Who he was
- In the absence of the prefect of Alexandria, when the Copts heard that their pope Dioscorus had departed to the Lord while he was in exile, the people met with the clergymen and had his disciple Timothy ordained patriarch.
- He was a monk from the monastery of Qalamon who had been ordained a priest in Alexandria by Pope Cyril the Great. Timothy was an ascetic zealous man, known for his theological knowledge.
- When the ruler returned to Alexandria he considered their behavior as a rebellion against Byzantium (Constantinople). Therefore, he took the side of Proterius the alien patriarch, keenly persecuting the Copts. In spite of severe violence he only won to his side four bishops who followed the alien Patriarch. When Pope Timothy left Alexandria on a pastoral trip, Count Dionysius arrived at Alexandria to commit atrocities against the Coptic Church causing it to be wounded byChristian hands.
- Upon the return of the Pope, the Count closed the gates of the city to prevent him from entering it. A mob assembled and nothing could control their feelings. They clashed with the army and fought a battle in which there were many casualties. The mob entered the Church and killed Proterius the alien and burned his corpse in the street.
- Pope Timothy and his brother were first exiled to Gangra and then to the Crimea.
- The people of Gangra island loved him and called him “the miracle-performer” and “the charitable.”
- The ruler then appointed “Salophaciolus” as patriarch, and the people boycotted him for seven years.
- In the year 475, Marcian the emperor died and was succeeded by Basiliscus. His physician who was from Alexandria interceded to the emperor to set the pope free.
- The pope then left his exile and went to Constantinople to thank the emperor. There he was welcomed by both the Church and state. He requested from the emperor the return of the exiled bishops. He called for a council that was attended by 500 bishops. In the council he confirmed the anathema against the Eutychian heresy and the rejection of the Tome of Leo. Reconciliation among the churches of Jerusalem, Constantinople, Antioch and Alexandria was established and lasted for a number of years.
What he wrote
- When Professor Meyendorff wrote about him, and about Sts. Severus of Antioch and Philoxenus of Mabbug he said that the non-Chalcedonians had at that time strong theologians contrary to the Chalcedonians.
- In his exile, Pope Timothy was careful to sendletters of faith to his people.
- He explained in these letters the faith of the Church cautioning the people from the Eutychian thought, giving reference to the writings of St. Dioscorus.
- The treatise of St. Timothy, the Pope of Alexandria, written during the sixties of the 5th century when he was in his exile, reveals that St. Dioscorus – his predecessor – was fighting against Nestorianism.
- The writings and letters of Timothy are lost in the original language, but his final and most voluminous work survives in complete form only in an Armenian translation. It is titled, “The Book Written by Mar Timothy, Bishop of Alexandria, against the Synod of Chalcedon” and was written during his exile in the Crimea.
- In it Timothy wrote:
- On the fact that one must assert as one our Lord and God Jesus Christ with His flesh and must assign everything to Him, what is divine and what is human, and that He became co-essential with us according to the body but also remained God, and that it is godless to separate Him into two [natures]'…wherein also is the refutation of the blasphemies contained in Leo's Tome and of the godlessness of the definition of the synod held at Chalcedon.62
- Two more shorter works, one Against the Definition of the Council of Chalcedon, and oneAgainst Leo's Tomesurvive in Syriac translations. His Theology
- Following St. Cyril, Timothy maintained that the nature of the incarnate Logos is one, since the humanity assumed by Him being without a specific hypostasis of its own. This humanity, however, is whole and complete and is united to the divine nature without alteration or confusion, so that Christ, incarnate and becoming man according to the economy, is co-essential with men according to the flesh, and co-essential with God the Father according to the divine nature. By virtue of this union, Timothy, like St. Cyril could claim that the Logos, while remaining impassible in His divine nature suffered on the cross thanks to the flesh He assumed.