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DIVINITY SCHOOL
TROWBRIDGE LIBRARY

THE AGE OF THE FATHERS
VOL. I.

WORKS BY THE SAME AUTHOR
LESSONS FROM THE LIVES OF THREE GREAT
FATHERS : St. Athanasius, St. Chrysostom, and
St. Augustine. With Appendices. Crown 8vo. 6s.
SOME ASPECTS OF PRIMITIVE CHURCH LIFE.
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AND other Studies in Church History. Crown 8vo.
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LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO.
LONDON, NEW YORK, AND BOMBAY

THE
AGE OF THE FATHERS
BEING
CHAPTERS IN THE HISTORY OF THE CHURCH
DURING THE
FOURTH AND FIFTH CENTURIES

BY THE LATE
WILLIAM BRIGHT, D.D.
REGIUS PROFESSOR OF ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY IN THE UNIVERSITY OF
OXFORD AND CANON OF CHRIST CHURCH

IN TWO VOLUMES
VOL. I.

..) I 1 lV- ... J ^ Tj

Votary of tj-ie

LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO.
39 PATERNOSTER ROW, LONDON
NEW YORK AND BOMBAY
1903
All rights reserved

PREFACE

The ground covered in these volumes is almost exactly the same
as that traversed by Dr. Bright in his earliest work, The History
of the Church from A.D. 313 to A.D. 451. But the treatment is
very different : that book was written for students, and it was the
work of an annalist aiming at completeness and verifying each
statement by reference to the authority for it : this is intended to be
more popular ; the interest of the reader is not distracted by notes,
the less important details are omitted, and attention is concentrated
on the lives of the great fathers and on the great doctrinal con
troversies ; it is the work of an historian and a theologian, writing
with a more perfect mastery of his materials, with a truer sense of
their relative importance, and with a greater freedom and richness
of style. But, though more popular, it is also more learned. It is
enriched by a wide and varied reading of thirty-five additional
years ; and those who have been privileged to see Dr. Bright's note
books — his " Sylva " as he called them, amounting to more than
sixty volumes — will know with what thoroughness and with what
freshness of interest he was wont to digest his reading and make
it available for future use. It is also illuminated by the experience
of later travel in the countries of which he writes, and many of
the scenes described— in Milan, in Rome, and elsewhere — gain a
new force from the mind of one who has looked upon them, and
looked upon them with the eyes of a vivid imagination, able to
bridge the gulf between the scene as it was and as it now is.
Above all, the form of the book is affected by the fact that it repro
duces the lectures with which he charmed and stimulated and
inspired generations of Oxford students. They, at least, as they
read the book, and, to a certain extent, all readers with them, will
not picture to themselves an historian writing in his study, but

vi Preface.
will see and hear a lecturer : they will see the merry smile break
ing over his face if any event has its ludicrous aspect, the fire
lighting up the eyes at the mention of the courage of witnesses
for the truth ; they will hear a voice ringing through the room as
it recalled the bold denunciations of passion or of cowardice even in
a Christian Emperor, or hushed into a solemn quiet at the mention
of the Sacred Name : they will recall a personality lifted by con
stant friendship with the great personalities of St. Athanasius, St.
Ambrose, St. Augustine, St. Chrysostom ; and seeing with his eyes,
they will therefore see with the eyes of the actors themselves the
events which he portrays.
It must be acknowledged that Dr. Bright was not well
acquainted with German, and it is possible that some modern con
tributions to our knowledge even of the original materials for the
history of the period may have escaped him. On the other hand,
few, if any, scholars of our generation have moved with such ease
among the primary Latin and Greek contemporaneous writers and
among the eighteenth-century literature of the subject, and it may
well be that an intimate familiarity with the editions of the
Benedictines of St. Maur, with Mansi's Concilia, and with Tille-
mont's Memoirzs, is still the best equipment for an author who
would communicate to his readers a real and intelligent under
standing of " The Age of the Fathers."
In the treatment of the narrative there will be found all those
marked characteristics which we have long been accustomed to
associate with Dr. Blight's work, an enthusiasm for great characters,
a picturesque and almost poetic power of painting the chief episodes,
and above all that delicate sureness of touch in handling questions
of doctrine, that fear of exaggeration, that sense of balance, which
springs only from a loyal reverence for truth, developed through
years of mature reflection. It is in keeping with this that we who
have had occasion to examine Dr. Bright's manuscript and to note the
successive changes made in it, have come to realize how there grew
up in his mind a greater tenderness and charitableness of judgment
towards those who opposed the orthodox view, and a greater effort
to credit them with those aspects of truth for which they were,
however onesidedly and wrongly, yet honestly contending. At the
same time, his indignation against the unfairness of some recent
Roman controversialists has perhaps led him to adopt an unduly
suspicious and hostile attitude towards the occupants of the
Roman see.

Preface. vii
Dr. Bright's lectures — on which the present work is based —
were carefully written out (although in delivering them he never
adhered strictly to the text) in a series of ten note-books, of which
the first is dated in 1870 and the eighth in 1873 ; the ninth and
tenth bear no date, but internal evidence shows that the ninth was
not completed before 1880 at the earliest. In all of them the
narrative occupies the right-hand page, while the left-hand page is
devoted to references and to quotations from original documents.
In all of them new matter was from time to time incorporated
in the narrative or added on the opposite page: but in the
earlier there are abundant traces of a further and systematic
revision, which was apparently undertaken in direct preparation
for the printing of these volumes ; and the discrepancy between
the proofs as we received them and even the later note-books
shows that a somewhat similar though less drastic revision must
have been continued on the type-written sheets. The last note-book
ends with the close of Chapter XLVII. : and for the two concluding
chapters we have had at our disposal no other material than the
printed slips. It is possible that the account of the Council of
Chalcedon was only put on paper for the purpose of the present
book. Before Dr. Bright's death the whole work had been type
written ; and pp. 1-320 of the first volume had received his final
corrections and had been printed off. When therefore Dr. Bright
asked me on his death-bed to be responsible for the publication,
it seemed an easy task ; but when we came to read over the pages
already printed, we were compelled to recognize, as the list of
errata will prove, that it had been with a rather failing eye and
hand that Dr. Bright had worked at the end. Consequently it
has been necessary — and this must be our excuse for the delay
in publication — to examine the rest of the work carefully ; to
check statements by reference to the original manuscript and
(occasionally) to the authorities on which they were based ; to
remove certain inconsistencies which had been caused by additions
made at the last moment ; at times to re-arrange the order of
the material. The greater part of this task has been undertaken
by Mr. C. H. Turner of Magdalen College, Assistant Lecturer
to Dr. Bright during the years 1888-1901, whom I cannot ad
equately thank for the care with which he has executed it ; but
we have also been greatly helped by the Rev. 11. G. Fookes, of
Lea Rectory, Gainsborough, who has undertaken the laborious

viii Preface.
task of preparing the Index out of affectionate devotion to his
friend and teacher.
In one of his later poems, Dr. Bright gave touching expression
to the dread which all must fear of the limitations of old age —
" of the inward change
On mind and will and feelings wrought ;
The narrowing of affection's range,
The stiffness that impedes the thought :
The lapse of joy from less to less,
The daily deepening loneliness."
But to his despondent mood the answer seemed to come from
the Psalmist's words, " They also shall bring forth more fruit in
their age ; " " A voice responds : It need not be :
Refuse to grow at all points old ;
Keep fresh the stream of sympathy,
On no pure interest loose thy hold ;
His own true self he ne'er survives
Who strikes a root in other lives."
These words have found a fulfilment already in the painstaking
and unselfish efforts which others have made to render this book
worthy of him and of its subject ; and they will find a fuller
response yet in many who will read it and catch some of the
writer's enthusiasm for the Church and its Truth.

WALTER LOCK.

Keble College,
August 16, 1902.

CONTENTS

CHAPTER PAGE
I. The Toleration of Christianity  1
II. DONATISM AND THE COUNCIL OF ARLES  12
III. The Councils of Ancyba and Neoc^sarea . . . . . 34
IV. LlCINIUS AND CONSTANTINE ....  41
V. The Beginnings of Arianism ....  53
VI. The Nicene Council. — Part I  .... 71
VII. The Nicene Council. — Part II. . . .  99
VIII. The Short Internal Peace  Ill
IX. The First Troubles of St. Athanasius .... ... 136
X. Prom Treves to Sardica  156
XI. The Church after the Sardican Councii  .191
XII. The Second Arian Persecution  215
XIII. The Variations of Arianism  246
XIV. Arimesum and Seleucia  264
XV. Results of the Council of Ariminum  283
XVI. Julian  294
XVII. Internal Church Affairs under Julian  323
XVIII. After the Pagan Reaction  337
XIX. The Episcopate of St. Basil ....  367
XX. GrRATIAN AND THEODOS1US  . ... 394
XXI. The Catholic Revival at Constantinople . . ... 40S
XXII. The "Second General Council"  ... 425
XXIII. The West in the Last Years of Damasus  462
XXIV. St. Ambrose and Justina  483
XXV. St. Ambrose and Theodosius  503
XXVI. The Last Years of Theodosius  520

ERRATA

Page 27, line 7, for " urbis," read "orbis."
,, 28, line 1, add inverted commas after "Londinensi.
„ 28, line 17, for "Adelphius," read " Adelfius," as in line 2.
„ 54, line 11, for "pursuit," read "dispute."
„ 68, line 38, for "Alexandria and Arius," read " Alexander and Arius."
„ 77, line 1, for "much altered," read " must attend."
,, 78, line 26, for "Heracles," read " Heraclea."
,, 80, line 20, for " retain it for," read " retain for it."
„ 81, line 26, for " we," read "he."
,, 82, line 9, for "discipline," read "discussion."
,, 105, line 29, for " subicarise," read " urbicarise."
„ 119, line 3, for "For," read "For."
„ 124, line 31, for " Tiberius," read " Tiberias."
„ 127, line 11, for "began," read "begun."
„ 129, line 30, for "finish," read "furnish."
„ 130, line 1, for " 1457," read " 1453."
,, 136, line 26, for "althongh," read "although."
,, 152, line 11, for "were ready," read ''was ready."
,, 170, line 9, for "of anti-Alexandrian prejudice," read "or anti-Alexan
drian prejudice."
„ 174, line 5, for "safeguards the (1)," read " (1) safeguards the."
„ 174, line 22, omit " new."
,, 184, line 8, for " Gaudentius of Narcissus," read " Gaudentius of Naissus,"
,, 184, line 26, dele comma after "before."
,, 184, line 29, for "formerly," read "formally."
„ 195, line 40, for " Constantine," read " Constantius."
„ 201, lines 16, 17, for "two priests of Alexandria, and a layman without,"
read " two priests of Alexandria and a layman, without."
„ 203, line 21, for "Constantine," read "Constantius."
„ 205, lines 2, 3, for " the second Sunday of the second week," read " the
Sunday of the second week."
,, 207, lines 9, 10, for "illustrating, as we may say with such tragical vivid
ness, " read "illustrating, as we may say, with such tragical vividness."
,, 212, line 17, for " omissiom," read " omission."
„ 216, lines 38, 39, for " Constantine," read " Constantius."
„ 228, line 36, for " thought it their duty," read " thought it his duty . "
„ 242, line 33, for " Oxyrinchos," read " Oxyrhynchus."
„ 249, lines 10-12, read "This was the ' Homoean' theory, called 'Acacian '
from Acacius, bishop of Csesarea, its chief representative."
„ 252, line 20, for " as," read " so."
„ 260, line 15, for " Homoousion," read "the Homoousion."
,, 274, line 3, for " contumacious," read " contumacious."
„ 277, line 39, for " fruitful to," read " fruitful in."
,, 280, line 16,, for "the library of the Louvre," read "the Bibliotheque
Nationale at Paris."
„ 280, line 22, for "this," read "thus."
„ 291, line 15, for "these orthodox," read " those orthodox."
,, 301, line 33, for "grotesque," read "grotesque."
,, 306, line 6, for " campaign," read " campaigns."
„ 811, line 21, for " Dorotorum," read " Dorostorum."
„ 318, lines 39, 40, for " on one hand," read "on the one hand."

THE

ADDITIONAL ERRATA
Vol. I.—
Page 217, line 24, for " Council of 343 " read " Council of 345."
Vol. II.—
Page 118, line 34, for " in the spring of 404 " read " in the spnng of 402.'
247, line 3, for " assembly in 354 " read " assembly in 353."
" 517, line 18, for " Maximin " read " Maximus."

 j_  ~ „-., ^^^jj.vx^u.^j u± reaauu over impulse, was
long reluctant to inaugurate a new persecution against a large
body of his subjects, whose religion had for more than forty years
been formally recognised as lieita, that is, as permissible under
Roman law, and whose traditional " pertinacity " had been
proved in its previous collisions with the government. At last,
indeed, he yielded to the urgency of Galerius, the savage-minded
ex-herdsman whose domineering temper had begun to overawe
him, and whose pagan superstition was an incentive to the worst
barbarity against Christians ; and having taken his resolve, he
showed himself bent on suppressing the Church's worship not
only by destroying buildings and annulling rights, but by crowd
ing the prisons with all its ministers, and endeavouring by
torture to make them apostatize. But he did not retain the
Imperial power for more than two years and some two months
/ VOL. I. B

ERRATA

Page 27, line 7, for " urbis," read "orbis."
„ 28, line 1, add inverted commas after " LondinenBi.
,, 28, line 17, for "Adelphius," read "Adelfius," as in line 2.
,, 54, line 11, for "pursuit," read "dispute."
„ 68, line 38, for "Alexandria and Arius," read. " Alexander and Arius."
„ 77, line 1, for "much altered," read " must attend."
„ 78, line 26, for "Heracles," read " Heraclea."
,, 80, line 20, for " retain it for," read " retain for it."

ness," read "illustrating, as we may say, with such tragical vividness."
212, line 17, for "omissiom," read "omission."
216, lines 38, 39, for " Constantine," read " Constantius."
228, line 36, for " thought it their duty," read " thought it his duty. "
242, line 33, for " Oxyrinchos," read " Oxyrhynchus."
249, lines 10-12, read "This was the ' Homcean' theory, called 'Acacian '
from Aeacius, bishop of Caesarea, its chief representative."
252, line 20, for " as," read " so."
260, line 15, for " Homoousion," read "the Homoousion."
274, line 3, for " contumacious," read " contumacious."
277, line 39, for " fruitful to," read " fruitful in."
280, line 16, for "the library of the Louvre," read "the Bibliotheque
Nationale at Paris."
280, line 22, for "this," read " thus."
291, line 15, for "these orthodox," read " those orthodox."
301, line 33, for "grotesqne," read "grotesque."
306, line 6, for "campaign," read "campaigns."
311, line 21, for "Dorotorum," read " Dorostorum."
318, line6 39, 40, for " on one hand," read " on the one hand."

THE
AGE OF THE FATHERS
CHAPTER I.
THE TOLERATION OF CHRISTIANITY.
The close of the last great Heathen persecution is naturally called
the close of the primitive period of Church history. It is not
without a deep moral significance that the supreme effort of the
pagan world-power to trample out the life of the Kingdom that is
not of this world should bear the name of Diocletian, rather than
of its true originator Galerius. The able and far-sighted founder
of a new Imperial system, affecting as he did on all occasions, in
Gibbon's phrase, " the calm dignity " of a " Jove-like " ruler, in
whom was represented the ascendency of reason over impulse, was
long reluctant to inaugurate a new persecution against a large
body of his subjects, whose religion had for more than forty years
been formally recognised as licita, that is, as permissible under
Roman law, and whose traditional " pertinacity " had been
proved in its previous collisions with the government. At last,
indeed, he yielded to the urgency of Galerius, the savage-minded
ex-herdsman whose domineering temper had begun to overawe
him, and whose pagan superstition was an incentive to the worst
barbarity against Christians; and having taken his resolve, he
showed himself bent on suppressing the Church's worship not
only by destroying buildings and annulling rights, but by crowd
ing the prisons with all its ministers, and endeavouring by
torture to make them apostatize. But he did not retain the
Imperial power for more than two years and some two months
f VOL. I. b

2 The Age of the Fathers. [Chap-
from the 23rd of February, 303, the day on which the work
was begun by destroying the great church at Mcomedia ; and
Galerius — who kept up the persecution until a horrible and pro
longed disease had broken his spirit in the end of April, 311 —
and his nephew, the ferocious Daza, called Maximin, the " worst
of all " the persecutors, as he is described by Eusebius, and whose
character was a blend of odious qualities, were beyond comparison
more active than Diocletian in the attempt to stamp out Christianity.
But still he, with whom rested the ultimate shaping of the Imperial
policy, did give — with whatever unwillingness — the first impulse
to that desperate undertaking; and history is so far not unjust
when she casts over his memory the whole gloom of a tragedy of
which the largest and most hideous portion was enacted by men
far worse than himself, when he had long retired to his Dalmatian
privacy. It was "under Pontius Pilate," who had repeatedly
" sought to release Him," that Christ " suffered ; " and the final
warfare of the Wild Beast against His servants was " Diocletian's
persecution " after all.
The event which finally put an end to it, and actually brought
in a new era, was the victory of Constantine over Maxentius,
" the tyrant rather than the sovereign " of Rome, at the " Red
Rocks," nine miles north-west of Rome, on October 28, in 312 :
it is usually, indeed, associated with the Milvian bridge, the " Ponte
MoUe," where Maxentius was drowned as he attempted, in his
flight, to cross the Tiber and gain the city. It was a battle,
says the historian of " Italy and her Invaders," which " ensured
the triumph of Christianity throughout the whole Roman world : "
a victory which the Senate, three years later, commemorated
by the erection of the Arch of Constantine near the Colosseum,
and attributed, in studiously vague terms, to " an impulse from
the Divinity." And when senate and people thronged to welcome
the Augustus of Gaul, Spain, and Britain (whose reign had practi
cally begun at York in 306), to thank him as a deliverer, and to
hail him as a monarch, the Roman Christians, from Pope Mel-
chiades, as Eusebius calls him, or rather Miltiades, downwards,
had reason enough to share in the general joy. They, indeed, and
their brethren through the West, had for some time been sub
stantially free from persecution : in this memorable October of 312,
more than seven years had elapsed since the compulsory abdication
of their old enemy Maximian; and even when he, for a time,
resumed the purple as the associate of his son Maxentius, he does

L] The Toleration of Christianity. 3
not seem to have interfered with that policy of conciliation which
Maxentius found it prudent to observe towards the Church, in the
interests of his unsettled throne. But no permanent reliance could
be placed on the humanity of a prince enslaved to the vilest
licentiousness, and to that foul craft of the magicians which, in
the preceding century, had greatly contributed to produce the
persecution under Valerian. The Christians of Rome, therefore,
could not regret Maxentius, and could not but look with hope and
good will on the true heir of that kind-hearted Constantius, who
had at least drawn near to the true religion, and even while
he was subordinate as a " Caesar," had done as little as he could
against its professors, although he had been obliged to publish
the first two edicts. This hope and good will would be increased
by the growing rumour that Constantine, on his march south
ward, had been warned by a mysterious vision, — or, as perhaps
one form of the story was even then circulated in Rome, by
a marvellous appearance in the sky, visible to his soldiers as
well as himself, — to advance in confidence of victory under the
" ensign " of the Cross. And when the Christians saw a statue of
the conqueror rising up in the midst of the city, with a cross-like
staff in its hand, and an inscription referring to "this saving
sign," they may be supposed to have given full play to their
most sanguine expectations of brilliant triumph as the fruit of so
eminent a conversion. Yet Constantine was not yet, in any true
sense, converted. He had been greatly impressed by the tragical
fate of several conspicuous enemies of Christianity : he had given
up the " secularism " which, as he frankly told a Western Council
two years later, had once led him to think that " no supreme
power could see into the secret of his bosom," had learned to
assimilate his father's faith in One God, and had prayed for
help to that God whom his father had worshipped : something
had happened to impress him profoundly with a conviction that
safety and prosperity would be found in identifying that God with
the object of the Christian faith and devotion ; and so he was led
to recognise in the Christ of the Church, not indeed as yet a
Saviour and Cleanser of the soul, but, at any rate, an invincible
Patron and Protector. He was still far off from the faith
which works by love, from the sense of sin that craves for moral
renewal ; he had but reached the position of believing that
" power belonged to " the Christians' " God," and it may be
doubted whether for several years after this date he had formed

4 The Age of the Fathers. [Chap.
any convictions which could commit him to a real adoption of
Christianity. In fact, it was but by degrees that his policy advanced even as
far as to an absolute religious toleration. Some time in 312 — -pro
bably before the overthrow of Maxentius — he had put forth an
edict which conceded to Christians freedom of worship, but under
certain restrictions which afterwards seemed to him less than just.
He was at present on good terms with Licrnius, who five years
before had been invested by his old comrade Galerius with the
full imperial dignity : the provinces of Illyricum were his prin
cipal domain, and from, thence he passed over into Italy, in order
to cement his alliance with the conqueror of the West by espousing
his sister Constantia. There is not a little confusion of accounts
and theories as to the order of events which followed ; but on the
whole we may suppose that it was in the early part of 313 that
the two princes met at Milan, and there promulgated the famous
edict which ensured liberty of worship — in its terse energetic
Latin, liberam atque absolutam colendas religionis suse facultatem,
to Christians and to all others alike, on the ground that this
was accordant with right reason — expressly cancelled the re
strictions of the former edict, and intimated a hope that this
grant would be rewarded with the favour of " the Supreme
Divinity." Maximin, the " half-barbarian " protege of Galerius,
who had raised him to Caesarship, and ultimately had conceded to
him. the dignity of Augustus, was now sharing the Eastern 'part of
the empire with Licinius. He had a bitter animosity against Chris
tianity, stimulated by a clique which, like Julian in after-days,
aimed at establishing a mystic Platonized Paganism. And accord
ingly he had in divers ways harassed the Asiatic churchmen.
But now he felt that policy required an alteration of his pro
gramme ; and in a letter to Sabinus, his praetorian prefect, in
which, to save his own dignity, he ignored the Western edict, he
pretended that he had always desired to use persuasion rather
than coercion in order to reclaim Christians to the worship of the
gods ; that he had indeed yielded to memorials addressed to him
from certain cities, praying that Christians might be forbidden to
live within their precincts, but that his motive was a regard to
precedents, and a belief that the gods approved their desire ;
however, he now deemed it fitting to renew his commands that
the Christian provincials should be " left free to follow their own
religion." They, for their parts, knew better than to rely on

i-] The Toleration of Christianity. 5
Maximin ; he had more than once rekindled the fury of perse
cution : after the wretched Galerius had put forth his Edict of
Toleration, permitting Christians to profess their faith, and desir
ing them to " pray to their own God for his welfare," Maximin
verbally ordered a relaxation of the persecution, but within six
months took indirect methods for renewing it, procuring addresses
to be made to him against the Christians, to which in his man
date to Sabinus he alludes, and replying to them with rhetorical
commendations and full assent. The tyrant, it was observed, on
the present occasion, had not sanctioned any public exercise of
Christian rites ; and his Christian subjects received further proof
of his real intentions, when he suddenly " threw off the mask "
of a good understanding with the other emperors, and marched
into the territory of Licinius. Then it was that, as the Chris
tians believed, he vowed to Jupiter, that if victorious in the
impending conflict, he would " utterly extinguish and annihilate
the Christian name," while Licinius on his side offered up prayer
to " the Holy and Highest God," and caused the words to be put
on record, and repeated by his troops. On April 30, 313, the
armies met ; Maximin was defeated ; he flung away his purple,
put on a servile dress, and fled one hundred and sixty miles in
twenty-four hours. When safe in Cappadocia, he resumed his
imperial garb, and vented his fury on many Heathen soothsayers
who had promised him victory ; lie then put forth one final edict,
proclaiming an unequivocal and absolute toleration. In this
document he expresses regret that his benignant intentions in
the preceding rescript have not been fully apprehended, so that
some of his subjects have needlessly "hesitated to resume the
religious rites which they prefer." Wherefore he gives all men
full notice that any person may freely embrace or follow Chris
tianity ; that churches (" the Lord's houses ") may be built ; and
further, that any houses or lands, of right belonging heretofore
to Christians, and confiscated, seized, sold, or granted away, shall
be restored to Christian ownership. One scene more remained
in the life of this unhappy tyrant, who might have rued the day
when he was taken, as a young peasant, "from the flocks and
the woods," to become soldier, bodyguard, tribune, Caesar, and Au
gustus. He took poison in despair, by one account, but it wrought
slowly, and produced a long death-anguish ; and when his bodily
eyesight was gone, he seemed to " see God, as surrounded by
ministers in white, and pronouncing his doom." Then, according

6 The Age of the Fathers. [Chap.
to this awful narrative in the " De Mortibus Persecutorum," he
shrieked out " as men do under torture," and cried, " It was not
I that did it, but the others ! " and afterwards expired in great
misery, imploring compassion from Christ. Stories of this kind
by no means inspire implicit confidence ; and perhaps, as in the
case of the death-cry invented for Julian, this tale of the agonized
death-bed of Maximin represents what Christians wished to believe
as to a manifestation of divine justice : at the same time, it is not
incredible that such a revolution of feeling should have been
produced by intense suffering, and should have elicited, at the
eleventh hour, something like a recognition of the Christians'
God. The death of the last persecutor took place in August, 313,
about six months after Diocletian, " broken with sorrow, shame,
insult, sickness, and old age" — he was seventy-eight — had died
in his immense palace at Salona. Licinius, having in the
midsummer of this year secured his position in the East as
against Maximin, promulgated the Edict of Toleration in his own
name and in Constantine's, on his arrival at Mcomedia, the
capital of the East, which under Diocletian's care had rapidly
grown into magnificence, and, as we have seen, had possessed
a stately church conspicuous on a hill. The Church, then,
throughout the Roman world participated in the religious freedom
permitted to all sects : she had no special privilege accorded to
her, nothing like ascendency, nothing like " establishment ; " the
followers of every strange and weird cult were to be completely
on a par with her members in the eye of the law. But the edict
took pains to make it clear that the confiscation of Christian
property was annulled : whatever had formerly belonged to indi
vidual Christians, or to their corporate body as such, and had
been alienated during the late troubles, should be restored ; and,
to make this restitution complete, the officials should take care
that no price should be demanded for such property: the non-
Christian holders should surrender it absolutely, and look for
compensation from the Imperial munificence.
We now see the nature of the great Act of Toleration, which is
connected with the name of the great city of North Italy. Milan
had witnessed, some eight years earlier, a scene full of hope for
the then afflicted Christians of the West, in the first abdication of
Maximian, who, as its non-Christian inhabitants would gratefully
recollect, had richly adorned it with stately buildings. It was

Ll The Toleration of Christianity. 7
afterwards to see some events of importance — -one at least of
tragical importance — in the contest of the ancient faith with a great
heresy ; and it was to derive an imperishable glory from the episco
pates of one of the greatest of Christian men, and, in a far distant
age, of an eminently self-devoted pastor. But now the illustrious
city which from the beginning of the century had been virtually the
capital of the West was honoured indeed by becoming the scene of
that memorable Imperial conference, which gave the Church rest
from a series of inflictions involving trials of peculiar intensity.
Technically, as we have seen, the edict of the two emperors did
not go much farther than that of Gallienus, which had made
Christianity a religio licita; it did not commit the emperors to
a single distinctively Christian sentiment, but spoke generally
of " the Divinity reigning on high ; " and it explicitly guarded
against the appearance of "disparaging any mode of worship."
Yet, while it confined itself to the simple object of securing
universal freedom in matters of religious observance, the half-
century which had elapsed since the edict of Gallienus had seen so
wide a diffusion of Christianity, and the persecution of the last
ten years had so thoroughly demonstrated the impossibility of up
rooting it, that the emperors were but recognising the patent fact
of its moral triumph, when they proclaimed toleration to be
necessary for the public peace. The Roman empire was not con
verted to the faith ; but the faith had drawn into its obedience
such masses of whatever throughout the empire was noblest and
manliest, that the absolute toleration of the Church as no longer
an " illicit " combination, but a recognised lawful society, and its
gradual advance to the position of a State religion, were inevitable
necessities of government. " The State," says J. J. Blunt, " did
not give its countenance to Christianity until it could no longer
withhold it : " and even if Constantine had not personally (to say
the least) learned by this time to hold the Name of Christ in awe,
he might still have framed the Edict of Milan, and have thus
prepared the way for a subsequent official adoption of the faith.
Paganism was stricken to death before it lost its legal supremacy ;
and when placed on a footing of legal equality with the religion
which its gravest writers had once taken for an " exitiabilis
superstitio," the ultimate result could not be doubtful. And as
the worst cruelties have again and again been the result of a
panic, we may discern in the barbarous policy of Galerius and
Maximin a perception of " the beginning of the end." They

a

8 The Age of the Fathers. [Chap.
struck at the Christian system furiously — one might say franti
cally — for they felt that even now their blows might come too late.
The Imperial orders touching the buildings which had belonged
to the Church, or to individual Christians, prove that before the
persecution there were many churches, as we should now say, in
existence and use ; and thus they illustrate Eusebius's statements
as to the erection of new and spacious churches in all the cities,
towards the beginning of the fourth century, and the destruction
of churches which signalised the beginning of the Diocletian
persecution. These "houses of prayer" had belonged to the
Christian society as "licita;" and there were also lands recog
nised as the property of that body, a recognition now solemnly
confirmed by the edict, in terms which " secured the revenue as
well as the peace of the Church." In this same spring of 313,
Constantine wrote to Anulinus, the proconsul of " Africa," enforcing
the necessity of restoring to " the Catholic Church of the Chris
tians " all the property — " gardens, houses, or anything else " —
which had of late years been taken from them. Instructions were
given to Ursus, the minister of finance in the African province, to
pay to Caecilian, bishop of Carthage, a sum described as 3000
"folles," and reckoned by Gibbon as £18,000; and the bishop
received a gracious letter from Constantine, desiring him to dis
tribute it among " the ministers of the legitimate and most holy
Catholic worship," according to a " brief" or list, which would be
furnished to him by Hosius, bishop of Cordova. More would be
supplied, if necessary, by the Imperial steward of estates, Hera-
clides. Another letter, written shortly after to the proconsul
Anulinus, sets forth the Emperor's conviction that the Christian
religion, when legally observed and practised, has brought great
prosperity to the empire ; and proceeds to decree that " those who
are called Clerics in the Catholic Church, over which Caecilian
presides," shall be wholly exempt from the obligation to serve any
public office, that so they may be free to " devote themselves to
the observance of their own " religious " law."
If the Western Christians had their own special satisfaction in
having found such a patron as Constantine, the Easterns would
feel a peculiar relief in being delivered from such a tormentor as
Maximin. They would look with exultation on his statues, now
lying shattered on the ground ; their children would be taught to
laugh at the black paint which was rubbed over his portraits.
Even the cruelties perpetrated by Licinius upon his wife and

L] The Toleration of Christianity. 9
children, who were relentlessly put to death, would probably, in
the circumstances, excite no other emotion than what might be
expressed by " Laissez passer la justice de Dieu ! " And the news
that judgment had been done on the agents of his malignity
towards the faithful would be hailed with stern exultation. It had
found them out, then, after all, that infallible, inevitable avenging
Hand : Culcianus, who had shed the blood of the saints in Egypt, and
Theotecnus, who at Antioch had stimulated a renewal of persecu
tion by means of pretended oracles from a new-made image of
Zeus Philios, — they had been overtaken by the wrath of God, had
come under those " millstones which grind tardily, but grind to
powder." The Lord, it was felt, had interposed to " extirpate the
wild beasts that ravaged His flock ; " those men of pride " who
set themselves against Him were laid low ; " " their image was
annihilated in the city ; " they were but " lately like the towering
cedars, but now their place could nowhere be found." " A splendid
cloudless day " had followed on a long darkness ; the Church.
had "a new song put into her mouth;" "she saw the desert
blossoming as a lily ; " she felt that the mercies now bestowed
were " beyond her expectation ; " her joy was expressed by festal
gatherings for the dedication of new and statelier sanctuaries, with
solemn beauty of ritual and full-voiced choral praise, and Chris
tians of " every age " pouring out their souls in thankfulness, and
communicating in " the mystic symbols of the Saviour's Passion."
On such occasions, the bishops and other ecclesiastics delivered
addresses ; and Eusebius preserves a florid specimen of his own
oratory, pronounced at the dedication of the new Cathedral, so to
call it, at Tyre. He proceeds to give some description of the
church: his notions of fine writing were not very compatible
with distinctness, but we can discern the outer enclosure or pre
cinct, the entrance into the cloistered quadrangle, the gates open
ing into the vestibule (afterwards called the narthex), the nave
with its lofty roof of cedar, and the screened chancel with the
altar in the midst, and seats for the clergy in a semicircle beyond.
" On the outside of the nave," but opening into it, were rooms and
offices for various purposes of the Church. If the Eusebian
description shows how instinctively, and as a matter of course,
the Church of this period invested her public worship with forms
of visible majesty, and built up her sanctuaries "like high
palaces," " exceeding magnifical," it also helps us to the conclusion
that a community which could rear so august a temple in the very

10 The Age of the Fathers. [Chap.
city where, some three years earlier, its members had been made
to " fight with beasts," could not " stand in much need of secular
help, nor owe its success to the help that it was about to receive."
At such dedication-services, Eusebius tells us, brethren from
different countries were wont to meet. We can imagine the
variety of thrilling and inspiring reminiscences, which each would
be able to contribute as they narrated their experiences of the
persecution. The Christians of Palestine, for instance, would tell
of those martyrs to whose " good confession " Eusebius has devoted
thirteen chapters between his 8th and 9 th books : of Procopius
who headed the catalogue, of Apphianus who had boldly stopped
the governor's hand when sacrificing, of Agapius who had played
the man in Maximin's presence, of the maidens Theodosia and
Ennathas, of Paul who had spent his last breath in a series of
detailed intercessions, of the learned and generous Pamphilus and
his companions, including the white-haired deacon who knew the
Scriptures by heart, and the young servant-boy who called on
Jesus amid the flames. From Antioch would come praises of the
heroic deacon Romanus, and of others who were " roasted on grates
of fire ; " from Nicomedia, where the storm first broke out, there
would be tales of the chamberlains of Diocletian's palace, Dorotheus
and his fellow-martyrs, and of Lucian the learned Antiochene
presbyter, who was carried to Maximin's capital city of Nicomedia,
defended Christianity in his presence, and died of tortures in
prison. Again, an Egyptian Christian would dwell on the pro
tracted sufferings of his brethren in the Thebaid, when thirty, or
sixty, or a hundred men, with wives and little ones, were butchered
in a day, and the very swords were blunted and broken with
ceaseless use ; he would speak of Philoromus, who had once been
seen every day administering civil justice, with soldiers round his
tribunal, but who sacrificed everything for the name of Christ ; he
would, perhaps, quote the words of Bishop Phileas to his flock at
Thmuis on the example of Him who humbled Himself even to
death, and on the martyrs as inspired by that supreme example ;
he would tell how Phileas practised what he taught, resisting the
tears of wife and children, confessing the Crucified as his God, and
invoking with his last breath " the Immaculate and the Incompre
hensible One ; " and he would depict the great hermit Antony as
almost courting martyrdom, standing in his white woollen cloak
before the prefect, and encouraging the faithful, in that autumn of
311 when Peter of Alexandria was suddenly seized and beheaded.

I] The Toleration of Christianity. 1 1
A Western Christian would not be silent, although Western
Churches had had but two years of suffering ; he would glory in
the marvellous endurance of Vincent the deacon of Saragossa, in
the youthful self-devotion of Agnes and Pancratius, in Vitalis the
slave at Bologna, in Afra the penitent at Augsburg ; perhaps he
would have heard how, in far-off Britain, Alban had died for
sheltering a priest, and professing his faith after discovery.
Such would be some of the recollections then fresh and glowing
in Christian minds, of those soldiers of Christ who had " willingly
offered themselves " to fight His battle and to " overcome by His
blood." Por a time, the Church in the East had little else to do
than thus joyously to reorganize her system, rebuild her churches,
and commemorate her martyrs ; it was for her, so to speak, a long
bright Paschal festival. But we must shortly turn to the internal
troubles which already in this year 313 had begun to disturb one
part of the Western Church, and read the first pages of the painful
history of Donatism.
Yet one lingers instinctively as if unwilling to pass onwards out
of the calm sunshine which, like some benignant presence, was at
this time gladdening almost every province of the earthly kingdom
of our Lord. It was the golden prime of the fourth century, when
His servants — to adopt the Vulgate rendering of a well-known
prophecy — might seem to be " sitting amid the beauty of peace,
and in tabernacles of confidence, and in rich repose." Many of
them might think, as the young Athanasius evidently thought,
when he gave vent to his buoyant expectations in the beautiful
book on " The Incarnation of the Word," that the Church was
almost foretasting the final victory ; that the " Royal banners "
would now advance without serious hindrance, rapidly winning
the world to its true Master. They would not, in their exultation,
in their fervid enthusiasm of hopefulness, take home the thought
that very intense religious happiness is often granted as a strength
against trials to come. And when such troubles did come, in
partial rekindling o^ persecution, or in the " long tragedy " of the
Arian conflict, or in manifold experience of the resisting force of
Heathendom, or in the disappointing discovery of the incurable
viciousness of Roman social life, some loyal souls, worn and
wounded even to faintness, would look back fondly to the happy
year of the Great Edict, as Apostles, fulfilling the ministry of the
Cross, " desired to see one of the days of the Son of man."

CHAPTER II.
DONATISM AND THE COUNCIL OF AELES.
One of the leading features of the Great Persecution was the effort
made by the government to seize and destroy the copies of Scrip
ture. " During the long period of repose," says Bishop Westcott,
" which Christians enjoyed after the edict of Gallienus, the cha
racter and claims of their sacred writings became more generally
known, and offered a definite mark to their adversaries." The
first of Diocletian's four edicts — a decree which appeared very early
in 303, when the old Emperor had not yet been induced even to
imprison the clergy — commanded that the Christian churches
should be pulled down, and the Christian sacred books should be
burned. This was first carried out on February 23 at Nicomedia.
Lactantius condenses the scene into three words, " Scripturae
repertae incenduntur ; " and Eusebius " with his own eyes " saw
similar sacrileges perpetrated at a later time, although it appears
from his narrative that copies of Scripture had escaped this
destruction, and were still in use at Gaza when persecution
raged there in 307. The " Acts " of Agape and her companions,
accepted by Ruinart, speak of the martyrs as refusing to give
up the books and parchments of Scripture, some of which were
seized in a private house. Felix, bishop of a town in Africa, is
bidden to give up such books, "all of them that he has." He
answers laconically, " Habeo, sed non do." At his next hearing the
proconsul asks why he will not give up " scripturas supervacuas,"
perhaps implying that any books which he chose to hand in,
whether sacred books or not, would be considered as satisfying the
legal obligation. Felix makes the same reply : the question and
answer are once more repeated : the bishop is taken to Italy, and
the prefect asks, " Felix, why do you not give up ' Scripturas
Dominicas ' ? or perhaps, you have not got any ? " The intention

Chap. II.] Donatism and the Council of Aries. 13
of the magistrate— as had so often been the case in persecutions —
was evidently to give the prisoner a loophole of escape ; but Felix
again answers, " Habeo sed non do," and receives sentence of death.
Among his dying words is the significant sentence, " Evangelia
servavi." Again, in the " Acts " of Saturninus, Dativus, and other
African martyrs, we read of a bishop named Fundanus, who con
sented to give up the books of Scripture ; and of a brave sufferer
named Emeritus, who, stretched on the " Little Horse " and horribly
tortured, was asked, " Have you any' Scriptures ' in your house ? "
and replied, " I have — but in my heart," probably meaning, " it is
impossible for me to part with them ; " of another, Ampelius, who
made a similar answer ; of another, a youth, who to the same
question answered simply, "I am a Christian ; " then, when his flesh
was being lacerated with iron hooks, added, " I have the Lord's
Scriptures, but in my heart — I pray Thee, O Christ, grant me
patience ! " At Cirta, the old capital of Numidia, the " curator "
or administrator of town-property called on Paul, the bishop, to
give up " the Scriptures of his law " (or religion) : the bishop eva
sively answered, " The Lectors (readers of Scripture in church)
have them, but we will give up what we have here." Bookcases
were found in the church, but empty : a subdeacon (who seems to
have ranked below a reader) produced, on further demand, " one
very large manuscript ; " the officials went to a reader's house,
and obtained four other manuscripts; at other houses, five
manuscripts, or two, or six, were surrendered : at length,
a " public servant " was sent into a house to search for " Scrip
tures," and reported that he could find none. Similar scenes were
enacted at Zama and Furni. So it was that in Africa, while the
persecution lasted in that province, many Christians obeyed the
summons to surrender the sacred books — then, we must by the way
observe, well known as such, as forming a recognised New Testa
ment Canon. Those who thus yielded must have told themselves,
and told others who censured them, that they had neither byword
or act disowned their belief in the truths of Scripture ; that this
belief, in its real life and force, was not dependent on the possession
or the perusal of so many " codices " or " membranae ; " that their
compliance — a reluctant compliance — with the Imperial order, now
the law of the Roman world, was not an apostasy, but would
rather tend to avert harder trials that would make apostasies only
too frequent. "We are not Lapsi," they would urge; "we are
not even guilty of any ecclesiastical offence." The answer would

j 4 The Age of the Fathers. [Chap.
be brief and indignant : " You can be disloyal to our Lord without
formally denying Him. He trusted you with His own book, with
the very records of His redemptive life, and you betray the
precious deposit to be torn in pieces and burnt by the blasphemers
— by those who would fain tread underfoot His religion. You
are not Lapsi — granted ; but you are Traditores ! "
The name thus given, associated as it was with treason, hit
the mark, and became a byword. Towards the end of Diocletian's
reign, and of the first reign, so to speak, of Maximian, on the 5th
of March, 305, a synod of bishops had met amid the fortified
heights of Cirta, for the consecration of a new prelate to that see.
They met in a private house, the churches not being yet restored.
Secundus, of Tigisium, presided, and opened the proceedings by
saying, " Let |us first examine ourselves : you " — turning to one
bishop called Donatus — ¦" are said ' tradidisse.' " The bishop thus
accosted made an evasive reply, indirectly asking indulgence,
"Reserve me to God's judgment," but remarking that he had
escaped the summons to burn incense. " What, then," rejoined
Secundus, " are we to say of the martyrs ? They won their crowns
because they made no betrayal." "Leave me to God," was the
answer : " to Him I will give account." " Come this way," said
the president; and then addressing a bishop named Maximus,
repeated, " They say too that you are a Traditor." Maximus an
swered that he had given up some papers, but no books (codices).
Another prelate said that he had given up " some medical books,"
practising a subterfuge which the officials often tolerated, or even
suggested. Another affirmed that the " curator " charged with
carrying out the edict had forced him to throw the four Gospels
into the fire : " and after all, I knew that the writing had become
nearly illegible! but," he added, "pardon me this offence."
Secundus then addressed Purpurius of Limata : " It is said that
you have killed your two nephews." The savage African temper
broke forth in Purpurius : " Do you think you can frighten me ?
I have killed, and will kill, all who oppose me : but you — how did
you get off, when called upon to give up the Scriptures ? Do not
provoke me to say more." This home-thrust produced an unex
pected change in the curious drama : Secundus had been for some
time in the hands of soldiers, and it was presumed that he had
not been freed without some compliance ; his nephew warned him
to close the inquiry, if he did not wish to provoke a schism, which
would leave him isolated and regarded as a heretic ; and the

n.] Donatism and the Council of Aries. 15
president, finding three other bishops of the same mind — or, as they
euphemistically phrased it, disposed to leave the suspected prelates
to God — acted on the advice by saying to them, " Take your
seats ; " whereupon the synod exclaimed, " Thanks to God ! " The
relief, perhaps, was felt by all the bishops present ; and so, this
unwelcome subject being dropped by common agreement, they
consecrated Silvanus to the see of Cirta. It was proved in 320 by
an official inquiry before the consular Zenophilus that this man
had been one of the subdeacons under the late bishop Paul, when
in May, 303, volume after volume, including " a very large codex,"
had been surrendered by readers or subdeacons to the magistrate ;
and on that occasion he had taken part in surrendering two gold and
six silver chalices, six silver urns, seven brass candlesticks, and seven
silver lamps, with men's and women's tunics and shoes ; and had
himself brought out a silver lamp, and a silver vessel from a secret
place in the church behind a jar. In this sense he might be called
a Traditor ; and the Christians of Cirta exclaimed, " Give us another
man, one of our own city ; Silvanus is a Traditor, — hear us, 0 God ! "
The new bishop was actually placed in his seat by the strong
arms of Mutus, a gladiator employed in the " arena ; " while the
faithful generally worshipped apart in the " Cemetery of Martyrs,"
and in the " Casa Major." This was the enthronement of Silvanus,
in the Easter week of 305.
By way of contrast to the Traditors, we must now observe that
the intemperate zeal which glowed in so many African Christians,
as if the heat of their climate had imparted, in De Broglie's phrase,
" un aspect farouche " to their very Christianity, had already given
trouble to Church authorities. There were cases in which men
anticipated the summons to " give up their Scriptures " by coming
forward of their own accord to say, " We have books, and we will
not give them up." Some who took this line were persons of no
good character, or were debtors to the Imperial treasury, and might
be supposed to aim at whitewashing their reputation, or enjoying
the bountiful supplies which usually passed through the prison-
gates to brave Confessors. But, whatever might be the motive,
all voluntary self- perilling was a form of that precipitate rushing
into trial which Montanistic fanaticism might call heroic, but which
to the sound judgment and reverential humility of Catholics seemed
nothing better than tempting the Lord. Cases might arise in
which a sudden and decisive prompting from above might warrant
a Christian in thus attracting, instead of awaiting, "the blast of

1 6 The Age of the Fathers. [Chap.
the terrible ones : " but, ordinarily, so to act was sheer presumption ;
and thus the Church's mind had expressed itself quite early in the
history of persecution, as when the Smyrnaean Church, in the
Epistle on the Martyrdom of Polycarp, gravely pronounced its
disapproval of those who surrendered themselves, referring to the
unhappy case of Quintus the Phrygian, who, after having done so,
gave way to panic, and apostatized ; so Cyprian had said that ^
Christians ought to " confess," not to " profess," — " not to surrender^
themselves of their own accord to the Gentiles ; " and so Peter of "/
Alexandria in 306 censured those who thus "drew on themselves"
a storm of temptation. "The sober sense of the Church," says
Lightfoot, " was again and again needed to rebuke and discourage
the spirit of challenging martyrdom ; " and thus it was on a well- /
understood principle that Mensurius, bishop of Carthage, forbade *¦
his flock to pay any respect to persons who had volunteered a
refusal to surrender the sacred books. He himself, he admitted,
had eluded the search for those books by putting in their place, at /
the " Basilica Novarum," some " worthless writings of heretics,"
which the officers unsuspectingly carried off. It was presently
suggested to the proconsul that the bishop had tricked him in this
business; but he declined to act on the suggestion. However,
Mensurius made himself some enemies, within the Church, by his,
severity in the one case and his stratagem in the other : he was
blamed for want of sympathy with Christian self-devotion, and^
suspected of having committed the complex offence of acting as a
Traditor and falsely pretending that he had only seemed to do so.
In St. Augustine's words, " it was said that he had lied in saying
that those books were not Scriptures, and had been minded thus
to hide his sin ; although he was also blamed for the deceit itself."
A party formed itself against him, headed by Donatus, bishop of
Casae Nigrae in Numidia ; it was the preparation for an open schism.
He was accused of sheltering a deacon, named Felix, charged withv
having written a seditious letter against Maxentius : he refused — j
unwarrantably, as we should say — to give up Felix into the hands
of the government, and was forthwith summoned to Rome. Before
he sailed, he deposited with some of the " elders of the people " —
leading laics who held an official position as churchwardens (and
were quite unlike the " lay elders " of Presbyterianism) — a large
number of gold and silver vessels belonging to his church; and
left an inventory of them in the hands of an old woman, with orders
that if he did not return, they were to pass to the next occupant

II.] Donatism and the Council of Aries. iy
of the see. He never did return : he satisfied Maxentius by his y
explanations, but he died, it appears, on his way home.
This was in 311. The vacant bishopric had to be filled. Two-
priests of Carthage, Botrus and Celesius, or Celestius, aspired to"-
the dignity, and in order to secure the appointment for one of them- '
selves, contrived to prevent the Numidian bishops from being sum-^
moned, by way of keeping the matter in the hands of prelates nearer
home. But their intrigues failed to gain their end. The archdeacon v
Caecilian was chosen by the " suffrage," or " request," — the strong
testimony or expression of desire, as from St. Cyprian's writings we
should interpret the terms, of the whole Carthaginian laity ; and
he was consecrated according to custom by bishops of neighbouring
towns, including Felix of Aptunga or Autumna. The woman who>
had received from Mensurius the " brevis," or inventory, of Church
treasures was faithful to her instructions, and delivered it, in
presence of witnesses, to the new bishop of Carthage. He there
upon demanded the treasures from the lay " seniores ; " but they,
as Optatus expresses it, in his work " on the Donatist Schism,'1'
" had greedily swallowed what was entrusted to their keeping ;" and
then, in anger at the new bishop's demand, they inaugurated a .
schism, and were abetted by the two disappointed candidates, and 
by a rich and influential lady named LucIUa. She had a personal —
grievance against Caecilian, whose temperament was averse to"'
irregular enthusiasm : while he was archdeacon, he had reproved -
her for the habit of kissing the bone of a dead man, whom she
regarded as a martyr, before she received the Holy Eucharist : as
Optatus says, " she was rebuked for giving precedence over the Cup
of Salvation to a bone of some dead man, and one who, if he were
a martyr, was not yet approved as such ; and she departed in wrath
at being thus put to shame." The mortification rankled in her
mind, and made her eager to compass, by her money and her
influence, any possible revenge upon Caecilian. And so it was
that, as Optatus reckons, three elements — detected fraud, dis
appointed ambition, and wounded vanity — combined to organize
an attack upon his episcopate, and to inaugurate the movement of
Donatism. The malcontents called to their aid some Numidian bishops, of
whom Secundus, who had presided in the Council of Cirta, was the
most conspicuous. According to a passage in St. Augustine's very
curious " Psalmus contra partem Donati," they had already come
to Carthage to take part in the appointment of a new bishop, and
vol. I. c

1 8 The Age of the Fathers. [Chap.
were vexed to find Caecilian already " ordained in his own see."
They found him supported by the great body of the laity as well
as of the clergy : he had possession of the church and altar used by
previous bishops of Carthage. The Numidian bishops were enter
tained by the malcontents, and would not enter the cathedral.
Caecilian, hearing of their hostile intentions, sent a message to them :
" If any man has any charge to make against me, let him come for
ward and prove it." At that time they did not urge anything against
him personally, but they made the objection which became so famous
and so important in the history of the subsequent controversy :
" Felix, who consecrated you, is a Traditor ; therefore your conse-"!
cration is illegitimate." Caecilian was said to have sent back a
reply, which Augustine considers to be a mere sarcasm : " If my
consecrators are Traditors, do you come yourselves and consecrate_
me." " Let him come," cried the surly Purpurius, who had turned
so fiercely on Secundus in the Council of Cirta — " let him come to
have hands laid upon him, and we will break his head by way of
penance." The Churchmen prevented their bishop from trusting^
himself to such " ruffians ; " and the Numidian prelates, who were
nearly seventy in number, proceeded to act. The church and altar
not being available, they met apart, and pronounced Caecilian
to be not legitimately bishop, because Felix was a Traditor, and
because Caecilian himself had, while yet archdeacon, prevented
food from being carried to imprisoned confessors : it was even said
that his agents had stood at the prison door with whips in their
hands. This latter charge, which they now for the first time
employed, was probably a gross exaggeration of Caecilian's natural
co-operation with his late bishop to check the rush of volunteering.
for martyrdom. If we ask how they came to take this extreme
step on the ground of these two charges, we shall find that according
to our authorities, Optatus and Augustine, some members of the
" schismatic Council " were those very bishops who had managed, at
Cirta, to stifle the inquiry into their conduct which Secundus was-'
instituting : they felt that they had incurred the reputation of being
Traditors ; and they might wish at once to gratify Secundus, and
to display their zeal against the offence of which they themselves
had been accused. A much larger number would be swayed by
the representations of Botrus and Celestius, acting on impetuous
natures possessed by an honest abhorrence of cowardly unfaithful
ness, and a genuine enthusiasm for Christian strictness. These
men would eagerly respond to the speech of Marcian, one of their

1 1.] Donatism and the Council of A rles. 1 9
number, who compared Traditors to those unfruitful branches which
were to be cut away from the Vine. We must not, however, ignore
the presence, in some cases at least, of a far lower motive ; we
know that some members of the synod which condemned Caecilian
were simply bribed by the gold of Lucilla, who spent a very,
considerable sum in thus promoting the purity of the Churchij
They were, says Augustine, "bought and instigated" by her to
strike this blow at the man who, years before, had galled her by
rebuke; and elsewhere he says with a curious pun that Nun-
dinarius, a Donatist deacon, had " exposed all the marketings "
(nundinas) of Lucilla. The see of Carthage was treated as vacant"-1?
and a former Reader named Majorinus, now attached to Lucilla's
household, was consecrated as bishop by the Numidians, including
Silvanus of Cirta. Thus was " altar set up against altar," and a
formal schism begun. Letters were written to nearly all the bishops
of Africa, denouncing Caecilian and his consecrators, and demanding
the recognition of Majorinus ; and many, " in good faith relying
on " the statements in these letters, were, as St. Augustine expressesj
it, "alienated from Caecilian." The churches beyond the sea
adhered to his communion, and ignored Majorinus as a pretender
and schismatic. Some account of the feud, from a quarter friendly"^
to Caecilian, had reached Constantine when, in the spring of 318, -
he wrote, as we have seen, two letters to Anulinus, the proconsul of
the " old province " of Africa, respecting the restitution of Church
property and the exemption of the Catholic clergy from civic
office-bearing, and also one to Caecilian as bishop of Carthagej
For in this latter epistle, after mentioning the sum to be distributed
by Caecilian' s instrumentality, among the clergy named in a par
ticular list, the Emperor proceeds to say that he has been informed^
of the attempts of " some men of unsettled mind to pervert the
people of the most holy and Catholic Church by a certain base
falsification ; " that he has written to Anulinus, and to Patricius,
the "Vicar" for Africa of the praetorian prefect of Italy, ordering
them not to tolerate such proceedings : that Caecilian, therefore,
may unhesitatingly invoke the support of the provincial govern-)
ment. Anulinus signified the Imperial orders about exemption of
clerics " to Caecilian and those who acted under him ; " but took
no cognisance of Majorinus and his supporters. The latter were
naturally irritated; and a few days after, some of the bishops"!
of the party, with a " great body " of lay adherents, presented to
Anulinus a sealed packet with a leather covering, superscribed,

20 The Age of the Fathers. [Chap:
" Statement of the Catholic Church containing charges against
Caecilian, given in by the party of Majorinus ; " and also, attached to
this, an unsealed " libellus " or statement. Both these documents
they earnestly requested the proconsul to forward to Constantine.
He did so on April 15, 313, taking care at the same time not tqj
prejudice the existing position of Caecilian. Part at least of the
contents of the unsealed " libellus " were as follows : " We entreat
you, Constantine, most excellent Emperor, since you come of a
just race, and your father, (alone) among the emperors, never per
secuted, and Gaul is free from this crime " (of delivering up the
Scriptures), " whereas in Africa there are contentions between us and
the other bishops, — we beg your Piety to appoint judges for us from
Gaul." This was signed, for the prelates " of the party of Majorinus,"
by five of their number : the name of Donatus, apparently, was not
put forward ; but the bishop of " Black Huts," who had begun to
disturb the peace of the Church in the days of Mensurius, must be
regarded as one of the most energetic leaders of the present schism,
although the Donatus, who was known as " the Great," and was
schismatic bishop of Carthage, belongs to a later time.
The documents reached Constantine while he was in Gaul,
perhaps at his favourite city of Treves. Greatly annoyed, he yet
determined to grant the request of the petitioners. He summoned '
Caecilian to come to Rome, with ten bishops whom he might select
as his supporters : he ordered ten others of the opposite party toj
appear and bring forward their charges ; and he wrote, forwarding
also copies of the " libelli " received from Anulinus, to Miltiades,
incorrectly called Melchiades, " bishop of the Romans," and to
"Marcus," whom Valesius supposes to be a presbyter of Rome,
afterwards Pope, and Tillemont identifies with Myrocles, bishop of
Milan. This letter, preserved in a Greek version by Eusebius^1
expresses the Emperor's vexation at finding divisions rife among
the bishops and people of the African provinces, which " Divine
Providence had willed to entrust to his devotedness ; " and inti
mating his desire to prevent " all schism and dissension," out of
" regard for the Catholic Church," informs Miltiades and Marcus
that they are to hear and decide the case in conformity to " the
most venerable law" of Christianity, and to "justice," and in con
junction with three bishops, Rheticius, Maternus, Marinus —
respectively bishops of Autun, Cologne, and Aries — to whom
similar letters, with copies of the necessary documents, were atj
the same time addressed. Of these three prelates, Rheticius (a

II.] Donatism and the Council of Aries. 21
predecessor, we observe, of Talleyrand ! ) was the most eminent,
and St. Augustine cites some remarkable words of his on baptism
as the " principalis indulgentia : " St. Jerome ranks him among
the famous men of his time, and mentions two of his works.
Constantine afterwards added seven other bishops to the proposed
court of inquiry, and this number, as we shall presently see, must
have been further increased. Thus opened another scene in the
strange drama. It was not the first occasion, strictly speaking, of
an appeal to the sovereign for justice from one of the ecclesiastical
parties : Aurelian had been invoked by the Catholic prelates and
clergy to expel the condemned heresiarch, Paul of Samosata, from
the " church-house " of Antioch. Nor can the " party of Majorinus "
be accused of having on this occasion set a precedent for undue
interference on the part of the civil power ; for as in Paul's case
" civil rights were involved in an ecclesiastical judgment," so this
appeal to Constantine related to " facts, not to doctrine : " he is
asked to appoint judges of the case, and he does so as the natural
guardian of public tranquillity, although he is careful to profess,
at the same time, his respect for the Church of which he was yet
in no sense a member. He orders the parties to " come before a
tribunal of bishops."
And now we must, in imagination, transport ourselves to the
south-eastern corner of Rome, and the slope of the Caelian hill
just within the Asinarian Gate, where the senatorial family of,
the Laterani, one of whom was put to death for conspiring
against Nero, had owned what Juvenal calls a " splendid house,"
part of which had come into the hands of Maximian, and of his
daughter Fausta, Constantine's wife, from whom it took the style
of " Domus Faustae," but transmitted to all time its old name of
" Lateranum." As if in anticipation of the time when the dwelling1
was made over to Pope Silvester by the true "Donation of
Constantine," and the earliest basilica of "Our Saviour in the
Lateran " was endowed by his munificence, the " Domus Faustae ",
was assigned for the hearing of this important cause : the prelates
who actually formed the court were nineteen in number, for it/
had been resolved to enlarge the tribunal, and increase its moral
weight, by the addition of bishops from various towns of Italy.
One can picture the disgust, not unmingled with alarm, which
must have been legible in many faces of the high Pagan society
of the capital, at seeing that proud aristocratic and Caesarean
mansion constrained by the Emperor's orders, during his absence,

22 The Age of the Fathers. [Chap.
to open its doors, for a solemn judicial process, to the chiefs
of a "superstition" the more hateful because no longer to be
despised. So it was that before the Council, or court of bishops, herch
assembled, accusers and accused stood face to face, on Friday,
October 2, 31ft No advantage was allowed to Caecilian : a full
and fair investigation took place ; and the prosecution, which was
mainly conducted by Donatus of Casae Nigrae, was discredited by
the offences brought home to him and others, and then broke
down under the failure of the evidence adduced against the de-j
fendant. On the first day of sitting, it appeared that Donatus had
been a stirrer-up of faction while Caecilian was only archdeacon ;
and he avowed that he had rebaptized and reordained some
bishops who had lapsed in the persecution. On the other hand,
the witnesses brought forward against Caecilian owned that they
had no facts to attest ; and the judges would not admit as evidence
the clamours raised against him by the least respectable of the
followers of his rival. It was then pretended that there were
other witnesses important for the case, who had come to Rome,
but whom Donatus, for his own reasons, had hindered from ap
pearing. " They should appear on the next day : " he repeatedly
promised to produce them. The next day came, but instead of
these witnesses, there appeared some persons with a " libellus " of
charges against Caecilian, which were examined and found want
ing. The accusers had recourse to the fact that as many as seventy^
bishops had condemned Caecilian; but the judges replied that a
large number of men acting in disregard of judicial principles
was of no greater moment than a small one. Caecilian had been
condemned unheard ; that fact proved the judgment to be worth
less, though ever so many had concurred in pronouncing it. The
third sitting ended the trial. The Pope and his colleagues (we
may use the word " Pope " as a matter of convenience) pronounced
Caecilian innocent. " Since," said Miltiades, " nothing has beenj
proved against him by the party of Donatus in conformity to what
they undertook, I am of opinion that he ought to be maintained
in full possession of ecclesiastical fellowship. But," he added,
"excepting only Donatus, the originator of the mischief, the
others who have opposed Caecilian may, if they choose, enjoy the
peace of the Church ; nay, I am ready to send letters of cornel
munion to bishops consecrated by Majorinus, and to consent that
where there are now two rival bishops, the one who was first

II.] Donatism and the Council of Aries. 23
consecrated shall hold the see, and the other be provided for elsej
where." This proposal is praised by Augustine as emanating
from " a true son of Christian peace, a true father of Christian
people," but is doubtless to be taken as the general sentence of
the whole synod, Miltiades as president speaking last, and Au
gustine repeatedly mentions the "judgment of the bishops;" and
again, "After the pacific resolution of the episcopal tribunal, all
pertinacity of contention and animosity ought to have been ex
tinguished." But it was not so. Donatus and Caecilian were""*
both desired, in the interests of peace, not at once to return to
Africa. Caecilian, by Constantine's orders, repaired to Brescia ;
Donatus soon obtained leave to go to Africa, on condition of no,tj
visiting Carthage. Two bishops, Eunomius and Olympius, were*
sent by the Council, or by Miltiades, to Carthage, charged to
" pronounce " or declare authoritatively, as Optatus expressed it,
" where" that is, with whom, " the Catholic Church was ; " to " pro^
mulgate," in short, "the decisions of the synod." They were
violently opposed by the partisans of Majorinus ; " daily dis
turbances " happened : at length the envoys did their errand, gave
sentence that " the Church " in Africa was that which was in
communion with other Churches, communicated with Caecilian's
clergy, and returned to Italy. Donatus then went to Carthage f
whereupon Caecilian speedily quitted Brescia, and returned home,
The schismatics renewed their complaints to Constantine?
They sent deputies to him, to denounce Caecilian as unfit to be aj
bishop. " That is nonsense," said the Emperor : " the case has
been settled at Rome, by thoroughly competent judges." They
persisted, saying that the bishops at Rome had passed a hasty
judgment within closed doors, omitting some important points in
the case. " What of Felix of Aptunga ? the little council of
nineteen bishops never exarhined the question whether he was a
Traditor; and that question lies at the root of all." We may
observe in passing that the idea of a supreme judicial authority in
the Roman bishop alone never occurred to either party. "Wearied
out," says Augustine, " by their daily importunities," Constantine
ordered Verus, the vice-prefect of Africa, to hold a regular in
quiry into the case of Felix. Verus being ill, the duty was per
formed by the proconsul iElianus with all strictness and severity :
part of the " gesta " are extant, and from them it appears that one
Maximus was, so to speak, counsel for the schismatics, and Apro-
nianus for Felix, and that a very important witness was one Alfius

24 The Age of the Fathers. [Chap.
Caecilianus, an old gentleman who had been " duumvir " or local
magistrate in 303, and as such had been obliged to carry out the
mandate for the seizure of Christian "Scriptures." He had, in
that capacity, taken away the episcopal chair from the church of
Aptunga, with some " letters of salutation ; " and had sent (as the
Christians had already done) to the house of Felix, in order to find
" Scriptures " there. Felix was absent. Nothing more passed at
the time. But, some years later, when one Maurus had simonia-
cally obtained the see of TJtica, Felix, in a sermon, declared that
no one ought to communicate with him, because of his " fraud ; "
whereupon an aedile's clerk, named Ingentius, being a friend of
Maurus, said by way of recrimination, "And let no one com
municate with you either, for you are a Traditor ! " He then
proceeded to Aptunga, determined to make evidence, if necessary,
for his charge. He called on Alfius Caecilianus, who was taking
his breakfast with his workmen; declined an invitation to share
the meal, and, on being asked his business, began to say, " I am
come to find out whether any Scriptures were burnt in the year
when you were duumvir." Caecilianus, who was clearly a
man of honour, answered, " You annoy me ; you are a spy — take
yourself off." Ingentius departed, but returned with the aedile
Augentius, whose clerk he had been, and they presented a sup
posed letter from Felix with an oral message, both to be commu
nicated to Caecilian, and to this purpose : " I have in charge
eleven valuable Scripture ' codices,' which I am called upon to
restore to their owner; I don't want to part with them, and in
order to avoid doing so, I would be glad if you, my friend, would
say that they were burned during your duumvirate." Caecilianus,
not suspecting any plot, was indignant at this " specimen of
the good faith of Christians ; " but was induced by Augentius to
dictate a short note for Felix, in which he simply said that, at the
time referred to, certain " letters of salutation " were given up by
a Christian named Galatius, and ended by a courteous hope that
Felix might be " in good health for many years." To this note
Ingentius fraudulently added a longer paragraph, tending to impli
cate Felix by making Caecilianus remind him that he, Felix, had
handed over to him the church key, and bidden him " take away any
books or papers which he might find, but not the stores of oil and
wheat : " whereupon, the forgery proceeded, " I told you that any
building found to contain books had to be pulled down; you
Felix) then a sked what you should do ? and I said, ' Let one of

n.] Donatism and the Council of Aries. 25
your people place the books in the cemetery where you Christians
offer up prayers, and I will come with the police and take them
off/ which we did accordingly." When this addition was read to
Caecilianus, he protested that he had never " dictated it," that it
was a forgery ; his own note had stopped short with the wish for
Felix's health. Ingentius, who at the time of the inquiry was a
decurion or common councillor, was summoned, examined, fastened
to the rack, and " being threatened " with torture, confessed that
" he had added it to the letter." He was condemned to imprison^
ment, in order to stricter examination ; and the proconsul pro
nounced " the religious bishop Felix " to be wholly guiltless of
the offence alleged, the burning or surrendering of the "deifica
instrumenta : " there was no evidence that "any Scriptures had
been found, or spoilt, or burnt," or that Felix had ever, directly or
indirectly, been concerned in anything of the kind. Such was the
" Purgatio " of Felix, obtained by means of the detection of In-
gentius's malignant forgery. The inquiry took place on February
15, 314; .ZElianus communicated the result to Constantine, who,
somewhat later, ordered Probianus, the successor of iElianus, to
send Ingentius to his court, as a living refutation, after this
inquiry, of the charge laid against the consecrator of Caeciliaivi
But the Emperor had resolved that the case should be definitively!
treated by a large assembly of Western bishops. Nothing short of
this, he thought, would avail to silence the controversy : and he
naturally hated controversies, not from the feelings which might
animate a Churchman who valued the spiritual blessings of unity,
but from a sovereign's intolerance of what interfered with the
quiet of his dominions, and also from the vexation which, as a
patron of the Christian community ab extra, he would feel at seeingj
disorders among his clients. And so we find him expressing him
self in the letter to iElafius or Ablavius (perhaps now " Vicarius "
of Africa), which announced his will that Caecilian, with some of
his colleagues, whom he himself should select, and some of his
adversaries, and also some episcopal representatives of each of the
African provinces, with such persons as they might associate with"!
themselves, should be conveyed at the public cost, that is, by
carriages and horses forming the " cursus publicus," or postal service
provided at the cost of the treasury, and by the shortest route,
through Spain to Aries, so as to arrive there before the 1st of
August, when the whole case should be fully and finally examined
and decided. It was, the Emperor wrote, too bad that these

26 The Age of the Fathers. [Chap.
dissensions and altercations should continue : they would, in all
likelihood, incense " the most high Divinity " against the empire
and himself ; and they were so much material for cavil against
the "holy observance" of the Catholic religion, which would be
too easily disparaged, on that account, by " men who were known
to turn their minds away from it." He also wrote letters summon^
ing a large number of bishops to the proposed Council. Eusebius
has preserved one, addressed to Chrestus of Syracuse, which recites
the main facts of the case as regards the calling of the Roman
Council and the persistency of the partisans of Majorinus in re
jecting its decision as the hasty judgment of a few, — remarks
on the advantage thus given to adversaries of "the most holy
religion," — and then sets forth the imperial purpose in desiring
Chrestus to repair to Aries, with two of "the second seat," i.e.
presbyters (whose seats on each side of the bishop were somewhat
lower than his own), and three servants to attend on them during
their journey, and there to take part in a large council of bishops
assembled from all quarters. The letter clearly shows that Con^
stantine called this council, not because he thought there was any
reasonable ground for the re-hearing of the case, but in order that
malcontents who ought to have been satisfied by the Roman
Council might "even now, at last, be recalled to brotherly
unanimity." -•
The old Gallic town Ar-laeth, " on the Marsh," at that time
intersected by branches of the Rhone, and by a number of small
lagoons or sea-inlets which made its situation like that of Venice,
was now the princely city of Arelate, which had long been eminent
as a " colony " among the Roman towns of Southern Gaul, and
had shared in the intellectual activities of " The Province," and
given birth to a professor or-" sophist," Favorinus, distinguished by
the friendship of Hadrian. Constantius I. had resided there ; and
his son took a strong interest in the city, which he attempted to
associate with himself by naming it " Constantina." It became the
seat of the " Praefectus Praetorio " of " the Gauls ; " Ausonius, in
the latter part of the century, described it as a " Gallula Roma : "
and its Roman character is still grandly represented by an amphi
theatre of Hadrian's time, a theatre begun by Augustus, and a
cemetery which is still, in Dante's phrase, " thick-spread '' with
Roman " sepulchres," and retains its euphemistic name of " Elysian
Fields " under the disguise of " Aliscamps." A melancholy place
now, with decay " writ large " over its very streets, as well as over

II-] Donatism and the Council of Aries. 27
its ruins, — Aries was then rising to a greatness which culminated
within a century after its first Council; and Honorius, when
decreeing that it should be the seat of a representative assembly
of "seven provinces" of Southern Gaul, recommended it as
" enriched by its commerce with whatever was goodliest in the
world," an expansion of Ausonius's phrase, " Romani commercia
suscipis urbis." The time at which Christianity first came to
Aries is not ascertainable: that the Trophimus of the apostolic age
brought it thither was the assertion made by its very discreditable
bishop Patroclus, in the early part of the fifth century, to Pope
Zosimus, who heaped favours on Aries because the story or legend,
ignoring St. Paul's language, and obeying the law of " Petrine "
development, represented Trophimus as deriving his mission from
St. Peter. But it seems certain that, in Archbishop Benson's words,
" there was no bishop of Aries before the death of St. Irenaeus : "
and although a Trophimus is reckoned by Gregory of Tours as one
of the seven missionary bishops whom, on the warrant of a record
of martyrdom, he describes as sent from Rome into Gaul in a.d. 250
(a year in whch no such mission was possible), and is named by
him as first bishop of Aries, the story cannot be reconciled with
Cyprian's letter of 254 ; for Marcianus, who had recently become
a Novatianist, had for some time occupied the see, and was evi
dently chief bishop of " the Province : " so that for once a legend
post-dates a historical event. The present cathedral of " St. Tro
phimus," with its solemn Romanesque interior, is interesting as
representing the basilica in which Hilary of Aries, and Caesarius,
officiated, and in which also Augustine of Canterbury was con
secrated by its Archbishop Virgilius in 597. The church of
Aries, whenever founded, was in Constantine's time conspicuous
and dignified; and thus it was fittingly chosen to receive the
" plenarium concilium " of the whole Church of the West, which
assembled on the appointed day, August 1, 314, — the first of the
thirteen Councils of Aries, and by far the most important and
memorable. Among its members were Rheticius and Maternus,
Agraecius, the newly appointed bishop of imperial "Treveri,"
Oresius of Marseilles, Avitianus of Rouen, Ambitausus of Reims,
Vocius of Lyons, Verus of Vienne (the city associated with Lyons
in the persecution of 177), Merocles or Myrocles of Milan,
Theodore of Aquileia, Proterius of Capua, Chrestus of Syracuse,
Caecilian of Carthage (supported by seven African colleagues),
Liberius of Emerita in Spain, and three British prelates, Eborius

28 The Age of the Fathers. [Chap.
of York, Restitutus of London (" de Civitate Londinensi), and
Adelfius, most probably of Lindum Colonia or Lincoln (the text
speaks of " Colonia Londinensium)." The whole number present
is uncertain, only thirty-three names being given in the synodal
letter: but the list in the Concilia called "Nomina Episcoporum"
includes the names of some other bishops, who probably had left
Aries when the letter was drafted, and mentions eleven cases in
which absent bishops were represented by clerics ; among these ong
is surprised to find not only Ostia, but the not distant Tarragona
and Saragossa, and even the neighbouring city of Orange. The
list names four presbyters, who appear among the signatories of
the letter, and ignores three of the signatories : of its fifteen pres
byters, twenty-six deacons, two readers, and seven exorcists, the
majority were evidently in attendance on their bishops, as Severus
on Myrocles, a presbyter and four deacons on Marinus, Sperantius
on Caecilian, Florus on Chrestus, Sacerdos and Arminius on
Adelphius, etc. Marinus of Aries presided. The deputies of the
Roman bishop Silvester, who had succeeded Miltiades on the
31st of January this year, were two priests, Claudian and Vito,
and two deacons, Eugenius and Cyriacus. The first business, of]
course, was the case of Caecilian : it was examined, and he was
again declared guiltless. He had again confronted his accusers :
again their proofs had been found worthless ; so that, in the
language of the synodal letter, "by the judgment of God and
of the Mother Church, who knows and approves her own, they
were either condemned or repulsed." Some, indeed, of those
who had opposed Caecilian were induced by the proceedings at
Aries to " return into unity with him ; " and it appeared that
the Council made or sanctioned some such proposal as that those
bishops of the party who should abandon their schism should be
allowed to share the episcopate of their several cities with the
bishops of Caecilian's communion — in a word, with the Catholic
bishops — until one or the other should die : a remarkable diver
gence, in the interest of peace, from the received principle of
diocesan episcopacy. -*
Two or three of the canons of this Council require special
notice. One touched the Easter-question, which had first arisen
in the second century, and will be best considered in connexion
with the Nicene Council; but it used very general language,
simply enacting that all should keep " the Lord's Paschal feast "
on the same day, to be announced, as usual, by the Roman Church

II.] Donatism and the Council of Aries. 29
for every year. Another definitively disallowed the African or1
Cyprianic rule of ignoring heretics' baptism as invalid, and re-
baptizing accordingly converts who had received it : every one who
had been baptized in the name of the Trinity was to be treated as a
christened person, and brought to " imposition of hands," or, in our
phrase, to confirmation; but if it appeared that he had been baptized /
in some other form, he must be baptized de novo. It is to this
decision of a " plenary council " of the whole West that Augustine
often refers in controversy with the Donatists. A third, while-
excluding from the clergy persons proved to have been Traditors,
recognizes as valid the ordination which bishops of this class have
conferred. There are also rules disapproving of usury, chariot-
races, and theatrical performances, recognising the religious law
fulness, for Christians, of military service, of civic office, and
provincial governorship, with the provision that they must fulfil
their Christian obligations, and accept the counsel of the local
bishop ; allowing those who are converted during illness to receive^
imposition of hands (so as to be admitted to the catechumenate) ;
excluding from communion for a time Christian girls who had
married Pagans, and denying communion to penitent apostates
during illness; restraining clerics from changing their sphere of
ministry ; strictly forbidding deacons to " offer " the Eucharist ;
repressing the self-assertion of deacons of cities; requiring a
plurality of bishops for a new consecration ; and tersely ordering
"that no bishop shall trample on another," i.e. treat him with
injurious contempt. A canon referring to adultery on a wife's-
part presents difficulties which need not be discussed here.
The bishops, in their formal letter to Silvester, lamented his
absence, but owned that he could not leave the place " where the
Apostles daily sit, and where their blood unceasingly bears witness
to the glory of God;" in other words, the Church of Rome was
recognised as possessing the episcopate founded by Peter and,
Paul, and the spots where they suffered martyrdom. But more
difficult and remarkable is the phrase that Silvester "holds the
greater dioceses," and therefore can most readily publish the
announcement of Easter. What is meant by " qui majores dimceses
tenes " ? The empire had been divided by Diocletian, for adminis
trative purposes, into twelve great regions called " dioceses," which,
as Professor Bury has shown, became thirteen in the course of the
fourth century; so that the term which we now apply to the
ecclesiastical district in the charge of a single bishop—then known.

30 The Age of the Fathers. [Chap.
as a " parish," by a mode of speech of which we find survivals
even in Bede — was used for a group of so many civil provinces
which was ruled by a "Vicarius," etc., and eventually placed
with other such groups under the superior oversight of one of
four "prefects," whose original relation to military affairs was
nominally represented by the epithet "praetorian." Thus the
Eastern prefecture contained the dioceses of "the East" (with
Egypt), of " Asia," Pontus, and Thrace : the Illyrian contained
the dioceses of Mcesia — afterwards subdivided into Dacia and
Macedonia — and of Pannonia, afterwards included in the Italic.
The Gallic extended from the northern limit of Roman Britain to
the Straits of Gibraltar ; and at first the diocese of Gaul proper
(equivalent to North France) was distinct from that of " Vienne,"
which was afterwards united to it. The Italian prefecture had
peculiarities of its own. It included the six provinces of " Africa "
— ultimately the seven of Western Illyricum — and those of Italy,
which may be distinguished as the North-Italian, ruled by the
Vicarius (or Vice-prefect) of " Italy," and the Central and Southern,
administered by the " Vicarius Urbis ; " while the great " city "
itself, and its neighbourhood, were under a special prefect, whose
office dated from the reign of Augustus. In what sense, then,
could the bishop of Rome be said " to hold the greater dioceses " ?
He was not patriarch, to use a subsequent term, in any part of the
East ; his authority to reverse local decisions was long afterwards
denied by the Church of Africa. Nor does the letter imply that
he was owned as in any sense supreme over the Gallic Church ;
still less, if possible, was he so regarded by the Christians of
Britain. The Churches of North Italy looked practically rather to
Milan than to Rome ; and Spain does not seem to have had any
special ties to the " see of Peter." And, to come to the point, there
appears good reason for connecting this expression with an older
use of the term " diocese," as equivalent to a province, or a part of
a province, or a district — a sense in which it was used by Cicero.
Then the Council will mean to say that Silvester's ecclesiastical
relation to the Churches of the ten Italian provinces under the
government of the "Vicarius Urbis" (who, observe, was sub
ordinate to the praetorian prefect of Italy, not to the prefect of
Rome) might give him exceptional facilities for acting as an organ
of communication with distant Churches. These provinces were,
in more senses than one, " majores ; " they contained the " eternal "
city, the centre of the Roman world, to which, as Dr. Liddon has

ii] Donatism and the Council of Aries. 31
said, " all the streams of human effort converged," and from which
radiated throughout the empire multitudinous lines of intercourse ;
they were wealthy, populous, and central : he who governed their
Churches might be said to be the chief pastor of the most favoured
and dignified portions of the empire; and his opportunities of
dispersing information would be in proportion to the con-
spicuousness of his position in the Church. The bishops proceed
to summarize the first, second, third, fourth, sixth, seventh, and
eighth canons, and conclude with curious abruptness, which
suggests that something has dropped out of the text. " Then he
(Constantine), being tired of it, ordered all to return to their
own sees. Amen."
'^j^To return for a short time to the history of what we may now
ealLby its familiar name of Donatism. J The great body of"
^©aecilian's adversaries were as obstinate as ever in their discontent.
They were not the least overawed by the authority of the Council
of Aries. " They appealed (provocdrunt)," says Augustine, " in
their extreme pertinacity and litigiousness, to the Emperor against
the Council." Hereupon Constantine wrote to his "dearest
brothers," the Catholic bishops at Aries, a letter more positively
Christian in tone than those which had preceded it — acknowledged
that God's mercies towards him were alike indescribable and
undeserved ; expressed his pleasure in the result of their just
decision in bringing back some sectarians to Catholic unity, and
his disgust at the renewed demands which the others had preferred
for fresh inquiry, and inquiry to be conducted by the Emperor him
self in person. " Incredible arrogance ! They demand a judgment
from me, whereas I myself await the judgment of Christ. For I say
the very truth — the judgment of the bishops ought to be so regarded
as if it were pronounced by the Lord in person. These malignants
look out for what is secular, abandoning what is heavenly. They
have copied the fashions of Gentile litigants by lodging an appeal ! "
After more in this strain, he turns the bent of his letter into a request
that the bishops, " following in the path of the Saviour," will wait
patiently a little longer at Aries, in order to offer favourable terms
to any one who will even yet reconsider their position ; if this
meets with no response, they may return to their respective Churches
" and remember me, that our Saviour may always have mercy on
me." He adds that the obstinate " perverters of religion " are by
his orders to be sent at once to his court. But this interesting
letter was followed by no slight concession to the persons denounced

32 The Age of the Fathers. [Chap.
in it. As Augustine says, he was " overcome by their impor
tunity." The Donatists all but prevailed on him, by some of their
leading men whom he had sent for to Treves in the spring of 315,
to hold a new inquiry in Africa by means of Commissioners.
However, on further reflection, he resolved to hold it at his own
court, and promised the Donatist bishops that if they could bring
home to Caecilian one single charge, he would hold it as equivalent
to the establishment of all. He summoned both parties to Rome.
Caecilian, for some reason not mentioned, was not forthcoming.
Constantine, although beset by demands that he should be con
demned as contumacious, simply gave orders that the inquiry should
be transferred to Milan. Thereupon some of the Donatists returned
to Africa. Constantine for a time thought of visiting Africa for the
purpose of adjudicating the cause ; but he found that this was im
practicable, and summoned Caecilian to Milan. The bishop went
thither, wearied, no doubt, and disappointed, but judging it best
not to disobey again. The investigation, which was conducted,
says Augustine, with all care and diligence, ended as usual : and
Constantine wrote to Eumalius, the " Vicarius " of the six " African "
provinces, telling him how he had found Caecilian to be " a man
thoroughly blameless, fulfilling the duties of his religion ; " a verdict
implying, as Augustine says, that no such crime could be found in
him as had been falsely alleged in his absence by his enemies. The
' letter was written on the 10th of November, 316, and Constantine's
wrath at the obstinacy of the false accusers found vent at first in a
hasty impulse to send them to execution ; but he thought better of
it, perhaps under the influence of Hosius, simply banished them,
confiscated their property, and took away the Churches which they
occupied. This act, however, failed to relieve him from the trouble :
the Donatists in a memorial told him that they would never com
municate with "that scoundrelly bishop of his," and in weary
disgust he recalled his sentence of exile, and left the case to " the
judgment of God." With this final declaration, this " indulgentia
ignominiosissima," of Constantine may be closed the first portion
of a repulsive but suggestive tale of faction and violence, combined,
no doubt, in some cases, with elements of character which mio-ht
have been turned to good account, but were all marred by want of
fairness, not to speak of want of charity. These men, whose coarse
and bitter partisanship so offends us, included some who had a zeal
that " even consumed " them for the discipline of the Church : they
had, no doubt, as Hooker allows, an ideal, in their better moments,

II.] Donatism and the Cotmcil of Aries. 33
of a Church which should be all-glorious in its purity. They were
scandalized by the intrusion, actual or supposed, of grave sin into
the sacred precinct ; they insisted that it should be driven out at
once and at any cost. But, as Cowper most truly said, " there is
no grace that the spirit of self can counterfeit with more success
than religious zeal," none that can more readily accept "the
wrath of man " as its instrument ; and when thus detached from
its proper moral correctives, it becomes a mere turbid, self-deceiving
impulse, which may at any time hurry the zealot into an abyss of
reckless truculence, and reproduce among Christians the atrocities
of unchristian fanaticism. Something, no doubt, must be allowed
for the sullen, gloomy, " black-blooded " temper which distinguished
many of the African provincials, producing a disposition to violence,
and a hardness literally inhuman. Those savage peasants, whom
Donatists, some years later, stirred up to harass the African Church
— the ruffians who went about blending wrath against the Church
of " Traditors " with a wild revolutionary movement against land
owners and creditors ; those hideous " Circumcellions " who were
somewhat akin, at least, to the " Sicarii," and nearly as ferocious
as the leaders of a " Jacquerie " — were phenomena from which, no
doubt, the simple credulous rigorists who first accepted the story
of " Felix the Traditor " would have recoiled in terror and abhor
rence. So again, the intense, almost insane self-assertion of
" Donatus the Greater," who succeeded " Donatus the Elder " in
the leadership, and bore himself as if he were actual sovereign of
Carthage, uniting an arrogance like that of Paul of Samosata
with Arianizing sympathies which would be another point of resem
blance, — this might seem a development of worldly-mindedness
which could be no natural fruit of an enthusiasm for Christian
intensity. More might be said as to the indomitable contentious
ness and obstinate resistance to evidence which the sect showed in
the days when it wearied the great heart of St. Augustine. But
the upshot and moral of the history is, that any excesses of pride,
or cruelty, or bitterness, or baseness, are possible to those move
ments which begin by earnestness without humility, and separate
indignation against evil from the natural virtue of justice and the
evangelical grace of love.

vol. 1.

