"Working the Earth of the Heart" The Messalian Controversy in History, Texts, and Language to A.D. 431

This study provides a complete reassessment of the Messalian controversy of the fourth and fifth centuries. The Messalians were a ascetic group whose extraordinary claims and graphic spiritual vocabulary were considered heretical by the early Christian church and the group was condemned at the Council of Ephesus in 431. Stewart reconstructs the history of the controversy from its beginnings and shows for the first time that the pseudo-Macarian vocabulary can be traced to a Syriac milieu, thus demonstrating that the controversy was not a question of heresy, but simply a misperceived cultural difference.