John, the Sleepers, and the Council of 431

Ephesus claimed the apostle John early. Polycrates, bishop of the city late in the second century, wrote to Rome that John was buried there, and by the sixth century Justinian had raised a great cross shaped basilica over the tomb on Ayasuluk hill. The city also generated the legend of the Seven Sleepers, young Christians who took refuge in a cave during a persecution and woke generations later to find the empire Christian. That story travelled: it is told in Syriac and Greek, and a version of it stands in the eighteenth sura of the Quran, which takes its name, the Cave, from it.

A house on the hill above the ruins is venerated as the last home of Mary. The identification is modern, made in the nineteenth century from the recorded visions of a German nun who had never travelled, and followed up by clergy who found a ruined building on the spot. Several popes have visited. The Catholic Church treats the site as a place of pilgrimage without pronouncing on the claim, which is worth stating plainly rather than leaving implied.

The council that met in the city in 431 was called to settle whether Mary might properly be called Theotokos, God bearer. Cyril of Alexandria opened proceedings before the bishops supporting Nestorius had arrived, secured the condemnation of Nestorius, and the rival session that followed condemned Cyril in turn. The emperor eventually confirmed the first. The churches that would not accept the ruling became the Church of the East, so a decision taken in Ephesus set the eastern boundary of the imperial church for good.