Christology and Grace in the Additions to Augustine's De Haeresibus

Abstract

While a great number of manuscripts of Augustine's De haeresibus add to the text chapters on the Christological heresies that arose after Augustine's death, modern editions offer only a confused picture of their transmission. This article identifies three distinct sets of additional chapters, and analyses their sources, possible origins and theological implications. It demonstrates that their authors were taking distinct positions in the debate over neo-Chalcedonianism, the interpretation of Chalcedonian Christology that started to became dominant in the early sixth century. The additions also provide evidence that many neo-Chalcedonians saw an Augustinian understanding of grace as complementary to their Christology.

By the sixth century, users of Augustine's De haeresibus ¹ – a list of summaries of the (real and imagined) beliefs of different (real and imagined) heretics – had grown discontented with this text. It lacked any information on the Christological heresies that occupied four consecutive ecumenical Councils after Augustine's death: the Council of Ephesus in 431 had condemned the radical dyophysite Nestorius, that of Chalcedon in 451 had anathemised the radical miaphysite Eutyches. The debate over where exactly the via media between these two Christological extremes lay continued for more than two centuries and precipitated two more ecumenical councils (Constantinople 553 and 680/81).²

Unsurprisingly, then, the first Christological additions to Augustine's De haeresibus were made by the early sixth century at the latest: before 523, a deacon of the Roman Church named John suggested to the senator Senarius that he read a Liber de haeresibus that apparently contained information on the Pelagians – the last original, Augustinian chapter – the Eutychians and the Nestorians.³ Adding information on these heresies soon seems to have become the norm: a sixth-century manuscript recording only the chapter list of De haeresibus ends with Nestorians and Eutychians.⁴ In the oldest extant complete manuscript of De haeresibus, also written in the sixth century, an eighth-century scribe added the disappointed note: ‘Nestoriana et Eutychiana hic scripta non sunt’ (‘The Nestorian and Eutychian [heresies] are not described here’).⁵ In an eighth-century manuscript, a scribe added chapters on these heresies on the empty verso leaf before the beginning of the text, adding above: ‘Hoc adiungendum est in fine sequentis libelli de heresibus’ (‘This should be added at the end of the following book on heresies’).⁶ Even an early ninth-century version of De haeresibus that had gone through at least two rounds of abridgement contains information on Nestorians and Eutychians.⁷ Beyond that, a great number of medieval scribes added chapters on these two opposing heresies to their copy of De haeresibus – not all of them offering the same information.⁸

Given that medieval scribes soon treated the additional chapters as indispensable parts of the text, it is remarkable that they have never been subject to a systematic study – including by any of the editors of De haeresibus. This article aims to fill this gap in two ways: firstly, it will disentangle the transmission of the various versions of chapters on Nestorians and Eutychians. This will also necessitate a discussion of the chapter on ‘Timotheans’ (the followers of Timotheos Aeluros, the miaphysite patriarch of Alexandria, 457–60, 475–7)⁹ that appears in most editions of De haeresibus, as well as of a chapter on ‘Predestinarians’ (those who believe that some humans are predestined to damnation, some to salvation) that does not appear in any edition but, as will be argued, should.

Secondly, it will examine the sources, possible origins and theological implications of the different sets of additional chapters for the first time. The additions to De haeresibus are an as-yet unutilised source of evidence for Latin writers’ breadth of opinion on and engagement with the Christological debates of the fifth and sixth centuries. They imply distinct positions in the debate over the interpretation of the Chalcedonian definition of faith, and while they appear in different combinations, medieval scribes working on De haeresibus never mingled chapters that implied different ‘Chalcedonianisms’. They were also aware of the intersection of the Christological debates with the controversy around Augustine's teaching on divine grace; hence, the combinations of additional chapters also betray distinct ‘Augustinianisms’ on the part of the continuators.