CHAPTER III.
THE COUNCILS OF ANCYRA AND NEOC^ESAKEA.
The return of peaceful times to the Church in Asia gave facilities
for the holding of two Councils, of which the first is assigned to
the same year with the Council of Aries, and which met at Ancyra
and Neocaesarea.
The city of Ancyra, in North Galatia, had become the capital
of the whole Galatian province. It stood, says Professor Ramsay,
" in a picturesque and very strong position ; " and it was " the
middle point of the great highway from Byzantium into Syria,
and the emporium of Oriental caravan traffic." It possessed a
grand marble temple, built in honour of Augustus, and an in
scription recording his acts. The Jews were, in his reign, an
important part of its population ; and he had ordered his decree in
their favour to be set up in " that conspicuous place which had
been set up in his honour by the Community of Asia at Ancyra."
We meet with its name in the early history of Montanism, where
the anonymous anti-Montanist writer, cited so largely by Eusebius,
says that he " discoursed many days in the church at Ancyra on
the points urged by the adherents of Montanus," and the presbyters
of Ancyra wished him to leave with them some records of addresses
which had " gladdened and confirmed " the minds of the faithful.
To this city, about the Easter festival of 314, or perhaps in the
fourth week after Easter, came some eighteen prelates from the
different parts of Asia Minor and Syria. Vitalis of Antioch, as
the highest in rank, probably presided ; another eminent prelate
was Basil of Amasea, who is said to have afterwards suffered
martyrdom : but the one whose name is best known is the bishop
of Ancyra, that unfortunate Marcellus who, in the Arian contro
versy, gave such trouble to his friends by appearing, at least, to
adopt a line of opposition to Arianism which was itself heretical in

Chap, in.] The Councils of Ancyra and Neoccesarea. 35
an opposite direction ; and next to him, a Basil who was the best
representative of that " Semi- Arian " view which might seem to
be rather verbally than intelligently heterodox. The chief purpose
of the episcopal gathering was to provide for the treatment of the
Lapsi of the late persecution. Not much need be said about its
canons. Cases of apostasy were classified. We find that some
presbyters had sacrificed to idols, and had then renewed their
profession of Christianity, but had made a private arrangement
with the officials that they should merely go through the form of
being submitted to torture. Some clerics or laics had taken part
in an idolatrous feast, had " dined in presence of idols," and this
under severe pressure, yet all the while had put on an appearance
of cheerfulness or indifference ; others had wept persistently, and
worn a mourning habit ; others had sat at the feast, but refused to
taste anything, or had resorted to the subterfuge of bringing and
eating their own food. Some Churchmen had not only lapsed, but
had pressed others to share in their apostasy. Various penances
are assigned to various classes. We hear of three orders or grades
of penitents : the Hearers, who might listen to the reading of
Scripture ; the Kneelers, who might join in certain prayers ; and the
Co-standers, who stayed throughout the Eucharistic service, and
were only restricted from actual communion. And we read of some
who needed no penance, who had had incense thrust into their
hands beside an altar, or part of the " idol-sacrifice " thrust into
their mouths, but who at the time and afterwards had unequivo
cally expressed their Christian faith. Another canon is important
in regard to the function of the " Chorepiscopi," or bishops of rural
districts. The reading is disputed, but probably comes to this :
" It is not permitted to country bishops to ordain presbyters or
deacons — " then, with an accusative and not a dative, " nor
truly city presbyters either (or, ' and certainly not city pres
byters '), without the written permission of the bishop, in another
'parish'" (or diocese), or perhaps, "in each parish." The other
reading, which is adduced as making the canon say, " it is not per
mitted to country bishops, nor even to city presbyters " (to ordain,
etc.), rests chiefly on the authority of Latin versions, whereas the
Greek manuscripts support the accusative, as is shown in a learned
paper in the third volume of Studia Biblica. It is not unlikely that
the dative was adopted under the notion that the accusative in
that second clause was an erroneous iteration of the accusative in
the first. But which reading is intrinsically the more probable ?

36 The Age of the Fathers. [Chap.
Were the Chorepiscopi real bishops, or, as were some in the West
in the latter half of the fourth century, presbyters holding an office
like that of a rural dean ? Apparently those in the East had received
episcopal consecration, but on the understanding that they should
be in strict subordination to the diocesan bishops. They were
stationed in the " country-sides," to look after the scattered rural
flocks : they are here directed not to confer orders even in their
own districts, still less in the cities where the diocesan bishops
dwell, without express warrant from the latter; the aim of the
restriction being apparently to guard against a gradual dissolution
of the unity of the diocesan Church. This being the object, one
may ask first, Why should the canon here introduce a restriction
applying to the action of a different class ? One class of persons
is forbidden (except under conditions) to do a particular act. If
we read the dative, we must suppose that another class is suddenly)
and in a dependent clause, placed under the same prohibition.
This would seem to mar the simplicity and unity of the veto pro
nounced. Further, if we render, " it is not permitted to Chorepis
copi, nor even" (as Lightfoot takes it) "to city presbyters," this
would suggest that city presbyters ranked higher than Chorepiscopi ;
whereas we see here that the latter had power to ordain, and there
is no good evidence for such power as vested in presbyters ; the
evidence, rather, goes the other way. Another canon shows that
churches, or " houses of the Lord," had, as such, certain property :
if any part of it had been alienated, an incoming bishop might
reclaim it. We also learn that in some cases persons appointed
as bishops for particular towns were repulsed by popular feeling.
The difficulty here is that, according to rule, a strong expression of
acceptance, or even of desire, was a necessary pre-condition of the
appointment of a bishop ; he was not to be set over an " unwill
ing " people. The laity of the diocese had very full opportunity
of signifying their opinions and wishes in such a case ; and it would
be very seldom that they were overruled by the provincial synod,
as if they did not know what- was best for them, or were too ex
citable and intractable to have their objections taken into account.
Again, the canons illustrate the general tone of feeling in
regard to asceticism. The requirement of 1 Tim. iii. 2, 12 (in its
natural sense) as to presbyters (called episkopoi) or deacons was
not, indeed, extended to lay people ; but still a second marriage on
the part of a laic was deemed a weakness, a falling short of the
higher tone of Christian life. ' At the same time, there is a clear

III.] The Councils of Ancyra and Neoccesarea. 37
expression of the Church's mind as against the morbid and un
christian type of abstinence which had been prophetically censured
by St. Paul, and had distinguished the Encratite sect (so called)
in the second century. When it is ruled that clerics who are in
the habit of abstaining from meat, or even from vegetables cooked
with meat, must at least taste the meat set before them, by way of
proving that their own practice has no relation to non-Christian
ideas (such as were hinted at in 1 Tim. iv. 3) we are to understand
a reference to the Agapae or common meals in which Christians
periodically shared by way of "love-feasts," which had been
abused by the rich at Alexandria, and were now often — as at
Rome — associated with the commemoration of martyrs, and held
at or near their tombs.
The Council of Neocaesarea is commonly said to have been
held but little later than the Ancyran. The Greek preface to its
canon calls them subsequent to the Ancyran, but earlier than the
Nicene. Some would assign it to the year after the Ancyran, i.e.
A.D. 315 ; others would say a few years later. Nineteen bishops
(including eleven who were present at Ancyra) subscribed this
council's acts, — if the lists of names be trustworthy. The city of
Neocaesarea, which "had begun to flourish from B.C. 64," was
now " the large and beautiful capital " of Pontus. It had become
illustrious, in the eyes of all Asiatic Christians, by the episcopate
of Gregory surnamed "the Wonder-worker," who found there,
says Basil, only seventeen Christians, and left there a convert
population. Even if we could suppose that there was a basis
of truth in those accounts of his supernatural powers which
were first published about a century after his time, and at
any rate have a legendary character, we should still believe
that the moral beauty and nobleness of his pastoral life and
labours were at least as impressive and fruitful as the presence of
what, in the language of the apostolic age, would be called bis
" charismata " or visible " mighty works." The prelates who met
at his city, probably just fifty years after his death, would find
memorials of him at every point of the Church life of his people.
Whether or not his dying wish had been obeyed, and no distinctive
burial-place marked out for him — for he desired, we are told, to
be " even after death a stranger and sojourner " — we may be sure
that the whole city was practically his monument, and that his
memory was " ever fresh " in his people's mind. His successors,
whom Basil afterwards compared to " a chain of precious stones,"

38 The Age of the Fathers. [Chap.
had been careful to hand on the traditions of his teaching and his
sanctity : " not a word, not an action, not a single point of ritual
observance " which was traceable to his authority, had been altered
since his time : the holyday rejoicings which he had transferred
from heathen festivals to the anniversaries of martyrs were now,
doubtless, invested by recent events (such as the hideous tortures
inflicted on some Christians of Pontus) with a more vivid and intense,
yet a more grave and awestruck exultation : in his formula of
doxology, glory was ascribed " to the Father, with the Son, and
with the Holy Spirit ; " of his formula of faith, or creed, the
autograph, written with " his blessed hand," as Gregory of Nyssa
says, was preserved as a priceless treasure, and the words were
daily used to instil the faith into the minds of the young, and to
preserve the whole flock in the lines of intelligent orthodoxy. The
church in which the Council now met was doubtless that of which
Gregory had laid the foundations, and which " some one of his
successors " — probably the bishop now occupying his seat — is said
by Gregory of Nyssa to have completed and beautified ; and alto
gether, the influence of him who was known in the Eastern Church
of this century as " Gregory the Great " would be felt to have
formed the whole moral atmosphere of the Pontic capital.
The Neocaesarean canons throw further light on the develop
ment of ascetic ideas. A presbyter is not to join in the wedding
feast of a " digamist," because strictly he would be bound to put
his entertainer to penance. A layman whose wife has dishonoured
him ought not to be ordained ; a priest who does not put away a
faithless wife, or a priest who voluntarily confesses that before his
ordination he fell into unchastity, ought no longer to celebrate.
No priest ought to marry after his ordination : the meaning is, if
he is already married, and is well qualified for priesthood, let him
be ordained; but if at his ordination he is single, he must not
afterwards accept the obligations of married life. This, as we
know, was a rule of long standing at the time of the Nicene
Council ; it had grown out of such a one-sided construction of the
apostolic advice in 1 Cor. vii. as would be fostered by recoil from
the hideous pollutions of pagan society, amid which the idea of
marriage itself had not yet been cleared of the " serpent's trail,"
had not vindicated its own pure dignity. Another canon excom
municates a woman who has married two brothers successively.
This implies the moral obligatoriness of the Levitical prohibition ;
and it was quoted by Henry VIII.'s advocates in his Divorce case,

Hi-] The Councils of Ancyra and Neoccesarea. 39
as representing the primitive Church's mind. Another recognises
only two classes of Catechumens, Hearers the lower, and Kneelers
the higher; and perhaps we may understand the canon as not
marking off the class called " Compe tents," or joint applicants
for speedy baptism. The Nicene canons speak of Hearer-Cate
chumens and Catechumens proper ; and those who were afterwards
distinguished as Competents would naturally, at first, be reckoned
among the latter.
The twelfth is perhaps the most remarkable of all the decrees
of Neocaesarea. " If any one be ' enlightened ' when ill, he cannot
be advanced to the order of presbyter (for his faith is not from
free choice, but from necessity), unless, perchance, on account of
his subsequent earnestness and faith, and of lack of men." This
is the law — older than the middle of the third century, so far as
regards its substance — which puts a distinct mark of disparage
ment on those cases of baptism (called " enlightenment " from Heb.
vi. 4) in which the recipient had wilfully deferred receiving it,
or neglected, to apply for it, while in health, and then sought
for it when the fear of death was upon him. Persons who so
acted were called Clinics, or " men of the sick-bed," and were
by rule debarred from ordination. Sometimes there would be a
deliberate plan of deferring until death drew near, in order to pass
out of the world with the full benefit of the baptismal cleansing.
Those who so acted would make some enormous assumptions ; as,
that they would not be struck down by sudden death, and that
they would not only in their last hour have time and means for
being baptized, but, after years spent in deliberate self-exclusion
from Christian grace, were sure to repent and "turn to the
Lord ; " they would also exhibit a revolting heartlessness in with
holding from Him the service of their best years, and they would
suggest the suspicion of trying to " make the best of both worlds "
in a very unchristian sense. The practice would connect itself
with a reverence " not according to knowledge " for the sanctity of
baptism, and with an exaggerated conception of the heinousness of
sinning after receiving it ; and thus a show of religiousness would
be attached to a postponement which the Church, by councils and
fathers, denounced as flagrantly wrong. It had been branded by
Tertullian as an " attempt to secure a furlough for sinning ; " and
in the latter part of the fourth century it was condemned on
similar grounds by Basil and Gregory of Nazianzus.
Neocaesarea joins with Ancyra in giving us information about

40 The Age of the Fathers. [Chap. III.
Chorepiscopi. We find that the rural presbyters stood on a footing
of inferiority to the city presbyters ; and as they were unques
tionably real presbyters, we see how the Chorepiscopi might be
subordinate to the diocesans, and yet be really bishops, as really
as our English " bishops-suffragan." A rural presbyter must not
celebrate, nor even administer, where the city presbyters were
present ; he may only do so in their absence. But the Chorepiscopi,
who are regarded as fellow-ministers with the bishops, although
as prefigured by "the Seventy," may do what the rural presbyters
may not do.
A curious and somewhat formalistic rule restricts the number
of deacons even in a large city, to seven, and refers for a reason to
Acts vi. Here we see that, as in the Ignatian Epistles, the
diaconate is treated as a sacred order. The restriction, as we
know from Cornelius of Rome, was observed there, and the result
was unfortunate ; for the seven Roman deacons in the midst of
some fifty presbyters were tempted to exhibit a self-importance
which aroused the indignation of Jerome.

CHAPTER IV.
LICINIUS AND CONSTANTINE.
It is probable that the Council of Neocaesarea was the last which
was permitted to meet in Asia Minor until the final overthrow of
Licinius. He had been unsuccessful in his first war with his
colleague, and had been compelled to sue for peace, which was
granted in the December of 314. This treaty left him master
of Thrace, Asia Minor, Syria, and Egypt, while it added to
Constantine's dominions Greece and Macedonia, Pannonia, Dacia,
and that Dalmatian region from which the Constantian house
had sprung — a house now reigning, as Gibbon expresses it, " from
the confines of Caledonia to the extremity of Peloponnesus."
Licinius was not likely to forget his own humiliation. His
" genius " had been " rebuked," his pride had been wounded, by
the unfailing good fortune and energy of a prince much younger
than himself, and that prince a patron of the Christians. And for
Christians, both as enemies of the old-world ways, and as the
natural well-wishers of the man whom he regarded with jealous
dislike and resentment, the old comrade of Galerius entertained a
stronger aversion than he could at first afford to show. He had
taken part in the great Act of Toleration, and had so far seemed
an " advocate of peace," and even " of true religion ; " he had
executed a terrific vengeance on the authors of an elaborate pagan
imposture, and had been celebrated by Christian exultation as a
signal instrument of Divine judgments on the root and stock
of the persecutors. But in his heart, says Socrates, "he hated
Christians," that is, as a disturbing element in society — for he had
no pagan enthusiasm, and was too; rude and illiterate to appreciate
religious controversies : a new sect, a spreading " cultus," was to
him a nuisance, and by its political bearings might become a peril ;
and although it might be politically necessary for him to practise

42 The Age of the Fathers. [Chap.
such dissimulation as was natural to his " perfidious character," he
would be sure to throw off the mask at the first opportunity, and
make these troublesome Christians feel that he would do them all
the mischief in his power.
The time at which he began to harass them has not been
distinctly ascertained. Jerome fixes one chief act of oppressive
ness as late as the year 320 ; and Tillemont acquiesces in that
date. For some time, no doubt, Licinius was cautious in his
operations, and this would suggest a longer interval between the
treaty of 314 and the attacks on his Christian subjects than
Sozomen's language appears to allow. He seems to have felt
somewhat as the French republicans felt towards the French
" clericals," considered as hoping for a restoration of royalty ; for
he suspected that the Christians prayed in their churches to be
brought under the sway of Constantine ; and this would lead him
to direct his first movement against the rulers of the Churches,
who on other grounds, also, would be naturally the first to feel
his hatred. On the whole it seems likely that at some time
between 315 and 320 he began by prohibiting the bishops "to
have any intercourse, in any place, with one another," to visit each
other's churches, " or to hold synods and debates on matters of
interest to the Church." So true was his instinct as to the value
of such meetings to the good order and healthy life of the com
munity which he had set himself to oppress, and ultimately, if
possible, to destroy. He set the precedent which many a govern
ment has, since his time, thought good to follow by putting a legal
impediment in the course of the Church's synodical action. It is
as well that we should appreciate the full significance of his first
hostile edict ; and perhaps, among the many who quote the sensi
tive and despondent Nazianzen's avowal that he never saw a synod
which did not add to the Church's troubles — an avowal followed
by words (not so often quoted) which show that he deemed
" seclusion " the only safeguard — there are few who remember or
consider that the first regular law against Church Councils was the
first step in a crafty and malignant tyrant's elaborate campaign
against Church life, and drew forth from the somewhat " liberal "
Eusebius the momentous observation, that men were compelled
either to resist the State's command, or to violate the Church's
" ordinances, — for great questions cannot be rightly decided other
wise than by synods."
Such was the first edict of Licinius. The second and third

Iv-] Licinius and Constantine. 43
were respectively embittered by an insult which recalled the
obsolete and hideous heathen libels against the Church, and by
a sarcasm in the style of Julian or of Frederick of Prussia.
Licinius ordered, as if in the interests of morality, that Christian
women should not go to church with the men, but worship apart
under female teachers ; and, this edict failing of success, he further
directed, as if in the interests of health, that Christian congrega
tions should assemble, not within their towns, but in the open
space outside the gates, because the air there would be purer ! It
was, perhaps, after both these mandates had been treated with
scorn, that Licinius ejected all his Christian servants from their
situations in his household ; and drove into exile, simply for their
faith, men who had been most loyal to his person. Some others
were mulcted of their property, or condemned to base and servile
employments in the mines or other public works— a form of
humiliating ill-treatment which had been one of the milder features
of the great persecution, and has left its memory in the long
detailed intercession in the Alexandrian Liturgy commonly called
St. Mark's. By this time — in 320, according to Jerome's date, in
his Chronicle, for the dismissal of Licinius' s Christian servants
— the hearts of those who, but six or seven years before, had been
overflowing with the joy of final deliverance from heathen perse
cutors were now sobered and saddened by the prospect of fresh
inflictions close at hand. They saw some of their brethren driven
to seek shelter in the wilderness, and others cast into prison, where
their friends were debarred from bringing them food or otherwise
ministering to their necessity. They saw a fresh edict go forth,
which must have thrilled them with the recollection of the fiery trial
of Diocletian's reign, and of the yet worse days that followed it :
all military officers who would not sacrifice to the gods were to be
deprived of their rank in the Emperor's service. As if to complete
the likeness of the new troubles to the old, churches were pulled
down, or shut up with a prohibition against the Christians' use of
them ; every facility was given to local officials to insult and annoy
Christian bishops. At last the instruments of Licinius, acting on
their own assumption as to their master's secret wishes, proceeded
to extremities, and in several cases to the ghastliest forms of
cruelty. Eusebius speaks of some who were literally cut to pieces,
and afterwards cast into the sea, " to become food for fishes." One
of the bishops who suffered death was, by one account, Basil of
Amasea, who had sat in the Ancyran and Neocaesarean Councils.

44 The Age of the Fathers. [Chap.
The bishop of another Neocaesarea, situated on the Euphrates, was
treated in a manner thus described by Theodoret, who mentions
him as a member of the Nicene Council. " Paul, the bishop of
Neocaesarea (it is a stronghold on the banks of the Euphrates),
experienced the wild rage of Licinius, for both his hands were
disabled by the application of red-hot iron, which contracted and
deadened the muscles of the joints." But one story of Christian
endurance, connected with this local and partial, but bitter and
trying persecution, is pre-eminently famous : it is the story of the
Forty soldier-Martyrs of Sebaste, who, according to a tradition
received by St. Basil, but, as we might expect, betraying the
growth of exaggeration, refused to sacrifice to the gods, and were
thereupon exposed naked to the piercing cold of a winter's night,
being informed at the same time that by promising compliance
they might at any moment have access to a hot bath. The pathetic
interest of the tale lies in this, that one of them, after a while,
accepted these terms ; whereupon the soldier who acted as guard,
under a sudden inspiration, took his place among the sufferers,
whose prayer that " as forty had entered on the contest, so forty
might win the crown," was thus fulfilled.
Licinius, throughout, avoided the position of an avowed reli
gious persecutor. He oppressed the Christians because he chose
to consider them disaffected and politically dangerous ; but he did
not proscribe their religion as such. Yet oppression is a test of
character ; and, limited as was the extent to which Licinius was
permitted to vex the Church, before bis plans were defeated by
his second and fatal war with Constantine, there were in this
period melancholy cases of weakness and of faithlessness, as when
some yielded, in the words of the Nicene Council, " without any
compulsion, danger, or loss of property," and some military officers,
who had at first cheerfully laid aside their " belts " rather than
satisfy the Emperor by sacrificing, soon afterwards " spent money,
and won their readmission to the army by presents : " not to speak
of the charge afterwards made by Constantine himself against one
who was more than once his worst adviser, Eusebius of Nico
media, that he, a bishop, had not only taken part with Licinius
against Constantine, but had been accomplice in his " butcheries
of true bishops " — a charge which it is impossible to admit as it
stands, but which may have been founded on some instance of
this prelate's habitual preference of secular interests to Christian
fidelity. The days of trial passed by, perhaps, before either the

IV.] Licinius and Constantine. 45
faithful or the faithless could fully estimate their prospects under
Licinius. He was, we are told, "meditating a general persecu
tion " when Constantine, in 323, made war upon him — for other
reasons, doubtless, beside that which Eusebius mentions, his sym
pathy for the suffering Christians of the East. The end of that
year saw the ruin of Licinius's cause ; the next year saw his name
added by Christians to the list of their dead foes. It was given
out that, after accepting terms, he began secretly to plot against
the victor ; but such charges were pretty sure to be made against a
defeated rival whose life had been guaranteed by a promise. He
was put to death at Thessalonica in 324 ; and this final victory
of the imperial friend of the Church and its ministers was natu
rally accompanied by a more open and emphatic association of
Christian ideas and purposes with his personal and official life.
The half-superstitious impression of a supreme Divine protection,
attaching itself to all who took the Cross of Christ for their
" saving sign," had by this time been evidently deepened, and, so
to say, transformed into a truer and fuller recognition of the un
earthly kingdom which that Cross represented ; a conviction still
far removed from single-hearted and unreserved self-devotion, and
compatible not only with delay of baptism, and with official re
tention of some heathen forms — as the imperial title of Pontifex
Maximus, or the celebration of " games " which were mixed with
heathen rites — but with not a little of non-Christianity in tone
and character, which Niebuhr was thinking of when he pronounced
the well-known judgment, too epigrammatic to be equitable, " A
repulsive phenomenon, and no Christian ! " No Christian, we
must indeed say, if the term be taken in its proper sense of one
living under Christian grace, and swayed by Christian principle, or
in the sense of one who, though not yet within the baptismal cove
nant, had resolved to commit himself absolutely to Christ, or had
found a home and stay for heart and conscience in the spiritual
depths and moral forces of Christianity. Not such was Constan
tine, either now or in later years of his strange life, when in some
respects his character underwent a grave deterioration, as in the
domestic tragedy of the execution of his son Crispus. Yet
it would be unfair not to credit him, at this period, with some
measure of what might be called Christian faith, sincere up to a
point, although poor in tone, and far enough from being a life-
renewing power; with a genuine appreciation of the Christian
moral standard, and with a large-minded perception of the need of

46 The Age of the Fathers. [Chap.
a spiritual support for social order — of what an Emperor might
gain from having a Church. For he was a man of great ideas ; he
knew a great thing when he saw it ; and he appreciated the great
ness of the Christian religion, as organized in a universal Church.
He was impressed by the strange force which had carried it
through many a fiery trial, by the new strength which it had given
to the principle of moral authority, by its capacity for becoming a
civil as well as a spiritual bond of union. And when we take
account of his glaring inconsistencies, we must remember how
many persons in that transition-time held partial relations with the
Church of Christ, and were actually, to a certain extent, Chris
tianized; and how Constantine, belonging to that class, was
specially impeded in his advance to higher things by the diffi
culties of a position such as no other monarch ever occupied, and
which must never be lost sight of in any estimate of his conduct.
So, when we turn with some disgust from Eusebius's fulsome
eulogies on the piety of a prince who delivered sermons to his
court, and tried to pronounce on Christian controversies, without
having as much as given in his name as a catechumen — when
we justly consider that in this respect the courtly Church his
torian exhibited himself as somewhat lacking in moral dignity, and
set a mischievous precedent for clerical obsequiousness — we must
still, in all fairness, make large allowance for the dazzling fascina
tion of such a phenomenon as an Augustus who did not simply
tolerate the Christian religion, but spoke of it in terms of increas
ing cordiality and respect, heaped substantial favours on its
official representatives, even espoused the side of Catholics
against schismatics, and generally set himself to promote the
advancement of the Christian cause. If he assumed, as he re
peatedly did, the tone of a " patron " of the Church long before he
became one of its members, he partly drifted by force of circum
stances into that position, and was partly led into it by ecclesiastics
whose heads, so to speak, had been somewhat turned by an astonish
ing experience. As to his enactments, he had abolished the
punishment of crucifixion two years after the first war with Lici
nius. He had, so to say, transformed the ceremony of manu
mission of slaves into a quasi-Christian act, in all cases affecting
Christian slave-holders, by allowing it to be performed in churches,
" in the presence of the prelates of the Christians," and, in that
case, with some abridgment of legal forms. It was not going
beyond the line of heathen emperors to forbid, as in 319 he had

IV-] Licinius and Constantine. 47
forbidden, any private consultation of " Haruspices," by invitation
of them into a Roman citizen's house, as " friends " and advisers ;
the public consultation he still permitted, but in terms expressive
of contempt for those who should " desire " in this way " to gratify
their own superstition." Two years later, a law promulgated at
Aquileia denounced all such magical practices as aimed at injuring
persons or depraving minds ; but at the same time tolerated what our
fathers called " white " witchcraft, employed for cure of disease,
or protection of vines from bad weather (as distinct from what was
called " Goetic "). He had shown that a growing zeal for the
interests of Christianity was accompanied with a growing earnest
ness against much that was immoral and inhuman in the social
life of Rome. Thus slaves were secured from extreme cruelty ;
prison-life, which had been such an element of suffering in the
persecutions, was rendered less intolerable; justice to accused
persons was enforced; the rights of children, of women, of celi
bates, were recognised in legislation ; and it is pleasant to find the
Emperor, in 316, forbidding drivers in the " cursus publicus " to
overtask their animals by the use of heavy sticks — a whip with a
little string, such as may " admonish by a harmless tickling," is as
much as his humanity will allow. He had exempted the Catholic
churches from tribute, and renewed, in 319, a previous exemption
of clerics from the burden of civic functions ; but had taken care
to guard against the possible abuse of such immunity by ordering,
in 320, that in future no one who was sufficiently well off to serve
as a " decurion," or provincial town-councillor, should get himself
made a cleric, and that if any, since the promulgation of his first
law on the subject, had thus shunned the " public duties " (obsequia),
he should be separated from the clerical " corporation," and take
his share of civil office. Such edicts as these illustrate the
increasing onerousness of those hereditary obligations which
ultimately turned the " curiae " of towns into " mere gaols " (as
Hodgkin expresses it), " in which the middle classes were shut up
from birth till death, to toil for the imperial tyranny " — gaols from
which their attempts to escape were barred by pitiless legislation.
Again, Constantine had granted full permission to " any man
whatever " to bequeath anything whatever to " the most holy and
venerable council" (that is, community) " of the Catholic Church."
And he had forbidden, on penalty of " fustigation," or of a heavy
mulct, in case the offender was too high in rank to be punished —
any adherents of a different religion to force Catholics, lay or

48 The Age of the Fathers. [Chap.
clerical, to attend the lustral sacrifices. The most famous, per
haps, of his laws of this period, affecting religion in any measure,
is one which, in March, 321, commanded all judges, and city
populations, and artisans — but, on account of the crops, exempted
country people from the obligation — to " rest on the venerable day
of the Sun ; " an order followed up, in the June of that same year,
by another law which, after reciting that it had already been
thought "most unseemly that the venerated day of the Sun
should be taken up with any contentious business," proceeded to
say that it was well-pleasing and agreeable that on that day
should be performed such business as met the wishes of the
persons concerned, such as emancipation and manumission of
slaves, which, accordingly, might be freely transacted on "the
festal day." Constantine did not stop here : he had abstained,
indeed, in referring to the " Dies Solis," from any language which
was distinctively Christian, and the prayer which he ordered his
soldiers to recite on Sunday was simply Theistic, beginning, " Te
solum agnoscimus Deum ; " his coins, bearing " the figure of the
Sun-god and the inscription Sol Invictus," might suggest " that he
could not bear to relinquish the patronage of the bright luminary,"
which afterwards, in his own statue at Constantinople, was strangely
associated with the crucified Sun of Righteousness; but it was
a stronger step to carry a tent-church with him in his campaigns,
and to originate the custom of each legion having such a tent,
provided with its ministering clergy. If, in addition to the law
about Sunday, he ordered, as Eusebius (followed by Sozomen) tells
us that he did, the observance of Friday, in memory of the work
of salvation, one must suppose that this order was addressed to his
Christian subjects alone.
With such enactments in remembrance, the Eastern Christians
who hailed his final victory over Licinius would have reason
enough for their " ceaseless plaudits in honour of Constantine the
Conqueror," and their exulting anticipations of a brilliant Christian
monarchy established in the dynasty which now presided over the
entire Roman world. They would look at each other, as Eusebius
says, " no longer with melancholy faces, but with smiles and
bright-eyed gladness," especially as they read their new sovereign's
ordinance addressed to the provincials of Palestine. He began by
dwelling on the success which had been granted to the faithful
servants of that " Supreme Being whose servant he was proud to
be," and whose providence had led him to his present eminence ;

IV-] Licinius and Constantine.

49

he dilated on the misery which had overtaken the persecutors, and
the honours which the martyrs had won ; and then, observing that
it would be most absurd that those who persevered in the worship
of God should not find advantage under one who had been employed
as God's instrument, he proceeded to take order for the relief of all
who had suffered under the late persecution. The exiles were to
be recalled from their " dreary homelessness," whether imposed as
the alternative of sinful conformity, or inflicted by the decree
which (following the precedent set in the case of Flavia Domitilla
under Domitian, and that of Pontianus and Hippolytus in 235)
condemned some to detention in islands ; the confiscated pro
perty of Christians was to be restored; those who had unjustly
been placed on the roll of " Curiales," or sent to toil in the
mines, or set to ignominious work in women's apartments or
linen factories by way of insult to their nobility, were all to be
freed from the oppressions to which they had been subject. The
stamp of legal " infamy " should be effaced ; the confessors who
had resigned military rank should have " the option " of resuming
it, or of receiving an "honourable dismissal;" the enslaved should
be free men again ; the property of martyrs should go to their
next of kin — failing such, to the " local church ; " their wills, if they
have made any, should take effect ; farms, houses, gardens, ought
to be restored by their present possessors (excepting always the
actual produce raised during their occupancy) to the legitimate
Christian owners ; the State itself would set an example in this
respect, for the Church should have her own again from the Im
perial treasury, and it would be a welcome task to restore to her
the places honoured by the burial of martyrs ; finally, all individual
purchasers of churches should, on duly restoring them, be reim
bursed by the Emperor's liberality — an exact repetition of a pro
vision in the Milanese edict. The letter concluded with an
exhortation to devout recognition of the Divine power ; and
Eusebius adds that the Emperor proceeded to appoint Christians to
vacant provincial governorships, and to forbid heathen governors,
even in the highest praefectorial rank, to sacrifice, i.e. to give their
official countenance to sacrifices. He then tells us that a law was
promulgated, " prohibiting the abhorred idolatry which went on,
in former times in cities and country ; " so that " no one was to
presume to erect statues, or practise divination, or perform any
sacrifice at all ; " and speaking of a later period in the reign of
Constantine, Eusebius, in his third book, describes a general
VOL. i. e

50 The Age of the Fathers. [Chap.
overthrow of temples and images carried out by the Emperor's
agents at his command. Similar statements, on the whole, are made
by later writers ; but it is impossible to take Eusebius's account
as proving an absolute extirpation of paganism, for no such change
can be said to have been seriously attempted before the reign of
Theodosius I. In fact, Constantine's own edict, " To all the
Easterns," guarantees freedom of worship to pagans ; and the
utmost that could have happened under Constantine would seem
to be the strict execution, by Christian state-officers, of existing
laws against unlicensed superstitions, the countenance given to
local outbreaks of iconoclastic zeal on the part of a Christian
majority, the demolition of not a few temples especially abhorrent
to moral as well as distinctively Christian feeling by their notoriety
as strongholds and shrines of infamous profligacy, — and perhaps,
at the end of his reign, some edict in general terms forbidding
sacrifices of a non-Roman type. And while this work was taken
in hand, Constantine wrote to Eusebius and other prelates, as to
his " beloved brethren," urging them to promote the rebuilding of
ruined churches, and the erection of new ones on a larger scale, the
expense of which was to be undertaken by the government.
Eusebius transcribes another edict, " To all the Provincials of the
East." It was obviously composed for Constantine by some
ecclesiastic versed in the rhetorical style of argument common
in the Greek schools of that age. The Emperor fully adopted
it, and wrote it out with his own hand; but was not likely to
have originated, for instance, the studied exordium on the evidence
for Theism furnished by "whatever is comprehended within the
supreme laws of nature," and on the providential ordering which
employs wickedness for the probation and rewarding of virtue.
The Imperial assailant of Polytheism proceeds to contrast his mild
and religious father with the persecuting tyrants : he calls God,
the Most High, to witness that he himself heard Diocletian ask for
an explanation of the oracle of Apollo, " that the just men on the
earth prevented him from uttering the truth," the explanation
being at once given, " that the just meant the Christians," and the
result being the promulgation of laws " written as it were with
bloody sword-points," and a persecution which " made the earth
weep, and darkened the very daylight with horror." After advert
ing, as usual, to the ruin of the persecutors, " condemned to per
petual punishment in the depths of Acheron," Constantine invokes
"the holy God of the universe" — whose ensign has led him

IV.] Licinius and Constantine. 51
to victory, whose "Name he sincerely loves, whose power he
devoutly dreads, and whose holy house he is labouring to restore "
— to be propitious to "his own Easterns." In the form of a
prayer, he announces his desire that Christians and heathens
should live side by side in peace, in "a renewal of intercourse
which may prove effectual in leading the wanderers into the right
way. Let no one molest his neighbour. Let every one do what
he himself chooses." Those who reject Christianity " may have
their temple-grounds of falsehood, if they please : we occupy the
radiant house of Thy truth ! " That truth is, essentially, as old
as the creation ; it was republished, to reclaim men from error, by
means of the Son of God. Next, the Emperor — having just alluded
to Christ, and no more — recurs to the attestation of Divine Provi
dence by the fabric of nature, which bespeaks a sustaining Hand ;
and in conclusion, once more impresses on his subjects the
necessity of mutual toleration. "Let no one be led by his own
convictions to hurt his neighbour." The rumour of an entire
destruction of heathen temples is, he says, unfounded : he would
have advised all men thus to root out " the power of darkness,"
had not ingrained prejudice been too powerful ; he has spoken
plainly, because he would not hide his real belief; "but it is one
thing to enter willingly on the struggle for immortality, another to
force the unwilling into it." Such, says Eusebius, was the address
which the Emperor, " like a loud-voiced herald of God," put forth
to all the Easterns, " to draw them off from diabolic error, and to
urge them to pursue the true religion." He was interrupted in
these benevolent endeavours by the first news of the great Arian
controversy. Enough has now been said to show how Licinius
struck, with what force he had time to put in motion, at the
ever-advancing Power which had withstood Galerius's more
formidable onslaught; and how the triumph of Constantine,
uniting the East and the West, gave to that Power the assistance
of a more avowed Imperial co-operation. It was but gradually
that Christians could apprehend the limitations of such assistance,
or even the new risks and the subtle temptations which adhered
to it : the danger of allowing the kingdom of Christ to be turned
into a kingdom of this world. Nor could they see at once — well
for them that they could not ! — the stiff resistance which the leaven
of the Gospel would encounter; the intractableness of much of
the material on which Christianity was to operate; the tenacity
with which paganism had inwoven itself into every form of secular

52 The Age of the Fathers. [Chap, iv
life ; the proud self-satisfaction of Roman aristocrats, the vicious
frivolity of Greek populations. Had such a distressing, bewildering
vision been allowed to burst upon them all at once, their faith might
in too many cases have reeled under the shock, and assumed that
the promise had come utterly to an end. But here, as in other
cases, " the distant scene " was kept out of sight, and men were
led on step by step, with strength sufficient for the needs of
the day.

CHAPTER V.
THE BEGINNINGS OF AEIANISM.
We have now to watch the gathering of a great controversial
storm, which speedily dispelled the fond hopes of those who had
expected that after the cessation of pagan persecution the bark of
the Church would float easily through smooth waters. It was not
to be : a long day of trouble, rebuke, and blasphemy was at hand
— a period of " scandals " which would put the sorest strain on
trustful hopes, on persistent endurance, on practical adhesion to a
sacred Cause ; which would cause love to wax cold, and would
grievously impede the progress of Christianity ; but which would
also train heroes of faith and " scribes well instructed," and vivify,
enrich, and consolidate the Christian conception of belief in
Christ as God's " own " and only Son. Our scene opens at
Alexandria, where the martyred Peter (whose death is dated on
November 29, 311) had been succeeded, perhaps in 312, by
Achillas, and Achillas, after a few months' episcopate, by
Alexander (312 or 313). This prelate had had to encounter
opposition from the very outset. To explain its cause, we must
go back to the very first years of the fourth century.
There was a bishopric of Lycopolis, on the northern boundary
of the Thebaid, which " appears to have possessed some honorary
pre-eminence among " the other sees which were subordinate to the
"Evangelist's throne" at Alexandria. Here, in a.d. 300, sat a
bishop named Meletius, whose character has been always more
or less of a problem ; although there is no doubt of his having
originated a schismatical movement, the grounds which he took
Up — the motives of his conduct — have been very variously stated.
Athanasius (writing apparently in 356) says that it is fifty-five
years since Meletius began his schism, and thirty-six since the
Meletians were condemned ; and in another work tells us that he

54 The Age of the Fathers. [Chap.
began it because he had been condemned in a council, by Peter,
for various offences, particularly for an act of apostasy during per
secution. Epiphanius, who evidently relied on some Meletian
documents of a partisan character, represents Meletius as a brave
confessor who suffered imprisonment with Peter, and in a dis
cussion with him on the right mode of treating those who had
lapsed, expressed a strong opinion against receiving them to penance
until the persecution had been for some time over, and they had
given sufficient evidence of genuine contrition; whereas Peter,
" being tender-hearted," urged a gentler line of proceeding, and at
last, when the pursuit grew hot, spread out his pallium or cloak on
the floor of the prison, and bade the brethren go on this or that
side of it, as they agreed with himself or with Meletius. He
thereupon found himself, says Epiphanius, left in a minority :
and so the schism began, and was kept up under Alexander
(whom Epiphanius imagined to have been Peter's immediate
successor). Meletius, banished to the mines, organized a " Church
of Martyrs" by constituting bishops and clergy, and after his
release still kept up private religious meetings with his own
friends, although on terms of personal friendship with Alexander.
The documents to which Epiphanius had referred are in various
ways self-convicted of untrustworthiness : but it is to be observed,
that the Nicene Council, in a formal letter to the Egyptian
Church, is silent about the accusation of apostasy, and dwells
only on the " disorderly and impetuous " conduct of Meletius ;
and also that a letter of Phileas and three other bishops to
Meletius, first published by Scipio Maffei at Verona in 1738,
rebukes Meletius for ignoring " the law of our fathers," and disre
garding the dignity of "the great bishop Peter," by ordaining
clergy outside the bounds of his own diocese, on the pretext that
persecution made it necessary thus to provide new pastors for
desolate flocks : to which letter an anonymous narrator appends the
statement, that Meletius, after receiving this remonstrance, did not
go to visit the bishops who had sent it from their prison, but after
their martyrdom repaired to Alexandria, and there, supported by
Isidore, "a turbulent man who desired to be a teacher," and
by Arius, pretended to excommunicate the presbyters whom Peter
had appointed to take the oversight of his Church, and ordained
two men, one in prison, one in a mine, — whereupon Peter
wrote a brief letter to his flock, ordering them not to com
municate with Meletius, until he himself, " with wise men," could

v.] The Beginnings of Arianism. 55
take cognizance of the matter. Such are the various accounts of
the origin of that Meletian schism or party which actually retained
some life as late as the middle of the eighth century. And if we
may accept as genuine the documents last quoted, commonly
called the Maffeian Fragments, we shall certainly be disposed to
think that Athanasius, when, many years after the event, he spoke
of Meletius as having been condemned for apostasy, was giving
credit to a serious misstatement — in its first form, perhaps, an
exaggeration of the fact that Meletius was rebuked for a breach
of ecclesiastical order, by confessors who soon afterwards became
martyrs ; and also that his date for the origin of the schism is
perhaps five years too early. The Epiphanian account, repre
senting Meletius as a zealot for discipline, and Peter as swayed
towards laxity by his benevolence, betrays, plainly enough, a
Meletian romancer's hand.
Whatever were the actual circumstances under which the bishop
of Lycopolis was drawn into a sectarian position, we may take it as
pretty certain that he became a schismatic during the persecution ;
and that Arius, afterwards the great heresiarch, espoused his cause.
According to one account, Arius for a while abandoned Meletius,
and was ordained deacon by Peter ; but when Peter proceeded to
severities against the Meletians — refusing to admit their baptism
— Arius " exclaimed against this conduct of the bishop," and was
consequently excommunicated. Under Achillas — who, like Peter,
was an object of Meletian invective — Arius regained his position
in the Church, on making his submission to the bishop. He was
even advanced to the priesthood, and put in charge of the oldest
church in Alexandria, which bore the name of Baucalis. It must
be here observed that there were at this time several churches
in the city, as those called after Bishops Dionysius, Annianus,
Pierius, Serapion, etc., and what we now call the parochial system
was already established, "for," says Epiphanius, "every church
had its own presbyter appointed over it," — as at Rome the churches
(now only twenty-five) had long been distinguished as tituli or
incumbencies, with clergy severally assigned to and "fixed" in
each — the original idea of the term " cardinal."
So stood matters at the death of Achillas : then, according to
Theodoret, Arius put forward his pretensions to the vacant see,
and was greatly mortified by the preference given to Alexander.
One is bound, however, to suspect these stories — by no means
uncommon — which ascribe the first movements of a great heretical

56 The Age of the Fathers. [Chap.
career (for instance, that of Valentinus the Gnostic) to the impulse
of wounded personal feeling. For some time, at any rate, after
the accession of Alexander, he had no difficulty with the priest
of the Baucalis church, and is said, indeed, to have " held him in
high esteem." He had much business and some trouble on his
hands : there was the building of a large and new church in memory
of Bishop Theonas, which, we are told, he used before it could
actually be dedicated; there was the appointment of bishops to
various sees, the names of some of whom are recorded by Atha
nasius, in connection with the sufferings which they lived to endure
in the days of Arian tyranny ; there was a sharp controversy with
a person named Crescentius, as to the right time for observing
Easter ; and there was the now established and intensified system
of attack carried on by the Meletians, who denounced Alexander
to " the Emperor," probably the Eastern sovereign Licinius. But,
withal, there were for the good and kind-hearted bishop resources
of support and comfort, and prospects full of hope, opening before
him as he watched the expanding intellect and ripening moral
force of a youth whom he had taken up — attracted, no doubt, by
the evident promise of a high vocation, by unequivocal tokens of
qualifications for doing the cause of Christ great service — and had
received into his house, as his confidential secretary and deacon.
It was no small privilege, no small happiness for Alexander, to
have opened the ecclesiastical career to Athanasius.
It was not until 319 — some six years after Alexander's accession
— that he began, as it seems, to hear of strange language being
held in Alexandrian Church society by the distinguished logician
and highly esteemed preacher, who, after a period of misdirected
and factious activity, had won for himself a considerable name for
strictness of life and theological ability, as pastor of the church of
Baucalis^y Arius was a man of mark even in his outward character-
lsticsTne was known by the sleeveless tunic and scanty half-cloak
which he constantly wore, by his tall person, his melancholy
thoughtful face, his grave manner, his sweet impressive voice, his
social attractiveness and signal powers of conversation. Personally
-as "Well as officially, he had great opportunities for bringing his
mind to bear on others ; and he " went about from house to house,"
energetically propagating opinions which caused, by degrees, a
vehement excitement, in regard to the nature of the Son of God.
It came to the bishop's knowledge that Arius was disturbing the
faith of some over whom he had gained an influence, as to the

v.] The Beginnings of Arianism. 57
uncreate and eternal being of the Divine Redeemer. He was
speaking of Him as, after all, only the eldest and highest of
creatures ; not denying to Him the title of God, but by limitations
and glosses abating its real power. Alexander thought it a duty
to try the effect of remonstrance : he was loth to regard his
presbyter as committed to a heresy of such flagrant character, and
he waited some time, as it seems, before taking any step which
should precipitate, or even necessitate, a breach. At last he
sent for him, but the interview produced no effect, for Arius
renewed the dissemination of his opinions, and, having by this
time secured a considerable amount of support, preached without
disguise the negation of the Son's eternal Divinity. The agitation
daily increased, and Alexander, it seems, was blamed by some
zealous Churchmen for indecision at a grave crisis. He thereupon
summoned a meeting of his clergy, but even then spoke with great
moderation, in the hope of reclaiming Arius, allowing freedom of
expression on both sides. The meeting broke up without result.
At an adjourned meeting Alexander deemed it high time to speak
out, and addressed his clergy on the subject of the Holy Trinity
in terms which Arius boldly and directly challenged, as involving
a Sabellian conception of the " Son " as a power put forth .from the
One Personal God, a mode or form of His self-manifestation.
Now, the name of Sabellianism was odious, especially in a
church which had special reason for venerating the memory of
Dionysius the Great, who, as bishop of Alexandria, had con
tended earnestly, and endured misrepresentation in the contest,
against the theory which sacrificed, so to speak, the Son's person
ality to His oneness with the Father, and thus, as he expressed it,
involved "unbelief" as to the Only-begotten: as we might say,
which involved all the revealed relations of Father, Son, and Holy
Spirit in confusion and unreality. Hence Arius had shown him
self a master of controversial policy, when he resolved to adopt as
his war-cry, " No Sabellianism ! " He proceeded to show himself a
master of dialectic fencing, when he argued thus from the admitted
fact of the Sonship. " If the Son of God is a real Son, then what .
is true in all cases of paternal and filial relationship is true in this '
case. But what is true in regard to such relationship is, that a
father exists before a son. Therefore, the Divine Father existed \
before the Divine Son. Therefore, once the Son of God did not
exist. Therefore, He was made, Like all creatures, of an essence
or being which previously had been non-existent."

58 The Age of the Fathers. [Chap.
Here was Arius, then, laying down at the outset a rationalistic
proposition, to the effect that he could argue irresistibly from human
sonship to Divine ; that the resources of human logic were fully
equal to the discussion of matters so transcendental, and that there
was no occasion for hesitating about such a use of such a criterion.
Then he proceeded to infer, from his major premiss, the non-
eternity of the Son's existence ; and this conducted him, with
perfect legitimacy, to the exclusion of the Son, thus produced in
t time, from the absolute incommunicable majesty of the One
I Uncreated Being. ThatJh^^attaEas-^uiL^finiaZjjind not Uncreate,
J were therefore^ tha^vwo^nrigirial q1p,rap.nif,s pf ^rig^WTcrxmR: "Tire
qUBstroifas to what led Arius to the formation of these opinions
may, perhaps, be never completely solved. We may ascribe
something to the Alexandrian development of Platonic ideas,
about the relation of "Mind" to the absolute Deity, as a
" demiurgic " power acting for the primary unknowable " One : "
yet Arius's tone of mind is hardly that of a Platonist. To connect
him, as Newman does, with the Antiochene heresy inaugurated by
Paul of Samosata, and for a time upheld by the much-respected
Lucian, is a proceeding sanctioned, in part, by an extant letter of
Arius, in which Lucian is referred to as his instructor. Still one
must observe in the first place, that the rapid growth of his school
in Egypt points back to Egyptian forms of thought, which
exaggerated what has been infelicitously called the Filial " Sub
ordination " (a term suggesting more than Subordinatio), and which
would naturally tell on his own mind, as we know that his followers
claimed Origen as on their side in regard to some language hardly
consistent with the doctrine of the Son's Divine Co-equality. In
the second place, there is a great gap between Paul of Samosata,
with his notion of an impersonal Logos temporarily residing in
a mere human saint, who, by moral " advancement," wins the title
of God's Son — and Arius, with his notion of a personal Divine
Son, towering high in antiquity of origin and dignity of position
above the highest Archangels, yet still separated by the im
passable gulf of creaturely being from the Supreme Essence of Him
who was, in the full sense of the phrase, the only God, the one
Almighty, and in whose presence all creatures as such were on
a par. A still greater difference, perhaps, must be recognised
between the position of Arius and that of Artemon or Artemas,
who was sometimes called the true founder of his heresy. And yet
it is undeniable that the temper of mind which conspicuously

V] The Beginnings of Arianism. 59
determined the course of Paul or of Artemon, and which, for con
venience, we may designate as rationalistic, was the same that
originated the hard, self-confident, and pretentiously logical
propositions to which Arius gave utterance at Alexandria. He
seems to have been lacking in reverence, keenly disputatious,
impatient of mystery, prone to see contradictions where other
minds would see only parallel truths incapable of being logically
harmonized; and without assigning too much weight to such motives
as pique or repugnance to episcopal authority, one may at least
suppose that the consciousness of being opposed to his official
superior, for whose intellectual abilities he had probably small
respect, would contribute something to the interest which he would
take in formulating a theory of his own connected with philosophic
conceptions of an Ingenerate Supreme, and escaping the difficulties
which he found in the dominant belief.
Such were the " preparations " of his theory. Its immediate
groundworks were, as we have seen, these two — a dread of
Sabellianism, and an assumption as to the conditions of Divine
Sonship ; and its essential propositions were these two, that the
Son had not existed from eternity, and that He differed from other
creatures in degree, and not in kind.
The second sitting of the clerical conference broke up, like the
first, without coming to any definitive result. It is worth while to
remember that " hierarchical pressure " had been conspicuous by its
absence. Alexander had allowed full liberty for the expression of
opinions ; and if he himself had spoken plainly, he had suffered him
self to be contradicted, and even rebuked as unsound, without taking
any official resolution. We can hardly wonder that many thought
that, in this, the bishop had carried forbearance too far. One of
the city presbyters, named Colluthus, considered him to have
betrayed the cause of faith by this tolerance of grave error, and
thereupon set up a sect of his own, and ventured, on the ground of
" the necessities of the time," to confer a sectarian ordination. But
it is important to observe that, according to the testimony of the
clergy of the Mareotic district in 335, he "pretended to be a bishop; "
so that if this is to be taken literally, we are not concerned with a
claim to confer orders in the character of a presbyter. One of
the persons who were in this manner declared " presbyters " was
named Ischyras; he will reappear in the history of the Arians'
persecution of Athanasius. Colluthus added to this schismatical
proceeding the advocacy of a strange theory, traceable evidently

60 The Age of the Fathers. [Chap.
to an ill-instructed zeal for God's honour, such as drove him into
separation from his bishop : he taught that the afflictions of life,
which in that sense are called "evils," do not come from the
Divine hand.
By the end of the year 319, matters had reached a point which
forbade all hope of peace. Private remonstrance and open dis
cussion had been tried without success, and Alexander thus found
that he must act officially : there were several presbyters and
deacons, and a large number of dedicated virgins, together with
not a few laymen, who had come to regard Arius as a better
theologian than their bishop. Accordingly, Alexander assembled
the presbyters and deacons of Alexandria and the adjacent
Mareotic district, and without formally excommunicating Arius,
caused them, or the majority of them, to sign a solemn letter, in
which he exhorted the followers of Arius " to renounce his impiety,
and submit themselves to the sound Catholic faith;" and he
followed up this censure by assembling the bishops, nearly a
hundred in number, who owed obedience to his see. This episcopal
synod was held, according to Tillemont, either at the end of 319
or the beginning of 320 ; butHussey, on the authority of Jerome's
Chronicle, dates it in 321. Arius and his adherents were present,
and on being questioned as to what they really held, avowed the
following opinions: —
1. God was not always Father, but became so when He
produced His Son out of nothing. For —
2. The Son was produced in the sense of being created ;
3. He was a creature, and therefore once He did not exist ;
4. Therefore, He is not like the Father in essence ;
5. Nor is He the Father's true Word or Wisdom, but can be
called so only in an improper sense, as being in fact the product of
God's true Wisdom, i.e. of that attribute whereby God made both
the Son and the Universe.
6. And, in truth, the Son was created with a view to the creation
of mankind : He was God's destined instrument in our creation ;
He would not have existed at all, had not God willed to make us.
7. Further, the Son does not perfectly or accurately know either
the Father or His own essence ;
8. And, like all rational creatures, He is by nature capable of
change. When it came to this point, one of the bishops, taking
advantage of the ethical sense of mutability, put a question, " Could

v.] The Beginnings of Arianism. 61
the Son of God, then, change, as the devil changed, from goodness
to evil ? " And the Arians, or perhaps one outspoken Arian, did
not hesitate to answer, " Yes, He could have thus changed ; for
His nature, being created, was capable of change." We must
needs suppose that this referred to an original, not to a present
possibility. The question meant, Was it abstractedly possible
that the Son should have joined the rebellious angels ? Arianism,
by treating Him as a created moral being, implied that this was
possible; and the fatal admission thus drawn forth decided the
Council to excommunicate and anathematize Arius and his
adherents, who were the following : —
Two bishops : Secundus and Theonas.
Six priests: Arius himself, another Arius, Achillas, Aithales,
Carpones, Sarmates.
Six deacons : Euzoius, Lucius, Julius, Menas, Helladius, Caius.
This excommunication of Arius and his companions is the first
landmark, closing a distinct portion of the history of the move
ment. The second portion extends from this point to the Council
of Nicaea. The immediate result of the Council of Alexandria was an
increase of ferment among the minds of Egyptian Church-people.
Not a few held with Arius on the question at issue ; others thought
that he had been unfairly treated by authority, and a division took
place between such persons and the orthodox, which was not
allayed by the withdrawal of Arius, and several of his friends, as
Carpones and Achillas, from Alexandria to Palestine. If, as he
himself asserted, he was actually banished by his bishop, it would
not be a stronger step than was taken by Demetrius in regard to
Origen. Whatever may be thought of Origen's theological eccen
tricities, it is painful even to put the two names in juxtaposition ;
yet we cannot help doing so at this point, for Arius, like Origen,
found shelter and support in Palestine, and especially at the hands
of Paulinus of Tyre, and Eusebius the historian, bishop of Caesarea.
He professed to desire nothing but peace, to be no heretic, no
innovator, but a man injuriously treated by bis own bishop, with
whom, notwithstanding, he longed to be again in communion. He
therefore applied for the good offices of several bishops: would
they not write to Alexander in his behalf, and send to himself
letters of communion ? Some did so, from a bond fide belief that
he had been misunderstood and misjudged; others, from a real
sympathy with his opinions ; but a few of those whom he addressed

62 The Age of the Fathers. [Chap.
resisted all his representations, and among these was Macarius,
bishop of " iElia " or Jerusalem. Alexander, on hearing of the
countenance given by several prelates to Arius, wrote to remon
strate with them ; we are told that one of his seventy extant letters
was addressed to Eusebius of Caesarea, others to the bishops
Asclepas of Gaza, Longinus of Ascalon, Macrinus of Jamnia, Zeno
of Tyre. Some of the bishops, in reply, denied that they had
countenanced Arius ; others said that they had done so on imper
fect information ; others protested that they had wished to
" reclaim " him by " kindly treatment ; " but he, for his part, was
now securing for himself a more powerful friend than any that
Palestine could supply in the person of Eusebius of Nicomedia.
This prelate, whom an English Church historian describes as
" one of the most hateful characters " in history, but who rather
deserves our pity for having been exposed to corrupting influences
which he was ill prepared to resist, had been irregularly transferred
from the see of Berytus to that of the present Eastern capital — the
fifth city, in point of size, in the empire. He was an astute and
able politician, who had had many years of experience of public
life ; he had gone great lengths in supporting Licinius's government,
even when it assumed a hostile aspect towards Christianity ; and
Licinius's wife Constantia, sister of Constantine, was probably
instrumental in procuring his translation. Philostorgius, the
Arian historian, called him " the Great ; " Sozomen speaks of him
as a "man of learning," as well as "of high reputation in the
palace ; " and he appears to have been imbued from a considerably
earlier period with the ideas which Arius had recently expressed.
To him, as to a " fellow-Lucianist " — a fellow-pupil of Lucian of
Antioch — Arius addressed a letter by the hands of a person whom
he calls his "father" Ammonius, then about to leave Palestine
for Nicomedia. He informed Eusebius that Alexander had " per
secuted and expelled " him for not believing in the eternity of the
Son, and in His eternal or continuous " generation " from the
Father. This doctrine he identifies with the notion of the Son's
being unbegotten; in other words, he contended that a real
" generation " of the Son must be an event which happened at a
certain period, and that to make it a perpetual fact of the Divine
existence was to annul its reality. He sneered at Alexander as if
he had called the Son " ingenerately generate ; " that is, he took up
the sense of "without beginning," philosophically attached to
agennetos or ingenerate, and inferred that as the Father was

v.J The Beginnings of Arianism. 63
" unbegotten," He alone was eternal; whereas, on the Catholic
view, the Son was " generate " in the sense of having His origin
in the Father, yet " ingenerate " in the sense of sharing the Father's
eternity. Moreover, while describing the Son as " perfect God,"
which was flagrantly to misuse terms, and even adding that He
existed as unchangeable, which was a correction of the incautious
admission made at the late synod, Arius intimated that to accept
Alexander's dogma would be to make the Son "a part of God,"
and therefore, in effect, no Son at all. Eusebius's answer contained,
no doubt, an invitation to Nicomedia ; it also contained a distinct
approval of Arius's sentiments — " for, plainly, what was made had
no existence before its making."
To Nicomedia, then, we must now follow Arius. The splendid
city which Diocletian had so loved, and had raised, in "a few
years, to a degree of magnificence which might appear to have
required the labour of ages," and which contained a palace of his
erection — the city, also, which had witnessed the outbreak of the
great persecution in the tortures of the Emperor's Christian
domestics, and the beheading of the bishop Anthimus — was now
the scene of a memorable meeting between these two old friends,
the occupant of Anthimus's seat and the exiled heresiareh of
Alexandria. Eusebius warmly espoused the cause of Arius, as
of a man injured by misrepresentation, and wrote " repeatedly " to
Alexander, urging him to silence the controversy, and to restore
Arius to his position in the Church. Arius himself wrote, in his
own name and those of his fellow-exiles, to their " blessed Pope
Alexander." In this remarkable letter he appeals to Alexander as
having himself taught them to own One God, the Unbegotten
Father, who before the ages really begat a Son, whom He caused
to subsist by an act of His will, in a condition unchangeable (we
observe again that the desperate assertion of the Son's morally
changeable nature is withdrawn) ; this Son not being an emanation
from the Father, nor a portion of the Father, nor co-eternal with
Him, but, as a created person, wholly the product of the Father's
will (a statement often used by the party, who liked to ask
whether the Sonship was supposed to be independent of the
Father's will, as if to drive their opponents into an absurdity).
The writer seems anxious to exclude all materialistic conceptions
of the Divine Sonship, and at the same time all notions of the
Son's co-equality ; the former being strangely assumed to inhere
in the doctrine of His being co-essential and co-eternal, from

64 The Age of the Fathers. [Chap.
which the co-equality was inferred by Catholics on the principle
which excluded from Christian thought any " greater or less " in
Godhead. As in several of the Arian utterances, one sees here
the hopeless contradiction into which, for all his logical keen
ness, Arius fell : he began by insisting that the idea of Sonship
should be preserved intact, and he ended, perforce, in a conclusion
which virtually destroyed it, by representing the person called
" God's only Son " as wholly alien from the essence of His so-called
Father, which was the same thing as making Him no Son at all.
This nemesis of logic was a point repeatedly urged by St. Athana
sius, when he insisted that the doctrine of co-essentiality was the
only preservative of the truth of the Divine Sonship — inasmuch
as no creature of God could be, in any proper sense, His Son.
But Arius wrote more, at Nicomedia, than this letter to his
" Pope." He resolved to popularise his opinions : he wrote
" ballads," says his own historian, for " sailors, millers, and
travellers ; " and he composed a poem which, if not by its very
name — " Thalia " (Festivity or Merrymaking) — yet by its metre,
that of the infamous poems of the profligate Sotades of Crete
(whose verses were offensive, says Neale, to many pagans who
" professed no extraordinary purity "), exhibited in a very startling
and scandalous manner the author's readiness to ally himself with
the secular spirit in one of its most thoroughly pagan forms, and
to purchase circulation for his theology by associating it, and the
sacred names which it handled and misused, with ideas and
recollections from which respectable heathens would shrink back
as from a pollution. But the composition itself was quite
grave in tone, and its significance was twofold : it illustrated his
singular lack of reverential instincts, and thus went far to account
for his peculiar heresy ; and it further expressed that heresy in its
most outspoken and repulsive form. Arius speaks of himself, in
the Thalia, as " the far-famed sufferer for God's glory ; " and he
reiterates his denial of co-equality and co-essential Divinity on
the part of the Son of God, who, he says, is " alien in essence from
the Father," "has nothing proper to God in His own subsistence,"
does not fully " know " His Father, but, " as a strong God, praises
His Superior," by whose " will He is whatever He is." It was
perhaps at this time that he adopted or urged that " Lucianist "
theory of the soul of Christ which was afterwards, with a short
sighted ingenuity, adopted and modified in the anti- Arian interest,
until it became the symbol of an opposite heresy. Christ, he said,

v.] The Beginnings of Arianism. 65
had no human soul, but His higher nature acted as such ; and since
that higher nature was after all created, there was no monstrous
paradox in assigning to it the emotions belonging in other cases
to humanity. The bishop of Nicomedia procured a recognition
of Arius from a synod of Bithynian bishops, which put forth a
letter of the encyclical kind, urging other prelates to take the
same line. One of these letters, addressed to Paulinus of Tyre
by Eusebius, is preserved by Theodoret. It gently complains
of Paulinus for not having written, like Eusebius of Caesarea, to
Alexander in defence of Arius. " I am sure that if you write to
him, you will convince him." The doctrinal language of this
letter is remarkable. On the one hand, Eusebius admits what the
Arians had ignored at the Council of Alexandria — the Son's
" perfect likeness, in power and character (or disposition), to the
Father." On the other hand, he maintains the Son to be " entirely
distinct from the Father in essence," and treats His " generation "
or production as the same in kind with that of men, and even
of inanimate creatures. While Eusebius was thus active, an
Alexandrian priest named George, who was then staying at
Antioch, took upon him to write to Alexander in defence of Arius,
and to the Arians in defence of Alexander. To Alexander he
wrote, " Do not blame the Arians for saying, ' Once the Son was
not : ' for Isaiah ' was not,' before he was born to Amoz." To the
Arians he suggested that Alexander's phrase, " The Son is from
the Father," might bear a very good sense ; " for all creatures are
in a sense from God" (1 Cor. viii. 6), "and the Son, as a
creature, may therefore be said to be from Him." The reply of
Alexander to this interference was a sentence of deposition against
George, for other offences as well as for heresy ; and subsequently
we find this man enrolled by Arian influence among the presbyters
of Antioch, and thence transferred to the see of Laodicea in Syria.
The then bishop of Laodicea, Theodotus, with Patrophilus of
Scythopolis, Paulinus, and others, appear to have been induced
by Eusebius of Nicomedia to write in behalf of Arius. A namesake
of Athanasius, who was bishop of Anazarbus in Cilicia, was
particularly outspoken. " The Son of God," he wrote, " is one of
the hundred sheep, which in the parable represent all the creatures.
If those hundred are all made, and there is nothing beside them
save God only, what is there extravagant in the Arians' enumeration
of Christ as among the hundred ? " And Eusebius of Caesarea,
though not properly an Arian himself, certainly gave practical
VOL. 1. *"

66 The Age of the Fathers. [Chap.
countenance to Alius, acted with Arianizers, and afterwards wrote
to a bishop named Euphration a letter, in which, as Athanasius
tells us, he distinctly said that Christ was not " Very God ; " but
it is possible that if we had the context, this negation might be
intelligible. When, soon afterwards, Arius returned to Palestine,
Eusebius was one of three bishops who allowed him to hold services
for Ms adherents, on condition that he sought to be reconciled to
Alexander ; and this, coupled with the fact that Eusebius's own
theological language for the most part admits of an orthodox
interpretation, may suggest that what he chiefly cared about was
the exclusion of Sabellianism, and that in this, he thought, both
Alexander and Arius might come to an understanding.
In the mean time, Alexander himself was bearing the burden
of the day with a vigour and heartiness which were perhaps, in
some measure, due to the support and aid of his youthful deacon
Athanasius, but which secured his reputation among the confessors
in the cause of orthodoxy. He and his faithful clergy were
constantly accused by Arian intriguers before the civil tribunals,
on the evidence of women who had been perverted into heresy.
They were scornfully disparaged as unintelligent, and as mere
blunderers in theology — as men who talked of "two unbegotten
Beings " (a different accusation from that of Sabellianizing, which
had been originally brought against them by Arius). The profane-
ness inherent in Arianism let loose, so to speak, a flood of impieties
in Alexandrian society, directed against the doctrine of the co-
eternal Sonship : the very theatres resounded with mockeries
against Christianity itself, and perhaps the heathen thus early
discovered that Arianism would be, so to speak, their natural
ally, when they heard Arians ask the boys in the market-place
whether there were " one or two Ingenerates," or appeal to women
as to " whether a son could exist before he was born." Amid these
distressing irreverences, Alexander worked on, writing letter after
letter, to the number, says Epiphanius, of seventy — one of them
being the famous Encyclical preserved by Socrates. It was written
in consequence of the efforts of Eusebius of Nicomedia to obtain
friends for Arius by letters to various bishops. After referring to
the unity of the Church, as requiring unanimity and sympathy
among its members, Alexander speaks of Eusebius of Nicomedia
as having formerly exhibited his ill-will (i.e. his hostility to the
truth), and as now renewing the exhibition of it ; he enumerates
the Arians of Alexandria who, for maintaining certain heretical

v.J The Beginnings of Arianism. 67
opinions, had been anathematized by a Council of about a hundred
Egyptian bishops ; he recites those opinions at length ; he asks,
" Who ever before heard such language ? " he argues from the
prologue of St. John's Gospel, and other texts, including Heb. xiii.
8, against the notion of a created, a changeable, or a partially
ignorant Son of God ; he denounces the new heresy as the nearest
approach yet made to Antichrist ; he expresses regret at the
perversion of its upholders ; he refers to texts which gave warning
of the rise of heresies ; and he concludes by exhorting his fellow-
bishops not to receive the excommunicated persons, nor to rely on
the representations made in their behalf, by Eusebius or by any
other. " For it befits us, as Christians, to keep aloof from those
who speak or think against Christ : " a maxim which appears
again and again in Athanasius's pleadings against this heresy, and
shows that he, like his bishop, habitually regarded it as a systematic
outrage to the Person of the Redeemer; and loyalty to that
Redeemer was the animating and sustaining motion of his lifelong
warfare against it. To this letter Alexander procured the signa
tures of thirty-six priests and forty -four deacons of Alexandria and
the Mareotis, who had formerly subscribed the letter of exhortation
addressed to the supporters of Arius, and who now — the rather
that two priests and four deacons had joined Arianism since the
Council of Alexandria — were called upon to testify their assent
to the sentence which that Council had pronounced. Socrates,
who for some reason or other is prejudiced against Alexander, says
that the dissemination of this Encyclical only made matters worse,
and embittered Eusebius of Nicomedia, " who at that time was a
very powerful person." Another plan was therefore adopted by
the indefatigable Alexander: he drew up and circulated, for
acceptance among various bishops, a " Tome " or doctrinal formu
lary. This obtained a large amount of success. It was signed
by the bishops of Egypt, including Thebais, and by those of Libya,
Pentapolis, Cappadocia, Lycia, Pamphylia, Proconsular Asia, and
by some, at least, of those in Syria. And Alexander, on receiving
their adhesion, wrote, or perhaps adopted, another circular, which
we have as addressed to his namesake, Alexander of Byzantium,
and which differs markedly in style from the former, being turgid,
involved, and diffuse. In it he complains vehemently of the
intrigues and conspiracies, as well as of the heresy, of the Arians ;
and also of the hasty credence given to them by several bishops,
especially three in Syria (meaning Eusebius of Caesarea, Theodotus,

68 The Age of the Fathers. [Chap.
and Paulinus). He proceeds to argue at great length against the
Arian opinions. In his statements there are a few peculiarities of
theological expression, such as the use (common to him and Arius)
of the word hypostasis for subsistence in the sense of " person ; "
but he carefully excludes the notion that the Son Himself is
" unbegotten," while insisting on His co-eternal existence. He
employs the term " Theotocos " as a title of the Virgin Mother ;
it had already been used by Origen, and was afterwards adopted
by Athanasius, and became, as all know, the Catholic symbol in
the Nestorian controversy. One of the most remarkable passages
in this letter is the caveat, repeated afterwards by typical Fathers,
that no orthodox terms can remove all difficulty, that a full compre
hension of God's nature is beyond the reach of our present faculties.
The notion of a materialistic partition of the Divine essence is dis
claimed, and ascribed to Valentinus and Sabellius, in view of the
emanatistic form of Sabellianism ; while the Arian theory is traced
up to Paul of Samosata, to Artemas, and to " Ebion," the imaginary
founder of the Judaical sect which had taken " poverty " as a charac
teristic. This is a statement which must not be taken rigorously,
but as equivalent to saying, " Arius follows in the track of those
whose theories have lowered the dignity of the Son of God." The
letter concludes by observing that the unanimity of the bishops
might serve as a good argument for reclaiming Arians. Among
others to whom Alexander wrote, Theodoret names the orthodox
Philogonius, bishop of Antioch. The date of the letter to the
bishop of Byzantium is apparently later than that of the Encyclical,
for it points to a later stage in the history, when many bishops
had taken a side ; and it may have been written in 323.
Towards the end of this year, Constantine himself interfered in
the controversy. He had just triumphed over Licinius, and was
naturally annoyed and disturbed by finding the Eastern Christians
then at discord with each other. With characteristic impetuosity
and self-confidence, he resolved to exhort the disputants to peace •
and wrote from Nicomedia a famous letter in which, as Tillemont
says, " one may discern, throughout, the mind of the Nicomedian
Eusebius." His namesake of Caesarea has given it at length. It
was addressed (with marked disrespect towards the bishop of
Alexandria) to " Alexandria and Arius." Constantine begins by
dilating on his strong desire to secure religious unity, as a means
to civil peace: he adds that he had hoped to heal the African
schism of the Donatists by transferring some Eastern bishops to

V] The Beginnings of Arianism. 69
Africa ; he then exclaims against the calamitous outbreak in the
East, of a worse dissension than that of Donatism. " Ah, glorious
and Divine Providence ! what a wound has thus been inflicted on
my heart ! " And from what an insignificant cause has this new
feud arisen ! He is informed that Alexander had raised an " idle
question," and Arius had expressed an "inconsiderate opinion."
He, as their " fellow-servant," would now advise them both to
forbear alike such questioning and such answering, as the " mere
exercise of an unprofitable idleness," or, at any rate, as quite unfit
for public discussions. On a profound subject such as that on
which the question was stirred — the nature of God — how few are
fit to speak, how few are likely to avoid misapprehension ! Let
each party, then, excuse the other for what may have given offence.
The point at issue does not touch the substance of the Christian
" law " or religion : it involves no vital difference ; it is " minute," it
is " extremely slight," it is " purely verbal," it is " unimportant," it
is " quite unessential " (he seems at a loss'for words to express his
sense of its utter insignificance, of what one might call its purely
" academic " character) ; it does not deserve to become the cause of
dissension between grave and earnest men, charged with ministerial
responsibilities. They are at one on the essentials of faith : let
them take a lesson from the philosophical schools, and agree to differ
about petty minutiae. Such small diversities of sentiment must
be expected and provided for : there is an ample extent of common
ground, on which all really needful unanimity as to the faith and
worship of God can be abundantly secured, to the great comfort,
the renewed peace, of Christian society, and to the intense relief
of the writer, their " fellow-servant," who will thus regain " days
of calm, and nights free from anxiety," and who has put off his
journey into the East until this "unreasonable and mischievous
dissension " shall be allayed.
Such was the letter of Constantine, which was so highly eulo
gized, not only by Eusebius, but by Socrates, and has in later
times been so often commended as a model of wise and charitable
counsel. Writers opposed to what would be called the dogmatic
spirit have described its words as " excellent " and " really golden ; "
and even Jeremy Taylor, while faintly admitting the possibility
of Constantine's " undervaluing the question," declares that the
letter " tells the truth." It may, however, be considered somewhat
strange that those who have thus applauded the Emperor's religious
" liberalism " have assumed that he was in a position to know the

70 The Age of the Fathers. [Chap. V.
actual state of the case. It is, on reflection, evident that he was
in no such position ; that one who still looked at Christian doctrine,
to a great extent, ab extra, was simply incompetent to decide
whether a theological question were trivial or momentous ; that in
affecting to decide, he was but showing himself up, so to speak, in
the light of a meddler with what he did not, and could not, under
stand. There might be, of course, a number of questions to which
the principle announced by Constantine would apply, but he did
not know enough of Christianity to apply the principle aright ;
and in the case before us, nothing is plainer than that the question
whether the Son of God were, or were not, a creature was as vital
as any that could be raised by Christian men.
The bearer of the letter was the venerated Hosius, bishop of
Cordova, who had been a confessor, under Maximian " Herculeus,"
the Emperor's father-in-law, and whom the Emperor, Socrates tells
us, " greatly loved and honoured." He was charged to examine
the case as between Alexander and Arius, and also to inquire " into
the conduct of the Meletians and Colluthians," and to do what he
could towards promoting uniformity as to the time of observing the
Easter festival. He came accordingly to Alexandria, perhaps about
the end of 324, or a little earlier, according to Tillemont ; but the
Council which was held on his arrival was without any important
effect, save the distinct declaration of the nullity of the Colluthian
ordinations. Colluthus had already submitted to his bishop ; and
those whom he had pretended to ordain were pronounced mere
laymen, on the express ground that their ordainer was not a
bishop — a reason which, as we shall see, has a direct bearing on
a certain theory in regard to the Alexandrian episcopate. An
Egyptian synod in 339 spoke on this point with a positiveness
which would have been impossible if at that time the right of
presbyters, as such, to ordain had been either asserted or regarded
as tenable within the Church. "It is evident, and nobody has
any doubt about it, that every imposition of hands on the part
of Colluthus has become " (i.e. has been pronounced) " invalid, and
all who had been appointed by him have taken the position of
laymen, and appear as such in the congregation." The dissension
caused by Arianism became daily more vehement. Constantine's
letters naturally had no effect, and Hosius, on his return, advised
the Emperor to try the effect of a general assembly of bishops from
all parts of the empire : and he accordingly summoned such a
Council to meet at Nicaea, in Bithynia, in the June of 325.

CHAPTER VI.
THE NICENE COUNCIL. — PART I.
We have now reached the close of the first period of the great
Arian controversy; and it may be well, in entering upon the
second, to bear in mind that six years of agitation and passionate
debate had brought out with sufficient clearness the issues which
were involved, and the attractions which Arianism could put for
ward for the consolidation of its forces against the theology which
it was attempting to discredit, and the ecclesiastical authorities
which it was resolute to defy. Of those attractions, some were
calculated to prevail with coarse and irreverent natures, which
found a "Thalia" congenial to their taste, or preferred a secular
ised and unexacting Christianity, or retained a paganised notion
of God, or took part, as by instinct, with men against whom synods
had pronounced, and whom bishops were treating as heretical.
But apart from and beyond such recommendations as these, there
can be no doubt that Arianism took strong hold on many serious
and thoughtful minds with a living persuasive power, characteristic
of the system which exhibited so versatile an energy and so
tenacious a vitality, and was destined not only to fight out a long
battle with the Church of the fourth century, but to win itself a
dominion among barbaric races, and reign over the Spanish Goths
until the latter part of the sixth age ; to lie dormant, indeed,
throughout the mediaeval period, but to break forth with a strange
renewal of life amid the confusions of the Reformation, to distress
Trinitarian Reformers on the Continent, to mould the religious
thought of John Milton and Isaac Newton, to plead with English
Churchmen through the writings of Samuel Clarke, to be matter of
theological debate in the presence of Queen Caroline, to prompt a
theory of lax " subscription " which Waterland set himself elabo
rately to attack, to pervert large sections of British and Irish

72 The Age of the Fathers. [Chap.
Presbyterians, and, according to the testimony of Dr. Dale of
Birmingham (in his interesting book on " Christian Doctrine "),
to retain adherents in that town " within the memory of" persons
still living in 1884. Such a theory, however manifest may be,
in our judgment, its inherent flaws and inconsistencies, was sure
enough to enlist a large amount of powerful support in the early
years of its activity : its notion, for instance, of a secondary
divinity might seem to recommend Christianity to minds just
emerging out of Polytheism, and those who wanted still to
continue on easy terms with the object of their worship might
feel more at home with a " deified " creature than with a Word
who "was God" — literally, immutably, indefeasibly — while He
had become man. Nor is it difficult to enumerate the principal
topics which must have been urged by the advocates of the rising
heresy, and to which their opponents were not backward to give
an answer. For instance : (1) Arians would appeal to not a
few minds by adopting a position virtually rationalistic, and by
promising to secure a Christianity which should stand clear of
philosophical objections ; and Catholics would answer by insisting
that the truths pertaining to the Divine Nature must be pre
eminently matter of adoring faith, that it was rash to speculate
beyond the lines of revelation, and that the Arian position was
itself open to criticism from reason's own point of view. (2)
Arians would call upon Catholics to " be logical," to admit the
prior existence of the Father as involved in the very primary
notion of fatherhood ; to halt no more between a premiss and a
conclusion, to exchange their sentimental pietism for grave con
victions sustainable by argument. And Catholics would bid them,
in turn, remember the inevitably limited scope of human logic in
regard to things divine ; would point out the sublime uniqueness
of the Divine relation called Fatherhood ; would proceed to carry
the war into the enemy's country by dwelling on the suicidal
force of that Arian dialectic which tended, in fact, to annihilate its
own ground by practically denying the essential Sonship, and on
the impossibility of the Arian conception of a created and secondary
god — a "demi-god," in Professor Gwatkin's phrase — a being who
could be decked out with an honorary divinity, while he was
essentially the mere product of the one all-creating Will, and
therefore — to take the point by which the Roman Catholic Dr.
Hawarden put Dr. Clarke to silence — held His existence pre
cariously durante bencplacito of the Father. (3) Arians would

vi.] The Nicene Council. 73
contend that they alone did justice to Monotheism, by representing
the Father as the one solitary, peerless, incomparable Eternal ; and
Catholics would bid them either give up their adoration of the
so-called " Son," whom they proclaimed to be " alien from the
Father's essence," or else consider how to clear themselves from
the stain of gross Ditheistic impiety. (4) Arians would endeavour
to load the Catholic conception of an essentially Divine Sonship
with the imputation of a materialistic degradation of the Divine
nature ; and Catholics would earnestly disclaim all carnal Gnostic
dreams of " partition" or " severance " in God. (5) Arians would
invoke the Christian sentiment of the time as against a disguised
return to Sabellianism, involved in the recognition of Filial Co-
equality; and Catholics would point out the radical difference
between such an idea and the merging of the Son's personality in
the Father's, which was the characteristic doctrine of Sabellianism
alike in its earlier and its later forms. (6) Arians would claim as
their own stronghold certain passages of Scripture, especially " My
Father is greater than I ; " and Catholics would explain these as
entirely consistent with the Son's essential co-equality, and as
referring, in part, to His acknowledged derivation of being from
the Father as Father, in part to His assumption of a created
nature for man's sake ; and having so explained them, would urge
the irreconcilable contradiction between a theory which made His
Divinity but nominal, and a series of texts which attested its
reality. (7) Once more, Arians would profess to be but repeating,
or legitimately developing, the strong " Subordinationist " language
of some earlier Church writers ; and Catholics would, in the first
instance, meet this allegation by showing how such writers, fairly
construed, differed from Arianism, or even furnished evidence
against it, and would then broadly denounce the new heresy as
a denial of the immemorial traditionary faith, and as, in fact, a
reproduction, in a new form, of what a writer early in the third
century had called the " God-denying apostasy," and of the Jewish
antipathy to a Christ who was " God's own Son."
We have now seen what were, so to speak, the remoter and the
immediate antecedents of the controversy, what were the circum
stances in which it actually broke out, what were the essential
propositions of the Arian theory, and what the attractions which
it could offer to various minds. And we can have no difficulty in
apprehending the issues which it raised. Of these the first was, as
has been well said, essentially " spiritual, devotional, and therein

74 The Age of the Fathers. [Chap.
moral." Who and what was Jesus Christ ? Was He to be adored,
or was He not 1 Were Christians right or wrong in making Him
the object of prayer and praise, and also of a trust, a loyalty, an
obedience, a devotion, literally supreme, unqualified, and absolute ?
He had from the first been so regarded : " the essence of Christian
life," as Dr. Wace has excellently said, had been this devotion
without limit, this self-surrender without reserve. But if he was
personally a creature, however exalted, however super-angelic,
then he had, as a creature, no claim to this manifold and all-
comprehending worship; and Christians must lose no time in
retracing their steps to a standing-ground which would, at any
rate, keep them clear of idolatry. And then if Arians rejoined,
" We do worship Him," the answer was obvious : " On your own
showing, you have no right to do so. You are idolaters, not in
fact, but in principle. You are transgressing the essential re
quirements of Monotheism, and relapsing virtually into poly
theistic laxities. Your so-called ' Son of God ' is ' a being who
is not to be supposed, a theological monster, unlawfully, pro
fanely, and falsely imagined ' " (to adopt the telling phrase
of Dr. Mozley). And thus it was the task of the Catholics
to uphold the Christian idea of God in its full practical import,
as severely excluding all secondary worship, under whatever
Christian terms its heathenishness might be disguised. Yet again,
if Christ were not truly God, if he were God in a merely
titular sense, as it were honoris causa, and separated in the root
of his being by an infinite chasm from the Divine essence and
life, then he could not be an adequate expression and revelation of
God, could not " interpret " Him accurately ; and Christians must
give up the inspiring assurance of being brought very near to the
Father through the Son, of beholding in Him " a glory as of the
Only-begotten," the very " glory of God in the face of Jesus." The
Most High would be for them, as for the old Gnostics, the Most
Distant — an abstract and practically unknowable " Depth," instead
of a God who had " so loved the world," and who could be " seen "
by those who saw Christ, and in Him knew " Him that was true."
Here then was another aspect of the Arian movement, which ex
hibited it as distinctly retrograde. And once more, it might be felt
by thoughtful observers of the Christian type of character that the
power of Christ's ethical teaching was closely bound up with the
divine supremacy of His claim; and therefore a theory which ex
plained away His Godhead would mean the weakening of Christian

VI.J The Nicene Council. 75
motives and the moral impoverishment of Christian life. As
Dr. Dale has well said, the doctrine asserted against Arianism was
" only a definite protest against forms of thought which, by denying
to the Lord Jesus Christ His divine glory, would have paralyzed
the characteristic power of His ethical teaching ; " or, in Dr. Wace's
words, the absolute " moral unity " between the will of Jesus, as
represented in the Gospels, and the will of God, being such as no
mere man could exhibit, is a " moral foundation " of the doctrine
of Their unity of nature. Thus, on all sides, the faith was im
perilled by the growth of a theory which in effect assailed its
vitality and its power as a religion ; and it is of this that Carlyle
must have been thinking when he made the memorable remark,
that " if Arianism had won, Christianity would have dwindled into
a legend." So stood the two parties face to face, when Constantine's
messengers were hurrying to all quarters of the empire, to
summon the spiritual rulers of Christendom to the great assembly
which he had resolved to hold at Nicaea. The notion of such a
council would be readily caught up by Constantine, as con
genial to his own magnificent ideas of imperial unity — ideas
which he would be glad to clothe with a religious and eccle
siastical form; not less, moreover, as likely to furnish the only
effectual means for restoring that internal peace and good order
of the Church, which this wearying and exasperating controversy
had broken up, as a civil war might break up the quiet of the
empire. And as he threw himself heartily into the plan, so was
he, the Emperor, alone competent to carry it out. There is no
doubt that this First (Ecumenical Council could only, humanly
speaking, have been " gathered together by the commandment
and will " of the first Christian " Princeps." No other authority,
in those days, was sufficient to assemble such a body as the
Nicene Council — meeting, not like the old councils of Antioch,
as a simple representative of a large part of the recently legalised
Christian Church, but as the gathering together, under solemn
public sanctions, of that whole Church as co-extensive with the
empire, and as avowedly possessing the sympathy and respect —
in a word, the practical adhesion — of him in whom the empire
was, on " Caesarean " principles, gathered up and impersonated.
To understand the position, we must transplant our thoughts into
a " Caesarean " atmosphere, such as that which prevailed through
out the period of the Great Councils, and was to a large extent

76 The Age of the Fathers. [Chap.
reproduced under the monarchy of a " Carolus Magnus " and a
" Ludovicus Pius." Constantine regarded himself as, in his own
daring phrase — his unbaptized character being considered — " a
bishop for the external relations of the Church," just as later
sovereigns, who were actually members of the Church, and thus
had better right to take its affairs in hand, might be called its
advocati, its guardians — in some sense its "supreme governors."
And in the discharge of this peculiar " episcopate," although, no
doubt, with the cordial assent and approval of the leading prelates
(a condition obviously indispensable, and one which he himself
would never have dreamed of neglecting), Constantine sent forth
his letters of invitation or citation, informing the bishops of the
time and place of the intended meeting, and placing at their
disposal public conveyances, or relays of horses, as had been the
case in regard to the Council of Aries. It may be thought that
one of these documents is extant, in what purports to be the
Syriac version of an epistle of Constantine desiring certain bishops
to come to Nicaea, partly on the ground that the Council of
Ancyra " formerly consented that it should be so." The language
is not free from suspicion, for it might seem as if the writer of
this letter did not know that the Council of Ancyra had been
held eleven years before the Nicene, but only knew of it as more
ancient than the Nicene. However, supposing it to be genuine,
Constantine must be referring to some other meeting of bishops
at Ancyra, the record of which is lost, but which may perhaps
have been a sort of preliminary synod, in which Alexander and
Hosius came to a full understanding.
The letter in question gives, at any rate, one probable reason
for the selection of Nicaea — the excellence of its climate. In the
vivid words of Cardinal Newman, the " beautiful town lay on
an eminence in the midst of a well-wooded, flower-embellished
country, with the clear bright waters of the Ascanian lake " at its
foot, and successive tiers of mountains behind. There was some
thing also which pleased Constantine's fancy in the significance
of its name as the " City of Victory," for he loved to style himself
" Constantine the Victorious ; " and it was, if not the first, yet
certainly the second city in Bithynia, and could trace its founda
tion to Antigonus and Lysimachus. Here, then, in the early
part of June, 325, assembled a large number of bishops ; but
when we attempt to ascertain the exact number, we are in
volved in the uncertainties which, for want of precise and careful

VI.] The Nicene Council.

