19 Facts About Nestorius

Nestorius refrained from attending both of these councils and instead sought retirement from the Byzantine Emperor.

Nestorius's teachings included restricting the usage of the title Theotokos, used for Mary, mother of Jesus, in order that Christ's human and divine natures not be confused, as he believed Christ was born according to his humanity and not his divinity, which indicated his preference for the concept of the prosopic union of two natures of Christ, over the concept of a hypostatic union.

Nestorius sought to defend himself at the Council of Ephesus in 431, but instead found himself formally condemned for heresy by a majority of the bishops and was removed from his see.

Nestorius is revered as among three "Greek Teachers" of the Church of the East.

Nestorius received his clerical training as a pupil of Theodore of Mopsuestia in Antioch.

Nestorius was living as a priest and monk in the monastery of Euprepius near the walls, and he gained a reputation for his sermons that led to his enthronement by Theodosius II, as Patriarch of Constantinople, following the 428 death of Sisinnius I of Constantinople.

Shortly after his arrival in Constantinople, Nestorius became involved in the disputes of two theological factions, which differed in their Christology.

Nestorius tried to find a middle ground between those that emphasized the fact that in Christ, God had been born as a man and insisted on calling the Virgin Mary Theotokos and those that rejected that title because God, as an eternal being, could not have been born.

Nestorius never divided Christ into two sons, he refused to attribute to the divine nature the human acts and sufferings of the man Jesus Christ.

Nestorius suggested the title Christotokos, but he did not find acceptance on either side.

Nestorius's opponents charged him with detaching Christ's divinity and humanity into two persons existing in one body, thereby denying the reality of the Incarnation.

Nestorius had arranged with the emperor in the summer of 430 for the assembling of a council.

Nestorius was made to return to his monastery at Antioch, and Maximianus of Constantinople was consecrated Archbishop of Constantinople in his place.

The monastery suffered attacks by desert bandits, and Nestorius was injured in one such raid.

Nestorius seems to have survived there until at least 450.

Nestorius died shortly after the Council of Chalcedon in 451, in Thebaid, Egypt.

In 1895, a 16th-century book manuscript containing a copy of a text written by Nestorius was discovered by American missionaries in the library of the Nestorian patriarch in the mountains at Qudshanis, Hakkari.

Nestorius' earlier surviving writings including his letter written in response to Cyril of Alexandria's charges against him, contain material that has been interpreted by some to imply that at that time he held that Christ had two persons.

Nestorius is however not a major figure in this church.