Previous editions of the additional chapters

First, however, the sets of additional chapters have to be distinguished – which the modern editions of De haeresibus make rather difficult.¹⁰ In Basle, in 1505/6, Johannes Amerbach published the first printed edition of Augustine's opera omnia; in the eleventh tome, De haeresibus appeared without any additional chapters.¹¹ This edition was the basis for that of Desiderius Erasmus, also published in Basle shortly thereafter. Here, De haeresibus appears with the addition of (only) a chapter on the Timotheani, which Erasmus reports having transcribed from a manuscript from the abbey of Gembloux.¹² In 1576, Erasmus’ edition was emended by the Louvain theologians, who copied the chapter on the Timotheans that Erasmus had found and added two more, one on Nestorians and one on Eutychians.¹³ In the appendix, they made clear that the first one only appeared in the Gembloux manuscript, whereas their other manuscripts added the remaining two chapters.¹⁴ In the late seventeenth century, the Maurists again emended the edition of the Louvain theologians by collating it with a number of manuscripts that had been unknown to the latter. The text of the additional chapters remained the same, but they altered the information on the provenance of the three additions: ‘Hic certe finitur Augustini liber: tametsi in codicibus manuscriptis plerisque addantur Nestoriani et Eutychiani …, et in quibusdam etiam Timotheani, hoc ordine: [Timotheans, Nestorians, Eutychians]’ (Augustine's book certainly ends here, though in many manuscripts, [chapters on] Nestorians and Eutychians are added …, and in some also [a chapter on] Timotheans, in this order: [Timotheans, Nestorians, Eutychians]).¹⁵

While they were certainly correct that the chapters on Nestorians and Eutychians were much more common than that on Timotheans, the statement on the order of the chapters was false. In all volumes of Handschriftliche Überlieferung der Werke des Heiligen Augustinus, only a single manuscript – Universiteitsbibliotheek, Utrecht, ms 61, written in the congregation of canons regular in Utrecht – is listed that actually transmits the three additional chapters as given by the Louvain theologians and the Maurists together; even in this fifteenth-century codex, the chapter on the Timotheans is the last rather than the first addition.¹⁶ At any rate, the Maurists apparently did not use this manuscript – no codex Traiectensis appears in the list of manuscripts that they consulted.¹⁷

However, the Maurists did use manuscripts that contained a chapter on Timotheans. Not all of their codices have been identified,¹⁸ but thanks to their notes pertaining to the edition, it is clear that their codex Victorinus (i.e. from the monastery of St-Victor in Paris) is now Bibliothèque de l'Arsenal, Paris, ms 250.¹⁹ The Jesuit Jacques Sirmond had, only some decades earlier, accurately described this same manuscript as adding chapters on Predestinarians, Nestorians, Eutychians and Timotheans to De haeresibus, with the middle two being distinct from the chapters on these heresies that the Maurists took over from the Louvain theologians.²⁰ These same four additions can also be found in BAV, ms Vat. lat. 511, fo. 42r, which was one of the ‘codices Vaticanos quinque’ used by the Maurists.²¹ Both transmit the same note before the additions: ‘Finit relatio sancti Augustini episcopi de haeresibus. Haec vero quae sequuntur a sancto Gennadio Massiliensi presbytero sunt posita’ (‘Here ends the holy bishop Augustine's account of heresies. What follows was written by the holy presbyter Gennadius of Marseille’). Thus, the Maurists did not only provide erroneous information when they stated that the chapter on Timotheans preceded a chapter on Nestorians and Eutychians in any of their manuscripts. They also left no indication of the facts that it was ascribed to Gennadius of Marseille, that Gennadius’ chapters on Nestorians and Eutychians in the Victorinus and Vaticanus codices were different from the ones they took over from the Louvain edition, or, crucially, that information on Predestinarianism ever was added to De haeresibus. Since the Maurists’ unpublished notes contain the correct information,²² this seems to have been a conscious decision. They may not have wanted to add fodder to the Jesuits’ ongoing campaign against Jansenism (named after Cornelius Jansen, bishop of Ypern 1636–8), in the context of which Sirmond had penned his rather more accurate description of the codex Victorinus. Those who subscribed to (or were accused of subscribing to) Jansenism – among them many Maurists – believed Augustine's teaching on grace and free will to be consistent with the Predestinarianism that Gennadius had defined as a heresy; it is thus not surprising that they preferred to pass in silence over the chapters Sirmond had transcribed.²³