77

records, much altered many of the proceedings of the Council
of Nicaea. There are extant several lists of bishops who subscribed the
acts of the Council ; but they do not agree in their numbers, and
they are clearly not exhaustive. Thus, the first of the five lists
printed by Mr. C. H. Turner gives 218 names ; the second, 210 ;
the third, 223 ; the fourth, 221 ; the fifth, 195 (this last professes
to omit " the Westerns, who were not suspected of heresy ") ; and
these lists include 15, 14, or 12 "chorepiscopi" who evidently
represented absent diocesan bishops. A fragment of a Coptic list
stops short at Pamphylia, having thus far exhibited only 147 names,
but with a number of blank spaces ; and a Syriac list gives 220,
reckoning the two presbyter-legates of Rome as two bishops (which,
of course, is incorrect, for they represented the single person of their
own bishop, Silvester), and mentioning a few of the Westerns. Two
Latin lists given by Mansi in his "Concilia" give only 227 and 204
names, including 15 and 13 chorepiscopi. Once more, the Greek list
of Theodore the Reader exhibits only 212 names ; but the compiler
adds that he has not been able to learn the remainder. If we
ask information of historians or other writers of the time, Con
stantine's own letter to the Alexandrians speaks of "more than
300 bishops ; " Eustathius of Antioch, as appears from Theodoret,
told his people soon afterwards that there were about 270, but
added that he had not taken any pains to ascertain the precise
number. Eusebius, in his Life of Constantine, speaks of " more
than 250." Athanasius, writing soon after a.d. 350, gives the
number as more than 300 ; in a later work, he fixes it at 318,
the famous number afterwards generally accepted. Julius of Rome
speaks of " the 300 ; " Hilary in one passage speaks of " 300 or
more," in others of 318 ; Epiphanius, writing fifty years after the
Council, says that " the Emperor assembled an GCcumenical Synod
of 318 bishops, whose names are preserved to the present day;"
St. Gregory Nazianzen gives the same number. St. Ambrose,
writing in 377, found a mystic significance in the number 318 —
the famous symbolic appropriateness, as it struck many minds
among the orthodox, of the number of Abraham's victorious
servants, and of the numerical value of the T (the cross), and
IH (Jesus). Sozomen speaks of "about 320," evidently with
318 in his mind ; and Theodoret gives the latter number. This
account prevailed in the Eastern Church, and also in the Western ;
and the Fathers of Nicaea became known as "the 318." They

78 The Age of the Fathers. [Chap.
were attended, says Eusebius, by an " innumerable host " of pres
byters, deacons, and acolyths, but these — among whom Athanasius
was pre-eminent — must be distinguished from the actual members
of the Synod. It was composed, properly speaking, of the prelates
alone ; but they were fully qualified by their antecedents to repre
sent their dioceses, and had provided themselves with clerical
attendance such as might be at once a means of counsel or
information and a check on inconsiderate action.
The assemblage of bishops and other ecclesiastics represented
at once the manifoldness and the unity of the Church universal.
Eusebius calls it, in his rhetorical vein, " a great garland of
beautiful flowers of every hue." There were all conceivable
diversities of age and experience : some of those who met face to
face at Nicaea were eminent, says Eusebius, " for wisdom of speech,
others for gravity of life and patient fortitude ; some were honoured
for their length of years, others were in the ardour of youthful
energy ; some had but just entered on their ministrations."
There were still more striking differences of nation and country ;
there might be seen, in close contact, faces from Syria, Cilicia,
Phoenicia, Arabia, Palestine, Egypt, Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia,
Pamphylia, Thrace, Macedonia, Greece, Western Europe, and
countries lying outside the limits of the empire. Alexander of
Alexandria, who of all men present must have felt most keenly
the intensity of the crisis, was attended by fourteen suffragans from
Egypt and the Thebaid, and five from the two provinces of Libya.
One of these bishops was Potammon of Heracles, who had lost an
eye in Maximin's persecution ; another confessor was Paphnutius
from the Thebaid, whose name is not given in the lists ; a few
were already committed to Arianism, including the deposed
Secundus of Ptolemais. But the most interesting person in the
whole group that surrounded the " Pope " of Alexandria was a
young man of puny stature, but with a face of singular beauty and
animation : he was the " archdeacon " Athanasius. Among the
prelates of Syria and Palestine was Eustathius, the orthodox
successor of the orthodox Philogonius of Antioch, and destined to
suffer from Arian malignity ; Eusebius the historian, from Caesarea,
already well known to Alexander as, at least in part, a sympathiser
with Arius ; Paulinus of Tyre, and Patrophilus of Scythopolis, who
took the same line ; Macarius of Jerusalem,, who had maintained
the doctrinal purity of his apostolic bishopric. From Neocaesarea
on the Euphrates came Paul, whose hands had been paralyzed with

VI-] The Nicene Council. 79
red-hot iron under the recent persecution of Licinius. With him
were James of Nisibis, the great saint of Mesopotamia, who was to
win himself renown in the resistance of his city to the Persians ;
Aitallaha, the new bishop of the " blessed city " of Edessa, where
the Church had flourished from at least the early part of the
second century ; Aristaces (properly Arisdaghes), from the Greater
Armenia, the son of Gregory " the Illuminator," who had organized
the Armenian national Church ; and John " of Persia," sole repre
sentative of a Church which traced up its original foundation to
sub-apostolic missionaries, . and was ere long to pass through the
fiery trial of the long persecution of Sapor.
From Caesarea in Cappadocia came Leontius, remarkable as the
consecrator, in former years, according to one account, of Gregory
the Illuminator, and ranked by Athanasius among bishops faithful
to the truth ; he had just baptized another Gregory, the father of
Gregory Nazianzen. From Gangra came Hypatius, who was said
to have been afterwards murdered by Novatians. The prelates of
the immediate neighbourhood — as Theognis of Nicaea, Eusebius of
Nicomedia, Maris of Chalcedon, Menophantus of Ephesus — would
look with unfriendly eyes at the majority of stranger bishops;
for their sympathies were with Arius, and their hope, doubtless,
was that the Council might be somehow prevented from siding, as
they would say, with the intolerant Pope of Alexandria. On the
other hand, Marcellus of Ancyra would be known as one of the
most determined supporters of Alexander; he was afterwards to
be known as one commonly accused of having taken up the
opposite extreme to Arianism, and justified, thus far, the Arian
taunt that to denounce Arianism was, in effect, to Sabellianize.
Spyridion of Tremithus in Cyprus, famous for his quaint and
hearty simplicity, would be pointed out as one who had still
retained the habits of his former shepherd-life, after he was
appointed a pastor of men.
Turning westward, so to speak, we may picture the arrivals of
Alexander of Byzantium, Poederos of Heraclea, Pistus of Athens,
Alexander of Thessalonica — a venerable man held in high esteem —
Protogenes of Sardica, and one who was to the northern frontiers
of the empire what John the Persian was to the eastern, — Theo-
philus, " bishop of the Goths," who in after-days was succeeded
by the Arian Ulfilas. From Sicily came Capito ; from Calabria,
Marcus; from Northern Italy, Eustorgius of Milan; from Rome
itself, not the aged Silvester in person, but two presbyters as his

80 The Age of the Fathers. [Chap.
deputies, Vito and Vincentius. Gaul sent a representative in
the person of Nicasius, who is called bishop of "Divio," which
Duchesne identifies with Die in Dauphiny. Domnus of Stridon
represented Pannonia; and from the utmost west, beside "the
great Hosius," appeared one who had already had his full share
in ecclesiastical troubles of a different kind, Caecilian of Carthage.
Among the bishops of cities were to be seen some prelates of a
lower rank; for one of the lists gives us the names of fifteen
Chorepiscopi, or, as we might say, bishops suffragan in rural
districts. And Constantine had invited a bishop who was actually
in schism, the Novatian Acesius, of Byzantium, much respected
for his sanctity.
If we endeavour to estimate the amount of Arianizing disposi
tion which was to be found among the bishops, it would seem that
about twenty prelates were more or less favourable to the heresy.
Some of these have been already mentioned. Theodoret says that
there were but a few of this class, and compares them to sunken
rocks, because they were reserved in expressing their opinion. We
shall presently see with what peculiar diplomacy some of them
laboured to preserve that opinion from censure — to retain it for a
locus standi in the Church.
The exact day on which the Council began its work has been
not a little disputed; but on the whole the preponderance of
authority would lead us to think that, even if, according to a
possible interpretation of a statement ascribed to Atticus, de facto
bishop of Constantinople in a.d. 406, the opening was at first
fixed for the 14th of June, yet for some reason the actual opening
took place on the 19th, the day mentioned in the Acts of the
Council of Chalcedon, and by other authorities of great weight. It
is to be observed that the Emperor was not present ; he probably
did not arrive at Nicaea until after July 3, the anniversary of his
victory over Licinius ; and to speak of his having really opened
the Council is to give an incorrect account of the facts. In his
absence, its first sittings were held more or less informally. A
question has been raised as to who was president : the bishop of
Cordova, " the great Hosius," is called by Athanasius the " head
of all the Councils," and his name comes first in the extant lists of
signatures, being always followed by the names of Vincent and
Vito, Silvester's presbyter-legates; and if some authorities are
quoted for the presidency of Eustathius of Antioch, the evidence
preponderates for Constantine's ecclesiastical adviser. But when

VI.] The Nicene Council. 81
Gelasius of Cyzicus, the historian of the Council, a writer by no
means of first-rate authority, speaks of Hosius as "holding the
place of Silvester, the bishop of great Rome, with Vito and
Vincent, presbyters of Rome," he is simply inserting that state
ment into the text of Eusebius, whose account he is quoting ; and
the insertion is an "evident corruption" of that text, and is
accompanied by a further perversion of its meaning ; for whereas
Eusebius wrote, " But the prelate of the imperial city (Rome) was
absent through old age, while presbyters of his were present and
filled his place," Gelasius actually transfers this remark to the case
of Byzantium ; " of the now imperial city, Metrophanes the prelate
was absent through old age, while presbyters of his," etc. The
ancient authorities which Gelasius ought to have had before him
distinguish Hosius markedly, as signing for himself, from the two
presbyters who " subscribed for their bishop, Silvester," who
" were present to supply his place ; " or as a Coptic version has it,
" Hosius said, ' I believe as is above written ; ' and Vito and
Innocentius (sic), presbyters, ' We sign for our bishop, who is the
bishop of Rome : he believes as is above written.' " Thus, we may
conclude that while it is most likely that Hosius presided, it is
certain that he did not, like the two priests from Rome, hold a
formal commission to represent Silvester, although he may not
improbably have been chosen to preside, partly on account of
his personal eminence, and partly as knowing the mind of the
Roman bishop, as well as of their common sovereign. At all
events, this is the only sense in which we can, with any reason or
likelihood, be considered as at all representing Silvester; and
such a sense would not justify us in calling him the " legate of
Rome." In short, as Silvester had not, so far as we know, any
peculiar share in the preparation for the synod, neither did he
hold by deputies the primary place in its proceedings ; and this
twofold fact is peculiarly momentous as against the Roman asser
tion of an original and continuous supremacy and infallibility,
acknowledged on all sides to be inherent in the Roman bishop.
For if ever there was a time for an infallible Pope to speak, it was
in this first conflict with Arianism. But nobody asked Silvester
thus to speak, and he never attempted to do so. In other words,
neither he nor any one else believed in papal infallibility.
The place of the meeting was, in the first instance, what
Eusebius calls " a house of prayer," the great church of the city,
which Theognis would be morally obliged to place, with whatever
VOL. i. G

82 The Age of the Fathers. [Chap.
reluctance, at the disposal of the Council, and of which we are told
that the Turkish conqueror Orchan in the fourteenth century
turned it into a mosque, and substituted for its Christian mosaics
the symbol of Islam. Within this sacred place the great question
of Arianism was at once brought under discussion. The Council,
although, properly speaking, composed purely of bishops, did not
deliberate with closed doors. Before the whole number of bishops
had arrived, and therefore before the actual assembling of the
Council, a preliminary discipline was carried on with what may
strike us as a strange freedom : for laymen, " skilled in dialectic,"
were permitted to take part in the argument, on the orthodox and
on the Arian side ; and not laymen only, but, as Sozomen informs
us, even pagan professors of philosophy, animated either by an
honest wish for information as to Christian belief, or by a desire to
discredit Christianity by reducing the doctrinal question to a
logomachy, urged their questions or their objections on the con
sideration of an assembly which, by its unparalleled character,
offered them such a field for Greek disputation as Hellenism had
never enjoyed before that day. Then it was, according to a
touching story, that on the day before the Council met, one of
these philosophers, indulging in railleries against the Christian
religion and the bishops, was interrupted by a simple-minded
confessor — by one account a layman, by another a rustic bishop
— who, with all the external disadvantages which bodily mutila
tion could entail, came forward, regardless of taunt and laughter,
amid a group outside the church-gates, and exclaimed, "In the
Name of Jesus Christ, 0 philosopher, listen ! " and then proceeded
to state plainly the leading points of the faith, with a power
which instantly commanded the philosopher's submission. "I
believe," he answered ; and afterwards assured his friends that
"an inexplicable force had swayed his soul to embrace Chris
tianity." This anecdote, interesting in itself, is valuable as illustrating
the extent to which a simple tenacity of traditional belief
prevailed among those who were assembled at Nicaea. A
considerable number of the " Three Hundred " — as we may call
them for convenience — were, in truth, to adopt the phrase which
Sabinus, a heretical bishop of later times, applied to the whole
body, " simple and unlearned men," who were bent on adhering
to the " canon " or standard of faith, but felt themselves not at
home in controversy, and therefore were disposed to cut short the

VI.] The Nicene Council. 83
discussion, and protest against a hearing being given to heterodox
argument. And when Arius was called in, and avowed his opinions
with a boldness which scorned evasion, we are told that several
bishops stopped their ears, and cried out that such blasphemies
merited instant condemnation. These were they who, as Sozomen
expresses it, were "led by the simplicity of their character to
accept the faith as to the Deity without curious speculations :
but," he adds, " others insisted that it was not right to follow the
more ancient opinions without testing them." Now, even if these
last words could be referred to the small but definitely Arian
section, and to the " Eusebians " whose aim was to conceal the
issue raised under terms of smooth vagueness, there is no
necessity, and indeed no reason, for supposing that the sentiment
was not, in a true sense, adopted by several of the orthodox.
There would be among the latter some, perhaps a considerable
number, who were as firmly persuaded as their simpler brethren
of the duty of " holding fast the form of sound words," of " con
tending for the faith once delivered," of not departing from the
" canon " of orthodoxy, of cleaving to " the teaching of the
Fathers : " they felt, and could express, the power of the question,
" Who ever heard such things as these ? " they knew that their
feet were on a rock while they resisted all novelties in doctrine ;
but they also knew that, when a great controversy had absorbed
the interest of all thoughtful minds in Christendom, it was
impossible to suppress it by mere anathemas ; that it was rather
a call on the instructed believer not merely to witness for his
belief, but to argue for it — to point out its deep and broad founda
tions, to exhibit its " proportion, symmetry, grandeur, simplicity,
interior congruity," and to show that no other belief was
Christianity in its fulness, and therefore that it alone had a
divine right to the allegiance of men, and a divine efficacy to
satisfy their spiritual needs and renew their inner life. This
would have also a bearing on another class, those who had to be
convinced that some new departure in point of language had to
be taken in view of a new emergency — that to leave the question
open, and trust that the evil would right itself without being met
fairly in front, would be at once short-sighted and unfaithful. Such
was the twofold task laid upon orthodox theologians by the dis
tresses and scandals of the Arian controversy; and the young
Alexandrian deacon, who was already making his presence felt in
the assemblage of prelates, was unconsciously teaching his elders

84 The Age of the Fathers. [Chap.
more than they had yet realised of the greatness and urgency of
the duty of the day.
But these preliminary discussions, for so we must regard them,
showed that the Council was but learning its work, and was not,
at first, ripe for a systematic and methodical consideration of the
question. We cannot wonder that some time was, as we might
think, wasted in desultory conversations, and that the excitable
temperaments of a large number of men brought together for an
unfamiliar duty, in circumstances which tended to bring out all
differences of tone, should have in some instances run into angry
personalities, alien to the awful subject on which they were engaged ;
insomuch that a variety of papers of accusation, or complaint, on
the part of bishop against bishop, were prepared for presentation
to the Emperor on his arrival.
That arrival took place, it is commonly said, after the 3rd of
July, on which day Constantine kept the anniversary of his
victory at Hadrianople. He then came from Nicomedia to
Nicaea : his first act was to receive the papers of accusation, to
form them into one packet, to read through it, and to lay it aside.
The next day was fixed for a solemn sitting of the Council, with a
view to arriving at a decision on the Arian case. The bishops
assembled, not in the church, but in the largest hall of the palace
of Nicaea, which is said to have stood close to the shore of the
Ascanian lake : the spot is still marked by " a few broken
columns." All along the sides of the apartment were seats
arranged for the bishops. " The whole Council seated itself with
becoming order : " there was a hush of expectation ; then came in,
one after another, some of the Christian courtiers, and at last a
signal was given to announce the approach of the Emperor himself.
He entered : the bishops rose to greet him, and gazed with an in
describable thrill of emotion on the entrance of the Augustus into
a Christian Synod. The tall commanding figure, which had lost
none of its stateliness through advancing years (his age was now
fifty-one), the purple (or dark-red) robe, the diadem, and the
jewels, were less impressive, after all, than the downcast eyes, the
"faltering steps," the blush of diffidence, the standing posture
which, when he reached his place, he assumed until the bishops
motioned to him to take his seat on a small gilded chair pro
vided for him. He sat down, and all did the like. Then, says
Eusebius, one of the bishops, he who occupied the first place on the
Emperor's right hand, arose, and in a short speech addressed the

VI.] The Nicene Cottncil. 85
Emperor, and gave thanks to God on his behalf. This, perhaps,
implies that Eusebius himself was the speaker ; and so Sozomen
understood it. True, Theodoret says that it was Eustathius of
Antioch who " crowned the Emperor's head with a garland of
eulogy, and thanked him for the interest which he had taken in
religious affairs." But probably Eustathius only made a short
speech, and Eusebius followed with a formal oration in the pompous
style which suited his notions of eloquence. Constantine then
broke the silence which followed by a Latin speech, delivered in
soft and gentle tones, after a bright and kindly glance round the
assembly, and a few moments spent in collecting his thoughts. " It
was," he began, " the sum of my wishes to find myself in your
midst, and I owe thanks to the Sovereign of the universe that
this my desire has been attained." With much dexterity and
grace, he proceeded to speak of their "unanimity," and then
intimated a hope that it would be perfected and secured. He
spoke of himself as their "fellow-servant," as "deeply pained
whenever the Church of God was in dissension, a worse evil,
to his mind, than any war : " he stated the reasons for convoking
the Council; and exhorted them all to labour, without further
delay, for the establishment of religious concord, and to put
aside for this great object all personal irritation or unfriendliness.
Probably it was after this address that he produced from within
his robes the packet of accusations, and, with a remark on the
Christian duty of forgiveness, caused it to be burnt in presence
of them all.
And now the great debate began in earnest. We have but
fragmentary and imperfect records of its course, but it would seem
that Arius was again called before the Council, and again avowed
his sentiments with an energy which expressed itself in passionate
emotion, and impressed Constantine very unfavourably, as we may
infer from a satirical letter clearly subsequent to the Council. His
outspoken frankness (to be remembered to his credit) was an
embarrassment to Eusebius of Nicomedia, who, in conjunction with
others, called after him " Eusebians," strove to neutralise its effect.
He exerted himself privately to obtain Constantine's support. " The
Emperor," says Eusebius of Caesarea, with an obvious touch of
exaggeration, " listened patiently to all, and took time to weigh the
arguments advanced. He gave support, in part, to both sides. . . .
Employing his power of speaking Greek, he was very mild and suave
in persuading some and convincing others ; and, drawing all into

86 The Age of the Fathers. [Chap.
unanimity, he made them agree in one sentiment as to the points at
issue," endeavouring to act as mediator between opponent speakers,
and urging mutual conciliation and forbearance with an emphasis
which would have come better from one whose position was inside the
Church and not outside. The plan of the Eusebians was to refrain
from language which would seriously offend the majority; but
they did not, perhaps could not, consistently adhere to it. The
majority of the bishops, doubtless guided by the genius and insight
of the Alexandrian deacon — who in his management of the debate,
" gained the applause of all the orthodox, and incurred the enmity of
all their adversaries " — were not, at this moment, impatient to push
matters to extremity ; they rather desired to draw out the thoughts
of the Eusebians, and, if possible, to find in their language, when
carefully considered, materials for a good understanding. Thus, they
either themselves proposed, or, at any rate, accepted the proposal,
that the faith should be summarised in strictly Biblical terms ; for
instance, that the Son should be declared to be " from God." The
minority conferred with each other, and agreed to accept this
phrase ; " for," said they, " it is written, ' All things are from
God.' " A pitiful evasion, which must have gone far to destroy
all hope of unity ! The Catholics proceeded : " Will you own the
Son to be the true Power and Image of the Father, like to Him in
all .things, His eternal Image, undivided from Him, and unalter
able ? " Athanasius, with his keen eyes, saw the little knot of
" Eusebians," as he says, " whispering to each other, and winking
with their eyes," to secure the adoption of this language also, as
capable of a sense which they could accept. " Yes, let us agree ;
for it is written, ' Man is the image of God,' ' we are in Him,'
' nothing shall separate us from His love ; ' " and then, antici
pating or adopting a quibble employed by the Arian " sophist "
Asterius, they added, " He may well be the Power of the Father,
for the people of Israel are the power (or host) of the Lord, and
even the caterpillar and the locust are so called : this title, there
fore, is harmless." " Will you own," once more they were asked,
" that the Son is Very God ? " " We have no objection to do so ;
if He has been so made, verily so He is." It was perhaps at this
point that Eusebius of Nicomedia, according to a statement made
by St. Ambrose, was rash enough to produce a paper expressing
his objection to the description of the Lord as the true and un
created Son of God. " If we say this, it will mean that He is of
one essence with the Father;" evidently intending this as a

vi.] The Nicene Council. 87
reductio ad absurdum. Indignant at this language, the great body
of the Council ordered the document to be torn to pieces ; and it
is apparently to this that Athanasius refers when he says that
the words employed by the Eusebians were condemned by the
Council — a phrase which suits well with Eustathius's description
of the Eusebian document, as offensive from its " perversity," i.e.
its utter deviation from the lines of truth.
What was to be done ? The honest and considerate attempt to
find a ground of union in New Testament language — an endeavour
in which Athanasius, habitually ready, as Keble says, " to commit
his cause to the witness of Scripture, and to follow the voice of
Scripture wherever it should lead him," could join with all sincerity,
even although he might be doubtful of its success — had been baffled
by the versatility of heretical equivocation. A disingenuous use
of terms, a readiness to " palter in a double sense," traceable
probably to the habits of Greek disputation, was characteristic of
the Arians, as afterwards of Pelagians and Paulicians, and other
sects ; and on the present occasion it became clear that, as the
language of the sacred books in regard to the Divine Sonship could
be robbed of its force by Arian evasiveness, it was necessary, in
the interests of the Scriptural truth itself, to go beyond the field of
Scriptural phraseology. Persuaded of the fact which St. Augustine,
some eighty years later, urged on an Arian layman of high position,
that even if a particular term were absent from Scripture, " the
thing intended by it might be found there," — the fact, let us add,
pithily expressed by Waterland as against modern Arians, that " if
we preserve the true sense of Scripture, and upon that sense build
our faith, we then build upon Scripture only, for the sense of
Scripture is Scripture," although it be clothed in phrases of later
date, — the leading Fathers of Nicaea resolved to guard the true
meaning of their Scriptural statements by the help of some words
taken, so to speak, from outside. This experience naturally turned
the bishops' attention to the forms of catechetical teaching and
baptismal confession current in the great typical Churches, and
representing so many lines of tradition from the apostolic or sub-
apostolic periods. It may be that some of these forms were recited
by their respective bishops, by way of pointing out landmarks for
the guidance of the Council. Such a course would be most natural
in itself, for the assembling of the Council gave an opportunity,
which had never occurred before, for a comparison of these forms
of the common faith — for a confluence, so to speak, of these

88 The Age of the Fathers. [Chap.
kindred streams of tradition ; and Alexander had already, in one of
his letters, set forth in substance his own baptismal creed. And
as this course would then commend itself to the leaders of the
Council, so it seems to illustrate and account for the proceeding of
Eusebius of Caesarea, who presented, for public reading in the
Council, the Creed of his own church, and which he prefaced by
these words : " As we received from the bishops who preceded us, and
in our first catechizing, and when we received the ' laver,' and as we
have learned from the divine Scriptures, and as in our presbyterate,
and in our episcopate itself, we believed and taught ; so now believ
ing, we exhibit to you our belief, and it is this." The creed which
followed bears a considerable resemblance to that which the Council
ultimately framed ; it was emphatic on the personal distinctions
in the Holy Trinity, asserting each Person to be and to exist " as
truly Father, Son, and Holy Spirit ; " it recognised " one Lord Jesus
Christ " as " the Word of God, God from God, Light from Light,
Life from Life, Only-begotten Son, firstborn of all creation, begotten
before all ages, and through whom all things came into being ; " and
it mentioned also His becoming Incarnate for our salvation, His
life among men, His Passion, Resurrection on the third day,
Ascension to the Father, and future coming in glory to judge
(the) living and dead," and concluded, as then quoted, with "We
believe also in one Holy Spirit ; " yet it was not sufficiently explicit
as to the main point then at stake, His eternal relation to the
Father. There could not be any positive objection to this formulary;
and we may believe Eusebius when he tells us — in his letter to his
own " Caesareans " — that no one " contradicted " it, and that the
Emperor was " foremost " in expressing his approval. But it was
practically inadequate for the emergency, for it could be misused
by Arian facility in glossing; and of this the orthodox majority
became convinced, although they were genuinely desirous to make
it, if possible, a basis for union between themselves and those who'
were not absolutely committed to downright Arianism. Something-
must be added to it : to begin with, an antithetical phrase which
affirmed the Son to have been " begotten, not made," would dis
tinctly exclude the fundamental Arian negation of the Son's
uncreatedness. The creed of Jerusalem might be laid under
contribution for the phrase " true God," which after all would but
apply that title to the Son in accordance with one interpretation
of 1 John v. 20. But a further step seemed requisite — the adop
tion of one or two phrases which might be called technical. And

VI.] The Nicene Council. 89
here, before going into any details on this point, we must notice
the charge, frequently brought against the Nicenes, of " gratuitously
and pedantically abandoning the beautiful simplicity of primitive
Christian thought, and troubling the clear stream of Christian
language by the infusion of a foreign element of Hellenic specula
tion." Now first, this raises a question which can surely receive
a " simple " answer : Will the " simple child-language " of those
who listened to apostles and learned to pray in the name of Jesus,
and to expect help and blessing from Him, be sure to suffice for
the needs of a Church which has grown alike in extension and
thought under the training of two eventful centuries ? The " clock-
hands " cannot be thus put backward. The Church had come out
into the open, had been obliged to construct a theological position
against the tremendous attacks of Gnosticism, and to provide for
educated inquirers in great centres of Greek learning. She had
become conscious of her debt to " the wise ; " she saw that in a true
sense she must " put away childish things," and " build up accord
ing to the need " of the actual time. That meant what Canon Scott
Holland has described as the action of faith in "putting its
intellectual power to use, considering itself, taking its own
measure, formulating its own meaning." And then, if Church
men were to apply anything like an intellectual treatment to the
great religious question before them, they must make use, to some
extent, of the current terms of their own day — must behave, as it
has been well said, " like Greek-speaking men of education ; " even
as St. Paul had adopted morphe and pleroma as terms with a
technical import — as St. John had infused a richer and worthier
significance into the Logos of a Palestinian or of an Alexandrian
school of thought, and as hypostasis had been used of the Divine
being in Heb. i. 3, and physis in 2 Pet. i. 4. But next, not to
say that the Nicenes had wished at first to dispense with all terms
that might be deemed technical, as if, in Newman's phrase, they
were "loth " to believe that the time had come for a new departure
in this respect, it is certain that they did not commit themselves
to any meaning which Greek schools might attach to the words
which they adopted, but explained the sense in which, for their
parts, they employed them. The word ousia was the main term
thus adopted. But then arose a new difficulty. It had acquired
two philosophical senses widely different, and, as we shall see
presently, might be suggestive of theological senses both orthodox
and heterodox. In Aristotelian use, it had meant, primarily and

go The Age of the Fathers. [Chap.
properly, the individual, the unit ; and secondarily the class, or the
general characteristics, the " nature " common to various particular
things as members of that class, as Aristotle calls the classes
in which the ousiai in the proper sense exist by the name of
"second ousiai." But later thought had reversed this order,
making the universal or general sense primary, and the individual
sense secondary; and this was the usage then most prevalent,
partly, perhaps, under the influence of Neo-Platonism. Again, as
ousia was originally descriptive of a man's property or goods — as we
find it used in the Parable of the Prodigal — so, in the materialising
system of the Stoics, it became a synonym for matter. But when
Christian writers had introduced it into theology, and spoken of the
ousia of God, they generally meant by it His essence, His own nature,
His very being, which, as His, was incommunicable and unique ; at
the same time, it was sometimes used for that being viewed on the
side of what we call personality. It was in the former of these two
cognate Christian senses that the word had been brought forward
during the Arian controversy : the original Arians declared, when
examined by the Council of Alexandria, that they believed the Son
to be not like to the Father as to " essence," and to be alien from
the " essence " of the Father ; and Eusebius of Nicomedia, writing
to Paulinus, distinctly said that the Son was not " from the essence
of the Father." In other words, he denied any real community of
being, so to speak, between the Father and the exalted person
called His Son. To the minds of the Three Hundred — at any rate,
of their leaders — this was a virtual denial of the peerless Sonship ;
they resolved, therefore, on inserting the word " ousia " into a
phrase which should guard that Sonship, and probably remembered
that it was anyhow ejusdem generis with the terms above referred
to as used in the New Testament. The description of the Son, then,
in the creed was to run thus: "Begotten of the Father, Only-
begotten, that is, from the Father's essence;" then, as in the Caesarean
document, " God from God." It has been thought (by the late
Dr. Hort) that in this collocation of terms, " Only-begotten "
was intended to be strictly connected with " God from God," in
accordance with a famous various reading in John i. 18, which was
repeatedly adopted by writers of this century ; but it would hardly
be natural to interpolate the clause beginning, " that is," between
an adjective and a substantive. After " God from God," were
added " Light from Light," and, by way of strengthening the
emphasis, " Very (or Real) God from Very God." But even this

vi-J The Nicene Council. 91
had been found open to evasion ; and the compilers of the proposed
formulary considered it desirable, or rather necessary, to enforce
the idea conveyed by " from the essence " by adding the momentous
words, " Of one essence," or " co-essential, with the Father."
Here the term homoousion was to guard and sustain the phrase
" from the essence." It would be recommended by the fact that
it had been accepted by Dionysius of Alexandria, when he was
suspected of minimising the real divinity of the Son of God. Yet
there were, no doubt, grave difficulties in the way of its adoption.
To take one point, it had been used of separate individuals belong
ing to the same " class," and, as such, possessing, in the common
phrase, the same "nature." Irenaeus had repeatedly described
the Valentinians as employing it of the beings who, in their wild
mythology, were thus cognate ; and so Neo-Platonism had called
the human soul "homoousion," or akin to God. Thus it would
be easy to attach to it, as theologically used, a sense suggestive
of Tritheism, or at any rate of what the " Quicunque " calls
a " division of the substance," a practical negation of the " Co-
inherence," with the result that distinctness would be thought of
as separation. Secondly, it had been yet further discredited by
conveying to some minds the purport of a completely opposite
error : as ousia had been used for individual existence, homoousion,
as applied to the Son in relation to the Father, might introduce
a Sabellian " confusion of the Persons," and this misconstruction
was long afterwards sufficiently serious to be dealt with by
Epiphanius and St. Ambrose. Thirdly, it had been associated with
ideas of division or partition of an already existing " essence," as
when Paul of Samosata in 269 had sophistically argued, " If the
Son of God be homoousios, He and the Father must have two ousiai,
derived from one pre-existing ousia ,- " and the Council of Antioch,
not seeing their way through this embarrassment of the question,
had forborne to employ the term. And lastly, there were still
adhering to it some materialistic associations such as still adhere,
in popular English use, to the term " substance ; " and thus an
objector would take up his parable against giving countenance to
a " carnal " and heathenish notion of Deity. And the Arians had
already marked the term in question for censure — had denied, as
in Arius's " Thalia," that the Son was " homoousios " with God ; or
had even confidently urged, as fatal to their opponents' doctrine,
that it implied this inadmissible, intolerable " co-essentiality."
The orthodox could not have been expected to foresee the obstinate

92 The Age of the Fathers. [Chap.
persistency of objections to the term, the difficulty which would
be found in detaching it from various misconceptions, and the
continuous necessity of protesting, as Athanasius and Hilary
did long afterwards, that Churchmen were "not bound by
what Greeks said," and that " the Church abhorred and rejected "
the inference which her opponents drew from the Homoousion ; yet
they must have been conscious that there was some risk in thus
committing the Church to a new type of doctrinal phraseology.
But still, when all was said, it seemed to them that theArianizers'
repugnance to the term indicated its value as a safeguard of
orthodoxy ; and, as Professor Gwatkin condenses the issue, " They
could not leave it an open question whether the Lord is truly God or
not!' "Some phrase," they would say, "we must adopt, and here
is one to our hand. No doubt, it has been used in ways which we
absolutely repudiate ; we are not bound to the notions, for instance,
which heathen philosophers or Gnostics have attached to it ; we
can make clear, beyond dispute, the sense in which we employ it,
and that sense is clear of Sabellianism, for we confess a true Son of
a true Father, and clear also (as the Emperor himself has pointed
out) of any carnal notion of a division of Godhead, for we proclaim
the Godhead to be spiritual and indivisible. Do you ask why we
use a phrase whose meaning needs to be ascertained with such
careful distinctness ? It is you who, by your facility in explain
ing away Scripture terms, constrain us to use it, to vindicate
its sound meaning, to follow the precedent set by earlier Church-
writers who have understood it as we understand it, as the ex
pression of a Divine Sonship which is ' only,' genuine, absolute,
and true. Those who really believe in such a Sonship will see
their way, if they are reasonable, to accepting the ' Homoousion '
as expressing it ; and we, by inserting it into our Creed, while our
intention in so doing is manifest, shall be at once excluding a
profane heresy which is deadly to men's faith, and giving force and
distinctness to the religious conceptions of the faithful. Therefore
we write it down thus : ' Co-essential with the Father.' It is our
' bulwark against irreligious conceptions,' and it is also our tribute
of devotion to the Son of God."
Such appear to have been the motives of those who were
charged with the duty of framing a formulary, in regard to the
insertion of the Homoousion. They cannot, on this view, be
accused of academic pedantry, of a taste for " technical subtleties "
as such. That taste was Arian, not Catholic. It was the Arians

vi.] The Nicene Council. 93
who indulged it to the full, who insisted on following out those
speculations respecting the nature of Deity which, as Dr. Wace
says, " have always had such a terrible fascination for the Eastern
mind ; " it was they who developed an extraordinary fertility in
the multiplication of formularies — "a creed for every year or
every month," says Hilary with pardonable exaggeration ; it was
they whose methods were largely borrowed from the Greek schools
of disputation, and whose positive love of subtle disquisition
compelled the Catholics, as Hilary puts it, to " speak out as to
what was really ineffable," and thereby to expose it to some " risk."
Or in the words of a great Nonconformist, " It is not the orthodox
who are ultimately responsible for the ' presumption ' with which
they alone are charged." It would, indeed, have been childish to
attempt to banish metaphysics from theology. Any religion with
a doctrine about God or man must, as such, be metaphysical. " To
talk of a person," says Liddon, " carries us at once into the very
heart of metaphysics : " and when once the question was asked
among professors of the religion which is centred in the person of
Jesus Christ, " Who is Jesus Christ, that He should be believed in
as no other man is believed in by us ? " — a question which, as
Canon Gore has said, " Christians must have asked because they were
men endowed with reason " — the answer must have " involved
metaphysics," but metaphysics as a means to an end. For the
real aim of the Nicene fathers (as Mr. Strong has pointed out in
his " Manual of Theology ") was moral rather than theoretical —
was the very opposite to the animus which inspired " Hellenic "
speculation ; it was to provide a doctrinal expression of the
devotion of Christians to their Redeemer, to give a rationale of
His " absolute supremacy " over the mind, the heart, and the life.
As Dr. Bigg puts it in his volume on Neo-Platonism, " the Nicene
definition rested on Scripture, on the religious experience, on the
Christian doctrine of redemption ; in a word, on a wholly different
cycle of thought " from that of any form of Greek philosophy.
" The three hypostases of the Neo-Platonist really formed but
one, and that an incomplete, because purely intellectual, person ; "
whereas Christian Trinitarianism grew out of the worship of the
Christian's Redeemer. Or if it is objected that the Trinitarian
idea, or the idea of a really Divine Christ, which the Nicenes were
determined to secure, is itself alien from the original Christianity,
the reply must take the form of a fair interpretation of the
Christology of St. Paul and St. John, with a view to disproving

94 The Age of the Fathers. [Chap.
the adventurous assertion that the Church of the first century was
" Ebionitic," and to show that it was belief in a Divine Son, and
through Him in a Divine Spirit — a belief, as Dr. Wace and Dr.
Dale have reminded us, present in solution in whole pages of the
Epistles from which no " proof-texts " could be quoted — which
led to belief in the Trinity as the safeguard of Monotheism. If,
again, it is contended that although some germs of such ideas are
discernible here and there in the New Testament, yet the Nicene
dogma unduly consolidates and systematizes what those germs
tentatively indicate, and is, in short, an illegitimate " development "
of them, so that to " serve it heir '' to the apostolic belief is a
procedure unwarranted by history ; we reply that the " dogma "
is really no bigger and fuller in its content than that belief,
although it gives greater precision and exactness to what the first
disciples had come to hold, but could not at once apprehend in all
its bearings. The way to test this is to ask, What proposition,
logically involved in the Nicene terms, is alien to the New Testa
ment Christology, or goes beyond the confession, " My Lord and
my God"?
To return to our narrative : the foremost among the Nicenes
— specially active, as we might say, in the committee appointed
for the arrangement of these terms — were Hosius, Alexander,
Athanasius as his deacon, and, as pre-eminently effective in the last
debate, probably Marcellus of Ancyra, and Eustathius of Antioch ;
and others who had shown themselves worthy of the confidence of
the majority were doubtless employed in the work. The Creed
as framed was based on existing formularies ; and, as we have seen,
there is good reason to think that several such creeds had been
read in the Council besides that of Eusebius of Caesarea, which,
with that of Jerusalem in a less degree, was virtually adopted as a
base. But other creeds served, probably, to supply materials for
the " Nicene." The truth is, that in considering the Nicene dogma,
as formally stated and authoritatively published, we must avoid
two grave mistakes. In the first place, it would be erroneous to
see in that dogma nothing else than a simple iteration of pre
existing Church statements, with the addition of an important
phrase or two, or in other words, nothing else than the result of
mere " traditionalism " crushing down discussion, and rigidly en
forcing on the whole Christian commonwealth propositions which
suited the taste of a hierarchical majority. For there was, as we
have seen, a real debate on the merits of the case, a genuine desire

VI-] The Nicene Council.

95

to meet objections, and to come definitely into contact with the
thoughts which the controversy had stirred ; there was a readiness
to appeal to Scripture as the " document of proof,"— even a dis
position to choose, if possible, Scriptural phraseology in the ex
pression of Church belief, to find in apostolic words a central point
of doctrinal unity. In the second place, we must avoid the oppo
site error of ignoring the ecclesiastical or conservative tone of the
Nicene fathers. This error may assume two forms: 1. To say that
" the eager discussions of Nicaea present the first grand precedent
for the duty of private judgement," is to employ language some
what ambiguous, but, if taken in one sense, signally paradoxical :
for, in fact, the temper of the great representative assembly of the
Church was one which could hardly have so much as apprehended
the standpoint of modern religious individualism. 2. Again, to
say that the Homoousion added a new idea to the doctrinal stores
of the Church— that it was an instance of what has been called
" accretive development " — is to forget that it was adopted as
expressing neither less nor more than this, that the Son of God was
God's true Son, and Himself strictly and properly God, " literally
of, and in, the one indivisible Essence," and not outside that Essence,
i.e. not a creature ; and that this belief in " one God " as existing
" in Trinity " had lain close to the very heart of the Church from
the very beginning of her career. Any relation of the Nicene
Creed to earlier local formulas is full of interest and value, as
helping us to identify its teaching, by means of diverse lines of
ecclesiastical confession, with the original " deposit " of faith com
mitted by the apostles to the Churches. The Three Hundred,
coming together, could attest in combination the belief which they
had severally inherited ; and the doctrine which they promulgated
in conformity with that belief would secure and enshrine the
elements of Apostolical Christianity. So it was that, after a
thoughtful survey of the subject, in harmony with the Churchly
spirit, and in fidelity to transmitted belief and worship, the great
Creed was written out, and doubtless read aloud in full Council,
in the Emperor's presence, apparently by Hermogenes, afterwards
bishop of Cappadocian Caesarea : —
" We believe in One God, the Father Almighty,
Maker of all things both visible and invisible :
And in one Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God,
Begotten of the Father, Only-begotten,

96 The Age of the Fathers. [Chap.
That is, from the Essence of the Father,
God from God, Light from Light,
Very God from Very God,
Begotten, not made, Of one essence with the Father ;
By whom all things, both in heaven and earth, were made ;
Who for us men and for our salvation
Came down, and was incarnate, and became man,
Suffered, and rose again the third day ;
Ascended into the heavens ;
Cometh to judge the quick and dead.
And in the Holy Spirit."
Such was the Creed proper : and we may observe in passing, as
to one clause, that there is no reason for attaching to the words
" for (on account of) us men " a different sense from that which is
indicated in the next words, " for our salvation," as if the first words
committed the Church to the speculation that the Lord would have
" been incarnate " even if He had not come as our Saviour. The
abrupt conclusion of the Creed was afterwards accounted for by the
non-existence at this period of any controversy as to the Third
Person of the Trinity. To the Creed thus completed, was added,
by way of more complete security to faith, a condemnation of Arian
errors : —
" But those who say,
' Once He was not,'
And — ' Before He was begotten, He was not,'
And — ' He came into existence out of what was not,'
Or — ' That the Son of God was of a different " hypostasis " or
" ousia," '
Or — ' That He was made,' or — ' is (was) changeable or
mutable,'
are anathematized by the Catholic and Apostolic Church of God."
Of these anathemas it is only necessary to say that the second
proposition condemned by them was an Arian inference from the
supposition that the "generation" was an event; — "whereas He
was (at some inconceivably remote period) " begotten," of course He
had no existence before that period ; " and that " hypostasis " must
be taken as used in the sense, not of " person," but of " essence," or,
as Latins would say, " substance " — the sense which, although not
invariably, was yet most frequently given to the term in the

VI.] The Nicene Council. 97
ante-Nicene period — so that " hypostasis " is here a synonym for
" ousia." The Creed, as thus framed and presented, was at once received
by the great body of the Nicene fathers. There were, however,
objections made by the small knot of Arianizing bishops. Eusebius
of Nicomedia, Theognis, Maris, Theonas, and Secundus, argued
thus : " If the Son is homoousios with the Father, it must be by
germination, as a sprout from a root ; or by derivation, as a child
from a parent ; or by division, as two or three pieces of gold from
a lump. But in none of these ways is the Son related to the
Father." Eusebius of Caesarea, also, at first, found great difficulty
in the Homoousion. His motive as a theologian was, as we have
seen, most probably dread of Sabellianism ; and he had persuaded
himself that the new term would open a door to it. He persisted,
for one day, in his objections ; but on the next day, finding that
the Emperor acquiesced in the Homoousion (although, as it would
appear, from a grave misconception of what was meant by the
Divine Sonship), that the majority who received it absolutely dis
claimed any materialistic sense for it, and affirmed that the Divine
Essence was not capable of division or alteration, and that earlier
Church- writers had employed the term — especially, that his beloved
Pamphilus had unhesitatingly adduced Origen as admitting it, — he
made up his mind to accept the phrase, and afterwards wrote a
letter to the people of his diocese in explanation of his conduct : a
letter, it must be observed, which (even setting apart one really
" heterodox paragraph " which is not in the letter as given by
Socrates) does not greatly reassure us as to his own convictions, or
as to his sense of duty in the construction of words. Others, who
went further in the Arian direction than he did, yielded at last
with more reluctance, and only, as it would appear, in order to avoid
disgrace and banishment ; for Constantine was now bent on
establishing the Creed accepted by the Three Hundred, and punish
ing any bishop who refused to sign it. Thus " Maris reluctantly
put his name to the document ; " Eusebius and Theognis signed
the Creed, and were erroneously supposed to have signed it without
the anathemas ; " Secundus and Theonas," says Neale, " alone had
courage and honesty to stand firm in their sentiments," and accord
ingly the Council condemned them with Arius, who had not even
been asked to recant, and accept the Homoousion, his heresy being
too notorious, and his persistency in it already proved. The Arians,
who of course regarded Secundus as a confessor, believed that he,
VOL. 1. H

98 The Age of the Fathers. [Chap. VI.
on receiving his sentence of exile from Constantine, turned to
Eusebius of Nicomedia with indignant scorn, and said, " You signed
to escape exile ; but I am confident, on the ground of a revelation
from God, that within a year you will be sent into exile too." The
condemnation pronounced by the Council on these two prelates, as
well as on Arius, extended itself to the original companions of the
latter ; and the words in which Julius of Rome afterwards narrated
the fact may fitly conclude our survey of the Nicene proceedings
against Arianism : " For theirs was no ordinary offence, nor had
they sinned against man, but against our Lord Jesus Christ Himself,
the Son of the livine God."

CHAPTER VII.
THE NICENE COUNCIL. — PART II.
Two other special pieces of business, important in their several
ways, though not to be compared to the Arian question in momen-
tousness, remained for the Nicene Council. The first was the
settlement of the Meletian troubles; the second was the settle
ment of the Easter-controversy.
I. The letter of the Council to the Alexandrian Church an
nounces the resolution arrived at in regard to what is there called
the " impetuosity," or " headlong rashness," of Meletius, and those
whom he had " ordained." " In strictness," say the bishops,
Meletius deserves no favour ; " but he is dealt with indulgently,
for we allow him to remain in his own city, and to retain a nominal
dignity, but not to lay on hands, nor to announce his intention of
doing so, either there or anywhere else." He is thus received into
Church communion, and not treated as a degraded ex-prelate ; but
those whom he had appointed were to be " confirmed by a more
sacred cheirotonia (ordination)." The phrase would strictly mean
that the Meletian ordinations, being schismatical, were held to be
null : cheirotonia is the usual term for ordination, and in the seventh
Nicene canon ex-Novatian clerics are allowed to rank with the
clergy " on receiving imposition of hands," which is most naturally
understood of a new ordination, although in both cases some writers
have supposed the words to mean merely a benedictory act, intended
to make ministrations regular. After this rite, whatever was its
import, they were to retain the rank to which Meletius had
advanced them, but to yield precedence to those who had been
ordained by Alexander, and not to " announce an intention to
ordain, nor to submit names for approval, nor to do any episcopal
act, without the consent of " the Catholic bishops of their cities : on
the death of any such bishop, an ex- Meletian bishop might succeed

i oo The Age of the Fathers. [Chap.
him, if found worthy, and preferred by the people (whose right to
express their mind is called a " choice "), and approved by the see
of Alexandria ; but such promotion is denied, in perpetuity, to
Meletius himself. This was the decision, more generous perhaps
than prudent ; and Athanasius did not scruple, in after-days, to
express his regret that the Council had been so forbearing.
II. The " Easter-controversy " was of very old standing ; it had
disturbed the Church in the second century. Polycarp and Anicetus,
Polycrates and Victor, had taken opposite sides as to the time for
closing the fast kept in preparation for the great annual solemnity
which probably began to be observed in the sub-apostolic period, by
" custom," as Socrates says, not by any apostolic ordinance, for
" none of the apostles legislated on the subject." The minority —
the Christians of Proconsular Asia and some other neighbouring
districts — said in effect, " Let us keep to the fourteenth evening of
Nisan as the starting-point of our feast, on whatever day of the
week it may happen to fall." They seem to have spent the first
part of that day in a fast commemorative of the Passion, and in
the evening to have celebrated the Holy Communion in thanks
giving for the Redemption as issuing in the Resurrection. Socrates
expresses this by saying, " They disregarded the Sabbath," that is,
they did not make a point of not concluding their fast before the
Saturday. The majority insisted that the fast should be closed on
a Saturday evening, and the Resurrection celebrated on a Sunday
morning, " the first day of the week," on whatever day of the
Jewish first month it might fall. Their motto, therefore, was, " No
Judaizing as to Easter ! " Their principle, being clearly more
Christian than that of the Quartodecimans, gradually prevailed :
Quartodecimanism died out during the third century in the province
of Proconsular Asia, once its stronghold ; but a new difficulty had
arisen out of a difference among the Jews themselves, for some of
them, contrary to their old traditions, had taken to keeping Pass
over before the vernal equinox. This produced a confusion : for
whereas the equinox belonged to the solar year, the Passover-day,
being the fourteenth of a month, was governed by the lunar ; and
thus if in a particular year Nisan 14 was reckoned as falling
before the equinox, and therefore Passover was kept before a new
solar year had begun, there would be two passovers in one solar
year, one after one vernal equinox, and the other just before the
next ; and long after the Council, Epiphanius said that " the Jews
did not care to be exact on this point : " they had not studied the

VH-] The Nicene Council. 101
astronomical question. The old usage of keeping Passover after
the equinox was maintained in its application to the Christian
solemnity by such authorities as Hippolytus, Dionysius of Alex
andria, and Anatolius of Laodicea (who, as quoted by Eusebius,
refers to Jewish writers), although as to the right day of the
equinox these writers were not precisely agreed, and Alexandrian
usage finally fixed it on March 21. But a certain number of
Christians followed the prevailing Jewish custom, although, says
Socrates, they admitted that it was not accurate. And this brings
us to consider the position of those Syrians, Cilicians, Mesopo-
tamians, who just before the Nicene Council were known to keep
Easter when the Jews kept Passover, as the Council says in
a letter ; " following the Jewish custom," says Constantine ;
Athanasius twice speaks to the same effect, and says that herein
they " walked lamely." What does this general language mean ?
That they were Quartodecimans pure and simple, is one view ; but
Sozomen says thatthey kept the feast in a "somewhat Jewish fashion,"
which would suggest a different view. Socrates seems to identify
them with those who kept Easter before the equinox ; and this falls
in with the stress laid by Constantine in his letter after the
Council on the anomalous results of such a practice, and would
account for his exhortation to have " nothing in common with the
Jews." And that principle would also require, as Hefele says,
that even if the 14th coincided with a Sunday, the Christian
Easter should be deferred until the Sunday following (the point
urged against the Celtic usage, in the seventh century, by advocates
of the Catholic or Continental). The result of the discordant
observance was, that some Christians were keeping the preparatory
fast, while others were exulting in their " day of splendour " and
in the festivities which followed it ; and here the reader of our
early English Church history may be reminded that even when it
was acknowledged on both sides that Easter-day must always be
a Sunday, a king accustomed to the Celtic reckoning (which
admitted the " 14th day " among possible Easter Sundays) was
enjoying his Easter, while his queen, who adhered to the " Catholic "
method, was " keeping the day of Palms." Constantine's letter gives
us rhetoric when we want accurate information ; but it is curious
to see how at that period men still spoke of the " holy day of
Pasch " as the " one festal day of our redemption, that is, of our
Saviour's Passion," and as " the feast from which we have received
our hopes of immortality" — the idea of redemption being thus

102 The Age of the Fathers. [Chap.
bound up with that of the Resurrection. But when a special day,
Good Friday, came to be devoted to the commemoration of the
Passion as such, it was too late to restrict to it the " paschal "
associations which St. Paul had connected with the sacrificial death :
they had been freely applied to the Resurrection-festival itself, and
a confusion of ideas established itself in the ritual language of
Greek and Latin Christendom. But as to what the Council of Nicaea
enacted, we can apparently say thus much : it unanimously resolved
that the custom of the majority should become the custom of all,
and undertook to enforce with plenary authority the resolution of
the Council of Aries as to uniformity of Easter-time observance,
and that on the lines following: (1) Easter-day to be always a
Sunday; (2) but whenever the 14th of Nisan is a Sunday, the
festival is to be held on the Sunday after, (3) and always after the
vernal equinox. If we could rely on a statement by Leo the
Great in the fifth century, the Council delegated to the see of Alex
andria the duty of ascertaining, for each year, by help of the tradi-
ditional Egyptian skill in such calculations, the right time for
observing the great festival, and of communicating this information
in good time to the see of Rome, whence, by an extension of the
custom which had been recognised for the West by the Council of
Aries, the exact day should be made known to remoter churches.
The difficulty of this statement lies in the fact that for years after
the Nicene Council the Roman Church differed from the Alexandrian
as to the right date of the equinox, which the Romans wrongly placed
on March 18, and the Alexandrians correctly on March 21 ; so
that in 387 the Alexandrian Easter was five weeks later than the
Roman. Another statement, that the Council authorised a scheme
or " cycle " which settled the recurrence of Easter during nineteen
years, is not borne out by the contemporary documents ; and still
less warrant can be found, as Bishop Lightfoot has shown, for
the further assertion that Eusebius of Caesarea was appointed
to frame this cycle, for it had been applied to the determina
tion of Easter by Anatolius, forty years previously, and was in
use at Alexandria. We can easily see how naturally the great
Council would be afterwards credited with more than in fact it
achieved. For the twenty genuine Canons of Nicaea, I may refer to my
Notes on the Canons of the First Four General Councils ; but some
thing may be said here as to a few of them which bear directly on
the Church history of the period.

vii.] The Nicene Council. 103
The third, for instance, illustrates the acceptance, in general,
by the Church, of the political division of the empire into
" eparchies " or provinces, as the base of a corresponding division
into provincial churches. The civil metropolis was also the
ecclesiastical. The " praeses " or " consularis " had his double,
so to speak, in the metropolitan bishop. This parallelism had
grown up naturally : as " all roads led to Rome," as the imperial
city was constantly receiving visitors from all parts of the " orbis
Romanus," so in various minor degrees the great provincial capitals
were centres to which persons of all classes resorted, and it needed
but the simplest ecclesiastical common sense to recognise that fact
in its application to the church " dwelling in " the capital, and to
the chief pastor of that church as an appropriate leader and virtual
superior for the bishops of the dependent towns. Thus the
metropolitan authority grew up without any formal enactment ;
it found its place ready made, and was ere long taken as a matter
of course. Thence came the institution of provincial synods, held
periodically under the presidency of the metropolitan. The
assembled bishops would decide as to the appointment to a vacant
see ; or, if all could not meet for this purpose, the business would
be performed by three at least, holding proxies for their absent
colleagues, and having the metropolitan's sanction for their act — a
condition on which the fourth canon insists. These assemblies
were also useful for the reconsideration of censures pronounced by
individual bishops; if the Council affirms such a sentence, the
whole Church is bound to respect it ; if, on the other hand, it is
deemed to have been due to party spirit or personal ill-temper —
a possibility recognised with suggestive frankness — it would be
rescinded, and a synodical meeting held in Lent would thus afford
a good opportunity for the restoration of friendly relations in time
for the Easter Eucharist.
A remarkable instance of the conformity of ecclesiastical
relations to civil is exhibited in the arrangement made with
respect to the churches of Palestine. If purely religious associa
tions were to decide such points, they would certainly have made
Jerusalem metropolitical : but the centre of provincial government,
as we learn from the " Acts," was not Jerusalem, but Caesarea ;
and therefore, all such associations notwithstanding, the bishop
of Caesarea is acknowledged to be metropolitan over all the bishops
in the province, including the successor of St. James " the Just,"
the chief pastor of the mother-church of Christendom, to whom

104 The Age of the Fathers. [Chap.
" ancient custom " gives only an honorary precedency among the
suffragans of the metropolitan see.
We may now look at the sixth canon, by far the most
important of all the twenty. It is literally this : " Let the
ancient customs which exist in Egypt, Libya, and Pentapolis
prevail, so that the bishop of Alexandria shall have authority
over all these districts ; since this is also customary for the bishop
who is at Rome. Similarly at Antioch, and in the other provinces,
the privileges are to be secured to the churches. And this is
thoroughly clear, that if any one is made a bishop without the
metropolitan's approval, the great Synod rules that such a one
ought not to be a bishop. If, however, two or three from personal
contentiousness oppose the common vote of all, which has been
passed reasonably and according to Church rule, let the vote of
the majority prevail." Such is the Greek text ; such also,
substantially, is the rendering of the oldest Latin versions. Of
these, the first in point of antiquity, brought home, it seems,
from Nicaea, by Caecilian of Carthage, begins, "Antiqua per
Egyptum adque (sic) Pentapolim consuetudo servetur, ut Alexan-
drinus episcopus horum habeat sollicitudinem : quoniam et urbis
Romae episcopo similis mos est." The second, which was carefully
made at Constantinople in 419, by comparison of the " Vetus "
with the authenticated original, and under the supervision of
Atticus the bishop, gives the same meaning. A Sicilian-Italian
version, produced by Roman delegates at the Council of Chalcedon
in 451, reads, " Quod ecclesia Romana semper habuit primatum :
teneat autem et iEgyptus, ut episcopus Alexandriae omnium
habeat potestatem, quoniam et Romano episcopo haec est con
suetudo." But this deviation from the text is ignored by the
versions of Dionysius Exiguus and Isidore, and by the one read
in the Council of Carthage in 525, " Antiqui mores obtineant qui
apud .ZEgyptum sunt, ut Alexandriae episcopus omnium habeat
potestatem ; quia et urbis Romae episcopis hoc solitum est."
Now for the purport. First of all, we may assume it as certain
that the Meletian disorders were the occasion of this law.
Meletius had violated the established rights of the see of Alex
andria by his insubordinate proceedings in Thebais, and else
where in Egypt. The bishop of Alexandria, by old custom, was
supreme throughout a wide extent of country which, according to
the civil division of the empire as organized under Constantine,
embraced five provinces ultimately placed under the rule of the

VH-] The Nicene Council. 105
" Augustal prefect." It appears that there were no metropolitans,
properly speaking, under the " Evangelist's throne ; " the occupant
of that throne administered ecclesiastical affairs, consecrated
bishops (and even, as some writers say, ordained priests), throughout
the hundred bishoprics which at this period were under his sway.
The Council intends to safeguard these rights of the bishop of
Alexandria; and, in doing so, it cites the case of the bishop of
Rome as a parallel and a warrant, i.e. it assumes that, as a fact,
the see of Rome has full ecclesiastical jurisdiction, without the
intervention of metropolitans, over a certain part of the Western
Church. What the part was, the Council unfortunately does not
say. Rufinus said, in his lax summary of the canon, " the subur-
bicarian churches ; " the Latin version called " Prisca," which
introduced this sixth canon with the gravely incorrect title, " On
the Primacy of the Roman Church," and followed this up by
" It is an ancient usage that the bishop of Rome should have
principatum" proceeded to say, " that he should rule with his
solicitude the ' suburbicarian ' places, et omnem provinciam," only
then bringing in the mention of Alexandria! The so-called
" Vetus " has the phrase " suburbicarian places," which, however,
does not appear in the version made by order of Atticus, and
may probably have found its way into the Vetus from Rufinus.
Be this as it may, the question arises, What would " suburbi
carian " mean as a political term in the fourth century ? The
common view, that it applies to the ten provinces of Central
and Southern Italy and of the great adjacent islands, which
were under the jurisdiction of the Vicarius Urbis, may now be
regarded as established. Repeatedly, in the eleventh book of
the Theodosian Code, we find mention of " suburbicariae " or
" subicariae regiones," a phrase quite incompatible with the notion
that the term in question belongs merely to the district within a
hundred miles of Rome, which, together with the city itself, was
administered by the Praefectus Urbi. This opinion is advocated
by Hefele ; but it may suffice to say that such an interpretation
of " suburbicarian " would stultify the canon before us, for so small
a territory could furnish no analogy in point of extent to the region
over which the Alexandrian bishop was ecclesiastically supreme ;
whereas the two provinces called " Egypt," the two called Libya
(one being Pentapolis), and the Thebaid, might practically be
deemed a fair equivalent to Campania, Tuscia and Umbria,
Picenum, Apulia and Calabria, Bruttii and Lucania, Samnium,

106 The Age of the Fathers. [Chap.
Valeria, Sicily, Sardinia, and Corsica. It thus appears that the
bishop of Rome did not at this time exercise metropolitan or
primatial jurisdiction over those northern provinces which were
called " Italy " in a restrictive sense, and were governed by the
" Vicar of Italy " under one of the Praetorian prefects. Still less
can we ascribe to him in 325 a patriarchate extending beyond the
peninsula. Many years had to pass before he could include — step
after step, and largely by imperial aid — the greater part of the
West in his ecclesiastical realm ; and as the hundred miles' distance
from Rome would give too small an area for the purpose of the
canon, so the whole West would be too large, and the parallel
implied would have been seriously impaired, or rather would have
been pointless.
To return : if the Roman bishop were supreme within certain
limits, if he could act, within those limits, as virtual patriarch and
sole metropolitan (save that Syracuse and Caliaris appear to have
been, or ere long to have become, metropolitical), his position
would be conveniently analogous to that which the Council was
securing for Alexandria. Their words come to this : " Let the see
of Alexandria continue to hold within the countries of Egypt,
Libya, etc., that full, direct power over the bishops which the see
of Rome holds in its own sphere. Such as Rome in this respect
is, such Alexandria has, by old usage, a right to be." Not a
word, we see, about any peculiar and universal prerogatives
inherent in the Roman see as such; not a word, in short, about
a Papacy. If Roman writers plead that the Council was not
concerned to speak of the Roman bishop as " Pope," but only as
quasi-patriarch, and therefore that the canon might leave his papal
claims on one side without implying a negation of them, and that
in any case it says nothing of his acknowledged " precedency," the
answer is that the matter in hand is jurisdiction, and that there
fore a simple " precedency " would not be relevant ; but that,
jurisdiction being concerned, the language of the canon is such as
would be natural for those who knew nothing of such claims,
but unnatural, or indeed impossible, for those who held the
Papacy to be the very basis of Church life. They would have
taken care to recognise, by a very unequivocal saving clause,
the transcendent and unique authority attaching to the " bishop
at Rome" as Supreme Pontiff — according to the present Roman
doctrine, as absolute monarch of the Church throughout the world.
But the canon proceeds to place in the same category the

VII>] The Nicene Council. 107
Church of Antioch ; no doubt there was a desire to honour the
orthodox Eustathius, as well as to preserve the rights of the native
church of the "Christian" name. Hitherto, there has been no
difficulty in seeing that the canon refers to the pre-eminent sees,
which were already in effect, though not in title, nor even in
fulness of organization, patriarchal. But the words, " Likewise in
Antioch, and in the other provinces, let the churches be secured
in their privileges," are relied on by those who (as Beveridge) deny
any reference in this canon to anything beyond the ordinary metro
politan powers. " For a province belongs," they say, " not to a
patriarch or quasi-patriarch, but to a simple metropolitan ; it is
therefore his privileges that in this passage, and throughout the
canon, are contemplated by the Council." In reply to this it is
urged, that not only do Innocent I., and before him Jerome, regard
this canon as affirming the patriarchal jurisdiction of Antioch, but
the Council of Constantinople in 381 refers to it as saving the
privileges of that see ; and that as to " provinces," the term may
be taken in a special sense as denoting the *' dioeceses," as they
would be more properly called, of Pontus, Proconsular Asia, and
Thrace, consisting of groups of provinces under the quasi-patriarchs,
or " exarchs," or primates, of Caesarea, Ephesus, and Heraclea.
But this restriction of the term does not seem necessary; the
canon may well be taken to mean, " Let all churches have their
respective privileges intact: the special powers of the see of
Alexandria, as of Rome, — and also the rights of Antioch, and the
rights of metropolitans, too, in the various provinces, — all, be they
greater or smaller, shall be respected ; we will uphold, for each
case, the status quo." And thus the canon passes on to speak of
metropolitan rights simply, and so of the power of a provincial
synod. As Le Quien says, "the Nicene Council, having con
firmed to the see of Alexandria, just as to that of Rome, its ancient
rights, took care to add, that similarly at Antioch, and in the other
provinces, every see and church should retain its own honour, so
that the see of Antioch should be reckoned as the third among
sees, and, according to ancient usage, should govern the provinces
of the East."
A rule against translation or removal of bishops from one see
to another, or of clerics from one charge to another, illustrates a
fact of which we have but too many illustrations — the growth of
secularity which had attended the Church's sudden exit from the
gloom of persecution into the sunshine of prosperity. Men whose

108 The Age of the Fathers. [Chap.
sacred functions had not made them less open to the temptations
of the world were apt to become discontented in comparatively
obscure positions, to solicit and scheme for promotion to bishoprics
more conspicuous or more lucrative, or to clerical spheres more
attractive to ambition. This tendency, which illustrates the
contrast drawn by Queen Caroline between Bishop Wilson and
certain English prelates, was the main reason for a restrictive
rule against "translations," which yet was not understood so
absolutely as to preclude such changes when they might seem
on public grounds desirable or expedient. Another evil, less
serious but not trivial, was the restlessness which not unnaturally
came over some clerical minds amid the new guarantees of uni
versal security : ecclesiastics had yielded to " a truant disposition,'
and taken to roving aimlessly about ; they were to be checked by
disciplinary action, and sent home to their own churches.
The subject of the "Lapsi," so much before the thought of the
Ancyran and Neocaesarean Councils, was again taken up by the
Nicene. According to a story current in the next century, Con
stantine asked the Novatian bishop Acesius, whom he had on his
own authority invited to the Council, whether he agreed with the
doctrinal settlement and with the rule as to Easter. He answered,
" Yes, they are both in accordance with what I have received by
tradition." " Then why do you stand aloof from the Church ? "
" Because my predecessors, in the Decian persecution, ruled that
those who had sinned unto death " (he alluded primarily to apos
tasy) " must not be admitted to the divine mysteries, but exhorted
to repent, and to hope for God's mercy otherwise than through
ordinances from which their fall had permanently excluded them.
The Emperor, impatient at what seemed to him an arrogant
rigorism, answered with humorous brusqueness, " Take a ladder,
then, for yourself, and go up to heaven your own way." Acesius
was evidently content with his own exclusiveness ; but the Council
thought fit to provide for possible cases of Novatian disposition to
join the Church. Those, then, who had belonged to their ministry
(which, it must be understood, was as " episcopal " as that of the
Church) were to be retained in their rank by an " imposition of
hands " (which has been already alluded to), after promising in
writing " not to refuse to communicate with persons who had been
twice married, or with ' Lapsi ' going through a prescribed penance,
and to follow in all things the ' decrees of the Church Catholic' "
If they lived in a place devoid of other clergy, they might officiate ;

vil.] The Nicene Council. 109
and a Catholic bishop might give to an ex-Novatian bishop the
office of " chorepiscopus," or the mere rank of a bishop, or even
of a priest — this in order to uphold the principle that there were
" not to be two bishops in one city," i.e. that there could be but
one bishop of each city — as we should say, one single diocesan.
" Lapsi," however penitent and dutiful, were to be incapable
of ordination ; and any whom bishops, knowingly or not, had
ordained, were to be deposed. Persons who, under the recent
" tyranny of Licinius," had lapsed without any strong pressure or
peril, were to be treated with an indulgence which they had not
deserved : they should be penitents — " Hearers " for three years,
" Kneelers " for seven, and for two years more " Co-standers," join
ing in the prayers of the faithful (that is, in the whole Eucharistic
service), but " not partaking in the Oblation," that is, the elements
that had been "offered." In some cases, military officers, called
upon to choose between their faith and their army-rank, had at
first " thrown away their belts," the badge of the latter, and
afterwards, as if repenting of their own religious fidelity, had
procured, perhaps by bribes, restoration to rank and employment ;
and then again, in remorse, they besought the Church's favour. It
would be necessary to test their sincerity and steadfastness by
keeping them among Hearers for three years, and then, if proved
to be truly contrite, they might pass at once into the class of Co-
standers. " But if they showed indifference, and were evidently
treating a formal exclusion from Church communion as of itself
securing their conversion, they must go through the full time."
This mild rule indicates a wish not to press hardly on men of high
standing in the army. The last canon on this subject refers in the
first instance to Lapsi who were surprised by fatal illness before
they had gone through their penance-time ; it confirms " the old
canonical law that no one, at the point of death, should be
deprived of the last and most necessary viaticum" the Holy Com
munion as provision for the soul ; and it emphasizes this rule as
applying to all dying persons whose state of mind satisfies the
bishop. But if a penitent, thus communicated, recovers, he must
for a time rank with the Co-standers.
One rule proposed was not adopted by the Council. It was
to the effect that persons in holy orders were not to be allowed
to live as married men. The venerable Paphnutius opposed this
restriction, and contended that it would suffice to retain the
" ancient tradition " which forbade men already ordained to marry

no The Age of the Fathers. [Chap. VII.
— a " tradition " already noticed. Paphnutius carried the Council
with him; but Rome ere long took up the rigorist line which
he had deprecated.
The Emperor was minded to connect the close of the Council's
proceedings with the festival of his own " Vicennalia," the com
pletion of nineteen years of his reign, which entered on its twentieth
year on July 25, 325. He invited the bishops to a splendid feast
in the central apartment of the palace ; they passed through the
ranks of armed body-guards in the vestibule, and found tables and
seats arranged in the banquet-chamber. Some, doubtless the most
dignified of their number, were seated at the Emperor's own table.
" It seemed," says Eusebius, " like an image of the kingdom of
Christ ! " The Emperor gave princely gifts to the bishops, accord
ing to their several deserts ; and on another day, he addressed them
in a farewell speech, exhorting to mutual goodwill, brotherly for
bearance on the part of the abler towards the inferior or weaker
brethren, concord and unanimity for the sake of the common cause,
and charitable self- adaptation to varieties of character and motive
in order to win all classes to the truth. " Be like wise physicians,
who treat different cases with discrimination, and are all things to
all. And now, farewell, and pray earnestly for me."
In closing the scenes of the greatest of all Synods, we need not
draw on the stores of legendary fancy in order to stimulate our
perception of its greatness. The Council of Nicaea is what it is to
us quite apart from all doubtful or apocryphal traditions : it holds
a pre-eminent place of honour, because it established for all ages
of the Church that august and inestimable confession, which may
be to unbelief, or to the anti-dogmatic spirit, a mere stumbling-
block, a mere incubus, because it is looked at ab extra, in a temper
which cannot sympathise with the faith which it enshrines, or the
adoration which it stimulates ; but to those who genuinely and
definitely believe in the true divinity of the Redeemer, the doctrine
of Nicaea, in the expanded form which Christendom has adopted,
is a prime treasure of their religious life, the expression of a faith
coherent in itself, and capable of overcoming the world in the
power of the Incarnate who is the " Co-essential," that is, as St.
Athanasius was careful to explain it, the " real " Son of God.

CHAPTER VIII.
THE SHORT INTERNAL PEACE.
The time usually assigned for the close of the Nicene Council is
the 25th of August, 325. The bishops, no doubt, set their faces
homeward, after the Emperor's farewell banquet, with hearts re
lieved from a great anxiety, and disposed to dwell thankfully on
the present, and to look forward hopefully into the future. It
would, perhaps, have seemed to them not only chilling, but faith
less, to augur a revival of the controversial distresses and trials
of the six years preceding the Great Council ; they would " thank
God, and take courage," putting aside fear about a peril that
seemed to have spent its force. In truth, it was an epoch at which
fearless gladness might be deemed a manifest duty. The great
old question, " What think ye of Christ 1 " had been stirred again
of late, and the answer of loyal faith had been emphatically given
by the representatives of a Christendom now spreading beyond
the empire, in accordance with profound convictions inherited
from the first recipients of Apostolic " outlines " of truth. A great
innovating theory, which represented the Head of the Church as
the highest of creatures, as a sort of superior and unique Arch
angel — a theory commanding several resources which older heresies
had not possessed; appealing impressively to minds of differing
types, offering to link Christianity with philosophies of the day,
pointing to men of high position and ability as its supporters ;
eminently versatile in its forms of self-expression, and skilful in
veiling, on occasion, under reverential language its own intense
destructiveness, and the momentousness, for religious thought and
life, of the issues which it involved ; — this theory had pushed itself
forward, by various advocates, in various countries, had produced
a dissension among Christians which nothing but an Oecumenical
Council had seemed competent to abate, and had in that Council

1 1 2 The Age of the Fathers. [Chap.
been resolutely met, elaborately cross-questioned, and solemnly
disowned. And in the majestic formulary which that great
assembly had put forth, compiled for the most part from older con
fessions, with the addition of one or two technical phrases which
were deemed necessary to check evasion and to guard the true
sense of simple language, the fundamental Monotheistic principle
underlying all revelation was practically harmonized with the two
specially Christian propositions which affirmed the reality of our
Lord's Sonship and of His Godhead ; and the Creed which excluded
all heathenish multiplications of Deity enforced on the Christian
soul the infinite claims of a truly divine and eternal Christ. Such
was the doctrinal result of those two months at Nicaea. And thus it
is easy to imagine the sense of relief and satisfaction which would
gladden the journey of many a prelate, from Bithynia, to his own
distant church, in those autumnal weeks of 325, and the thankful
ness with which many a flock, in Italy or in Syria, in Greece, or
Egypt, or " ever orthodox Gaul," would receive their pastor's
account of the synodical definition which had vindicated the
Redeemer's majesty. The beautiful tradition of the Armenian
Church represents its " Illuminator " Gregory as welcoming, at
Valarshabad, his son Aristaces, who had represented him at the
Council, and breaking forth, after he had heard the Nicene Creed
from his son's lips, into the doxology which, to this day, is recited
after the Creed by the celebrant of the Armenian liturgy : " Yea,
we glorify Him who was before the ages, by adoring the Holy
Trinity and the One Godhead of the Father, and of the Son, and of
the Holy Ghost, now and ever, through ages and ages. Amen."
And yet to us, knowing what we know of the post-Nicene
history, this serene hopefulness must needs be pathetic. It looks
too like the unthinking joy of children, sure to be chastened by
the oncoming experience of life. The halcyon days were soon to
be overclouded. By degrees, and not by very slow degrees, Chris
tians had to learn something more of the limitations under which
the work of the " Kingdom " is carried on in a world subject to
vanity. Grievous anxiety, bewildering perplexity, dark alarms
as to the result, were to thicken around the path of believers in
a really divine Christ. The issue which had seemed so clear ere
long became obscured — " entangled," as Canon Scott Holland has
said, in "compromises and circumlocutions and misdirections,"
turned aside by " complications from external influences," by the
weaknesses or blunders of " normal ecclesiastical authorities " which

vin.] The Short Internal Peace. 113
" temporised," or yielded, or shirked the question by " ambiguous
formulas," and put stumbling-blocks in the way of the simple, and
tempted the timorous to think that the Nicene Council had met in
vain. But even common sense can see a providence in the conceal
ment of trials still future. And another apparent ground of satis
faction would be found in the acquisition which the Church seemed
to have secured beyond risk of loss, by the impression made on the
mind of the Roman world's one ruler. Although as yet unbap-
tized, and not even a professed catechumen, he had now, for some
years past, committed himself more and more to a Christian pro
fession ; and, after having, within a year, imperatively called for a
cessation of the Arian controversy, as a vexatious wrangle over
theological minutiae between persons who were at one on the
essentials of faith, had suddenly, with that rapid susceptibility of new
influences which was one of his characteristics, and which might
have made thoughtful Churchmen feel less secure of his adherence,
adopted the most stringently hostile line towards Arius and every
thing connected with his heresy. Not only did Constantine, in a
letter to the Alexandrian Church, describe the late " incumbent,"
as we might say, of the " parish " of Baucalis in Alexandria, as the
sole originator, under diabolic promptings, of this impious, this
pernicious misbelief, and appeal, in proof of the statement, to the
" unanimous judgment of more than three hundred bishops,
renowned for piety and mental acumen ; " but in a general cir
cular he likened Arius to one whose name must have suggested to
all Christians of mature age whatever was most pertinacious in
literary Antichristianism : he ordered the Arians to be designated
as " Porphyrians," and inaugurated a tragical series of penal ordi
nances by denouncing immediate death to persons convicted of
concealing an Arian book ; but this, like other of his severe laws,
was in effect brutum fulmen. It is probable that to this period also
should be assigned the strange letter in which Constantine replied
to a memorial from Arius, who had complained of the harshness
with which he had been treated, of the Imperial order which had
deprived him of his home. For answer, he received what Socrates
calls a piece of sarcastic rhetoric : the Emperor condescended to
ignoble personalities of satire against the fallen and banished
heresiarch, whose picture he drew, so to speak, from recollections
of his appearance in moments of painful excitement at Nicaea.
Having thus indulged his taunting vein at the expense of Arius's
" bloodless face and emaciated figure," his " dishevelled hair " and
vol. 1. *

114 The Age of the Fathers. [Chap.
restless jerking movements, Constantine challenged the "man of
iron heart " to come into his presence, and maintain his own opinions ;
expressing withal a hope — characteristic of the extravagant self-
confidence with which the unbaptized patron of the Charch was
wont to approach theological questions — that he, Constantine,
would be able to " heal Arius of the wound which heresy had
inflicted on his soul."
In regard to one of the two subordinate questions decided by
the Nicene Council, the Meletian discord was healed, as far as a
resolution of the Council would heal it, by measures which Athana
sius, with his local knowledge of the temper of the party, did not
scruple to regret as too indulgent. We have seen what these
provisions were. Alexander, accordingly, on returning home
carried them out in the first instance by summoning Meletius,
and desiring him to make out a list of his clerical and
episcopal adherents. Athanasius, who, however, writes on the
subject with an evident bias, ascribes to " Pope Alexander " the
intention of preventing Meletius, by this prompt action, from
" selling ordination to many," and so increasing the number of his
partisans. Meletius drew up the list, and placed it in the arch
bishop's own hands. It contained the names of twenty-nine
bishops, including his own, of five presbyters, and three deacons.
One of the bishops was a person whose after-conduct went far
to justify Athanasius's opinion that these sectarian chiefs would
abuse the Council's leniency: he was John of Memphis, whose
secular name was Arcaph, and who, either then or shortly after
wards, " was ordered by the emperor to be with the archbishop,"
i.e. to remove to Alexandria and live there, as a person needing
special surveillance under Alexander's immediate control. That
control was not to be long exercised. The " archbishop," whose
life had, ever since 319, been harassed by a controversy which,
according to the most probable account, he had not provoked,
and which had made him, against his own wish, " a man of strife
and contention," was struck by a fatal illness not long after
his return home. The "Index" to Athanasius's Festal Letters
dates this event in April, 328. Now let us consult the chief
authority. Athanasius, after speaking of the terms granted
to the Meletians at Nicaea, says that "within five months after
wards, Alexander died." Five months from the close of the
Council would fix his death about the end of January, 326 ; and if
we understand the words of Athanasius to mean that he died five

viii.] The Short Internal Peace. 115
months after those terms had become operative, still it is incredible
either that he should so long delay his return from Nicaea, or that
the arrangements for the reception of thirty-seven persons into
Church communion should trail on for something like two years.
Naturally they would be finished before the end of 325 ; and the
death might then take place about the end of April, 326, and the
" Index " may be right as to the month, though wrong as to the year.
The close of his life was vexed by the discovery that Meletian
factiousness was in truth irreconcilable. John Arcaph, as leader of
the party, strove in vain to get the Emperor's licence for holding
separate religious assemblies ; but one cannot implicitly rely on the
Meletian stories reported by Epiphanius, and the vague allusions of
Eusebius may refer only to some Meletian address to Constantine
immediately after the Nicene Council. It is possible, however, that
Alexander may have found it expedient to send Athanasius, as his
archdeacon and confidential agent, to Constantine's court before he
was himself taken ill. It is certain that Athanasius was absent
when Alexander died. For, in the first place, Apollinaris of Laodicea,
whose father, the elder Apollinaris, was an Alexandrian born, not
only says that Athanasius had fled, to avoid election at the approach
ing vacancy — a proceeding which, on the whole, may be thought
unlikely on the part of one who owed so much to the old archbishop,
and would hardly, of his own will, and from merely personal motives,
leave him when the end seemed near — but adds the vivid and
pathetic anecdote transcribed from some work of bis by Sozomen,
how that Alexander, when at the very point of death, called for
"Athanasius," whereupon another Athanasius — probably the son
of Capito, an " Athanasius, presbyter," who lived to suffer with his
great namesake in the Catholic cause — answered, " Here am I ; "
but Alexander, as if no one had spoken, repeated the name, and
then in faint dying accents murmured, " Athanasius, you think
you have escaped, but you will not escape," " intimating," said
Apollinaris, " that he was being called to the contest."
No such explanation, indeed, was necessary to bring out the
prophetic significance of those death-bed words. It must have
been clear even when they were uttered, that the next occupant
of " the Evangelist's throne " would have to play the man against
various enemies of the Church. And who should that occupant
be but the great deacon, who had already proved himself so strong
of heart and clear of aim, so quick to discern and energetic to act,
so effective at Nicaea against Arian astuteness, so faithful, loyal,

1 1 6 The Age of the Fathers. [Chap.
and powerful a supporter to the old prelate who had cherished
him as a son ? Alexander could not, says Tillemont, " show more
love to his Church, nor make her a richer gift, than by leaving to
her Saint Athanasius in his stead ; " and yet Athanasius, for what
ever reason, was not at hand, may have delayed his return —
if he had been sent on business to the court — in order, if possible,
to avoid an appointment which hardly any one of the great men
of the ancient Church accepted without genuine reluctance and
alarm. Some delay took place, therefore ; and the custom which
perhaps existed at Alexandria at that period, whereby the desig
nated successor watched the corpse of the late bishop, placed his
right hand on the lifeless head, personally laid the body in its
grave, then put on " the pall of Saint Mark " and took his seat on
the vacant throne, could not be observed in this case. Epiphanius
believed that the Meletians took advantage of the interval to set up
Theonas as their bishop of Alexandria ; and he says, by way of
accounting for it, that Alexandria " had never had two bishops as
the other cities had " — that is to say, there had not been in the
capital of Egypt any Meletian bishop disputing the position of the
Catholic, as was the case in the subordinate cities. There may
have been some such attempt on their part ; but when Epiphanius
says that the Churchmen elected Achillas, this is a confusion with
Alexander's predecessor ; and we may take it as certain that after
some weeks, or rather months, from the death of Alexander, the
vacancy came legitimately to an end. As to the time of the
election, it cannot have been before the beginning of May, 326, for
Cyril of Alexandria ascribes to Athanasius a pontificate of " forty-
six years complete," and Athanasius died on May 2, 373 ; he must
therefore have come to the see after May 2, 326 ; and although
some would date his accession at the end of that year, so long a
vacancy seems improbable, and the Festal Letters' Index — which,
we must recollect, is not by Athanasius himself — may be right in
fixing on the 14th of Pauni, i.e. June 8, as the time of the election.
Two points must be noticed as to its proceedings. The bishops
who owed obedience to the " successor of St. Mark " were nearly one
hundred in number. They would all, if possible, meet, according to
custom and the fourth Nicene canon, for the election of him who was
to be at once their metropolitan and their primate. Now the Arians
afterwards circulated a story, that seven of these prelates, breaking
the vow which they had made, with their brethren, to give their
votes in open synod, clandestinely consecrated Athanasius ; nay,

VIII.] The Short Internal Peace. 117
worse, according to one form of the tale — that he with some followers
seized the church of St. Dionysius one evening, found there two
bishops, secured the door against their escape, and compelled them
to lay their hands upon him, exerting some strange (one might say,
mesmeric) fascination over their wills ; that the other bishops
anathematized Athanasius ; but that he, having strengthened his
own position, wrote to Constantine, as if in the name of the com
munity of Alexandria, to announce his consecration, whereupon
Constantine, deceived by the form of the letter, confirmed the
appointment. But these statements may take their place at the
head of a long series of Arian calumnies against the great hero of
the Nicene faith. For the Egyptian prelates, in their Encyclical
of A.D. 339, solemnly proclaimed to all Christians that the entire
body of Alexandrian Church-people had for days and nights, during
the session of the election-synod, kept up their exclamation, " Give
us Athanasius, the good, the pious, the Christian, — one of the
ascetics," or the self-disciplined, alluding to Athanasius's known
strictness of life, modelled, as far as circumstances would permit,
on the fasts and devotions of the venerated Antony. " He," they
cried, " will be a bishop indeed ! " They prayed aloud to Christ
for this object of their desire: they declared that the bishops
should not leave the church where they were sitting, until Athana
sius was proclaimed as bishop-elect ; and so, in their presence, not
indeed with absolute unanimity — an admission which guarantees
their statement — but by a majority of episcopal voices, Athanasius,
as Gregory Nazianzen expresses it, " was raised to the throne of
Mark in virtue of the suffrages " (that is, the earnest resolute ex
pressions of desire, constituting morally what was otherwise caUed
a " choice ") " of the whole people, and not by those vile methods,
afterwards prevalent " (he alluded, perhaps, to the case of Mace-
donius at Constantinople), "of violence and bloodshed, but in a
manner apostolical and spiritual." The attestation of the Egyptian
bishops, who refer also to the whole province as cognisant of the
fact, was enough for the sardonic Gibbon, who observes that these
prelates would not guarantee " a public falsehood." As for the
suggestion that the ex-Meletian bishops were overridden in the
exercise of their suffrage, it is absurd on the face of it ; for the
Nicene Council had allowed them no diocesan jurisdiction, and
therefore no vote in episcopal appointments.
Another point to be mentioned is, that according to Eutychius,
patriarch of Alexandria from 933 to 940, a thorough change in the

1 1 8 The Age of the Fathers. [Chap.
mode of appointing bishops of that great see was made in the case of
this his greatest predecessor. His statement is that (1) of old, the
patriarch was chosen by a college of twelve presbyters, tracing its
origin to St. Mark, and was always one of their own number, " the
rest of them laying their hands on his head, and thus blessing him
and making him patriarch," but (2) Alexander ordered that future
patriarchs were to be chosen by the neighbouring bishops, not by
the college of presbyters, and not even necessarily out of that
college. And he adds that there was no bishop outside Alexandria
until the time of Demetrius. What are we to say of this state
ment ? To begin with, Eutychius lived some six hundred years after
the days of Alexander. Next, he was a writer capable of gravely
retailing some most grotesque fictions as to Alexander's episcopal
acts ; for instance, he says that Alexander destroyed an Alexandrian
idol called Michael, that he deposed his predecessor for Arianism,
and that he refused to curse Arius a second time at Constantine's
order; and as to Alexandrian Church history, this writer makes
Origen a bishop in the sixth century! Thirdly, the story, if
it implies, as it seems to do, that this presbyteral benediction
was the only consecration of early Alexandrian patriarchs, is
opposed to a mass of evidence as to the general mode of ancient
episcopal consecration. Fourthly, some evidence of real value
indicates that Egypt had many bishops in early times, although
some may have been rather vicars of the Alexandrian bishop
than proper diocesans. The Egyptian "Church Ordinances"
mention elections of bishops ; and Pamphilus spoke of Demetrius
as having assembled a synod of bishops against Origen, who him
self speaks of bishops in a matter-of-course way as the ordinary
rulers of the Church. Lastly, Eutychius seems to have got hold of
a distorted form of Jerome's story, that until the times of Heraclas
and Dionysius (who came to the Alexandrian see in 231 and 247)
" the Alexandrian presbyters used to nominate one of themselves
to the higher dignity of the episcopate, just as the army made an
imperator, or the deacons named an archdeacon." This statement,
which has no support from Eusebius, does not, properly speaking,
exclude, but rather suggests, some confirmation of such an act by
higher authority ; for on the constitutional principle it would be
for the senate to ratify the election of an "imperator," and that
of an archdeacon would unquestionably require the sanction of the
bishop ; and there would be nothing very strange if the chapter,
so to speak, of Alexandrian presbyters had the sole right of.

