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After this, they convened an eighth council, one hundred and three years after the Council of Chalcedon in which the Jacobites were anathematized (1). The motive was that the bishop of Manbij—an eastern town near Aleppo, now sunk into the earth (2)—affirmed the transmigration of souls and denied the resurrection. At the same time the bishop of Edessa, the bishop of Mopsuestia, and another bishop declared that Christ’s body was only an apparition, not a tangible reality. The emperor therefore gathered them in Constantinople.

The patriarch there said to the latter group, “If His body was a phantom, then His deeds must be a phantom, His words a phantom; and every body, action, or utterance witnessed among human beings would have to be the same.”

He then addressed the bishop of Manbij: “Christ rose from the dead and has informed us that people likewise will rise from the dead on the Day of Judgment. In His Gospel He said, ‘The hour will not come until all who are in the graves, when they hear the voice of the Son of God, will answer’ (3). How, then, can you claim there is no resurrection?” Thus he bound them to disgrace and anathema.

The emperor ordered that a council be held to pronounce their curse. He summoned the patriarchs of the regions, and at this council one hundred and sixty-four bishops assembled. They anathematized the bishop of Manbij and the bishop of Mopsuestia, while upholding the statement of the bishop of Edessa: that Christ’s body is real, not illusory; that He is perfect God and perfect man, known to possess two natures, two wills, and two operations, yet subsisting in one hypostasis. They also reaffirmed the four earlier councils, after