After a long pause in editorial activity, two critical editions were completed in 1969. At the University of Vienna, Leo Bazant-Hegemark edited De haeresibus for his doctoral dissertation. He only included additional chapters that he found in the Maurists’ edition and in at least one of his manuscripts. Since he did not use either Bibliothèque de l'Arsenal, ms 250, or BAV, ms Vat. lat. 511, he left out the chapter on Timotheans. He also pointed out whenever a manuscript would transmit different chapters on Nestorians and Eutychians than the ones edited by the Maurists, but did not offer editions of these alternative chapters.²⁴

In the same year, Roel Vander Plaetse and Clemens Beukers published a critical edition of De haeresibus in the Corpus Christianorum Series Latina. In an appendix to the Augustinian text,²⁵ they reprinted the chapters on Timotheans (i), Nestorians (ii) and Eutychians (iii) from the Maurists' edition, collating the latter two with their own manuscripts, and adding editions of the alternative chapters on Nestorians and Eutychians (iia and iiia) – distinct from both ii and iii and the Gennadian chapters on these heresies. Vander Plaetse and Beukers left out the Maurists’ assertion on the order of the chapters, but did not explicitly clarify the actual relation of their chapter i to ii and iii (or, for that matter, to iia and iiia). They also did not add the other three Gennadian chapters preceding the one on Timotheans in the manuscripts that do transmit it, even though they cited Germain Morin's 1907 article showing that it was, in fact, the last of four chapters that should be attributed to Gennadius.²⁶ Thus, the Maurists’ – perhaps intentionally – misleading image of the transmission of the additions to De haeresibus has not been fundamentally amended since the seventeenth century.

Christological basics

Before this long overdue amendment can be undertaken, however, it might be helpful to provide a brief overview of the relevant theological debates. The Council of Chalcedon (451) had decreed that Christ was to be acknowledged ‘in two natures …, the distinctive character of each nature being preserved and coming together into one person and one hypostasis’.²⁷ Among the adherents of this definition, however, there was disagreement over which part of it was to be stressed particularly. If, as especially some Western theologians seemed to think, Nestorius’ main error had been in denying the full divinity of Christ, and Eutyches had failed to ascribe full humanity to him, an orthodox Christology would mainly expound how the ‘distinctive character of each nature’ could be preserved in the one person of Christ. The followers of this tradition did so chiefly by distinguishing between Christ's ‘divine’ and ‘human’ acts; Christ's suffering on the cross, for example, was proof of his full humanity, since, in their eyes, it certainly could not be attributed to his divinity.²⁸ If, however, the issue was that Nestorius had not been able to express adequately the unity of Christ's two natures, and instead believed his human and divine natures to be two separately acting subjects, the challenge of orthodox Christology was to spell out how the two natures could come together ‘into one person and hypostasis’, that is into a true ontological unity. This was the interpretation of the so-called neo-Chalcedonians, whose theology began to become dominant especially in the East in the early sixth century.²⁹ The adherents of the earliest neo-Chalcedonian movement, Theopaschitism, advocated for formulas that could express how Christ's divinity took part in the suffering on the cross; to the Theopaschites, ascribing it only to the human Christ was tantamount to Nestorianism. Given this disagreement, the different constructions of the Christological extremes in the different continuations of De haeresibus can give insight into the different continuators’ positions on what would constitute Christological orthodoxy.

