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By the time the [[Fourth Ecumenical Council|Council of Chalcedon]] was called, politics had already started to intermingle with Church affairs. When the Emperor Marcianus interfered with matters of faith in the Church, the response of [[Pope Saint Dioscorus I of Alexandria (Coptic POV)|Dioscorus of Alexandria]] (the Pope of Alexandria who was later to be exiled) to this interference was clear: "You have nothing to do with the Church." It was at Chalcedon that the emperor would take his revenge for the Pope's frankness.
The Council of Chalcedon abandoned Cyrillian terminology and declared that Christ was one hypostasis in two natures. However, in the Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed, "Christ was conceived of the Holy Spirit and of the Virgin Mary," thus the foundation according to non-Chalcedonians is made clear. In terms of [[Christology ]] the Oriental understanding is that Christ is "One Nature--the Logos Incarnate," ''of'' the full humanity and full divinity. The Byzantine understanding is that Christ is ''in'' two natures, full humanity and full divinity. (Just as all of us are of our mother and father and not in our mother and father, so too is the nature of Christ. If Christ is in full humanity and in full divinity, then He is separate in two persons as the [[Nestorianism|Nestorians]] teach. Imagine your nature in your mother and your father; you are then two different people. If however your nature is of your mother and your father, then you are one person [http://www.geocities.com/mfignatius/others/byzantine01.html].) This is the linguistic difference which separated the Orientals from the Byzantines.
The Council's finding were rejected by many of the Christians on the fringes of the Byzantine Empire: Egyptians, Syrians, Armenians, and others. From that point onward, Alexandria would have two patriarchs: the "[[Melkite]]" or Imperial Patriarch, now officially known by the Egyptian State as the Greek Orthodox Patriarch of Alexandria and all Africa [http://www.greekorthodox-alexandria.org/], and the non-Chalcedonian national Egyptian one, now known as the Coptic Pope and Patriarch of Alexandria and Apostolic See of St. Mark. Almost the entire Egyptian population rejected the terms of the Council of Chalcedon and remained faithful to the national Egyptian Church (now known as the Coptic Church). Those who supported the Chalcedonian definition remained in [[full communion|communion]] with the other leading churches of the Roman Empire. The non-Chalcedonian party became what is today called the [[Oriental Orthodoxy|Oriental Orthodox Church]].
