He appears first as a presbyter of the church of Edessa during the episcopate of Rabbula, warmly espousing the theological views which his bishop uncompromisingly opposed.
[1] The famous theological school of Edessa, of which, according to some accounts, Ibas was head, and to which the Christian youth from Persia and adjacent lands came for education, offered many opportunities for propagating Theodore's beliefs.
The growing popularity of doctrines which appeared clearly heretical alarmed Rabbula, and he endeavored to get Theodore's works anathematized and burnt.
In the letter, Nestorius is severely censured for refusing the title Theotokos to the Virgin Mary, and Ibas accuses Cyril of Apollinarism, and denounces the heresy of his 12 chapters, charging him with maintaining the perfect identity of the manhood and Godhead in Christ, and denying the Catholic doctrine of the union of two Natures in One Person.
This was distasteful to those who held the strong anti-Nestorian views of their late bishop, and they speedily planned to secure his deposition, by spreading charges against him of openly preaching heretical doctrines.
To Proclus the matter appeared so serious that towards the close of 437, he wrote to John I of Antioch as the leading prelate of the East, begging him to persuade Ibas, if innocent, to remove the scandal by condemning publicly certain propositions chiefly drawn from Theodore's writings against the errors of Nestorius.
Their leaders were four presbyters, Samuel, Cyrus, Eulogius and Maras, who acted at the instigation of one of Ibas's own suffragans, Uranius, bishop of Himeria, a pronounced Eutychian.
[9] Ibas, starting his journey for Hierapolis Bambyce to pay his respects to Domnus, learned of the accusation, at once summoned his clergy, pronounced excommunication on Cyrus and Eulogius as calumniators, and threatened the same treatment to all who participated in their proceedings.
[13] Eulogius and Maras then hastened to join their companions in Constantinople, where they found a powerful party strongly hostile to the Eastern bishops, Theodoret in particular.
He engaged to publicly anathematise Nestorius and all who thought with him on his return, and declared the identity of his doctrine with that agreed upon by John and Cyril, and that he accepted the decrees of Ephesus equally with those of Nicaea as due to the inspiration of the Holy Spirit.
The Eutychian party was aided by the intrigues of Chrysaphius, Dioscorus of Alexandria and their partisans to obtain an edict summoning a further General Second Council of Ephesus for 1 August 449.
Reports diligently spread in Edessa during his absence of Ibas's heterodoxy made his reception so hostile that he was obliged to leave the town and request the Magister militum for a guard to protect him.
When Chaereas entered Edessa on 12 April 449, to commence the trial, he was met by a mob of abbots and monks and their partisans, clamoring for the immediate expulsion and condemnation of Ibas and his followers.
[1] Chaereas, however, was moving too slowly for their hatred, and on Sunday, 17 April, the excitement in church was so violent that the count was compelled to promise that the verdict of the synod of Beirut should be reviewed and a new investigation commenced.
This began on the next day; all the old charges were reproduced by the same accusers, amid wild yells of "Ibas to the gallows, to the mines, to the circus, to exile" drowning every attempt at explanation or defence.
[22] Chaereas, as had been predetermined, addressed a report to the imperial government, declaring the charges proved; and on 27 June the emperor, acknowledging the receipt of the document, ordered that a bishop who would command the confidence of the faithful should be substituted for Ibas.
A controversy concerning his letter to "Maris" arose in the next century, in the notorious dispute about the "Three Chapters", when the letter was branded as heretical (together with the works of Theodore of Mopsuestia and Theodoret's writings in favour of Nestorius) in the edict of Justinian, and was formally condemned in 553 by the fifth general council, which pronounced an anathema against all who should pretend that it and the other documents impugned had been recognized as orthodox by the Council of Chalcedon.
weight, and consul Anatolius, Magister militum, a silver coffer to receive the relics of Thomas the Apostle, who was said, after preaching in Parthia, to have been buried there.