Sources and tendencies of the Christological additions

Previously unknown chapters

Having untangled the editorial history of the different sets of additions and set the stage theologically, they can now be analysed separately, starting with chapters on Nestorians and Eutychians that have not made it into any edition. They are found in BNF, ms lat. 5600, fos 130r–131r (saec. x/xi), and BNF, ms lat. 2787, fo. 16r–v (saec. xi).³⁰ Since both manuscripts are quite late and only transmit an abridged version of De haeresibus (and ms lat. 2787 only parts of it), it is not surprising that these did not show up on the editors’ radar. However, the additional chapters must be of considerably earlier date: the same abridged version of De haeresibus is also found in a late eighth/early ninth-century codex (BNF, ms lat. 1564) – though without the ending, since several quires are missing.³¹ BNF, ms lat. 3848B, another late eighth/early ninth-century codex, transmits an even more shortened version. The additional chapters in this manuscript are clearly based on the ones transmitted in BNF, mss lat. 600 and 2787, most obviously in the chapters on Nestorians and in the respective first sentences of the chapters on Eutychians (see Table 1). In the following excerpt from the definitio fidei of the council of Chalcedon in ms lat. 5600, several specific miaphysite dogmata are anathemised, each introduced by ‘hos qui audent/dicunt etc’. In ms lat. 3848B, this is summarised as ‘hos omnes anathematezat sancta et apostolica aecclesia et omnes sequates eorum’, without giving a clear idea of who ‘hos omnes' would be. Thus, the additions must have been penned by the late eighth century at the latest; judging by the age of their sources, they may have been written as early as the 450s. The chapter on Nestorians is an extremely truncated rendition of ch xii.9–xiii.4 of Vincent of Lérins's Commonitorium (written in 434),³² defining Nestorianism both as wanting to introduce a duality of persons (instead of a duality of natures) in Christ, and as seeing Christ as a mere man. The chapter on Eutychians consists almost entirely of a lengthy quotation from the oldest Latin translation of the definitio fidei of the Council of Chalcedon.³³

Table 1. The additional chapters in the once- and twice-abridged versions of De haeresibus

In some manuscripts of this version of the definitio, Christ's two natures are said to be acknowledged as ‘coming together in one person, but not in one substance’ (‘sub una persona, non sub una substantia conuenientes’), clearly the work of a Latin translator who had trouble with the Greek phrase ‘εἰς ἓv πρόσωπον καὶ μίαν ὑρόστασιν συντρεχούσης’ (‘coming together in one person and one hypostasis’). Having translated ὑπόστασις as substantia, they seem to have worried that this could be read as a synonym for natura, so they added a non to leave no room for a (crypto-)miaphysite interpretation.³⁴ Since this clearly reveals the translator's staunchly anti-miaphysite priorities, it is worth mentioning that the author of this chapter on Eutychians used a manuscript with the added non already excised. This, as well as the fact that they introduce both constructions of Nestorianism, suggests that they wanted to take a rather middle-of-the-road approach, without suggesting any clear partisan position in the post-Chalcedonian debates to their readers.

The Gennadian additions

Chapters on Predestinarians, Nestorians, Eutychians and Timotheans, beginning with ‘Praedestinati sunt qui/Nestoriani/Eutychiani/Timotheani dicunt’ respectively,³⁵ are explicitly ascribed to Gennadius of Marseille (†c. 495) in Bibliothèque de l'Arsenal, ms 250 and BAV, ms Vat. Lat. 511, as well as in BNF, ms lat. 16364.³⁶ Hincmar of Reims (†882) also used a manuscript of De haeresibus with these four chapters ascribed to Gennadius.³⁷ Another point in favour of Gennadius’ authorship is the fact that the text describes the heresy of the Alexandrian miaphysites in the vein of Timotheos Aeluros as distinct from the heresy of Eutyches: the Timotheani otherwise only appear in Gennadius’ continuation of Jerome's bio-bibliography De viris illustribus and in his Liber ecclesiasticorum dogmatum.³⁸ The four chapters are probably a fragment of the Catalogus haereticorum that he alludes to several times in De viris illustribus; most notably for our purposes, he states that information on Nestorius’ dogma could be found in the Catalogus.³⁹ He seems to have written it in 475, during Timotheos Aeluros's short stay in Constantinople.⁴⁰

Gennadius is a prime example of the tendency of some Western theologians to see both Nestorianism and Eutychianism as heresies ascribing only a single nature to Christ. He sees in Nestorius an adherent of Bewährungschristologie (Christology of merit), according to which Christ was only human, but taken up by God as merited by his sinlessness. Unwilling to attribute such human activities as being born, suffering and dying to God, he would rather deny Christ's divinity. Eutyches, in turn, was supposed to have denied the true humanity of Christ, claiming that his corporeal form was only similar to a human body.⁴¹ In this presentation of the Christological issues, therefore, the neo-Chalcedonian project of stressing the ontological unity of Christ's two natures might seem as if it would open the door to both Nestorianism and Eutychianism – and indeed, this is what some Westerners later accused the neo-Chalcedonians of.⁴²

