Saint Arethas, a Monophysite?

by an Athonite Hieromonk

 

Saint Arethas the Great Martyr

 

The publication [1] that presents a popularized view of Saint Arethas, the great martyr, and his companions as “Miaphysites,” (i.e., Severian, anti-Chalcedonian Christians who rejected the Council of Chalcedon) lacks theological weight and sufficient historical foundation. I will present the controversial excerpt from the publication, specifically the dialogue between the child and his father regarding the martyrdom of Saint Arethas:

“These saints lived after Chalcedon, in the sixth century. And my Coptic friend loves them. He even has their icons in his room.”

“That doesn’t make sense,” the father muttered. “Why would a Coptic family have icons of Chalcedonian saints?”

“Because these saints rejected Chalcedon,” the boy replied. “They were miaphysites.” . . .

“Dad, I looked up the history. Long after the council of Chalcedon—about two generations later—a famous miaphysite bishop the Coptics call St. Philoxenus ordained the bishops of Najran. These bishops and the martyrs who followed them were Christians who rejected Chalcedon. And yet they’re universally honored—in Orthodox churches in Russia, Greece, Serbia, Romania, Georgia, and Antioch—in the Coptic, Syriac, Armenian, and Ethiopian churches—even among Old Believers and the ‘Genuine Orthodox’ and ‘True Orthodox’ sects…”

The article concludes:

“The above dialogue between father and son centers around a paradox: Eastern Orthodox church calendars honoring saints who rejected Chalcedon. And behind that paradox lies a remarkable, historically traceable background: a story of bishops, martyrs, and kings bound together across the Red Sea by a shared miaphysite confession of the Christian faith.”

This text promotes the erroneous idea that the so-called “Miaphysite” (Monophysite) belief of today’s anti-Chalcedonian Christians is somehow aligned with Orthodox theology. The idea that Saint Arethas and his fellow martyrs were anti-Chalcedonian (Monophysite) saints can only be seen as a hagiographical assertion of the later (post-Arab conquest) anti-Chalcedonian Church of Egypt.

Saint Arethas’ martyrdom took place in 523 A.D., at a time when the Christian population of Himyar (present-day Yemen) was part of the Catholic [universal] Church, and as such, he is honored by the entirety of the Christian world.

The historical facts bear witness to the following:

Saint Arethas’ martyrdom took place in the city of Najran in the isolated country of Himyar, under the rule of the heathen king Dhu Nuwas. The cause for his martyrdom was the king’s fanatical Judaism in his persecution of the city’s Christian inhabitants. The entire Christian world was moved by the marvelous martyrdom of so many individuals under such circumstances. The appeal made by the besieged Christians of Najran to Constantinople and Persia led to the political intervention of Emperor Justin (518-527) with the king of Ethiopia, Elesbaan (Kalev Ella Asbeha, 520-540), which resulted in a military intervention in 525 to restore Christianity, which had been persecuted by the Jewish-minded king Dhu Nuwas, and who had brought about the martyrdom of Saint Arethas and his companions. [2]

Emperor Justin (518-527) was the Orthodox emperor in Constantinople who overturned the pro-Monophysite policies of his predecessors (Zeno, Basiliscus, Anastasius) and restored the Fourth Ecumenical Council to the Diptychs. His diplomatic actions in Ethiopia (including his support for the Christians of Himyar) could not have led to the recognition and confirmation of any supposed Monophysite position in Ethiopia or Himyar. Moreover, the ecclesiastical consciousness of the people in Constantinople would not have tolerated such imperial policy, especially since it had been wounded by the pro-Monophysite tendencies over the previous thirty years. In 518, the people demanded from Patriarch John of Cappadocia: “We have not communed for so many years; we want you to immediately declare the Council of Chalcedon from the pulpit.” This people would not have accepted the honoring of martyrs who had rejected the Council of Chalcedon and stood so opposed to Orthodoxy.

Lastly, the Orthodox hagiographers (Symeon Metaphrastes, Demetrius of Rostov, Agapius of Crete, Saint Nicodemus, and the later writers) would never have been convinced to include figures who were severed from the Catholic Church and involved with the heresy of Severian Monophysitism in their Synaxarion.

The anti-Chalcedonian claim that Saint Arethas and his fellow martyrs rejected the Council of Chalcedon because Monophysite monks had spread anti-Chalcedonianism in Himyar and installed their supposed co-religionist bishop Paul is highly uncertain and unsupported.

