On the Anathematisms The Anathematisms against Origen

Editor's note

In the 540s monks in Palestine revived speculations drawn from Origen: that souls existed before their bodies, that the heavenly bodies have souls, and that at the end all things, the demons included, will be restored. The Emperor Justinian, who wrote on theology himself, answered them in 543 with a treatise against Origen sent to the patriarch Menas, and closed it with these anathematisms, which the patriarchs signed. Ten years later the bishops of the Fifth Ecumenical Council took up the same condemnation.