The heresy of the Timotheans, too, is understood as denying two natures of Christ, though here – somewhat more in line with actual miaphysite thought⁴³ – Gennadius claims that they believed the incarnation ‘dissolved and compacted the two natures – i.e. God and Man – into one mass’ (‘duae naturae, id est deus et homo, in unam resolutae et compactae massam’). He stresses that in such an understanding of the incarnation, the ‘qualities of the [respectively] active nature’ would ‘be changed’ (‘immutata … naturarum proprietate efficientium’).⁴⁴ Thus one may infer that, in his view, an orthodox Christology would be able to prove the duality of Christ's natures by clearly distinguishing between his ‘human’ and ‘divine’ actions.

Since Augustine died before even the Nestorian controversy had reached full swing, it is not surprising that Gennadius’ formulations of Christological heresies seemed compatible with the original text of De haeresibus. The fact that Augustine's lengthy treatment of Pelagianism at the end of De haeresibus could immediately be followed by Gennadius’ definition of Predestinarianism – the belief in double predestination, i.e. that God predestined some humans to salvation, some to damnation⁴⁵ – may seem more puzzling: Gennadius is often described as a ‘semi-Pelagian’, as the opponents of Augustine's fully developed teachings on grace and free will would come to be known in the early modern era. Where Augustine believed that, because of original sin, humans were dependent on God's saving grace to even be able to want to believe correctly and do good works, thus ascribing a relatively minor role to human agency in salvation, the semi-Pelagians tended to see more of a balance between human agency and divine grace.⁴⁶

However, even at the Council of Orange in 529, when several Gallic bishops led by Caesarius of Arles condemned semi-Pelagian doctrine and prescribed the Augustinian dogma of prevenient grace – i.e. that faith and good works would be impossible to achieve for humans without God's grace first calling them – they still also condemned the belief in predestination to damnation.⁴⁷ At least until the sixth century, therefore, the teachings of Augustine and of Gennadius on grace were not necessarily seen as conflicting – a point also made by Hincmar of Reims in the ninth century when trying to refute Gottschalk of Orbais's defence of double predestination, and again by Jacques Sirmond in his invective against Cornelius Jansen in the seventeenth century. Both used the fact that De haeresibus and the Gennadian additions are transmitted together as proof of their agreement.⁴⁸ It should be noted, though, that these are the only additions to De haeresibus where medieval scribes felt it necessary to point out explicitly that they did not form part of the original text, suggesting that the compatibility of the Augustinian and Gennadian doctrines of grace was always contested.

Two sets of neo-Chalcedonian chapters

While Gennadius’ condemnation of Predestinarianism seemed compatible with Augustine's De haeresibus, at least to some medieval scribes, none of them apparently saw Gennadius’ condemnation of the ‘Timothean’ miaphysites as compatible with any of the chapters on Nestorians and Eutychians that appear in the modern editions.⁴⁹ Among themselves, however, these chapters could be rather freely combined: while the chapter on Eutychians that appears as iiia in the CCSL edition – of which only three manuscripts are known anyway – always follows chapter ii on Nestorians, chapter iii is found together with both ii and iia in many manuscripts. These additions seem to have been made at different points in the transmission process, since the combinations do not correspond to the stemma established by Vander Plaetse and Beukers.⁵⁰

All four of these chapters seem to have originated in a neo-Chalcedonian context. Chapter ii, the most common chapter on Nestorians, starts with a very similar construction of this heresy as the Gennadian chapter: Nestorius is said to have seen Christ as a ‘mere man’ (‘hom[o] tantum’) who was only later taken up by God.⁵¹ However, a different approach was taken by this author when it came to properly defining the subject of Christ's prima facie human actions: where Gennadius wrote that ‘God was born and suffered in a human’ (‘deum in homine … natum vel passum’)⁵² – still displaying some hesitancy over ascribing suffering directly to the divine Christ – and stressed the need to differentiate the ‘qualities of the active nature’ in the chapter on Timotheans,⁵³ for the author of this chapter, Nestorius’ biggest mistake was not saying that the ‘God-man’ (‘deus homo’) Christ had suffered and was buried.⁵⁴ In this, they were clearly inspired by a group of neo-Chalcedonian monks from Scythia minor who, among other things, pushed for the formula ‘unus ex trinitate passus est carne’ (‘one of the trinity suffered in the flesh’) beginning in the mid-510s. This Theopaschite formula was endorsed by Justinian already in 520, and (after initial resistance by Pope Hormisdas) also by Pope John ii in 534.⁵⁵ While the author of the chapter in question did not use the same words as the Scythian monks, they evidently shared their concern – and that of the neo-Chalcedonians more broadly – to properly express the unity of Christ's two natures, in this case by stressing that his one, divine-human, hypostasis was subject to the passion.