VI H-] The Short Internal Peace. 119
nominating their bishop, and if, as a further privilege, all persons
extraneous to the chapter were disqualified for such election. And
the statement is immediately followed by the words, " For what
does a bishop do which a presbyter may not do except ordaining ? "
After all, Jerome may have been mistaken : the story is his alone :
and, supposing it to be true, it is not to be confounded with the
Eutychian story, as to which we may further remark, that had
the election of Athanasius been thus the inauguration of a new
method of appointment, in virtue of an ordinance of the late bishop,
some advantage of that circumstance would have been taken by
the Arianizing party.
The accession of Athanasius must have caused to all who
sympathised with that party the keenest vexation and disquiet.
We may perhaps suppose that either before his accession or very
soon after it, complaints were made from Alexandria to Constantine
of certain pertinacious Arians, whom the Emperor thereupon sum
moned to Nicomedia, as having endeavoured to rekindle the dis
sension. Eusebius welcomed them as brethren ; and, in conjunction
with his friend Theognis of Nicaea (who, like himself, is said by
Socrates, but incredibly, to have signed the Nicene Creed without
its anathemas), admitted these rejectors of that creed to Com
munion. Indignant at this conduct, the Emperor banished the two
bishops into Gaul, and wrote to the Nicomedians a severe denun
ciation of Eusebius, as having " turned their minds away from the
truth," by a misuse of his influence over them and their clergy ;
not omitting to recall the imputations — perhaps forgotten during
recent events — which charged Eusebius with having lent his active
support to the tyranny of Licinius, and been implicated in the
murder of " bishops who deserved the name." In that age, impu
tations against the character of an obnoxious man were but seldom
sifted with anything like judicial strictness by those who had an
interest in repeating them ; even Athanasius too lightly adopted
the worst construction of Meletius's actions in his original quarrel
with Alexandrian Church-authority, and also countenanced a
discreditable suspicion as to a crypto-Arian bishop of Antioch ;
and much more would Constantine take up a current rumour of
this kind, when he wished to aggravate the case against a powerful
court-bishop who had suddenly incurred his displeasure. However
there was no doubt that these Alexandrian Arians had been
patronised by Eusebius and Theognis ; and this " impiety, and
connexion with Arian fanatics condemned by the Oecumenical

1 20 The Age of the Fathers. [Chap.
Council," was proved to the satisfaction of a local synod, which
forthwith appointed Amphion to succeed Eusebius, and Chrestus
to succeed Theognis — at some time, probably, in 326, for Philos-
torgius's date of " three months after the council " is hardly con
sistent with the tone of Constantine's letter, which seems to imply
that some longer interval had elapsed.
A very different subject from the Arian controversy now began
to attract the interest of Christians in Palestine. Helena, the
Emperor's mother, now approaching her eightieth year, had come
to pray at " iElia," or Jerusalem, at a time when her heart was
deeply wounded by " the untimely fate of her grandson Crispus,"
whose mysterious disgrace and execution, in the summer of
this year, cast a dark shadow over Constantine's life. She
found the city, says Socrates, " as desolate as a garden-lodge, in
the words of the prophet." Her son had already, however, con
templated an exploration of the sacred ground associated with the
Crucifixion and the Burial ; and her presence in Jerusalem stimu
lated the work which he now ordered to be carried on. Thus there
may be no real contradiction between Eusebius, who ascribes that
work to the son, and later writers like Socrates, who give such
prominence to the mother. Eusebius does in fact record her
pilgrimage to Palestine, and her pious zeal for whatever could
honour " the place where the Lord's feet stood ; " but he is refer
ring especially to the church-building, of which more presently, in
Bethlehem and on Olivet. The object which Constantine, and, we
may be sure, Helena also, had at heart, was the discovery of the
Sepulchre of our Lord. The tradition of the place averred that a
lofty mound of earth, the top of which was paved with stone, and
surmounted by a temple of Aphrodite, would be found to cover the
actual spot. " Impious men," says Eusebius, " had striven to
obliterate the memory of that monument of immortality, by
laboriously covering it with earth, and raising upon the mound
thus constructed a true burial-place of souls," ;in the shape of a
temple for that loathsome " cultus " which, beyond all other
idolatries, would insult and defile the sacred ground beneath.
There appears to have been no difficulty felt as to where the search
should be made : it was believed that where the mound rose, there
lay the sepulchre below it ; and the statements made by Sozomen
in the next century as to uncertainties existing for a time, and
removed in part by the family records of a Jewish resident, do not
agree with earlier language. We may assume that the account given

vill.] The Short Internal Peace. 121
to Constantine was substantially the same which Alexander of
Jerusalem had heard when, about 214, he came to see "the
Places ; " but whether this local belief was well founded depends,
of course, on the question whether in the first century the site
in question was enclosed by the " Second Wall," or whether,
as defenders of the tradition consider, that wall sloped inwards
so as to exclude the site, and with it the "place of a skull."
On the latter view the tradition would be quite compatible with
the assertion that " Jesus suffered without the gate " (Heb. xiii.
12). In virtue of orders from Constantine, which, perhaps,
Helena herself brought, the temple was destroyed, its materials
indignantly flung away, while the images which it contained were
broken to pieces, the mound was levelled, and then the cave of
the sepulchre came, we are told, to light, uninjured and undefaced,
" attesting to all eyes," says Eusebius, the truth of the Gospel
story. The Emperor, on hearing of this successful result of the
excavation, wrote to Macarius, bishop of Jerusalem, expressing his
delight at the discovery of the monument of "the most holy
Passion," meaning clearly, the sepulchre as a standing evidence of
the Death ; and proceeded to announce his intention of adorning the
spot with a basilica which should surpass all others in its general
effect and its several details, and to request the bishop's opinion as
to the best marbles to be employed, and as to whether the roof
should be wrought in mosaic, or fretted and gilded — the latter of
which two methods was in fact adopted with brilliant effect. Thus
commenced the building of the Constantinian church, properly
called the " Martyrium of the Resurrection " or " of the Saviour,"
sometimes, rather confusedly, of " Golgotha," afterwards " of the
Holy Cross," which was not dedicated until ten years after the
Council of Nicaea. Eusebius describes it as exceedingly lofty and
broad, with cloisters extending along its sides : in the apse were the
altar, the episcopal throne, the seats for the clergy, and twelve pillars
with silver bowls by way of capitals ; beyond the apse was the
baptistery. These, it should be remembered, were at the western
end of the church ; the entrance was from the east, by three doors
which were reached by a flight of steps from a large oblong court,
open to the sky, and " paved with glittering stones." To the north
of this court rose the hill traditionally named Golgotha, on which,
when the Gallic bishop Arculf, as reported by Adamnan and by
Bede, visited it in the seventh century, a church stood, and within
it, on the supposed spot of the crucifixion, a large silver cross, with

122 The Age of the Fathers. [Chap.
a circle of lamps hanging above. Beyond the court eastward an
elaborate work had been executed by Constantine's order: the
sepulchral cave, which at first had appeared as part of a mass of
rock standing out alone on level ground (as Eusebius describes it
in bis " Theophania "), was separated from the rock around it
(which Cyril of Jerusalem calls the outer cave) ; it was then, with
questionable taste, deprived of the appearance of a cavity, carved
into the shape of a horseshoe, cased with marble, and so left to
enclose what was deemed to be the actual sepulchre, both being
surrounded by a building of circular form which was called the
Anastasis, and was decorated, says Eusebius, in his vague way,
" with exquisite columns and ornaments of every kind." Arculf,
as reported by Adamnan, mentions twelve pillars, a triple wall,
and within the " round monument " the sepulchre itself, seven feet
long and three palms above the floor — the colour of both, says this
minute observer, being white and red. A lady-pilgrim of the
latter part of the fourth century, who is usually identified with
Silvia of Aquitaine, the sister of the prefect Rufinus, describes an
early Sunday service at which this sepulchral chapel was lighted
up and filled with the freshening odour of incense.
Thus far we see from Eusebius that the discovery which Con
stantine's instructions brought about was supposed to be that of
the Holy Sepulchre. But in 347-8, ten years after the Life of
Constantine was written, Cyril of Jerusalem, then a presbyter
officiating in the great church, repeatedly alluded, in his Cateche
tical Lectures there for the most part delivered, to the known
existence and piecemeal distribution of the actual wood of the
Cross of Christ. " The whole world is filled with portions of the
wood of the Cross. . . . The holy wood of the Cross is seen among
us to this day, and by means of those who have in faith taken of
it, has from this place now almost filled the whole world," etc.
The letter to Constantius, ascribed to Cyril, distinctly says that
the " salutary " wood of the Cross was found in Jerusalem in the
time of Constantine ; but this letter is of disputed authenticity.
Silvia speaks of processions to " the cross," and of tapers lighted
before and behind it. But it is not until about 394 that we find,
as given by Chrysostom, the first form of the famous story of the
discovery of three crosses — the " holy cross " between two others,
with the title attached to it ; and in the next year St. Ambrose
makes the same statement, adding that Helena, when the true
Cross was ascertained, " worshipped, not it, but the King that had

vin.] The Short Internal Peace. 123
hung thereon." Passing on but a few more years, we find this
story amplified by another miracle : the " true cross " was identified,
according to Sulpicius, by the revival of a corpse after touching
it, when contact with the other crosses had been without result ;
according to Rufinus, and after him Socrates and others, by the
restoration of a dying woman to health after she had touched the
true Cross. But with the cross were also, Ambrose tells us, dis
covered the nails ; from one, Helena caused a bridle-bit to be made,
from the other she constructed a diadem, and gave both to her son
for his use : a strange anecdote, but in its very strangeness unlike
a fiction, and seemingly akin to the statement that one of the nails
thus found was used to fashion rays for the head of Constantine's
colossal statue on the top of the " Porphyry Pillar " in Constan
tinople. On the whole, the silence of Eusebius would not of itself
be a proof that a cross, or what seemed to be a cross (if not three
crosses), was not dug up at Jerusalem in the days of Macarius, and
straightway acknowledged as an authentic relic of the Passion of
Him who was there crucified between two robbers ; but only that
Eusebius, for his part, did not believe in their authenticity. He
probably thought, as Professor Willis thinks, that these relics " were
pieces of timber and iron work" which had been "accidentally
turned up in the course of the excavations," and thereupon hastily
invested by fervent " imagination " with a character not their own.
They came to light, we may suppose, after the discovery of the
Sepulchre ; and some who had welcomed that discovery as true and
precious might distrust the new marvel, which at the same time
would impress uncritical minds more powerfully than the former
event could do, for the Cross would naturally be a more thrilling
and fascinating object than even the open Sepulchre ; and to hear
that the very " wood on which Christ bare our sins " was now in
the possession of Christians would kindle an enthusiasm such as no
other tidings would excite in minds which could not forecast the
impulse which such a belief would give to a materialising super
stition. Yet it remains that Constantine himself, and Eusebius,
ignored any other discovery than that of the sacred Tomb.
Two other spots, unspeakably sacred to believers of all kinds,
were enriched with memorials of Helena's devotion. The cave
which, as early as the days of Justin Martyr, had been visited at
Bethlehem as the scene of the Nativity, was splendidly adorned ;
and Constantine afterwards presented to the chapel thus formed a
<*oodly array of gold and silver ornaments, and coloured " veils " or

124 Tlie Age of the Fathers. [Chap.
curtains. On the summit of Olivet, a round church arose in
honour of the Ascension ; and here also many costly gifts repre
sented the Emperor's homage to " the Great King." His mother
literally executed the injunctions of that Divine King by acting as
a servant to His specially devoted servants, waiting on the conse
crated virgins of the Church of Jerusalem at a feast, and humbly
pouring water on their hands. And not only in the Holy City,
but throughout her progress in the East, this representative, so to
speak, of Anna was to be seen making offerings in churches, even
in " the little chapels of small towns ; " while the genuineness of
her piety was everywhere proved by charities at once magnificent
and endearing, by exuberant benevolence for all sufferers, by the
release of prisoners, the relief of persons toiling in the mines, the
supply of food and clothing to the needy, the recall of exiles,
the bounteous kindness to all who sought her aid — illustrations
of character which give an interest to the churches bearing her
name in old English towns and villages, especially in Yorkshire
and Lmcolnshire. She died, it would seem, about two years
after her visit to Palestine, "full of peace and joy," in the arms
of her son, who received her final counsels and blessings, and
regarded so happy a death, in Eusebius's words, as rather " a trans
ference and removal from an earthly to a heavenly life." He
buried her body at Rome; "the tradition of the Greeks" said
that after two years he removed it to his new capital at Byzan
tium ; but this tradition Tillemont regards as questionable. Con
stantine was not behindhand in imitating his mother's zeal for
the external building-up of the Church. In Palestine he em
ployed a converted Jew named Joseph — who afterwards, when
about seventy years old, told Epiphanius that he had been converted
after repeated visions of Christ — in the work of raising churches
at Tiberius, Nazareth, and other places which had been inhabited
by Jews only. Hearing that Mamre, or Terebinthus, was still a
favourite seat of "impure worship," where libations were poured
into " Abraham's well," and each worshipper devoted his choicest
animals for sacrifice, Constantine wrote to the bishops of Palestine
in terms of indignant rebuke: his mother-in-law, he said, had
informed him of misdoings which they had culpably overlooked.
The place where God the Saviour Himself, with two angels, had
appeared to Abraham, must be cleared of foul idolatry; and he
bad commanded Acacius, one of the " counts " who ranked highest
among imperial attendants, to have the altar pulled down, the

vni.] The Short Internal Peace. 125
"images" burned, and a church erected on the spot, "that it
might be rendered a fit meeting-place for holy men." At Aphaca
in Mount Lebanon, where a starry flame was believed to descend
on a certain day into the river Adonis, he suppressed the abomina
tions connected with the temple of Aphrodite ; he provided
churches for the Phoenician Heliopolis, a place infamous for
exceptional grossness of heathen profligacy; he rewarded the
inhabitants of Maiuma, the port of Gaza, for their unanimous
adoption of Christianity, by erecting their town into " the city
of Constantia : " he razed to the ground the shrine of a Cilician
oracle ; he caused the images which, like that at Ephesus in St.
Paul's day, were said to have "fallen down from Zeus," to be
" purified " and made public property, if their materials were of
value, while such as could not be so utilised " were left as monu
ments of the baseness of pagan superstition." For this raid
against idolatry he employed, instead of military force, the agency
of one or two trusted confidants, who, says Eusebius, went in fear
less faith among large populations, destroying the strongholds of
" long-standing errors," invading the " darkest recesses " of
temples, and exposing brazen images dragged forth with ropes
into open day. The result of this, says Eusebius, was in some
cases the conversion of pagan spectators ; in others, he admits,
people lost their old belief without adopting a new one. Con
stantine indeed, in conformity to his own farewell speech at Nicaea,
in which he had reminded the bishops of the various motives
which might attract men to Christianity, was careful to associate
his edicts against local idolatries — edicts which, in his later years,
grew more and more stringent, although they were far from being
always successful — with acts of imperial munificence for relief of
poverty and distress, which might lead many to feel that the
destroyer of temples was at any rate their most powerful friend
and patron. Among the churches which he built, and which by
their size and splendour were doubtless meant to impress the
popular mind with a sense of the majesty of Christianity, as well
as to witness for the principle of offering the best and costliest of
earth's treasures to God's service, may be mentioned a magnifi
cent basilica, which was erected at Nicomedia " in honour of his
Saviour " and in remembrance of his " victory over the enemies
of God : " he began a great church at Antioch, the completion of
which in his son's reign forms an epoch in Eastern Church history,
so far as the Arian controversy is concerned. But far more

126 The Age of the Fathers. [Chap.
interesting and momentous were his three great ecclesiastical
foundations in Rome itself. The oldest, which seems to have been
completed under Silvester, was formed out of that "Domus
Faustae" which, as we have seen, had been used for a conciliar
inquiry into the Donatists' case, and which still perpetuated the
memory of its old patrician lords by the name of " Lateranum."
Thus arose " the Constantinian basilica of the Saviour," afterwards
called St. John Baptist's, the original " Christ Church " of Chris
tendom, which superseded the primitive cathedral that had been
formed out of the " house of Pudens " on the Viminal, and which
still, in its modern form, retains its diocesan primacy, and vaunts
itself, by a proud inscription on the facade, " Omnium urbis et
orbis ecclesiarum mater et caput." Its site, on the south-eastern
edge of Rome, contrasts with that of the more famous church built
over the reputed tomb of St. Peter along the northern line of
Nero's Circus on the Vatican hill, but including that of the Via
Cornelia to the north of it. We may take it as a typical basilica,
observing that both the Roman law courts and the old Roman
churches were developed out of the great mansions of Roman
nobles ; the pillared court or " atrium," roofed over, became the
justice-hall proper and the church-nave ; its porticoes would serve
as nave aisles, while the " tabulinum " or family record-room
beyond it suggested, in the one case, a raised apsidal recess for the
judge, in the other a sanctuary with an altar, and seats for the
bishop and clergy, such as may still be seen, in stately proportion,
in the desolate cathedral of Torcello near Venice. Entering from
the east, the visitor passed through an oblong fore-court or "ves-
tibulum," which opened by five doors into the nave, the central
part of which was flanked on each side by two aisles ; ninety-two
columns, " collected," says Professor Lanciani, " from everywhere,"
supported the lofty roof; separated from the nave by an arch
adorned with golden mosaics, a kind of transept extended slightly
north and south of the aisles ; last of all, to the west, the sanctuary
presented to view a canopy with six pillars, under which, and
reached by a double descent of steps, was the " confession " or
burial-chamber of the martyred Apostle, containing a " loculus "
or coffin in an outer case of bronze, with a massive golden cross on
the lid. High above was the altar, surmounted by a canopy
resting on porphyry pillars, with the episcopal throne and the
seats of the clergy beyond. Duchesne considers the church to have
been 390 feet long (its enormous successor extends lengthwise

vm.] The Short Internal Peace. 127
to 607 feet) without including the apsidal sanctuary ; its breadth
was 226 feet; thus, to compare its proportions with those of
our own two primatial churches, it was shorter than Canterbury
by 126 feet, than York by 96, but 174 feet wider than the main
part of York, which is a few feet wider than that of Canterbury.
A fair idea of its interior may be derived from the present
magnificent (though sadly lonesome) basilica of St. Paul " With
out the Walls," which represents not only the comparatively small
church reared by Constantine over that Apostle's tomb on the
Ostian road, and appropriately endowed with property at Tarsus,
but the far larger structure began by Valentinian II. and finished
by Honorius, consisting of an ample transept and a vast nave.
Legend said that St. Paul's body was transferred to this spot from
the place of his martyrdom at Aquae Salviae or Tre Fontane, on a
road leading out of the Ostian, by a pious lady named Lucina ; but
history attests the belief as to the two Apostolic graves from at least
the early part of the third century, when Caius offered to show his
Montanist opponent " the trophies " of the two great apostles on
the Vatican and on the Ostian road. Constantine is also claimed,
with some probability, as the founder of the two churches of St.
Agnes and St. Laurence " Without the Walls," both rebuilt in the
seventh and sixth centuries, but retaining much of their primitive
aspect. The basilica of " The Holy Cross in Jerusalem " in the
Sessorian palace occupied by Helena, and long afterwards by
Theodoric, is ascribed to her munificence — perhaps by an assump
tion which belongs to the developed story of her discoveries at
Jerusalem: it is called "Heleniana" in the record of a clerical
and lay assembly held there in 433 to inquire into charges laid
against a pope. It should be added that in Mr. J. H. Parker's
opinion some of these churches were built by the clergy with
grants made by Constantine. Lists of splendid and precious fur
niture, including lamps and altar vessels, are assigned to the Con-
stantinian churches at Rome : St. Peter's is said to have possessed
estates at Antioch and Alexandria, elsewhere in Egypt, and even
in Eastern Assyria. These and the like endowments, which
probably were but gradually obtained, were not drawn from the
treasury, but from property confiscated during persecution, and
left unclaimed by the heirs of Christian owners, from revenues of
demolished temples, and from funds connected with exhibitions
temporarily suppressed.
But the Emperor's heart was not in Rome. He wanted a city

128 The Age of the Fathers. [Chap.
of his own creation, in the ordering of which he would have a free
hand, unfettered by traditions and precedents such as had stereo
typed the life of the " urbs venerabilis ; " and it was with the
insight of true genius that he chose Byzantium, which he had
besieged while it was held by Licinius, to be the seat of a new
administrative and military centre. We see him in 328 personally
tracing the limits of the future capital ; he follows a line at some
distance to the west of the old wall, and when courtiers ask,
" How much farther ? " he answers mysteriously, " Until He stops
who is going in front of me." The work was hurried on by his
impatience ; and when it was, in a sense, completed, it appeared that
the old Byzantine site was still to be the heart of the New Rome,
containing all the chief buildings except the Forum of Constantine,
which, says Professor Van Millingen in his " Byzantine Constanti
nople," stood just outside the chief gate of Byzantium, and the
church of the Holy Apostles, with its carved dome and roof of
gilded bronze, near the new Constantinian Wall. From this forum
a broad " Middle street," lined with stately colonnades, led to the
oblong " Place " called Augustaeum in honour of Helena as Augusta,
and displaying her statue on a pillar ; and at one end of it, on the
site of an ancient gate, stood the "golden milestone" whence
distances were reckoned. On the south of the Augustaeum was
a senate-house attached to it, and distinct from that in the
forum; on the east was the ground afterwards occupied by the
glorious church of St. Sophia. A person standing in the Augustaeum,
and looking northwards, would thus have his back to the senate-
house, on his right hand the site of the future cathedral, on his left
the " baths of Zeuxippus " (an old title of Zeus), and the entrance
to the imperial palace, which came to extend far to the east
and west, and had behind it gardens reaching to the Propontis,
now called the Sea of Marmora. Stretching beside the palace
westwards was the magnificent Hippodrome which had been
begun by Severus ; it was nine hundred feet long and half that
width, with a semicircular west end ; at the other extremity was a
building called the " Kathisma," whither the Emperor could ascend
from the palace in order to view the races. This vast space, which
contained an Egyptian obelisk, was destined to be the scene of
the most characteristic incidents in Constantinopolitan history.
The design of the founder was pervaded by a resolution that " his
own city " should be — what " the elder Rome " stubbornly refused
to be — a city of Christian faith, " clear," as Eusebius says, of old

VIIL] The Short Internal Peace. 129
idolatry, although the existing Byzantine temples were not de
stroyed, and the quasi-pagan idea of the city's "Fortune" was
conspicuously recognised. Choice works of Greek art were set up
in the chief public places : the three-headed serpent which had
once supported the golden tripod at Delphi stood nearly in the
middle of the Hippodrome, and survived to be partly shattered by
Mahomet the Conqueror ; the Augustaean senate-house exhibited a
statue of Zeus which had come from Dodona, another of Athene,
and a group of the Muses ; and the idea of these " spoliations "
might be illustrated by Keble's poem for the Third Sunday in
Lent. So in the centre of the forum the famous Porphyry Pillar,
which with its marble pedestal rose to a height of a hundred and
twenty feet, was surmounted by a statue in which the head of Apollo
had been superseded by that of Constantine referred to above ; while
the triumph of Christianity was more evidently set forth by the
image of the Good Shepherd as presiding over a fountain. The
vestibule of the palace impressed the same thought by means of a
picture of Constantine with a cross of gold and jewels over his
head, and a dragon transfixed at his feet ; and its chief state apart
ment was ornamented by a cross of precious gems beaming from
the centre of the gilded roof, and forming what Eusebius calls a
visible " phylactery " of the Emperor's reign. Eusebius says that
he adorned his city with " many houses of prayer ; " but Socrates,
whose whole life was spent in Constantinople, ascribes to him
two only — that of Irene, which doubtless indicated a Pauline
title of Christ as " our Peace," and that of the Apostles ; but
he made preparations, doubtless, for the great church of " the
Holy and Eternal Wisdom," and for others finished after his death.
Eusebius preserves for us an interesting letter, in which Constantine
desired him to finish at the public expense, for public reading in
the churches of Constantinople, fifty copies of Scripture, correctly
and fairly written, on well-prepared parchment, by skilful hands,
and to send them in two public conveyances, under the care of a
deacon of Caesarea. The commission was promptly executed : the
transcripts, arranged in sets of three or four leaves, containing
twelve or sixteen pages each, arrived at Constantinople, probably
soon after the dedication of the city, which took place on the
11th of May, 330 — a day kept long afterwards with a grand
ceremonial, in which tapers were carried in procession round
the statue of Constantine on the porphyry pillar. The history of
this Christian Rome, extending through eleven centuries to the
vol. 1. K

130 The Age of the Fathers. [Chap.
fatal 29th of May, 1457, when the last of the Constantines died
a hero's death, is mournfully overclouded by senseless factions,
dynastic intrigues, brutal punishments, selfish luxuriousness, and
a formal and pedantic religionism. There is no freshness of life,
because no freedom ; the richness of the scene has been compared
to that of "tropical decay." But there is another side to the
picture, to which Gibbon did but scanty justice ; and one is glad,
at any rate, to remember the glory of some really great Constan-
tinopolitan reigns, the reinvigorations after periods of decadence,
the preservation, as Dean Church expresses it in his matchless
chapters on the " Influences of Christianity on National Character,"
of the "traditions of learning and scholarship," of art and culture,
of commerce and industry, and the elaborate legislation and
" administrative experience " which helped to make this empire,
especially under the Basilian line, " the only existing image in the
world of a civilised state," and better still, its persistent stand
against " the barbarous tribes and Oriental peoples which " (in Van
Millingen's words) " sought to make European civilisation impos
sible, and to strike down a great outpost of Christian faith." We
ought to remember this, and withal to think of the first Constan-
tinopolitan generation as remarkable for benevolence to the poor,
and for a Christian fervour which commended the faith to many
of their Jewish, and to most of their Greek neighbours.
An instance in which that faith was commended to a bar
barous people by unofficial zeal is supplied by the story of
a captive woman, Nina or Ninia by name, whose profound devo
tional earnestness impressed, in the first instance, with a sense of
some unearthly power the " Iberian " or Georgian heathen among
whom she dwelt. She seemed to live in prayer and fast, in vigil
and thanksgiving ; her bed was a sack spread on the ground. Why
did she go through all this ? The question was soon answered :
this was " the right way of worshipping the Son of God." The
Son of God ? who was He ? Something of an answer was given
when a mother, according to the simple custom of these poor
barbarians, brought her sick child from one house to another in
hopes of finding some one that knew of a cure. The foreign
captive at last was applied to. "I know of no medicine," she
answered, " but I do know that Christ healed many — Christ the
true and great God, — and I believe He will heal this child also."
She laid the little one on her rough bed, prayed over it, and
presently restored it to the mother : the child from that very hour

VI H-] The Short Internal Peace. 131
did well. A similar prayer of faith was followed by the recovery
of the Iberian queen from sickness : the stranger was warmly
thanked, but answered, "It is not my work, but the work of
Christ, the Son of the God that made the world." The king,
whose name is given as Miran, offered her a reward ; she put it
aside, saying, " You could best reward me by acknowledging my
God." " He treasured up the saying." Next day, having lost his
way, while hunting, amid a dense mist, he called first on his own
gods — in vain ; then appealed to the God of the foreign woman,
and saw his path lying clear before him. In due time he and his
wife became converts, and afterwards active preachers of Chris
tianity. Priests were obtained from Gregory, "the Illuminator"
of Armenia, or, by another account, from the Roman empire;
and Georgia, as we now call it, took its place among Christian
lands, and looked back with grateful reverence to its "illu
minator" Nina. The story, as told by Rufinus, was learnt by
him from one who had been a prince of the land, whom he calls
Bacarius. One other event may be most conveniently mentioned in this
place, although it is associated by Tillemont with the year pre
ceding the accession of Athanasius. This event is the development
of Monasticism into its ccenobitic form — the first foundation of
a conventual community.
What, we may ask, was the origin of Monasticism ? What led
Paul "the first hermit," in the reign of Valerian, to make the
wilderness not only a refuge from persecution, but a chosen life
long home, where he might spend his whole life, as Jerome expresses
it, in prayer and solitude ? Why did the youth Antony, about 271,
imitate the ascetics who had already, within his own district, adopted
a certain extent of eremitic retirement, and afterwards dwelling in
a tomb, then for twenty years in a deserted mountain castle, and
finally in a rock-hewn cell on Mount Troica in the north-east of
Egypt, lead a life so marvellous in its persistent " self-discipline,"
its intensities of devotion and of spiritual conflict, and in the union
of severity and tenderness which filled all who approached him
with blended love and awe ? What was the mighty impulse which
peopled the Nitrian mountain, and the Wilderness of Cells, and the
yet remoter and wilder Scetis, with solitaries carrying out the same
theory of life, and aiming at more and more entireness of self-
mortification ? Three principal forces produced this result. The
purely Oriental passion for solitary religious contemplation received

132 The Age of the Fathers. [Chap.
a new impetus from the desire to realise, in its most thorough
going entireness, the Christian principle of self-sacrifice, to give up
literally all for Christ, to emulate and perpetuate that absoluteness
of devotion which in days of persecution had been the glory of the
" Confessor." Antony was penetrated and enkindled by hearing
the text read, " If thou wilt be perfect," etc. The common designa
tion of the monk was the ascetic or spiritual self-trainer ; his aim
was to emancipate his whole being from all the manifold powers
of " the flesh ; " he would fain be in the strictest sense " Christ's
soldier," and live altogether for and in the unseen. And then a
third motive, which fitted in easily with the second, drove many a
young Egyptian Christian, not to speak of natives of other lands-,
to seek spiritual safety in the cell of the ascetic ; and this motive
was a dread and horror of the moral pestilence which was around
him in the towns, and which in many an instance had blighted and
ruined those who had begun life innocently and happily — dread
of the unspeakable corruption, horror of the detestable brutality,
which seemed inseparable from the common life of a society radi
cally heathenised. Fervent souls, full of the thought that salvation
was the one thing needful, that perdition was the most terrific of
realities, and that the Evil One had his haunt and stronghold in
the " pomps " and lusts and basenesses and pollutions all around
them, would be ready to rush away from what was not only
sickening and revolting, but deadly to the soul's true life. "I
must save my soul," would be the resolution, " and I shall almost
certainly lose it, in such a ' world ' as this city-world, whereon
God's curse rests visibly ! " Long afterwards Chrysostom admitted
that if boys sent to school were sure to turn out well afterwards,
he should " detest as foes to the commonwealth those who drew
them into monasticism." Now it is impossible to ignore, on the
one hand, the nobleness, purity, spirituality, sympathy, and moral
wisdom of some of the great recluses, especially of Antony. But
neither can we help seeing that the self-discipline was marred by
unhealthy extravagance, by a confusion of means with ends, by a
forgetfulness of moral proportion ; that vehement natures, despairing
too soon, showed a want of faith in the Gospel's power to leaven
the lump of common life, and to " keep " loyal souls " from its
evil;" and that for the average monk there were temptations
haunting the "wilderness," such as spiritual pride, intolerance
corresponding to ignorance, moods of weariness and disgust (after
wards called acedia), astounding hardness towards his relatives,.

viii.] The Short Internal Peace. 133
and a disposition to bitterness, or even insolence, in his dealings
with the outer world — not to mention the risk of delirious imagina
tions produced by silence or solitude. No doubt the monastic
impulse was for some select natures a reaching forth after " per
fection." We may think with Dean Church that an enormous
force of self-indulgence, such as that which then flooded society,
could only be met by an equally disproportionate asceticism ; but
still we must say that it was disproportionate. If we are not to be
¦unsympathizing cynics in our view of the subject, neither are we
to be undiscerning sentimentalists ; great saints living in the world
of that day, fighting its influences on their own ground, yet praising
up monasticism as the ideal Christianity, may have ignored the
weak or morbid elements in a form of life which seemed more
supernatural than their own. We must try to see the facts all
round, to admire and revere without ceasing to discriminate, to
recognise mistake where on New Testament principles it is
patent; we cannot but wish that more good men had stayed at
their posts, among "their friends," and thus borne testimony for
Christ ; we cannot but see that the ascetic ideal tended rather to
lower than to raise the standard of ordinary Christian conduct,
that very great mischief was done by monopolizing for monastic
life such phrases as " religion " or " the service of God," and that
in the Middle Ages, which, as Bryce puts it, are full of a
" perpetual contradiction," men could worship ascetic saints
without giving up their own ferocity and sensuality. But at
any rate we may, at this period of our history, dwell rather on
the practical wisdom, the genial kindliness, the sweetness and
fragrance of soul, which charm us in the character of Antony, than
on the eccentricities, coarsenesses, asperities, superstitions, and
other such faults, which showed themselves only too quickly in
monks of poorer mould who clearly had no exceptional " vocation."
Nor can we doubt that such a phenomenon as his life, brought
home to ordinary observation by his occasional visits to Alexandria,
did contribute not a little to the argument involved, then as in
all ages, in the presence of high Christian greatness, and helped
many thoughtful inquirers to own the powers of the Kingdom
of God. So much on the earlier and simpler monasticism, as represented
by the solitaries who lived, it may be, near each other, and could
hold not infrequent intercourse, but did not live in community.
The ccenobitic life was a clear departure from the primary

134 The ASe of the Fathers. [Chap.
conception of solitary "self-training:" it must have begun
gradually, as hermits drew near each other in lauras or settle
ments ; but its chief founder was Pachomius, who in 325 estab
lished himself with about nine associates at Tabenne, or
Tabennesus, an uninhabited village— not an island in the Nile, as
some have thought — near the city of Tentyra in the northern part
of Upper Egypt, which gave a theme of satire to Juvenal. He
had begun the world as a pagan soldier of the tyrant Maximin,
and had been drawn to Christianity in 312 by the generous
kindness which some Christians had shown to himself and his
comrades when prisoners of war. After he had been for some
time the pupil and companion of an old hermit named Paleemon,
he became convinced, it was said, by an angelic vision, that his
mission was to serve men in order to reconcile them with God ;
and this led to the gradual formation of a society of monks living
at Tabenne under his guidance. The Rule of community-life
ascribed to him abounds in details which indicate a later deve
lopment ; but it may well represent the main principles on which
he worked — a certain disciplinarian precision together with zeal
for religious attainment, as when it insists that every one shall
learn by heart some portion of Scripture, or, again, with vigilance
against despotism on the part of superiors. The monastery — it
was more properly the convent — was divided into a number of
" families," each having a principal and a second in command, and
inhabiting a separate abode, in which three monks occupied each
cell : three or four families formed a " tribe ; " the various necessary
occupations were discharged in rotation by the families ; and the
common worship of each family was vespers, while some other
offices, with the celebration of the Eucharist on Sunday and
Saturday, were performed in the conventual church. Besides
twelve prayers and psalms at vespers, the same number of prayers
were repeated by the monks individually during the day and at
night with three before dinner. The whole daily life was precisely
mapped out by the Rule in regard to the scanty meals (usually
about 3 p.m.), the time of sleep, the dress consisting of a sleeveless
linen shirt, a sheepskin cloak, and a " cowl " (the cloak to be only
laid aside at Communion), the labour — that of making mats of
rushes or palm-leaves, the supply of which for each " house " was
to be strictly regulated — the religious addresses, the meditations,
the studies for which books wanted were to be given out by rule,
the times of silence, the confessions of faults and the penances, the

vin.] The Short Internal Peace. 135
provision that any one going outside the monastery shall have a
companion with him, the multitudinous prohibitions, one of which
forbade a monk who was not an official to extract a thorn from a
brother's foot, — in short, the full routine of " self-training " as now
consolidated by the principle of association. From the first settle
ment at Tabenne sprang eight others, all in the northern Thebaid,
the principal being " the great monastery " at Pabau, where all were
to meet at Easter ; each of these had its superior or steward, and all
acknowledged their " abbot " or " father " Pachomius as the general
head of the congregation. It was perhaps in the earlier years of
the society, when Pachomius had still some twenty years of life
before him (he died in 348), that Athanasius, passing up the Nile
on a visitation tour to the Thebaid (probably in order to control
some unruly Meletians of that district), was greeted at Tabenne
by a large choir of monks. But he did not see Pachomius, who,
fearing that his own bishop Serapion would request the archbishop
to ordain him priest, hid himself behind his brethren, and so,
unobserved, had a view of Athanasius " as he stood up in the boat,"
and afterwards foretold that the young " Pope " — the special title
of an Alexandrian bishop — had much to endure in the cause of
faith. We must next see how his powers of endurance were to be
tried.

CHAPTER IX.
THE FIRST TROUBLES OF ST. ATHANASIUS.
There is some difficulty in ascertaining the precise character and
order of the events which led to the recall of the Arian leaders
from their exile, and the consequent rekindling of dissension,
although not, as yet, to the avowed reassertion of opinions ana
thematized at Nicaea. The account of Socrates is, first, that
Eusebius and Theognis, shortly after their banishment, presented
to " the principal bishops " a " palinode " or letter of submission,
in which they professed their entire acceptance of the Nicene
faith, and their readiness to subscribe the anathemas, from which,
they said, they had withheld their assent in the council on the
simple ground that they believed Arius to have been misrepre
sented, and to be innocent of heresy. " Now," they said in effect,
" we are content to waive our opinion, and to acquiesce in all the
decisions of your holy synod : if you will give us an audience, you
will find us entirely conformable ; and we have the more reason to
claim this at your hands, since you have shown indulgence to Arius
himself, and recalled Mm. We therefore request you to intercede
with the Emperor on our behalf." Then Socrates adds, that by this
" palinode " they procured their recall, and took possession of their
sees, driving out the recently installed occupants : and he infers
from the document, first, that at Nicaea they had signed the creed
without the anathemas, whereas in Ms previous narrative of the
Council he had made them not only decline to condemn Arius,
but reject the creed on account of the Homoousion; and next,
that Arius Mmself had been released from the sentence of exile,
althongh not permitted to return to Alexandria — an inference
which strikes him, naturally enough, as involving a difficulty ; for
why should Arius have met with indulgence at an earlier time
than did the two bishops ? In fact, Socrates's statement as to the

Chap, ix.] The First Troubles of St. Athanasius. 137
whole case of these men appears deficient in consistency and pro
bability. He is certainly wrong as to the position in which they
stood at the close of the Council. They had, we know from other
and better evidence, given up their objections to the Homoousion, at
any rate had acquiesced in the proposed formulary, and so were on
terms of peace with the Council, and owed their exile to a distinct
offence committed at a later period. This, in itself, leads one to
suspect the genuineness of the " palinode ; " or rather, to treat it
as irreconcilable with Constantine's letter to the Nicomedians,
and with the apparent meaning of an Alexandrian Council's
Encyclical, referring to their condemnation or deposition. Again,
the " palinode " implies that the Nicene fathers were still sitting
in council, and might admit the memorialists " into their presence ; "
which was far from being the case. And not only does it ascribe
the condemnation of the memorialists to the Nicene Council, but it
ascribes to the same body the recall of Arius, and the favourable
acceptance of his personal pleading in Ms own defence " as to the
points on which he was accused ; " wMch is altogether extravagant.
On the whole, then, Tillemont seems to be justified in rejecting the
" palinode," as inconsistent with ascertained facts, and partly also
self-contradictory, for it makes the two bishops say that they had
been " condemned before they were tried," and yet that they had
" suggested what they thought good," and had " signed the creed ; "
and further, ascribes to them a willingness to sign the condemnation
of Arius after the Council itself (as it asserts) had treated him as
cleared from the charges on wMch that condemnation had been
based. And if the document is set aside, the statement that Arius
had been recalled before Eusebius and Theognis falls with it ; and
we are freed from the necessity which Socrates had imposed upon
himself of considering Arius to have been, in the first instance,
absolved from the charge of heresy, yet restrained from visiting
his old home, and to have been afterwards sent for by Constantine
in order to make before him another explanation of his senti
ments, as if he had not made one in presence of those ecclesiastical
judges who had condemned him, by the hypothesis, on imperfect
knowledge of Ms mind. We may therefore suppose that Eusebius
and Theognis (1) did profess acquiescence in the Nicene decision,
(2) were afterwards bamshed for fraternising with notorious Arian
partisans, and (3) did by some means persuade Constantine that
they had no sympathy with Arianism, and thus procure their own
restoration, as persons holding bond fide orthodox Nicene faith.

138 The Age of the Fathers. [Chap.
Hence arose a policy very different from that of the original Arians
— a policy of crypto-Arianism, according to wMch no overt demon
stration was to be attempted against the Nicene theology, and
what De Broglie calls " a courtly heresy, not striking, not popular,
not likely to shock ordinary Christian minds," was to be insinuated
into those minds that would be likely to feel some irritation
at the party, as it would be called, that had triumphed at Nicaea,
and " carried matters to extremes " which learned men like the
Caesarean Eusebius, and other eminent prelates, like some of Ms
bretMen in Palestine, could not thoroughly approve in their hearts.
Now here we must distinguish between those who really aimed,
from more or less distinctively Arian motives, at undermining the
Nicene decision, — crypto- Arians, or Eusebians, as we may call
them, — and those who would say to each other that the Council
had committed itself to a somewhat one-sided line ; that the term
Homoousion was not necessary as a safeguard of a true belief in
the divinity of the Son of God, and was even dangerous on account
of the ideas wMch might naturally be associated with it ; and, on
the whole, that for the future a more "moderate" course would
better serve the interest of religion. The two classes acted together,
but ought not to be identified ; yet to apply even to the latter of
them the term "conservatives" is misleading, and suggests that
Homoousion indicated a new doctrinal departure ; whereas the
" conservatism " of those who disliked it, or vaguely suspected its
import, was a tMng of pMases rather than of ideas. We must
also take account of a section which would be attracted by forms of
speaking which, while professing full orthodoxy of belief, favoured
a vague and general conception of the subject, such as might
commend itself, not indeed to mere ecclesiastical and official
theologians, but to statesmen and men of the world. It is evident
that the line which the powerful Court-prelate — for he soon re
sumed all Ms influence over Constantine — had thus marked out
for Mmself, promised great things for the interests of Arianism.
His recall may perhaps be dated in 329, if not in 328. We
do not positively know what step he first took ; but it may be safe
to follow Socrates, when he places in close connexion with the
return of the two exiled Arianizing bishops a blow struck at a
bishop who was hardly inferior to Athanasius in anti- Arian zeal,
and excelled him in the weight and dignity derived from a longer
episcopate and a more conspicuous fame. EustatMus, who had
been translated from the see of Beroea in Syria to what Sozomen

ix.] The First Troubles of St. Athanasius. 1 39
calls the " apostolic throne " of Antioch, about the beginning of
325 — had held a high place, if not the highest place, in the Nicene
Council — and was known as an able writer, exhibiting, as the same
historian tells us, great powers of thought and great beauty of
language, must have been, at this time, one of the most prominent
men in the Church. He would have earned the animosity of all
Arianizers had he done no more against Arianism than what he did
in the Nicene debates ; for we see the position which he then took
up from a fragment, preserved by Theodoret, of a work of his
against the party, in which he described the remarkable scene of
the tearing up, in the Council, of an "impious document " handed
in by Eusebius of Nicomedia. As bishop of Antioch, the third of
the three Mghest prelates of Christendom, Eustathius had carried
on the war against heresy by refusing to admit into the Antiochene
clergy six well-known Arianizers, three of whom were destined to
occupy his seat — Stephen, Leontius,Eudoxius, Eustathius of Sebaste,
George of Laodicea, and Theodosius of Tripolis. He did not sMink
from accusing Eusebius of Caesarea as guilty of tampering with
the Nicene faith; and Eusebius retorted by charging him with
SabelliaMsm. These mutual denunciations lead Socrates to remark
that many who branded each other as " blasphemers who denied
the Son's personal subsistence," or " introducers of polytheism " in
the form of worship of a secondary Deity, were really " fighting in
the dark," for both parties acknowledged the Son as truly personal,
and the one God in Tlrree Persons — that is, each party was essen
tially orthodox in the point on wMch it was suspected by the other.
But tMs will hardly pass. That among many who disputed about
the term Homoousion there were some whose differences could
have been removed by candid and patient explanations — such as
those which, at a memorable Alexandrian Council, held some thirty
years later under the presidency of Athanasius, were interchanged
between Catholics who put diverse senses on the word " Hypostasis "
— is indeed very probable. But it would be difficult to tMnk that any
such process could have identified the belief of EustatMus with
the belief of the two Eusebii. For we cannot credit the old friend
of Arius, who was cognisant of the " Thalia," with a real belief in
the Church doctrine of the Holy Trinity ; and we can hardly look
upon the historian-prelate, whose name has been less closely linked
to that of Arius, as a consistent believer in the Co-equality of the
Son. These two namesakes, accordingly, now appear united against
the bishop of Antioch. The Nicomedian Eusebius, with Theognis,

140 The Age of the Fathers. [Chap.
had obtained the Emperor's leave to visit the holy ground at
Jerusalem, and the monuments of Imperial piety there rising up.
On their way, they reached Antioch, where Eustathius, Theodoret
tells us, " showed them all manner of brotherly cordiality." They
passed on to Jerusalem, where a conference of Arianizers was held.
Eusebius of Caesarea was there, and Patrophilus of Scythopolis,
Aetius of Lydda, Theodotus of Laodicea, with others. The result
was that a council or conference of the party was organized in the
verjr city of Eustathius, probably not without allusions to the
councils held against Ms heretical predecessor in the preceding age.
We have different accounts of the measures taken. Socrates quotes
a statement by George of Laodicea, to the effect that Cyrus, the
successor of Eustathius at Bercea, procured Ms condemnation as
a Sabellian ; to tMs statement he objects, on the ground that Cyrus
Mmself was afterwards deposed on that very charge. He obscurely
refers to another story, wMch Theodoret gives at length, and which,
considering the unscrupulousness of the Arians, is not improbable,
that a shameless woman was hired to ruin the reputation of
EustatMus by a calumny, and that the judges, so-called, who had
suborned her, acted on her evidence by pronouncing Eustathius
¦deposed. In spite of reclamations from several orthodox bishops and
laymen, the enemies of EustatMus persuaded Constantine of the
justice of the sentence, and apparently of a moral charge as sup
porting it ; and, according to one story, added a minor but irritating
accusation, that the deposed prelate had spoken disrespectfully
of Helena. The Emperor followed up the ecclesiastical decision of
the case by banisMng EustatMus into Thrace ; and the parting
words of this illustrious victim of conspiracy were well remem
bered at Antioch in the days of St. Chrysostom, who describes Mm
as exhorting his people not to " abandon the fold," to be steady in
resisting the " wolves " and bearing witness for the faith. This
counsel was understood by CMysostom as equivalent to a recom
mendation of the course wMch some of the Antiochene Catholics
adopted, who did not break off communion with the bishops
successively placed in the seat of Eustathius ; while others, who
acquired distinctively the name of " Eustathians," worshipped apart
from the very day of his exile. The time of this expulsion of
EustatMus was apparently the end of 329, or early in 330 : it was
" thirty years," Theodoret tells us, before the expulsion of Meletius
from the same bishopric, in the beginning of 361. As to the filling
up of the see, there was not a little difficulty: the Arianizing

ix.] The First Troubles of St. Athanasius. 141
leaders, not unnaturally, fixed on Eusebius of Caesarea, then at
Antioch, as the best man for that high post ; they wrote to Con
stantine on the subject, and he also received letters from the great
civil digMtaries, Acacius Count of the " Orient," i.e. the whole
region subject to Antioch, and Strategius, or Musonianus, who had
been sent to execute the decree of exile against EustatMus. The
moment was decidedly critical : the feelings of the Arianizing and
Catholic parties in Antioch were so exasperated, that, as Eusebius
himself assures us, " matters came very near to bloodshed." But
Eusebius himself shrunk from translation, which he deemed.
inconsistent with the principles of Church order; and wrote to
Constantine, expressing Ms earnest wish to remain in the church
to which he had originally been appointed. Constantine approved
this desire, and wrote to Mm in praise of a resolution " agreeable
to God and to apostolic tradition." To the Antiochenes he sent a
long letter, admonishing them to study quietness and good order,
and alluding to the removal of EustatMus as the " clearing out "
of " filth that had marred their vessel." He also suggested to the
bishops at Antioch, that they should select either George, a citizen
of Arethusa, who had been ordained priest by Alexander of
Alexandria, or EupMonius, a priest belonging to Caesarea in
Cappadocia. According to one account, Paulinus, bishop of Tyre,
whom Eusebius held in such Mgh admiration, was elected, and held
the see for six months ; but the fact of tMs translation has been
doubted, and it may be that the immediate successor of Eustathius
was Eulalius, whose tenure was very brief, and who was followed —
possibly, though not probably, after a second attempt to secure
Eusebius — by EupMoMus, who also sat but a short time (a year and
six months), and was succeeded by Flacillus. " All these bishops,"
says Theodoret, " were secretly tainted with Arianism ; therefore
the majority of the devout clergy and laity quitted the church-
assemblies, and met for worsMp by themselves." Those who, as
we have seen, adhered to the existing church-communion were at
least safe from hearing any avowedly Arian teacMng, and found it
possible to profess Catholicism without hindrance, or rather to-
profess it as the acknowledged CMistianity. A little before the
expulsion of EustatMus, Asclepas, bishop of Gaza, had met with
similar treatment ; and a little after that event, Eutropius of
Hadrianople, who had exasperated the Arianizing leaders by warn
ing all who visited his city against the sopMstries of the Nicome-
dian Eusebius, was driven from his church and home.

142 The Age of the Fathers. [Chap.
And now we must watch the opening scenes of the "long
tragedy " of the troubles of Athanasius, remembering the emphatic
summary wMch Hooker gives us of the general aspect of that life
long struggle, in wMch the " royal-hearted " hero (to adopt Cardinal
Newman's comprehensive phrase) exMbited notMng but what
"very well became a wise man to do and a righteous to suffer."
The first two or tMee years of his episcopate were comparatively
tranquil. His festal or Paschal letter for 329, the first of a long series
intended to announce the right day for the coming Easter, contained
no allusion to Church troubles, but is worth looking at as a
specimen of Ms thoroughly practical tone as a Christian teacher :
" ascetic " though he was, he admomshed his people to remember
that fasting, in order to profit the soul, must be accompanied by
moral efforts after real sanctification ; with all his glowing antici
pation of the great joy of the Easter festival, he insisted that this
gladness should stimulate believers in the Resurrection to more
absolute self-devotion and to every form of active charity. One
can easily understand that he was, thus early, binding Ms people's
hearts to himself, and realising to a great extent that picture
which Gregory Nazianzen afterwards drew of his episcopal
character as uniting such varied excellences, " gentleness without
weakness, gravity in rebuke without asperity, vigour in general
administration and assiduity in spiritual duties, a comprehensive
grasp of his work as a whole and a discriminating attention to
special cases ; " he would already, we cannot but doubt, be at once
luminous and profound as a preacher, winning affection by gemality
and tenderness, " stooping to the level of average minds, while
soaring above the ablest in range of thought," — making himself, in
short, in the Pauline sense, " all tMngs to all men." But he soon
found that the clouds from different quarters were gathering into a
storm over his head. His Paschal letter for 330 has an allusion to
" heretics," as instruments of the great deceiver of souls ; and it
was, perhaps, about the close of that year that the heresiarch whom
he had for years withstood was permitted to regain the position
from which Constantine's sentence of exile had dislodged Mm.
According to the received story, an Arian priest had gradually
acquired influence over the mind of the Emperor's sister Constantia ;
and she, when sinking under a fatal illness, recommended him
earnestly to her brother's regard. Thus introduced to Constantine,
the priest found it easy to suggest to the Emperor that Arius had,
in fact, been misunderstood ; that there was no real difference

IX.] The First Troubles of St. Athanasius. 143
between his actual belief and the Nicene doctrine ; that if he were
allowed an opportunity, he would himself satisfy the Emperor on
this head. " If this be so," said Constantine, " I will admit Mm to
an audience, and on Ms professing to hold the true faith, I will
restore him to his home in Alexandria." And Socrates proceeds
to exhibit a letter in which Constantine expresses to Arius his
surprise that he has not already come to court, since he had been
for some time aware of the Emperor's readiness to receive him :
language, says Socrates, implying that Constantine had already
exhorted him to retract his errors. The letter contained a command
to Arius to appear in the Imperial presence, in order that, " having
experienced the Emperor's good will, he may return to his own
country." The date of this letter is November 25, " in 330," says
Tillemont, " as far as we can judge ; " and Arius, with his friend
Euzoius, whom Alexander had deposed from the diaconate, hastened
to Constantinople, and professed their agreement with the faith of
Nicaea. Thereupon Constantine, according to the narrative, re
quired of them a written statement of belief ; and they presented
what has been reckoned the " second Arian creed " (the first being
that statement which Arius had long before sent to Alexander).
This document, although it did not contain the Homoousion,
acknowledged the Son to be " God the Word," and concluded by
a solemn imprecation, " If we do not truly believe in the Father,
Son, and Holy Spirit, as the whole Catholic Church and the Holy
Scriptures teach, God is our Judge, both now, and in the judgment
to come," and a request, significantly though indirectly referring to
Constantine's former letter to Alexander and Arius, that the
Emperor would promote the writers' reuMon to their mother the
Church, " all needless and superfluous questionings being laid
aside." TMs profession of belief, while it failed to satisfy the
thoroughgoing Arians, who thought it disingenuous and evasive,
was well calculated to serve its immediate purpose by the very
vagueness of its language, which at least admitted of an orthodox
sense : and Socrates tells us that " Arius, having thus satisfied
the Emperor, returned to Alexandria ; but the device framed for
suppressing the truth did not for all that succeed : for Athanasius,
instead of receiving Mm, turned away from him with abhorrence,
whereupon he endeavoured to excite a fresh disturbance in
Alexandria by disseminating Ms heresy." And, in fact, we find
Athanasius, in Ms festal letter written at the beginmng of 331,
referring to the renewed hostility of heretics, and to the false

144 The Age of the Fathers. [Chap.
accusations now directed against him. Probably the first of a
long series of calumMes was an attack on the canonical regularity
of his election ; and for tMs the Arianizers would find willing allies
in the Meletian party, now again organized as a schismatical
faction by John Arcaph, to whom, it was said, Meletius on his
death-bed had bequeathed his leadersMp. Some movements of
sectarian hostility had been met, if we are to accept the state
ment of Epiphanius, by an appeal on Athanasius's part to the
civil power ; and at all events, the Meletians were in a temper to
co-operate with Arian intriguers, as having a common enemy in
the archbishop. He himself assures us that Eusebius secured
their aid by ample promises, and that they agreed to help Mm
whenever he might call on them for their support ; and Eusebius
appears to have, in the next place, written to Athanasius, request
ing Mm to admit Arius and his friends to communion at Alexandria.
The bearer of tMs letter was also charged with an oral message, in
which the language of request was exchanged for that of menace.
But neither kind of appeal was likely to avail with Athanasius.
" I refused," he Mmself says in his " Apology against the Arians,"
"declaring that it was not right to admit to communion those
who had invented a heresy contrary to the truth, and had been
condemned by the Oecumenical Council." Thereupon Eusebius
appears to have asked Constantine, in effect, whether his gracious
act in favour of a much-injured priest, whose opinions had been
misconstrued by partisan bitterness, was to be practically nul
lified at the will of one self-opinionated prelate. It was easy
to stir up the jealousy of an autocrat who deemed himself the
special favourite of Heaven, and " bishop for the Church's external
affairs." He sent to Alexandria two palace-officers, Syncletius
and Gaudentius, with a letter couched in these imperious terms :
" You are now informed of my will that all who wish to enter the
Church shall have full liberty to do so. If you Mnder such
entrance on the part of any persons, I will instantly send a person
to depose you by my command, and remove you from your place."
Athanasius replied by a letter in wMch he insisted that " there
could be no communion between the Catholic Church and the
heresy that was fighting against Christ," for in that light he habitu
ally regarded Arianism. The Meletians were now called upon by
Eusebius for definite aid against Athanasius, and after some time
they concocted what he treats as the first formal charge which he
had to encounter ; — three Meletian bishops, whose names appear

IX.] The First Troubles of St. Athanasius. 145
in Meletius's catalogue of Ms supporters, — Ision, Eudaemon, and
Callinicus, — repaired to the court of Constantine, and accused
Athanasius of having assumed the powers of government by taxing
Egypt to provide linen garments called sticharia, probably re
sembling albs, and for use in church service — for otherwise why
should the bishop be charged with tMs exaction? But two of
Athanasius's priests, who happened to be on the spot, at once refuted
tMs accusation : the Emperor wrote to Athanasius, reprobating the
conduct of his accusers, and summoning him to court. He obeyed
the summons, and found his foes ready with another and graver
charge : " Athanasius," they affirmed, " had sent a boxful of gold to
PMlumenus," a rebel against the Emperor of whom nothing else
is known. At Psammathia, a suburb of Nicomedia, Constantine
examined tMs accusation, and found it baseless ; and Athanasius
gave some account of these troubles in Ms festal letter for 332,
written somewhat later than was usual, and while he was still at
the court, and was suffering from an attack of illness. His enemies,
so he wrote, had been " driven away in disgrace for their wanton
attack upon him ; " and he blends the expression of his personal
triumph with the exhortations to prepare for Easter rejoicing.
The Emperor, in parting from Athanasius, charged him with a
letter to the Alexandrian Churchmen denouncing the restless
intriguers against their " most reverend bishop." But in this same
inquiry at PsammatMa, the Emperor had heard and dealt with
another charge which was afterwards revived and widely spread,
and wMch Athanasius represents as having become formidable
after Ms return from the court. TMs was the famous story of the
Broken Chalice. We must recall the case of the Alexandrian
priest Colluthus, who had separated from the communion of
Alexander in the early days of the Arian controversy, on the pre
text that the archbishop was too indecisive in his action against
heresy. One of those whom he had pretended to ordain, and
whom the Council of Alexandria had pronounced to be mere
laics, was named Ischyras: he persisted, despite this decision,
in officiating as a priest, at a small place called "The Peace
of Secontarurus," belonging to the district of the Mareotis, wMch
was so near to Alexandria as not even to require a "chorepis
copus," still less to form a diocese in itself, but in which every
large village had its own presbyter. In this little hamlet
there was no church; but for the purpose of Ms unauthorised
ministrations Ischyras had obtained the use of a small house,
vol. 1. l

146 The Age of the Fathers. [Chap.
belonging to an orphan boy named Ision, the scanty congregation
being cMefiy composed of the nearest relations of the so-called
pastor. Athanasius, on one of his visitation tours, was informed
of these irregularities, and sent one of his priests, named Macarius,
to summon Ischyras before him. Macarius, accompanied by the
legitimate pastor of the district to wMch the hamlet belonged, went
to Ischyras's dwelling, and found that he was ill in bed. The
summons, therefore, was transmitted to Mm through Ms father;
and Ischyras, on recovering, found that his relatives would no
longer countenance his mimstry. He thereupon joined the
Meletians, who had previously been without any supporters in the
Mareotis ; and they, as it appears, partly by persuasion, partly by
threats, and even by violence, induced him to say that Macarius
had found Mm in church, and in the act of celebrating the Eucharist :
that while he was '' offering the oblations," Macarius had rushed
upon Mm, thrown down the holy table, burned the service-books,
and even broken the chalice itself. For this violence Athanasius
himself was held responsible ; but it was easy for him to prove (1)
that there was no church in the hamlet; (2) that the day of
Macarius' s visit was a common weekday, on wMch, according to
the usage of the Egyptian Church, there would have been no
celebration ; (3) that even had it been otherwise, Ischyras was too
ill, on that day, to leave his bed ; (4) finally, that no celebration
by him could have been valid in the eye of the Church, for he was
not a priest at all, his ordination having been pronounced null
and void on account of the essential incompetency of his ordainer.
Ischyras, who was a weak unstable person, was blamed by his
friends for lending Mmself to a gross misrepresentation ; and came
to Athanasius, entreating with tears to be received again into the
Church. Athanasius rebuked Mm sternly, and exacted from him
a written declaration, signed in the presence of six priests and
seven deacons, to the effect that he had uttered these falsehoods
under pressure of actual ill-usage, inflicted specially by three
Meletians, whom he named. " I take God to witness," wrote the
unhappy man, " that no breaking of a chalice, no overturning of a
holy table, took place." In spite of this declaration, the story was
reiterated even before Constantine, who, as we have seen, had heard
enough already to reject it. And at the same time the plotters had
matured a still more malignant conspiracy, which ascribed to Atha
nasius the combined guilt of murder and magic. We pass from the
libel of the Broken Chalice to the libel of the Dead Man's Hand.

ix.] The First Troubles of St. Athanasius. 147
The story which is connected with the name of Arsemus is
characteristic of the men and of the time. John Arcaph had raised
a person of this name to the episcopate for the Meletian flock at
Hypsele in the Thebaid, and had afterwards induced him to go into
Mding. Then the rumour spread, " Arsenius has been murdered."
Why, and by whom ? The answer was ready — " Athanasius got
hold of him, killed him, and dismembered his body for magical
purposes : a sorcerer can do much with a dead man's hand ! — and
here," said the Meletians who told this hideous tale, " here, in this
wooden box, is all that we can recover of Arsenius, — his hand, which
Athanasius has used for Ms dark incantations, and wMch " — they
did not explain how — " has come into our keeping." We must
remember in order to understand the case, how imperfectly, in one
sense, had Christian belief emancipated the soul from the bondage
of dark terrors ; how intense at that time, and long afterwards, was
the belief in the occult craft of the maleficus, a craft of which, it
is said, more than eighty kinds were enumerated : the particular
form here imputed to Athanasius had been practised, says Eusebius,
by the Emperor Valerian under the instruction of an Egyptian
magician ; and Socrates tells us that more than twenty years after
the Nicene Council, the process of clearing out an underground
pagan sanctuary in Alexandria for the erection of a church revealed
the skulls of persons who had been put to death for the purpose of
divination by their intestines. Thus to many minds it seemed
simply natural that the power displayed by a dreaded and hated
enemy should be due to a source not less terrible than abominable.
And as Constantine by a law of 321 — to which Eusebius alludes
in Ms " Life " — had denounced the severest penalties against any
who should be proved to have employed magical arts for injurious
ends, Athanasius soon found that the contempt with wMch at first
he treated tMs new slander would not be sufficient to clear him
in the Emperor's eyes. He received from Dalmatius, Constan
tine's half-brother, for whom had been revived the dormant title
of Censor, and whose son, the younger Dalmatius, was raised to the
higher dignity of Caesar, a formal summons to meet this charge at
Antioch; and, having ascertained that the Emperor was really
" moved " on the subject, he wrote, while on a tour in Pentapolis, to
the Egyptian bishops, desiring that Arsenius should be sought out,
and sent a deacon to carry on the inquiry. A deacon was, as such,
the aide-de-camp of his bishop, ready to receive his orders or go on
his errands ; and this agent went straight to the Thebaid, Arsemus's

148 The Age of the Fathers. [Chap.
country, and learnt that the missing man had been heard of as
concealed in a monastery at Ptemencyrcis, on the eastern bank of
the Nile. Thither he proceeded, but warning had been given of
Ms approach ; and on arriving, he found that Pinnes, the superior,
had already sent Arsenius away. However, he could at any rate
arrest Pinnes, and by aid of some police-force bring him before
one of the military commanders stationed at Alexandria ; in whose
formidable presence the truth came out, and Athanasius gives us,
in Ms " Apology," a letter written by Pinnes to John Arcaph, wMch
was clearly intercepted by his agents, and in which Pinnes informed
his " brother and father " that it was " impossible any longer to
keep secret the fact that ArseMus was alive, and had been Mdden."
But where was he ? The search for him in Egypt was in vain ;
but a new scene of this strange drama, in which the comic is
mingled with the tragic, opens at Tyre. In a tavern of that city
are seated the servants of Archelaus, a distinguished resident, of
" Consular " rank. They hear it casually said by some other cus
tomer, that Arsenius is concealed in a particular house ; they mark
the speaker's face, inform their master, and thus lead to a search
wMch discovers a man evidently in Mding. " I am not Arsenius,"
he exclaims ; but Ms captors insist on showing him to Paul the
bishop, who knew Arsenius of old. Further denial is impossible ;
and Constantine is informed of the detection of the plot. He at
once stops the proceedings of the Censor's court, and commands the
Eusebians, who, says Athanasius, were coming into the Orient — in
effect, to Antioch — for the purpose of supporting the prosecution,
to return home ; and he also writes again to " Pope Athanasius,"
with expressions of cordial respect, desiring him to "read the
letter frequently in public, in order that the Meletians may be
forewarned of his intention to visit any future conspiracies by
personal cognisance according to the civil laws." Other letters
flow in to Athanasius, expressing sympathy and congratulation ;
one, from a Mghly respected bishop, Alexander of Thessalonica,
who addresses Athanasius, evidently on the ground of seniority, as
Ms " brother and son," is preserved as a specimen of the rest. And,
as if to complete the triumph, John Arcaph himself appears in
church, confesses Ms misconduct, is pardoned, and announces to
Constantine that he is reconciled to Athanasius ; and the Emperor
replies in a tone strangely courteous, which in itself proves that
John had been formidable as an enemy. ArseMus Mmself wrote,
in Ms own name and in that of his clergy, to assure Athanasius

IX.] The First Troubles of St. Athanasius. 149
that he and they were resolved for the future to pay all due
obedience to the metropolitical church of Alexandria, and expressed
a hope that Athanasius might " be strong in the Lord for many
years." These events happened about the end of 332. Incredible as it
might seem, Eusebius was able ere long to persuade Constantine
that the recent cases ought to be regularly examined by a council ;
and accordingly a council was summoned to meet at Ms name
sake's city of Caesarea in 333. It did not, however, meet until
334 ; and Athanasius, for " thirty months," as Sozomen tells us,
persisted in refusmg to attend an assembly from which he could
expect no justice. At length, in 335, he was peremptorily ordered
by Constantine to appear at a council wMch was to be holden at
Tyre, preparatory to the solemn dedication of the newly fmished
Church of the Resurrection at Jerusalem.
To Tyre, accordingly, in the summer of that year, Athanasius
went with about fifty of Ms suffragans. Their impetuous Egyptian
temperament, already stirred with wrath against the persistent
enemies of their cMef, blazed out uncontrolled when they found
themselves ushered into the assembly, not, as was the decorous
usage, by attendant deacons, but by the civil officers who had to
register indictments at law — when they saw Macarius dragged in
chains before the Council, and Ischyras himself among the accusers,
and Flacillus in the president's seat, and various bishops, known
for their ammosity to Athanasius, among the judges of the cause.
Protests against such unfairness were in vain. The aged Potam-
mon, bishop of Heraclea Superior, who had sat in the Nicene
Council, and been honoured there for having lost an eye in the
great persecution, could not restrain himself, and passionately
addressed Eusebius of Caesarea. " What, are you sitting there to
judge Athanasius ? You and I were both imprisoned in the cause
of Christ : how you escaped uninjured, you best know." Here we
observe that Potammon, confessor as he was, had not learned the
lesson of thinking the best rather than the worst : as Bishop
Lightfoot;says, "a thousand things might have occurred to earn for
Eusebius an exceptional favour " involving no unfaithfulness to
convictions; and one cannot wonder that he commented on the
" insolence " of the Egyptian. Paphnutius, that other venerable
confessor who had spoken at Nicaea against the project of separating
the married clergy from their wives, took hold of Maximus, bishop
of Jerusalem, led Mm aside, and convinced him, by a few earnest

150 The Age of the Fathers. [Chap.
words, of the innocence of Athanasius. The accusations began :
they did not touch the point of doctrine, but impugned merely the
conduct of the archbishop of Alexandria ; beside the former charges
as to Ischyras and ArseMus, he was said to have gained Ms see
uncanonically ; to have thrown down a chair decked with linen
(the covering which was usually employed for an episcopal seat) ;
to have caused Ischyras to be imprisoned on a charge of pelting
the Emperor's statues; to have deprived the Meletian bishop
Callinicus, imprisoned him, and exposed him to military ill-usage ;
to have placed in Ms see a priest who had been degraded; to
have beaten or imprisoned five other Meletian prelates for disown
ing Mm ; and, by one account, to have been guilty of immorality.
TMs last charge, if really made, was signally confounded ; others
were also promptly met ; in regard to others Athanasius demanded
time. But he had the pain of seeing some old supporters come
forward to incriminate him ; some convicted libellers found a
ready hearing, while his suffragans were not allowed to speak.
The scene by which this unrighteous council is best remembered
is that which followed on the production, once again, of the dead
hand in the little box. A cry of horror and pity broke forth, even
in the town where the story of the murder had been, as one might
think, disposed of once for all. Athanasius looked calmly round;
he had been prepared even for this. " Does any one here," he
asked, "know Arsenius ? " " We did know him right well," cried
many voices. He turned aside for a moment, and led forward a
man closely muffled, with head bent down. " Raise your head,"
said Athanasius. The man obeyed. "Is not this the face of
Arsenius ? " He then lifted off the cloak, first from one hand —
then, after a pause, from the other; and asked triumphantly,
" Has God given to any man more hands than two ? " There was
one moment of triumph : Arcaph, who had repaid the indulgence
shown to Mm by resuming his place among the plotters, ran hastily
out of court ; but others, with a promptness almost admirable,
extemporised a theory of the phenomenon. " It was not really
ArseMus in flesh and blood ; it was an optical illusion — only one
more proof of Athanasius's singular proficiency in the black art ; "
and this produced a new storm, which actually imperilled Ms life
until the Count Dionysius, appointed to " keep order " in the
assembly, saved it by hurrying Mm on shipboard. Afterwards the
Eusebians admitted their mistake about the supposed death of
Arsenius : a bishop, acting under order from Athanasius (always

IX.] The First Troubles of St. Athanasius. 151
the arch-villain of the drama), had beaten Arsenius and shut Mm
up ; he had escaped, but had disappeared : how natural, then, to
think that he was dead ! There remained the case of the Broken
Chalice. Athanasius, by producing Meletius's list of adherents
(given in to his predecessor), proved that Ischyras had not been
among them ; and, in fact, Ischyras was obliged to acknowledge
that Ms congregation consisted of only seven persons. It was then
that the adversaries proposed that the Council should send a com
mission of inquiry into Egypt, to collect information in the
Mareotic district itself. Athanasius was ready with his objections :
it would be a mere waste of time — they had already brought forward
all that they thought they could urge, and now, being at a loss,
they pretended to want more evidence. " At any rate," he urged,
" if there is to be a commission, let it be composed of persons not
suspected of intriguing against me." The Count Dionysius sup
ported tMs plea ; the commissioners, he said, ought to be chosen
by open voting in full synod. But he was disregarded, for the
Eusebians had taken the measure of Ms resolution, which had no
backbone of force. Two Meletians, then at Tyre, were sent as
" avant-couriers " to prepare the ground m the Mareotis ; and the
Eusebians in a private " caucus " chose six of their own partisans —
the very persons to whom Athanasius's " challenge " would apply
— and then canvassed the other bishops, individually, for approval.
Some further remonstrances were made, as by the forty-eight
Egyptian bishops who had come with Athanasius to Tyre ; by
Alexander, bishop of Thessalonica, who, having discovered what the
Eusebian policy meant, took up a manful line against it ; and by
Dionysius, who mildly exhorted the Eusebians to avoid the censure
wMch would inevitably attend a patent injustice, but exhorted m
vain. Men who know what they mean to do are not apt to be
turned aside by a few words which are not likely to be translated
into action. Nothing comes of " It is no good report that I hear."
The commissioners — Theogms, Maris, Macedonius, Theodore, and
two young Western prelates destined to a most unenviable
notoriety, Valens of Mursa and Ursacius of Singidunum, who had
studied under Arius, had been deposed from the presbyterate by
Catholic bishops, and promoted to the episcopate by Arians —
started for Egypt, with Ischyras as their companion " in lodging,
at board, in the wine-cup." The traditions of Roman civil
justice would have been shocked by the proceedings of these
Christian ecclesiastics,, who took care to leave Macarius at

152 The Age of the Fathers. [Chap.
Tyre under a guard ; as to wMch one asks, Where was Count
Dionysius ?
When the inquiry opened in the Mareotis, all semblance of
impartiality was cast aside. As Bishop Julius of Rome afterwards
said, evidence (so called) was admitted on the part of catechumens
as to what had taken place at an Eucharistic "oblation," when,
by uMversal Church-law, they could not have been present.
Incredible as it may seem, we are told that even Jews and pagans
were allowed to give "information," while the testimony of
Catholic presbyters was refused. Philagrius, prefect of Egypt,
who had lately joined the Arians, were ready with pagan soldiers
to overawe witnesses, while the commissioners prompted them by
signalling ; and yet even so it came out that on the day specified
Ischyras had been too ill to officiate. The Alexandrian clergy
drew up a formal protest to the commissioners as having refused
their evidence, and violated the Scriptural rules as to a fair trial
(alluding to Acts xxv. 16). The Mareotic clergy addressed the
Council in a paper to the effect that Ischyras never was a presbyter
and never had a church, and that the commissioners had refused
to give them a hearing ; and they also gave in a memorial (formally
dated on the 10th of Thoth, i.e. September 7) to Philagrius and
to two other officials, containing a brief statement of the facts
about Ischyras, and concluding, " The whole (of his) story is false."
The commissioners, disregardmg all such protests, and supported
not only by State functionaries, but by Meletians faithful to
their compact with Arianizers, made up their report, effected the
banishment of five Alexandrian priests, connived at some pagan
brutalities towards virgins and laics, and sailed for Tyre as if their
end was acMeved.
Meantime Athanasius had complained to Dionysius as to the
constitution of the commission, and his suffragans had demanded
that the case should be sent up to the Emperor on the ground that
the offences charged were matter for civil justice ; and he Mmself,
despairing of any redress at Tyre, "resolved," as Gibbon ex
presses it, " to make a bold and dangerous experiment, whether
the tMone was inaccessible to the voice of truth." Attended by
five of his loyal suffragans, he took the first vessel for Constanti
nople, and suddenly appeared in the middle of the road where
Constantine was riding eastward into Ms new capital. The
Emperor was startled; who was this small man that dared to
stand in his path ? An attendant said, " It is Athanasius." To

ix.] The First Troubles of St. Athanasius. 153
Constantine the name suggested something like " troubling of
Israel ; " he had been taught to regard the bishop of Alexandria
as a restless agitator ; he tried to pass him by in silence. But
Athanasius was not one to be passed by ; he meant to be heard,
and the Emperor's impressible temperament ere long acknowledged
the moral digmty of one who asked for no favour, but for the right
of confronting his accusers in the Imperial presence. TMs right
Constantine felt that he could not but concede. Meanwhile those
accusers were having their own way at Tyre. The Council received
the Mareotic report as conclusive, and on the strength of it con
demned Athanasius, but in their synodal letter grounded the decision
partly on Ms " contumacy " in ignoring the summons to attend a
council at Caesarea, partly on his " insolent and turbulent " manner
of treating the charges brought against him — passing them over as
insignificant, and declining the Council's jurisdiction, and lastly,
on the proofs of his guilt obtained by the commissioners in Egypt.
They then acknowledged the Meletians as Churchmen (they could
not do less in requital of services rendered), and adjourned to
Jerusalem for the grand dedication festival. The ceremony took
place in the presence of two hundred prelates on the 13th of
September, a day long afterwards kept holy at Jerusalem, and still
marked in the Constantinopolitan Church calendar as " the Encaenia
of the Resurrection." We can imagme the admiration of those
who crowded to the solenmity : the persons who took part in it,.
approaching the basilica, passed westward tMough the entrance
court into the lofty nave, with its double aisles and rows of vast
columns, its carved and gilded roof, its walls glistening with marble
of various hues, and gazed with wonder and delight at the apse
with its twelve pillars, beneath which, and overhanging the altar,
stretched a splendid curtam heavy with gold and jewels ; while,
in the eastern space outside, a cloistered court united the church
to the round Chapel of the Sepulchre. Here, amid all that
ecclesiastical majesty could exhibit — on ground encompassed by
the most sacred associations — in an assemblage of Church
dignitaries which Eusebius of Caesarea compares to the Nicene, as
including representatives of Persia, Mcesia, MacedoMa, Thrace,
after addresses by many episcopal orators, and a solemn celebra
tion of the Eucharist, Arius and Ms friends were recognised as
Catholic Christians, on the ground of the indefinite and inadequate
formula which, about five years before, they had presented to
Constantine. The Council made no pretence of reconsidering the

154 The Age of the Fathers. [Chap.
doctrinal decisions of Nicaea; the line taken was simply that
Arius had been misunderstood, in consequence, as the synodal
letter intimated, of misrepresentations prompted by "jealousy,"
and that, in fact, he and his adherents had preserved in their state
ment "the universally acknowledged apostolic tradition." The
synodal letter was addressed to all the churches within what we
may call the patriarchate of Athanasius ; he, of course, was treated
as a deposed bishop, and, on his part, he describes this Eusebian
Council as virtually hostile to his theology as well as to his
character. At any rate, while professing not to innovate in
doctrine, this imposing array of bishops virtually set the Homoou
sion aside. One prelate, whose name will often recur as an
unhappy one in our Mstory, and who was intensely hostile to
all Arianizers, had refused to attend the festival, because of the
recent injustice to Ms friend Athanasius — this was Marcellus of
Ancyra. It was doubtless a startling shock to the prelates at Jerusalem
to receive a letter from Constantine, in which, after intimating
more than a suspicion that the decisions at Tyre had been dictated
" by passion and not by justice," and narrating the circumstances
of his interview with Athanasius, he commanded them to hasten
to his court. The assembly broke up in haste ; many fled home
wards ; but the two Eusebii, Theognis, Patrophilus, Valens, and
Ursacius, at once obeyed the summons, trusting to their past ex
perience of the power of " the last word " over Constantine. They
resolved, with remarkable versatility and prudence, to drop all
previous charges about linen, about gold, about Ischyras, about
Arsenius, and to bring forward a fifth, which was sure to touch
the Emperor on a sensitive point, to the effect that Athanasius had
threatened to distress Constantinople by hindering the periodical
sailing of the Alexandrian cornfleet, which had now been diverted
from the Old Rome to the New. Athanasius, in amazement, asked
how he, " a poor man," could cherish any such design ? But the
Nicomedian Eusebius, with an oath, protested that he was " a rich
man and a powerful ; " and when Athanasius resumed Ms own
defence, Constantine, as if utterly weary of the long disputes about
his conduct, cut Mm short by a sentence of banishment to Trier,
or, as we commonly call it, Treves, the ancient capital of Roman
Gaul and Germany, where the Emperor himself had often resided,
and where his eldest son Constantine was then ruling in Ms name.
Hither, then, we must in imagination follow Athanasius through

IX.] The First Troubles of St. Athanashis. 155
Germany in the winter of 335-6. Accompanied by some faithful
Egyptians, to whom, as to himself, such a journey must have been
no slight trial, he arrived in February, 336, at the destined place
of Ms first exile, and received a most cordial and respectful
welcome from Constantine the younger, and from Maximin the
bishop. To an Egyptian the city on the Moselle seemed, as he
himself says, an "extremity of the earth." It had not yet,
apparently, been adorned with the great gateway wMch now in its
decay is called " Nigra ; " but eighty years before it had seen an
Augustus " displaying the majesty of the empire," and forty-two
years before it had become the seat of government for the
Emperor's father as " Caesar ; " and if its commercial importance
had not reached the point which led Ausonius to speak of it
as " feeding, clothing, and arming the forces of the empire,"
Athanasius must have felt that, as a sojourner within its
walls, he was safe from the weltering sea of barbarism, and
sheltered by the power of " the Roman peace." His position, as
fixed by this banishment, was a peculiar one ; he was, indeed, an
exile in consequence of a charge which seriously affected his
loyalty, and which the impatient Emperor had not allowed him to
refute ; yet he seems to have sometimes thought that the sentence
might have been intended to shelter Mm from further persecution.
It was a time of rest which he greatly needed, and was by no
means without its brightness and consolation ; and it is interesting
to think that the city which was, in this same century, to be
associated with the names of Ambrose and Martin, was now a
haven of refuge for Athanasius.

