A Preacher from Antioch
Nestorius was born around 381 at Germanicia, a town in the Roman province of Euphratensis in northern Syria, now Kahramanmaraş in Turkey. He became a monk at the monastery of Euprepius near Antioch and was ordained a presbyter there. Antioch was the great city of the Syrian churches, and its teachers, among them Diodore of Tarsus and Theodore of Mopsuestia, were known for reading Scripture in its plain historical sense and for insisting on the full humanity of Christ. Later tradition made Nestorius a pupil of Theodore, though that cannot be proved.
Nestorius became famous as a preacher. He was eloquent, austere, and zealous, and when the see of Constantinople fell vacant at the end of 427, Emperor Theodosius II, weary of local factions, chose this outsider from Antioch. Nestorius was consecrated bishop of the empire's capital on April 10, 428.
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