Nestorius
386 CE–451 CE · Germanicia
Nestorius (c. 386–c. 451) was a monk and theologian of the Antiochene school who was appointed Archbishop of Constantinople by Emperor Theodosius II in 428. He became the center of a major Christological controversy when he objected to the title Theotokos ("God-bearer") for the Virgin Mary, proposing instead Christotokos ("Christ-bearer") and articulating a Christology that his opponents characterized as dividing Christ into two distinct persons. The Council of Ephesus (431), the third Ecumenical Council, condemned his teaching and deposed him from his see, after which he was exiled first to his monastery near Antioch and subsequently to the Great Oasis of Hibis in Egypt. His sole surviving complete work, the Bazaar of Heraclides, written in exile and composed c. 451, offers his own defense of his theology and argues that the Chalcedonian Definition of 451 vindicated his position — a claim disputed by the mainstream tradition. The theological tradition bearing his name, Nestorianism, continued in the Church of the East and shapes Syriac Christianity to the present day.
Contested teaching
His Christology — understood by opponents as positing a loose "prosopic union" of two persons in Christ rather than a single hypostatic union — was condemned as heretical and he was deposed by the Council of Ephesus in 431.
Life journeyclick any stop, or use ←/→Trace on the map →
GermaniciaTurkey
What they did here
Born c. 386 in Germanicia (modern Kahramanmaraş, Turkey) in the Roman province of Syria Euphratensis.
About Germanicia
Germanicia (modern Kahramanmaraş, southern Turkey), a city of Commagene/Euphratensis. Nestorius, the controversial archbishop of Constantinople, is generally said to have come from Germanicia.
In the same place & time
Sages whose lives overlapped with Nestorius’s in the same cities, drawn from their recorded journeys.
In the same tradition
The world in their lifetime
Thinkers and teachers of other traditions whose lives overlapped with Nestorius’s — a glimpse of the wider world they lived in. Drawn purely from recorded birth and death years.
Works
No works attributed in the corpus yet.