CHAPTER X.
FROM TREVES TO SARDICA.
We have seen how Marcellus of Ancyra had expressed Ms indig
nation at the gross injustice of the Tyrian Council, by refusing to
take part in the dedication ceremony at Jerusalem. But, although
he had been for more than twenty years a bishop, and a metro
politan of the " Galatian " Church — not to speak of his position as
one of the Nicene Three Hundred — he had already given great
offence, and sown the seed of protracted scandal and embarrass
ment, by his own theological language in controversy with
Arianism. He had been drawn to engage in this controversy by
a wish to counteract the influence of a widely circulated treatise
called " the Syntagma," the author of which, Asterius of Cappa-
docia, was one of the older Arians, and is several times named
with reprobation, as " a crafty sopMst," in the writings of Atha
nasius. Asterius maintained that the Son of God was one of the
things " made " by the beneficent will of the Father, and by His
impersonal Wisdom, wMch was to be clearly distinguished from
CMist ; and that Christ was only the " power of God " in the
same sense that the " locust-army " in Joel was called (in the
Septuagint) His power, i.e. simply as God's agent and instrument.
TMs treatise Asterius carried about with him in Syria and else
where, and read it at synods, seating himself, layman as he was,
within the chancel among the clergy. Such boldness excited no
little disgust; and Marcellus, a man of eager temperament, and
impelled to attack Asterius not only as an individual heretic, but
as patronised by the Eusebian leaders, plunged into the fray, and
wrote a work professedly in exposition of the mysterious passage
(1 Cor. xv. 28) on the future " Subjection " of the Son. In this
book, which he is said to have personally placed in Constantine's
own hands, he did not spare the memory of Pailinus of Tyre, who

Chap, x.] From Treves to Sardica. 157
had once, wMle staying with him, called Christ a " creature ; " and
he attacked the two Eusebii, and Narcissus, bishop of Neromas,
the last of whom he represented as holding what was eqMvalent
to Tritheism. But what were his own assertions ? As far as they
can be ascertained from passages quoted by a very hostile critic,
Eusebius of Caesarea, Marcellus had been driven by his anti- Arian
vehemence into something very like a Sabellianizing position, which
would also involve " Psilanthropism " or " HumaMtarianism."
Pressed by the Arian arguments from the relation of a son, as
such, to a father, and from the phrase " Image of God," as applied
to Christ, he took the bold course of abandoning, so to speak, the
terms " Son " and " Image " to the detractors from Christ's Divine
dignity. He invented a broad distinction between the Logos and
the Son, whom Irenaeus, faithfully interpreting the prologue of St.
John's Gospel, had identified ; and endeavoured to secure the
etermty of the former by reducing Him in effect to what we call
an attribute, while, as to the latter, he sacrificed the whole Divine
significance of the title of " God's own " or " only-begotten Son,"
and attached to the Sonship a significance exclusively human. In
other words, Marcellus, apparently, held (1) that the Logos was
simply a power dwelling in God, sometimes quiescent like an
unspoken thought, sometimes operative like an uttered word : a
power wMch, in the act of creation, emerged from the Divine mind
as an efficient or operative energy, but which neither then nor at
any other time acquired any true personal distinctness ; (2) that
this Logos, by a sort of " expansion " of the Divine Unity, became
temporarily related to Jesus, who, as the chosen organ for its
mamfestation, the man whose being was filled with its presence,
was called the " Son " and " Image " of God ; but from whom, in
God's appointed time, the Logos would withdraw itself, and re
lapse by a movement of " contraction " into the bosom of Divinity.
Whether these views, involving such a revolution in Christian
thought, were really adopted by Marcellus, or only " put forward
as matters of discussion " (a plea borrowed from Greek schools}^
was a point much debated by his friends and foes. Athanasius,
for a time at least, hoped the best as to his orthodoxy, but
afterwards, by one account, suspended fellowship with Mm, and
by another, indicated that he had gone much too near to
heresy, and, according to Newman, implicitly criticized Ms school
in the "fourth Discourse against the Arians." Later fathers
more explicitly pronounced against him, and modern writers

158 The Age of the Fathers. [Chap.
generally treat him as heterodox. The Eusebians, of course,
denounced Mm indignantly : Socrates believed that the bishops
assembled at Jerusalem had examined Ms treatise, and extorted
from him a promise to burn it — a promise wMch he did not fulfil ;
but this story is inconsistent with later events, for such a sub
mission, once made, would have settled the fact of his heterodoxy
as an author. It may be that the assembly at Jerusalem did take
some notice of Ms book ; but we may follow Sozomen when he
ascribes its formal condemnation to a meeting of bishops at Con
stantinople, held, obviously, after the baMshment of Athanasius.
These prelates found the charge of heresy proved ; they deposed
the aged metropolitan from Ms see, and appointed to it a priest
named Basil, afterwards famous as the head of the Semi-Arians,
and admitted to "umte in his person the most varied learning
with the most blameless life of all " that remarkable party. TMs
Council of Constantinople laid up in the records of that church a
memorandum of the condemned tenets of Marcellus ; and letters
were sent, to the neighbourmg churches, contaiMng extracts wMch,.
it was said, would be sufficient specimens of a book too lengthy to-
transcribe, and of which the heretical character would be evident.
All copies of the work were to be sought for and destroyed ; and
(as a more legitimate method of abating its effect) Eusebius of
Caesarea was desired to answer it, and accordingly produced, first,
two books " Against Marcellus," and then three books more " On
the Church's Theology," in wMch he used language "explicitly
orthodox," says Lightfoot, " against the two main theses of Arius,"
although in some passages, as might be expected, he exhibited a
strong Subordinationism. Sozomen tells us that in their letter to-
Constantius requesting him to banish Marcellus, they described
Mm as having insulted the Emperor by refusing to attend the
dedication of the great church at Jerusalem. Thus, as we read in
the Athanasian " History of the Arians," they caused Marcellus to-
be driven from his home.
We now approach the last scene in the life of the great heresi-
arch, from whose opinions Marcellus's language represents, to all
appearance, so impetuous a recoil. Arius had been again unable,
after the exile of Athanasius, to regain his position at Alexandria.
He was recalled to Constantinople. Athanasius tells us that he
Mmself was informed by the priest Macarius, then on the spot, of
what next occurred. This account is as follows: Constantine
asked Arius whether he " held the faith of the Catholic Church ; '"

x.] From Treves to Sardica. 159
Arius, who, it must be remembered, had been recently recognised
at Jerusalem as holding it, said, with a solemn oath, " I do." He
then presented, once more, a written statement of belief, disin
genuously, as Athanasius says, evading the points which were
really at issue, and employing Scriptural terms which might, of
course, conceal a heretical meaning. Athanasius describes this-
as a protestation " that he did not hold the opinions for which
Alexander had condemned him." But this description represents
what Athanasius saw in the proceeding : it is not by any means
probable that Arius referred at all to Ms old controversy with his
former bishop. Athanasius would feel that if Arius said, " I do
believe as the Church believes," he was either a convert to the
Nicene faith, or a trickster of the worst kind ; and thus he would
speak of Arius as implicitly disclaiming, and that insincerely,,
his notorious misbelief. Was Arius deceitful in the business ?
Neander thinks that he has been unfairly blamed — that he might
protest as he did honestly, in his own sense, as he understood
Scripture. But Ms protest was in answer to the question, " Do
you believe with the Church ? " and Constantine would take it as-
indicating an acceptance of what had been affirmed at Nicaea by
a sentence which no subsequent authority had set aside. And
even as so understood, the final and emphatic assurance of
orthodoxy given by Arius did not wholly allay the Emperor's
suspicions. "You have done well to swear, if you really do
hold the right faith ; but if not — according to your oath will
God judge you ! " The Eusebians, as soon as Arius left the
presence, attempted to bring him at once into the church of
Peace, then the cathedral, which stood northward of the palace,
and nearer to the creek of the Golden Horn. But the venerable
bishop Alexander, who was then about ninety-eight, and had
held the see of Byzantium as early as 314, firmly withstood the
entrance of " the inventor of the heresy." He was but reiterating
a previous refusal, for, as Socrates tells us, Eusebius of Nicomedia
had menaced Mm with deposition by a council, if he offered any
hindrance to the practical carrying-out of the decree of the Council
of Jerusalem in favour of Arius. " But Alexander cared nothing
for deposition when he had to deal with a plan for overthrowing
the Nicene doctrine, of which," says Socrates, " he deemed himself
a cmardian ; " and finding that even the reception of Arius by Con
stantine had no effect on Ms persistency, the Eusebians angrily
broke off the conference, saying, " We brought Arius hither in

160 The Age of the Fathers. [Chap.
despite of your wishes, and to-morrow, in despite of your wishes,
he shall communicate with us in this church." They turned away
from the church-gates ; and the old prelate, in sore distress, with
Macarius for his only attendant, went up Mto the chancel, threw
Mmself on the pavement, and in that posture with outspread
hands began to pray, or, as Socrates expresses it, " he bade fare
well to argument, and took refuge with God." Macarius was
prostrate in prayer at Ms side, and heard him, as Athanasius says,
asking two tMngs : " If Arius is to be brought to CommuMon to
morrow, let me Thy servant depart. But if Thou wilt spare Thy
Church — and I know that Thou wilt — look on the words of the
Eusebians, and take away Arius, lest heresy may seem to enter
with Mm into the church, and impiety be hereafter reckoned for
piety." Such was the tremendous prayer of Alexander on that
Saturday afternoon ; and somewhat later, when Arius was walking
through the forum of ConstantMe, and approaching the lofty pillar
of porphyry, while Ms face, often gloomy and sometimes wild-
looking, was bright with triumph, and his conversation with the
friends who tMonged around him had all the excitement of Mgh
spirits, he suddenly stopped short, withdrew from his companions,
and in a few minutes was found dead — -a violent internal dis
order, accompanied with haemorrhage, having destroyed life in a
manner so fearful that it recalled the horrors of the Field of
Blood. " The Eusebians, greatly confounded, buried their fellow-
conspirator, while Alexander, amid the rejoicing of the Church,
celebrated the CommuMon with piety and orthodoxy." Such was
Athanasius's account of the following Sunday's proceedings ; but
he adds a qualifying explanation that the rejoicing was not an
unchristian exultation in his death — " God forbid ! " — but a recog
nition of what appeared to them a most uneqmvocal divine judg
ment, " a condemnation of AriaMsm by the Lord Himself." The
Arianizers, however, had their own explanation, also a preter
natural one ; — the forces of magic wMch had been employed M the
case of Arsenius had been not less successful, though exerted for
a yet guiltier purpose, in the case of Arius; on which Neander
remarks that magic would not have been thought of, if poisoning
could have accounted for the tragedy. Others, as Sozomen can
didly tells us, ascribed the death to an affection of the heart, or
some such ailment, caused by joy at unexpected success. The
event took place in 336; and the Churchmen of Alexandria
thought the opportunity a good one for addressing Constantine

x.] From Treves to Sardica. 161
in behalf of their banished prelate. The great Antony, says
Sozomen, wrote more than once to the Emperor, entreating Mm
not to believe the Meletian libels against Athanasius. But Con
stantine, who seems to have made up Ms mind that Athanasius
was incurably contentious, and that peace and order would be
imperilled by Ms return, told Antony that the judgment of the
recent Council (of Jerusalem) must be respected, and commanded
the Alexandrian clergy and others to forbear their foolish inter
cessions in favour of a man condemned for misconduct. On the
other hand, he would not tolerate the Meletian party movements,
and banished John Arcaph from Alexandria.
One more scene of Eusebian violence, sanctioned by Constantine,
marks the year 336. Alexander, M the August, probably, after
the death of Arius, was laid on Ms death-bed; and in Ms last
moments, says Socrates, recommended that his see should be filled
by one of two persons. " If you want a man apt to teach, and
holy in life, choose Paul, whom I ordained priest ; he is young in
years, but not in mind. But if" — here Sozomen's version is more
trustworthy — " you prefer a man conversant with public busmess,
fit to cope with civil rulers, take MacedoMus, who has been for
many years a deacon of tMs church." The orthodox preferred
Paul, whose family came from Thessalonica, and who was in great
repute for eloquence ; the Arianizers favoured Ms rival. Ultimately,
Paul was chosen, and consecrated; but speedily assailed with
some false accusation, and bamshed by Constantine, doubtless
under the influence of Eusebius, and in the interests, as the Emperor
would think, of public order. TMs was the first of four expulsions
from Ms bishopric, wMch distingMshed Paul amongst several
orthodox bishops who suffered, in fact, for their orthodoxy, and
wMch likened Ms vicissitudes, in some sort, to those of Athanasius.
In tMs instance, Pontus was his place of exile ; and Constantine
appears to have kept his see vacant, and, as in Athanasius's case,
prevented any appointment of a successor. He would only go to
a certain point with Ms Eusebian advisers. And his time was now
drawing to a close ; he had, in the early part of 337, some prospect
of a Persian war, for wMch he made vigorous preparations, not
forgetting religious appliances, such as a chapel-tent of embroidered
linen, in which the CMistian rites might be celebrated during the
campaign. But the war was not destined to break out in his days :
the Persian king, after some bluster about demanding the restora
tion of provinces ceded to the empire, thought it unwise to measure
VOL. I. M

1 62 The Age of the Fathers. [Chap.
himself in real conflict against the " ever- victorious " Emperor, who,
for Ms part, had a far different ordeal awaiting him. Ecclesiastical
Mstory cannot dwell with any special interest on the grandiose and
self-complacent progress of Constantine to the end wMch he reached
on WMt-Sunday, May 22, 337, and probably in his sixty-fourth
year. The tardy and formal admission to the full catechumenate ;
the death-bed request for that baptism wMch he had deliberately
postponed until tMs supreme hour ; the declaration, after he had
received the imtiatory sacrament from Eusebius, that " now at last
he was in very truth blessed," that all the unbaptized — that is, all
who were what he had so long been content to be — were " miser
able ; " the imperial purple studiously laid aside, and the arraying
of Ms whole person, and of his very bed, in radiant " chrisom "
wMte ; — these scenes, so full of pomp, so devoid of moral beauty and
true pathos, impress us with no tenderness nor reverence for the
memory of a sovereign whose character, though great in some re
spects, and not without amiability, was never free from " repulsive "
elements, and did not improve as he drew near to Ms end. It has
been well said that the spirit of the East overwhelmed him ; the
Roman Augustus became Orientalised. As a so-called CMistian
prince, he is found grievously wanting from Ms lack of simplicity
and smgle-mindedness, of religious consistency and reality : he has
a certain belief in the Christian dogma, but his ineradicable egotism,
Ms Caesarean self-assertion, make Mm at best a patron of the faith,
and often a dictator to the faithful. The caprice and fickleness
wMch were among his most obvious weaknesses made Mm often
contradict, in effect, his apparently fixed resolutions in favour of
the Church ; and, as if by a strange irony of fate, the autocrat who,
immediately after the triumph of Catholicism at Nicaea, had been
ready to persecute Arians, had subjected heretics and schismatics
(with a slight exception in favour of Novatians) to burdensome
civil obligations, and had afterwards proscribed heretical worship,
even in private houses, by a law which produced, we are told, much
insincere conformity, — tMs Constantine fell so absolutely under
the influence of advisers bent on undermining Catholicism, as to-
become their instrument in schemes wMch he could not penetrate,
and to receive baptism at the hands of a prelate whom the Nicene
Council had been hardly able not to condemn. Great allowance,
of course, must be made for his peculiar temptations, for the extra
ordinary and anomalous position wMch he held, for all difficulties
that stood in the way of Ms becoming a Christian Caesar in good

x.] From Treves to Sardica. 163
earnest. And even as many Christians of pure and high tone may
have joined in the vehement grief which followed that imperial
corpse, as it was borne under the gilded roof of his new basilica
of the Apostles, to rest in a central space surrounded by twelve
memorial coffins, so should we, when we think of Mm in com
parison with Alfred or St. Louis, or even with such minor sovereigns
as.Ethelbert of Kent or Oswald of Northumbria, remember that
less was given to him, in one sense, than to any of them ; and
recognise whatever in him, indicating at least occasional nobleness
or worth, or some honest adoption of a great religious cause, must
lead us, in the words of De Broglie, to " claim for him the justice
of man, and to hope for him the mercy of God."
It is natural to think best of Constantine when comparing him
with Constantius, his successor in the East, who was twenty
years old at his father's death. And if that father's court
and personal surroundings had not become like those of Dio
cletian, or even of a vulgar Asiatic despot, it would have been
possible for Constantius to have grown up less tyrannic, less hard
hearted, less dependent on vile palace-favourites who well knew
how to " support false accusations by secret wMsperings," — such
as Eusebius his High Chamberlain, arrogant, regardless of justice,
" eager to mia " every rival, who became " intolerable in his
consciousness of power over his master," and " over whom," as
Ammianus says with an ironical inversion of positions, Constantius
" had a good deal of influence ; " or Paul the " notary," called
" The Chain " from Ms skill in stringing together calumnies ; or
Mercurius the treasurer, who stole into private parties, like " a dog
that wags its tail but will give a sly bite," to be a spy on un
guarded talk, and whose ability in malignant suggestions gave him
the nickname of " Count of the Dreams." Constantius had some
virtues : he was sober, chaste, a good soldier, and not without some
taste for learMng, although, we are told, his rhetorical and poetical
attempts were failures ; and it was perhaps a sense of his own
practical incapacity which showed itself not only in his absurd
affectation of impassive stateliness, the stiff pose of the head, and
the absence of all expression in Ms face, but also in the avidity
for flatteries, the credulity wMch made him fancy that he had
fought where in fact he had not been present, the excessive
vacillation, the dread of assassination, the restless suspiciousness,
and the implacable ferocity (born of fear) wMch Ammianus com
pares to those qualities as they existed in Dionysius of Syracuse,

164 The Age of the Fathers. [Chap.
or in Caligula, Domitian, or Commodus. He continued, naturally
enough, the Church-policy of Ms father, and fell under the
influence of that Arian priest who had swayed the mind of
Constantine in favour of Arius. And not only did Constantius
give practical confidence to the Eusebians, but he was gradually
drawn to adopt the Arianizing theology; Ms wife and Ms
chamberlains were instrumental for this result, but he was also
impressed, it would seem, by the ability of Eusebius of Nicomedia,
and the exegetical attainments of Theodore, bishop of Perinthus.
It was not, in all probability, until more than a year from
Constantine's death that any change took place in the circumstances
of the great exiled primate of Egypt. But on June 17, either in
337 or 338, Constantine II., the eldest of the tMee imperial
brothers, who ruled over Gaul, Spam, and Britain, wrote from
Treves to the Christians of Alexandria, announcing his purpose
to restore Athanasius, "the true expositor of the adorable law
of CMistiaMty" ("law" being used here, as often elsewhere,
for religion). In this announcement he thought it prudent
or respectful to represent himself as merely carrying out an
intention of Ms late father ; for which we have no evidence but
Ms word. He assumed the consent of his brother Constantius,
and he took Athanasius with him to Viminacium, a town of
Mcesia, on the high-road to Constantinople, where the tMee
brothers, Constantine, Constantius, and Constans, held a meet
ing, and concurred in the restoration of the bishop of Alexandria.
The latter went on to Constantinople, where he seems to have
found Paul reinstated m the bishopric ; but Macedonius took
the opportumty of Athanasius's visit to urge in his pre
sence a complaint or accusation against Paul; whatever it was,
it was soon dropped, and Paul admitted Macedonius to priests'
orders. After leaving Constantinople, Athanasius had a second
interview with Constantius at Caesarea in Cappadocia ; as at
Viminacium, he said not a word against Ms former persecutors,
and he left the Emperor, to all appearance, with good prospects of
a friendly understanding; In November the churches of Alexandria
resounded with thanksgivings, and the clergy and people had the
intense delight of welcoming back their bishop after his exile.
Reasons have been ably urged for the earlier of the two years 337
and 338, one of wMch must be the year of his first return ; but
on the whole it may be said that probabilities incline towards the
latter. Constantine II. was hardly likely to make the restoration

x.] From Treves to Sardica. 165
of Athanasius one of his first pieces of business, and to take it in
hand at Treves only twenty-six days after his father's death near
Constantinople. And although in his letter he only styles himself
" Caesar," whereas he became fully Emperor in September, 337, yet
he might even in 338 adopt a modest style in addressing Ms
brother's Egyptian subjects. And the Syriac version of the lost
Greek of Athanasius's tenth " festal letter," written at the beginmng
of 338, is declared by a very eminent Syriac scholar, the late Dean
Payne Smith, to imply that he was still " absent " from home — " at
the ends of the earth," " separated in place from " his flock, " as it
were in the wilderness," and yet practically assured that Ms recall
would ere long be obtaMed, because to God all thmgs were possible.
One very touching passage of the letter illustrates the same
point : — " 0 my beloved and dearest, if it is from tribulations
that we must pass to comfort, we ought not to be grieved on
account of vicissitudes, or frightened because the world is resisting
CMist, but to treat such tMngs as a probation."
But soon after his return, new troubles broke in upon Ms peace.
The enemies of Athanasius bestirred themselves to lay two new
charges against him before the three princes : " He had misappro
priated the corn granted by the late Emperor for charitable purposes
in Egypt and Libya ; and the day of his return had been darkened
by violence and bloodshed." Irritable and suspicious, Constantius
wrote to Athanasius, assuming the truth of the former charge ; but
"messengers from Athanasius succeeded in refuting both." He
was, however, in a weak position technically, if not morally, in
regard to his having resumed his see by mere civil authority, after
having been deprived of it by a council. His answer would have
been that the Council of Tyre was a mere partisan assembly, wMch
had forfeited its synodical dignity by the most flagrant Mjustice.
At the same time, Ms adversaries, like those of CMysostom long
afterwards, had a point which they could press ; they also went
further back, so to speak, into the past, and impugned the canonical
validity of his election to the see. Thus equipped with weapons of
attack, they began to work for the object which, while Constantine
lived, had seemed impracticable, the establishment of an Arian
bishop in Athanasius's stead — the person selected being one Pistus,
an excommunicated Arian, who had been consecrated by the
notorious Arian bishop Secundus. TMs scheme appeared far from
unpromising. Eusebius of Nicomedia had now attained to a height
of rank and influence wMch multiplied Ms opportunities and

1 66 The Age of the Fathers. [Chap.
satisfied Ms ambition. The charge against Paul, which seems to
have affected his moral conduct, had been revived, and he had a
second time been expelled from Ms see, and banished to Singara
in Eastern Mesopotamia, afterwards the scene of a Roman defeat,
in order, manifestly, that Eusebius might be placed in that con
spicuous bishopric, and thus become a natural centre of operations
for the eastern prelates of Ms party. They now resolved to try
whether it was possible to enlist aid from the Western Church,
and especially the aid of the bishop of Rome, Julius I., who had
come to his great place m February, 337, and become known by
tMs time for energy and force of character. To him the Eusebians
sent three envoys — Macarius, a priest, and two deacons, Martyrius
and Hesychius. They were bearers of a letter, and were directed
to state the case against Athanasius, and in favour of Pistus's
promotion to the Alexandrian see, considered as canonically vacant.
But Athanasius was on the alert ; he wrote and circulated a letter
wMch, he tells us, induced many bishops to disown Pistus with
anathema ; and we learn from Julius himself the effect of this step
on the Arian delegates at Rome. They had exhibited to him the
report of the Mareotic Commission as if decisive against Athanasius.
But on hearing that presbyters of Athanasius were coming to
Rome with a letter, one of their envoys, though unwell at the
time, "decamped by night," rather than face the shame of an
inevitable exposure. His companions, the two deacons, put a
bolder face on a bad business, and stood their ground ; but being
unable to meet the charges brought against Pistus, they requested
Julius to assemble a synod for the discussion of the case of
Athanasius, and if he pleased, to preside as chief arbiter. " This,"
says Athanasius with quiet humour, " they did in the hope of
frightening me." Julius for his part invited both parties to a
council ; but from Athanasius we gather that he himself was asked
to select the place — Julius being pretty well assured that Rome
would be the place thus selected. He also sent to Athanasius
a very important piece of evidence — the report of the Mareotic
Commission. Athanasius immediately laid it before a council of
Egyptian bishops, who thereupon drew up, or adopted, a synodical
Encyclical or circular letter, which forms the first document M the
great Athanasian " Apology." It is addressed to " the bishops of
the Catholic Church everywhere," and is an elaborate defence of
Athanasius to the following effect. His adversaries were leagued
with Arians, and animated by ferocious personal malignity ; their

x.] From Treves to Sardica. 167
charges against him were libellous ; the bloodshed of which they
had accused Mm was, in fact, the execution of certain criminals by
the prefect of Egypt, while Athanasius himself was still in Syria ;
their story of irregularities in Ms appointment, was the very
reverse of the truth ; the new occupant of the see of Constanti
nople would do well to look to Ms own position. The Council of
Tyre was anything rather than a regular ecclesiastical synod ; its
proceedings were one long mockery of justice. The story of
Arsenius's murder had been triumphantly refuted, and Arsenius
was actually at this very time requesting to be readmitted to
communion with the Egyptian Church. Ischyras was the mere
mouthpiece of a scandalous partisan calumny; the Mareotic
Commission had exMbited its temper, and concluded its misdoings,
by a disgraceful alliance with the pagans of Alexandria ; and
documents were extant which proved the inconsistency and the
falsity of the statements made against Athanasius. The Encyclical
ended by calling on all bishops to disbelieve the Eusebian
slanders, and to understand that all signatures purporting to be
those of Egyptian bishops, in support of these slanders or of the
Eusebian party, were in fact the signatures of adherents of the
Meletian scMsm.
So stood matters at the end of 339 or the begmning of 340
(according to the cMonology wMch has here been adopted) ; but in
the Lent of 340 an edict of the prefect of Egypt astoMshed the
Alexandrians by announcing that a new bishop was commg to
take possession. This was not Pistus (he had been tMown over),
but a Cappadocian named Gregory, sent from the court to supersede
Athanasius, in accordance with a resolution passed by a recent
synod held at Antioch. Then followed indignant outcries, protests
before the magistrates that this new attack was prompted by
partisan hatred, and gathermgs of excited people in the churches
in order to pray for the averting of a great calamity. Accordmg to
the literal sense of the earliest authority, the order of events was
as follows. By way of preparing for Gregory's arrival, and in
timidating those who had remonstrated against his appointment,
the prefect Philagrius attacked the church called after Quirinus,
and encouraged the pagan rabble and a crowd of rough peasants
(many of whom would have their own grudges against CMistianity)
to set fire to the baptistery and the church books, to ill-treat monks,
to bind and drag about some widows and virgins, to offer birds
and pine-cones to their idols on the holy table itself, perhaps to

1 68 The Age of the Fathers. [Chap.
tMow the consecrated elements on the floor, and to profane the
sanctuary by scandalous orgies. Towards the end of Lent Gregory
arrived, escorted not by clergy, but by soldiers, as the bishop
recogMsed by the State. He brought with Mm as Ms secretary
an Arian named Ammon, who had been excommunicated by
Alexander. He seems to have persuaded Mmself that he must
allow rough work to be done in Ms cause; and he was at
least indirectly concerned in giving to pagans and Jews a free
hand for plundering the church, seizing on monies deposited
there, and appropriating to their own use the stores of wme
and oil, and even the doors, and the wood of the chancel-
screen. Fresh outrages were committed on persons and pro
perty; the allowance of bread for the minor clerics and the
virgins was intercepted; on Good Friday itself, March 28,
Philagrius scourged thirty-four women, one of whom held her
psalter in her hands during the brutal infliction; and on Easter
Day, to the special satisfaction of the pagans, Catholics were
imprisoned for disowning the intrusive bishop, and thereby, as it
would be represented, disparaging the imperial authority. After
tMs, Athanasius, who had Mtherto remained within the precincts
of a church not yet attacked or desecrated, thought it time to
withdraw, by way of preventing further outrages, into a place of
security, where he composed an Encyclical letter. But a reign of
terror set m ; Catholics were disturbed in their prayers at home
by domiciliary visits of soldiers; priests were hindered from
admiMstering baptism and visiting the sick; captains of vessels
were compelled under torture to take charge of Gregory's letters
to other Arian bishops ; and a memorial signed by pagans and
Arians, imputmg capital crimes to Athanasius, was placed in
Philagrius's willing hands for transmission to the Emperor. Such,
is the account given in our cMef document, the Encyclical. The
" History of the Arians," wMch seems to have been composed in
part by a secretary or friend of Athanasius without the advantage
of Ms continuous supervision, describes him quite mistakenly as
leaving Egypt at the mere report of the enormities attendant on
Gregory's arrival; and the Index to Ms Festal Letters goes yet
further astray, by making Mm flee from Alexandria four days
before that arrival took place. Accepting, then, Ms Encyclical as-
of primary authority, we must say that, after finishing and de
spatching it, Athanasius contrived to get on sMpboard and to sail
for Rome. That he made but one visit to Rome at this time —

x.] From Treves to Sardica. 169
instead of two, as Socrates imagmed — is now admitted on all
hands ; but the year is still a matter of dispute. However, the
thirteenth of Ms Festal Letters, written from Rome early in 341,
seems to date his arrival at latest in the spring of 340 ; and the
question between 339 and 340 runs up, evidently, mto the
question whether his return from Treves was in 337 or 338, as to
which we have adopted the later date. His " one care on reacMng
Rome," he says with a certain fine simplicity, was " to lay his case
before the Church : afterwards he spent his time in attending the
services." Most impressive would be the sight of the great
Confessor visiting, for instance, the church of St. Peter, wMch
absorbed the whole attention of one of Ms companions, the
Egyptian monk Ammonius. He, we are told, would not visit
any other bMlding in the city : his austere unworldliness, perhaps,
regarded its secular magnificence as undeserving of a Christian's
notice ; but the other attendant monk, Isidore, was for some reason
at home in the high patrician society. The presence of these two
men, combined with Athanasius's own enthusiasm for the character
of Antony — on which, no doubt, he would dilate — and for other
types of ascetic sanctity, had an important result on the ChristiaMty
of the West. It appears that he was a welcome guest M a patrician
house on the Aventine, the home of a Mgh-born widow named
Albina, whose little daughter, Marcella, hung on the lips of the
exiled bishop, who now " brought into that stagnant atmosphere "
of Roman society " the breath of a larger world." Jerome says
that she heard from Mm about " the purpose of monks," as illus
trated by the lives of Antony and Pachomius, and of virgms and
widows. Many a prejudice cherished by Roman Christians against
the name, the garb, the life of a monk, would be abated during
Athanasius's sojourn in Rome ; and he unquestionably inaugurated,
by that sojourn, the great movements of European monasticism,
and prepared the way for the work of Benedict.
It would appear that Julius, after welcoming his guest, sent
two presbyters, Elpidius and Philoxenus, to repeat Ms invitation
to the Eusebians, and to arrange for a council to be held at Rome
in the December of that year. The Eusebians were perplexed by
finding that Athanasius was already at Rome ; and they could
well surmise that a council held there would not be so easily
turned to their purposes as one at Tyre or at Antioch. Wishing,
perhaps, to put off a decision, and see what time could do for their
object, they detained the Roman envoys beyond the month named

1 70 The Age of the Fathers. [Chap.
by Julius, i.e. until January, 341. Elpidius and Philoxenus were
therefore, in all probability, better informed on Eastern Church
events than any other Roman presbyters had been in their time.
They would probably hear much of the death of Eusebius of
Caesarea, wMch happened in 340 : they might know enough of his
public conduct, of those " acts " m support of AriaMzing interests,
wMch Newman considers to be his real "confession" of belief,
although they can partly be referred to anti-Sabellian sensitiveness
of anti- Alexandrian prejudice, and he never, at any rate, accepted
Ariamsm in its entirety ; but they would be told how greatly he
excelled in learning all other prelates, how earnestly he had
studied and laboured, how much he had been respected and loved
by Constantine ; and they would also learn something of his pupil
and successor Acacius, who gave promise of an active episcopate,
and was, by all accounts, a thorougMy clever man, ready-witted,
well-informed, a good speaker, and competent for the part which
he afterwards played as an organizer of a distinct section of the
Arian body, and, indeed, for other parts wMch he by turns took
up in a career so versatile as to win for Mm from the ultra- Arian
Philostorgius the character of an accomplished knave.
The spring of 341, according to the most probable reckoning of
time, found Athanasius awaiting his opponents' arrival, and pre
paring his yearly festal letter to Ms people. " See," he wrote, " I
am writing to you from the city of Rome, where I shall keep the
festival with bretMen, but shall also in spirit and will be cele
brating it with you." He had reason to dwell on the consolatory
side of all distresses and trials ; for his Alexandrians, and indeed
all the faithful m Egypt, had had much to suffer. He had evidently
been kept informed of the increased ferocity of the Arians.
Orthodox bishops scourged and imprisoned ; the aged confessor
Sarapammon driven from Ms see ; Potammon, who had lost an
eye in the great persecutions, again a sufferer for the truth's sake,
beaten so brutally that he seemed to have died under the blows,
and only restored for a brief remnant of life by " careful nursing
and fanning ; " Athanasius's aunt harassed in her last days, refused
burial by the usurping bishop, and carried to the grave by friends
as if she were one of their kindred ; widows and poor almsfolk
bereft of their allowances, and the very oil- vessels broken before
their faces ; — such were the scenes wMch Athanasius had in mind
when he wrote the words, out of the depth of his own spiritual
experience, " These things happen m order to prove and test us,

x.] From Treves to Sardica. 171
that being found steadfast and approved in Christ's service, we
may be heirs of the saints." " Whatever our foes can inflict will
never exceed the mercies of God. ... So let us not look at dis
tresses and persecutions, but rather at the hope set before us. . . .
In all tMngs," he concludes, " let us praise Christ who hath called
us, and so, tMough CMist, shall we be delivered from our foes."
He wrote, about the same time, to his friend Serapion, bishop of
Thnmis, informing Mm that he had been obliged to confute the
pretensions of some Meletians to be recogmsed as Churchmen by
writing to the bishops of Syria ; " and bishops of Palestine wrote
to me in reply, confirming the judgment passed agamst the
Meletians." Among these friendly prelates, probably, was
Maximus of Jerusalem, who, as we have seen, had quitted the
Eusebian party in 335. Athanasius had also to warn Serapion
against the scandal wMch would ensue, if the Egyptian Christians
— meaning those outside Alexandria itself — did not observe the
coming Lent like the rest of the Church; and to notify the
appointments which had been made, under Ms authority, to
thirteen vacant sees within Ms jurisdiction. "This letter," we
are told, " he wrote from the city of Rome." There was, however,
nearer at hand a powerful sustainer of the Alexandrians' constancy
in the person of Antony, who, as he dwelt on his mountain — still
called by Ms own name — between the Nile and the Red Sea,
looking down upon the level ground far beneath, with its gushing
springs and its date-palms, and the little strip of cornfield and
herb-garden — " kept Ms heart watchful," says Athanasius, and had
ready interest and sympathy for all who, either bringing Mm
periodical gifts of food, or coming to him for spiritual help, told
him of the sufferings of the faithful. He wrote more than once to
remonstrate with Gregory ; but Gregory treated the letters with
contempt. He wrote also to the military commander Valacius,
who was active in the persecution : " I see wrath coming upon
thee ; cease to persecute Christians, lest it overtake thee ! "
Valacius laughed, tMew down the letter, and spat upon it,
tMeatening to " come and look after Antony ; " afterwards, how
ever — in less than five days, says Athanasius — he met Ms death
by the sudden fury of a horse which had previously been the
gentlest in Ms possession.
It was in the spring of 341 that the Roman envoys at last
returned home. They brought a letter from the Eusebians, which
Julius thought so offensive that he kept it to himself, hoping for

172 The Age of the Fathers. [Chap.
some explanation. There were, indeed, M it expressions of high
respect for the orthodox, apostolic, and primeval Church of Rome,
but it was urged that, after all, she had been founded from the
East; that all bishops, irrespectively of the size of their cities,
had the same authority ; and that the writers had personal claims
to respect fully equal to those of Julius. The letter, says Sozomen,
was " forensic " in style — that is, it dealt in clever special pleading,
not unmixed with rhetorical irony; and the writers, not very
consistently, seem to have objected to the holding of a new council,
and accused Julius of violating the canons, and " rekindling the
flame" of an old strife. Moreover, said they, the notice of the
council did not allow them time enough: Julius ought to have
considered the difficulties which their sovereign's Persian war
would, for the present, put in the way of some of their number.
Agam, why did Julius write in his sole person? why did he
address the " Eusebians " instead of all the Easterns ? why had he
shown partiality to Athanasius ? why had he distrusted their state
ments ? why had he disregarded the authority of a council (i.e. in
not treatmg the see of Alexandria as vacated by Athanasius's
deposition at the Tyrian synod) ? Reference was also made to
the case of Marcellus, as if he had induced Julius to sanction " his
impiety towards CMist." The letter declared, further, that peace
reigned in the Eastern Churches, and that all were of one mind in
disowmng the ex-bishop of Alexandria.
By way of further securing their ground, the Eusebians re
solved to take advantage, once again, of a great church solemnity,
for the holdMg of a council in their own interests. Ten years
before, Constantine had laid the foundations of a new church at
Antioch, wMch Ms biographer Eusebius describes as unique in
grandeur. It had now, at last, been completed ; in the middle of
a large cloistered court an octagonal structure towered up to a vast
height, with adjacent buildings of different stories, and in its
interior so lavishly decorated that it became popularly known as
the Golden Church, "DomiMcum aureum." In the summer of
341 the dedication took place ; ninety-seven bishops assembled,
and Constantius Mmself was present. Flacillus would be only too
glad to utilise such a gathering for the purposes of Ms party ; but
it must be observed that many of the prelates could not be called
Arianizers, and that, although Maximus of Jerusalem refused to
attend, there were bishops of Mgh reputation and virtual orthodoxy,
such as the amiable Dianius of Cappadocian Caesarea, to sanction

x.] From Treves to Sardica. 173
the proceedings of tMs " Dedication Council," as it is called, by
their unhesitating co-operation. The character of the council has
seemed twofold, and given rise to some perplexity. Hilary of
Poitiers, ever desirous to conciliate the moderate Arians, calls it a
" synod of holy men ; " and its canons have been respected by the
Eastern Church. Yet it committed itself to doctrinal formulas
wMch were, to say the least, inadequate, and to acts of hostility
against Athanasius. To explain tMs, we need not resort to the
hypothesis of two dedication synods, an orthodox and a heterodox ;
rather may we suppose that many of the bishops were inex
perienced in theological questions, and could not look at Church
matters from the Athanasian point of view. It would thus be easy
for the astute Eusebian leaders, with their plan of attacking the
Nicene Council indirectly by a direct attack on the position of
Athanasius, to represent his conduct in an unfavourable light, to
prejudice their brethren agamst him, and so to lead them to
acqmesce M dogmatic language wMch seemed orthodox, but which
ignored the creed of 325.
The first procedure of this synod "in Encaeniis" was to
pass twenty-five canons, of wMch the following were the most
important. I. Severe penalties for all who break the law about the time
of Easter, as fixed by " the great and holy Council " (a judicious
exhibition of respect for Nicaea).
II. 1. Excommunication of those who carelessly and irrever
ently go out of church before the Eucharistic service, properly
-speaking, begins.
2. Excommunications to be respected; no communion with
any under such sentence.
IV. The fourth canon was aimed at Athanasius. A bishop, a
priest, or deacon, lawfully deposed, who shall presume afterwards to
officiate, is never to have hope of restoration. TMs was based on an
older canon wMch ranks as twenty-eighth among the " Apostolic "
canons ; but that referred to a just deposition, and tMs very Antio
chene law implies the action of the accused bishop's own synod,
whereas the synod at Tyre was not Athanasius's own. This canon
was afterwards used against St. Chrysostom.
VIII. Country presbyters not to send letters of commumon —
or at least, only to neighbouring bishops ; but Chorepiscopi of
good repute may send them. This canon implies what a later
canon of the same series asserts, the character of Chorepiscopi as

1 74 The Age of the Fathers. [Chap.
real bishops, although, as we have seen in regard to an Ancyran
canon, the exercise of their authority was limited by the terms of
their appointment.
IX. Another canon, based on the " older rule of the fathers,"
safeguards the (1) rights of metropolitans : " the provincial bishops
are to know that the bishop presiding in the metropolis is also
charged with the care of the whole province," and not to act with
out him except in matters simply diocesan. (2) At the same
time, their authority is to be kept within limits ; they are not to
interfere with bishops' ordinary jurisdiction, nor, in provincial
matters, to act alone.
XII. A deposed bishop, etc., to have one court of appeal, " a
larger synod : " if he " troubles the emperor " after such synod's
adverse judgment (thus seeking a State court of final appeal), his
case to be treated as closed.
XIV. If provincial bishops differ on an accused bishop's case,
the metropolitan is to call in some bishops of the nearest province
to sit with them. This canon implies that the patriarchal or
primatial system was not yet properly at work.
XIX. The nineteenth develops the fourth Nicene. " A bishop
not to be ordamed (i.e. consecrated) without the presence, or at least
the written approval, of the majority of the new comprovincials.
Otherwise his " ordination " is void. If, it is added, some contra
dict from contentiousness, let the majority prevail.
XX. Provincial synods to meet yearly, (1) in third week of
Easter-time, (2) on 15th of October. Priests and deacons, having
complaints to make, to appear at the synod. (Thus priests and
deacons were not constituent members of such synod.)
To these canons was annexed a synodal letter, addressed to all
bishops. The next proceeding of the Dedication Council was the
confirmation of the previous sentence against Athanasius— an act
which, as the bishops, or many of them, would be assured by
the Eusebian leaders, was not to be taken as prejudicing the
authority of the Nicene Council; for the question was not of
Athanasius's faith, but of his conduct. And, this step taken, the
next was to obtain the council's sanction for three statements of
doctrine. Let us see what these were.
The first of these "creeds of Antioch" begins uneasily and
abruptly, in a tone recalling the proverb, " QM s'excuse, s'accuse."
" We have not," the bishops say, " become followers of Arius ; for
how should we that are bishops follow a presbyter ? " They affirm

X-] From Treves to Sardica. 175
their fidelity to the original unchanged faith, and add that Arius,
in fact, had explained himself in a sense conformable to it ; so
that, as they express it, " it is we who have admitted him?' But
this brief and vague formula was soon deemed unsatisfactory, and
superseded by a longer one, which is specifically " the Creed of
the Dedication," and became the favourite formula of the Semi-
Arians. It was attributed, says Sozomen, to the martyr Lucian
of Antioch, who seems to have practically, for a time, anticipated
the moderate Arian view, and been in consequence out of com
munion with tMee successive bishops of Antioch. It has been
suggested that it was his recension of an original Antiochene
creed ; but Athanasius treats the formula — at least part of it —
as a " new " work of " the Eusebian party." It is for the most
part Catholic, except that, of course, it omits the Homoousion ;
it adopts the various reading of John i. 18, "the only-begotten
God;" it owns the Son as God from God and Perfect from
Perfect, as livmg Word and Wisdom, true Light, and incapable
of change ; and especially calls Him the " adequate Image of the
Father's Godhead, essence, and glory " — a phrase which, as Gwatkin
says, is really eqmvalent to Homoousion, although it had been
used by Asterius. What is called the personal oneness of Jesus
with the Divine Son could not be more explicitly emphasized
than in tMs formula. But its language has at least one ques
tionable element, where it speaks of the Father, Son, and Spirit
as " three in hypostasis " — the word being here used, not as at
Nicaea, for essence, but for personal subsistence — " and one in
concord," where a Catholic would have said, one in nature, the
essential unity being the basis of the moral. The creed ends, like
the Nicene, with anathemas; but they do not absolutely con
demn Arianism, but only the coarser and more outspoken forms
of that heresy, such as the assertion that the Son is " a creature
as one of the creatures" — an assertion which, as was afterwards
unhappily proved at the Council of Arimmum, might be repu
diated without owning Him as Uncreate. One more formula,
specially anti-Marcellian, was m some sense sanctioned by the
Council : it was a personal statement of belief by a bishop named
Theophronius, beginning solemnly, " God, whom I call as a witness
on my soul, knows that I believe," etc., and acknowledging the
Son as " perfect God from perfect God," and as " being ' with
God ' in hypostasis," i.e. personally subsisting ; it ended with
special condemnation of the followers of " Marcellus, of Sabellius,

ij6 The Age of the Fathers. [Chap.
or of Paul of Samosata." But it was by no means substituted for
the creed ascribed to Lucian. So ended the proceedings of this
famous assembly, probably in the autumn of 341.
It was near the end of tMs year, when Athanasius had been
waitmg eighteen months at Rome, that Julius resolved to wait no
longer for the Eusebians, and assembled the long-expected council,
consisting of more than fifty bishops, in the church' of the Roman
presbyter Vito, who had been one of the representatives of Silvester
in the Nicene Council, and must have been regarded in Rome as
a representative of Nicene faith. The Eusebian letter was now
read ; the Athanasian case was examined in detail ; the report of
the Mareotic commission, brought to Rome some two years before
by the three Eusebian envoys, was considered; presbyters from
Egypt deposed to the atrocities which followed on Gregory's
intrusion, and particularly to the harsh or cruel treatment of old
men who had been many years in the episcopate, and the banish
ment of bishops and of others who had refused to communicate
with Gregory. Marcellus, then at Rome, attested, or at least
affirmed, the infliction of similar outrages at Ancyra ; many pre
lates from Thrace and Syria and other countries had the same tale
to tell, and, in some cases, very grave charges to make against the
Eusebian party — charges, it would seem, impugning personal
character. All the evidence, on both sides, being taken into
account, the Roman synod pronounced Athanasius to be inno
cent : when he had first come to Rome, we are told by Julius
that his coming was taken as presumptive of his innocence ;
but now, after this long delay and full investigation, the bishops
"confirmed towards him their communion and their love."
Marcellus was acqmtted of heresy, on the ground partly of his own
protestations in a letter to Julius, wMch adopts the Old-Roman
form of "the Apostles' Creed," and explicitly identifies the Son
with the Word — and partly of the declarations of Vito and Ms
brother-delegate at Nicaea, Vincentius, who assured the Council
that he had there contended for the truth, — evidence wMch,
considering the point at issue, could hardly be relevant. One
might wish to think that the old bishop of Ancyra had not fully or
habitually realised the outcome and result of Ms speculations, and
could honestly say that he believed, with the Church, in a Divine
CMist, who was Himself the personal Word and the Eternal Son ;
but his statement did not affirm the endlessness of the kingship
of Christ, which was in effect denied by the theory of a merely

X] From Treves to Sardica. 177
temporary relation between Him and the Word. It would appear
also that Asclepas of Gaza, who had been deposed even earlier than
Eustathius, — had afterwards, in the presence of Eusebius of Caesarea,
been acqmtted of charges brought against him, — had returned, and
been again expelled on the charge of breaking an altar and causing
bloodshed, — was next declared mnocent by this Council. Julius,
then, in the name of the Council, wrote a letter to the Eusebians,
naming seven of them especially, and addressing them as " beloved
brethren," who were not yet finally committed to a wrong line : he
replied to their captious objections, and after stating the reasons
for the Council's judgment, again offered them the opportunity of
confronting at Rome those whom they had accused. Two points
in this synodal letter, wMch well deserves praise for its argumenta
tive skill and "judicial tone," have received particular notice. (1)
Julius says that the Nicene Council rightly ordered a reconsidera
tion, by one synod, of the decrees of another that had preceded
it. Does tMs point to some now lost Nicene canon ? Probably
not; Julius may only mean that at Nicaea the decisions of the
Alexandrian Council were not deemed final. (2) He complains that
(in the proceedings at Tyre and elsewhere) the Eusebians had
neglected to follow the old Church rule, according to which, if any
bishops were accused, " words should have been written to us all,
that so a just sentence might be determined by all," — i.e. the cases
should have been brought before the whole collective episcopate,
or (he must mean) before what might be called a representative
number. TMs had not been done, and therefore the bishops would
again have to assemble, " in order that the condemnation of those
who are found guilty might take place m the presence of all."
But after thus defining the general rule, Julius proceeds to a
particular case, that of the Alexandrian Church ; " the custom was
first to write to us, and so to get a just sentence passed from this
place ; " if a bishop of Alexandria were suspected, he contends
that the right course would have been to give notice to the Church
of Rome — and this, with a Roman laxity of statement, he calls a
tradition from the "blessed Apostle Peter," wMch, as such, he
communicates to the Eusebians, adding that it is pretty well
admitted tMoughout the Church. This passage evidently fails to
justify the gloss of Socrates and Sozomen, that " no canon was
deemed valid without the Roman bishop's consent ; " their state
ment, says Tillemont sigMficantly, " appears different from what
the letter contains ; " but what does Julius mean ? Apparently he
vol. 1. N

178 The Age of the Fathers. [Chap.
is referrmg to the close traditional connexion between the " sees
of St. Peter and St. Mark," and probably thinking, in particular, of
the complaints made to Dionysius of Rome, when Ms Alexandrian
namesake was suspected of heresy. Here, then, just where on the
papal theory Julius should have claimed to be the supreme judge
in all cases of bishops throughout the Church, he describes the
whole episcopate as the true judicial body, and ranks himself among
its members, as one of " us all ; " and it is only in the special case
of Alexandria that he cites usage and tradition for a judicial
authority in the Roman Church. In taking leave of this letter,
which impresses the reader by its logical ability and its grave
dignity, we must again observe that it is written in the name of
the Roman Council, not solely of the Roman bishop ; and thus, in
the Roman Council's judgment, it is Central and South Italy that
speaks as well as Rome.
And now the young sovereign of Italy and the West, Constans,
comes upon the scene. He had withstood the demands of Ms
brother Constantine for the cession of certain territories, and, by
a war wMch ended in Constantine's death, had become lord of
the whole Western realm. Like too many other emperors, he
was spoiled by sovereign power, and lowered Mmself by sensu
alities wMch Constantius, with all his faults, would have scorned.
But at this time, as far as it appears, Ms better qualities — straight
forward simplicity, kindness of heart, an honest love of Christianity
and respect for good men and sacred things— were in the ascendant.
He was much interested, at this time, in the endeavour to abolish
pagan sacrifices: he had already commissioned Athanasius to
prepare for him some " bound volumes of the Scriptures ; " and his
cMef adviser in matters ecclesiastical was Athanasius's friend
Maximin, bishop of Treves. As sole monarch of the West, it was
important to the Eusebians to conciliate him ; and, at the same
time, they were naturally desirous to persuade the Western Church
that opposition to Athanasius did not involve heresy, — to recom
mend their own theology to the downright Latin mind. And so,
when about the end of 341 — "a few months," says Athanasius,
after the Dedication Council — they felt a certain dissatisfaction
with their recent creeds, as if something more " perfect " might be
framed, they determined to draw up a new one, and present it to
the Western Emperor. It was perhaps the least objectionable that
they ever made, and was reproduced on three later occasions ; and
the anathemas appended to it expressly condemned the formula of

x.] From Treves to Sardica. 179
the old Arians, " The Son was from nothing," and the assertion that
He was "from another hypostasis ( = essence) and not from God; "
but as to the etermty of His existence, it was less satisfactory, only
condemning the dictum, " Time was when He was not," and thus
leaving a loophole for evasion. Like the TheopMonian formulary,
but still more emphatically, it excluded the Marcellian notion of
the temporary nature of Christ's Sonship and kingdom : " Whose
kingdom, being indissoluble, will remain to infinite ages ! " Armed
with this document, four Eusebian envoys, Narcissus, Maris,
Theodore of Heraclea, and Mark — the last named being bishop of
Arethusa m Syria, a man of many virtues, who showed his great
constancy imder pagan inflictions in the reign of Julian — set forth
on their journey to the imperial court at Treves, and on arriving
gave in the new creed, as from the Antiochene Council, by way of
guarantee for their soundness of faith and for the orthodoxy of the
Eastern Church at large. Such is Athanasius's account. Socrates
says that the bishops were also charged by Constantius to explain
to Ms brother the case against Athanasius and Paul : nor is tMs
unlikely, so far as Athanasius is concerned ; as for Paul, he had
not then visited Italy. However, the journey of the envoys was
frMtless; Constans dismissed them from Ms presence, acting no
doubt under the influence of Maximin, who would not admit them
into the cathedral of Treves, and so mcurred the hatred of their
party. This visit of the Eusebian envoys took place early in 342. In
November of that year they lost the great ecclesiastical politician
from whom their party took its name : Eusebius, once of Berytus,
then of Nicomedia, lastly of Constantinople, died in the fulness of
power and success, leaving a name not only bound up with the
Arian heresy, but also suggestive of the lowering of religious tone
which a secular atmosphere can produce in ecclesiastics, as m the
feudalised prelates of the eleventh century, the English politician
bishops of the fifteenth, or the prince-bishops who sometimes forgot
that they were priests. His death was a signal for new disturbances :
Paul reclaimed and regamed Ms see; the Arian party elected
Macedonius, and he was consecrated, not in the newly completed
basilica of St. SopMa, but in a church dedicated to St. Paul near
the opening of the Golden Horn, by five bishops, four of whom
had sat on the Mareotic commission. Constantius was absent at
the time : on hearing of these events, he ordered a general named
Hermogenes, then on his way towards Thrace, to turn aside into

180 The Age of the Fathers. [Chap.
Constantinople and drive out Paul. But a multitude of people
rose in defence of their true bishop. Hermogenes persisted, and
employed military force ; the mob, in wild fury, seized Mm,
dragged him through the city, killed Mm, and cast the mangled
corpse into the Propontis. Constantius hastened to the capital,
puMshed this outrage in person, deprived the people of the larger
portion of their corn-allowance, and expelled Paul once again ; but,
regarding MacedoMus's appomtment as in some sense the cause of
the tumult, refused to recogMse him as bishop of Constantinople,
and only allowed him to hold services M St. Paul's church. He
then returned to Ms palace at Antioch ; while Paul, as it seems,
received orders to reside at his native city of Thessalonica, whence
he may afterwards have repaired to Rome. There he seems to
have again met Athanasius ; for it was not until after tMee full
years of residence at Rome that an unexpected summons from
Constans obliged the great exile to repair to Milan. He was not
very willing to do so. He inquired of his friends what the imperial
letter portended : he then learned that some bishops (perhaps
Hosius and Maximin) had requested their sovereign, now returned
from Britain and free of his Frankish war, to write to Ms brother
and demand a new General Council, as the only cure of the
Church's wounds. " Accordingly," he writes, " I went to Milan : "
it was apparently in the summer of 343, for cMonological reasons
make the old date of 347 impossible ; and one has now to connect
the memory of Ms visit with the other ecclesiastical glories of the
city where Ambrose became bishop, and where Augustine became a
CMistian. Constans received Athanasius with the kmdness which
secured his lastmg gratitude and affection : Protasius, bishop of
Milan, went with Mm into the presence-chamber, while Eugemus>
the " master of the palace," stood just outside the " veil " or curtain
that hung, as usual, before the inner rooms of emperors or of
judges. The Emperor announced that he had written to Ms
brother requesting that a Council might meet. This, it seems,
was the substance of the interview. Athanasius stayed some
weeks in Milan, and then, by desire of Constans, met Hosius in
Gaul, and was fellow-traveller with that venerable bishop to the
destined place of the Council, the politically important city of
Sardica or Serdica, wMch, as situated in Moesia, was "on the
verge of the two empires," but just witMn the dominions of their
" protector." At tMs time and place, then, about a hundred and seventy

x-] From Treves to Sardica. 181
prelates met, of whom a small majority were Westerns, including
the bishops of Sardica, Thessalonica, Milan, Ravenna, Verona, Barce
lona, Cordova, Carthage, Lyons, Aries, Sens, Paris, Treves, — Julius
of Rome being represented by Philoxenus, his former messenger,
and Archidamus. The seventy-six Easterns included such Euse
bian leaders as Stephen, then bishop of Antioch, Menophantus
of Ephesus, Acacius, Theodosius, Mark, Basil, Eudoxius of Ger-
maMcia (afterwards notorious for his profanity), and others, but
not Gregory, nor George of Laodicea, who is said to have stayed
at home for fear of what might befall Mm at the Council. (Paul,
the orthodox bishop of Constantinople, was neither at Sardica,
as Socrates thought, nor detained at home by his people, as
Theodoret surmised.) Among the less distinguished Eusebian
prelates appears the name of Quirius, clearly a corruption of
Ischyras — that unhappy impostor having been made a bishop for
the hamlet where he had pretended to be a presbyter. Among the
Easterns, accordmg to the testimony of two of their number, were
" many " personally Catholic in belief, that is, who substantially
agreed with the Catholics, although they scrupled at the Nicene
formula. But, as at Antioch, they were dommated by the Eusebian
leaders, who, as they travelled to Sardica from the East, agreed
among themselves as to their line of action : they would not allow
the decisions of Tyre and Antioch to be reconsidered, and there
fore they would take no part in the Council if Athanasius, or others
condemned in their Eastern Councils, were admitted to seats at
Sardica. In that case, they would simply report their own arrival
pro forma ; and accordingly, when they found not only that the two
great civil officers, " Counts " Musonianus and HesycMus, whom
they had brought with them in hopes of thereby gaimng the upper
hand, would not be allowed to enter the Council, and that many
" who had suffered at their hands " were come to bear witness
against them, but also that Athanasius and Marcellus, and Asclepas
of Gaza, and Lucius of Hadrianople, who had been formerly loaded
with chains by Arian persecutors, were allowed to sit in the
cathedral of Sardica with Protogenes the bishop, who had given his
assent to the condemnation of Marcellus, and with Hosius and the
other Westerns to express their opinions freely, and even "to
celebrate the divine Mysteries," — the Easterns in disgust shut
themselves up withm apartments which Constans, apparently, had
placed at the bishops' disposal within his own vast palace — that
palace which, some thirty years before, had witnessed the horrors of

1 82 The Age of the Fathers. [Chap.
Galerius's frightful death-bed. It would have been better, perhaps,
if the Westerns, in their relations with Athanasius and the others,
had been more punctilious in avoidmg whatever might seem like a
disposition to prejudge the case in their favour ; but it is not true
to say that both parties, Eastern and Western, alike came " with
their hands tied " — that the Westerns were bent on upholding as
final the decisions of a Council in Italy, and regarded it as the
Easterns regarded their own Councils in Syria and Palestine. The
Easterns did prejudge the case against Athanasius ; the Westerns
viewed the whole case as open, and therefore were strictly in their
rights when they treated him as a man not yet found guilty. A
series of messages, challenges, recriminations, went on for " many
days." Athanasius and Marcellus repeatedly expressed their
reachness to confront their accusers, who on their part sent word to
Hosius, Protogenes, and the rest, that they would not appear until
" those condemned men " were excluded ; and then they would
appear, and "make known the sentences passed by former Councils "
against them, without going into the question of Marcellus's heresy,
wMch, said they, was patent on the face of Ms book. TMs dogged
refusal to treat the Sardican meeting as competent to re-hear all
the cases was provokmg enough ; but Hosius did not lose patience,
or abandon the hope of conciliation. He mvited some of the
Easterns to confer with him in the church- buildmgs, where he was
lodged, and there supplemented the warning which the Westerns
generally had sent, " Come and state your charges, on pain of being
deemed calumMators," by language more calculated to persuade.
" Do not be afraid of any failure of justice. Nothing is settled ;
everything can be discussed. Come to the Council; or, if you
prefer it, come to me alone, and state your case, — and if you can
prove it against Athanasius, I will guarantee that the Council shall
condemn him. And if you fail to prove it — if he proves his own
innocence, and you still object to communicating with Mm — I will
persuade Mm, even in that case, to come with me into Spain."
Athanasius, according to Hosius (who stated this incident, years
afterwards, in a letter to Constantius), acquiesced in this prosposal ;
doubtless, he felt that he could afford to do so. The Easterns
were deaf to all Western proposals or invitations : some of them,
indeed, might have yielded, but that their more resolute brethren
kept them strictly confined to the palace ; from wMch confine
ment, however, two bishops, Macarius and Asterius, contrived to
escape, and earned the bitter wrath of the Eusebians by describing

X-] From Treves to Sardica. 183
before the Western Council their programme and their tyrannous
conduct. The end of it was that the minority withdrew from Sardica,
on the pretence of tidings from the Persian war. But, in fact,
they simply migrated to " the large and noble city " of PMlip-
popolis, in TMace, and thus witMn the realm of Constantius ;
disregardmg a final warning letter sent after them by the Sardican
bishops, and assuming for themselves the position of the true
"Council of Sardica." After tMs "unseemly and suspicious flight,"
as Athanasius calls it, they drew up a synodal letter professing
to be written from Sardica, and addressed to Gregory of Alex
andria, to the bishop of Nicomedia, and to their few supporters
in the West, and to all Catholic bishops under heaven. In
this document they denounced Marcellus, and gave their own
version of the case of Athanasius : e.g. that the Mareotic commis
sion had proceeded on first-rate evidence ; that Athanasius on his
return had done worse than before, and had, in particular, brought
heathen force to back him, and, after some further sacrileges, had
fled to Rome and begMled the West. The letter affirms also,
that horrible impieties had signalised the return of Marcellus,
Paul, Asclepas, and Lucius : e.g. that " at Ancyra the consecrated
Body of the Lord was hung round the necks of priests, as they
were dragged in insult tMough the forum; that at Hadrianople
the sacrifice consecrated by priests opposed to Lucius was thrown
to the dogs." By "persistent flatteries," the letter proceeds, Atha
nasius deceived several innocent bishops ; but what was said in his
favour by those who had not heard the case tried could have no
weight. Then Julius is referred to, as havmg " too easily " received
Athanasius into communion ; the Westerns, having taken this
" rash " step, were concerned to defend themselves while seeming
to defend him. Others who had been deposed in the East were
acqmtted in the West by judges ignorant of the records of their
deposition. It was quite unfair on the part of the Athanasians to
summon the Easterns to defend themselves : it was a reversal of
the positions of the two parties. Athanasius had once condemned
Asclepas, and Paul had condemned Athanasius. (!) The Eusebians
then proceed to give their own version of the events at Sardica.
They had obeyed the summons to a Council, but, on arriving, had
been shocked to find that Athanasius and the other offenders were
admitted as members of the assembly ; and when they had pro
posed to Hosius and Protogenes that a new commission of Easterns

184 The Age of the Fathers. [Chap.
and Westerns should inquire, in Egypt, into the charges against
Athanasius, this proposal was refused. They then denounce
the other party as an unscrupulous set of liars ; proclaim them
selves champions of the rights of the Eastern Church ; retort
the charge of schism on the Westerns ; betray a theological animus
by imputing " blasphemy " to Athanasius, and mark out as ex-
commumcate Julius, " the leader of the wicked," Hosius, Protogenes,
Maximin, and Gaudentius of Narcissus ; winding up with a creed
wMch Socrates, by some strange carelessness, treats as ultra- Arian,
whereas it is, at the worst, only Madequate, and is (with a very
few verbal differences) the creed already presented by four deputies
to Constans : it is very explicit on the everlastmg nature of
CMist's kmgdom, and anathematizes all who deny Him to be God.
Abandoned by the East, the Sardican Council, consisting of
nmety-seven bishops, of whom apparently the greater number
came from Illyricum, set itself to its work under the presidency
of Hosius, who is not to be regarded as " legate of Rome," but had
the first place as a tribute to his personal digMty. Evidence was
produced against Arianizing tyrants ; Lucius of Hadrianople held
up the chains he had worn, others exhibited sword-cuts, others
declared that they had been nearly starved, others spoke of whole
churches terrorised by magistrates or by mobs ; letters were read
which Theogms of Nicaea was proved by deacons who had served
under Mm to have written in order to exasperate the emperors by
lies against Athanasius and others ; the Mareotic report was read,
as before, at Rome, and found to be ex parte and untrustworthy ; two
ex- Meletian presbyters testified that Ischyras had never been one
of the Meletian clergy ; the report of Asclepas's former acqmttal,
which had been formerly drawn up at Antioch, was also produced.
Marcellus was acqmtted of heresy, partly on the untenable ground
that his obnoxious statements had been advanced in the way of
inquiry and discussion, and so did not convey Ms real mind, but
partly also, it is said, after a full reading of the contexts of the
impugned passages, whereby the Council satisfied itself that he
had " never affirmed the Word to have come into existence from
holy Mary, or His kingsMp to be but temporary " (an exculpation
far from satisfactory, for he was supposed to have asserted tMs,
not of the Word, but of the Son). At the end of the investigation,
the Council dealt out excommuMcations against the Eusebian
leaders. Three are named first, as having, wolf-like, broken into
Churches : Gregory, Basil, and QMntianus, usurpers of the sees of

X-] From Treves to Sardica. 185
Athanasius, Marcellus, and Asclepas. These are declared to be
simply no bishops, and are excommunicated. Excommunication
and deposition are then pronounced against Theodore, Narcissus,
Acacius, Stephen, Ursacius, Valens, Menophantus, and George, as
heretics, who, " having severed the Son and alienated the Word
from the Father," ought themselves to be "severed from the
Catholic Church and the Christian name."
Thus the Western Church decided, for its own part, the great
Athanasian cause. It seems that Hosius and Protogenes proposed
a formula explanatory of the Nicene Creed in view of recent
heretical developments ; it is extant, and insists on the umqueness
of the SonsMp, on the Son's identity with the Word and essential
oneness with the Father, on the true divinity of Christ, and on the
eternity of His kingdom. It was not, however, adopted by the
Council, wMch would not even appear to add to the Nicene
formulary : nearly twenty years later, Athanasius, in Ms " Tome
to the Antiochenes," took pains to correct a wrong impression on
tMs point. But a series of canons is attributed to the Council,
and may with fair reason be regarded as genmne, in spite of the
difficulty that seventy-five years later the African Church knew
of no Sardican canons, and that no mention of them is made by
Socrates. But the African Church did not then know of the true
Sardican Council : the silence of Greek writers may be due to
the fact that the Sardican canons were intended for the West ;
and one of them (as we shall see presently) seems to have been
indistinctly known to a Constantinopolitan Council m 382.
What is more, Gratus of Carthage, presiding in a council five
years after the Sardican, gives Ms recollections as to one of its
enactments (the fifteenth canon in the Latin). Only one set of
these canons need here be mentioned at length — that group wMch
specially characterizes the Sardican legislation, and provides for an
appeal to the see of Rome. The third canon enacts —
(1) No bishop is to go, uninvited, into a province not his own.
Compare the thirteenth canon of Antioch.
(2) Disputes of bishops to be settled in their provinces.
(3) But — here is the main point — if a bishop deems himself
wronged by the sentence of his comprovincials, and wishes for a
new trial, " then," said Hosius, " if it pleases you, let us honour the
memory of the Apostle Peter, so that the judges of the case should
write to Julius, bishop of Rome, in order that, if he thinks it neces
sary (so the Latin, and this is implied by the whole context as in

1 86 The Age of the Fathers. [Chap..
the Greek), the trial may be renewed by means of the bishops who
live near that provmce " (compare the fourteenth Antiochene), " and
he may name judges. But if it cannot be shown that the case
calls for a new trial, the existing decision must not be disturbed."
(4) TMs is really a suggestion by Bishop Gaudentius : " You
should add that when a bishop, thus deposed by his compro-
vincials " (lit. those who live near Mm), " announces that he
means to procure another trial, Ms see should not be filled up
until the bishop of Rome, having examined the case, pronounces
agamst Mm."
(5) Hosius proposes as before : " If a bishop in such a case has
appealed to the bishop of Rome, the latter may, if he pleases,
tMnk good to write to the bishops of the province nearest that in
wMch the case arose, that they may settle it. But if such an
appellant can persuade the bishop of Rome to send a presbyter or
presbyters from Mmself, that bishop may do so, and such presbyters
are to sit with the bishops, and hold their principal's authority.
The Roman bishop is to choose between these two courses." This
was the first of the two canons quoted as Nicene by a Roman
legate to the African Church in 418.
Now let us pause to see what these Sardican rules amount to.
On them was built up a vast fabric of appellate jurisdiction of the
see of Rome : what is its basis ? For, observe, previously no
provision existed for an appeal from the provincial synod. Now,
such provision is made, and comes to this. A bishop may require
his provmcial judges to write to the Roman bishop with a view to
a fresh trial, and may also himself write as appealing for it. Then
the Roman bishop is to consider whether the case requires a fresh
trial. If he thinks it does not, then, of course, the provincial
decision is to stand. If he tMnks it does, he may commit the
fresh trial to the bishops of the province nearest the one con
cerned, with or without the admission of representatives of his
own see to a place among such judges, as he may tMnk most
desirable. Now, in estimating tMs power thus conceded, we may at the
outset remark that it clearly was not meant to be a personal grant
to Julius for Ms lifetime. He is named, but the council is evi
dently including his successors in its view of " the Roman bishop."
But, next, two points are important to be noticed : —
(1) The power, whatever it be, is granted ; it is not recogmsed
as inherent. There is indeed a reference to the memory of St.

x.] From Treves to Sardica. 187
Peter ; but if there had been a pre-existing appellate jurisdiction
belonging to the " Cathedra Petri," the language of the canon
would have been different. As it stands, the plam meaning is,
" We must put a certain power into some hands ; into what hands
so fitly as those of the bishop who specifically occupies St. Peter's
seat ? " The Council feels that there is a moral sMtableness in
selecting that bishop for this Mgh trust. And doubtless the stead
fast orthodoxy which the present bishop had mamtained in the
Arian contest had somethmg, or rather much, to do with the
selection. (2) The power is limited. The Roman bishop may not
(a) evoke the case to Rome, motu propria ;
nor (b) call the provincial synod to account ;
nor (c) form the new tribunal at his own pleasure ;
nor (d) preside in it ;
nor (e) judge the case by himself.
The power given is very much less than what was given by
the Council of Chalcedon, in such cases, either to any primate
or to " the see of Constantinople : " it is a power, in short, incon
sistent with the theory of papal supremacy. We must, in fact,
say that, both in its scope and in its origin, this power bears
witness against the subsequent papal claim ; and that had Julius
believed himself to be the Supreme Pontiff, the ruler of all
bishops, the fountain of all jurisdiction, he could not have
accepted what these canons gave Mm without stultifying Ms own
position m the Church. And it may reasonably be urged in
favour of the genumeness of these canons, that their language
about Rome smts the time and the circumstances, whereas a Roman
forger at a later date would have been pretty sure to assign larger
powers to the First See.
Another canon has qmte a different purport in its Greek and
Latin forms, although in both it refers to the duty of compro
vincial bishops in regard to the filnng-up of a vacant see. The
Council of Constantinople in 382 quotes as Nicene a provision
that these bishops might at pleasure call in the "neighbouring
bishops " to ^assist in such consecration. TMs is not in the fourth
Nicene candn, but somethmg like it is in the Latin form of the
sixth Sardican, wMch directs that if only one bishop is left m a
province, and he neglects to consecrate another, those of the neigh
bouring province are to exhort Mm to join with them in that
work. Thsse bishops of the Council seem to have some knowledge

1 88 The Age of the Fathers. [Chap.
of the Sardican canon, but not as such, and to have carelessly
mixed up their impressions about it with the text of the Nicene.
Another orders that sees should be erected in cities rather
than m villages or small towns ; and this has an interest for us,
in that it was cited when the Council of London in 1075 removed
bishoprics from Sherborne to Sarum, and from Selsey to CM-
chester, and afterwards acted upon in the transfer of sees from
Crediton, Dorchester (in Oxfordshire), and Elmham to Exeter,
Lincoln, and Norwich.
Other canons are directed against growing abuses, such as the
African bishops' habit of resorting to the court in a selfish eagerness
for secular promotion, or the carelessness shown in appointing to
bishoprics men who had never given proof of fitness by serving for
a due time in the ministry. It is ordered on this latter point, that
m accordance with apostolic teaching and primitive rule, no man
shall be consecrated until he has passed tMough the grades of
reader, deacon, and presbyter, and that no one shall be hastily
ordained as deacon or as presbyter. Five canons refer to troubles
or disorders at Thessalomca, the capital of that region, afterwards
called Eastern Illyricum, to wMch most of the members belonged.
It seems that in a vacancy of the Thessalonian see, two competitors,
EutyeManus and Musaeus, had acted as rival bishops ; the council
reduces them to the status of lay churchmen.
The last canon orders that a bishop who breaks these decrees
shall be liable to deposition ; and, to carry this out, if any one of
the prelates now assembled sees (after his return) a bishop travel
ling on the Mgh-road, he is directed to ask — bluntly enough — " Are
you going to the court ? if so, why ? " If the traveller says, " The
Emperor has summoned me," let him pass on. If not — if he has
only a selfish purpose — let the bishop not sign Ms letters of
commendation. To these canons must be added an arrangement made at Sardica,
as to the reckonmg of Easter for fifty years to come.
The remaming documents of the Sardican Council are its letters.
(1) The Encyclical, given, like so many other papers of deep
interest, by Athanasius in his Apology, and in a Latin version by
Hilary, informs all Catholic bishops as to the facts now ascertained,
and thus explains the ground on which Athanasius, Marcellus,
and Asclepas had received full acquittal. The letter ends by an
exhortation, based on 2 Cor. vi. 14, Gal. i. 9, to hold no fellowsMp
with the excommunicated Arian bishops — not to write to them,

x.] From Treves to Sardica. 189
nor to receive letters from them. The prelates who, not having
attended the synod, received this Encyclical, wrote in great
numbers to signify their adhesion, and among these were the British
bishops. (2) A second letter, sent to the Alexandrian Church,
exhorts that much-tried community " before all things to hold fast
to the right faith of the Catholic Church " (a curious anticipation
of the first words of the " QMcunque "). " Many grievous and
dreadful troubles have you suffered, many insults and injuries has
the Catholic Church undergone, but he that endureth to the end.
shall be saved ; therefore contend above all things for the sound
faith, and for the innocence of your bishop Athanasius." It is
added that Gregory has been deposed, although, properly speaking,,
he never was a bishop (as to wMch we may observe that the dis
tinction between irregularity and invalidity had not as yet been
clearly laid down) ; and praise is bestowed on the four Alexandrian
priests who had been persecuted by the Mareotic commission.
(3) A letter nearly identical with this last was sent to the bishops
of Egypt and Libya. (4) A Latin version of a letter to Julius is
given by Hilary, in wMch is a passage recognising the fitness of
reference, on the part of the bishops of each province, to " the head,
that is, the see of Peter the Apostle ; " a passage wMch, although,
as Hefele admits, it comes in awkwardly, and looks not unlike an
interpolation, is intelligible in a complimentary epistle from a
great Western Church-assembly to the great primatial see of
" Suburbicarian " Italy, the one " apostolic " see of the West, the
see which the whole Church associated with the name of St. Peter.
TMs letter distingMshes tMee subjects wMch had come before the
Council : — Doctrine — Persons accused, — Outrages perpetrated by
Arianizers. But it concludes suspiciously by naming only seven
bishops as excommunicate. Three other letters, two professmg to
be by Athanasius, are Msufficiently supported, and may be set
aside as spurious.
We also gather from the letter to the Alexandrians that the
Council wrote to the two emperors, requesting them to release the
suffering Catholic confessors, and to restram the civil courts from
adjudicating in religious causes on any pretext of providing for the
Church. Thus ended the famous Council from wMch, as it would seem,
so much had been hoped m the mterests of peace among Christians
at a time when so much of the world was still unchristianized. It
was to have been a General Council : it failed to secure that

190 The Age of the Fathers. [Chap. X.
character, not only from the secession of the Easterns, but also
partly from the imperfect representation of the West. Even
withm the Western Church, its influence was not all-pervading;
and, strange as it may seem, St. Augustine in the early part of the
next century knew of no Sardican Council save the heretical
" conciliabulum " of PMlippopolis, which, as we have seen, had
usurped its name. The fraud had been so far successful as abso
lutely to efface the memory of a synod which, in the intention
of those who assembled it, was to have represented the Church
tMoughout all the world, and to appropriate its true name to the
heterodox assembly of malcontent seceders, in the mind of a great
light of the African Church, and probably of other prelates else
where. At Rome it was naturally otherwise ; the Sardican Council
had done honour to the " see of St. Peter," and Pope Julius had
been present there by Ms legates, like Silvester at Nicaea ; and the
result of the Sardican deliberations had been the triumphant
vindication of the great Confessor whom Julius had learned to
love and honour, the emphatic affirmation of the judgment wMch
Julius and his Roman Council had pronounced, and the enactment
of Church laws which might loosely be regarded as, for the West,
supplemental to the Nicene, and thus, by a considerable license of
speech, came to be described at Rome as forming one body with
the Nicene — as being, in effect if not in fact, " Nicene canons." In
short, the Sardican Council aimed at being Oecumenical, but ended
in being simply a great Western Synod, emphatically loyal to the
Catholic faith.

CHAPTER XL
THE CHURCH AFTER THE SARDICAN COUNCIL.
I.
The immediate result of the Council of Sardica was a widemng of
the breach between the Eastern and Western Churches, in so much
that, according to Socrates, "the boundary line of communion
could be pomted out at the Pass of Succi," where the mountains of
Haemus and Rhodope, as Ammianus expresses it, " separated
Illyria from Thrace." The statement of Socrates, says Valesius,
must not be strained to mean that the schism was formal and
absolute ; but for the present, those who had trusted that the
meeting at Sardica might be a signal for the renewal of good
understanding were compelled to tMnk that it had rather deferred
than hastened that consummation.
Fresh Arian persecutions immediately broke out. Theodulus
of Trajanople had left Sardica before the Council dissolved : with
Olympius of .ZEni, he was accused of crimes ; he fled, was pursued,
narrowly escaped with life, and was proscribed m an imperial letter
wMch announced that, if found, he should be put to death. The
two prelates who had gone over to the Westerns at Sardica were
bamshed into Libya, and otherwise harshly treated. Lucius, on
Ms return, boldly rebuked the Arian leaders, was again loaded
with fetters on neck and hands, and sent to die in exile ; and ten
laymen of Ms church, employed in the manufactory of arms at
Hadrianople, were put to death under orders from Constantius, for
refusing to hold communion with the prelates excommunicated at
Sardica. At Alexandria, two priests and three deacons were con
demned to exile in Armenia ; the city and harbours were strictly
watched, to prevent the return of Athanasius and Ms banished
clergy ; and it was ordered that if they were found near Alexandria,

192 The Age of the Fathers. [Chap.
the magistrates should put them to death. The Arians also,
according to Athanasius, made use of the " public conveyances,"
provided at the Emperor's cost, in order to hunt down persons
suspected of orthodoxy : some were scourged, others imprisoned,
others banished ; some fled into the wilderness, others — as had
been the case after Gregory's earlier persecution — were frightened
into dissembling their belief.
Truly a dark prospect was that which lay before the Catholics
of the East in the early months of 344. But Easter, which fell
that year on April 15, brought them some hopes of relief. Con
stantius was then at Antioch, and there received a deputation from
the late Council of Sardica, consisting of Vincent, bishop of Capua,
— once a delegate of Rome at Nicaea, and afterwards unfortunate
in the same function at a later Council, — and EupMates, bishop
of Cologne, whose name has been, as we shall see, associated with
some questioning as to Ms doctrinal faithfulness. They came
charged with the synodal letter to Constantius above referred to ;
and its request was backed by a letter from Constans, recommend
ing the delegates' mission to his brother's favour, and apparently
intimating a tMeat that if Constantius would not do justice to
the banished prelates, especially to Athanasius, he Mmself would
enforce their restoration. Constantius gave some signs of yielding ;
the Arians at Antioch took alarm, and Bishop Stephen attempted
to rain the character of the aged Euphrates by an infamous plot,
which was to have been carried out by a young profligate named
Onager. The woman who was employed by Onager for the purpose
cried out in alarm when she understood the nature of the con
spiracy ; and on the next day, when an inquiry was held, in conse
quence of a false report against Euphrates, the truth came out, and
Salianus, a military commander of Mgh character, whom Constans
had sent to accompany the delegates and urge Ms own demand on
Constantius, insisted that, as Stephen's offence was a crime, he
should be given over to the cogmsance of the criminal law, instead
of being dealt with by a synod. The distinction was judged
reasonable, and a trial, accordingly, took place in the palace.
Stephen was convicted ; a synod of bishops was permitted to depose
Mm, and Ms see was given to Leontius, a PMygian by birth,
who was canonically disqualified for the priesthood, and had
therefore been deposed from it, but in spite of this was now made
bishop of Antioch, doubtless on the ground of his smgular astute
ness, Ms diplomatic reserve in the expression of his own opinions

XL] The Church after the Sardican Council. 193
— in a word, Ms systematic crypto- Arianism. To place an avowed
Arian in the see would have been too bold a step at a time when
the exposure of Stephen's wickedness had been so damaging to the
party ; and therefore a man who had not in any way publicly com
mitted himself to Arianizing opmions was thought the most desir
able successor to Stephen himself. In fact, this was a perilous
crisis for the Arian interests : just at the time when the imperative
tone of the Catholic emperor of the West was shaking the resolu
tion of his brother, a scandal of the gravest kind had arisen in the
Mghest ranks of the Arian episcopate. And the consequence was
at once felt. Constantius, as Athanasius admits, was shocked at
Stephen's gmlt, " and came to a better mind : " he inferred from
tMs discovery the probable baselessness of other attacks on anti-
Arian bishops ; he ordered the recall of the Alexandrian ecclesi
astics from Armenia ; he even wrote, some thmk, either then or not
long afterwards, to Athanasius himself, in terms of encouragement
or of favour ; but it is more probable that this reopening of com
munications with the man whom he had reinstated m 338, and
begun to persecute m 340, did not take place until 345. However,
the position of Arian affairs, tMoughout 344, was so unpromising,
that about the end of that year the more moderate of the party
resolved to make one more attempt to conciliate the Western
Church. They had more reason than ever to desire thus to mini
mise their theological differences from the Westerns, or, at least, to
remove the Western suspicions as to their substantial orthodoxy ;
and they had now an advantage which, three years before, they
had not possessed. For the views ascribed to Marcellus had
been, so to speak, illustrated, and their natural issue most offen
sively brought out, by the teaching of Ms pupil and friend,
Photinus, bishop of Sirmium. TMs man was born at Ancyra, and
had been deacon under Marcellus. We may dismiss the imputa
tion of lax morality made against him as agamst other heretics ;
tMs would be a natural partisan imputation, and is inconsistent
with the hold which he acqMred and retained over his own
people. Able, eloquent, persuasive, and bilingual, this Galatian
pastor of a Latin flock and cMef bishop of Western Illyricum
was, as events proved, capable of grievously damaging the cause
of orthodox faith if he came forward, as he did, as a champion of
an offensive heresy. Like Marcellus, he held that an impersonal
Word had before creation been immanent m God, had then come
forth to energise in creation, and had ultimately dwelt with
VOL. 1. °

194 The Age of the Fathers. [Chap.
pre-eminent fulness in Jesus CMist, the Son of Mary; but he seems
to have been particularly explicit in denying the pre-existence of
Christ, in contendmg that He was in no sense personally Divine,
and thereby accentuating what Ms master had miplied. He had
thus, apparently during 343, become obnoxious not only to the
Eastern enemies of Marcellus, and to all who dreaded a revival of
Sabellianism, but also, and more especially, to many who, if they
were unable to follow or appreciate a line of speculation or con
troversy as to the Logos, were at any rate keenly sensitive to all
disparagement of their Saviour's digMty ; for Photinus, as it has
been well said, gave special offence by his degraded Christology,
with its affimty to the Ebionitic conception of a merely human
Jesus, and the Samosatene development of that conception into
a CMist who became " Son of God " in virtue of his peerless
human excellence. The Easterns, therefore, would feel that they
could now point more successfully to the Marcellian tone of
thought, as self-condemned M its second representative, and could
be sure of much Western sympathy in denouncing it as eminently
unchristian ; even as, accordmg to Hilary, the Arianizing Orientals
in the great Council of Sirmium, a few years later, tried, in their
letter to the Westerns, to make capital out of the condemnation
of Photinus as against the Athanasian party, which had acqmtted
Marcellus. " You see," they would say, " the Athanasian tendency
to SabelliaMsm. We told you of it before; you can now no
longer ignore it." It would, therefore, be a good moment for
recommending the Eastern doctrinal language to the favourable
consideration of the Westerns. They accordingly drew up at
Antioch what is known in history as the Macrostichos Ecthesis, or
simply the " Macrostich," m which the creed brought to the West
in 342 is followed up by a very " lengthy " statement, represent
ing the better kmd of AriaMsm, but giving a partially unsatisfac
tory turn to its disclaimers of AriaMsm proper, wMch, however,
include the emphatic statement that the Son of God is " God
perfect and true as to nature," unique in SonsMp, "like in all
tMngs to the Father," and abidmg in closest fellowsMp — as we
might say, m coinherence — with the Father, but which fail to
acknowledge His actual coequality. His Divme existence before
all " ages," as one of tMee real Persons (prosopa), and not as a Logos
now "mental" and now "uttered," and the endlessness of His
kingdom, were asserted against Marcellus, and against him whom,
by such a play on names as Eusebius of Caesarea had delighted in,

<i.] The Church after the Sardican Council. 195
xhe Macrostich designates as " Scotinus." The final paragraph ex
plained that the formulary had been framed in order to clear away
all unjust suspicion, and convince the Westerns that the Easterns
believed like Churchmen, or, as it is expressed, " that all in the
West may know, as to the Easterns, their Churchmindedness in
the Lord." Charged with tMs formulary, a second set of four
Eusebian deputies — Eudoxius, bishop of Germamcia, MacedoMus of
Mopsuestia, Demophilus, Martyrius, and others — travelled to Italy
{tMee years after the journey of the first set with " the fourth
Antiochene " creed in their hands), and appeared in the spring of
345 before an Italian council at Milan, which was engaged in
condemmng Photinus as a heretic, a step which had to be repeated
once at Milan and twice at Sirmium. There, too, apparently,
Valens and Ursacius were endeavouring to reconcile themselves
with their Western bretMen by a sort of recantation — anathe
matizing not only the opinions of Photinus, but the heresy of Arius
and Ms supporters, who said that once the Son was not, that He
was made out of nothing, that Christ was not God and Son of God
before all worlds. The Eastern deputies presented the Macrostich ;
but it was much too lengthy for Western patience, and the Council,
doubtless remembering the events of the winter of 343, cut the
matter short by a decisive proposal. "All tMs is needless. If
you say that the Easterns have been misunderstood, there is one,
and only one, way of removrng misapprehension. Do not think
that we shall accept any creed but the Nicene ; but will you,
and those whom you represent, condemn the views of Arius ? "
Eudoxius and his compamons, as Liberius of Rome, in a letter
written eight years afterwards, informs us, dechned this test, and
"withdrew in much irritation from the Council." The Westerns,
they found, were impervious to persuasion so long as one thing
remained undone — and that was the very thing wMch the Easterns
could not bring themselves to do. The recogmtion of Arius at
Jerusalem in 335, if notMng else, stood in their way.
Athanasius, at the time of the Milanese Council, was apparently
staying at Aqmleia, wMch was at this period, by the Emperor
Julian's account, a " rich, luxurious, and prosperous " seaport ; its
inhabitants were already known as " Veneti." He was the guest of
Fortunatian, its bishop. It would seem that he must already have
heard of the death of Ms rival Gregory ; it had taken place, says
the Arian History, " ten months after the return of Constantine to
a better mind." TMs may synchromze with the substitution of

196 The Age of the Fathers. [Chap"-
Leontius for Stephen ; but that act would mvolve the summoning
of a Council, wMch could hardly be got together before the summer
of 344, and this would date the death of Gregory in the April of
345 : it can hardly be postponed to June 26th, even if we could
understand the Festal Index as meaning to date it on that day in
345, although mentioning it under 346. The de facto vacancy of
the Alexandrian see encouraged Constantius to take further steps
in the path of justice and humanity. According to Socrates, he
received a second letter from Constans, menacmg him with war if
he declined to reinstate " Athanasius and Paul." But it is pro
bable that whatever menaces Constans used were in fact conveyed
at the Easter of 344; and Constantius would seem to have
entertained the idea of restoring Athanasius from about the time
of Leontius's accession. But he did not, apparently, write to
Athanasius at once. His personal dislike or suspicion not
unnaturally made him defer this particular task. After " a long
time," as he Mmself says, he did write. It may be, certainly, that
this " long time " includes some part of 344, but the words would
admit the other construction. Constantius, in his first letter,
invited Athanasius fearlessly to come into his presence, rhetorically
described the places of his Western sojourn as " wildernesses," and
professed, with a transparent attempt to preserve his digmty, that
tMs grace, on his part, was altogether self-suggested, and even
that he had written to Constans, asking him to permit Athanasius's
eastward journey. Another letter, written from Edessa in tMs
same year 345, briefly directed Athanasius to make use of " the
public conveyances" (or cursus publicus): this letter was despatched
by the hands of one of Athanasius's presbyters, recalled from
Armenian exile. One more letter was written after a longer in
terval, and brought by the deacon Achitas to Athanasius at Aquileia.
His slowness in acting on Constantius's invitations is somewhat
surprising ; it would have been worthier of him, one is tempted
to tMnk, to have shown more confidence, and acted more boldly ;
but, for whatever reason, his misgivings were not removed until
early in 346. He then visited Rome, and was cordially welcomed
by Julius, who wrote a beautiful letter of congratulation to the
Alexandrians on their recovery of their pastor, now " returning to
them, after all his trials, more illustrious than when he went
away. It delights me," he proceeded, "to imagme the multi-
tudmous greetings, the glorious festivity which will make your
hearts glad, on the day of my brother's return ! " The good and

XL] The Church after the Sardican Council. 197
generous Pope added that he too had a personal joy like theirs, as
havmg been permitted to become acquainted with so emment a
man ; and concluded by praying that the Alexandrians' noble con
fession M the righteous cause might be rewarded with those better
tilings which " eye hath not seen, nor ear heard." Few documents
of the fourth century are more touching, or exhibit their author
in a more attractive aspect, than this letter of Julius of Rome.
Athanasius travelled into Gaul to take leave of Constans, who
perhaps accompanied him on his journey south as far as the Italian
frontier. At Hadrianople the returning exile saw the graves of the
ten slaughtered Catholics m front of the city. At Antioch, he at
last had another interview with Constantius, who, although he was
at Constantinople for most part of 346, probably paid a short visit
to Antioch about midsummer. The Emperor was in his most
gracious mood; the archbishop maintained a grave self-respect,
wMch must have seemed far from courtly. He made no com
plaint of inferior agents of " Eusebian " maligMty, but insisted on
referrmg to what Constantius himself had done. " Let me confront
the accusers on whom you relied: I am ready to meet them."
Constantius would not hear of it. " I will cause all previous
charges agamst you to be effaced from the public records : God
knows I will never again listen to any such. This is my fixed
purpose ; set your mind at rest on the matter. There is, however,
one thing that I will request of you, in return for my favour. Let
one of your many churches in Alexandria be given up to those
who cannot jom your communion." With Ms characteristic readi
ness Athanasius answered, " You have the power to order ; but I
also may as reasonably ask, that one church in Antioch may be
given up to those who cannot worship with Leontius." The
Emperor would have agreed to tMs, but Ms Arian advisers persuaded
him to drop the negotiation. Sozomen thinks they perceived that
they could gain nothing at Alexandria, and might lose much at
Antioch. In fact, Athanasius's presence m Antioch had embarrassed
Leontius, and encouraged the " EustatMans," who, as we have seen,
had kept up their worsMp apart. In the " golden Church," many
¦Catholics prayed and sang along with the Arianizers, but the forms
of doxology varied : one part of the congregation ascribed glory to
the Father "tMough the Son, in the Holy Spirit," while others
said, " and to the Son " or " with the Son," and " with the Holy
Spirit." Such variations were no novelty. St. Polycarp in his
dying prayer had used " tMough " and also " with ; " Dionysius

198 The Age of the Fathers. [Chap,
of Alexandria had used " and ; " wMle Julius had recently used
" tMough," and Athanasius seems to have used " through " more
frequently than " with." Thirty years later, Basil said that the
form " with " had been handed down to Mm as supported by
venerable authorities ; he Mmself had used it both in regard to the
Son and to the Holy Spirit, although he had also used " tMough "
and " in," and he defended " and " as warranted by the baptismal
formula. Leontius on this occasion, with characteristic wariness,
slurred over the critical words, and only just raised Ms voice at
" world without end," literally, " unto ages of ages." It should
be observed that " As it was in the beginning, so now and ever
(be it)," was not in the original form. The fire of Catholic faith
and devotion was kept up in the cathedral congregation by two
laymen, Flavian and Diodore, who simply gave themselves up
to the task, and inspirited their bretMen by establisMng the
antiphonal chant of the psalms in the church of Antioch. They
were mtensely and unmistakably in earnest, and Leontius durst
not interfere with them ; yet Athanasius felt bound to hold aloof
from them, and from all who held commuMon with the bishop ;
and we can well imagine the exultation with which the Eustathian
remnant, itself considerable in point of numbers as of zeal, would
see the great confessor entering the private house where they met,
and joining in the services — an act on Ms part which had mo
mentous results in the after-history of the " Antiochene scMsm."
He left Antioch after a short visit, letters being at the same time
sent by Constantius to various classes and personages in Egypt.
The bishops and clergy were informed that all judgments passed
against them on Athanasius's account were now to be cancelled,
and that to be in communion with Mm was even to be deemed
a proof of loyalty. The laity of Alexandria, who, Constantius
wrote, had been for a long time without a bishop's presence,
were bidden to welcome Athanasius, and profit by Ms inter
cessions with God. The prefect of Egypt, and the governors sub-
ordmate to him, were commanded to erase all that was found
in their order-books " tending to the injury " of Athanasius and
Ms people ; and Constantius also directed that the Mghly valued
privilege of immunity from onerous mumcipal or " curial " offices
should be restored to the Athanasian clergy. The archbishop
was welcomed at the maritime city of Laodicea in Syria by a
young Reader of the Church, Apollinaris ; he and his Alex
andrian-born father were highly educated, and their keen love for

XL] The Church after the Sardican Council. 199
the brilliant Hellenic literature had brought them, years before,
into a painful collision with their bishop Theodotus, who had put
them under public censure for listening to the recitation, by a
Greek sophist, of a hymn in honour of Bacchus, and had only
absolved them after full proof of their sorrow. The young Apolli
naris (for both had the same name) now drew on himself another
church-sentence from his present bishop, the Arian George, for his
enthusiastic reception of Athanasius, on whom George would look
with the bitter enmity of one who had been degraded for heresy
by Alexander. From Laodicea Athanasius proceeded to Jerusalem,
where a Council was held, without the sanction of the metropolitan
of Caesarea, but in virtue of the honorary precedency of Bishop
Maximus, and thus with the result of furnishing a sort of precedent
for the Mdependence of the see of Jerusalem, wMch, as we shall
see, was not secured until 451. And here nearly all the bishops
of Palestine did what could be done towards repairing the miscMef
wrought by that unhappy Council of Jerusalem wMch, eleven
years before, had recognised Arius as orthodox. TMs new assembly
gave its cordial greeting to Athanasius, and sent a letter to Ms
suffragans, and his clergy and laity, congratulating them on Ms
restoration as a marvellous answer to their prayers, and professmg
to be umted with them by the common tie of affection for Mm.
Sixteen prelates, Maximus bemg first, signed the letter; others,
who were absent, wrote to Athanasius, excusing their former un
friendliness. He set forward once more. On reacMng Pelusium,
he warned the people against Arian craft ; accordmg to Socrates,
he performed ordinations in some churches not belongmg to the
Alexandrian diocese — or, as it would then be called, "parish" — and
"thus originated another complaint" against Mm; but the ample
powers of the Alexandrian see render this latter statement doubtful.
And now it only remained for Mm to enjoy with his people the
day wMch had been so glowingly anticipated by Julius ; it was on
the 24th of Paophi, or 21st of October, that his second return took
place, a.d. 346. The picture of such a scene drawn by Gregory
Nazianzen, and connected by him with a tMrd return in 362,
seems to belong more probably to this. He shows us, as it were,
the vast masses of people streaming out from Alexandria in
majestic procession, regularly divided mto their several orders, to
meet their archbishop at some distance from the city ; the eyes
gazmg eagerly from every rismg ground for a glimpse of the well-
known diminutive figure with the noble " angelic face," the ears

200 The Age of the Fathers. [Chap.
strained to catch his first greetings, the voices rising in rapturous
plaudits, the hands clapped in delight, the air fragrant with
incense ; the city, from Sun-gate to Moon-gate, north and south,
and throughout its whole circmt of some fifteen miles, one blaze
of festal illumination; doubtless also the churches of Theonas,
of Dionysius, of Quirinus, and the Baucalis church itself, crowded
with thankful worsMppers as soon as Athanasius was actually
in Alexandria. It was a day such as leaves an ineffaceable
impression of splendour, triumph, and happmess ; and long after
wards, the Alexandrians used to say of any magmficent pageant,
" It is Like the day when Pope Athanasius came home ! " But
better worth recording, as Athanasius and his friends felt — for it
is this that is dwelt upon in the " Arian History " — was the moral
fruit of all this exuberant enthusiasm; the congregations en
couraging each other in good works; many, young and old,
embodying their thankfulness in exceptional and absolute self-
devotion, giving themselves up " to care for the things of the Lord "
in consecrated celibacy and " self-discipline," — or, in married life,
and in families, throwing their whole souls into prayer or active
charities, and making their " houses seem like churches ; " and
amid all this outburst of piety and earnestness, wMch proved that
the " glorious festival " had done a solid work on souls, and had
manifoldly raised the moral and religious tone of the community,
the archbishop, as Gregory tells us, might be seen doing the work
of a peacemaker, and gently and generously accepting the re
pentance of old opponents. Some, indeed, of those who had been
scared into conformity with Arians came by Mght to entreat his
pardon ; " they had always been faithful in their hearts ! " There
were, of course, some necessary substitutions of orthodox bishops
for Arians, wMch Athanasius had to execute with all speed. In
one or two cases, he allowed a bishop who had " returned to Church
uMty," probably from Meletiamsm, to hold rank along with the
regular bishop of the place ; and it is mteresting to find that the
regular and long-desired absolution of Arsenius now took place,
and he was confirmed in Ms bishopric at Hypsele. From abroad,
there flowed in a multitude of letters fraternal and congratulatory ;
andValensand Ursacius, having, as we have seen already, renounced
Arianism at the recent Council of Milan, wrote from Aquileia to
Athanasius with cool impertinence as their " beloved brother,"
and desired Mm to write back to them ; " for know that we are at
peace with you, and in communion with the Church." They also

xi.] The Church after the Sardican Council. 201
" went up to Rome " — of their own free will, as Hosius afterwards
declared — but apparently from a desire to propitiate their sovereign
Constans, and in presence of Julius and his presbyters subscribed
a recantation to tMs effect : " We have laid many charges against
Athanasius by letter : you, Pope Julius, wrote to rebuke us, and
we could not justify ourselves ; we here confess that those charges
were all false ; we desire to be m communion with Athanasius,
since we have now been pardoned by you; but if he or any
Eastern bishops should call us to account for this matter, we will
not attend without your sanction. We repeat our renunciation of
Arianism made at Milan, and will abide by it." The Latin
origmal of tMs document (which has been thought spurious, but
seems rather to have an air of genmneness, especially in the
expression of uneasiness as to future proceedmgs) was sent to
Athanasius by Paulinus, bishop of Treves as one version reads it,
but more probably of Tibur. We are also told that afterwards, two
priests of Alexandria, and a layman without any mstructions from
Athanasius, presented " letters of peace " to Valens and Ursacius,
which they signed — bemg ready at that time to sign anytMng.
Havmg thus sufficiently abased themselves, they were, it appears,
received into communion by another Council of Milan representing
many provmces, and principally occupied with the busmess of
Photinus, whom it condemned but could not dislodge.
Here, then, amid the "deep and wondrous peace" which
Athanasius enjoyed for nearly ten years, we may, as having
reached a landmark, pause awhile in the Arian history.

