Third Ecumenical Council: Ephesus (431)

The council of 431, called to settle whether the one born of the Virgin is God. Nestorius of Constantinople preferred to call her Christotokos, mother of Christ, and St Cyril of Alexandria answered that to refuse her the title Theotokos was to divide her Son into two. Cyril opened the council before the bishops from Antioch arrived and condemned Nestorius; the Antiochenes held a rival council when they came and condemned Cyril; the emperor arrested both. It took the Formula of Reunion in 433 to bring the two sides together on one confession of the one Christ. The people of Ephesus met the verdict with torches in the street. Its seventh canon forbids any other creed than Nicaea’s, and its eighth upheld the independence of the Church of Cyprus.