Given that the Theopaschites found their most vocal Western supporter in the African bishop Fulgentius of Ruspe, Morin may well have been correct in assuming an African origin for this chapter.⁵⁶ However, an Italian or Gallic origin is just as plausible. The Roman deacon John may have referred Senarius specifically to this expanded version of De haeresibus,⁵⁷ since he also seems to have been sympathetic to the cause of the Scythian monks: he was the dedicatee of theological tractates that Boethius wrote in support of the neo-Chalcedonian formula of Christ ‘from and in two natures’ (‘ex et in duabus naturis’) as well as of the Theopaschite ‘unus-ex-trinitate’ formula.⁵⁸ The Gallic bishop Cyprian of Toulon was apparently familiar with the text as well: he tried to convince Maximus of Geneva of the orthodoxy of the phrase ‘deus homo passus est’ around 530, accusing him of Nestorianism if he did not subscribe to it.⁵⁹

Interestingly, the Scythian monks, Fulgentius of Ruspe and Cyprian of Toulon, were also all staunch supporters of Augustine's doctrine on grace;⁶⁰ in fact, Cyprian's dispute with Maximus may have stemmed from his defence of the dogma of prevenient grace at the Council of Valence in 528.⁶¹ In the following year, the Council of Orange prescribed this dogma as mandatory – quoting some capitula on grace and free will that seem to have been written by one of the Scythian monks.⁶² Given the apparent consonance between neo-Chalcedonian Christology and an Augustinian understanding of grace, it is not surprising that the Theopaschite chapter on Nestorianism was not only seen as incompatible with Gennadius’ definition of Timotheanism, but also was never combined with his chapter on Predestinarians.

Chapter iiia on Eutychians seems to have been the least popular chapter of the four, but it may have been written by the same author as the much more widely transmitted chapter ii on Nestorians. Both start with versions of the phrase ‘[Nestoriani/Eutychiani] a [Nestorio/Eutyche] qui … dogmatizare ausus est’ (‘Nestorians/Eutychians from Nestorius/Eutyches who dared to teach the dogma’) and use the acceptance of the formula ‘deus homo passus est’ as a litmus test for orthodoxy.⁶³ Alternatively, it is of course possible that a later author modelled chapter iiia after chapter ii, wanting to parallel the two Christological heresies. According to chapter iiia, instead of subscribing to the formula in question, Eutyches ascribed the suffering only to the divine Christ, since he believed that his human nature had been fully dissolved into the divine nature in the incarnation. This chapter also contains an account of Eutyches’s acceptance by the synod of Ephesus in 449 and his eventual anathematisation and exile in Chalcedon in 451.⁶⁴

Chapters iia (on Nestorians) and iii (on Eutychians) may have had a different author, but they, too, seem to have been written by someone engaged in the Theopaschite controversy on the neo-Chalcedonian side. Chapters iia and iii both show some similarities with the Disputatio de Nestorianis et Eutychianis written by Bishop John of Tomi who, before his tenure as bishop, was one of the Scythian monks pushing for the acceptance of the ‘unus-ex-trinitate’ formula.⁶⁵ The last sentence of iia was in fact taken over almost word for word from John of Tomi's Disputatio; the dependency of chapter iii on the Disputatio is less obvious, but still recognisable (see Table 2).