II.
Let us turn, then, in the first mstance, to another and very
different scene, which, in a distant field of the Church's work, was
recalbing the memories of the age of martyrdom.
For historical purposes, we may neglect the legend about
Thaddaeus, one of the Seventy, being sent by St. Thomas to Abgar,
king of Edessa, according to a local account preserved by Eusebius,
and connected with a fabulous correspondence between Abgar and
our Lord. The church of Edessa seems to have origmated in the
second century ; and then the story of an Apostolic mission might
grow up. But the names of Adai and Maris, associated with the
oldest " East Syrian " liturgy, may represent the fact as to the first
preaching of Christiamty in Eastern Mesopotamia, whence it was

202 The Age of the Fathers. [Chap.
carried mto Persia. There were, in the second century, many
CMistians in Persia who refrained from the lawless marriages
sanctioned by Persian law. We do not know that their position
was at all affected by the overthrow of the PartMan monarchy,
and the restoration of the Persian in the Sassanid kings, a hundred
years before the Nicene Council ; and we are told that Manes or
Mani, in his earlier days, before he became the founder of a new
and thoroughly unchristian system, had adopted Christianity, and
had even acted as priest in the Persian Church. In 309, three
years before the overthrow of Maxentius by Constantine, Sapor II.,
the " Long-lived," began at once his life and reign ; and as he
grew up to manhood, he became bent on wresting back from the
Romans those " five provmces to the north and east of the Tigris,"
wMch Rome had acquired after the campaign of 297. But it was
perilous to try conclusions with " the Victorious " Constantine.
John, a Persian bishop, was permitted, as it appears, to attend the
Nicene Council ; and Sapor sent envoys with friendly messages to
Constantine, who learned from these two sources that there were
many churches in Persia, and that " multitudes of people were
bemg gathered into the fold of Christ." Thereupon, about 332,
Constantine resolved to address Sapor in favour of the Persian
Christians. His letter, preserved by Eusebius, begins with the
emphatic declaration, "It is by preservmg faith in God that I
enjoy the light of truth." In Ms usual style of didactic and self-
complacent rhetoric, but also with remarkable adaptation of his
topics to his intended reader, Constantine descants on the hateful-
ness of sangMnary sacrifices, on the divine approval of pure hearts
and virtuous lives, of gentleness, of forbearance, on the wretched
fate of the persecutor Valerian, whom, he says, " God's vengeance
gave over to your country ; " then, after referrmg to the ruin of
more recent heathen tyrants, he comes to the point by expressmg
his satisfaction at the prosperity of the Christians under Sapor,
and commending them to his " brother's benignant " care. This
letter is qmte incompatible with Sozomen's supposition that a
persecution of Persian Christians had then begun : we must rather
say that they were, at any rate, not seriously disturbed until several
years later. The peace between Rome and Persia was not broken
until after the death of Constantine ; but Sapor saw his opportunity
in the partition of the Roman sovereignty, and early in 338 the
Persians were compelled to raise the siege of the strong frontier
city of Nisibis, which had long been esteemed the Eastern

XL] The Church after the Sardican Council. 203;
" bulwark " of the empire. Then, as in two later sieges, which the
city sustained m 346 and 350, and the last of which continued for
a hundred days, James its bishop, who had sat in the Nicene
Council, upheld its resistance by Ms lofty faith and courage. Thus
the Persian king would learn but too easily to associate Christiamty
with the cause of Rome, and to suspect his Christian subjects of
disaffection. The Magian priests would know how to work upon
his uneasiness. They persuaded him to impose excessive taxes on
the CMistians, although many of the latter had embraced voluntary
poverty : the collectors were rigorous, and much distress ensued.
The next step was to destroy churches, and confiscate sacred vessels.
As a third measure, bishops and clergy were imprisoned; and
many a CMistian, seeing a reign of terror setting in, was scared
mto dissemblmg his belief. After several such preludes to a
regular persecution, Symeon Barsaboe (" son of the Leather-
seller"), the primate of the Persian Church, bishop of the two
adjacent royal cities of Seleucia and Ctesiphon, was denounced
— according to Sozomen, who had full mformation, by Jewish resi
dents — as a traitor who had not only protested against the oppres
sive taxation of Christians, but was wont to give information to
Constantine respecting the plans of the " Great Kmg." He was
led in chams before Sapor, probably, says RMnart, in the April of
345. The place was Ledan m Huzitis. He pointedly omitted the
usual ceremony of prostration, wMch Alexander and Diocletian
had borrowed from Oriental palace-chambers, and which was per
petuated through ages at the Caesarean court. " Why do you not
prostrate yourself," asked Sapor, " as you used to do ? " Symeon
answered boldly, " I did so when I was not put in chains to make
me betray my God, and when therefore I might freely do homage
to my king." Sapor bade Mm, at least, adore the sun, promising
riches and honour if he complied, menacing him with death,
and with destruction of all Christians, if he were obstinate. He
was immovable, and, together with two old priests, was remanded
to prison. Passmg forth at the palace-gate, he saw sitting there,
like Mordecai of old, a Christian of high rank, arrayed in splendid
attire. This was his friend Usthazanes, cMef officer of the palace,
and foster-father of Sapor, who had lately, under severe pressure,
consented to worship the sun. He rose at the bishop's approach,
and, as he had doubtless been wont to do in happier times, bowed
reverently before him. Symeon uttered a few words of stern
reproach, and turned his face away. Usthazanes burst mto tears,

204 The Age of the Fathers. [Chap.
exchanged his rich garments for black, and sat down agam at the
gate, groaning bitterly : " Woe is me ! what can I expect from the
God whom I denied, if for His sake my old friend thus disowns
me ! " Sapor heard of his sudden grief, sent for him, and asked if
any evil had befallen his house. " Would that it had ! " cried his
foster-father. " Why do I live — why do I behold the sun, to which
I paid a guilty worship, betraying CMist and deceiving you ? But
I protest, by the Creator of all tilings, that I now take my side,
once for all, as a Christian." "This is Christian magic," said
Sapor, who had a true regard for Usthazanes : he tried alternately
severity and kmdness, in order to bend Ms resolution; all was
in vain, and Sapor at last ordered him to be beheaded. It was
Maundy Thursday. Usthazanes begged one moment of respite,
wMch Ms guards granted ; he then sent a message to Sapor : " 0
king, my loyalty to your father and yourself needs no proof : in
return for it, I ask one boon. Cause it to be proclaimed that
Usthazanes dies, not for any offence committed in his office, but
oMy for bemg a Christian, and refusmg to deny Ms own God at
the king's order. " Sapor granted the request, m hopes of terrifymg
the CMistians by such a proof that mere persistency m CMistianity,
or in rejection of the sun-worsMp, was a capital crime, even in the
person of one so dear to Mm. The bishop in Ms prison heard that,
as in several other pathetic and cheering cases in the history of
martyrdom, a temporary apostasy had been thus gloriously re
dressed ; he thanked God, and doubtless came forth all the more
tranquil and joyous, next morning, to be once again questioned by
Sapor. He declared that he would worsMp neither the kmg nor
the sun. He was condemned to die, with a hundred other im
prisoned confessors. They were all led out on the Crucifixion
mornmg ; all refused the cMef Magian's offer of mercy at the last
moment, on condition of doing the king's will ; Symeon stood by
while each in turn received the death-stroke, speakmg to them of
the true life to which a death for God would be the entrance, of
the great account, and the eternal future. He suffered with his
two priests, one of whom, Ananias, an old man, trembled visibly
as the moment drew near. Pusices, the superintendent of the king's
works, stood near and encouraged him : " Shut your eyes for one
moment, and be of good courage ; you will speedily see God's own
light ! " The speaker was at once arrested, and dragged before Sapor ;
he owned himself a Christian, and spoke boldly of the CMistians'
innocence ; he was pumshed by a death of special pain, his tongue

XL] The Church after the Sardican Council. 205
bemg torn out before life was extinct. " The sword," we are told,
" never rested in its work for ten days, until the second Sunday of
the second week of the Pentecostal period," i.e. our first Sunday
after Easter ; and m the followmg year, when Good Friday came
round, an edict appeared, dooming to death all who should own
themselves Christians. Many fled mto places of Mding, and the
Magians hunted them down with relentless eagerness ; others came
forward to profess their belief, lest by silence they should seem to
deny it ; and great numbers suffered martyrdom. One of the
most famous cases in tMs terrible Persian persecution was that of
Tarbula or Pherbutha, a dedicated virgm, sister of Symeon, who
with her sister and her servant, both women of devoted lives, was
seized on the charge of having avenged Symeon's blood by bringing
on the queen, through magical arts, the disease from which she
then suffered. This was a Jewish calumny, and the queen, a pro
selyte to Judaism, gave it credence. The three women were sawn
asunder, and the halves of their corpses were fastened to three
large stakes on each side of the place of execution. " To break the
spell," said the Magians, " the queen must pass between them ; "
and this ghastly scene is referred to April or May, 346. A
chamberlain of the palace, named Azadas, was put to death without
Sapor's personal knowledge ; and the king, who "loved him," by a
new edict restricted the persecution to the teachers of Christianity.
Among those teachers who were martyred may be mentioned
Symeon's successor in the Seleucian bishopric, Sadoth or Chahdoust,
who, with a hundred and twenty-eight companions, was imprisoned
for five months, and repeatedly tortured. All but Sadoth were led
together to execution ; he was beheaded in another district, about a
year after Symeon's martyrdom ; and an aged bishop, Acepsimus,
was Mrprisoned for tMee years, and finally beaten to death. We
need not at present look farther mto a series of inflictions which
lasted, with some intermissions, until the death of Sapor in 380.
Seldom has any national Church been exposed to so severe a trial
of faith and patience ; it is difficult for the imagination to picture
to itself the merest outlines of what has been called, with but little
exaggeration, the Forty Years' Persecution. But, from its earliest
portion, some features stand out in such distinctness as cannot be
surpassed m the records of Christian endurance : beside the Great
King himself, perverted into the most obstinate of persecutors by
fanatical zeal for his national worsMp, by affronted royal pride, and
by a conviction that Christians must be traitors — or his wretched

206 The Age of the Fathers. [Chap.
wife, goaded by suffermg mto a barbarous credulity — we seem to
:see the high-hearted primate setting an example of true constancy ;
the old court servant seduced for a while Mto apostasy, and re
claimed by timely rebuke for a martyr's crown ; the dauntless
layman sustainmg the old priest's courage at the critical moment,
and the tMee holy women adjudged, by a specially odious calumny,
to a death of umque torture. Enough has been said to show what
was the condition of the Christians in the farther East in. the period
just following upon the Council of Sardica, while on the central
stage of Church life the Catholic cause was emergmg into some
what of rest and sunshine. Let us now turn our thoughts into an
opposite quarter, and look at the condition of the African Church
in presence of its obstinate local scMsm.
III.
At the time of the Sardican Council, some thirty years had
elapsed since the Donatist movement, or, as it was then called, the
" pars Majorini," had sprung out of a stern zeal against alleged
unfaithfulness in time of persecution — a zeal wMch might most
emphatically be called " not according to knowledge," boiling to
fever-heat in dogged and vehement African natures, refusing to be
corrected either by charity or by justice, but not disdaining to
co-operate with such base elements as petty vindictiveness and
baffled ambition. The contention of the new sectarians was a
definite andiunvarymg one : " Caecilian was not legitimately bishop
of Carthage, because Felix his consecrator had been a Traditor —
had surrendered certain copies of Scripture in the beginnmg of the
Great Persecution. The only true bishop of Carthage was Major
inus, who had been consecrated m order to provide Carthage with
a bishop whose commission was untainted ; and Caecilian himself was
not, as the apostolic rule required, ' blameless,' for he had formerly
shown great unkmdness to imprisoned Christians during the
persecution." Constantine had early been called upon by the
adherents of Majorinus to have the case judicially exammed.
Since that appeal, wMch took place m April, 313, five investigations
had been made — by the Council of Rome in October of that year ;
by the proconsul .ZElianus at Carthage, when the charge against
Felix was proved to rest on forgery ; by the Council of Aries in
August, 314 ; by Constantine in Ms cabmet council at Milan in
November, 316 ; and by the "consular" Zenophilus, who had to

XL] The Church after the Sardican Council. 207
receive an accusation against Silvanus of Cirta, in 320. All these
trials, says Gibbon, " were favourable to the cause of Caecilian : "
" perhaps," he adds with his wonted cynicism, the question " was
determined with justice ; " but on that point, the extant evidence
as to Ms opponents assuredly leaves no doubt. Of their odious
temper, — violent and arrogant almost to the point of frenzy,
pertinacious in the face of damning facts, as Augustine says of the
party, " toties mendax, toties confutata," contemptuous of all but
partisan interests, illustrating, as we may say with such tragical
vividness, the Apostolic description of schism as " carnal," — we
have such proof as to make it difficult to read the Donatist Mstory
with patience, or to believe that there were any really good men
among the adversaries of Caecilian. And yet m so large a body
there must have been some whose cMef fault lay in partisan
credulity, and whose chief object was to keep the Church of CMist,
at a time full of secularising influences, true to herself and to her
Head, loyal, strict, devoted, pure.
The exile of the Donatist leaders, mcluding the more famous
of the two who bore the name of Donatus, i.e. Donatus " the
Great," who succeeded Majorinus m his episcopate at Carthage,
continued five years or thereabouts, and came to an end, from
Constantine's weariness at their importunity, three years before
the Nicene Council. Their recall had given them fresh oppor-
tuMties for consolidating their party. Donatus of Carthage, as his
admirers preferred to call Mm, without employing the ordinary
title of bishop, was eminently qualified to act as their head ; and
from him, rather than from Ms elder namesake, the party cMefiy
derived its name. He was able, eloquent, learned, and of blame
less personal conduct ; but Ms pride of office and position amounted
almost to insanity, and was afterwards compared by Optatus — who
wrote about A.D. 370 — to the self-exaltation of the " prince of Tyre "
depicted by Ezekiel. He treated the other bishops of his party as
his vassals and creatures, hardly deigning, it was said, to " partake
of their oblations," i.e. to communicate at their hands. He allowed,
at least he did not forbid, Ms adherents to swear by Ms name : St.
Augustine says that " by the white hair of Donatus " became a
common Donatist oath. He also, it seems, accepted without
reluctance their exclamations of " Well done, good leader, noble
leader ! " and Optatus censures Mm because, when any Donatists
came to Carthage, he did not ask them the common questions about
the rain or crops, or the peace of their district, but (as if he had

208 The Age of the Fathers. [Chap.
no time or thought for such " small talk") put the question to each,
" How is my party getting on where you live ? " It was not, says
Optatus, the cause of Christ — the Church — that was the apparent
subject of his thoughts, but what he did not shrink from calling
" his party." At the same time he must be supposed to have habi
tually regarded " Ms party " as the true Church of Christ ; and he
wrote a letter to prove that in it alone was true Christian baptism — a
position which, before he became the " leader," had been practically
carried out by rebaptizmg any churchmen who joined the schism.
He also wrote a book on the Holy Spirit, in which he showed a
disposition to Arianize. Under his presidency the sect gathered
strength: it was bold enough to appropriate a church built by
Constantine for the Catholics of Cirta ; and the Emperor ordered a
new basilica to be erected for them on another site. A law of his
in 330 shows that its influence had wrongfully imposed " curial "
burdens on some Catholic " readers " and subdeacons ; it became
popular, respectable, imposmg; and many applicants for admission to
its commuMon acknowledged themselves to have been "Traditors,"
but objected to being rebaptized. These cases were dealt with about
A.D. 330 by a great Council of two hundred and seventy Donatist
bishops, which sat for seventy-five days, and after much deliberation
excused such persons from receiving a fresh baptism ; but, as Tille
mont expresses it, " the Donatists did not by any means hold to
this decree." About the same time, perhaps, the party extended
its operations by establishing a little scMsmatic bishopric outside
the walls of Rome, for a small knot of African residents ; the first
occupant of it was Victor of Garbia. He had no following among
the Roman CMistians ; he was obliged to establish himself on a
hill outside the city — perhaps the Janiculan — and there to hold his
services in a cave wMch he had fenced with hurdles. TMs spot was
to the Donatist conventicle at Rome — called from this circumstance
the Montensians or Hill-folk — all that the basilicas on the Lateran
or the Vatican, wherein no Donatist would set his foot, were to the
great community which worsMpped in some forty churches, adhered
to the " Cathedra Petri," and regarded it as the most eminent,
symbol of the unity of the Church.
As we have already seen, the famous Western Council, wMch
paid such careful observance to the dignity of the " see of Peter,"
included among its members the successor of Caecilian — Gratus,
bishop of Carthage. This had led the seceders at Philippopolis to
address their synodal letter to Donatus, his rival, among other

XL] The Church after the Sardican Council. 209
bishops on whose friendsMp they might count. Little or nothmg
came of tMs overture so far as the Arian interest was concerned,
for if Donatus himself was unsound, while not denymg the
Homoousion — that is, as Augustine expressed it, if he personally
held " that the Son, though of the same substance with the Father,
was yet inferior to Him, and the Spirit inferior to the Son " — tMs
-advanced " subordmationism " of their chief teacher did not make
its way into the minds of Ms adherents. But they did make use
of the Eastern bishops' letter, as proving that the East disowned
the " Traditors' " apostasy, and recogmsed their body as the
African Church. On the other hand, Gratus appears to have taken
the opportunity, as he returned home by Italy, of paying a visit
to the Emperor Constans, for a purpose wMch, sensitive as he
was on the scandal of needless journeyings to court, he would
represent to Mmself as just and necessary. The Emperor would
do a good work, he pleaded, if he would send alms to the poor
-Christians of Africa; and this generous charity on the part of
a Catholic monarch might have the further good result of wm-
Mng back to the Church not a few who were now m scMsm.
Constans readily entered into the plan, and sent two imperial
commissioners, Paul and Macarius, charged with gifts from himself
to all African CMistians. The sum was very large — a " treasure,"
as Optatus describes it, out of wMch the poor m every district
might have been "relieved, fed, clothed, and made happy." The
commissioners, in distributing it, made no distinction between
churchmen and sectarians : it was, Mdeed, one object of their
mission to try the effect of Mndness on sectarian ammosity ; they
only coupled their dole, m the case of Donatists, by exhortations
to return to Catholic umty. EverytMng was done gently and
persuasively; mdeed, to have acted otherwise would have con
travened the very purpose of their coining. They addressed
themselves to Gratus's lordly rival, and explamed , the Emperor's
wish to befriend the poor members of both commuMons. Donatus,
who a few years before had not hesitated to write to Gregory,
praetorian prefect of Italy, as the " disgrace of the senate and of
his order," now thought fit to show the Emperor's agents how little
he, " Donatus of Carthage," the most powerful man in the African
capital, cared for any missive from a prince. "What has the
Emperor to do with the Church ? " he demanded, in forgetfuMess or
disregard of the repeated memorials wMch Ms party had showered
on the father of Constans; and, as if m sheer recklessness, he
VOL. I. P

210 The Age of the Fathers. [Chap.
bestowed some bitter epithets on Constans himself. The com
missioners kept their temper, and calmly said, " Well, we shall go
tMough the various provmces, and distribute supplies to any who
will receive them." " I have already written," he rejoined, " to
prevent my people from taking anythmg at your hand ; " he would
doubtless feel, if he did not say, that the gifts were intended to
bribe them into conformity; and if we may here refer to the
Donatist " sermon on the harassmg of the party " at some period of
Caecilian's episcopate, it might be some justification of Donatus's
violent language that this was not the first occasion on which
the government had attempted to " take faith captive," as the
Donatist writer expresses it, by means of money.
But the party had an engine of resistance, the power of wMch
its leaders knew too well. Tumultuary reprisals va. the form of
outrages on Mdividual Catholics by Donatists had, as early as 317,
called forth the horror and pity of Constantine. They were
probably perpetuated by the wild bands of fanatic peasants, who
commonly gamed their livmg by beggmg from one hut or cell to
another, and hence acquired the name of Circumcellions. They
were origmally social malcontents, enemies of " capital " and
proprietorship as such, and ready to side with the Donatists as
" the disaffected party in Church and State." Even when pagamsm
was M full power, such men had courted death by violently
interrupting a rural sacrifice ; they were just as ready to rush, M
the cause of the "pure Church," on "adherents of Traditors,"
although with the prospect of slaying rather than of bemg slain.
And yet agam, some years later, but before the arrival of Paul and
Macarius, these "madmen," as they are often described, had
proclaimed war, in grotesque but savage fasMon, against property
in the name of religion : headed by Maxido and Fasir, whom they
styled "Leaders of the Samts," they had scared creditors into
abandonment of their claims, beset the Mghways, dragged masters
out of their carriages and forced them to change places with their
slaves, and altogether made themselves such a pest that the very
Donatist prelates whom they professed to acknowledge had to-
mvoke the government agamst them, and Count Taurinus had put
many of them to death at a Numidian town, where long afterwards
their white gravestones were understood to claim for them the
honours of martyrdom. Such was the force now called out by
another Donatus, schismatic bishop of Bagai, to prevent the
commissioners from entering his city. He gave them the proud

XL] The Church after the Sardican Council. 2 1 1
name of " Agonistici," or Combatants for God. One can realise,
by help of some passages of St. Augustine, what these Circum-
cellions looked like, what they shouted, how they rushed on —
thick swarms of dark-faced barbarians, armed with huge clubs
which they called " Israels," and thundering forth their war-cry of
" Praises to God ! " a shout more dreaded than the roar of a lion,
and probably adopted m opposition to the Catholic watchword,
" Thanks to God ! " A collision followed when Paul and Macarius,
for mere safety's sake, procured soldiers from the Count Silvester :
at first the Roman horsemen, who came on m front, were repulsed,
and then the soldiers, exasperated, fell on the fanatics, and put a
small number of them to the sword. Thus was the peaceful
aspect of the scheme for Reumon irretrievably darkened ; and the
Donatists, who on this occasion lost two of their bishops, Donatus
of Bagai, and a prelate of some learning and religious reputation
named Marculus, immediately canonized them as martyrs, although
there was some suspicion, justified by the after-history of Donatist
fanaticism, that they were, m fact, suicides. Blood had at any rate
been spilt ; the Agonistici had been cut down by the soldiers
brought against them by the " operarii unitatis ; " it was a new
persecution of the faithful. Such was the language held by the
scMsmatics, who for years continued to denounce the memory of
" the time of Macarius," to implicate Mm personally in the whole
guilt of the slaughter of Bagai, and m the subsequent " martyrdom "
of two other Donatists, Isaac and Maximian, one of whom, it is
said, died M prison after many inflictions, and the other was cast
into the sea : a narrative which Tillemont suspects as possibly
invented by the Donatists, but which may record some actual
cruelty mto which the government was provoked by obstmate
fanaticism. It is needless to add that the scMsmatics held the
Church answerable for all that Macarius or the soldiers did ; and
doubtless, although in fact the Catholic bishops were not either
directly or indirectly parties to the proceeding, it was natural for
mcensed followers of Donatus to see their hand in the edict which
baMshed the Donatist cMefs, and enforced that "UMon" which
could not be effected by persuasion. Macarius, who now entered,
as Optatus acknowledges, on a rigorous course, would naturally
justify it to his master on the ground that mildness had been met
by perverse obstinacy, which, from an imperial point of view, would
look like sedition ; and as the original plan had aimed at promoting
simple conformity through material assistance, we may presume that

212 The Age of the Fathers. [Chap.
the prospect of many insmcere professions of ChurchmansMp did
not greatly disquiet either Macarius himself, or the clergy in whose
Mterest, although on his own responsibility, the repressive policy
of 317-320 was again put in force. When the Union was to be
Maugurated by a solemn celebration of the Eucharist in the
cathedral of Carthage, there was an attempt to stir up religious
pamc. " It is a restoration of paganism that is coming upon us,
under the guise of UMon ! Paul and Macarius will attend the
sacrifice ; and when the altar is prepared, they will set an image
upon it, and so have the sacrifice changed into idolatry. Chris
tians, beware ! Whoso tastes of this sacrifice, to be offered in
ratification of the UMon, tastes of a thing offered to an idol ! "
But many who came to the service were much relieved by finding
that there was " nothmg to shock the eye or the ear of a Christian :
there was only a pure worsMp, with the orderly ritual duly observed,
and notMng changed," as Optatus expresses it, " by addition or by
omissiom, in the offering of the sacrifice to God." Thus many
who had been schismatics were Mduced to " welcome the peace
which seemed now to have a Divine sanction." Macarius, indeed,
was present, and commumcated, and made an address to the people,
by way of explaining the object for wMch the " Union " had been
established ; but he did not, we are carefully told, assume the tone
of a preacher, nor begin and end Ms speech with the wonted
episcopal form of salutation. The result of these proceedmgs was
naturally a large reinforcement of the numbers of the African
Church : various motives, of course, impelled various persons to
accept the Union, and many must have retained in heart the
sectariaMsm wMch they thought it prudent to abjure. Among the
new conformists were several Donatist bishops. Of the imposmg
scMsmatic hierarchy which some years before had sat in council
on the question of receiving repentant Traditors, nothmg was now
to be seen on the stage of African Christianity; the Donatist
services were proscribed, and no commuMon lifted its head in
rivalry with that of wMch Gratus was the cMef pastor. He was
thus able to hold a Council of the whole African Church at
Carthage, some time apparently between 345 and 348. It ranks
as the first Council of Carthage, although, takmg Mto account those
of the precedmg century — the one held under Agrippinus, and
the seven under St. Cyprian — it would be reckoned as the Mnth.
Gratus began his address by thanksgiving to God and Christ for
the close which had been put to " the evil schism," by the agency

XL] The Church after the Sardican Council. 213
of the most religious emperor and of his instruments in the holy
work. He went on to say that this epoch of restored unity was a
good time for enacting some necessary Church rules, wMch should
avoid the extremes of laxity and rigour. " First, then, if you
please, let us consider the question of rebaptization. Let your
Holinesses give judgment whether a person who has once been
dipped in the font, with due confession of the Trinity and in the
faith of the Resurrection, may again be interrogated on his faith,
and again immersed in the water." All the bishops exclaimed,
" Far be it, far be it ! " Gratus expressed his satisfaction, and passed
on to another poMt, which had been of great importance in the
very begmnings of Donatism. We have seen that Mensurius, and
Caecilian as his archdeacon, had exerted themselves — the Donatists
said, with great harshness — to discountenance the intemperate zeal
of persons who, instead of waiting to be interrogated by a heathen
magistrate, came forward of their own motion to declare themselves
Christians, and rushed precipitately, so to speak, on that death
which such a self-surrender naturally entailed. The moderate
party M Africa, followmg St. Cyprian's judgment rather than
Tertullian's, had always regarded such an act as presumptuous, and
declMed to acknowledge as martyrs those who thus provoked the
government to shed their blood. TMs view was denounced by the
Donatist fanatics as a scandalous insult to Christ's triumphant
athletes, and a transparent veil for poor-spirited disloyalty. Gratus,
therefore, was touching one of the vital points at issue when, with
a cautious and modest preface, as one who was but a member of the
episcopal body — " sharing," as he said, " the same solicitude with
yourselves " — he proposed that no one, on pain of censure, should
treat as martyrs those whose vehement impetuosity had really
disqualified them for that august title, and who were sufficiently
graced by the Church's indulgence in burying them as Christians.
TMs second canon was also accepted by the Council ; it had already,
the bishops exclaimed, been passed, since the Union, in local synods.
The scandal and temptation caused by the custom, still existing in
some places, of clergy dwellmg in the same house with women
who were not their wives, was treated of in two other canons, the
first of wMch relates particularly to the case of these " Sub-
introductae," already brought before the Ancyran, Neocaesarean,
and Nicene Councils. Another bishop suggested that no bishop
should receive another's cleric or laic without Ms leave ; and
Gratus approved, addmg, " I remember that in the holy Council

214 The Age of the Fathers. [Chap. XI.
of Sardica it was ordamed that no one should take possession
of a man belonging to another flock," — alluding to the fifteenth
Sardican canon, wMch, however, did not warrant the extension
of the prohibition to the case of laics. He summed up the pro-
ceedings by proposmg to Mclude in the resolutions of tMs Council
the statutes of other councils, and the whole body of existing
Church law, and by calling on his brethren to sign the Council-
record. So ended the proceedmgs connected with the "union" of
Donatists and Catholics : an event wMch gave the Church of
Africa about sixteen years of external peace, but wMch was far
enough from really healmg the scMsm, or quencMng the forces
which were sullenly and determmately abidmg their time for a
fresh explosion, and whose extent was tragically manifest when
Julian's edict M favour of the Donatist exiles gave an opportuMty
for the reorganization of the sect, and opened a new scene of
fanatical outrages and sternly repressive penal laws.

CHAPTER XII.
THE SECOND ARIAN PERSECUTION.
The course of the Church M her contest with Arianism, while her
cause was impersonated m " Athanasius the Great," may be likened
to a dangerous mountain- path, diversified at intervals by plateaux
of " large room " on whose ample levels the wearied feet might
rest, and the eyes freely look around, reviewmg the extent that
had been traversed, and calculating, M some sort, the measure of
exertions that must follow. One such resting-place had already
been granted, for a short time, after the first return of Athanasius
in 338, on the termMation of Ms sojourn at Treves. Another and,
as it might be called, a still more refreshing mtermission of toils was
obtamed M the " deep and wondrous peace " wMch succeeded Ms
second return, eight years later, m the autumn of 346. To this
tranquil period may be referred the foundation of an organized
Church M EtMopia, otherwise Habesh or Abyssmia, wMch m those
days extended across the Straits of Bab el Mandeb into Southern
Arabia. We owe the story to information received by Rufinus,
the sometime friend of Jerome, from a priest named iEdesius, the
brother of its hero. True, iEdesius said that the mam event took
place when Athanasius had "recently become bishop:" but a
mention of the Ethiopic Church and its chief pastor in a subsequent
work of Athanasius suggests a later date, and iEdesius, M Ms old
age, might have confused the time just precedmg Athanasius's worst
troubles with the earliest part of Ms career. It was then, we may
say, about 350 that Athanasius was sitting in synod with his
suffragans, or some of them, when a stranger craved an audience.
He gave Ms name as Frumentius, and said he had come from
EtMopia, wMch was then also known as " Interior India ; " and
Ms narrative was "stranger than fiction." He and Ms brother
jEdesius were CMistians born at Tyre ; many years before, as boys,

216 The Age of the Fathers. [Chap.
they had accompanied a kmsman named Meropius, a "philosopher"
or scientific mquirer, on a journey to the far south, on wMch he
had entered after hearing the account of the travels of another
philosopher named Metrodorus — the date of whose return is thus
an element m the case, and is placed by Valesius m 325, but some
twenty years earlier by Tillemont, who accepts the early date of
the story. The two brothers were on their way home when their
vessel touched a port m the Red Sea ; they two alone had escaped
death at the hands of the barbarous natives, and after bemg sold
as slaves to the king of the country, whose capital was Auxume
or Axum, had grown up as Ms confidential servants. After his
death Frumentius had been made guardian of his son, or rather
of his two sons Aizan and Sazan ; in that office, he had done Ms
utmost to provide places of worsMp for CMistian traders resident
in EtMopia, and to spread Christian ideas among the native popu
lation. When the guardiansMp came naturally to an end, the
queen and her son had begged the brothers to remain m EtMopia ;
but they had returned to the Roman world — iEdesius hasteMng
to the old home at Tyre, wMle Frumentius, with the noble words,
" It is not right to Mde the Lord's work," repaired to Alexandria,
to entreat that a missionary bishop might be sent to the country
wMch he had learned to serve and love. Athanasius looked full
at the petitioner, and borrowMg the words of Pharaoh concerning
Joseph, said, "And whom can we find so fit for that work as
yourself — a man M whom the Spirit of God is ? " The other
prelates assented, and Frumentius received consecration, returned
to EtMopia, fixed Ms see at Axum, was supported M Ms mission
by the royal house wMch he had upheld in its time of weakness,
and so laboured as to earn the name of "Father Salama, who
kmdled in EtMopia the splendour of the light of Christ."
But to return to the scenes of religious strife. There were
matters connected with attacks on orthodoxy outside the general
line of Arian hostilities, wMch might sufficiently remind all
thoughtful Churchmen that they must not dream of any permanent
rest from the burden of vigilance or the stress of warfare. We
need not, apparently, mclude M these subjects of anxiety the
alleged demal of Christ's Godhead by Euphrates of Cologne, who
had been one of the deputies from the Sardican Council to Con
stantine, and the Mtended victim of an infamous Arian conspiracy
at the Easter of 344. The account of the condemnation of
Euphrates in a Council of fourteen prelates, held at Cologne in 346,

xii.] The Second Arian Persecution. 217
cannot now be deemed authentic ; it was never brought forward
until a comparatively late period, and the silence of contemporary
or other ancient authorities is rendered more impressive by the fact
that, in the record, Bishop Servatius of Tongres is made to say, " I
was aware of Euphrates's conduct and teaching from the circum
stance of my livmg in a neighbouring city, and I often contradicted
him, when he denied Christ to be God, in the hearing of Athanasius,
bishop of Alexandria : " according to which Athanasius must have
known of EupMates' s heresy while he was resident in Germany,
six or seven years before the Sardican Council conferred ou
EupMates the honour of being one of its delegates. The whole
story looks like an Arianizer's attempt to counteract, as it were,
the scandal of Stephen's detected plot against Euphrates by asso
ciating the latter with the characteristic heresy of Photinus, and
making Athanasius, and his friend MaximM, and Servatius, who
afterwards visited Athanasius at Alexandria, cognisant in various
ways of the gross unsoundness of the Metropolitan of " Second-
Germany." But we must enter into the troubles which were
undoubtedly distressmg the Italian bishops in 347, not only from
the ArianizMg disposition of some of their brethren, whom it was
found necessary to excommunicate, but from the persistency of
Photinus of Sirmium, who, strong in natural gifts, and supported
by his own people, had practically defied the sentence of thev
Milanese Council of 345* Another Council, therefore, probably held
at Milan, promulgated a new sentence of deposition m 347 : it was
this assembly which, while condemning several Arianizers, appears
to have formally accepted that recantation which Valens and
Ursacius (as we have already seen) had tendered to the earlier
Council of Milan, and which they had supplemented by a friendly
letter " to Athanasius," written at Aquileia, and by a formal and
explicit recantation in presence of Julius and the presbytery of
Rome. They were now received mto communion by the Council,
in the presence, and with the assent of Julius's legates. The mam
object, however, of this numerous Council, the members of wMch
are described by Hilary as "anxii," was to clear the West yet
more decisively from all supposed complicity in the detested errors
of the disciple of Marcellus ; it was eminently necessary to show
that tMs development, M a peculiarly offensive form, of the theories
ascribed to the old friend of Athanasius and the old enemy of the
Arians, met with simple rejection at the hands of the "Athana-
sians " of Italy. The Council accordingly communicated its-

218 The Age of the Fathers. [Chap.
sentence against Photinus to the Eastern bishops. Some of these
saw their opportunity, and held a meeting with remarkable bold
ness m Photmus's own city — a very important border-town in
Lower Pannonia, and "the bulwark of the Illyrian provinces."
This meeting, wMch may be dated in 348, must rank as the true
" first council of Sirmium." The prelates there assembled, in their
reply to the Italians, took occasion, wMle renewmg the sentence
against Photinus, to denounce Marcellus as the origmator of Ms
heresy; to say that Marcellus's acqmttal at Sardica had been
irregular, and obtained, so to speak, on false pretences ; and to
affirm that Athanasius himself had been obliged, at last, to break
off commuMon with his former friend. TMs latter statement was
believed by Hilary, who traced Athanasius's action to some later
utterances of Marcellus ; but it hardly agrees with Epiphanius's
account, who says that when he himself once asked Athanasius
what he thought of Marcellus, he got no answer save a qMet and
yet sigmficant smile, wMch he understood to mean that Athanasius
" regarded Marcellus as one who had only just stopped short of
heresy, and had defended himself agamst that charge." If Atha
nasius ever did suspend communion with Marcellus, it must
have been for a short time only ; for he seems to have regarded
Mm with confidence as cleared of all suspicion of heresy, when
he wrote, or sanctioned the writing of, the " Arian History " about
ten years later. And indeed, one cannot lay much stress on a
statement by Arianizing bishops as to the conduct of Athanasius
towards the person whom they specially abhorred ; for their object
was to commit all adversaries of PhotiniaMsm to a sort of censure
on Athanasius. They expressed their own belief m a short and
vague creed, wMch could not of itself imply any heresy, but
by its mdistinctness could serve only to put the Westerns more
than ever on their guard, and is therefore described by Hilary as
""fraudulent." And thus, although East and West were agreed
in reprobating Photinianism, the Arian difference still kept them
apart. So stood the great question which divided the Latin-speaking
Churches from a large portion at least of the Oriental, when an
event occurred wMch ultimately placed the East and West once
more under a single tin-one. The Emperor Constans had not
fulfilled the promise of his early years. He suffered from a painful
affection of feet and hands, which took away much of his energy,
and thus he fell into the hands of bad favourites, under whose

xii.] The Second Arian Persecution. 219
influence Ms character deteriorated. He never could have been
great, but he had amiable qualities, and, in the eqmtable judgment
of Ammianus, would have " committed no faults, or at any rate
only vernal ones, had he but been well advised." In Ms thirtieth year,
for want of due military caution, he allowed himself to be defeated
by some adherents of an insurgent general named Magnentius, and
was slain by them at a town called Helene on the Gallic side of
the Pyrenees, January 18, 350. Magnentius was acknowledged as
Emperor by " the two great prefectures of Gaul and Italy," mcludmg
Britain, Spain, and Western Africa ; the usurpation of Nepotian,
a " stolid " young nephew of Constantine, at Rome, lasted but
for a month: for nearly a year Vetranio, a dull illiterate man
who had ruled " Illyricum," including Macedonia, Greece, Epirus,
Dacia, and Mcesia, was allured into the position of an imperial
claimant ; but Constantius, with considerable tact, induced him,
late M 350, to accept ease and safety in private life, and thus
had his hands free to carry on the struggle with the slayer of his
brother. TMs was no light task, for Magnentius was a strong man,
who conciliated at least some of Ms subjects by observMgthe laws,
as Libamus expresses it, and others by a tolerant policy towards
pagaMsm. But Constantius defeated him at Mursa in September,
351, drove Mm into Gaul in 352, and finally routed his forces in
the Cottian Alps in 353 ; whereupon Magnentius fled to Lyons,
and adopted " the Roman fashion " of death.
If we ask for the first ecclesiastical consequence of these political
changes, we shall find it m the opportuMty given, by the annexa
tion of Vetramo's dominions to those of Constantius, for a further
movement against the indomitable bishop of Sirmium in his own
city; thither Constantius, whose birthplace it was, betook Mm
self on his way to confront his remaining rival ; and there a large
synod met, probably early in 351. Basil of Ancyra was there,
naturally eager to push matters home against the disciple of the
prelate whose seat he filled once again, in consequence of a fresh
expulsion of Marcellus ; for it seems that the latter's tenure of that
uneasy throne had been renewed some time after 344, and agam
cut short, perhaps in 350. Among other prelates there were to be
seen Eudoxius, MacedoMus of Mopsuestia, Theodore of Heraclea,
and Mark of Arethusa, with Valens and Ursacius, who had been
persuaded by their old friends to return to what Athanasius calls
" the mire of their impiety." It is hardly possible, however, to
follow Socrates when he says that Hosius of Cordova was present

220 The Age of the Fathers. [Chap.
on this occasion, although " much against his will ; " he was still a
subject of an Emperor, or usurper, at open war with Constantius.
The Council once again deposed Photinus ; and it published, in the
first mstance, a creed, wMch was all but exactly identical with
that which had been brought from Antioch to Constans, had been
adopted at Philippopolis, and had formed the first part of the
Macrostich. Then to this creed were appended, not, as before,
a few anathemas, but twenty-seven, wMch form the characteristic
of this Sirmian Confession of 351. Athanasius observes that the
bishops, while they did not make their document so long as the
Macrostich (which was, in fact, prolix in its comments on its seven
anathemas), yet wrote new matter in the place of the larger part
of the Macrostich, " as if they had listened to the suggestions of
others." The first anathema had been annexed to the creed at its
previous appearances, save only that, when brought to Constans,
it did not condemn the position, " There was time or age when the
Son was not," but simply, " There was time when He was not ; "
the evasion, " He was before all time " (which would not strictly
imply eternal existence), being more distinctly, yet not qmte
adequately, proscribed by the later censure against those who
would not say, " He was before ages," as well as " before time." Of
the remaiMng anathemas, some are protests agaMst all Ditheistic
or Tritheistic conceptions ; others disclaimed the notions imputed
by thorough adherents of Nicene doctrine to even the milder form
of AriaMsm as to the passibility of the Son's (so-called) divinity,
or His derivation of bemg from the mere will of the true Creator ;
others msisted on His mMisterial agency in the creation and
under the patriarchal covenant, explaming, for instance, "The
Lord ramed fire from the Lord," of the combined operation of the
Father and the Son, and excluding Ditheism on the ground, not
of the coinherence, but of Filial " subjection ; " others mdicated
a disposition to what was afterwards known as the Macedoman
heresy, wMch separated the Holy Spirit from the being of God ;
others struck at Marcellus's language about a temporary " ex
pansion " of the divme essence, by which the " Son " — that is, as
Marcellus was supposed to mean, the human person as taken
into temporary relations with the " forth-going " Word — began to
exist; others, earnestly enforcmg the pre-existence and divmity
of the Son as absolutely, and not in mere divine foreknowledge,
living and divmely energising (i.e. in subordinate mmistration),
before His nativity in the manhood, must have been at once

xil] The Second Arian Persecution. 221
understood as illustrating the condemnation of Photinus. The
whole document is interesting, and may be taken as a speci
men of the better kind of Arianizing formulas. Hilary, who
had long before received baptism in the faith of a really eternal
Christ, utterly separate in His essential being from all created
existences, and was shortly afterwards elevated to the bishopric
of Poitiers as the hope and strength of Gallic Christianity, makes
the best (for an irenic purpose) of this long Sirmian Creed as
virtually Catholic, as implying an essential unity between the
Father and the Son, and — in spite of one or two phrases which by
themselves might cause suspicion — consistent with a belief in the
Co-equality ; but in this connexion he Mmself uses language over-
strongly Subordinationist. Athanasius ranks the formula as one
of the Eusebian or Arianizmg attempts to provide a substitute for
the Creed of Nicaea. At any rate, the Council which produced it
must M fairness be treated as more respectable than an ordinary
Eusebian synod, m that, as Newman says, " it met to set right a
real evil, and was not a mere pretence with Arian objects." But
the " real evil," even yet, presented some difficulty : Photinus
complamed to Constantius that he had been unjustly condemned ;
nor was it until after a formal discussion, in presence of certain
appomted judges, between Basil and the deposed prelate, that the
latter was pronounced to have merited his sentence, and accord
ingly sent into exile, from which he did not return during the
lifetime of the Emperor.
That prince might, in this case, be acting cMefiy as the mstru-
ment of a well- deserved Mdignation against a thorough-gomg deMal
of the pre-existence of Christ. But he was himself prepossessed in
favour of Semi- AriaMsm : he had been the oppressor of orthodox
bishops ; and now, as the master not only of the East but of
Illyricum, and the rightful heir of the whole Constantmian m-
heritance, he was only too likely to show his real mind by
renewMg the persecution wMch Ms late brother's remonstrances
or menaces had induced him, seven years before, to intermit. The
orthodox of Constantinople must have soon begun to tremble for
their bishop ; and they had a speedy fulfilment of their worst
apprehensions. Philip, the praetorian prefect of "the Orient,"
who, as such, presided not only over the " Orient " proper, but over
tMee other " dioceses," and who enjoyed the full favour of Con
stantius for some time after he quitted office, — as late, at least, as
September of 351, — was commissioned — probably about the end

222 The Age of the Fathers. [Chap.
of 350 — to perform a very different service for the master whose
success, comMg when little expected, and amid circumstances pecu
liarly favourable to Ms Arian advisers, impelled Mm as by an over
mastering mstinct into the congenial path of Arianizmg tyranny.
Philip was to expel Paul once more, and once for all, and effectually.
He " remembered," says Milman, " the fate of Hermogenes : " he
sent a message to the bishop, respectfully desiring Mm to come
to the Baths of Zeuxippus, where business of importance re
quired Ms presence. Paul, we may suppose, set forth from his
house near the cathedral of St. Sophia, which had been com
pleted during the usurpation of his see, and had but to traverse
the rectangular piazza or forum called Augustaeum M order
to reach the appomted meeting-place, which, M its all but
fresh adornments of stately columns and statues of bronze, was
situated between the palace-entrance and the eastern end of the
Hippodrome. Philip showed him the imperial order : the prelate,
whose spirit, perhaps, was broken rather by Ms frequent mis
fortunes than by age — for he was comparatively young some
fifteen years earlier — submitted, and allowed Mmself to be huddled
through a door leadmg into the imperial palace, and thence on
board a boat and across the Bosporus. There was need for this
precaution; for the people, suspecting mischief, were crowdmg
round the baths in a mood which boded danger. But PMlip was
prompt as well as crafty : he had orders to install Macedonius in
the bishopric, and he lost no time in presenting that often-baffled
aspirant to the gaze of the astonished crowd, among whom, says
Socrates, he appeared " as suddenly as a missile shot from an
engine ; " they saw Mm seated beside Philip in his state-carriage,
escorted by guards with drawn swords to the gates of St. Sophia.
The people were too utterly taken by surprise to contemplate any
hostile demonstration ; but they crowded blmdly and confusedly
Mto the cathedral precinct, and the soldiers, findMg their way
thus obstructed, chose to tMnk that resistance was intended, and
cut down those who thronged around them, until some 3150 corpses,
slaughtered, or crushed m the desperate struggle to escape, covered
the pavement across wMch the Arian bishop, after what Socrates
ironically describes as " this brilliant success," passed M triumph
to Ms tin-one beyond the altar. From that tragic day to the
enthronement of Gregory Nazianzen m the winter of 380, the see
of Constantinople was a stronghold of AriaMsm, and of Arianism
in alliance with such irreverence and worldliness as to bequeath

xil.] The Second Arian Persecution. 223:
sore trouble to the episcopate of that Mgh-souled, fervid samt,
whose name was destined to be one of the few glories of ecclesias
tical " New Rome." There was somethmg like an anticipation of
St. Chrysostom's last afflictions M the brief remainder of the life
of Paul. He was carried in chains to Cucusus, a lonely little town
on the Cappadocian frontier, long afterwards selected as the place
of Chrysostom's exile. There he died — but how ? There were
dark rumours : the people of Cucusus said that Ms death was not
natural ; one story rested on the authority of a bishop named
Serapion, as having heard the Arian persecutor Philagrius say
that Paul was left for eleven days without food in a narrow
cell, and, being found alive at the end of that time, was strangled
— presumably by the orders of PMlip. Sozomen candidly acknow
ledges that he has never been able to ascertain whether disease or
violence was the cause of Paul's death ; but we cannot wonder
that he was regarded as a martyr in the cause of Catholic Chris-
tiaMty, and that he holds his place among confessors m the Greek
and Latin calendars alike. His death may be dated M the
beginning of 351, and the likeliest account of his four expulsions is,
that he was bamshed (1) to Pontus by Constantine, (2) to Singara
and to Emesa by Constantius, (3) was ordered to repair to his old
home m Thessalonica m consequence of the Hermogenes tumult,
and (4) finally was carried off to Cucusus in 350. When Philip
Mmself died, in disgrace and misery, a year after Paul's " martyr
dom," the Catholics naturally said, " It is a judgment."
The news of tMs tragedy, no doubt, sounded to the Alexandrian
Churchmen as ominous of some great trouble approaching their
own doors. Athanasius, Mdeed, had given no umbrage to Con
stantius : the first public act of Ms, after the death of Constans had
left the Eastern Emperor the sole possession of the imperial rights,
was to bid prayer, so to speak, in Ms church, for " the good estate
of Constantius Augustus," in the hearing of the " duke " or general
Felicissimus, and six other Mgh secular officials ; and Ms people at
once and unanimously responded, " 0 CMist, send help to Con
stantius ! " But he had seen reason to take in hand the task of
compiling the great "Apology," or Defence, agamst the Arians,
by way of meeting the objection that the old charges agamst him
had never been satisfactorily disproved ; and did so first by pro-
ducmg evidence of the judgment of synods and bishops in his
favour, and then by exMbitmg the grounds on which those judg
ments were based. This explains the inartistic and unchronological

.224 The Age of the Fathers. [Chap.
arrangement of the work. In 350 he was visited by certain envoys
from Magnentius to Constantius, includmg Servatius, bishop of
Tongres ; and he burst into tears when speaking to him of Constans.
But Valens and Ursacius were again at their work as mtriguers.
Liberius, who succeeded Julius of Rome on May 22, 352, was
plied with letters against Athanasius, which however were out
weighed, M the judgment of his Roman synod, by an encyclical
from eighty suffragans of Alexandria; and this proves the spurious-
ness of a letter in the Hilarian " Fragments " in which Liberius is
made to say that he had summoned Athanasius to appear at Rome
and answer to certam charges, but that Athanasius had ignored
the citation. But Constantius, on his westward journey against
Magnentius in 351, had been irritated, says the " Arian History,"
by seemg that so many bishops retaMed commuMon with
Athanasius. Therefore, " like one set on fire, he suddeMy changed
his mind ; " and in the spring of 353 Athanasius heard enough of
the Emperor's unfriendly mood to resolve on sending five bishops,
one of them Ms friend Serapion of ThmMs, and three presbyters,
as a deputation, in order, if possible, to conciliate Constantius.
Four days later, on May 23, Montanus, a body-guard or " Silen-
tiary," arrived, with an Mrperial letter of a startling kind. " The
bishop of Alexandria was not to send any messengers to court ;
but as he had requested leave to visit the Emperor at Milan, he
was free to do so." As he had requested ? He had never made
any such request. He saw through the attempt to decoy him, and
answered that a permission granted on a misconception must,
of course, be regarded as having no weight : if the Emperor sent
him a distinct order to appear at Milan, he would set forth at once ;
until then, he should stay at Alexandria. The baffled agent of
tMs ignoble device left Alexandria accordmgly, as Sozomen says,
" without havMg effected anythmg." It appears that one false
charge made against the archbishop was the extravagantly absurd
one, that he, the friend of Constans, had had treasonable deahngs
with Magnentius. A letter purporting to come from Mm to the
usurper was exMbited by his Arian foes, among whose resources
the forger's craft was not inconspicuous. Another charge was not
so manifestly slanderous, and he had to take some pams to coMute
it: there might seem to be a prima facie likelihood that he had
stirred up Constans against Constantius for his own purposes;
but in fact, as he afterwards proved, Ms mtercourse with Constans
had been so scanty as to give him no opportumty for such an

xil.] The Second Arian Persecution. 225,
exercise of his influence, even supposing that he had had any wish.
to do so. He had written to Constans twice, and heard from him
thrice, and had seen and spoken to Mm in several places, such as
Milan, Aquileia, and Verona, but never alone.
Constantius was now more powerful and more formidable than
ever ; and a new Council was spoken of as to be called in the West
under his auspices, for the settlement of all the ecclesiastical dis
sensions, after the successful close of the civil war. Liberius, in
the name of many Italian bishops, desired the Emperor to convoke
it at Aqmleia. This request was conveyed through Vincent, now
bishop of Capua, and Marcellus, another Campanian bishop, who
also were entrusted with the documents for and against Athanasius,
wMch had been laid before the Church of Rome. These deputies
found Constantius at Aries, some thirty-nme years after the great
Council held there on the Donatist case. He refused to let the
proposed Council meet anywhere but in that city ; and it assembled
there in the winter of 353, under circumstances most threatenmg
to the Catholic cause. The bishop of Aries, Saturninus, was a
violent Arian ; and the first step taken was the presentation, by
Constantius's orders, of a draft of a sentence condemning Athanasius.
On the other hand, the Roman delegates demanded that the theo
logical question should take precedence of the personal : " Let us-
first settle the point of doctrine, and then go on to points of
conduct." No, the Arians would hear of nothing of the kind.
At last, the delegates so utterly forgot their duty under the
pressure of tMs ArianizMg dictation, backed up as it was by
imperial support, that they gave up the cause of Athanasius, on
the condition that Valens and Ms friends would in their turn give
up the cause of heresy. " Better to yield the point," they thought,
" as to one man than to lose the opportunity of a triumph for the
faith." A foolish and culpable forgetfulness that there were cases,
and tMs was one of them, M wMch one man impersonated the-
faith ; and that m no case whatever could the faith be secured by
acquiescence in a mamfest injustice. Valens and the Ariansj
havmg secured their point, fell back on their possession of a.
majority in the Council, and refused to entertain the dogmatic
question ; all that msistence could do was done M order to force
all the bishops present to sign the renunciation of Athana
sius (who, as Dr. Pusey once observed, might easily be mis
represented to, or misunderstood by, the average Latin mind) ;
and all gave way on the side of the orthodox minority, save
VOL. I. Q

226 The Age of the Fathers. [Chap.
one whose firmness put to shame the weakness of the Roman
deputies. That one man was Paulinus, the worthy successor of
MaximM at Treves ; he withstood all threats and all persuasions,
and was bamshed first Mto a PMygian district, where he had to
dwell among adherents of MontaMst fanaticism still surviving in
its ancient birthplace, and then to some remoter spot beyond the
limits of CMistendom. Liberius, on hearing of tMs result of the
Council, wrote to Hosius m bitter vexation and sorrow. " I hoped
much from Vincent, who had often sat with your Holiness as a
judge m that cause. I had believed that, with Mm as legate, the
Gospel of God would be preserved in its entirety. He has not only
gamed notMng, but has Mmself been carried away into that dis
simulation. After what he has done, I am affected with a two
fold grief, and have resolved, for my part, to die in God's cause
rather than give my adhesion to a judgment that is agamst the
Gospel." To Caecilian, bishop of Spoletum, Liberius wrote, " Dearest
brother, let not VMcent's conduct turn you back from the purpose
of acting rightly." There was need for energetic warnmg, and for
co-operation among faithful-hearted Italian bishops ; for trouble
was " hard at hand."
" The situation," says Hefele, "was most critical, for the Emperor
required the Italian bishops to break off all ecclesiastical relations
with Athanasius." Then it was that Liberius found sympathy
and help in the steadfastness of Eusebius, bishop of Vercellae, who
was famed as the first Western prelate that personally adopted
monastic rules of life, and who, as combimng spiritual fervour and
zealous faith with patient sweetness and eqMtable mtelligence, was
enunently qualified to uphold the cause of Catholic truth at this
specially trymg crisis. Another auxiliary was fully as zealous as
Eusebius, but far less equable in temperament, and, while wholly
mcapable of fear, or of any weakness that might compromise Ms
religious loyalty, was too likely to spoil the good effects of his sturdy
constancy by hot-headed and uncharitable vehemence. This was
Lucifer, bishop of Caliaris, the metropolitan see of SardiMa. He
came to Rome, and offered to go to the Emperor and demand an
other Council, wMch should proceed on better principles than that
of Aries : Liberius accepted the proposal, and united with Lucifer
a priest named Pancratius, and a deacon named Hilary, who after
wards became famous, but whose fame, like Lucifer's, was M the
end such as no Catholic would envy. The Pope sent by these
deputies, probably at the begmnmg of 354, a letter to Constantius,

xil.] The Second Arian Persecution. 227
in which he began by endeavouring to allay the Emperor's known
irritation agamst Mmself, as expressed in a recent letter to the
Romans, and then referred to false charges which had produced
or Mcreased it. He was accused of having suppressed certam
letters of the Easterns, because they mculpated Athanasius. On
the contrary, he had read them, M his church, to his Council.
They had been considered, and had been only put aside when out
weighed by letters from the Egyptian Church. Then, with some
what too much, perhaps, of self-consciousness, Liberius protested
that he had come to the see of Rome unwillingly, but that in it
he hoped to remain without offending God for the rest of Ms
life, observmg the rules handed down by his predecessors, and
holding fast that faith, in its inviolate purity, which had been
transmitted by " such eminent bishops, most of whom were martyrs,"
— an exaggeration due to local tradition or legend. Then he came
to the matter M hand. The Easterns professed to wish for peace.
What peace ? Could he forget that, eight years before (he was alludMg
to the events of the spring of 345, when the " Macrostich " was
presented to the Westerns), four of these Eastern bishops refused
to condemn Arianism in a Council at Milan ; and was it not patent,
from a letter of Alexander of Alexandria to " Silvester of holy
memory" — apparently the first of Alexander's encyclicals — that
before Athanasius became bishop, a number of priests and deacons
were excommrmicated for Arianism, some of whom, at the very
time at wMch he was writing, were said to have orgamzed councils
for themselves, outside the pale of the Catholic Church ? In these
circumstances, how could the Easterns be regarded otherwise than
with suspicion ? He then described the unfairness with wMch his
delegates at Aries had been tricked mto a seemmg compact, wMch
proved to be no compact at all: such proceedings deprived the
recent Council of all moral weight, and Liberius must now solemnly
call upon the Emperor, by Ms sense of gratitude to God for the
signal overtMow of Ms enemies and establishment of bis authority,
to let the whole matter come before another Council, M wMch the
decisions of Nicaea, approved by Ms father, should be treated with
deserved respect. Liberius had already written to Eusebius of
Vercellae, askMg him to support the request by Ms influence with
the Emperor ; he now agam wrote m commendation of the bearers
of tMs letter, " I know that the Spirit of God is fervent M you.
Act with my delegates, as may be pleasmg to God and His angels,
and beneficial to the Catholic Church." Eusebius heartily entered

228 The Age of the Fathers. [Chap.
into his feehngs and hopes ; and when the delegates came into
North Italy, and visited him on their way mto Gaul, he gave them
a cordial welcome — the more cordial, probably, because Lucifer was
Ms countryman and friend. On hearing of tMs kindness, Liberius
wrote to him again a third time, acknowledging a letter wMch
Eusebius had written on their arrival, and exhorting the bishop of
Vercellae, in terms which his own subsequent history invests with
a paMful Mterest, to go on "labouring as a good soldier of the
Eternal Sovereign, and to show Mmself in the character of a priest
speaking the truth." He also wrote to Fortunatian of Aquileia,
in whom he expressed a confidence which events proved to be un
founded — one must needs say as unfounded as that confidence
wMch Liberius apparently was now placing in himself.
Some months elapsed before Constantius gave Ms assent to the
Pope's request. When he did so, it was probably because his
Arian advisers themselves professed to wish for another Council, at
which their work might be done more thoroughly than at Aries.
Accordingly, m the begmmng of 355, three hundred Western
bishops, and a small number of Eastern ones, assembled at Milan.
The place might seem less unfavourable than Aries to the interests
of orthodoxy, for Dionysius, the bishop who, as such, was the
leadmg prelate m the North-Italian provinces, was earnestly
Catholic, and his people are spoken of by St. Hilary as " most
pious " — a character which, in fact, they soon exhibited in days of
trial. But the attitude assumed by Constantius Mmself was so
menacmg, and so ominous as to the policy which the Council
might be made to carry out, that Eusebius dechned to attend. On
tMs, he was urged by a synodal letter, not without threats, to
consult with its bearers, Eudoxius and Germmius, and then sigMfy
Ms acceptance of the condemnation of the heretics Marcellus and
Photinus, and of the " sacrilegious " Athanasius. Constantius Mm
self exhorted Mm to appear at Milan ; the three Roman delegates,
M a brief letter expressive of strong emotion, implored him to
come and defeat Valens, as "Peter and Paul had overthrown
Simon Magus." He wrote to the Emperor, sayMg that he now
thought it their duty to come to Milan, where, as he sigMficantly
concluded, "I promise that I will do what shall seem just and
well-pleasmg to God."
The Council held its sittings, as usual, m the principal church.
The metropolis of Northern Italy had several churches : two
which are named by St. Ambrose were not in existence at the^

xil.] The Second Arian Persecution. 229
time, for it was by Ambrose himself that they were dedicated —
these were the " new " or " great " Basilica of the Apostles near
the Roman gate, and the church represented by the present San
Ambrogio. Ambrose mentions three others — the churches of SS.
Felix and Nabor, and St. Fausta, and the " Portian church, outside
the walls," westward of the Ambrosian. In one of these churches
Dionysius presided as bishop, and here the Council met : for ten
days Eusebius was excluded from their sittings, and when he was
admitted, the plans of the Arian managers bemg matured, he was
asked to sign the condemnation of Athanasius. It must always be
remembered that this was not to profess any doctrinal opmion,
but to recognise the previous condemnation of Athanasius on
charges affecting his character. Like the Roman legates at Aries,
Eusebius answered, " First let us settle the question of primary
importance : I know that some bishops here present are not sound
m the faith. Here" — and he produced a paper — "here is the
Nicene Creed. If you will sign it, I will do what you please on
other matters." It was a disingenuous speech, if strictly construed ;
but Eusebius well knew that the bishops would not sign the Creed
with anything like unanimity. Dionysius, who seems to have
made a similar promise, was naturally the first to take the paper ;
but Valens wrenched it, and the pen with which he was on
the pomt of signmg, from his hands, exclaiming, "We can get
nothing done in that way." This scene took place within the
chancel, which was separated by a curtain from the nave. The
Milanese Church-people who crowded the nave could hear some
disturbance, and became greatly excited : their bishop, it is said,
went down into the nave to quiet them ; he then returned into the
sanctuary, but was called out again on the sudden arrest of a
Catholic layman by military force. He is said to have told them
not to defend the faith by arms. At another session Eusebius was
agam importuned to condemn Athanasius, and agam msisted that,
in the first instance, the Nicene faith should be affirmed. If
Athanasius were afterwards proved guilty, he would condemn him.
The people m the nave seconded Eusebius by outcries of " Turn
out the Arians ! " and Dionysius and Eusebius succeeded in
signMg the Nicene Creed in presence of the bishops, and imme
diately before the celebration of the Eucharist. It would appear
that the celebration was demanded by the Catholic laity, and per
formed by Dionysius ; that Lucifer was kept away from the church
by Constantius, and that the people by their resolute attitude,

230 The Age of the Fathers. [Chap.
as they persisted M remaMing for two nights M the church — a
precedent followed M their later troubles — mduced the Emperor
to set him free. But the Arians, thereupon, transferred the
Council to the palace, some idea of wMch may be derived from
the stately columns remaMing near the church of San Lorenzo.
Dionysius, Mdeed, refused to leave "his people," but the other
bishops attended, and Valens and Ursacius proposed the adoption
of a letter bearing the Emperor's name, described by Lucifer, a
most unfriendly witness, as written in a polished and graceful
style. The imperial writer, who was essentially a pedant, and
thought himself a philosopMc theologian, had previously, it would
seem, been inclmed to the Semi- Arian theory, M its earlier and
less teclmical form, as expressed M the Macrostich and the " long
Sirmian Creed," which was drawn up, as we have seen, with his
own cogmsance. But now he seems to have drifted for the time
into a bolder AriaMsm. His " letter," accordmg to Lucifer, denied
the reality of the Sonship, spoke of the Son as rather a titular than
a true Son, as called God M an improper sense, and as, M fact,
made out of notMng. It is not unlikely that tMs description may
be M part a zealot's inference from the Emperor's words; but
unless he has done them grave Mjustice, one must suppose that
Constantius directly or Mdirectly denied M tMs formula the un-
createdness, etermty, and proper Godhead of our Lord. He now
took up his station behMd the curtam which, as usual, shut m Ms
presence-chamber, so that he could hear what passed on the other
side of it, and thus expressed Ms mMd to the prelates by Ms
officers. He argued in this fasMon : " I am resolved to establish
religious peace M my empire. TMs faith wMch I hold is attested
by Heaven ; for if I did not believe aright, God would never have
thus signally blessed my reign : I should have been overthrown
by my enemies, whereas I now hold undivided and undisputed
sovereignty." It was that argument from temporal success of
wMch Ms father had been so fond, and wMch, m Ms case, had
been not a little supported by the approval of courtly bishops.
But the Roman legates Msisted that the Nicene faith, wMch tMs
imperial document contradicted, was the immemorial, immutable
faith of Christians ; and Lucifer vehemently exclaimed, " If all the
Emperor's army shot their darts at us, we would not change our
mMd M tMs matter. All the true servants of God are agreed on
tMs — m the cause of salvation we trample the Emperor's authority
underfoot ! Let the Emperor see to his own soul's welfare ; let

XII.] i The Second Arian Persecution. 231
him, for Ms own sake, condemn Arianism." Constantius, it seems,
persisted M saying that Ms document was orthodox ; and they
retorted, " To say so is to be a forerunner of Antichrist ! " To
Constantius, of course, such language was absolutely bewildering :
he had never before been defied M his own palace ; he seems to
have resorted, M a confused manner, to alternate menaces and
entreaties; and Ms advisers were reduced to the experiment of
causmg Ms " letter " to be read in church, in the hope that, at the
worst, it might be heard without open resentment, as being
composed by one who was only a catechumen. But it called
forth a burst of indignation; and Constantius then passed to a
pomt on wMch he might hope to be more successful, the personal
charges agadnst Athanasius — among wMch, probably, was included
the enormity of havmg allowed a large church, built at Alexandria
on ground belonging to the Emperor, and at his expense, and
therefore known as " Caesarean," to be used by the multitude of
Alexandrian Church-people for Easter services before it had been
fmished and duly set apart by dedication. But the pomts chiefly
insisted on would, of course, be those as to which, it might have
been thought, the mgenuity of slander had done its worst and
been put to shame. " Athanasius has committed grave offences,"
said the Emperor. Then came up once more the old fables of
sacrilege and magic and assassination, guaranteed once again by
the fluent audacity of Valens. "The bishops must condemn so
great a crimmal ! " said Constantius. " How can we condemn a
man unheard and unconvicted ? " was the answer. " We are
willMg to go at our own expense into Egypt, to hear his case
among his own people — only let the Emperor name Catholics as
Ms accusers." No ; the Emperor insisted on an immediate, an
unqualified condemnation. He talked, said Lucifer afterwards,
" as if we were gladiators, not bishops." They pointed indignantly
to the confession made by Valens and Ursacius : " Will you rely
on self-convicted calunmiators ? " " It is no question," replied
Constantius, " of Valens and Ursacius : it is 7 who am now
accusmg Athanasius ! " Then it was that the spirit of freedom and
justice spoke out, by episcopal voices, m lofty defiance of a brutal
Caesarism : " You cannot accuse where you have no personal
knowledge, and where the accused is not present. The matter, too,
is not one which affects Rome, so that the Emperor's mere word
could be taken as sufficient; M the present case, accuser and
accused must stand on equal terms. Moreover, the present demand

232 The Age of the Fathers. [Chap.
'has no canon to rest upon." Here, says the " Arian History," the
despot broke in with a claim of undisguised absolutism : " Let my
will serve for a canon, as it does with the Syrian bishops." The
" History " is apt to use a good deal of dramatic freedom ; but
Constantius was likely enough, when incensed, to say something of
the kmd, and the bishops, then addressed, were as likely to " stretch
out their hands," as if calling God to witness, and say, in terms or
in effect, "Remember Who gave you the empire, and Who can
take it away, and before Whom you must stand at the day of
judgment! Do not introduce the imperial power into Church
affairs, nor the Arian heresy into the Church." He laid his hand
on his sword at hearing this, and for a moment thought of ordering
them to execution; but they were condemned, as a matter of
course, to exile. Such was the example thus set by Eusebius and
Lucifer. Their fate was shared by Dionysius, who accordmg to
Lucifer had been beguiled into disownMg Athanasius — but this is,
perhaps, an exaggeration of a conditional promise ; at any rate, he
now cast in his lot with the two undaunted confessors, wMle
another account describes him as incurring a like sentence by
refusing to communicate with Arians. Pancratius and Hilary were
nobly constant : Hilary was afterwards savagely beaten, but found
comfort in thinking of the scourging of Christ. Maximus of Naples
was also unyieldmg ; so was another pious bishop, Rufinianus.
But the great majority were terrorised into compliance with the
Emperor's will, not only as to renunciation of Athanasius, but also
as to profession of communion with the Arians : as Sozomen
says, they acquiesced " either through fear, or through deceit, or in
ignorance." Thus ended this unhappy Council of Milan, which
Hilary calls a " synagogue of malignants," and Lucifer, with a sort
of unconscious anticipation of a more famous scene at Ephesus,
depicts more graphically as a " cave of robbers."
The association of Arianism with a persecuting temper is one
of the prominent facts of this period : one cannot fairly say that
it was inherent in the heresy, for if Western Arianism had its
Hunneric, it had also its Theodoric; but in the case before us,
an Arian autocrat's intolerance of opposition exhibits itself m a
systematic oppression of the Church. Eusebius was banished to
Scythopolis, the seat of the old Arian bishop Patrophilus ; here
he was repeatedly dragged about, and up and down stairs, as if to
destroy him by sheer brutality. Lucifer was kept in a dark cell,
under the guardianship of Eudoxius, bishop of Germamcia, who had

XII-] The Second Arian Persecution. 233
been one of the bearers of the Macrostich to Milan. Dionysius was
banished Mto Armenia or Cappadocia, and Ms throne was filled by
a Cappadocian named Auxentius, who had received ordMation from
Gregory, and whom Hilary afterwards denounced M a vigorous in
vective. Maximus died in the place of his exile ; Rufinianus fell
into the hands of a young prelate whom Constantius had drawn over
into Arianism, Epictetus of Centumcellae, who made his prisoner
run before his carriage until, it is said, he died of internal rupture.
Writing some years later, but certainly in a strain of such furious
and, as it were, inarticulate indignation that one receives his state
ments with more than a little doubt, Lucifer speaks of the severities
inflicted by Constantius on those bishops or ecclesiastics who would
not disown Athanasius, as mcluding not only banishment, im
prisonment, condemnation to mines, but tortures and death in
various forms ; although, as in one passage he admits, Constantius
wished torture to be inflicted, but not death. It was now that
Martin, afterwards so famous, was " publicly scourged." It seems
certain that several bishops were " removed from their sees by his
mere authority, and that some," in Lucifer's words, were compelled
to suppress their Catholic sentiments, " if they wished to sit qmet,"
so that "their love" for the faith was "cMlled" by fear. City
after city was visited by imperial messengers and palace-officers,
threatening the bishops, setting the magistrates on to threaten
them, announcMg that all prelates must sign the anti- Athanasian
documents presented to them, on peril of being hurried Mto exile.
Clerics belonging to Valens and Ursacius attended the commis
sioners thus employed, M order, says the " History," to report to
the Emperor any want of zeal on the part of the local magistracy :
in any such case, there followed what Lucifer calls " formidable
menaces " from Constantius, and some heavy fine was suspended
in terrorem over the delinquent. The people in several cases
loudly lamented as their bishops were dragged before the authorities ;
but they soon learned that such an expression of sympathy would
be treated as seditious, and punished by " chains, insults, scourging,
and confiscation." But Rome was now to be attacked; and
Liberius was dealt with, in the first instance, by that policy of
apparent gentleness which Constantius had employed M several
cases with success : as Lucifer chose to put it, the " wolf came m
sheep's clothing." Eusebius the high chamberlam, Constantius's
all-powerful and villamous favourite, was sent with letters and
gifts to win him over. He was asked to " sign against Athanasius "

234 The Age of the Fathers. [Chap.
— that is, to acquiesce in his condemnation — " and to communicate
with the Arians." " This," said Eusebius, " is the Emperor's desire.
Come, comply with his request " (the word " command " was not at
first used), " and accept these presents from Ms bounty." " No,"
said Liberius, — according to the Athanasian narrative ; it " would
be an utter breach of all canons to condemn Athanasius, after he
has been deliberately pronounced mnocent. Let the Emperor, if
he insists on having the case re-heard, summon a really free
ecclesiastical assembly, where, M the first place, the Nicene faith
may be secured, and then all questions as to conduct, on either
side, may be impartially examined." Eusebius changed Ms
tone, and took to threatemng; then, leaving the Pope in the
Lateran, he crossed the city to St. Peter's, and there presented the
gifts as offerings. Liberius heard of this, and rebuked the sacristan
of the church for not having prevented what he considered as a
sacrilege : he then caused the gifts to be cast out of the basilica.
TMs, of course, irritated Eusebius yet more: he returned to his
master, and reported that there was no hope of gaining Liberius's
adhesion — other methods must be taken ; and, M consequence,
a detachment of imperial agents came from Milan with orders
to the prefect of Rome, that Liberius was to be inveigled away, or
else forcibly secluded from his people. The latter and milder
course was taken by the prefect : the very gates, the harbour, were
guarded against Catholics who might wish to visit the bishop;
families wMch supported Mm by their sympathy or reverence were
threatened ; bribes were used to detach his friends from Ms cause ;
plots were laid against ascetics and Christian ladies; bishops of
neighbouring churches went Mto hiding ; at length, M the middle
of the Mght, Liberius was removed to Milan, and the Emperor,
attended by Epictetus and Eusebius, endeavoured to shake his
resolution. Theodoret gives a long conversation which, he says,
is recorded to have then taken place (a statement wMch cannot
be taken literally), and m which, if the text is right, he makes
Eusebius affirm that Athanasius was proved to be heterodox in the
Nicene Council ! It is not improbable that, as Theodoret says,
Liberius reminded the Emperor of the recantation of Valens and
Ursacius — " a paper still in our possession ; " that Epictetus accused
Liberius of wishing to triumph over the Emperor's fixed purpose,
and then to boast of it at Rome ; that Constantius recurred to his
favourite point, " Athanasius has intrigued agaMst the security of
my throne." The " History of the Arians," after its manner, puts

XII.] The Second Arian Persecution. 235
Mto Liberius's mouth a solemn admomtion : " Cease to fight against
Him who gave you the empire by persecuting those who are His
servants, and who will never yield to an anti-Christian heresy."
Constantius, accordMg to Theodoret, offered him three days for
consideration : he answered, " Three days, or three months, will
not alter my mind." He was banished to Beroea in Thrace ; and,
wMle on his journey, refused supplies of money from Constantius
and Ms wife, and also from Eusebius, to whom he returned the
bitter message, "Go, and first become a Christian, before you
presume to send me alms."
Hosius was, M some sense, a person whose adhesion was even
more worth obtaming than that of the Roman bishop. His position
in the Christian community was, as for many years it had been,
umque. " He had passed a life, prolonged beyond the age of
man" — for he was now more than a hundred years old — "M
services and sufferings in the cause of CMist; he had been
distingMshed as a confessor in the MaximMian persecution ; "
he had sat in the Spamsh Council of Illiberis in 305, and had
presided at Nicaea and at Sardica; he was commonly known as
" Father Hosius ; " and his episcopate had extended over more
than sixty years. About the same time at wMch Constantius made
his attempt upon Liberius, Hosius was sent for, and requested to
gratify the Emperor by disowMng Athanasius and communicating
with the Arians. He replied by a severe reproof, addressed to-
the Emperor M person — was allowed for the time to return home,
but was importuned by letters from Constantius, which he re
garded as " drops of rain or gusts of wind : " after several such
letters had reached him, he wrote the memorable reply preserved
by Athanasius, in which, after dwelling somewhat on his age, and
Ms active participation m the proceedings at Sardica, he flatly
denied the truth of the plea of coercion by which, it seems, Valens
and Ursacius were wont to explain their now retracted apology.
Then, in language full of earnest dignity, he exhorted the Emperor
to " forbear Mtruding himself into ecclesiastical matters," and drew
a strong line of distinction between the provMces of the civil and
the spiritual power. " We have no right to exercise temporal
rule, nor you to burn incense" (a metaphor taken from 2 Chron.
xxvi. 18, and here used for the discharge of priestly functions).
For the special poMt of Constantius's present urgency, he had one
answer : " I will not join myself to the Arians, — on the contrary,
I even anathematize their heresy : nor will I subscribe agamst

&¦

22,6 The Age of the Fathers. [Chap.
Athanasius, whom we and the Roman Church, and the Sardican
Council, 'pronounced guiltless, and whom, in consequence, you
yourself recalled with honour." He remmded the Emperor of his
own letters and promises M favour of Athanasius ; and bade him
reflect that although in this world he might be gratifymg his
advisers, he would have to stand alone and answer for himself at
the Day of Doom. TMs letter produced no effect on Constantius :
he and his chamberlain renewed their attempts to frighten Hosius ;
and after learning that Hosius was writing to other bishops that
they ought rather to die than to recogmse Arianism, he sent for
Hosius, and inflicted on him a protracted and painful detention
at Sirmium, the tragic result of which will appear among the
events of 357.
Before we leave, for a time, the affairs of the Western Church,
•so miserably compromised by the Councils of Aries and Milan, we
must observe the position of the Catholics at Rome and in Gaul.
The substitution of ArianizMg bishops for the banished Catholic
prelates was part of that " thorough " Arian policy which Lucifer
¦describes as Constantius's " attempt to destroy the Lord's vine
yard." And he was not likely to sMink from carryMg it out in
regard to the great " apostolic " church which he had deprived
¦of its as yet unyielding pastor. Epictetus was an instrument
ready to Ms hand, when a new episcopal appointment was to be
managed or enforced at Rome. And so, says the " Arian History,"
" having made preparations in the palace rather than in the
church," and secured a packed meeting from wMch the Roman
laity were excluded, and in which, therefore, their rights in the
election were set aside, Constantius "compelled" tMee partisan
bishops to consecrate, within the palace, " one Felix, a man worthy
of them." Such a profanation as this would have been impossible
in a Roman basilica ; and Felix, in Athanasius's view, was mani
festly an Ariamzer, although, according to some statements, known
to Socrates and Sozomen, he was either a reluctant tool in Arian
hands, or was personally orthodox wMle he communicated with
Arians : but anyhow the adherents of Liberius are said to have
avoided entering any church where Felix was present. The
strange (and yet, in one sense, not strange) attempts made by
papal writers to save the credit of this "anti-pope," by repre
senting him as appointed with the consent of Liberius, as acting
for him during his exile, as condemnMg Constantius's heresy,
and as winning the crown of martyrdom, are exposed and duly

XII.] The Second Arian Persecution. 237
characterized by Tillemont and by Dollinger. They have in
troduced a confusion into the papal enumeration by making it
necessary to reckon Felix II. and III., in the fifth and sixth
centuries, as Felix III. and IV. It must, however, be added that
tMs Felix had supporters, both lay and clerical, who were strong
enough to mamtain party divisions wMch outlasted the life of
Liberius himself, and had very deplorable results.
While the Roman Church was in this disabled condition, the
Gallican, although much afflicted by such unworthy prelates as
Saturninus of Aries, had recently gained a new champion of
orthodoxy M Hilary of Poitiers. Elevated to that bishopric about
353, that is, some three years after his own conversion (of which
he has given a most interesting account), Hilary might, says Tille
mont, have secured a tranquil and prosperous position by sacrificing
his convictions to his worldly convenience ; he might have enjoyed
the sunshine of court favour, and yet passed with many undiscern-
ing persons for a Catholic bishop : " but the love for Christ, which
lived in him by faith and hope, could tolerate no such disguise."
He took his Ime decisively. In conjunction with many Gallic
bishops, he publicly withdrew from all communion with Saturninus
of Aries, Valens, and Ursacius ; signifyMg at the same time that
their less guilty associates might, on repentance, be agam ac
knowledged as bretMen, provided that the exiled prelates should
approve of this resolution. And he wrote a short letter to the-
Emperor, wMch is called his " First Book to Constantius : " it is
remarkable (especially when contrasted with Ms work "Against
Constantius," written five years later, m 360) for the studied and
respectful blandness of its tone towards the monarch, on whose
kindly nature he professes reliance, wMle entreating Mm to
restrain Ms judges from Mterfering in Church matters and op
pressing Catholic ecclesiastics. It is still more remarkable for its
emphatic protest in favour of religious freedom : the Emperor is-
too wise not to know that " no one ought to be coerced mto an
external conformity " — that peace and order can only be re
established by allowmg every one to adopt, unrestrained, the
religious profession which Ms own mind approves. TMs principle
is placed by Hilary on the most sacred of all foundations : God
Himself teaches men to know Him, but does not force their wills ;
or rather, He will not accept an mvoluntary homage ; and there
fore, even if coercion were used m the cause of the true faith, a
bishop should protest, "I can only receive a willMg proselyte."

