John I of Antioch

John became patriarch of Antioch in 428 and held the seat until his death in 441. He had been a monk before that, trained in the Antiochene tradition of biblical interpretation, and he was a close friend of both Theodore of Mopsuestia and Nestorius, a friendship that decided the shape of his life.

When Cyril of Alexandria moved against Nestorius over the title Theotokos, God-bearer, applied to Mary, John wrote to Nestorius privately and told him to accept the word. It was ancient, John said, and no orthodox man need be afraid of it. Nestorius would not.

The Council of Ephesus was called for June 431. John set out with the bishops of the East, a long journey with bad weather and, he said, a famine along the road. Cyril, with the imperial commissioner objecting, opened the council anyway before the Antiochenes arrived and deposed Nestorius in a single day's session. John reached Ephesus five days later, refused to recognize what had been done, and convened a rival council of about forty-three bishops that deposed Cyril and Memnon of Ephesus in return. The emperor Theodosius II eventually confirmed the deposition of Nestorius, arrested Cyril and John both, and sent everyone home in disgrace.

What John did next is why he is remembered. Instead of hardening the split, he spent two years negotiating. Working through intermediaries, Paul of Emesa carried the drafts, the Antiochenes produced a short doctrinal statement, and in 433 Cyril accepted it and John accepted the condemnation of Nestorius. That text, the Formula of Reunion, confesses Christ as perfect God and perfect man, of one substance with the Father in his deity and with us in his humanity, in a union without confusion, and calls Mary Theotokos. It is the clearest bridge document of the century and the ancestor of the language later adopted at Chalcedon in 451.

The cost was real. Some of John's own bishops regarded the settlement as a betrayal of Nestorius and broke communion with him; he had to depose several, and a group of Antiochene clergy left Roman territory altogether for Persia, where their tradition took root in the Church of the East. Cyril's followers, for their part, thought he had given too much away.

John died in 441 and was succeeded by his nephew Domnus. His nephew inherited the same fight, and lost it.

Sources: the Acts of the Council of Ephesus (in the Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, second series volume 14); the correspondence of Cyril of Alexandria; Socrates Scholasticus, Ecclesiastical History; Philip Schaff, History of the Christian Church.