Because:

a) Regarding the period before the martyrdom of Saint Arethas (523 A.D.), it is written: “According to tradition, around 480 A.D., during the reign of Al-Ameda (455-495), the ‘Nine Saints’ first went to Ethiopia, who are still considered the second apostles of the country. It is widely argued that they were Monophysites... However, these opinions are not well documented or supported by historical evidence” (Theological Encyclopedia, entry “Ethiopia,” vol. 1, p. 1019). The Orthodox Synaxarion commemorates “Saint Bishop Paul, who had died two years before the martyrdom of Saint Arethas,” [3] and that “in the sixth century in Himyar, there were three famous bishops: Paul, John, and Gregentius,” [4] for in Himyar “the lover of God and virtuous King Abram Abraham ruled” [5] and that he “sought the independence of his kingdom from Ethiopia and turned to Byzantium and the Chalcedonian doctrine.” [6] These Orthodox hagiographical accounts do not reconcile with the idea that Paul was a Monophysite, as it is claimed in the later Anti-Chalcedonian hagiographical tradition that he was installed in Najran by the Monophysite Philoxenus of Hierapolis in the 480s. It is also historically testified that the Arabic and Ethiopian versions of the martyrdom of Saint Arethas are later than the original Greek text: “The Martyrdom was written in Greek c. A.D. 560, and survives through its translations into Latin, Ethiopic, and Arabic.” [7]

b) After 451, the process of accepting the Fourth Ecumenical Council began (in Latin, reception). It was a long process that culminated over a hundred years later. At the time of Saint Arethas’ martyrdom, doctrinal disputes in Christian areas were intense. Egypt was going through a period of doctrinal and ecclesiastical flux. The vacillations due to the Unionist (e.g., Peter Mongus) and other negotiating tendencies show this fluidity. There was an alternation and parallel installation of Orthodox and Monophysite bishops in episcopal sees. The idea that Himyar was decisively influenced by Monophysite actions is a manifestly one-sided anti- Chalcedonian claim that emerged after the time of Saint Arethas. The people of Egypt at that time reacted against the Council of Chalcedon for known theological and political reasons but did not form a Monophysite Church until after the Fifth Ecumenical Council of 553 and its rejection by the Monophysites of Egypt.

c) In Ethiopia, the reign of King Elesbaan (520-540) (who is a saint according to the Orthodox Synaxarion) [8] coincided with the reigns of Justin and Justinian (527-565). A coordinated “inter-Christian” military intervention against the Jewish king Dhu Nuwas would have been a very natural reaction to the violent destruction of an entire Christian city. However, it would have been paradoxical for a clear and organized Monophysite community to have existed in the region of Himyar, supported by its counterpart in Ethiopia, but unnoticed by the imperial court in Constantinople, at a time when relations between the two kingdoms were excellent, the Archbishop of Alexandria was still an Orthodox (Chalcedonian) bishop, and top Monophysite bishops were being condemned in Constantinople.

d) We must admit that a martyrdom, such as that of Saint Arethas, which left a profound impression upon the entire Christian world, would have remained in the memory of Egyptian and Ethiopian Christians after they had formed separate churches and by that time they would have considered it as a “their own, anti-Chalcedonian” achievement.

Given all of this, it is clearly naive to believe that the honor given to Saint Arethas by the entire Christian world (Orthodox, Latin, and Monophysite) equates to a theological endorsement of the Severian Monophysitism, which is today erroneously referred to as “Miaphysitism.” The theological basis for the view that Miaphysitism is the Orthodox Cyrillian Christology is utterly impossible, as is demonstrated by theological studies in the volume: Ὁ Θεολογικός Διάλογος Ὀρθοδόξων καί Ἀντιχαλκηδονίων: παρελθόν, παρόν, μέλλον. Μία ἁγιορειτική συμβολή [The Theological Dialogue of Orthodox and Anti-Chalcedonians: Past, Present, Future. A Hesychastic Assessment] (Mount Athos: Holy Monastery of Saint Gregory, 2018). The modern term “Miaphysitism” refers to traditional Severian Monophysitism, which has been condemned by the entire Patristic and Synodal tradition of the Orthodox.

 

ENDNOTES

1. Fr. Joseph Gleason, "4,301 Orthodox Saints Who Said 'No' to an Ecumenical Council", posted September 19, 2025.

2. (In Greek) Neos Synaxaristes tes Orthodoxou Ekklesias, Oktovrios (October), Indiktos Publications, Athens 2004, pp. 285-289.

3. See above., pp. 286-287.

4.  Saint Justin Popovic, Lives of the Saints (ZITIJA SVETIH in Serbian), October, p. 529 (see footnote).

5.  As above, p. 548.

6. Neos Synaxaristes..., see above. p. 227 (ὑποσημ.).

7.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martyrdom_of_Arethas

8. Saint Justin, as above. p. 549.

 

Source: https://www.orthodoxethos.com/post/saint-arethas-is-he-a-monophysite