Table 2. Similarities between chs iia/iii of the appendix to De haeresibus and John of Tomi's Disputatio de Nestorianis et Eutychiani

Key:

Bold = (almost) verbatim quotations

Italic = looser parallels

The author of iia also accused Nestorius of wanting to use the appellation ‘anthropotocos’ (from ἀνθρωποτόκος, ‘bearer of man’) for the virgin Mary instead of ‘theotocos’ (from θεοτόκος, ‘bearer of God’).⁶⁶ The more common – and more accurate – accusation is that, because he did not want to ascribe the ostensibly human attribute of ‘being born’ to God, Nestorius rejected the ‘θεοτόκος’-title in favour of ‘χριστοτόκος’ (‘bearer of Christ’). In two sermons, though, he also suggested using both ‘ἀνθρωποτόκος’ and ‘θεοτόκος’ together.⁶⁷ These two sermons are only transmitted in a Latin translation in the so-called Collectio Palatina (BAV, ms Pal. lat. 234, fos 2r–113v), a collection of texts on Nestorianism compiled at least in part by one of the Scythian monks during or shortly after the Theopaschite controversy.⁶⁸ According to the epilogue of an earlier, non-extant version of the Collectio Palatina, now found in the middle of the collection, it originally ended with John of Tomi's Disputatio.⁶⁹ Thus, the author of chapters iia and iii most probably had this earlier recension of the Collectio Palatina at their disposal.

While chapter iii offers a rather conventional definition of Eutychianism – Eutyches is compared to Apollinarius and Mani, in that he supposedly denied Christ's humanity⁷⁰ – chapter iia makes a similar rhetorical move to chapter ii, supplying both constructions of Nestorianism. It starts with the accusation that he believed Mary only to have borne the human Christ (hence anthropotocos), but instead of deducing that Nestorius denied Christ's divinity, the author concludes that he must have believed the divine Christ to be different from the one born of Mary. Therefore, he must have assumed two Christs; the issue with his Christology was that he was not able to adequately express the ‘unity of the person … and inseparable association’ (‘unitat[as] personae et … societa[s] inseparabil[is]’) of Christ's two natures.⁷¹ Both in content and with respect to the intertexts, then, chapter iia specifically points to a neo-Chalcedonian origin, which explains why it seemed interchangeable with chapter ii to some medieval scribes working on their respective copies of De haeresibus.

Augustine's De haeresibus was continued in multiple ways by late antique and early medieval scribes; they had the confidence to alter the text to fit their needs, adding information on the heresies that seemed like acute dangers in their days, even if they had not been in the days of Augustine – in particular on the debates around Christology that had arisen since. Far from simply piling on whatever information they could find, these continuators were aware that, depending on how they defined the Christological heresies, the same theological tradition could look either like the obvious orthodox refutation of one heresy or dangerously close to another. While one continuator seems to have opted for allowing their readers to make up their own mind, both Gennadius and the (two) Theopaschite continuator(s) made quite clear which theological tradition would, in their eyes, be in line with orthodox Chalcedonian Christology. Their answers were diametrically opposed, though; defining the error of the ‘Timothean’ miaphysites as being unable to express the difference in ‘acting natures’ in Christ's human and divine actions was clearly incompatible with defining Nestorianism as an insufficient understanding of the participation of Christ's divine nature in the suffering on the cross.

Combining Gennadius’ chapter on Timotheans with the Theopaschite one on Nestorians in the editions of De haeresibus therefore muddles our understanding of how late antique and medieval people actually interacted with the text, as does leaving out the chapter on predestinarianism altogether. Ironically, the fact that the debate over the relative role of divine grace and human free will was raging again when the Maurists prepared their edition led them to make decisions that would make the fifth/sixth-century version of this same controversy less visible: at least for some, it was entirely possible to claim the authority of Augustine's name in the refutation of such heresies as Pelagianism while at the same time defining as a heresy what for others was Augustine's (orthodox) doctrine of grace – though at least they seemed reluctant to ascribe the definition of ‘Predestinarianism’ as a heresy to Augustine personally. While certainly not an automatic connection, the specific combinations of additional chapters actually transmitted in the manuscripts of De haeresibus also provides more evidence that many neo-Chalcedonians saw an Augustinian understanding of grace as complementary to their Christology; they thus had no qualms about claiming his name for their Christological additions.