238 The Age of the Fathers. [Chap.
He deprecates imputations of disloyalty or discontent, m order to
make way for Ms entreaty that the Emperor would recall the
bamshed bishops : he describes the Arian heresy as a " novelty,"
and the condemnation of Athanasius as a flagrantly unjust
movement in defence of that novelty so righteously condemned.
The tract concludes with a brief account of the proceedings at
Aries. These protests of Hilary and Ms friends, four of whom
took part in the memorial to Constantius, provoked the Arian
party in Gaul to hold a Council at Biserrae, or Beziers, near
Narbonne, M 356. As cMef bishop of South Gaul, Saturninus
would naturally preside. Hilary "denounced the patrons of the
heresy, and offered witnesses to prove Ms assertions." But the
bishops would not allow Mm a hearing : according to a statement
afterwards made by Auxentius of Milan, they even deposed Mm
from the episcopate ; they accused him of sedition, first before the
" Caesar " Julian, who was then M command in Gaul, and after
wards before Constantius ; and M consequence he and Rhodamus,
bishop of Toulouse, a man whose gentle temperament was oppor
tunely sustaMed by Hilary's immovable resolution, were banished
Mto Phrygia. But, as he himself says, he took comfort in the
assurance that " the word of God was not bound, but would have
its free course." He began his great work "On the Trimty,"
perhaps origmally entitled " On the Faith." In it he protests that
he writes under a necessity laid upon him by the false theories of
heretics ; they have spoken amiss, and therefore Catholics must
try to speak aright, while knowMg that the subject transcends
both thought and language. Yet in the course of his argument
he sometimes forgets tMs caveat, and is tempted to follow up
a IMe of speculation wMch may at any rate be called peculiar.
Occasionally he seems to lose his way, and becomes not only
obscure but mconsistent. On the one hand, he is afraid to face the
humiliations involved in our Lord's assumption of humaMty, and
fairly startles us by Ms readiness to explam away texts that refer
to them. On the other hand, he Msists that to put on "the
form of a servant" was Mcompatible with retaining "the form
of God : " but tMs may be due to his mistake in confound-
mg " form " or essential character with " fasMon " or outward
appearance ; and Mr. Watson, in Ms very elaborate and thoughtful
" Introduction to St. Hilary," considers that on the whole a laymg
aside of the form of God meant for Mm the concealment, during
Jesus Christ's earthly life, of the divine " glory " or majesty.

XII.] The Second Arian Persecution. 239
Certainly nothing can be more explicit than Hilary's assertion
that the CMist of the Gospels was at once true God and true
Man; that M takmg the human nature He did not, for He
could not, give up the divine. Some of the difficulties in Hilary's
CMistology may be due to the cumbrous and tortuous style wMch
defaces many passages, and of wMch Jerome says, truly enough, that
it repels the " simpler" readers. To return to our story. The
church of Toulouse suffered grievously after the removal of its
bishop ; some of its clergy were beaten with sticks, or with pieces
of lead attached to thongs, and used for the punishment of
criminals ; and Hilary, in his description, adds the sigmficant
words, "And on Himself, as holy persons will understand with
me, on CMist Himself hands were laid," by such insults offered
to the consecrated elements as demed the validity of Catholic
ministrations. And now let us turn to the gathering of the storm round the
head of the man whose position had not been as yet openly assailed
since his return M 346, but whom Constantius so passionately
desired to isolate and deprive of ecclesiastical sympathy. How
long, the Alexandrians might well ask — how long would Athanasius
be allowed to occupy Ms tMone ? The answer would be, Until the
principal churches have been induced to disown him, and thereby
to isolate him.
There had been symptoms of coming trouble, as we have seen,
even in 353, when Montanus appeared with his mysterious despatch.
For more than two years from that visit, the Alexandrian Church
was left qmet, except that an order was sent to the prefect of
Egypt that the usual allowance of corn should be no longer given
to the orthodox clergy, but to the Arians, and that, M contra
diction to the Emperor's declaration in 346, the adversaries of
Athanasius should be free to criticize him and his adherents ; and
the magistrates were admonished, with menaces, to recognise
the Arians as Churchmen. In the August of 355 — exactly
thirty years after the Nicene Council, and while, in mournful
contrast to that hopeful time, the empire was traversed M all
directions by Arian persecutors with the Emperor's authority at
their back — an attempt was made once more, by an imperial
" notary " or messenger narked Diogenes, to lure Athanasius from
Alexandria. This attempt was carried on for some four months,
until December 22 ; then appeared a " duke " or general officer
named Syrianus, whose presence awakened so much anxiety that

240 The Age of the Fathers. [Chap.
memorials were addressed to him by the clergy and by the
majority of the citizens, in presence of the prefect of Egypt and
the provost of Alexandria. Syrianus at last promised " by the life
of the Emperor" that no change should be made in Church
matters without fresh orders from the court. This mterview took
place on January 18, 356, and for more than three weeks all was
qMet. But on Thursday night, February 8 (the date has been
established by Professor Gwatkin), Athanasius was at a solemn
vigil that was bemg kept by Church-people of all classes, in pre
paration for a service on the Friday, in that church of St. Theonas
from wMch, sixteen years before, he had withdrawn amid the prepara
tions for the intrusion of Gregory. Suddenly, soon after midnight,
Syrianus, with Hilarius a " notary," and Gregorius a cMef of the
police, beset the church at the head of a body of soldiers, more than
five thousand strong. Feeling, as he expressed it, that he was bound
to imperil Mmself for his flock, the archbishop " sat down on his
tMone" at the extreme end of the sanctuary, and ordered the
deacon m attendance to " read a Psalm," which in our reckoning is
the 136th, " and the people to respond, ' For His mercy endureth
for ever,' and then all to depart," — it being clear to him that
not they, but he himself, would be the special mark of the
assailants. The " readmg," according to what we know from St.
Augustine to have been the custom established by Athanasius,
would be recitation rather than chanting; and as a subsequent
protest, dated on February 12, puts it, "while the reading was going
on," the doors were burst open : with a fierce shout, the soldiers
rushed m; clasMng their arms, dischargMg their arrows, which
in some instances proved fatal, and brandishmg their swords in the
light of the church-lamps, they crowded up the nave, trampling
down some of the people, who struggled to find their way out as
others had already done. Voices of terror and wild excitement,
mingling with the sacrilegious din of the irruption, penetrated into
the sanctuary, urging the archbishop to save his life, to fly while
yet he had time. " I will not stir," he answered, " until you have
all got away safely." He stood up, and made his voice heard in
the calm familiar summons, " Let us pray to the Lord ; " then,
after a very brief prayer, ordered all to escape as best they could.
When nearly all had departed, the monks and clerics present
literally dragged him from the tMone, just as the soldiers were
rushing through the chancel-gates ; it would even appear from one

xii.] The Second Arian Persecution. 241
passage in the protest that hostile hands did lay hold on Mm for a
moment, and that after the severe tension of those terrible minutes
he looked like one in a dead famt as he was carried away ; but
he himself says that he thanked God, at that moment, that he
had not endangered Ms people by preferring his own safety to
theirs. TMs was the memorable " flight of Athanasius," which forms a
cardmal epoch in his life, and was followed by six years rather of
concealment than of exile — concealment secured at first M the
country near to Alexandria, from which he origmally intended to
go at once to Constantius, in the hope, or on the chance, that this
last outrage might prove to have exceeded the Emperor's inten
tions, and that therefore the boldest course might m fact be the
course of safety. Accordingly he began to compose an elaborate
defence of his conduct, to be recited in the imperial presence, if he
should be allowed an Mterview. The paper, wMch is artistically
drawn up, must be read tMoughout on that hypothesis ; and if, even
so, it seems to us " unreal," we must allow for the long-standmg
traditions wMch governed all addresses to the " Augustus." Assum
ing the gracious disposition of the Emperor, he undertakes to answer
the four recent charges against him — that of (1) prejudicing
Constans against Constantius, (2) corresponding with Magnentius,
(3) usMg the " Caesarean " church before it had been dedicated,
(4) disobeying the Emperor's summons to Italy. But wMle he
was thus at work, the news of further persecution in the West,
especially of the banishment of Liberius and the detention of
Hosius — events, obviously, wMch had happened several months
after the Council of Milan — made Mm hesitate about trusting Mm
self within the reach of the Emperor ; and he heard soon afterwards
that the Arianizers were preparing to circulate among his suffragans
a vague creed, couched in Scriptural language, but in fact ignoring
the doctrine of Nicaea. To meet this danger to their steadfast
ness, Athanasius wrote a " Letter to the Egyptian and Lybian
Bishops : " a task not rendered more easy by the agitating intelli
gence that another Gregory, so to speak, was to be Mtruded into
his seat, m the person of George, a violent Arian from Cap-
padocia. This man was not -\jrithout some literary tastes; "he
had collected a valuable librar y ; " he may have been, in former
days, as Athanasius asserts, ;Mlty of fraud, when actmg as a
contractor of stores at Consta: itinople ; but such a story would
•be easily credited against a heretical usurper of the " Evangelical
VOL. 1. R

242 The Age of the Fathers. [Chap.
throne." Of Ms ruthless temper there can be no doubt : when he
arrived, as Gregory had done, M Lent — the Lent of 356, we may
safely infer from Athanasius, for the government would not defer
Ms Mtrusion for a year — Arian violences had, as M Gregory's case,
preceded him.; for the Count Heraclius, sent by Constantius
expressly to announce his approval of Syrianus's proceedmgs,
had encouraged a mob of the younger pagan working-men to
attack with stones and clubs the worshippers at a Wednesday
service or " Station " m the great " Caesarean " church. The
Easter of 356, in the first week of April, brought special trouble
to bishops and ecclesiastics, virgins, widows, the poor of Atha
nasius's flock, and even private Catholic householders. We
find Sebastian, a MaMchean holdMg high military command,
employed M the Mterests of George to break up a congregation
which, on a June eveMng, the Sunday after Pentecost, was
worsMppmg m a cemetery, the churches bemg now in the hand&
of the Arians. As it was, he came too late, for the service was
over ; but he seized some virgins and others, and, on their refusal
to embrace the Arian communion, caused them to be beaten so
brutally that some died from the blows, and their corpses were
kept without burial. Then came the bamshment of sixteen
orthodox bishops, the flight of more than thirty, the Mstallation of
old Arians M the bishoprics thus vacated, or of " men notorious for
their wealth," or of profligate young men who had not even gone
through the catechumenate. Monasteries were destroyed, houses
plundered, alms-women beaten on the soles of their feet, presbyters
expelled from their churches and exposed to varieties of barbarous
treatment ; in short, a reign of terror was virtually proclaimed.
Under such a trial of constancy, one can hardly wonder that some
were Mduced to dissemble their belief, among whom were probably
the two priests Achetas and Didymus, who, accordmg to Lucifer,
disowned their archbishop's faith, and professed AriaMsm; it is
said also that Theodotus, bishop of Oxyrinchos, accepted re-
ordmation from George, and was in consequence disowned by Ms
own flock, who were conspicuous for Catholic zeal.
Even after bemg Mformed of these tragic incidents, Athanasius
appears not to have wholly abandoned Ms plan of personally
confronting Constantius, and trying to recall Mm to better feel-
mgs, until he learned that one imperial letter had denounced
Mm as a fugitive criminal who richly merited death, and that
another had exhorted the two princes rulMg M Ethiopia, Aizan

XII.] The Second Arian Persecution. 243
and Sazan, to send Frumentius, bishop of Axum, to Alexandria,
that he might be instructed by George and other prelates in
the knowledge of "the Supreme God," i.e. as we must interpret
it, in the belief of the sole Divinity of the Father. Nothing
came, however, of tMs attempt to disturb Frumentius; and we
cannot give credit to the statement of Philostorgius, that Theo-
philus the Indian, an Arian missionary bishop, after visiting his
native island of DM and parts of Hindostan, arrived among the
Axumites, and there "arranged the affairs" of religion, that is,
established (or confirmed) the Arian faith. It is very likely that
TheopMlus had visited Axum, but incredible that he should have
been the first preacher of CMistiamty in that district, and very
improbable that he should have made any such impression as to
supplant the Catholicism represented by Frumentius. But the
tidmgs that Frumentius was to be sent, if possible, to Alexandria,
and that he himself was to be sought for as far as the Ethiopian
frontier, M order to be lodged in " the prison of the prefects," finally
convmced Athanasius that he must, for Ms church's sake, give up
Ms daydream of an " appeal unto Caesar," and accept the condition
of an exile. General Church Mstory is not greatly concerned with
the circumstances of Ms veiled and mysterious life during the next
six years : enough to say that it was chiefly spent amid the cells
of the Egyptian monks — partly, no doubt, on the hill of Nitria,
or in the wilderness, so-called, "of the Cells," or in the yet
remoter Scetis ; partly, also, M the " monasteries and hermitages
of the Thebaid," Mcluding an] ancient tomb at Thebes. Antony
had been taken to Ms rest a few weeks before the irruption of
Syrianus and the flight of Athanasius ; the latter doubtless had,
before qmtting Alexandria, received back, as Antony's legacy, a
sheepskM cloak wMch had been Ms own gift, and which had been
worn out m the service of Ms venerated " father." Pachomius, also,
had died eight years previously, and his abbacy had passed
tMough the hands of Petronius and Orsisius into those of Theodore,
commonly called " the Sanctified," whom Pachomius had trusted
with high duties at an early age, and who was said to have pre
dicted the great increase of Arian persecution. Amon, the founder
of the solitaries of Nitria, had died, perhaps, earlier than Pachomius ;
but at Nitria Athanasius might converse with Pior, Antony's
disciple, who, according to a strange characteristic story, contrived,
while visiting his old home at his superior's bidding, to keep his
absurdly superstitious vow of never looking at the face of a relative :

244 The Age of the Fathers. [Chap.
there too, perhaps, he would find Pambon, celebrated alike for his
humility, his tender charity, and his earnest vigilance against sins
of the tongue ; at Scetis he might admire the austerity and holi
ness of the priest Macarius " of Egypt," whose recorded sayMgs
exhibit so much knowledge of the heart, and so much kindliness
of nature. In the Thebaid, Macarius " the Alexandrian," whom
Athanasius might have seen of old as a vendor of sweetmeats in
the great city where every one was busy at some occupation,
had already become famous among monks. He who had all his
life reverenced the very name of Antony, and had been hailed
at Ms election as a "proficient in self-discipline," would be at
home in any monastic settlement, would readily content himself
with the rough fare of the recluses, would put on the " colobium "
or the " melotes " as readily as an episcopal habit, would sit at
work on tracts or letters M a cell whose chief furniture was a mat
of palm-leaves, would jom as fervently as any monk in the daily
psalmody, would naturally accept on a Sunday or a Saturday
the office of celebrating the monastic Eucharist. We can thus
picture Mm as listening to what Mrs. Oliphant, in her " Makers
of Modern Rome," describes as " the evensong that rose as from
every crevice of the earth, wMle the Egyptian afterglow burned
in one great circle of colour round the vast globe of sky." And
all the time, the " royal-hearted " fugitive would be the true though
" invisible patriarch," most effectively and systematically governing
his church by a network of correspondence, wMch would be kept
up by means of that rapid and secret intercourse wMch linked the
Egyptian monasteries to each other. And that facility of communi
cation would often doubtless secure the archbishop against those
who were sent in pursuit of Mm : as a deacon of Ms M earlier days
had found Arsenius gone when he had all but " run him down " in
Upper Egypt, so, on the nearer approach of danger, Athanasius
would be swiftly removed to another Mding-place — perhaps only
just in time, and with such "hair-breadth 'scapes " as might antici
pate the experience of a fugitive Jacobite or Vendean. And yet it
is to this period of exciting and perilous adventure that we owe
some of his most important works : for in him the balance and
equipoise of high qualities involved a signal power of concen
trating all his faculties on the duty of the day or the hour ; his
strength had in it a serene presence of mind. The great theo
logical "Discourses against the Arians" were composed during
this " exile ; " so were the theological letters to Serapion on that

XII.] The Second Arian Persecution. 245
newly arisen variation of Arianism which described the Holy
Spirit as the highest of ministrant beings, the theory commonly
known as Macedonianism ; so, too, the short letter to the same
Serapion, giving an account of the death of Arius. Historically
the most interesting of the writings now under consideration is
the " Defence concerning the Flight." It was called forth (probably
late M 357) by Arian sarcasms about his " cowardice," set on foot
by Leontius of Antioch and other members of the party. He is
thus led to narrate the circumstances which had rendered such
" flight " Mevitable, and, on New Testament grounds, justifiable ;
and in the concluding part he shows that he has at last utterly
given up all hope of justice from Constantius, although we may
reasonably follow Professor Gwatkin in doubting the genuMeness
of a sMgle and abrupt reference to Constantius as "the heretic."
A " Letter to the Monks " introduces the Arian History, in which
we can hardly help discerning in various passages a hand that
is not his own, betrayed by inconsistencies, inaccuracies, and
overdone declamation; and a recent French biographer of "St.
Athanase," wMle accepting it as Ms work in the proper sense,
treats it as one of the party pamphlets, intended for secret circu
lation, which were frequent in the literature of the age, and to
which he finds a parallel in a little work wMch Aetius, as quoted
by Epiphanius, describes as "privately composed" by him, and
published in a corrupt form by his opponents. We may now look
away from the actual persecution to the disintegration of the
Arian body itself.

CHAPTER XIII.
THE VARIATIONS OF ARIANISM.
Seldom, perhaps, have the faith and patience of Catholic Christians
been more severely tried than in the two years that followed after the
Council of Milan, and the successful terrorising of so many Western
bishops. It might seem that the work of Nicaea was practically
undone, and that a relentless autocrat, as yet, like his father,
extraneous to Christian communion, was to be the Mstrument of
heresy for securing its position withM the Church. And yet, just
about this time, the radical incoherences of that rationalistic
Christology which Lucifer so often designates as Arian " idolatry,"
and Athanasius as Arian "fanaticism," but which may be best
regarded as in effect a method of adapting CMistianity to certain
un-Christian forms of thought, and evacuating its cardinal doctrines
of their real life and power, began to show themselves more and
more distinctly, and to prepare the dissolution of what had once
seemed an organized mass.
The origmal Arianism, as it confronted Alexander of Alexandria,
was an outspoken assertion of what appeared to Arius, Achillas,
Euzoius, and their companions, to follow inevitably from the Son-
sMp of our Lord. It consisted cMefiy of a series of negations, with
which we are already familiar, and which were based, more or less
directly, on the original negation of the Son's existence from all
eternity. At the same time, there was m tMs original Arianism a
recognition of His digMty as superior to that of all other creatures,
and of His office as the agent of God m creating them. And
so, when it became necessary for Arius, after Ms departure from
Alexandria, to present Ms opinions M some form which would not
startle or shock the ordinary Christian mind so seriously as their
first utterance had startled and shocked the faithful of Alexandria,
he had but to emphasize one part of Ms teacMng, and disgMse the

Chap, xill.] The Variations of Arianism. 247
true bearing of its more characteristic elements. He could lay
stress on what distinguished the Son, as he conceived him, from the
generality of creatures : could proclami Mm morally immutable ;
could even give him the title of "full God," M the sense, of
course, of a titular divimty. And this modification, or " embel
lishment," as it has been called, of the original Arian " impiety,"
was carried yet farther by Arius's powerful supporter, Euse
bius of Nicomedia, and others like him, than by Arius himself,
who, to do him justice, reaffirmed, in Ms letter to his own
bishop, his belief that the Son was a creature. The Eusebians,
not liking openly to attack the Nicene doctrine, adopted an
evasive line of speaking on the person and being of the Son :
they addressed themselves to the work of undermimng the
Homoousian faith by suggesting formulas wMch ignored the
Homoousion, but which seemed to recognise the Son's divme dignity,
hailed Him, m the words of the " Lucianic " or proper Antiochene
creed, as " the Father's adequate image," and at the same time
satisfied the numerous mmds that suspected Sabelliamsm M
Homoousian language, and feared that to represent the Son as
within the incommunicable essence was, in effect, to deny His
true personality.
Such was the earlier kind of Semi- Arianism, represented in
part by the creeds of Antioch, the creed presented to Constans,
and afterwards adopted at PMlippopolis, not to say by the " long
exposition " or " Macrostich " of 344. But out of this theology, so
to call it, of expedients, grew up, by degrees, a bond fide belief M
the theological position thus provided. The facts bear out New
man's view, that many pious and learned divines, such as Basil
of Ancyra, were really anxious to go all lengths m extollmg the
Son of God, short of the Homoousion, and only sMank from
that because they fancied that it savoured of Sabellianism, or of
materialistic conceptions of Godhead ; as to wMch Hilary observes
that these false senses of the term would be excluded if care were
but taken to affirm the Divme Sonship, and St. Basil urges that it
was even anti-Sabellian, "for nothing is ' homoousion' with itself."
But the elder Basil and his friends were really anxious to tMnk
and speak reverentially of their Saviour. They would not admit
that He was a creature, as the old Arians had said ; they owned
the Filiation to be " apart from time," and to have a relation to
the Father's " essence : " so that they got near to the recogmtion
of the Son as co-eternal and co-essential, but did not come up to

248 The Age of the Fathers. [Chap.
it. They were, so to say, befogged by the subtlety of their own
distMctions, and did not see that they ought to have either affirmed
more or denied more. It appears that their formula, "Homoiousion,"
— He is not one M essence with the Father, but He is " like in
essence " to the Father, — was suggested, in the first instance, by
what passed at Alexandria when the first Arians were condemned.
Those men had denied, among other tMngs, that the Son was
"like in essence" to the Father. The men of the later school
of whom we are now tMnking had not, according to Socrates,
employed as their own tMs formula rejected by the original
Arians until the year 360, when Macedonius, who had been
Semi- Arian bishop of Constantinople, suggested it as a conveMent
party watchword. Yet even if we could accept tMs statement,
their minds were " Homoiousian " before they promulgated
the pMase. Of that pMase tMee tMngs may be said : first, that
it was its authors who exMbited that readmess to "divide the
world upon an iota " which has often been imputed to the
Catholics, whose phrase was in the field before theirs attempted
to dislodge it ; secondly, that, as Gibbon candidly remarks, a close
approximation in terms may cover a wide opposition of ideas;
and thirdly, that it showed the inconsecutiveness of their thought,
for how could one who was not fully God be " like to the essence "
which is unique because supreme ? The Semi- Arians sometimes
took advantage of the phrase, " In all pomts like to the Father ; "
a phrase wMch Cyril of Jerusalem, who was long ranked among
them, employed in his " Catechetical lectures," and wMch Basil, in
May, 359, expanded, so to say, into "Like in hypostasis, and beMg,
and existence." But, M truth, Socrates's statement (ignored by
Sozomen) places the adoption of the Homoiousion, as a sub
stitute for the Homoousion, at least three years too late — for it
was evidently current, as we shall see, before the middle of 357.
And it was asserted by them with a genuine desire to bar out the
grosser and more offensive forms of Arianism, and with a religious
earnestness which, as Newman expresses it, makes "the men
better than their creed," and goes far to explaM the tenderness and
considerateness with wMch two such haters of Arianism as Athana
sius and Hilary speak of them as virtually differing rather in terms
than m real belief from the upholders of Nicene orthodoxy. The
respect thus paid to the best representatives of tMs Mnd of Semi-
Ariamsm may be most conveniently represented in the title of
" Saint " allowed to Cyril, who was, at any rate for a considerable

Xlil.] The Variations of Arianism. 249
time, " afraid of the Homoousion," yet in teaching allowed all that
it meant, a veritable, personal, and eternal Divine Sonship. The
hope entertained by Catholics as to the Semi-Arians as a body
was that, by finding their position to be unreal, they might come
to unlearn their prejudices against the Homoousion; a hope in
some instances verified at a later time, in others doomed to
disappointment. But there was another development of the Eusebian or older
Semi- Arian school which tended in the opposite direction, towards
an Arianism more thorough-going and intense. This was its
chief representative, the " Homcean " theory, called " Acacian "
from Acacius, bishop of Caesarea. But its basis was of older
suggestion. Early in the controversy, at the Nicene Council itself,
it appears that a jealousy was expressed as to the use on the
Catholic side of any terms " not found in Scripture." The Nicene
fathers endeavoured to meet tMs feeling by adopting Scriptural
phrases, but found that every one of them was quibbled away on
the Eusebian side, and that it was necessary, M the interests of
Scriptural truth itself, to employ such terms as " essence " and-
" co-essential." After the Council, Eusebius of Caesarea, in his
letter to his flock, implied some sympathy on his part with this
dislike of " non-Scriptural " language ; at least, one reason wMch
he there gave for havMg been ready to reject some Arian pMases
was that they were " not in Scripture." And this pomt, " The
Homoousion is not a Scriptural term," was urged by Constantia's
Arian chaplain on Constantius, and no doubt many times in
other cases. " Why," it might be asked, " should not all Christians
be content to express their belief in the words sanctioned by the
Holy Spirit? Have we not seen trouble enough arise from
techMcalities of man's framing ? Is not the safe, the charitable,
the truth-seeking course simply this, to call the Son ' like to the
Father according to the Scriptures,' and if you will, ' in all points
like,' without employmg such words as Ousia or Homoousion " ?
There was a manifest plausibility in this suggestion : it appealed
to some minds that were weary of debate, to others that suspected
some miscMef m the Homoousion, or in any other form of a philo
sophic term that had been taken in different senses ; to others,
again, who had a real honest reverence for Scripture, and might
be apt to forget that a dispute as to the true meaning of Scripture
words could only be met by a "non-Scriptural" expression of
that meanmg, and that no question was ever solved, but could.

250 The Age of the Fathers. Chap.
•only be shelved, by " colourless indefiniteness." And it was the
learned and ready-witted successor of Eusebius of Caesarea, a
man very capable of shifting Ms ground, but whose real affmities
were with true Arians, that gave prominence to the thought, and
emphasis to the watchword — about 350, as Newman considers,
when he had become mvolved in Ms quarrel with the "Semi-
Arian" Cyril. Thus the symbol of the " Homoion " gradually came
forward into view : it was mtended by its authors to resist those
Semi- Arian tendencies which seemed favourable, in the long run,
to the Catholic dogma ; and, as we shall find, its result was a
stimulus and effective support given to the most pronounced form
of Arianism ; for although the formula of which we must now
say sometMng, and which appears as the Ultra- Arian watchword,
was verbally m direct contradiction to the confession of "like
ness," its maintamers could admit a " likeness " which was only
moral, and therefore predicable of any created being whose will
was at one with the will of God.
Ultra- Arianism, in fact, was a revival, without disguise, of the
old Arianism that shrank not from calling the Son of God "a
creature and a handywork." Its formula was, " The Son is unlike
the Father : " it called Him " Anomoion," and hence its maintainers
were known as Anomceans. Their leader was Aetius, a man
whose earlier life was a series of strange adventures, M which he
displayed a versatility and ingenuity that might forecast Ms sub
sequent ascendency over many minds less energetic and self-
reliant. He might have been surnamed " the Irrepressible." A
friendless orphan lad at Antioch, he began life M the employment
of a vinedresser, and had then gone into the trade of a goldsmith,
or, as the Catholics chose to say, of a blacksmith or tinker : he next
appeared as a physician's assistant ; and M the medical society of
Antioch Ms natural aptitude for disputation became sharpened and
Mtensified, until he found Ms way into employment as a " sophist "
or professional arguer ; and this, with the bias towards Arianism
which an Arianized medical school had communicated, is said to
have recommended Mm to Paulinus, the Arianizing bishop of
Antioch. Then it was, according to Philostorgius, his admiring
Mstorian, that he made good his position as irresistible in logical
fence, or what was then called " eristic," and vented such strong
Arianism that Eulalius, the next bishop, obliged Mm to leave
the city. He retired to Anazarbus in Cilicia, where, after he
•had for a time been servant and pupil to a "grammarian," or

XI il.] The Variations of Arianism. 251
lecturer upon ancient standard texts, Athanasius the bishop, who
had, as Ms great namesake informs us, spoken of our Lord as
"one of the hundred sheep," gave him some countenance, and
some Mstruction in the Gospels. From Anazarbus he passed on
to Tarsus, and read the Epistles with a friend named Antony ;
then, venturing to revisit Antioch, was welcomed by Leontius, at
that time a presbyter, who Mtroduced him to the study of the
Prophets. He again returned to Cilicia, and there was sorely vexed
by being beaten m an argument with one of the Borborians, an
infamous Gnostic sect ; but he found a salve for this mortification
at Alexandria, where he utterly confounded a leading Manichean.
He then resumed his old medical studies, combining them with
further pursMt of Aristotelian logic ; and, " thus accomplished,"
he once more returned home, where Leontius, now bishop of
Antioch, ordained Mm deacon — Hefele says, about 350. As his
opMions must have been well known, at least in their main
features, this was one of the boldest steps on wMch that cautious
prelate ever ventured ; and Flavian and Diodore remonstrated
so indignantly, that he was obliged to forbid Aetius to officiate.
These remonstrances were probably grounded on his offensive
rationalism — on what Theodoret calls his alteration of theology
into " technology," or his sopMstical use of ambiguities con
nected with such a term as " Ingenerate," or his insistence on the
mutual exclusiveness of the phrases " from whom " and " tMough
whom," which Basil mentions in his work " On the Holy Spirit."
In any case, Aetius was requested by Ms friends to revisit
Alexandria, and oppose Athanasius on Ms own ground ; and he
kept no terms with the more moderate Arians, but insisted on the
non-eternity and createdness of the Son as Mvolving a difference
from the Father in essence, which could be summarised m the
word " Anomoion " — understood, of course, in regard to nature, not to
will. He gaMed a powerful assistant in Eunomius, a Cappadocian
who was recommended to him as a secretary, who was destined to
succeed and surpass him in the theoretical formulation of Ultra-
Arianism, and who also resembled him in the early struggles by
wMch he rose from the condition of a labourer's son to that of a
" paedagogus " (a servant whose duty was to conduct a boy to and
from school), and, on being dismissed by his employer, took to
tailoring until he became acquainted with Aetius. Such, at least,
is the account given by Gregory of Nyssa, who also accuses him
of laxity M moral teaching ; but this is probably due to hostile

252 The Age of the Fathers. [Chap.
report. Anyhow, Eunomius, like Aetius, was an eager student of
Greek dialectic, totally devoid of reverence, with very little know
ledge, says Socrates, of the letter of Scripture, and none at all of its
true purport. But he was, we must suppose, a man of real ability,
for Basil the Great and his brother Gregory did not disdain to
write against him, and the Anomoean Philostorgius calls Mm far
superior to Aetius in " erecting a superstructure on a basis," — in
other words, M working out a definite and positive system, of wMch
one characteristic poMt was the utter negation of all mystery in
the tMngs of God. Arius himself had represented the Father's
essence as beyond the cognisance of the Son ; and this, of course,
was with Mm a mode of emphasizMg the difference — the essential
and really infinite difference — wMch, m his view, divided the Son
from the Father. It was equivalent to saying, "The Son is a
creature." But Eunomius went to lengths unheard of by the
original Arians. He did, indeed, place as wide a gap as Arius
had done between " the Ingenerate " and " the Generate ; " but he
tirrew aside the instinctive Christian belief in the ineffable, inscrut
able vastness of the Divme nature, and declared that " man could,
and did, know as much of God as God knew of Himself;" as
Epiphanius tells us that the AnomcEans affirmed that " man was as
well acquaMted with God's nature as he was with Ms own ; " and
Basil had to meet the Eunomian taunt that Catholics believed in
an " unknown God," and to distinguish the senses in which God
could be said to be known. Thus, in Eunomius, the rationalism
which lay at the root of Arianism attained its full development :
the heresy which began by assuming that it could argue with
absolute confidence from human sonship to Divine, ended by
proclaiming that God's essence was far from unsearchable, and
His ways, accordingly, by no means past finding out. Gwatkin's
estimate of this school is excellent : " presumptuous and shallow,
quarrelsome and heathenising, yet not without a directness and a
firmness of conviction, which gives it a certain dignity in spite of
all its wrangling and irreverence."
TMs is, M a general outline, the history of the various forms of
Arianism down to the period wMch we have now reached. The
ground is disputed, at this crisis, not only between all Arians and
all Catholics, but between different Arianizing parties : properly
speaking, mdeed, between two — the Semi- Arians with their symbol
of Homoiousion, and the Anomceans who, in the person of Aetius,
have already come into collision with such men as Basil of Ancyra ;

xiii.] The Variations of Arianism. 253
the Acacian Arians being, in fact, in practical sympathy with the
Anomcean line of thought, but ready to condemn it for the interests
of their party, and disposed to advance as far as might be safe, but
no farther, on the road which led to the extremities of Arian
negation. The Semi- Arians, as we may express it, had to watch
a foe on the right hand and on the left — one of these foes being
apt to play virtually the game of the other. Basil of Ancyra
might thMk the Homoousion inadmissible, but the vagueness of
the Homoion would provoke and disqmet Mm : what if it should
ultimately prove little better than the plain-spoken Anomoion ?
Might not the less repulsive of these two formulas be a decorous
preparation for the other ? Might it not turn out that (as Epiphanius
afterwards said) those who said " Like " meant " only in will,"
and were at one with those who said "Unlike," meaning "in
essence " ? Amid such anxieties, it was not quite easy to depend on
the Emperor Constantius. On the whole, he sympathized with the
Semi- Arians ; but occasionally, as at Milan, he " allowed himself
to be swayed by Valens and Ursacius into a more definitely Arian
position ; " and the extraordMary violences of the Semi- Arian
MacedoMus at Constantinople, including the sacrilege of forcing the
Eucharist into mouths held open by pieces of wood, could not fail
to irritate the Emperor, who also resented his removal of Con
stantine's body from the insecurely built "Apostles' church" to
another near the Propontis, with the result of a bloody tumult.
At this questionable crisis, and probably soon after the mid
summer of 357, the Arian leaders in the West contrived to hold
another Council, which bears a most unhappy reputation, and
which was eminently calculated to alarm the Semi- Arian party.
It is, in fact, the third of the Sirmian councils; the first being
held most likely M 348, soon after the Council of Milan in 347 ;
the second, or " first great synod of Sirmium," in 351. The present
Council was composed of Western bishops. Valens, Ursacius, and
GermMius, the successor of Photinus, were its rulmg spirits ; and
it sanctioned a creed, apparently composed by Potamius, bishop
of Lisbon, but doubtless with the aid of Valens and Ursacius, and
commonly known as the " Blasphemia," — a name given to it by
Hilary, who exhibits it in the original Latin, and repeatedly
denounces it as " pestilent " and " most impious." TMs document,
while owning the Son to be " God from God," and " our Lord and
God," and confessing the Trinity as revealed in the form of
baptism, distinctly proscribes the use of Ousia, or Homoousion, or

254 The Age of the Fathers. [Chap.
Homoiousion, because they are not "Scriptural" terms, and because
the matter is above human apprehension ; and proceeds to affirm,
absolutely, the superiority of the Father to the Son " M dignity
and majesty," and the subjection of the Son to the Father " M
common with all the tMngs which the Father has made subject to
Himself." Thus we see how a formula which, in some sense, was
Acacian, and which did not affirm the Anomoion, could be in real
affimty to Ultra- Arianism. It is one of the most misleading points
m Socrates's narrative that he places tMs creed m juxtaposition
with that of 351.
But the tragical Mterest of tMs new Creed of Sirmium lies M the
fact that it was signed — reluctantly, no doubt, and after protracted
and spirit-breaking Mflictions— -by the venerable prisoner at Sir
mium, " Father Hosius." NotMng M the long series of the mean
nesses and cruelties of Constantius — who arrived at Sirmium in the
December of 357 — is more revolting than the systematic employ
ment of moral and physical angmsh as a means of conquering the
resolution of tMs old man, who had dared to rebuke him in the
name of truth and justice. It was under cruel pressure, physical
and moral, after knowing that his kmsfolk were to be persecuted
on his account, and, accordmg to report, after beMg actually
subjected to blows and tortures, that Hosius gave way so far as to
sign the " Blasphemia," wMch Hilary, either most unfairly, or from
Mformation seriously inaccurate, ascribes to him and to Potamius,
as if their concern M it had been identical. The Arians who had
extorted the concession afterwards added distinctly Anomcean
language to the Blasphemia, and circulated it M that form as the
creed of Hosius. EpiphaMus's opmion, that he had been tricked
into signMg such a document, contrasts with the language of
Hilary, to wMch Gibbon alludes when he mentions " the inhuman
severity of some of the orthodox as regards an unfortunate old
man," and wMch contrasts with the noble tenderness of the
Athanasian statement, that "although he was with difficulty
brought to hold commuMon with the Arians, he would not sub
scribe agamst Athanasius ; " and on his death-bed, some few
months later, he deplored the concession which had, so to speak,
been wrung out of Mm, retracted it by anathematizing AriaMsm,
and died, as Augustine declares agaMst the Donatists, in com
munion with the Catholic Church. Whether he was in fact
condemned by the Spanish Church and absolved by the Gallic,
Augustine does not seem certam; but if this were so, he is

Xiil.] The Variations of Arianism. 255
confident that the Spanish Church acted on a hasty impulse, and
was well pleased, on better information, to withdraw its sentence
against the man who, save for that hour of weakness, had been
through a long life its pillar and glory. " He would have been
honoured," says Tillemont, " as one of the greatest of saints, if he
had lived only a hundred years : . . . a striking proof that we are
capable of the greatest faults when God leaves us to ourselves."
Another lapse from constancy now followed, and in a quarter
still more emment. Liberius, says Athanasius, remained M Ms
exile for two years. But his was a nature wMch could confront
a despot better than it could bear up under captivity. He was
enthusiastic, fervid, full of noble and loyal impulses, but lackMg
M the solidity of endurance. He was apt, one would think, to
boast Mmself too much when putting on his armour. In 355 he
had withstood Constantius to his face, had spurned the persuasions
or menaces of Ms agent, and had written to Eusebius, Dionysius,
and Lucifer m terms of hearty admiration. Now, at the end of
357, Ms mood was different. Athanasius says that the fear of a
violent death had begun to work upon him ; and accordMg to a
letter ascribed to Mm in the Hilarian Fragments, he was deprived
of the society of Ms deacon Urbicus. The Emperor, indeed, M
his visit to Rome M April, 357, had found it expedient to promise
that Liberius should be restored ; and this promise, when at first
clogged, so to say, with the condition that he should preside over
the Roman Church conjointly with Felix, had been received with
a sigmficant exclamation, which sounds like a condensation of
St. Cyprian's language on the subject : " One God, one Christ, one
Bishop ! " It was, therefore, the Emperor's policy to reMstate the
exile; but he resolved to impose on Mm terms of conformity.
He had a ready agent in Fortunatian, bishop of Aquileia, who-
had been in 345 the host of Athanasius, had been looked upon
with confidence by Liberius m 355, but M that same year had.
yielded, at Milan, to the urgency of Constantius. According to
Jerome's account, he had already tried to persuade the Pope to-
follow Ms own example ; and now, after Liberius had long known
the bitterness of TMacian exile, he renewed his "solicitations," and
" broke down " Liberius's resolution. And thus, according to the
letters ascribed to Liberius in the Hilarian Fragments, begMMng
respectively, Pro deifico, Quia scio, and Non doceo, and the stern
notes on those letters purporting to be by Hilary, Liberius, while
still at Beroea, says m effect, " I have accepted the assurance

256 The Age of the Fathers. [Chap.
of the local bishop Demophilus that the Eastern bishops' con
fession of faith, made at Sirmium, is orthodox, and thereupon
I have, without difficulty, acquiesced in it ; I had already — in
common with the Roman Church — admitted the justice of the
sentence against Athanasius, and signified as much, through
Fortunatian, to the Emperor ; I am in communion with Ursacius,
Valens, Germinius, Epictetus, and Auxentius ; and, yet, after all,
I am still detained in exile, and, as one almost driven to despair,
must entreat that Italian bishops will exert their influence for
my recall." Hilary's comment on this (assuming its genMneness)
is that the creed wMch he accepted was a perfidia, and he
anathematizes Liberius as a "prevaricator," or deserter of the
cause to which he was pledged. Now, what Sirmian creed, repre
senting a " false belief," so Arian as to satisfy the Western Arians
who are named, and at the same time composed by Easterns, can
be the one referred to ? " Surely not the long Sirmian creed of
351, which Hilary treats as virtually orthodox ! The so-called
" second " (more properly third) Sirmian creed might Mdeed be
called (as another Gallic bishop, Phoebadius, does call it) a
" Perfidia," and Hilary himself calls it a " Blasphemia ; " but then
it was drawn up by a small number of Western bishops. And tMs
difficulty remains even if we set aside, as not by Hilary, a note
which includes among the authors of the "Perfidia" not only
Valens and Ursacius, but Eudoxius, Theodore of Heraclea, who
was dead when it was promulgated, and Basil of Ancyra, who
was much nearer to Catholic lines than was consistent with
acceptance of such a document. As we shall see, a Sirmian creed
of practically Semi- Arian drift was drawn up in 358 ; but that
will not smt the account in the Fragments, from which we gather
that Liberius signed a thoroughly Arian document of Sirmian
origin while still in detention at Beroea, and it seems probable
that his lapse, whatever it was, took place m the winter of 357-8 :
so that Sozomen's statement — presently to be considered — which
fixes on the creed of 358 as the formula M question, and Sirmium
itself as the place, can hardly fit in with other evidence. The
difficulty, which Tillemont calls " celebrated and important," is
dealt with by Hefele somewhat trenchantly, and against the sense
of most writers. He sets aside the three letters in question as
not gemiine ; and it must be admitted that the first, in saying
that Liberius had formerly " defended Athanasius " on the ground
of Julius's letter in his favour, and had afterwards given up the

xill.] The Variations of Arianism. 257
"defence" of his conduct, does not agree with Liberius's own
account already mentioned, and that no solution meeting all the
conditions of the problem has as yet been proposed. But the
case does not rest on these letters alone : we have other proof,
even if they are wholly or partially discredited. True, Athanasius
neither says nor implies anythmg about Ms acceptance of a
heretical formula ; he only says that Liberius, under fear of
death, " signed " a paper renouncing his communion. But Hilary
himself, not in the Fragments, but in a pamphlet agamst Con
stantius, implies that Liberius's restoration was connected with
some " impiety ; " the two sectarians, Faustinus and Marcellinus,
agree with the Fragments in so far as to say that he signed
a "perfidia;" Philostorgius says that he "signed against the
Homoousion;" and Jerome is uneqmvocally emphatic in two
passages, one in Ms ChroMcle, the other in Ms book Be Viris
Illustribus, to the effect that he signed a " heretical " creed, but
under pressure, as the latter passage affirms, from Fortunatian.
Here, then, is evidence, Mdependent of the Fragments, as to a real
and grave unfaithfuMess on the part of Liberius ; evidence which
emboldens one of the most eqMtable of judges — the late Dr.
Cazenove of Edinburgh — to say that " if any assert that Liberius
did not fall, they may as well give up all belief in Mstory." But
it seems hardly possible to reach a satisfactory solution of the
question, What precisely was it that he signed? wMch of the Arian
formulas of the time did he, however reluctantly, accept ?
The creed commonly known as the " Blasphemia " was a definite
gam to the advanced wing of the Acacian party, who were substan
tially not far beMnd the Anomcean position. Another advantage
was gaMed when, on the death of Leontius of Antioch — which
probably took place in the late summer of 357 — the court chamber
lains contrived, as Newman expresses it, to transfer Eudoxius from
Germamcia in Syria to the primatial see of " the Orient." He had
been one of the Eusebian deputies charged to present the Macro
stich to the Westerns in 345 ; and on that occasion, when called
upon to anathematize Arianism, had left Milan in disgust. At the
disastrous Council of Milan in 355, he did so much service to the
Arian cause that, in Tillemont's phrase, " Constantius rewarded
him by makMg him the gaoler of Lucifer ; " and GwatkM brands
him as " perhaps the worst of the whole gang." Philostorgius, the
Ultra-Arian historian, judges him rather favourably, evidently
because, havMg been a Semi- Arian, he was practically drawn over
VOL. I. S

258 The Age of the Fathers. [Chap.
Mto Anomoeamsm, although he was too " timorous " to avow it.
But the time of Ms translation to Antioch was in two ways
momentous. In the first place, it brings before us a celebrated
name — that of Cyril — who had for seven years occupied the see
of Jerusalem. Ordained priest by the former bishop Maximus,
and entrusted by him with the duty of instructing catechumen-
postulants for baptism in 347 or 348, Cyril — who was separated
from orthodoxy by a mere verbal difference, dislike or dread of
the term Homoousion — was elected and consecrated as Maximus's
successor "in 350 or early M 351." A story to the effect that he
had previously accepted reordMation from Arians is countenanced
by Jerome, but may be set aside as due to prejudice and as " M-
eredible." He soon won hearts by selling a rich vestment (given
to Ms church by Constantine) to relieve the poor M a famMe;
but Acacius, his metropolitan, made tMs act a pretext for summon
ing Mm to trial, and Cyril for two years ignored the citation,
partly because he knew Acacius to be a theological opponent, and
partly from a not unnatural wish to assert the Mdependence of the
mother of all churches. At last he was deposed and banished ; he
took refuge with Silvanus of Tarsus, whose doctrinal position was
exactly Ms own, and entered a formal appeal to a " higher court," i.e.
to a greater council. This collision with Cyril made Acacius the
more ready to jom in a general attack on the Semi- Arians, wMch
was being planned at the begmMng of 358. A Council was held
at Antioch, at wMch Eudoxius, Acacius, UraMus of Tyre, and
others, condemned the Homoiousion as well as the Homoousion,
and confirmed, by so domg, the Sirmian " Blasphemia," referring
at the same time to the authority of the " Westerns " as having
thereM adopted tMs twofold negation.
TMs was a challenge which the Semi- Arians were not slow to
answer. They had been alarmed and irritated by the " Blasphemia ; "
and some of their leadMg men — George of Laodicea (himself
unstable in convictions), Mark of Arethusa, and others — had been
personally aggrieved by not being consulted, or asked to co-operate,
in the recent election to the Antiochene see. When Eudoxius
ventured on excommunicatMg many Antiochenes who would not
accept the resolutions of Ms late Council, George gave to these
persons a letter for all the bishops whom Basil had invited to the
dedication of a new church at Ancyra. TMs letter was a cry of
indignation and distress. Aetius, it complained, had been treated
with the Mghest distinction by the new bishop of Antioch. It was

XIII.] The Variations of Arianism. 259
Mdeed natural that the promotion of Eudoxius to that great see
should be a signal for the return of Aetius from Alexandria. It
was better to be the rulMg spirit M the counsels of Eudoxius at
Antioch, than to officiate as deacon under George of Alexandria ;
and Aetius's pupils had received ordMation and all manner of
encouragement from Eudoxius. George of Laodicea exhorted the
bishops who should read his letter to hold a meeting for the
deliverance of Antioch from Anomoeanism. Let Aetius be put
under ban, and his newly ordained followers be deposed from the
mMistry. The letter was read at Ancyra, and produced a great
impression on the twelve prelates assembled. A little before the
Easter of 358, which fell on the 12th of April, the Council of
Ancyra, wMch was, M more than one sense, another Dedication
Council, took into consideration the facts stated by George, and
the " blasphemous " character of the Sirmian creed of 357. More
than those twelve bishops, whose signatures are given by Epipha
nius, were probably present at this Semi- Arian gathering, wMch
drew up a string of Mneteen anathemas, to the following effect
(Hilary mentions only twelve) : —
1. Agamst all who denied the Homoiousion, and, falsely em
ploying the terms Father and Son, regarded the " Son "as in fact
the creature of the " Father."
2. Against deniers of the Son's personality. So 6, 8.
3. Against all who called the Son " Wisdom," but a Wisdom
separate from the Father's Essence.
5, 7. Against maintaMers of the Anomoion. So 9.
10. Against identifiers of " He begat " with " He created me,"
i.e. against all who made the Son a mere creature.
11. Against all who reduced the likeness of the Father and the
Son to a mere likeness of action. So 12.
13. AgaMst any who so interpreted the Homoiousion as to
merge the Son in the Father, or make Him a part of, or an efflux
from the Father.
14. AgaMst any who, while guarding the personal distinction,
rejected the Homoiousion.
15. Against all who did not admit the Filiation to be before all
time and beyond all thought. So 16.
19. Against all who asserted the Homoousion.
These decrees were comments, as it were, on a long dogmatic
exposition, which was, M part, lumMously orthodox, enforcmg the
poMt so much urged by Athanasius, that real Sonship excluded

260 The Age of the Fathers. [Chap.
the notion of createdness — that Father and Son stood in one
relation, Creator and creature in another. Misleading senses of
" Son " and " Father " were noticed and excluded : Christ, said
the bishops, is called Son in a very different sense from the
cMldren of God by adoption. The application of mere "human
wisdom " to such a mystery was condemned, as plainly contrary
to the teaching of St. Paul, " Where is the wise ? " "0 the depth
of the riches ! " The true force of Old Testament sayings about
the Divine Wisdom was brought out by the Apostles, whose teach
ing Mvolved the Homoiousion, but not the Homoousion ; for
that formula the Ancyran Council still regarded as identifymg, m
a Sabellian fasMon, the Son's personality with the Father's. The
letter referred to the authorities of the Dedication Council, that
of Philippopolis under its usurped name of " Sardican," and the
Sirmian Council of 351. The rejection of Homoousion by this
Council showed that the Semi- Arians were far from being ready to
return to the Nicene Creed in their indignation at the more pro
nounced Arianism which had now called out their protest. They
were qmte confident of the tenableness of their peculiar position ;
and as Constantius was now staying at Sirmium, they sent tMther
four envoys to request his Mterposition against Eudoxius, Aetius,
and the Ultra- Arians generally. These envoys were Basil;
EustatMus of Sebaste, distmgmshed by his sMftings of theological
position, the fanatical asceticism censured by a council at Gangra,
and his subsequent hostility to St. Basil the Great ; Eleusius, whom
Hilary praises, and whom we shall meet with again as a dogmatic
Semi- Arian, but who had had some share in the violences of Mace-
domus ; and Leontius, a priest who had served M the palace as a
personal attendant on Constantius. The deputies were but just in
time. Asphalius, a priest of Antioch, and a zealot for Arianism,
had obtained a letter from Constantius in support of Eudoxius, and
was returnMg for Antioch, when the Ancyran deputies by their
representatives changed the Emperor's fitful mind. He had,
apparently, been induced to approve the " Blasphemia ; " but now,
on further information, he acqMesced in the Semi- Arian denuncia
tions of the Anomoion, and wrote another letter to the Antiochenes,
withdrawing from the reluctant hands of Asphalius the one which
he had entrusted to him. The new letter contained a declama
tion against Aetius, a declaration (hardly credible) that the pro
motion of Eudoxius took place without the Emperor's sanction,
a profession of Homoiousian belief, and an exhortation to eschew

XIII-] The Variations of Arianism. 261
Anomceanism. But this was not enough : the Semi- Arians made
further use of their opportunity, and "compelled," as Hilary
expresses it, those bishops who had taken part in the issuing of
the " Blasphemia " to " confess their ignorance and mistake, and
by a fresh signature to condemn their own deed." And the
Ancyran deputies, who had taken the liberty of abbreviating, in
the copy which they brought, their council's list of doctrinal
anathemas, and especially of omitting the bold condemnation of the
Nicene test-phrase, procured, according to Sozomen, the Emperor's
sanction for a new formulary, compiled from the decrees of the
first Council of Antioch agaMst Paul of Samosata, the Creed of
the Dedication Council of 341, and the Sirmian condemnation
of Photinus in 351. This formulary was illustrated by a letter
from " Eastern bishops of the Semi- Arian party," in which the
Semi-Arian principle was laid down, and reasons given for
objecting to the Homoousion, as that it implied the sense
which Paul of Samosata had professed to find in it, i.e. the
notion of one prior essence, and two others formed by partition
of the prior one; that it was rejected by the first Council of
Antioch as involving Sabellianism ; and that it was not found
in Scripture. Of these grounds the first was an unworthy
recognition of a heresiarch's despicable fallacy ; the second was
inconsistent with the first, for the Council's action was closely
related to Paul's cavil; the third was that Acacian position,
already described, which was manifestly not tenable for a moment
by advocates of the Homoiousion. It was to this composite
Sirmian formulary that Sozomen supposed Liberius to have given
Ms consent. Sozomen knew nothing, it seems, or else believed
nothing, of any submission made by Liberius at Bercea, or of any
recogmtion by him, at any time, of any gross form of Arianism.
The statement of tMs historian is that Liberius was summoned
to Sirmium, was there urged to give up the Homoousion, and
there, in company with four African bishops, and with Valens,
Ursacius, Germinius, and the Easterns then present, accepted the
composite Semi-Arian formulary above mentioned, but also cleared
himself of the imputation (set on foot by Anomceans at Antioch) of
havMg admitted the Anomoion, by presenting, with the approval of
the other bishops, a confession of faith, excommuMcating all who
demed that the Son was like to the Father " M essence and M all
respects," M other words, all who fall short of high Semi- AriaMsm.
The story is highly suspicious, for how could Valens and Ursacius be

262 The Age of the Fathers. [Chap.
acting with Mgh Semi- Arians ? Yet Tillemont, Dollinger, and New
man, while accepting the genuineness of the letters M the Hilarian
Fragments, mconsistently tack- on to it Sozomen's account of the
circumstances of Liberius's lapse as not only correct, but complete ;
whereas it is clear that to sign the composite Semi-Arian docu
ment would not be such an acceptance of downright heresy as
Jerome's and Hilary's undoubted words imply ; and further, that if
he had already made the greater concession, the lesser would have
been needless. Even if it could be abated to tMs extent, the fault
of Liberius would be confessedly a fall. Hefele admits that the
silence of Socrates or Theodoret cannot outweigh fourth-century
evidence ; and even if, as this great Roman Catholic scholar con
siders, he retamed Ms own faith M the essential Godhead of the
Son, he consented to surrender the word by which the Nicene
Council had guarded that truth. Moreover, whatever was the
precise form of Liberius's concession to heterodoxy, there can be
no doubt whatever as to the capacity in which he made it. He
was not approached as an individual, but as one who deemed him
self still bishop of Rome de jure, and who on certain conditions
might again become bishop of Rome de facto. As such, he yielded
to pressure; and while, of course, he was not pretendmg to
mstruct the CMistian world ex cathedra, he did unquestionably
compromise Ms own see, because he officially abandoned the
Nicene position. " If," it has been poMtedly said, " Liberius, as
a private CMistian, remained probably quite orthodox, as Roman
pontiff he publicly, officially, failed." He returned to Rome, with
the Emperor's sanction, in the begMMng of August, 358, bearing
with Mm, as we may well believe from his subsequent conduct, a
heavy heart, an uneasy conscience, M the midst of what Jerome
calls his " triumphant entry." Felix was compelled to leave the
city, and lived in retirement on his own estate until his death in
365, consoled, we must suppose, by the sympathy of Ms own par
tisans, of whom the chief was a priest named Damasus.
Such was the memorable Semi-Arian triumph in the May of
358 ; it was followed up by the bamshment of the leadmg Ultra-
Arians — as Aetius, who with Eunomius, lately ordamed deacon at
Antioch, was banished into Phrygia, just when they were pre
paring to memorialise Constantius against Basil and his party.
TheopMlus " the Indian," an indefatigable missionary of the Arian
faith, had been exiled in 354, accordmg to the Anomcean historian,
on account of his connection with the unfortunate Caesar Gallus :

xili.] The Variations of Arianism. 263
he had afterwards been recalled, and was alleged to have effected
a supernatural cure of Constantius's beloved wife Eusebia ; but he
was now, PMlostorgius tells us, sent to Heraclea in Pontus on a
revived charge of disaffection, while Eudoxius, after receiving an
order to leave Antioch, sought refuge in his native ArmeMa.
Seventy other persons were sent into exile ; and, as Newman
puts it, "the Semi- Arians, elated by their success with the Em
peror, followed it up by obtaining his consent for an Oecumemcal
Council, in which the faith of the Church should definitively be
declared for good," with a special view to the suppression of
AnomceaMsm.

CHAPTER XIV.
ARIMINUM AND SELEUCIA.
A new General Council ! — this was the prospect opening before the
Eastern Church in the summer of 358 ; and the first place thought
of for the Council was Nicaea. But the "Homoiousian" party
had a natural repugnance to the scene of the great " Homoousian "
council ; and Nicomedia was selected in its stead. Letters of
summons went forth among the bishops, and many prelates had
actually begun their journey to the proposed meeting-place, when
the city was laid in ruins, on August 24, by a terrific earthquake,
the results of which were exaggerated by rumours, but were
sufficiently serious, involving the destruction of the magmficent
church, and the death of two prelates, one of them being Cecropius,
the bishop of the city. Again was Nicaea suggested, this time by
Basil ; and Constantius at first agreed, and ordered that the
bishops who were not disabled by bodily weakness should meet
there m the early part of the summer, while those who could not
take the journey should send priests and deacons as their repre
sentatives ; also, that ten delegates should be sent for the Western
churches and ten for the Eastern, to report to the Emperor the
resolutions at which the Council might have arrived, "in order
that he might judge whether they were in accordance with Scrip
ture, and carry out the practical conclusions as might seem to him
best." So thoroughly was the whole affair arranged, and on lines
of " Byzantine " imperial supremacy, when not only was Nicaea
again put out of consideration for fear of the mischief done to all
BithyMa by the earthquake, but the victory secured by the Semi-
Arians, at Ancyra, over their adversaries of the Acacian and
Anomcean sections was suddenly neutralised by representations
made to the facile Emperor on the part of some old Arian par
tisans, who induced him to recall the banished Anomoeans, and to

Chap. XIV.] Ariminum and Seleucia. 265
break up the intended assembly into two councils representing the
East and the West. The policy of " divide and govern " was a
promisMg one for the enemies of Semi- Arianism ; it might avert
the danger of an cecumenical condemnation of the Anomoion and
of its advocates. The Western Council, it was now resolved,
should be at Ariminum ; for the Eastern, Tarsus was thought of,
and then Ancyra, but for some time nothMg was settled. It was
while matters were in tMs state that Hilary, in Phrygia, wrote his
work " On the Councils," or " On the Faith of the Easterns," in
acknowledgment of letters which he had received from his brother
bishops m Gaul, Germany, and Britain, in reprobation of the
" Blasphemia," and with the triple purpose of informing them as
to the doctrinal statements of the Eastern Semi- Arians, of inducing
them to act M concert with the Semi- Arians, at the impending
Councils, against the common enemy, and also of overcoming the
difficulties which, tMough the force of prejudice, had prevented the
Semi- Arians from accepting the Homoousion. The task which he
thus undertook was a very delicate one, and involved a liberal use of
benigna interpretatio ; it required him to put the best interpretation
on Semi-Arian proceedmgs, to represent the Semi- Arians as on
their way to the full truth, and as separated by a real difference of
principle from the Ultra-Arian impiety, and even from such a
position as Hosius had consented to adopt, and also to warn
against a Sabellian misuse of the Homoousion, and to explaM
"likeness in essence" as M effect implying co-equality. When
tMs — which occupies far the larger part of his treatise — was
accomplished, he turned to the Semi- Arians, and urged them, as
Christians who meant to recogMse CMist's Sonship m its true and
essential divMity, who in effect were " not Arians," but now
" desirous of holding apostolic and evangelical doctrine " — to
reconsider their objections against the Nicene term, and to think
whether it were not, in its true sense, the full expression of the
idea which they were wont to associate with the Homoiousion ;
whether, M a word, believmg what they did, they could consistently
ignore, still less proscribe, that term wMch he, indeed, strange to
say, had never heard of until he was " gomg mto exile," but which,
when he heard it, commended itself to him as expressive of Ms
own baptismal belief. With all Ms earnest, even passionate long-
Mg to bring Westerns and Semi- Arians together, Hilary was too
truthful to keep back his conviction that Semi-Arian formulas
were madequate, were not free from suspicion of heresy, nor from

266 The Age of the Fathers. [Chap.
language offensive to pious ears. Taken at its best, he is con-
straMed to say, Semi- Arianism is unsatisfactory, it wants correcting
and filling up, and that can only be done by its becoming frankly
Catholic : if you own the Son as " like M essence," if you feel that
it is not enough to acknowledge a moral likeness of will or action,
notMng ought to Mnder you from owning Him as " co-essential ; "
and until you do so, you are not safe. " This," says Tillemont, " is
the finest part of Ms work : " it is, we may add, truly Athanasian ;
but, as an appeal, it had little success.
It was not until May in 359 that Basil gave up the attempt
to make his bretMen agree as to the best place for the Eastern
Council. He then resolved to take the Emperor's judgment by
way of settiMg the matter ; and he visited the court at Sirmium,
where he found several bishops, including Mark, George of
Alexandria, and Valens. It was there determined that the
Easterns should meet at Seleucia in Cilicia, on the river Caly-
cadnus, a city distinguished from its various namesakes by the
epithet Tracheotis, as situated in a " rugged " district, but populous
and prosperous, though exposed to the attacks of Isaurians. But
at tMs new Sirmian conference the Homceans won a new move
in their game. " Would it not be well," it was asked, " to have
ready for the Councils some draft of a doctrinal formulary ? "
The Semi-Arian members of the conference could not deny it;
and Mark of Arethusa, as a leadMg Semi-Arian, was appointed,
by general vote, to draw up a creed. He seems, however, to
have allowed other hands to take part in the work; and the
result was " a patchwork of two views," in wMch the Acacian
predominated, for the term Homoiousion was proscribed. The
creed began: "The Catholic faith was published in the presence
of our sovereign . . . Constantius, Augustus, eternal, in the con
sulate of Eusebius and Hypatius, at Sirmium, on the 11th of
the Calends of June." TMs was May 22, the WMtsun-eve of
359, and it was not until Mght had set M that the wording was
really settled. The Son was owned in this paper as "begotten,
not oMy before all time or age, but before all beginmng, and all
conceivable essence," and as "like M all tMngs to the Father,
according to the Scriptures ; " but all mention of " essence,"
as regarded the Father or the Son, was to be laid aside as non-
scriptural, although there was a respectful reference to those
"fathers" who in their simplicity had employed a term which
had proved so liable to misconstruction. One striking phrase M

XIV.] Ariminum and Seleucia. 267
this creed (borrowed from Job xxxviii. 17, LXX.) referred to the
descent Mto Hades: "At whose presence the doorkeepers of
Hades trembled." This " Dated Creed," as it is called from its
preamble — wMch became the mark of some rather strained and
unfair taunting from the pen of Athanasius — was not signed by
all the bishops present without some difficulty. The Semi-Arians
felt that they had yielded the key of the position. Basil, hoping
to neutralise this result, appended to Ms signature an elaborate
note, declaring that by " like in all tMngs " he meant, " like not
only M will, but in 'hypostasis,' in existence, in being ;" he went
as near as he could to saying " in essence," and defended " ousia "
as implied M " He who is." Valens, on the other hand, was loth
to accept the explanatory " in all thmgs ; " he would, of course,
have preferred simply to say " like," — which would virtually leave
room for Anomoeamsm, for the likeness might be construed as
merely a moral one, such as any angel, or even any holy man,
might have towards the Creator : and, in signing, he at first left
out " in all things," — whereupon Constantius compelled him to add
the words. For, whatever Mfluence Valens might have regained
over the Emperor, he had not as yet made him quite forget his
Semi-Arian sympathies. Hilary, perhaps, was right in saying that
Constantius, soon after the Council of Ancyra, was " offended " by
its condemnation of those who made the Father's existence prior to
the Son's ; but he still clung to a higher idea of the Son's being
than any that proper Arianism would recogmse — he still considered
himself, no longer indeed a Homoiousian, but far enough from an
Anomcean. Here then, at last, we close the series of Councils of
Sirmium. The first had condemned Photinus in 348 ; the second
had produced the long Sirmian Creed in 351 ; the third had sanc
tioned the " Blasphemia " in 357 ; the fourth had adopted the
Semi-Arian compilation m 358 ; and the fifth had agreed on the
Dated Creed in the May of 359.
And now, while Constantius was taking up an Acacian lMe,
but was, doubtless, valumg himself on Ms accurate and intelligent
moderation — wMle the Ultra- Arians were estimating what they
had gained, the Semi-Arians what they had lost, m tMs WMtsun-
tide conference — the Western Council was opened M May at
Ariminum on the Hadriatic, in Northern Umbria, some distance to
the south-east of Ravenna, a city wMch was associated with Caesar's
march after the crossing of the Rubicon, and had become a colony
in 268. Officials of the government had collected more than four

268 The Age of the Fathers. [Chap.
hundred bishops from Italy, Illyricum, Africa, Spain, Gaul, and
BritaM : provisions were assigned to them at the public cost, but
nearly all the orthodox prelates preferred to live at their own charges ;
only tMee British bishops, who were exceptionally poor (a point
which throws light on the social position of their church), set what
Sulpicius calls " a noble example " by choosing to be supported by
the treasury rather than by the contributions of their brethren. A
very large majority of the bishops — in spite of the persecution of
355 — were attached to the Nicene faith : there were but eighty who
were Arians. The former took possession of the church ; the latter,
" of set purpose," met for prayers in a separate buildmg. In the
church were to be seen no delegates from Liberius, but several
bishops of Mgh reputation, as Restitutus of Carthage, Servatius,
Phcebadius, Grecianus, Musonius from Africa ; among the mmority
Auxentius of Milan, and Epictetus, were prominent, and were
doubtless active co-operators with Valens, who had brought from
Sirmium his copy of the Dated Creed, and an imperial letter (dated
May 27) desiring the prelates to settle the question of doctrine,
and then send ten deputies to Ms court, who might confer with the
deputies from the Eastern Council. " Reason does not permit," said
the Emperor, " that in your Council anything should be decreed
respecting the Easterns : any such decree, if you make it, will
vamsh away, and be of no effect." He had instructed Taurus, the
praetorian prefect of Italy, to keep the bishops together until they
were agreed on the poMt of doctrine ; and this, M one sense, was
soon acMeved. When the debate began, on July 21, Valens,
Ursacius, GermMius, Auxentius, Caius, and Demophilus of Bercea
came forward, and proposed that all previously published formu
laries should be put aside, and the Dated Creed adopted. Valens
read it M its origMal Latin, and added, " It is sanctioned by the
Emperor ; what need have we of any further documents ? Here
is a plam Scriptural confession, expressing the true faith without
introducmg those details of individual opMion, which multiply
controversies and puzzle the simple folk." "It is true indeed,"
replied many of the Catholics, " that we want no long discussion
about creeds. The Nicene Creed is our Creed: — to exclude all
doctrinal innovations is our purpose. Is it yours also ? if so, join
with us M condemning AriaMsm." The AriaMzers of course
refused. " Let us read, then," rejomed the majority, " the Nicene
Creed, and all the subsequent creeds, and test the latter by the
Nicene standard. Thus only shall we arrive at a final decision of

xiv.] Ariminum and Seleucia. 269
the question, by adhering to the traditions of our fathers — by stand-
Mg firm on the ground of the ancient faith." The various creeds
having been read, the bishops, by a great majority, resolved that
the creed proposed by Valens was a device for annulling the Nicene
settlement. " Let it be decreed that nothMg new take the place of
the old and received Creed. The name of ' substance,' and the
tiring intended by the name, cannot be given up : the Catholic
Church, with her salutary teacMng, has been ever accustomed to
confess both." Thereupon, Grecianus moved as follows : " The
Catholic Council, dearest brethren, has shown all due tolerance
towards Ursacius, Valens, Germmius, Caius, Auxentius, who, by so
often changing their faith, have disturbed all churches, and are now
trymg to insinuate their heretical notions mto Christian mMds.
They want to subvert the Nicene Creed, and have brought us one
wMch we could not lawfully accept. They were long ago pro
nounced heretics by us : now, agaM, speak your mind about them ! "
The answer was, "We resolve that the heretics be condemned."
It was done, and eleven anathemas were pronounced not only
agamst AriaMsm, but agaMst those Sabellian and Photinian errors
which in other directions were as fatal to true belief. The con-
cludMg anathema is characteristic M its comprehensive and laconic
stringency : " If any other blasphemies, by Arius or by any one else,
have been discovered, we anathematize them likewise." A letter
was addressed to Constantius, explaining the principle on which
the Council had acted : " We deemed it a crime to mutilate what
belonged to the saMts and those who had sat at Nicaea, and who
did but uphold the doctrine of their Catholic predecessors." The
Dated Creed was described as " contaMMg much perverse doctrine : "
and the Emperor was entreated to consider favourably the statements
wMch would be made to him on behalf of the Council, and to allow
it now to break up, its work being done. Very many of the bishops
detained at Ariminum were old and poor, and were wanted at home
by their flocks : let the Emperor permit them to return, but above
all let him sanction no change in the doctrine recognised by his
father, and spare the bishops, in future, the needless toil and
vexation of attending councils which were not requisite for the
cause of religion, and which rather interfered with their proper
work. The letter was carried to Constantius by fourteen delegates,
who, unfortunately, were " young men with little learning and little
caution ; " the Arians sent ten of their own body, " elderly men,"

270 The Age of the Fathers. [Chap.
says Sulpicius, " imbued with the poison of a false faith, and strong
m subtlety and ability," — or, M Hooker's pMase, "wary and
practised veterans." The Catholic delegates, among whom was the
bishop of Carthage, were Mstructed to make no terms with Arians,
and to reserve the whole case for the Council. They did not make
such good speed as not to be outstripped by the Arian deputies,
among whom were Valens and Ursacius ; and when Constantius
heard the report of the latter, he became, says Socrates, " much
incensed agaMst the Council, and detained its deputies for a long
time without an answer." He sent, mdeed, a brief letter, by tMee
messengers, to the Council, explaining that the Persian war
absorbed Ms thoughts (it was, indeed, M tMs autumn of 359 that
Sapor, after a siege of seventy-tMee days, took Amida), and that
he had directed the delegates to await Ms return at Hadrianople.
To tMs the bishops at Ariminum replied by an assurance that they
should not depart from their resolution, and by agaM entreating
the "most religious Emperor," in mere humanity, to send them
home before the wMter had set in.
So ended the first of the four scenes, into which the drama of
the two Councils appears to divide itself. The second opens at
Seleucia on Monday, the 27th of September. When the Eastern
Council met, there were about a hundred and sixty bishops
present : of these, accordMg to Hilary, a hundred and five were
Semi-Arians, as George of Laodicea, Eleusius, SopMonius from
PapMagonia, Macedonius, Silvanus of Tarsus, Basil, Eustathius,
and Cyril as an appellant agaMst Ms sentence of deposition ; but
of these, Basil and MacedoMus arrived after the opemng of the
Council. Hilary adds that " there were as many blasphemers as
smted Constantius ; " in effect, we must suppose, about forty Acacians
altogether, Mcluding Acacius, Patrophilus, Eudoxius, George of
Alexandria, Uramus of Tyre. Of the orthodox party there were
very few representatives — some twelve Egyptian prelates who
dared to resist their de facto primate, and Hilary, now M the fourth
year of his Phrygian exile, and summoned by virtue of the general
order for the attendance of all bishops resident in the East : he
was questioned as to his faith, and on proving by his profession of
Nicene belief — as Sulpicius tells us, that the Gallic Church did
not hold a Sabellian " trionymam solitarii Dei unionem " — he was
permitted to take his seat in the Council. From one pMase in
the opening of Athanasius's work on these two Councils, it has
been inferred that he himself literally " saw " the proceedmgs at

XIV.] Ariminum and Seleucia. 271
Seleucia ; but tins is improbable. Those proceedings were watched
and controlled, in the Emperor's name, by Leonas, an officer of his
household. They began in remarkable contrast to the Ariminian
Council's silence about questions of personal conduct. There, the
enemies of Athanasius had said notMng on the subject of Ms cha
racter ; here, many accusations were, at the outset, urged against
many bishops, and agaMst Basil, and Macedonius, and Patrophilus,
whose coming was daily expected, and who had excused themselves
for tardiness. The bishops were divided in opinion as to whether
the question of doctrine or the personal accusations should take
precedence : the imperial letter, through some inadvertence, had
given contradictory instructions on this head ; and it is said that
a wish on the part of the Acacian section to avoid charges brought
agamst them induced them (although they had lately professed
agreement with the Semi-Arian MacedoMus) to league them
selves with the Anomoeans properly so called, and to urge a reso
lution for entering first on the question of doctrine. Accordmgly,
the Council saw itself divided Mto two main parties. One, the
larger, was for the Nicene Creed minus the Homoousion, or, if that
were disliked, for the Dedication Creed of 341. The other was for
a vague "Homcean" creed, such as that which had been framed
at the Whitsun-eve conference of Sirmium, the appropriateness of
wMch for Ultra-Arian purposes was illustrated by its bemg now
referred to by such men as the Alexandrian George and the Antio
chene Eudoxius. The dispute — M which the Arians maintained
that the Lord, as Son, was a creature — waxed hot and lasted long ;
at length, while the evening was closing M, Silvanus shouted out
with vehement energy, " We want no new creed — let us confirm
the creed of the Dedication." The Acacians, on this, withdrew ;
the " Lucianic " Antiochene, or " Dedication " creed, was read, and
adopted on the following morMng, September 28, after the doors
of the church in which the Council met had been closed. Among
those who signed the formulary were some deacons and readers,
representing their absent bishops. Acacius and Ms friends spent
tMs second day in protesting against what they called an irregular
and clandestine act, in frammg a new formulary, and embodying
it M a declaration submitted to Leonas, and to the provmcial
governor Lauricius. This paper was dated September 28 ; the
persons who signed it began their statement by complaiMng that
M the preceding day's session, some bishops had been irregularly
admitted to seats in the Council, others had been excluded, or

272 The Age of the Fathers. [Chap.
silenced, without warrant, and the Council had become a scene of
disorder. They then stated their personal approval of the Dedica
tion Creed, but urged that " Homoousion " and " Homoiousion "
had been found productive of dissension, and ought to be laid aside
as non-Scriptural. But, they added — with the readmess that
Acacius showed to abandon, for a time and professedly, his more
outspoken friends — " We anathematize the Anomoion, and regard
its maintainers as aliens from the Church." Epiphanius says that
this was a " snare set by crafty hunters ; for when the Acacians
were by themselves, they would say that the Son was like the
Father only as a picture was like its origMal." On this occasion
they produced a formulary of their own ; it was not the Dated
Creed, though it professed to be equivalent to it. The Dated Creed,
on the one hand, did not, like this formulary, condemn the
Anomoion ; but, on the other hand, this creed did not, like the
Dated, define the Son to be like the Father " M all tMngs : " it only
said, " We plainly confess the Son to be like the Father, according
to the apostle's words concerning the Son, ' Who is an image of the
Mvisible God.' " In fact, the Dated Creed, as Athanasius tells us,
had been withdrawn from circulation, and its copies suppressed
by means of " MartiMan the notary," probably because the date
referring to the Consulships, and the title of " eternal " given to
the Emperor, had provoked severe criticism.
The Acacian declaration and creed received the signatures of
thirty-eight bishops, given by Epiphanius, and of Patrophilus, who
was not an Anomoean. On the third day, September 29, Macedonius
and Basil having arrived, Leonas endeavoured to bring the two
parties together. But the Acacians protested against opeMng the
third session until all the bishops who were under any accusation
had gone out, as well as those who had been, like Cyril, deposed.
The Semi-Arian majority, not wishMg to give Acacius any pretext
for breaking up the assembly before the question of Anomceanism
could be thoroughly dealt with, yielded this point to their opponents.
Then it was that Leonas said, with diplomatic dexterity, " Let us
read this paper, which Acacius has put into my hands." The
majority knew nothing of the nature of the paper when he made
tMs announcement ; for Leonas, being in league with Acacius, had
kept secret the preparation of the new Acacian creed. He pro
ceeded, accordingly, with the readmg : a great disturbance ensued,
for the main body of the prelates, as we have seen, were for
adhering to the Dedication formulary properly so called, and

xiv.] Ariminum and Seleucia. 273
Sophronius exclaimed, " If to make an exposition of the faith
means to promulgate, day after day, our private opinions, we shall
never get at the truth." The debate was adjourned until the next
day, September 30, when Acacius, justly enough, reminded the
Semi-Arians that they had frequently made creeds of their own,
in deviation from that of Nicaea; and the rejoinder of Eleusius,
" We have to stand by the creed of our fathers," — meanmg,
of course, the Antiochene, not the Nicene, — only showed the
weakness of the Semi-Arian position; for, as Socrates remarks,
it invited the retort, " Are not the Nicene bishops ' fathers '
in a truer sense ? " The question then, our historians tell us,
took a somewhat different form. What, it was asked by the
Semi-Arians (naturally desirous of turning the tables on their
opponents), was really meant by the Homoion ? In what did the
"likeness" consist — in essence, or in will? Was it a substantial
similarity, or only a moral one ? The Acacians of course answered,
" It is a likeness in will, not in essence." " What ? " rejoined the
Semi-Arians; "have not you, Acacius, M your own published
works, called the Son 'like the Father M all things ' ? " Acacius
could seldom have found himself in so weak a position as when
he had to reply, " It is not fair to quote a man's books agaMst
himself; " and after a long debate Eleusius said, "We are not
concerned with personal recriminations ; we have not to ask why
Basil or Mark accepted the Dated Creed, nor need we examine this
new formulary ; our duty is simply to reaffirm the Dedication
Creed, and expel those who reject it : " whereupon Leonas thought
it time to close the sitting. Next day, October 1, when requested
to come into the Council, he flatly declined to do so. " I was
deputed," he said, "to preside over a Council which should be of
one mMd. It is hopeless to expect this Council to be of such a
character, and I shall come among you no more. Go you to the
church, if you will, and chatter to your hearts' content." WMle
he spoke, the Acacians were in the very house which he occupied ;
and they, like Mmself, refused to return to the Council. Much
fraitless negotiation followed ; the majority summoned the Acacians
to attend the inquiry wMch was now to be made into the case of
Cyril : the reply was sometimes, " We will meet you here, not in
the church ; " sometimes, " We, not you, are appointed by the
Emperor to judge the accused bishops." At length the majority
saw that they were, in fact, determined not to jom M any further
business — not to go into the case of Cyril's appeal, not to meet
vol. 1. T

274 The Age of the Fathers. [Chap.
charges brought agaMst themselves, not to accept the Creed of
Antioch. Accordingly, sentence of deposition was passed, in the
church, against the contumacions Acacius, George of Alexandria,
Eudoxius, Patrophilus, UraMus, and others of that party : excom
munication being also decreed against Asterius, a prelate of some
see unknown, and eight others, until they should make good their
defence. Cyril was doubtless restored. Anianus was consecrated
to the see of Antioch, but soon afterwards fell Mto Acacian hands,
and was sent by Leonas into exile. Protest was made, but in
vain ; and then the Council sent its deputies to Constantius, among
whom were Basil, Eustathius, Silvanus, Eleusius ; but they were
outstripped by the deputies of the Acacian party, who also lost
no time in securing, on their arrival, the mfluence of important
palace-officers. This was the end of the proceedmgs at Seleucia.
Thus far, then, orthodoxy had triumphed in the Western Council,
and Semi- Arianism, as opposed to proper Arianism, M the Eastern.
But the end was not yet.
Another scene, in fact, had opened, before any deputies from
Seleucia could reach the court. After the ArimMian Council's
deputies arrived at Constantinople, they were ordered to meet the
Arian deputies from Ariminum at Nice M TMace — a place chosen
for the convenient similarity of its name to Nicaea. There the
Catholics were harassed, importuned, intimidated, and beguiled
into the acceptance of the Homoion M its vaguest form. TMs took
place, as an extant document in Hilary's "Fragments" informs
us, on the 10th of October, and Socrates is mistaken M datmg
it after the ArimMian Council had broken up. Restitutus, speak-
Mg for Ms brethren, declared that on fuller inquiry it appeared
that Valens and Ursacius were orthodox ; and gave formal ad
hesion to another creed, which omitted "in all things" when
affirming the "likeness," and proscribed "hypostasis" as well as
" essence." With this new edition, so to speak, of the " Dated "
formulary, wMch might by a paltry juggle be represented as
"Nicene," the Catholic deputies — Catholic, indeed, no longer —
were sent back to their Council, the proceedings of which they had
already been induced to repudiate as null and void. Constantius
at the same time wrote to the Council in a thorougMy Acacian
sense, and ordered Taurus to keep all the prelates at Ariminum
until those who refused the new " Nicene " formula should be
reduced to fifteen, who were then to be sent into exile.
But when the deputies returned to Arimmum, the great

xiv.] Ariminum and Seleucia. 275
majority of the bishops disowned their act, and refused to com
municate with them ; although they pleaded that they had signed
the new creed under pressure. On the other hand, the Arianizers
in the Council wrote in exultation to their Eastern friends : " We
always held tMs belief, and we are now in union with you as
holding it." To Constantius they also wrote a letter, wMcli
Tillemont describes as the meanest and most infamous of docu
ments ; they professed " entire obedience to the Easterns and to
Ms directions," alluded to " the rest " of the bishops as " being
wont to use the terms Ousia and Homoousion M regard to God
and His Son," and then supplicated the imperial " kindness " not
to detain them along with " those who were tainted with perverse
doctrine," but to " send them home to their flocks " as having
satisfactorily proved their own orthodoxy, by assenting to the
prohibition of the word Ousia : " Assist, 0 gracious Emperor,
those who worsMp none but God the Father, tMough our Lord
Jesus Christ, the Son of His glory," — in this passage clearly
implying that they were not, properly speaking, worsMppers of
Christ. The Catholic-minded bishops held out for a time ; but
gradually their patience and clear-sightedness began to fail them.
The prospect of indefinite detention, of a winter on the shore of
the Hadriatic, of financial difficulties as to mamtenance, of the
relentless vindictiveness of a heterodox autocrat, perturbed their
judgment and their sense of religious duty. The Arianizers
pressed them hard with arguments against " this idle standing-out
for a word." " You desire, no doubt, the union of all good
Christians. Well, be sure of this — that term ' ousia,' and its
compounds, are the hMdrances to such union. The Eastern bishops
have made up their minds to call the Son simply ' like ' to the
Father, M order to secure peace. Why must you insist on being
at discord with them on this matter ? Why cannot you be content
with what satisfies them ? Come, tell us : Is it CMist that you
worsMp — is it Christ that you want to serve — or is it the word
Homoousion ? " By these arguments, the Arianizers, who had
now got possession of the church of Ariminum, and excluded the
Catholics from it, overcame the resolution of nearly all their
former adversaries. The bishops on the Catholic side, says
Sulpicius, went over in troops to the other side, until only twenty
were left. Among these the Gallicans, Phcebadius and Servatius,
were prominent. The prefect did his utmost to make them yield.
He first threatened, and then implored them — even, it is said, with

