1 Coll. Vat. 25, ACO I 1.1, p. 114. 2 Coll. Ver. XVIII ACO I 2, p. 64. 3 Coll. Vat. 61, ACO I 1.2, pp. 52-4. 4 Joanne McWilliam, Augustine at Ephesus?, in: Marsha L. Dutton and Patrick Terrell Gray (eds.) One Lord, One Faith, One Baptism: Studies in Christian Ecclesiality and Ecumenism in Honor of J. Robert Wright, (Grand Rapids, Michigan/Cambridge, U.K, 2006), 56-67 suggests that fundamental doctrinal sympathies between Augustine and the Antiochenes, in particular Theodore of Mopsuestia, lay behind the invitation to Ephesus. On this point cf. J.A. McGuckin, Did Augustine’s Christology depend of Theodore of Mopsuestia?: Rivista di storia e litteratura religiosa 25 (1989) 444-57. 5 Peter Brown, Augustine of Hippo: a biography (London, 2000), 431-7. Augustine and the Western Dimension of the Nestorian Controversy George A. BEVAN, Kingston On 19 November 430 the emperor Theodosius issued a sacra to Cyril of Alexan- dria and other metropolitan bishops to request their attendance at a synod to convene at Ephesus on Pentecost (7 June) of the next year. 1 In addition to the obvious eastern invitees, the emperor Theodosius issued an invitation to Augus- tine of Hippo to attend. 2 But unbeknownst to the emperor and his advisors Augustine had died on 28 August 430 while Hippo was besieged by Vandals. When the council finally met at Ephesus on 22 June, some two weeks after its planned opening, neither Augustine nor his metropolitan, Capreolus, could attend. In their stead a deacon of the church of Carthage, the presbyter Bessula, announced Augustine’s death to the assembled bishops. 3 Why was Augustine singled out among western bishops to attend this eastern council? The question does not admit of an easy answer and has not been raised directly in most literature on Ephesus. 4 To say that Augustine’s unquestioned pres- tige as a doctor of the church led to his summons is anachronistic. Hippo was not a metropolitan see, Augustine was not current with the eastern christological debates, and, what is more, he barely knew Greek. It seems unlikely, in any event, that Augustine would even have attended had he lived to hear the summons. In the last years of his life Augustine spent his time, his health failing, in his library putting his literary legacy into its final shape while his city was besieged. 5 An abstruse eastern controversy over the status of a Marian epithet, Theotokos, would not have, on the face of it, commanded Augustine’s attention. The invitation of Augustine finds at least a partial explanation in a hitherto understudied dimension of the Nestorian controversy. It is widely accepted that 92795_StudPatrist_289.indd 1 21-12-2009 07:32:28