Nikoloz Aleksidze IDENTIFYING KYROS OF ALEXANDRIA MA Thesis in Medieval Studies Central European University Budapest CEU eTD Collection May 2009 IDENTIFYING KYROS OF ALEXANDRIA by Nikoloz Aleksidze (Georgia) Thesis submitted to the Department of Medieval Studies, Central European University, Budapest, in partial fulfillment of the requirements of the Master of Arts degree in Medieval Studies Accepted in conformance with the standards of the CEU ____________________________________________ Chair, Examination Committee ____________________________________________ Thesis Supervisor ____________________________________________ Examiner ____________________________________________ Examiner CEU eTD Collection Budapest May 2009 IDENTIFYING KYROS OF ALEXANDRIA by Nikoloz Aleksidze (Georgia) Thesis submitted to the Department of Medieval Studies, Central European University, Budapest, in partial fulfillment of the requirements of the Master of Arts degree in Medieval Studies Accepted in conformance with the standards of the CEU ____________________________________________ External Examiner CEU eTD Collection Budapest May 2009 IDENTIFYING KYROS OF ALEXANDRIA by Nikoloz Aleksidze (Georgia) Thesis submitted to the Department of Medieval Studies, Central European University, Budapest, in partial fulfillment of the requirements of the Master of Arts degree in Medieval Studies Accepted in conformance with the standards of the CEU ________________________ Supervisor ____________________________________________ External Supervisor CEU eTD Collection Budapest May 2009 I, the undersigned, Nikoloz Aleksidze , candidate for the MA degree in Medieval Studies declare herewith that the present thesis is exclusively my own work, based on my research and only such external information as properly credited in notes and bibliography. I declare that no unidentified and illegitimate use was made of the work of others, and no part of the thesis infringes on any person’s or institution’s copyright. I also declare that no part of the thesis has been submitted in this form to any other institution of higher education for an academic degree. Budapest, 25 May 2009 __________________________ Signature CEU eTD Collection ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Many thanks are due to my two supervisors, Niels Gaul, for his patience while reading and rereading my thesis and for his suggestions and critique, (I should also express my amazement for his ability of noticing even the most minor inconcistencies) and to István Perczel, who although from a great distance, was supporting me morally and intellectually for the whole period of thesis writing. Finally I would like to thank Judith Rasson for the tremendous work she has done by correcting our works. CEU eTD Collection i TABLE OF CONTENTS Introduction..................................................................................................................1 1. The statement of the problem................................................................................1 2. Previous study.......................................................................................................3 3. Sources ................................................................................................................4 4. Structure ...............................................................................................................7 5. Methodology.........................................................................................................8 Chapter I.....................................................................................................................10 Herakleios in the Caucasus .........................................................................................10 I. 1. The Period of Herakleios’ Campaign in Georgian Sources...............................12 I. 2. The Religious Policy of Herakleios..................................................................17 I. 3. The Armenian Sources on the Invasion of Herakleios ......................................22 Chapter II ...................................................................................................................26 Kyros in Georgia ........................................................................................................26 II. 1. In Kartli..........................................................................................................26 II. 1. a. Georgian sources on Kyron.....................................................................27 II. 1. b. The provenance and education of Kyron .................................................29 II. 1. c. The Evaluation of Kyron by the Armenian authors..................................31 II. 1. d. The ecclesiastical policy of Kyron ..........................................................33 II. 1. e. Kyron’s international policy....................................................................38 II. 2. The relations of the churches of western and eastern Georgia .........................41 II. 3. In Lazika ........................................................................................................42 II. 4. Preliminary conclusions..............................................................................45 Chapter III..................................................................................................................47 Kyros in Alexandria....................................................................................................47 III. 1. The nature of Kyros and of his rule ...............................................................49 III. 2. Kyros in Muslim sources...............................................................................51 Chapter IV..................................................................................................................55 The Doctrine...............................................................................................................55 IV.1. Introduction: Status questionis .......................................................................55 IV.2. Previous approaches towards Monotheletism .................................................56 IV.3. The evaluation of Monotheletism by the Byzantine authors............................57 IV.4. Early “Monenergisms”: Apollinarios and Severos of Antioch ........................59 IV.5. The Christology of Kyros...............................................................................60 IV. 5. a. One activity in the conditions of two .....................................................61 IV. 5. b. Satisfactio .............................................................................................63 IV. 5. c. One theandric activity............................................................................65 IV. 6. The Antiochian tradition – Theodore of Mopsuestia, Nestorios, Theodoret of Kyrrhos...................................................................................................................68 IV.7. Two directions of Monotheletism...................................................................74 CEU eTD Collection Conclusions................................................................................................................78 Appendices.................................................................................................................82 Bibliography...............................................................................................................91 ii Introduction 1. The statement of the problem After taking the throne Emperor Herakleios faced two great threats to the empire, the Persian invasion and considerable religious “disorder”. Therefore he had to wage a war on these two fronts, although in many cases the two – religious and political – overlapped. This was especially felt in two regions of the empire – in the Caucasus, one of the regions most vulnerable to the Persian offensive, where the religious stand of the population directly determed the political affiliation, and, in Egypt – a province which had almost never seen peace and where Christian denominations had been having bloody showdowns for more than two centuries already.1 Along with fighting the Persians Herakleios together with his long-time collaborator, Sergios patriarch of Constantinople, decided to create a theological doctrine which would unite the two most opposing major Christian denominations of the time – the Chalcedonians and the Anti-Chalcedonians, with the idea that it should also unite other Christian denominations under the leadership of the Church of Constantinople. There were two regions where Antichalcedonism was the most widely spread and was thus undermining the stability in the empire and becoming in several cases a support for the hostile forces – the Caucasus and Egypt. From the very moment when Christianity became an official religion in the first half of the fourth century in the Caucasian kingdoms of Armenia, Kartli and Albania religion became a crucial political and diplomatic tool. After the Council of Chalcedon in 451 the unity of the Caucasian Church started to shatter and finally after one century precisely, in 551 at the Council of Dvin it was finally broken – the Armenians became politically affiliated with the Persians and dogmatically were strong Anti-Chalcedonians, CEU eTD Collection 1 On the reign of Herakleios and religious situation in the period see: Walter Kaegi, Heraclius Emperor of Byzantium (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003);