Eutyches

Eutyches was a presbyter and archimandrite (the head of a monastery) at Constantinople, visited by many and with friends among the soldiers of the palace (Zachariah, Chronicle 2.2). Before a synod under Flavian of Constantinople he said, as Evagrius quotes him, that the Lord was from two natures before their union but that he confessed only one nature after it; Evagrius adds that he denied that the Lord’s body was of the same substance as ours (Evagrius, Ecclesiastical History 1.9). The synod deposed him. Leo I called his statement absurd but wrote that he might be restored if he recanted (Leo, Letters 28.6 (the Tome)) (Leo, Letters 29).

The council of Ephesus in 449 received him back, according to the Syriac chronicle because he presented a recantation and confessed the true faith (Zachariah, Chronicle 2.3). The Definition of Chalcedon received Leo’s Tome as written “for the removal of the false doctrines of Eutyches” (Definition of Chalcedon). The opponents of Chalcedon did not defend him either. The same Syriac chronicle says that, wishing to affirm one nature, he rejected the truth of the body taken from the Virgin and taught “an inaccurate dogma” (Zachariah, Chronicle 2.2), and in 1990 the joint commission of the Eastern Orthodox and Oriental Orthodox churches agreed in condemning the Eutychian heresy (Orthodox–Oriental Orthodox Agreed Statement (1990) 1, 7).