosing.
- ✕It did not have the pope in the room. Vigilius, in the same city, refused to attend, and his own Constitutum of 14 May 553 forbade what the council then did.
- ✕It did not achieve its purpose. The anti-Chalcedonians were not reconciled, and the separate Coptic and Syriac hierarchies hardened in the decades after.
What people think it did
Constantinople II proves the pope can be overruled, or that a council can act against him — so papal primacy is a later invention.
What happened: The council acted while the pope refused to attend, and its decrees were not treated as binding until he accepted them; his acceptance in December 553 is what secured its reception in the West. That is an argument about how badly a pope can be treated and how much political pressure a council can labour under. It is not an argument that a council can define without him, since this one waited to be received.
This council condemned reincarnation, and thereby removed it from Christianity.
What happened: The Origenist anathemas condemn the <em>pre-existence</em> of souls — the notion that souls existed before their bodies and fell into them — which is not reincarnation, and which no council needed to remove from Christianity because it had never been in it. The claim that the Church deleted reincarnation from the Bible or the creeds at this council is a nineteenth-century theosophical invention with no support in the acts.
What followed
Justinian kept Vigilius in the city until he yielded. On 8 December 553 the pope wrote to the patriarch Eutychius accepting the council, and on 23 February 554 issued a second Constitutum arguing at length that the condemnation was justified and did not contradict Chalcedon. He was allowed to start home in the spring of 555 and died on the journey, at Syracuse, without seeing Rome again.
The West did not take it quietly. Northern Italy went into schism over the Three Chapters — the Schism of Aquileia — which lasted in places until the end of the seventh century, longer than the controversy that caused it.
The council is nonetheless counted as the fifth ecumenical council, and its Christology is standard Catholic teaching: the one who was born, suffered and died is a divine person, and it is legitimate to say that God suffered in the flesh.
Follow it further
Sources
- Second Council of Constantinople — anathemas and sentence (English)
- Catholic Encyclopedia: Second Council of Constantinople
Every date, figure and quotation on this page was checked against the conciliar text or a published translation before it was written, and independently re-checked by three separate passes over dates, quotations and theology. Where the sources disagree — attendance figures above all — the page gives the range rather than choosing.