Textkritik im Dienste der Wahrheitsfindung? Das VI. Ökumenische Konzil (680/81) und seine Fälschungsnachweise

Abstract This article investigates the plausibility of the proof presented at the Sixth Ecumenical Council (680/81) to show that the Logos of Patriarch Menas (536-552) and the two letters of Pope Vigilius (537-555) were forgeries. These texts were among the most important testimonia of the so-called Monotheletes, and prove the assertion of one operation and one will in Christ long before the controversy of the seventh century. Through an analysis of the conciliar acts and other texts it is shown that the argumentation of the council was not only incoherent and self-contradictory but actually scandalous, since the evidence presented by an authentic papyrus roll of the Acts of the Fifth Council, with its clear proof of the authenticity of the Vigilius letters, was ignored. In an adoption and further development of the frequently overlooked treatment of this matter in the 1971 edition of the Acts of the Fifth Ecumenical Council (553) (ACO, ser. I, 4/1) the following is demonstrated: the discovery of the longer first edition of the Acts, containing the Vigilius letters, in the original papyrus rolls of the Acts of the Fifth Council led, from the beginning of the so-called monenergist-monothelete controversy, to the (re‐)introduction of the disputed texts into the shorter second edition contained in codices. It is indisputable that these texts are authentic.