276 The Age of the Fathers. [Chap.
tears — to "take a more moderate line. The bishops," he urged,
" have now been shut up for more than six months withM this
town. Many of them are poor, all of them feel the rigour of the
winter ; none of them have any hope of release wMle you twenty
remain obstinate. What is to be the end ? Why will you not do
as others have done ? Why cannot tMs large number of adhesions
to the Emperor's creed be your authority for accepting it ? "
Phoebadius answered firmly, "You can send us Mto exile; you
can inflict on us what you will ; but a creed framed by Arians we
will not accept." For several days this attack and defence went
on. At last Valens begged to suggest that it was a mistake to
call this creed heretical. " It has been put forward by the Easterns
with the Emperor's authority ; to reject it will involve a grave
responsibility : your own delegates," he probably added, " have
signed it ; and if you thMk it inadequate in any respect, add what
you like to it, and I engage that we will accept your additions."
Phoebadius, who had begun, Sulpicius says, to show signs of
wavering, thought tMs proposal a happy outlet from the difficulty.
He and Servatius set to work to frame some anathemas wMch
might fairly bar out Arianism, and secure at least the substantial
truth wMch was to be no longer guarded by the Homoousion.
These condemnatory propositions were directed agaMst " the whole
false doctrine of Arius ; " but, accordMg to the text of Sulpicius,
they did not imply that the Son was co-equal, and " without begin
ning " of existence. Then Valens, by way of contribution, offered
an anathema of Ms own, or a statement eqmvalent to an anathema,
agaMst those who said " that the Son of God was a creature like the
other creatures." In tMs, of course, as Sulpicius says, " there lay
concealed a wile ; for M these words, wMch demed the Son to be a
creature like the rest, He was yet asserted to be a creature, though
superior to the rest." But at the time tMs quibble was not
detected. The small remnant of bishops who had not given way
until these additions were made to the new symbol had more of
the dove, says Tillemont, than of the serpent — were " deceived,"
says St. Ambrose, " by the first sound of the phrase," and fell
unsuspectingly Mto this snare, wMch, in fact, might have been
avoided by any one who knew — as, probably, few at Ariminum did
know — that the designation of the Son as " God's perfect creature,
but not as one of the creatures," had been employed by Arius him
self, in a letter to Alexander, written before the Nicene Council.
Thus, the general result seemed to be a compromise : neither party,

xiv.] Ariminum and Seleucia. 2jj
says Sulpicius, " could thMk it had won all along the lMe : " the
creed now adopted, and which must henceforth be called the
Ariminian, was itself a " Homcean " symbol ; but the appended
anathemas appeared to secure Catholic truth. However, the people
outside the Council suspected that Valens had been playMg some
Arian trick, and he found it desirable first to disclaim AriaMsm
in the presence of Taurus, and next, on a day when bishops and
laity were assembled in the church, to make a more emphatic
disclaimer on a prearranged plan. What followed we learn from
Jerome, who had consulted public church arcMves. MusoMus,
from the African province of Byzacena, who presided at tMs gather
ing on the score of Ms venerable age, proposed that some prelate
should recite the various poMts of AriaMsm, in order that they
might all be publicly condemned. Thereupon Claudius, a bishop
from Picenum, began to read the propositions popularly attributed
to Valens. But Valens mterrupted him — " They are none of mine ; "
and proceeded to recite them with anathemas, all the bishops
responding to each, " Anathema ! " as Valens repeated them in
order ; while clapping of hands and stamping of feet welcomed this
" evidence " of his orthodoxy, and many voices professed regret for
doubts previously entertaMed respecting it. Special reassurance
would probably be derived from the condemnation of "any one
who did not say that the Son was eternal with the Father."
Claudius then added, that Valens had forgotten one point, which,
to leave no doubt remaMmg, it would be well for the bishops
then to guard : " Anathema to him that says, The Son was before
all ages, but not before all time, — so as to imply that somethmg
was prior to Him." This was at once accepted, as were some other
propositions on pomts as to wMch Valens had been suspected. The
strange facility of the Westerns in regard to some of the professedly
anti- Arian statements which Valens had now joined in making, the
slowness in discernment, the credulous catcMng at such eqmvocal
safeguards, may partly be accounted for by the Latin deficiency in
theological acuteness, and partly, no doubt, by the effect of weari
ness and fear on the minds of men who under less searching trial
had contended well for orthodoxy.
This was the end of the Council of Arimmum, the " shameful
close," as Sulpicius expresses it, of what had " begun so well ; "
and an epoch fruitful to scandals and confusions, from which the
Church in the West was slow to recover, and which are best
described in the famous words of Jerome, " Ingemuit orbis, et

278 The Age of the Fathers. [Chap.
Arianum se esse miratus est," must be fixed at this memorable
wMter of 359. Before the close of the Ariminian proceedings,
however, the mMd of Constantius had been preoccupied agaMst
the Semi-Arians of Seleucia by the Acacians; and when the
Seleucian deputies arrived at Constantinople, they had speedy proof
of the difficulties of their situation. They complained to the
Emperor of the heresy and misconduct of Eudoxius. Constantius
interrupted: "Let us first get the doctrinal question settled."
Basil boldly remonstrated with the Emperor for having drifted
away from " orthodoxy." Constantius reproached Mm for causMg
disturbance M the churches, and ordered him to be silent. Eusta
thius was more successful than Basil in gaining the Emperor's
attention, and produced a doctrinal paper recently promulgated by
Eudoxius. The Emperor, who was by no means as yet prepared
for AnomoBanism, was shocked at the language of this document,
wMch Mferred the Anomoion from the text, " the Father, of whom
are all thmgs, and Jesus CMist, through whom are all tMngs."
He asked Eudoxius what he had to say. " The paper," said the
bishop of Antioch, " is not mine : Aetius wrote it." Aetius, when
summoned, avowed that it was his ; he knew nothing of what had
passed, did not understand what was Mvolved M the question put
to him, and even expected to gain credit by the avowal. A sentence
of exile was there and then recorded agaMst Mm, though not then
executed; he was also "thrust out of the palace." EustatMus
pushed the advantage he had won : " Eudoxius tMnks exactly with
Aetius : he has admitted him to his house and his table ; he could
not have been ignorant of the composition of tMs paper ; in fact,
he avowed his knowledge of its authorship." " Conjectures and
inferences are not evidence," said the Emperor, for once showing
a judicial mind. " Then," said Eustathius, " let Eudoxius condemn
Aetius's paper, and he will convince us of Ms innocence." Eudoxius
was commanded to do so ; he " tried various evasions," but, with
Ms usual timidity, shrank from tirreats of banishment, and pro
nounced a formal repudiation of AnomceaMsm, but demanded that
bis opponents should on their side renounce the unscriptural
Homoiousion. Upon this, Silvanus boldly defended that pMase,
as implied M the uncreatedness of the Son ; and he was, in con
sequence, sentenced to exile. Here, then, was the Emperor in a
position wMch apparently smted Ms temper well : he had rebuked,
as he would think, the two extremes of Semi-Arian dogmatism and
Anomcean profaneness, and had balanced himself M & juste milieu.

xiv.] Ariminum and Seleucia. 279
He resumed consideration of the case of Aetius, and put it into the
hands of Honoratus, newly appointed as "city-prefect" of Con
stantinople ; but soon resolved to examine Aetius personally. A
discussion followed between Aetius and Basil, who was apparently
attended by Ms namesake, afterwards the great St. Basil, who was
not as yet m holy orders. Aetius was held to be vanqmshed, and
the Emperor was, anew, disgusted with Ultra- Arianism. At tMs
time, the final deputation from the ArimMian Council, bringMg the
Homcean creed as now accepted, arrived at Constantinople. They
were immediately exhorted by the Seleucian delegates to hold no
communication with the virtual patrons of Anomceanism. To the
letter containMg this counsel was annexed a copy of the impious
statements which had been brought home to Aetius. But the
deputies from ArimMum repelled tMs overture with scorn and anger,
and hastened to unite with the Acacians, to proclaim the real purport
of their anathema about the relation of the Son to " other creatures,"
and even to put a grossly sopMstical sense on the propositions as
to His beMg co-eternal, and not beMg produced from non-existing
substance, — beside exhibiting their wonderful capacity for quibbling
in regard to the Homoion itself, which was made to mean nothMg
Mconsistent with the Anomoion ; for, " according to the Scriptures,"
man is described as " like " to God, and a grain of mustard-seed to
the kMgdom of heaven : but we may imagine the Mdignation of
the Semi-Arian delegates when urged by the triumphant Acacians
to sign the ArimMian Creed. They protested that they could not
give up the word " ousia." But when the Acacians declared " upon
oath " that they did not hold the Anomoion, and indeed were ready
to condemn it, — and when Constantius argued that whatever the
Homoiousion implied would be better expressed by the simple
Homoion, and menaced the unwilling Semi-Arians within the
palace with exile M case of their refusal to adopt a formula wMch
proscribed all but " Scriptural terms," — at last, after a conference
with the Emperor and the Acacians, wMch lasted through the
whole of the 31st December, far on into the last night of the year
359 (for Constantius wanted to devote January 1 to the openMg
of his Consulship), the ten Seleucians consented, says Sulpicius,
under tMs "imperial coercion," to adopt the unsound Western
Creed. One more Council was now held, before the gathering of
bishops at Constantinople broke up. In the beginning of January,
360, the addition of the Bithynian prelates raised the number to

280 The Age of the Fathers. [Chap.
about fifty, and the new Synod Mcluded one memorable person,
UlpMlas " the Goth," otherwise UrpMlas, who had been born in
311 among the Goths north of the Danube, and sent as their
envoy to Constantine. He had acted as a reader among his
countrymen within the empire: in 341 he was consecrated by
Eusebius of Nicomedia and other prelates, as bishop for the Goths,
for whose instruction he laboured assiduously, translating all the
Scriptures Mto Ms people's language with the exception of the
four books of Kings, which he thought might Mcrease their already
excessive love of war. A persecution by the GotMc ruler drove
Mm with Ms converts Mto Mcesia about 348. Philostorgius would
represent him as the first bishop of the Goths, but he was certaMly
preceded by Theophilus, who sat in the Nicene Council; and although
he was long supposed to have been Mtentionally Catholic, it is now
clear, from a narrative by Ms pupil, an Arian bishop, which was
discovered m the library of the Louvre, that he was from the first
in some sense an Arian, and that his Arianism, when formulated,
was of the Homcean type. The Council was ruled by the arch-
Homcean Acacius ; and its acts fall naturally into three divisions.
First, it ratified the ArimMian creed, and abolished all preceding
formulas. Even some who really held Ultra- Arian opinions adopted
the Homoion as tMs set forth, and put their own sense upon it. The
second business was the condemnation of Aetius, who, as before,
was sacrificed by the Acacians. He was deposed from the diaconate,
and bamshed by the Emperor into Cilicia. His writings were put
under prohibition; and some bishops, who declined to sign the
sentence (although, indeed, one of them, Serras, a Libyan, had
borne testimony to the profane arrogance of Aetius), were ex
communicated prospectively, if they did not submit witMn six
months. But we are told by Sozomen that among those who did
condemn him were some who avowed that they did so with reluc
tance, and only by way of disclaiming Anomceanism. The third
busMess was one in which all Acacians would unite with genume
satisfaction; the Semi-Arian leaders, so lately, as it seemed, suc
cessful, were now prostrate, and were deposed on various grounds,
affecting their conduct rather than their belief. Thus, Basil was
accused of violent and tyrannical conduct towards certain clergy,
of interference with the Emperor's officers in regard to the case of
Aetius, of stirring up the Sirmian clergy against their bishop, of
denouncing Valens and other bishops, of perjury in denying tMs
act, of exciting sedition in the West, of ordainMg a notorious

XIV-] Ariminum and Seleucia. 281
profligate, of evading accusations by making his clergy swear
around the holy table not to accuse each other, of not excommuni
cating a "church-officer guilty of bloodshed." Eustathius was
charged with various offences, for wMch he was said to have been
already more than once put under censure. Eleusius was deprived
for having, among other acts, ordained an ex-priest of Hercules,
convicted of sorcery, and feigmng to be a convert to ChristiaMty.
Cyril, whom the Acacians specially hated, was of course agam
deposed: he had already been vilified before Constantius for
selling a rich vestment given by Constantine to his predecessor ;
that tMs sale was meant (as we have seen) to relieve the poor of
Jerusalem during a famMe, was deemed no excuse in the eyes of
Arian formalists and courtiers. At a distinct session of the Council,
Sophronius was deposed for avariciously selling, with a view to Ms
own profit, the offerings made to his church, and of appealing to
another court agaMst the sentence of the synod; Silvanus, for
makmg himself a party leader, and placmg an unfit person in a
bishopric ; Neon, bishop of Seleucia, for havMg conferred the episco
pate on men who were engaged in secular magistracies, and ignorant
of Scripture and Church-rules. Macedomus was, of course, obnoxious
to the Emperor for havMg previously provoked a sanguinary tumult,
and he was also charged with laxity M disciplMe. To the sees of
these prelates, Acacians or crypto-Anomoeans were appointed, as
Eudoxius to Constantinople : this unprincipled man signalised his
first mMistration m the newly completed cathedral of St. SopMa
by a horrible and long-remembered jest about the Father being
" impious " and the Son " pious," by way of enforcing the notion that
the Son worsMpped the Father. TMs was on Tuesday, February
15, 360. Here is one more illustration of the practical affinity of
AcaciaMsm to AnomceaMsm, which may represent the real out
come of that plausible modification of the heresy ; while the con
fusion produced by what Socrates calls the " labyrinth " of Arian
creeds may be best described by the heathen Ammianus's brief
and bitter taunt at the " troops of prelates hurrying M public con
veyances from one synod, as they call it, to another," or by the
Catholic Hilary's famous words in his " second book to Constantius,"
presented during the sessions of tMs Council, in which he complaMs
that now " there are as many creeds as fancies, that men wander
about as various wMds of doctrine sway them, that creeds are
framed every year or every month, then cancelled, then renewed,
until the most absolute perplexity and suicidal Mconsistency had

282 The Age of the Fathers. [Chap. XIV.
become the normal state of Christian theologians." A passage wMch
Gibbon calls worthy of a CMistian philosopher, and wMch is some
times read or quoted without due remembrance of the fact that,
M Hilary's view, as M that of Athanasius, all tMs deplorable and
scandalous uncertamty was the product of a restless heresy that
was consistent M notMng but m aversion to the Nicene faith.
Hilary, M this tract, requested leave to address the Emperor and
the Council on the matters of doctrine Mvolved m the Arian con
troversy : professmg at the same time Ms own immovable fidelity
to the creed of Ms regeneration, an older and simpler formula
than the Nicene, but, as he believed, m entire accordance with it.
The request was refused : he thereupon relieved his mind by com
posing, but takmg care not to publish, an unmeasured invective
" AgaMst Constantius," and was afterwards sent back mto Gaul, as
" a sower of discord and a disturber of the East." And here we
may close our review of that triumph wMch had been acMeved by
the persistency and diplomacy of Acacian AriaMsm.

CHAPTER XV.
RESULTS OF THE COUNCIL OF ARIMINUM.
The cause of apostolic CMistiaMty, as it had been vindicated and
guarded m the Nicene Council, might, to human judgment, have
seemed well-Mgh a lost cause at the opemng of the year 360. A
great Western Council, whose proceedmgs had begun with an
exhibition of unmistakable fidelity to the Nicene faith, had been
partly wearied, partly menaced, partly beguiled Mto the accept
ance, not of Semi- Arianism, but of that Acacian form of AriaMsm
which, as managed by sMfty and worldly-minded prelates, was
effectively working in the interests of an extreme development of
heresy, even although its representatives might find it convenient
to disown and condemn the latter, and to put forward their
Homoion as avoiding alike the techMcality of the Homoiousion and
the coarse impiety of the Anomoion — as embodying in a simple
and " Scriptural " formula whatever was really necessary for savmg
faith M the Son of God. And the Semi-Arian Council of Seleucia,
which had included several who were rather verbally than really
separate from the orthodox position, had apparently witnessed in
vam agaMst the lower grades of Arianism, and had been followed
by the submission of its representatives to that same Homoean
formula which had secured the assent of the Westerns at Ariminum.
It mattered little, comparatively, that the avowed upholder of the
Anomoion, Aetius, whom zealous Churchmen called " the Godless,"
had been made a scapegoat for the Acacians, or even that the
Anomoion had been in express terms repudiated by the less candid
but not less profane Eudoxius. All who could really discern the
true bearings of the case would feel that the proscription not only
of the Catholic, but of the Semi-Arian creed, and the enforcement
of the Homoion by a Council in the imperial city, and by the full
weight of the imperial power, meant nothing else than the ultimate,

284 The Age of the Fathers. [Chap.
and probably the not distant triumph of Ultra-Arianism ; unless,
in the providence of God, some turn of events should deprive
Arianism of the support of the State, or some vigorous reaction
provoked by the Acacians' Msolent triumph should neutralise the
effect of the events at Ariminum, and impel the best of the
Semi-Arians to take some further steps in the direction of
Catholicity. The "fearful troubles," as Tillemont expresses it, "which
were excited M the Church by the exaction of signatures " to the
ArimMian Creed, Mvolved a persecution wMch Sozomen does not
hesitate to call more grievous than those of the pagan emperors,
inasmuch as, " if it seemed more moderate m regard to bodily in
flictions, it entailed more disgrace to the Christian name, for both
the persecutors and the persecuted were origmally members of the
Church," and fellow-Christians were treated as no Christian ought
to treat any fellow-man. Jerome's famous hyperbole has already
been quoted ; M another passage he says that nearly all Churches
were polluted by communion with Arians, under the pretext of
" peace " and " the Emperor's will." Gregory of Nazianzus, who
knew well what he was writing about, describes the expulsion of
several bishops who refused to sign the new creed, and the sub
stitution of others who accepted the episcopate on these terms.
" The Mk was ready, the informer was at hand ; " many prelates
subscribed against their own privately retained convictions, under
pressure of menaces or under the Mfluence of smooth persuasions.
Some, says Gregory, had whatever excuse ignorance could furnish ;
but that, in the eye of Roman law, would be held no excuse at all.
And the flocks, in many cases, followed blindly as their pastors
went, accepting mechaMcally what they accepted : it was not so
m other cases, as when Dianius of Cappadocian Caesarea signed the
creed, and Basil and " many others," who in his native country
" feared the Lord," were exceedMgly shocked and grieved at such
compliance, and could not be satisfied until they were assured that
the signature was given "in simplicity of heart," and "without
any intention to abandon the faith of Nicaea." Gregory Nazianzen's
father, the old bishop of Nazianzus, was, as his son expresses it,
" carried away by his simplicity " to subscribe the AriaMzing
symbol, but was believed, at the time, to have not " defiled his soul
with the ink" of the signature, but preserved his faith intact.
The " more zealous Churchmen " of the city, while protesting
against his act, admitted that it was a mistake, and not an apostasy.

XV.] Results of the Council of Ariminum. 285
Jerome describes the confusion which filled the Church, and the
varying lines of action adopted by various bishops after the real
bearing of the Ariminian catastrophe became apparent. " Some
confined themselves to the communion of their own local church ;
some began to write to those who were in exile for their adherence
to Athanasius ; some, despairing of anytMng better, deplored the
communion which they had adopted ; a few — as men will do —
defended their mistake as if it were a deliberate action." Lucifer,
from his place of exile, began to pour forth pamphlet after pamphlet
in denunciation of the injustice and tyranny of an Emperor who
had, in Ms view, apostatized from the faith to Arianism ; and it
must be said that the volcanic fury of these outbursts was neither
helpful nor honourable to the cause wMch had fired this zeal.
He never tMnks of measuring his words, of the responsibility
attaching to sheer vehemence ; he never stops to ask whether this
or that phrase befits a Christian confessor. The title of one of his
treatises is sufficiently significant — " One must not spare those
who offend against God ; " and Ms notion of " not sparing " is
illustrated by one sentence : " God calls you (Constantius) a
scorpion ; are you angry with me for calling you so ? " In
another of these diatribes he says, "We think you as bad as
worshippers of all the demons." Gregory, bishop of Elvira, wrote
vigorously M behalf of the Nicene faith, and received a letter
of congratulation from Eusebius of Vereellae. "As long as you
persevere in the same confession, and hold no mtercourse with
the hypocrites, promise yourself our communion. . . . All the
hope of the Arian fanatics depends on the protection of secular
sovereignty; they know not the text, 'Cursed are they that
put their trust in man ! ' " Liberius Mmself, and VMcent of
Capua, effaced, as Tillemont expresses it, the disgrace of their
previous weakness by "refusmg to consent to the decrees of
Ariminum." In Gaul, the Council of Paris (the first of a series
of synods held M that city, which was now associated with the
court of the Caesar Julian, who afterwards as Emperor looked back
fondly to " Ms dear Lutetia ") addressed to the Eastern bishops—
that is,1 to those who had been represented at Seleucia, and had
upheld the use of the term Ousia against the Acacian and crypto-
Anomcean intriguers— a letter preserved among the " Fragments "
of St. Hilary. From this letter it appears that the Seleucians had
written to Hilary, denouncMg those mtriguers, and narrating the
failure of their own attempt to keep the Ariminian delegates from

286 The Age of the Fathers. [Chap.
consenting to Arian " blasphemy." Hilary, who had now returned
to Gaul, had evidently set before Ms brethren the true state of the
case ; they found that " their simplicity had been deceived Mto an
abandonment of the word Ousia," according to the terms of the
Ariminian formulary : they accordingly, in this Council, explicitly
confessed the Homoousion itself, as the true expression of the
actual "birth of the Only-begotten God" (as M one reading of
John i. 18) " from God the Father ; " defiMng the relation of the
Son to the Father as not a " umon " m the Sabellian sense, but a
" unity " in the Catholic ; identifyMg " ousia " with their own Latin
" substantia ; " condemning all the Anomcean " blasphemies," of
wMch the Easterns had sent a list ; announcing that they regarded
as excommunicate Ursacius and Valens, and the other ArimMian
delegates, together with SaturMnus, and with those "apostate
bishops " who, " by the ignorance or impiety of certain persons,
had been set in the place of brethren undeservedly exiled; and
promising and declaring M the presence of God, that whosoever
should resist the decisions of the Council withM Gaul should be
expelled from the communion and from sacerdotal dignity." TMs
Council of Paris was one of the first signs of hope, of a possible
restoration of orthodoxy and unity, among the distressed and
bewildered Churches of the West.
Nor were the Catholics of the East without some grounds of
encouragement at the close of 360 and the beginning of 361.
AnomoeaMsm, to do its representatives justice, was usually associ
ated with a downright frankness which makes them, comparatively,
objects of respect, in contrast with the shifty insincerities of several
less notorious Arians. But according to a story told by Theodoret,
Eunomius, their ablest man, had been placed by Eudoxius in the
see of Cyzicus, on the understanding, or rather with the hope, that
he would not shock the ears of Ms flock by callMg the Son of God
a creature. " Eleusius has accustomed them to regard him as un
create ; you must not, by hasty and premature disclosure of your
own sentiments, alienate those whom a little patience will bring
round ; when the right time comes, you can proclaim what, for
the present, a prudent reserve must keep in the background."
Eunomius, at first, adopted tMs advice, and used ambiguous
language, which some of his orthodox hearers well understood to
be a disguise for Anomceanism. Thereupon, meeting craft by
craft, they went to the new bishop's house ; and, as if zealous for
definite teaching, begged him to speak out, and save the flock

xv] Results of the Council of Ariminum. 287
from theological uncertainties. What was Ms real belief?
Eunomius fell, it is said, Mto the snare, and expressed Ms belief in
the Anomoion. " It will be very unjust and irreligious in you,"
they rejoMed, " not to make this truth, which you thus hold, public
before all men." He followed tMs Msidious counsel ; and they,
hurrymg to Constantinople, denounced Mm as an Anomcean before
Eudoxius, and then, when he paid no attention to their complaint,
before Constantius, who, being still hostile to Anomceanism,
ordered Eudoxius to send for Eunomius, and try him on the charge
of heresy. Eudoxius tried to gain time. On this, the accusers
again complaMed to the Emperor, who menaced Eudoxius with
banishment if he any longer neglected to obey ; and Eudoxius was
constrained to send a formal citation to Eunomius, but at the same
time privately warned him to leave Cyzicus, and to take all the
blame to Mmself for havMg transgressed the counsel given to him :
whereupon Eunomius retired from Cyzicus, imputed treachery to
Eudoxius, and proceeded to form a sect of his own, on the basis, of
course, of explicit Anomceanism. This is Theodoret's account,
worth remembering as an illustration of the laxity of Greek
Christians in regard to " pious frauds ; " but a simpler and likelier
story is told by Socrates and Sozomen, although with too late
a date — that Eunomius at first made a great impression on the
people of Cyzicus by Ms parade of dialectical ability, but after
a while, and as associated with Arianizmg language, it disgusted
them so much that they drove Mm out of their city, and he took
up his abode at Constantinople, as an " unemployed bishop." There
upon the Cyzicene clergy accused him of Mnovating in doctrine ;
Eudoxius obliged him to make a public statement of his theolo
gical tenets, and thereupon, acquitting Mm of all blame, sent Mm
back to Cyzicus ; but he declared that he would not remain any
longer with persons who had suspected him, and took tMs oppor
tunity of seceding from the commuMon of the established Arian
izing sect — a step to wMch, M fact, he was prompted by Ms
indignation at the harsh treatment experienced by Aetius, whom
he habitually spoke of as Ms master. PMiostorgius agrees with
other accounts m regard to the accusation of Eunomius by members
of the Cyzicene church, and then says that Eudoxius summoned
him to Constantinople ; that he, at first, reproached Eudoxius with
neglecting to fulfil his promise of bringMg back Aetius from exile ;
that he then defended Mmself before the ConstantMopolitan clergy,
and professed his acceptance of the Homoion, or " Like accordMg

&

288 The Age of the Fathers. [Chap.
to the Scriptures," and his rejection of the Anomoion, as well as
of the Homoiousion : whereupon Eudoxius exultingly quoted the
words, " Mine answer to them that do examine me is tMs," and
requested Eunomius to preach on the festival of the Epiphany.
The sermon, it is added, asserted the absolute " subservience "
of the Son to the Father, which would at least imply Anomceanism ;
and then Eudoxius, after highly eulogizing Eunomius, was so far
from fulfillMg the promise about Aetius, that he tried to Mduce
Eunomius to acquiesce in the deposition of Aetius, and sign the
ArimMian creed. If, as Philostorgius had just before asserted,
Eunomius had made profession of the Homcean faith, he could
have no difficulty about the Ariminian decisions ; but he would
by no means sacrifice his friend and Mstructor, and refused to do
either of the two tMngs proposed to Mm. He then resigned the
see of Cyzicus, and withdrew Mto Ms native Cappadocia ; but,
says PMlostorgius, was recalled to stand Ms trial at Antioch, M
consequence of the representations of Acacius to the Emperor.
When the day of trial arrived, however, Acacius durst not act
as accuser ; and the case was adjourned for a larger Council. TMs
long story of Philostorgius is M more than one particular Mcon-
sistent with itself ; and the general facts would seem to be, that
Eunomius was accused of Anomceanism, and that Eudoxius was
compelled to sacrifice Mm as he had already thrown over Aetius ;
that Eunomius was thus deprived of his bishopric, and provoked to
adopt the position of a seceder, the head of a sect representing
unmitigated Arianism, and planting the Anomoean theory on a
distinctly rationalistic basis. All mystery, as we have seen, was
excluded by Eunomius from theology: God was represented as
possessMg no transcendent knowledge of His own nature, as in
nowise superior to man in regard to the comprehension of Himself.
In short, human thought could be an adequate measure of the
Divine mind and beMg ; and Eunomius made the enormous
assumption that this intellectual comprehension was the " know
ledge of God " presupposed in Scripture. At first one asks,
Could a Theist seriously hold this ? The explanation seems to
be, that the simplifying process which had got rid of Trmitarian
distinctions, and reduced God, as Dorner says, to " an individual
shut up M Himself," found its nemesis in tMs " cool and irreligious
assertion." And what was Ms CMistology? According to his
words as quoted by St. Basil, and to the formal exposition of
his belief which years afterwards he presented to Theodosius I.,

xv.] Results of the Council of Ariminum. 289
there was but one Person m the Godhead, single, solitary, peerless,
havMg no compaMon M Deity, no partner M authority, no assessor
M majesty (language which reminds us of Mohammedan nega
tions) : yet under this one only true God there was a " God only-
begotten," but begotten in such sort as not to have existed from
eternity — one who could be entitled a " true God," — " like " to
the Father M the sense of being His image and seal, a "Lord"
and " King of glory," but not actually partaker of the digmty of
the " Father." Here we find even an ultra- Arian theologian
employMg the "glorious and awful Name" in the unreal sense
wMch the pagan element in Arianism had made popular. The
Holy Spirit was spoken of as made by, and holdMg an inferior
position to, the Son ; yet both Son and Spirit, as created, must
have been regarded as on the same level before the solitary incom
municable majesty of the one true Almighty God. The Eunomian
sect, we may here observe, expressed its intense hostility to every
other form of belief by rebaptizmg those who had been baptized
into the Name of the Trinity, and by practisMg a single immersion
" Mto the name " or " the death " of Christ.
The scandal caused by the exposure of Eunomius would, M one
respect, tell favourably on the interests of orthodox belief. Another
phenomenon would probably cause many who held, or who Mclined
towards, that belief, to realise more distinctly the tendency of all
Arian schools to various developments of heresy, or, as Sozomen
expresses it, "the progress of doctrinal Mnovation towards yet
further novelties of opMion." For the " Macedoman " theory, as it
was called after the Semi-Arian Macedomus of Constantinople —
wMch spoke of the Spirit as the proper Arians had spoken of the
Son, i.e. which described Him as a created being, the servant and
mmister of the Son — appears to have been forming itself at tMs time,
and attracted the attention of Athanasius m his retreat, for he wrote
agaMst it m his Letters to Serapion. If in one respect it illus
trated a " down-grade " movement, in another it might be taken
to show that many, at least, of those who held it were now ready
to magnify the Son as practically co-equal to the Father, and to
reserve the conception of essential inferiority for the Spirit, who,
of course, had all along been held by Arians and Arianizers to be
unequal to the Father ; and these Semi-Arians might some day
come to acknowledge the Divmity of the Holy Spirit, if, as was
hoped, they were now virtually persuaded of the proper DivMity
of the Son. On the other hand, of course, it could not be without
vol. 1. u

2 90 The Age of the Fathers. [Chap.
anxiety and distress that Catholics would view the uprising of this
new theory ; for not a few minds might rest in it, and concentrate
on the question of the Holy Spirit, by help of this new formula,
the remnants of Arian thought wMch otherwise might have
gradually, perhaps rapidly, dissolved, and vanished from their
mental area. And thus the formation of Macedonianism was for
the time a manifest evil, although hopeful minds might regard it
as, to some extent, a symptom of the decline of the Arian heresy.
The beginning of 361 was signalised by a remarkable event,
which greatly affected the condition of the orthodox of Antioch,
and which illustrated the upward tendencies of some good men
who had been connected with Arianizmg schools. The great see
of Antioch was filled up by the action of a Council M wMch,
according to Epiphanius, the Acacians were pre-eminent, and
which appointed Meletius to the bishopric. TMs celebrated man,
famous during many subsequent years not only for the conspicuous
and uMque position wMch he occupied, but for the mental gifts
and the moral beauty of character which endeared Mm to so many
churches, even although he lacked the recognition of the two sees
wMch ranked first and second in the hierarchy, had been made
bishop of Sebaste in Armenia, the see vacated by the deposition of
the Semi-Arian Eustathius ; but as Eustathius was deposed twice,
at Melitene about 356, and at Constantinople by the triumphant
Acacians in 360, it is difficult to say at what time Meletius was
set in Ms place. At any rate, he found Ms position unendurable
on account of the " contumacy " of Ms people, who were strongly
attached to Eustathius ; he therefore resigned the see, and with
drew to Beroea in Syria, where, according to Socrates, he acted
as bishop, and from whence he repaired to the Seleucian Council,
and there subscribed the creed drawn up by Acacius. He would
thus be supposed to agree with the domMant form of Arianism :
— such is Theodoret's statement, by way of accounting for his
promotion to the Antiochene see, so far as the Acacians were
concerned ; and it is necessary, for the understanding of after-
events, to bear always in mind that Meletius's antecedents were,
in the Homcean sense, Arian. But, Theodoret adds, " the adherents
of apostolical doctrine, knowing Meletius to be sound in the faith,
and bemg clearly aware of the splendour of his character and
the richness of his virtue, gave their assent to this election, and
actively promoted the framing and the general subscription of the
decree for carrying it out. Both parties," he asserts, " entrusted

xv.] Results of the Council of Ariminum. 291
this decree to the keeping of Eusebius, bishop of Samosata,"
who had begun his career in relations with Arianism, but soon
took up a Catholic position. TMs story exaggerates the action
wMch Catholics would be M a position to take M such a matter ;
and Theodoret writes with a very strong bias in favour of
Meletius, who was thus brought to Antioch, and received by a
vast procession, Mcluding not only bishops, clergy, and laity, but
even Jews and Greeks. The greatest curiosity was felt as to the
Hne of teaching wMch he would follow. Even the " Eustathians "
or Old Churchmen, who were, as we have seen, in Athanasius's
eyes the true Church of Antioch, and who, in default of a bishop,
acknowledged the priest Paulinus as their head, were nearly as
much interested in the question as those who adhered to the
communion of the Antiochene episcopate ; and among these
latter were these orthodox who were represented by Flavian and
Diodore, and the Arians who were anxious that the theology of
Eudoxius should not be dislodged from so important a stronghold.
Truly the scene in the Golden Church must have been strikmg
and dramatic, when, after some sermons of a purely practical
character, Meletius was called upon to take part in a course of
addresses on the great text (Prov. viii. 22) which, in its SeptuagMt
rendering, had been for years a battle-field between Catholics and
Arians : " The Lord created me a beginnMg of His ways, for His
works." For the most part, all disputants agreed in regardmg
the SeptuagMt as practically infallible ; and it was this habitual
assumption wMch made it so needful that a Jerome should arise
to assert the claims of the "Hebrew verity." Here and there
a scholarly writer, such as Dionysius of Rome or Eusebius of
Caesarea, might suggest that " appoMted " rather than " created "
would give the true import of the original, and might thus pre
pare the way for Basil's yet bolder observation that " other trans
lators had come nearer to the sense of the Hebrew by rendering
it ' possessed.' " But few had ventured to hMt that " Wisdom,"
in a Hebrew poem, might be a Divine attribute persomfied ; and
Athanasius had taken what to us seems very needless trouble by
argMng at great length that the text referred to the creation
of our Lord's human body, while on the other hand the Arians
confidently adduced it as decisive against the etermty or uncreated-
ness of the Word or Son ; and on this occasion Constantius evi
dently mtended a triumph for his form of AriaMsm, when he ordered
that the different bishops now assembled in Antioch should deliver

292 The Age of the Fathers. [Chap.
addresses, not extempore, but carefully prepared and written, by
way of exposition of the passage. George of Laodicea, who had
returned from Semi- Arianism to the older and more pronounced
Arianism, " displayed " M Ms paper " the full offensiveness of the
heresy." Acacius followed, in a discourse which was " far removed "
from proper AriaMsm, but which did not come up to the standard
of orthodoxy. Then Meletius stood up. His sermon, preserved
by Epiphanius, begins with the subject of peace and charity : it
describes the Son not only as God from God, but as the ineffable
exponent of the Ineffable, the personal Word, the Offspring of the
Father and " exactly representing His impress ; " it explains the
text as giving a particular illustration of that mysterious Filiation
wMch no one pMase could set forth. Although the Homoousion
was not asserted, and Catholics might, like Epiphamus, object to
" two or tMee poMts " m the discourse, the speaker would be con
sidered as having abandoned the Arian position, or, in Newman's
lively pMase, to have " confessed the true Catholic tenet, so long
exiled from the throne and altars of Antioch." The orthodox
among Ms hearers broke forth, after the fashion of the age, into
shouts of applause ; and on the other hand, according to Sozomen,
the Arian archdeacon stopped the new patriarch's mouth with his
hand, whereupon Meletius significantly extended three fingers
towards the people, and then only one finger; when the arch
deacon released Ms mouth in order to seize his hand, Meletius took
the opportunity of proclaiming the Nicene faith, and exhorting his
people to adhere to it unreservedly. A grapMc but Maprobable
anecdote ; Theodoret more credibly says that the extension of the
fingers was M reply to a request from the congregation that
Meletius would give a short summary of his belief; and Meletius,
it is added, accompamed these gestures with the terse antithetical
sentence, "We conceive of Three, but we address One." The
orthodox, including the EustatMans, were transported with delight :
the Arian countenances were overspread with sullen gloom. The
party could not, of course, tolerate such a demonstration on the
part of the new patriarch : within thirty days he was removed
from the city, in pursuance of a resolution of the Arian bishops
and of an order from Constantius. The governor who was charged
with the execution of this decree was pelted by the crowd as
he passed with Meletius through the great square of the city;
but accordmg to the tale received by CMysostom, Meletius spread
his own cloak over him, giving thereby a lesson of patience to

XV.] Results of the Council of Ariminum. 293
his new flock. It is said the deed of Ms election was demanded
back from Eusebius of Samosata ; that he stretched out both his
hands, saying, " Rather cut off my hands than bid me resign a
trust ! " and that Constantius could not help admiring so manly a
spirit, and held Eusebius thenceforth M Mgh estimation. But he
placed M the see of Antioch one of the oldest and most notorious
of Arian partisans, Euzoius, once deposed from the diaconate by
Alexander of Alexandria for adhering to the heresiarch, with whom
in fact he had been on intimate terms. This was too much for
those orthodox Antiochenes who had hitherto conformed to the
established Church. They determined to renounce all commuMon
with the new bishop : they could not coalesce with PaulMus and
the Eustathians, because the latter did not recognise Meletius on
the ground of Ms Arian consecration ; but they held their services
in a church called " the Apostles'," which stood outside the " old
city " on the bank of the Orontes. Euzoius did Mmself credit by
permitting the EustatMans to meet M a small church, within the
" new city " which had been built between the branches of the
river by Seleucus II. and Antiochus III. This concession was
a tribute to the gentle disposition and the Mgh character of
their presbyter Paulinus. The two orthodox bodies, united by
faith but not m outward commuMon, must have witnessed with
horror and Mdignation the open avowal of Anomoeamsm by a
Council held under the auspices of Euzoius, which promulgated
another Arian creed — the last and the worst in a catalogue wMch
includes some twenty formularies, beginning with Arius's letter
to Alexander. It plaMly called the Son a creature made out of
nothmg ; it bluntly asserted Him to be " in no wise like to the
Father." The authors of this document were, however, asked how
they could reconcile such language with the appellation, " God of
God," wMch their creed still gave to the Son ? They fell back on
the despicable and odious qmbble origMally Mvented by George
of Laodicea, that all tMngs — all creatures — may be said to be
" from God." But the equivocation was too gross : " they could
not," says Socrates, " endure the reproaches and the condemna
tion wMch they incurred ; " and they accordMgly laid aside this
Anomoean symbol, and reaffirmed the Arimiman creed wMch had
been sanctioned at Constantinople. So stood the Arian cause in
the early months of 361.

CHAPTER XVI.
JULIAN.
The year 361 was marked by a sudden and tragical revolution
in the relations of the Christian faith to the Roman empire.
The minds of CMistians, whether orthodox or heterodox, had for
many years past been familiarised with that combMation which
Tertullian had regarded as practically beyond all hope — the com
bination of imperial sovereignty with the profession of the service
of the Crucified. Constantine might be but an inconsistent and
unsatisfactory proselyte, but he had with ever-increasing emphasis
delighted to proclaim Mmself the worsMpper and the mstrument
of the one true God revealed M Christ ; and Constantius, perverse
and tyrannous as he was, notoriously addicted to a particular form
of Arian CMistiamty, and relentless M Ms oppression of the
Catholic leaders, had made Mmself conspicuous as even pedanti
cally attached to what Newman calls an " imperceptible centre "
between the Homoousian faith and the coarser developments of
heresy, and afterwards as acquiescMg in the Homcean Mdefiniteness.
But now, while Christians of antagonistic communions were
absorbed in their own controversies, and contendMg, as it were,
for the future of the Roman world — while Catholics of a fervid
and impetuous disposition were regarding the Emperor as an Anti
christ because he persecuted them in the Mterests of Ms own
unsound theology, and while his old Semi-Arian friends were dis
gusted by his deviation into the path of Acaciamsm, and anticipated,
perhaps, his ultimate acceptance of Anomceanism — all classes of
his CMistian subjects were startled by the unexpected thunder
peal of tidmgs which made it too certam that the throne of the
empire would ere long be filled by a prince who had openly
renounced the Christian name. It is not without a thrill of awe,
assuredly not without a fixed gaze of absorbed attention, that

Chap. XVI.] Julian. 295
Christian students, after the lapse of so many Christian ages, can
contemplate such a phenomenon as the brief career of the Emperor
Julian, surnamed the Apostate.
Already had tMs unhappy man gone through vicissitudes
sufficient to make a longer life eventful. He was the first cousin
of Constantius, being the son of Constantine's half-brother Julius
Constantius, and of Basilina, a daughter of the noble AMcian
house, and undoubtedly a Christian. Julian, the oMy child of
tMs marriage, called after Ms grandfather, a praetorian prefect, was
born at Constantinople in 331, apparently on the 6th of November,
and appears to have been baptized as a child, and sedulously sur
rounded with Christian influences from the first dawn of memory
and thought. Then came the Mdeous massacre of Mne princes of
the younger branch of the house (as Julian's enumeration literally
implies), which signalised the accession of Constantius, but for
which he can hardly be held responsible. Julian was at tMs
time in Ms seventh year; he afterwards asserted that Constan
tius had at first intended that he and Ms elder half-brother Gallus
(born in 325) should share the fate of the other victims, but that
ultimately their lives were spared in order to be spent in a kind
of exile. The motives for this change of intention, or, at any rate,
for the extension of mercy to the two boys, are given by Socrates,
who says that Julian was spared because he was so young, and
Gallus because he was supposed to be sMkMg under a disease ; but
Gregory Nazianzen, who, in spite of Ms tendency to declamation,
probably possessed some trustworthy information on these matters,
describes Julian as privately saved from the hands of the destroyers
of his kmdred by the good offices of Mark, bishop of Arethusa.
Whatever may have been the case as to tMs crisis of Julian's life,
it seems clear that he was left in entire dependence on the good
pleasure of Constantius ; as he Mmself said, he had Mherited no
property from Ms father, whose estates were naturally confiscated
to the crown. Constantius appears to have sent him, for a time,
to Nicomedia, to be there educated by Eusebius the bishop ; and
we read of Ms havmg been trained M grave and self-restraMed
habits by a ScytMan eunuch named Mardonius, who acted as his
" pedagogue," or guardian attendant, while he lived M Constanti
nople, and taught him (no bad lessons) to love the Odyssey, and to
admire both Aristotle and Plato. He was probably about thirteen
when Constantius assigned for Ms abode, and that of Gallus,
an imperial castle named Macellum in the distant woodlands

296 The Age of the Fathers. [Chap.
of Cappadocia. It is curious to see the different representa
tions made by himself and by Gregory concernMg the six years
which the brothers spent in tMs place. Gregory descants on the
benevolence of Constantius M preserving these remnants of the
imperial house in a princely mansion, where they were carefully
Mstructed in the whole curriculum of liberal education. Julian
looks back with disgust to the enforced seclusion, where, as he
expresses it, they were " debarred from all good learning," reduced
to associate with their slaves, and assured, but not convmced, that
the Emperor now regretted the massacre of their father and brother
and other kMdred. There is no doubt that great pams were taken
to confirm the impression made by their early Christian teachMg,
but taken in a very unwise and wholly unhopeful fashion. They
were taught CMistianity by masters who accustomed them to a
round of religious acts, specially to attendance at Church-service,
and visits to the tombs of martyrs : we are told that they jointly
reared a church M honour of St. Mamas of Caesarea M Cappadocia,
and Gregory sees a token of Divine displeasure against Julian in
the circumstance that the part of the buildmg wMch he had under
taken to construct repeatedly fell down. The youths also enrolled
themselves, he tells us, in the order of readers, and officiated as
such M the church ; and to all appearance both were equally
sMcere in their professions of CMistian zeal. TMs state of tMngs
lasted until about the middle of 350, when Julian obtained per
mission to resume Ms studies at Constantmople. He was now a
youth of nineteen. Among his teachers was a " sopMst " or pro
fessor named Hekebolius, at that time a Christian, or, at any rate,
one who made some display of attachment to Arian CMistiaMty ;
and Nicocles, a " grammarian " from Lacedaemon, also a CMistian
— for Constantius made a point of proMbitmg Ms kinsmen from
hearing any lectures given by persons of suspected belief. Early
in 351 the Emperor's restless jealousy — reqmted by as constant
distrust on Julian's part — removed him to Nicomedia; it would
be thought desirable to give the prince as few opportunities as
possible of becomMg popular in the capital. But then Nicomedia
itself was a place of danger to Julian's faith ; LibaMus was resid
ing and lecturing there, and a promise was extorted from Julian
not to attend the too celebrated professor. Julian kept Ms pro
mise in the letter, but broke it M the spirit, by arrangMg with a
ferryman — as LibaMus asserts — for a large sum to convey to Mm
notes of the lectures taken down by one of the students : these

xvi.] Julian. 297
notes he eagerly studied, no doubt with all the zest peculiar to
" stolen waters," and without perceiving that rhetoric was sinkMg
Mto a pedantry divorced, as Professor Dill says, from realities, and
baneful to " intellectual progress." But it was the province of Asia
wMch, as Gregory expresses it, "became for Julian a school of
impiety : " for it was at Pergamum, whither he was permitted to
travel with somethMg of the state as well as of the liberty of a
prmce, that he had an interview with the aged Neo-PlatoMst
iEdesius, who, like Porphyry and Iamblichus, and others of that
school, united the fantasies of occult science with the Alexandrian
mysticism, and whose disciple Eusebius whetted Julian's "sacri
legious curiosity," as Augustine calls it, by warnMg him against
magic, and thus inspired him with an eagerness to visit and hear
Maximus, an archimage, so to speak, of anticMistian philosophy,
who was then M Mgh reputation at Ephesus. But we must now
ask, What was there m Julian which Mrpelled M\m to plunge mto
these recesses of pagan speculation, and ultimately to abandon
ChristiaMty M obedience, as it were, to the fascMation which they
exerted ?
It is not, assuredly, enough to say that he was urged on by a
passionate ambition to reign, and was therefore an apt pupil of
pagan wizards who promised him the empire. Whatever effect
any hopes or promises of this kmd might have on a mind which
must have been conscious of considerable aptitudes for sove
reignty, we must look further and deeper for the determMMg
causes of the change. They are connected with Julian's own
special circumstances, with Ms peculiar experiences, with the drift
of Ms temperament — M short, with Ms personality.
And first, Ms CMistian traMing had been a drill ; the belief
and the duties of a Christian had been imposed upon hMi by in
structors who never seem to have even attempted to appeal to Ms
conscience or Ms heart, but had been content to put him through
a mechanical routine, so that for him ChristiaMty represented a
series of tasks and restrictions. The process employed was essen
tially that wMch in ordinary life has so often produced a resentful
submission, and collected materials for a later revolt. The mistake
made by religious parents, who know not how to sympatMze with
their children, and who live to find that those children, as they grow
up and attain a freedom wMch can no longer be withheld, simply
" hate church-goMg," and tMow off religion as an Mtolerable yoke,
was committed in this Mstoric case on a scale of such magnitude

298 The Age of the Fathers. [Chap.
that it affected the future of an empire ; so that Julian never really
assimilated the religion forced on him from without, and long
before he had actually given up his acqmescence in CMistian
doctrine, he had lost all chance of taking hold of it by such a faith
as could be in a true sense vital : it was turned Mto " the letter
that killeth." And Dr. Rendall, m his monograph on Julian,
makes the apt remark that as Ms religious traimng was " violently
Arian," it could not M any case have prepared him to appreciate
" CMist's character and work."
Secondly, the name of Christ had been unhappily bound up, for
Julian, with that of Constantius. He had suffered from the jealous
unfriendlMess of his kmsman ; he knew that that kinsman might
at any moment be driven by fear and dislike to give very active
expression to this more or less hostile mood. And Constantius
posed as a zealous CMistian monarch, even as a polemical champion
of one particular form (so called) of Christian theology. How could
the boy, or the growMg youth, when broodmg over Ms prospects
in what he considered an imprisonment under the pretence of worthy
nurture, help remembering M whose name Ms nearest relations had
been slaughtered, and how that name was constantly associated
with edicts M favour of Arian dogma ? Council after Council met
under imperial auspices ; creed after creed received more or less of
imperial sanction ; the Emperor himself could argue like a divMe
m behalf of the formulary which for the moment suited Ms
fancy, or commended itself to Ms preference ; and whatever for the
moment he approved was to be dutifully adopted by his subjects.
Tyranny over minds was thus associated with all that was mean
and repulsive in character, with ignoble methods of government,
with a tribe of palace-favourites each more detestable and mis-
cMevous than the other, so that, m the pagan historian's scathing
pMase, the imperial court was " a seminary of all the vices." Here
was a representation of Christianity as enthroned wMch might well
prove a rock of offence to a young mind which honestly scorned
what was base or cruel ; and we cannot but say with Milman that
" the unchristian CMistianity of Constantius must bear some part
of the gMlt of Julian's apostasy."
Thirdly, we must take account of Ms peculiarly " Hellenic "
temperament, wMch found in the graceful mythology and legendary
poetry of Greece a charm that made CMistian doctrine seem dry
and poor and cold and uninteresting. He had none of the solidity
of the Latin genius ; he was Greek M tastes and in feeling, had the

XVI.] Julian. 299
Greek vivacity and the Greek sensitiveness, was devoted to Greek
literature, and, in Archbishop Trench's phrase, " could not consent
to lose the grace and beauty of the Greek worsMp." His " eager
delight in the wonderful products of Greek imagination and thought
would be accompanied by impatient intolerance of the CMistian
anathemas against classical idolatry." They would seem to him to
declare war against culture itself, to represent mere brutal obstruc-
tiveness, or a sullen dislike of all that could make life lovely. It is
hard for us to realise the attractions of the old idolatry ; but they
certainly existed, and exercised a potent fascination. It is harder
yet to understand a state of mMd which was simply dead to all the
moral and spiritual majesty of the Gospel faith ; but many were
then quite unable to appreciate it, or even to admit its claim on
their consideration. We cannot ignore the multitudinous evidence
of an astonishMg tenacity of life displayed by pagaMsm long after
the Church had secured possession of the Mgh places of the world,
and reappearing not only M " philosophers," but in poets, historians,
professors, physicians, generals, and statesmen high in office;
and an ardent youth, with a rapturous enthusiasm for a brilliant
literature and its artistic products, would naturally respond to the
appeal made to a whole side of Ms nature by a system which had
for ages enlisted in its service such a wealth of poetry and imagina
tive genius. And indeed we can understand Mm better, if we re
member how the rediscovery of classical literature at the Renaissance
" produced an Mtellectual Mtoxication " which seemed to lift Plato
above St. Paul, and even above Christ.
Lastly, there was in him a vein of unhealthy mysticism, wMch
could not find satisfaction M the grave, severe, and reserved
supernaturalism wherein Christianity had embodied its answer
to the soul's deepest questions, its provision for the soul's most
urgent needs. No greater mistake was ever made than that
of the eighteenth-century unbelievers (satirised by Berkeley in
Ms "Alciphron") who claimed " the Apostate '' as a freetMnker.
He was m Ms own way a devotee ; he had a passion for the
mysterious ; he craved for heights and depths ; but the heights
and depths of the Gospel were not such as he could appre
ciate ; they did not satisfy a morbid curiosity, nor miMster to a
superstition which St. Paul would have called " carnal," but wMch
illustrated the young prince's strange lack of good sense, and also of
healthy humour. They were silent on matters as to which he was
impatient for knowledge, and also demanded a mental humiliation

300 The Age of the Fathers. [Chap.
agaMst wMch his vamty instinctively rebelled. Thus he was
attracted to the weird sensational theurgy by wMch at that time,
under the gMdance of lamblichus, Neo-PlatoMsm had been
vulgarised: he actually submitted to the ghastly blood-bath of
the Taurobolia by way of undoing Ms early baptism ; he fancied
that the new lore could give an esoteric interpretation to the
popular mythology, could surround it with the charm of fantastic
rites, and promote Ms scheme of an idealization of the current
HelleMsm, — the title of " KMg Helios " beMg assigned to an
invisible solar deity, acting downward upon a sphere of "intel
lectual " creatures, between the "intelligible " or "transcendental"
and the " sensuous," cosmic, or visible spheres, and regarded as the
agent of the one archetypal principle of existence, which ranked
first in the Neo-Platonic triad as " the One " (Thing), a sublime
abstraction transcending all " qualities," but wMch Julian strove
to invest with character by entitling it " the Good." It would
seem that tMs Helios, who is clearly analogous to MitMa, was also
to be a substitute for the Logos of Christianity ; and Julian did
not object to speaking of beneficent spirits as " solar angels." The
Neo-PlatoMst theosophy was Mdeed at a disadvantage for want of
a basis, and that want could not be supplied by mere assertions
about divMe communications received in ecstasy ; nor could it be
forced into union with that old cultus of " the Immortals " which
Julian was bent on retaimng, and which he thought he could refine
by reading Mto it Ms own ideas, by spiritualising its materialistic
imagery into " enigmatic adumbrations " of truth, and by elevating
the etMcal standard of those who officially represented it.
Such was, on the whole, the movement of his mind. It was
afterwards remembered that in rhetorical discussions with his
brother he had taken pleasure in maMtaMMg the pagan side ; and
Gallus was ere long alarmed by reports which Mduced him first to
send Aetius — of all persons — on a visit to Julian, M the hope of
thus counteracting any pagan influences ; and then, on receivMg a
reassurance from Aetius, he expresses his satisfaction M a letter to
Julian, who had made Mmself an adept in dissmiulation, and was
ready for any amount of hypocritical conformity : he could read the
Scriptures in church as a " lector," and secretly revel in Ms initia
tion into mysteries of which Maximus was the Merophant.
At the end of 354, a new change befell his external position.
Gallus, a rough-tempered and incompetent person, had held the
digMty of Caesar, which in Diocletian's system had distinguished

XVI.] Julian. 301
an heir-apparent. But he had come into collision with the ever-
suspicious Emperor, had been lured away from Ms eastern provMce,
and beheaded, " agamst all laws," in a Dalmatian island. Julian,
who says, " If he was not fit to reign, it was due to Ms rustic
education, and he had at least a right to live," seemed likely to be
Mvolved M Ms brother's fate, and for seven months was practically
a prisoner, " in the midst," says LibaMus, " of fully armed guards,
who looked at Mm with savage glances." The main part of that
time he spent at Milan, where Constantius then resided ; but the
Emperor only once admitted Mm to an audience, and then in
consequence of the kmd offices of the Empress Eusebia. In the
middle of 355, while the Arian persecution was begMMng, Julian
was permitted to visit Athens, where he spent some time M study ;
and it was during this period that he paid a secret visit to the
mysterious sanctuary of Eleusis. His sojourn at the great HelleMc
school, or, in a lax sense of the term, University, was naturally a
time of vivid enjoyment ; he was regarded as able to teach rather
than to learn ; a crowd of ardent Greek students gathered round
him, and were delighted " to hear the language of poets and schools,
the native idiom of the Attic soil, uttered with grace and dignity
by princely lips." Gregory of Nazianzus, and Basil, afterwards
" the Great," were among his CMistian fellow-students : Julian
had met Basil at Constantinople M former years, and now, more
than once, visited the two friends m their common lodgmg. There
was much ground for intellectual sympathy, many topics of con
versation wMch would not touch on matters of belief; but the
impression wMch Julian produced, at least on Gregory, was decidedly
unfavourable. Gregory thought the prince eccentric and morbidly
excitable : he was struck by the outward manifestations of an un
balanced and unhealthy mind ; he noted, as sigmficant of evil, the
strange abruptness of Julian's talk, his jerky and unmeamng ques
tions and replies, Ms wandering glances, his noisy laughter, — the
supercilious sneers, and grotesqne contortions of countenance, wMch
corresponded with the frequent sMuggMg of Ms broad shoulders, —
the general aspect of uneasmess, restlessness, disdaM. " How great
a miscMef to itself is the empire fostering ! " exclaimed Gregory ;
then added, " God send I may not prove a true prophet ! " The
nervous symptoms thus detailed might M part be due to Julian's
perpetual anxiety to guard the secret of Ms paganism, M part to
his perpetual alarms about his own safety, which culmmated when,
M the autumn of 355, he was again summoned to Milan, and had

o

02 The Age of the Fathers. [Chap.

no choice but to obey, although, as he himself says, with a flood of
tears, and an agonized prayer for protection addressed with out
stretched hands to the Athenian goddess. His alarms were soon
dispelled : Constantius, acting under Eusebia's influence, was
resolved to raise him to the dignity of Caesar, and to place him in
deputed sovereignty over Gaul and Germany, Spain and Britain.
TMs step was taken on the 6th of November, 355 ; but it did not
abate the prince's apprehensions, and he was still kept under strict
surveillance — " the servants' hands were searched, lest they should
convey to him a bit of a letter from a friend." However, the situa
tion improved : a marriage was arranged between Julian and Helena,
the sister of Constantius, who died five years later ; and he set forth
for Ms new government with only two confidential servants, both
of whom, as it appears, were in his secret : they were Euhemerus,
his librarian, and Oribasius, his physician and secret diviner.
We are not concerned with Ms Gallic admmistration, except
to observe that it brought into action some of Ms highest
qualities, and materially prepared him for accepting the magni
ficent career to which the tumultuary enthusiasm of his troops
at Paris invited him in the summer of 360. " Julian Augustus "
did not immediately proclaim Ms devotion to the pagan cause:
Ms last act of religious insincerity was a formal attendance, on
the Epiphany of 361, at the Church service M the cathedral of
Vienne; but as he hastened eastwards to coMront the army of
Constantius, he threw off all reserve, and publicly offered sacrifice
to the gods. The expected collision was averted by the fatal illness
of Constantius, who, soon after he had received baptism from the
Ultra- Arian Euzoius at Antioch, was struck down by a violent
attack of fever, and died at Mopsucrene under Mount Taurus, on
the 3rd of November, 361.
Thus Julian, now avowedly " the Apostate," was left in undis
puted possession of the empire. And in considering his reign in
relation to the history of the Church, it will be convement in the
first instance to take a brief survey of Ms various proceedings
towards the religion wMch he had now publicly abandoned,
and then to notice the leading events internal to that community
which signalised his brief but extraordinary reign.
He had taken care to combme a solemn recognition of the
gods, whom he chose to regard as " protectors " of that New Rome
wMch had been founded as a purely Christian capital, with his
personal participation in the funeral solemnities of Constantius.

XVI.] Julian. 303
The new monarch, who, with due outward show of regret and
reverence, touched the coffin of a predecessor and rival, but soon
took vengeance on the base mMisters of Ms tyranny, proceeded to
Maugurate the restoration of pagan worship by pourMg libations
with Ms own hand, congratulating those who did the like, " laugh
ing at those who declined to do so, endeavouring to persuade them
to comply, but not choosMg to put any force on their inclMations."
This was the account given by his admired friend LibaMus. He
Mmself writes to Maximus, who had been the agent of Ms
pagan initiation, that he has established public worsMp of the
gods, with hecatombs in thanksgiving for his great success ; and at
a later time he mformed the sopMst Hekebolius that no " Gali-
laean" (Ms favourite term of disparagement for Christians) has
been put under any pressure, or dragged to the temple, thanks
to Ms humane and benevolent decrees. Theodoret angrily refers,
more than once, to the epithets of " most gentle, most dispassionate,"
by wMch the pagan Emperor became known among a large circle
of pagan sympatMzers. And it is admitted by other Church
historians that he expressly adopted toleration of all opinions as
the watchword of Ms policy. Socrates, indeed, insists that, in a
certaM extended sense of the term, he must be described as a per
secutor, but at the same time draws a clear line between Mm and
the older pagan assailants of the Church. Sozomen more fairly
and explicitly represents him, as, at first at any rate, "havMg
recourse to argument and persuasion, attempting to allure rather
than coerce men Mto paganism, charging the people not to commit
any injustice agaMst the Christians, not to insult them, not to
constraM them to offer sacrifice, and not even forbidding them to
assemble for worship ; and in this acting on the persuasion that
what needs for its attainment the activity of the free will can never
be acMeved by the employment of force." It was possible, so
argued the Emperor, as his views were represented by LibaMus, to
cure a bodily disease by a severe operation ; but errors on the
nature of God could not be eradicated by fire or steel ; and to what
purpose would the hand sacrifice, if the thought condemned the
hand ? TMs, as it has been truly said, was " a philosophy altogether
new to Romans," whose formalism was content with an outward
compliance. But there were, we may suppose, three strong
reasons M Julian's own mMd and experience, for his resolution to
abstaM from such severities. First of all, he was far from bemg
naturally cruel : Ammianus tells us'that he often "threatened " when

304 The Age of the Fathers. [Chap.
he would not " strike," and that M some cases he moderated penal
Mflictions even on personal enemies, " with a genuine lenity " such
as would contrast attractively with the cruelties which timidity
had made natural to Constantius. Secondly, his theology, so to
say, disinclined him to avenge the quarrel of the gods by the
sword: he objected to the very idea of a "jealous God," and was
wont to regard Ms deities as tolerant of religious varieties. And
thirdly, Ms early familiarity with narratives of martyrdom had left
M his mind a rational conviction that the ancient persecutors had
but stimulated the moral forces of the religion wMch they had
endeavoured to stamp out; or, as we are told by Sozomen, whose
candour is justly praised by Rendall, "he had found that the
cruelties of former times had been of no avail for securing the
position of PagaMsm, — that, on the contrary, they had been a
principal cause of the Mcrease of ChristiaMty ; and he believed
that he should be better able to establish pagaMsm by showmg
Mmself unexpectedly forbearing and gentle to the multitude of
CMistians." These maxims of toleration were embodied by Julian
himself in a memorable letter, written at Antioch, nearly a year
after his accession, to the people of Bostra M Arabia: "Do not
you," he says, " who serve the gods, damage the houses of those
who err tMough ignorance rather than of set purpose ; we must
persuade and Mstruct men by reason, not by stripes, or Msults, or
bodily Mflictions. Therefore I agaM and repeatedly exhort those
who are zealous for the true worsMp, to do no wrong to the multi
tude of the Galilaeans" (i.e. CMistians), "not to attack or insult
them, but to pity rather than hate those who fare badly in the
greatest of all matters." We must, of course, assume that in tMs
profession of humane policy he was governed by his persistent
zeal for the old worship, and seriously believed that its interests
would be best served by a marked abstinence from the barbarities
of Galerius or of Maximin.
But while he thus forbore to declare open war against Chris
tianity, and, Mdeed, was to a considerable extent mfluenced m
tMs resolve by obvious prudential considerations, he determined
to discourage the profession of CMistiamty by all other means at
the command of an absolute monarch ; m fact, he could employ
six methods of tMs kind for the restoration of pagan supremacy.
First, as he wrote to Artebius, " while he did not intend that the
Galilaeans should be put to death, or otherwise injured, contrary to
justice, he laid it down as a rule that the followers of the ' true '

xvi.] Julian. 305
worship ought to be preferred to them." He conceived that it
would be quite possible to keep his cause free from the obloquy
of cruelty, or of the persecution of religious belief as such, and yet
to undermine what he could not storm, to discourage what he could
not proscribe, and to confine his favours and his confidence to
those who adhered to, or who would conform to, the old ritual.
Secondly, he could employ all the resources of imperial persua
sion, personal appeals, promises, gifts, promotion, in order to win
over CMistians who should come under Ms notice — a method wMch
succeeded in the case of a few unprincipled waiters on fortune, but
failed with noble souls like Gregory's brother Caesarius, a young
physician of eminent ability. Thirdly, he could tacitly condone
any demonstration of anti- CMistian passion on the part of the
heathen populations, who might easily be impelled by hatred of
Christians to acts of violence, or even of slaughter. Fourthly, he
could exMbit Christianity M an unfavourable light by elaborate
controversial attacks, in which, as his extant polemic shows by its
indescribable narrowness and pettiness, he did but display his own
inability to understand the spirit of the religion wMch he tried to
argue out of court ; and also by all that power of sarcasm, wMch
was one of the features of Ms Greek-like volubility. Fifthly, he
could take M hand a much-needed reform of the existing pagan
society, and especially of its priesthood ; he would not disdain to
borrow hints from the Christian system M matters connected with
moral and social virtue ; in short, he thought he saw Ms way to a
result which woMd at once re-establish the credit of " Hellenism,"
and give effect to Ms own sincere aversion for the sensuality wMch
its atmosphere had nursed. And lastly, he could patroMse the
Jewish body, which still, tMough its wealth and internal umty,
was a power to be reckoned with. Constantine had conferred on
it some privileges, but at the same time had warned it not to
harass converts from Judaism to CMistiaMty ; and it was still on
the watch for opportunities of showmg its hatred to the name and
to the worshippers of " the Crucified Man."
And what was the existing force to which he could appeal ?
PagaMsm had not been crushed in the East by the influence of
" Christian " emperors ; it had much of real life left in it, and indeed
was destined to show long afterwards that no government, however
Christian, could dispense with the services of its ablest represen
tatives. In the West it was far stronger, and in the old Miperial
city it possessed a seemMgly impregnable fortress. ChristiaMty,,
VOL. 1. x

306 The Age of the Fathers. [Chap.
in the heyday of its prosperity, had made many enemies, who
would be more than ready to welcome a new era. And Julian
himself, at little more than thirty years of age, might reasonably
count on a long reign as the unquestioned heir of the Constantinian
house; Ms renown as a general had been established by his
Gallic campaign, and he was conscious of no small gifts for political
admMistration ; he was a practised speaker, whose tongue, says the
pagan historian M gently satirical fasMon, was very rarely silent ;
he was not less ready with Ms pen — a writer of orations, satires,
pamphlets ; — why might he not succeed in elaborate controversy ?
Thus we can well imagine that when, in the first days of Ms reign,
he tMew himself enthusiastically not only into the dignified
functions of a supreme pontiff, but into all " the meanest offices "
of a pagan sacrificer — when he, the Augustus, astonished even his
fellow-pagans by " bringMg the wood or blowmg the fire, slayMg
the victims, and thrusting Ms hands into their entrails " m order
to collect infallible indications of the will of the gods from the
appearances of the heart or the liver — he recked little of the criti
cism, rather whispered than uttered, which regarded such assidMty
as " odd, extreme, undigmfied, M bad taste." His hopes of success
in a task wMch he knew to be arduous would sustaM him, or rather
would animate Mm, M presence of any difficulties or any objections ;
he relied on " Helios " as an all-sufficMg patron, and felt sure that
what Diocletian had failed to achieve by the rough method of per
secution would M time be the crowmng success of his own more
varied and resourceful policy.
If, at the outset, the display of an anti-Christian programme
provoked some Christian zealots to a violent expression of their
hostility against restored temples and altars, the penalty Mflicted
would be, in his view, a simple vindication of public order ; and
any who thus suffered would not by any right be honoured as
martyrs. Nor can we deny that he showed good judgment by Ms
next edict for the recall of all bishops who, for any reason, had
been bamshed under Constantius. Whatever was his real motive,
we can hardly wonder that he was supposed to be aiming at two
objects — the credit of liberality on the one hand, and on the other
the renewal of those dissensions wMch had discredited ChristiaMty.
As Sozomen expresses it, " he is said to have commanded this, not
from any wish to show favour to the bishops who had been exiled,
but partly to blacken the memory of Constantius, and partly
in the hope that the Church would be Mvolved in an intestine

xvi.] Julian. 307
strife by the contentiousness of Christians, and would thus deviate
from its own laws." Or as Ammianus, an unsuspected witness,
tells us, " he Mvited the heads of the different Christian sects into
Ms palace, and exhorted them to abate their dissensions ; but Ms
real object was that those dissensions might be aggravated by
liberty, so that he might no longer have to confront an united
Christian body." In these conferences he used sometimes to
exclaim, " Listen to me ! the Alamanni have listened to me, and
the Franks." But he was disappoMted in the expectation that a
large number of CMistian bishops would be induced to exhibit
the weak side of their cause by wrangling with each other for the
amusement of the pagans who surrounded him ; and, in fact, the
common danger to the whole Christian cause was soon found to
have the effect of suppressing, or at least of moderating, the
vehemence of controversy between professing Christians. For, says
one of the Church historians, " men who are attacked by foreign
enemies are fain to keep the peace with one another."
Julian proceeded to gratify Ms spleen against the Christians by
revokMg all grants of privilege to their clergy. The much-prized
exemption of Christian ecclesiastics from burdensome civic offices,
such as the vexatious and often rumous obligations of the decu-
rionate, was now cancelled by the Emperor. " Let those decurions
who decline to serve, on the ground of being Christians, be recalled
(to their duty)." Another law restrained the free use, by large
classes of persons throughout the empire, of the so-called cursus
publicus: the object of tMs enactment was "to strike at the
CMistians without namMg them ; " for it was of frequent occur
rence in the late reign that prelates, especially Arians, were
seen, in the caustic language of Ammianus, " hurrying, in crowds,
and mounted at the public expense, to what they called their
synods." A third enactment restored to the various cities all pro
perty which had been alienated from them : " We command public
possessions to be restored to the cities." TMs alienation had often
been made with a view to the bMldMg of churches ; and thus, by
a brief law which did not even name the CMistians or their places
of worsMp, Julian " implicitly commanded the destruction of many
a Christian sanctuary." The execution of this law, in effect, called
forth all the passions of the heathen populations, wMch in some
' places were most ferocious against the religion which had, during
so many years past, predominated with ever-Mcreasing imperious-
ness over the ruined or decaying strongholds of idolatry. If in

308 The Age of the Fathers. [Chap.
some cities and districts, as at Edessa, or at Caesarea in Cappadocia,
or at Maiuma, the port of Gaza, the whole population was enthu
siastically devoted to the CMistian faith — if M others, as Bercea,
only a few of the " curia " or municipal corporation were well
Mclined to the old idolatry — there were others, as Alexandria,
wMch still contained a large pagan element, and others like
Carrhae, and Heliopolis near Mount Lebanon, and Gaza, and
Anthedon, and Arethusa M Syria, wMch were remarkable for an
Mtense and furious animosity against Christianity and its adherents.
In such places as these, Julian's accession awoke reactionary hopes,
and his order for the "restoration of public property" became a
signal for reactionary violence. Mark, bishop of Arethusa, who is
said to have been directly instrumental M the preservation of Julian's
young life, had, as Sozomen candidly confesses, " carried his zeal
for the conversion of the Mhabitants beyond the limits of per
suasion." In the days of Constantius, he had actually destroyed a
stately temple ; he was now commanded either to rebuild it, or to
defray the cost of its rebuilding. He would not do the former ;
he could not do the latter. He fled, but hearing that several of his
flock were being harassed and tormented in Ms absence, and on
Ms account, he returned, and gave himself up to the magistrates :
whereupon the savage mob rushed upon him, stripped and beat
Mm, dragged Mm about, thrust him Mto the sewers, set the very
schoolboys at Mm to toss him aloft and to and fro, and receive his
body by turns on their iron writing-pens. When thus barbar
ously lacerated, he was hung up M a basket amid the blazing sun-
shMe, and smeared with sauce and honey, M order to invite the
attack of bees and wasps ; from which " lofty station," as Gibbon
calls it, the indomitable old man derided his persecutors as " creatures
grovelling far below Mmself," and foretold a similar contrast M
their respective conditions tMough etermty. His endurance greatly
damaged the pagan cause, for even the enemies of his faith were
struck with admiration : he was at last released, after refusMg to
pay any tiring whatever — even a greatly abated sum — towards the
restoration of the temple ; and was dismissed, in Gibbon's words,
" to enjoy the honour of his divine triumph."
Similar scenes, and others still more revolting, were enacted in
other parts of Syria. At Ascalon and Gaza, priests, laymen, and
consecrated virgms were put to death with hideous atrocities.
The deacon Cyril at Heliopolis, an ardent idol-breaker under Con
stantius, was killed by the vengeful pagans, who absolutely tore

xvi.] Julian. 309
out and devoured Ms liver. CMistian churches were burned at
Damascus, at Berytus, and doubtless in many other places where
the civil authorities lent themselves to the popular fury : at Emesa
a recently erected church was turned into a temple of Bacchus
Androgynos, as Julian had set up the image of Fortune in the
desecrated cathedral of Constantinople. At Antioch a pagan
priest was about to destroy a Christian's dwellMg erected on the site
of an old temple, when LibaMus, with memorable fair-mMdedness,
interposed, and asserted that " Theodulus had every right to retaM
the house which had become legally his property ; " and similarly
he pleaded for a Christian of Bostra named Orion, observMg that
the senseless barbarities practised on Mark could not be imitated
without disgrace and loss to the cause of wMch their perpetrators
had imagined themselves champions. Julian himself, though averse
from cruelty, and desirous of securing a reputation for benevo
lence, fell far below LibaMus M his estimate of the true character
of these local outrages. He " dissembled as long as possible his
knowledge of the injustice which was exercised M his name." He
" conMved," says Theodoret, at the outrages committed : a recent
biographer admits that he " culpably condoned some pagan
excesses : " to use Gibbon's words agam, he " expressed his real
sense of the conduct of his officers by gentle reproofs and sub
stantial rewards," and gave vent to Ms scornful bitterness against the
" Galilaeans," the " worsMppers," as he called them, " of the Dead
Man," in taunts wMch Frederick II. of Prussia might, on more
than one occasion, have seemed to imitate, but wMch Boissier
prefers to call " des sarcasmes de theologien enrage!' " 'Tis your
duty," he would say to Christians who appealed to his justice, —
" 'tis your duty to bear these afflictions patiently : for tMs is the
command of your God." At the same time it is but fair to remember
that he himself could sometimes show great self-command under
provocations wMch would have tMown Constantius Mto fury.
Maris, the blMd old bishop of Chalcedon (who had been one of the
Eusebian deputies to Constans in 342), caused Mmself to be led
by a cMld into the Emperor's presence, while he was sacrificing to
Fortune M the desecrated church of St. SopMa, and reproached him
for Ms impiety and apostasy. Julian sneeringly answered, " Your
Galilaean God will never cure your blindness." "I thank my
God," retorted Maris, " that I am blMd, and unable to see the face of
such an apostate ! " Julian, says Sozomen, turned away in silence ;
but Socrates tells us that he afterwards took a severe revenge.

310 The Age of the Fathers. [Chap.
We must now observe his conduct M reference to the most
remarkable of all the pagan outbreaks of tMs period. George,
the usurper of the tMone of Athanasius, had been the oppressor of
pagans and Catholics alike. Already he had been obliged to leave
the city, in consequence of a popular movement wMch had beset
him in the church of St. Dionysius — as the Fragmentary Chronicle
of Alexandrian events Mforms us — M the year 357. He had returned
under the wMg of civil and military power ; he had renewed Ms
insolences and violences, had stooped to the base trade of a delator,
" forgetful," says Ammianus, " of his Christian profession, wMch
suggests nothing but what is just and gentle ; " and had specially
offended the Alexandrian pagans by a speech wMch, if uttered
by a Catholic bishop, would probably have been eulogized as
an outburst of godly zeal. "How long," he cried, looking at
" a beautiful temple of a GeMus " — so Ammianus tells the story,
— " how long will this sepulchre stand ? " Supposed as he was
to be the adviser and abettor of all the measures by wMch
Artemius, the governor of Egypt, had earned the hatred of the
pagans of Alexandria — such as a heavy taxation on all houses, and
an armed Mvasion and spoliation of the mighty temple of Serapis
— the Arian bishop had cause to tremble for Ms life, when news
came to Alexandria that a new reign had begun, and perhaps that
Artemius had been put to death, by Julian's orders, at Antioch.
The exultant pagans rushed M irresistible numbers to George's
house, seized Mm, flung Mm Mto prison, and after twenty-four days
dragged him forth, beat and kicked him to death (much after the
fasMon M wMch tradition or legend has described the martyrdom of
St. Mark in the same city); and then, after exhibiting the mangled
remains, flung over a camel's back, in various quarters of the city,
they burned them to ashes on the seashore, expressly in order to
prevent them from being collected as relics, like those, says
Ammianus, of the men "who persevered in constancy to their
religion even to a glorious death, and are now called martyrs."
Philostorgius boldly ascribes tMs murder to the counsels of
Athanasius, and Ammianus insinuates that the Catholics of
Alexandria might have protected the life of George, but refrained
from interfering in the cause of their enemy ; and he proceeds to
tell us how Julian was gradually induced to abandon Ms first
intention of MMcting extreme punishment on the murderers, and
to content himself with addressMg to the people of Alexandria a
letter of stern remonstrance on the inhuman brutality which had

xvi.] Julian. 311
disgraced a city of Greek origin, honoured by the presence and
worship of Serapis " the great and holy god." To the prefect of
Egypt he at the same time despatched a curious epistle, directing
him to rescue and secure for his use the valuable library, contaMing
works on philosophy and rhetoric, and on the theology of " the
impious Galilaeans," which had attested the literary culture of the
Cappadocian parasite, the fraudulent army-contractor, the Arian
intruder, persecutor, and tyrant.
With the cases of mob-fury must be combMed those in wMch
provmcial governors outran Julian's orders, or license, and put
Christians to death. If the martyrdom of " John and Paul " at
Rome be historical, it took place by the authority of the pagan
prefect Apronianus, who probably supposed the Christians to be
gMlty of magic; and when that word was pronounced, sheer
terror could show itself in any amount of cruelty. But these
inflictions were generally for acts of " zeal," as Christians would
call it, agaMst the restoration of temples or images, as when
AmacMus, M Phrygia, put to death (the same death as St.
Laurence's) three CMistians — MacedoMus, Theodulus, and Tatian
— for breaking in pieces some newly polished images at Meros,
or when iEmilian at Dorotorum m Thrace was burnt alive by
Capitolinus for destroying altars, or EupsycMus, at Caesarea M
Cappadocia, was put to death for destroyMg a temple of Fortune.
A worse case was that of the priest Basil at Ancyra, who after
praying aloud, as he looked at pagans sacrificmg, that no Christian
might fall into such delusions, suffered death under the hands of
the local governor, and, as Sozomen implies and we may well
believe, not by Julian's express command.
Another method of the policy of discouragement, as distinct
from open persecution, will be found in Ms conduct towards the
CMistians M the army. He Mmself, at his accession, spoke of the
majority of Ms troops as " devoted to the worsMp of the gods ; "
and Gregory admits that very many were led astray Mto conformity
with the Emperor's religion, although, as he expresses it, " ' more
than seven thousand men ' were left, who would not bend a knee
to Baal, nor worsMp the golden image." Julian, in fact, was
encouraged to hope for a general acqmescence M pagaMsm on the
part of Ms troops, not only from the example of complacent
apostasy set by such persons as Hekebolius the " sopMst," or
Felix and Elpidius, both of them Mgh officers M Ms household, or
even by one " ultra-liberal " bishop, Pegasius of New Troy — men

3 1 2 The Age of the Fathers. [Chap.
whose baseness contrasted with the fair-mMdedness and self-respect
of such a pagan as Candidian, a correspondent of Gregory Nazianzen
— but from the natural Mfluence wMch Ms successful military career
in the West would give Mm over soldiers whose hearts were M
their calling. Accordingly, he sometimes, as Sozomen tells us,
addressed the Christian soldiers :Mdividually, sometimes through
their officers, and, to accustom them to the visible presence of
ensigns wMch represented the ancient alliance between the pagan
worsMp and the military life, he abolished the use of the Labarum —
" the great standard," says Gregory, " which elevates the Cross on
Mgh in front of the ranks " — and restored the old standard of " the
senate and people of Rome." He placed the images of the gods
M juxtaposition with his own, so that it was difficult to render the
usual salutation to the likeness of the monarch without payMg a
constructive homage to Jupiter, or Mercury, or Mars, who were
represented as turning their eyes, in token of favour, towards the
Emperor who had restored their worship. Only a few, we are told,
saw tMough tMs artifice, or, if that term be thought too harsh,
appreciated the difficulty thus created ; the rest, mechanically or
thoughtlessly, bowed to the images thus combined. His next
" machmation," says Sozomen, " was more transparent," and was
therefore a better test of a soldier's character and courage. On
certaM festival days, when donations were distributed to the army,
soldiers who approached to receive them were ordered first to tirrow
incense on an altar erected near the place where the Emperor was
seated. It was on such an occasion that some Christian soldiers
who had unthinkingly complied with this command were afterwards
sitting over their wine, and, in pledging each other, invoked the
name of CMist, whereupon a heathen comrade taunted them with
inconsistency : " Just now, for the sake of the Emperor's gift, you
renounced your Christ by throwmg incense on the fire." The men
started up in an agony of grief and remorse, ran out mto the
street with passionate outcries, protested aloud that they had not
meant to abjure their faith, and even rushed into Julian's presence,
and called on him to take back the gifts which they had M-
cautiously accepted, and to inflict on them as Christians whatever
he thought fit. We may set it down to Julian's credit that he
inflicted nothing worse than exile, Mcluding, of course, removal
from their posts in the army. Among those officers who con
sistently avowed their faith were three who lived to become
Emperors — Jovian, and the brothers Valentinian and Valens. Of

xvi.] Julian. 3*3
Valentinian it is said that when, as one of the guards of Julian, he
was about to enter a temple with him, the pagan priest sprinkled
some water over his military cloak, and thereupon he tore off and
flung away the piece which had thus been sullied, and was banished
soon afterwards Mto Armenia — not on the ground of tMs act, but
on the pretext of some negligence M military duty during Julian's
stay at Antioch. Two other body-guards, Juventinus and Maxi-
minus, boldly remonstrated with the Emperor for his insidious
cruelty in causing the bread, meat, and other articles of food ex
posed for sale M the market-place, to be sprinkled with the water
of pagan sacrifices. Julian on this occasion departed from his rule
of forbearance, and the two soldiers died by the sword; but here
too he was careful to disclaim the motives of a persecutor, and gave
out that their death was a punishment of msolence to their
Emperor. He adopted a similar line in regard to offices in his court, and
to posts of provMcial government. He excluded all who would
not sacrifice to the gods from all such places of trust ; and with one
of his disingenuous references to the sacred books of CMistians,
affirmed that their law forbade them to use the sword agaMst
criminals, however worthy of capital punishment.
But a third plan was far more malignant, and deservedly
drew down special obloquy on the name of Julian. He at first
put forth, in June, 362, an edict requiring that all public teachers
must receive the sanction of the curiales or town-councillors in
cities ; but tMs enactment was not enough for Ms impatience. He
went further : as Socrates briefly expresses it, he enacted a law
" forbidding CMistians to partake of education ; " a more correct
account is Jerome's in his Chronicle, " it forbade Christians to be
teachers of liberal arts : " but the phrase is too brief to be fully
descriptive, and we must look for full information to what is
reckoned as the 42nd letter of Julian, probably written at Antioch,
in which he Mmself, giving full play to his vein of sarcasm, and
remarking on [the inconsistency, as he represents it, involved in
the act of teacMng pupils out of books wMch the teacher regards
as fraught with falsehood, ordains that no Christian shall give
Mstruction in the studies of Greek antiquity. Greek writings,
he urges, are full of references to the gods : any one who objects
to such references may " go into the churches of the Galilaeans,
and there expound Matthew and Luke ; " it ought to be no hard
ship to him to be interdicted from lecturing on what he cannot

314 The Age of the Fathers. [Chap.
conscientiously approve. The unfairness of tMs edict, which the
pagan Mstorian would fain have seen " buried M eternal silence,"
and which the modern unbelieving Mstorian denounces as " partial
and oppressive," was patent and gross enough without the exag
geration which sometimes represented it as actually forbiddmg
CMistian boys to frequent the public teachers. Julian did not
forbid them to learn the pagan classics; but Ms edict, incapaci
tating their CMistian lecturers, would of course indirectly close
the doors of the schools against many of the pupils, who would
not be allowed by their parents to study under avowed enemies of
the faith. Jerome tells us that Proaeresius, who held one of the
chairs which Marcus Aurelius had founded at Athens, resigned Ms
post when this law was promulgated, although Julian had made an
exception M Ms favour. The vexatious law, however, was " unwise
for the very purpose contemplated ; " it became the means of
calling forth a singular versatility and activity on the part of some
highly educated CMistians. The two Apollinares, father and son,
of Laodicea M Syria, who, as we have seen, had been long distin
guished by their attainments, and had also shown their zeal for the
Catholic faith by their fervent attachment to its great Egyptian
representative, set to work to compose books on the model of the
great classical authors, M wMch the truths of religion should be
set forth. The elder, according to Socrates, wrote a grammar,
translated the Pentateuch Mto heroic verse, and produced metrical
paraphrases of other books of the Old Testament; wMle the
younger, destined ere long to an unhappy notoriety, wrote an
argumentative treatise on Christianity in the form of the Platonic
dialogue, and also a translation of the Psalms into heroic verse, wMch
is still extant. These curious works had a temporary success, but
were naturally neglected after the emergency which produced
them was removed. One Mteresting result of their dissemMation
is the passage in which Socrates considers the objections wMch a
strictly religious Christian might be tempted to bring against the
study of pagan literature ; and M wMch he summarises the view
which, if not all, yet the greater number of emMent Church
writers would take of the question by an expansion of the tra
ditional precept, " Be ye approved money-changers," and the apos
tolic maxim, " Prove all tMngs, hold fast the good." The Mstorian
expresses Ms own mind in a golden sentence, " Wherever anythMg
excellent is found, it is the property of the truth." But Julian
Mmself was ambitious of distinction as an author : he would follow

XVI.] Julian. 315
in the track of Celsus and Porphyry ; and Ms controversial treatise
agamst CMistians, known to us tMough the extracts made by Cyril
of Alexandria in his reply to it, betrays a total, radical miscon
ception of the religion wMch he assailed, combMed with fretful
bitterness and an affected rationalism Mconsistent with his own
superstition. Here are a few specimens : " Your Christian
Scriptures cannot make any men wiser or better. If Christianity
does not make people slavish, set me down as a babbler. It is a
legendary invention of men, involvMg belief m absurd figments.
If you revere the Old Testament, why do you not still observe
passovers and sabbaths ? What folly to erect fishermen Mto theo
logians, or to make much of a few healings in a few towns of Syria !
Baptism cannot cure leprosy, yet you pretend that it can cure a
disease of the soul. No one ventured to call CMist ' God ' until
the good-natured John did so, and even he only after findmg out
that Christians were venerating the tombs of Peter and Paul."
His favourite name for our Lord is " the Carpenter's Son ; " he
does not insult Him, but superciliously gives Him the go-by,
and is totally blMd to the significance of His teacMng and His
character. Let us now pass to two memorable cases in which Julian
signified Ms feelMgs in reference to the Church of Christ, while
dealing with pagans and with Jews. He was fully sensible of the
attractions exercised by Christian charity and strictness of life.
In a "fragmentary" paper, and in a letter to the pagan high-
priest of Galatia, he exhorts priests of the gods to appropriate
for the service of " HelleMc " religion the modest gravity of
deportment, the severe purity, the avoidance of all demoralismg
scenes, the active benevolence to sufferers, the reverent treatment
of the dead, the self-respect in the presence of civil digMtaries,
which were so impressive and so influential when observed in the
conduct of CMistian clergy. He orders daily sacrifice, and forbids
Ms priests even to read the writings of any sceptical philosopher.
In tMs whole lMe of action he strove desperately, as we may
express it, to elevate and to spiritualise the paganism which he
had agaM entirroned, and whose adherents, all the while, looked on
with amused wonder at a pietism which they could not appreciate ;
to them it was an eccentricity, or what would now be called a
"fad." He would fain have seen pagan temples used for real
prayer and for etMcal preaching; he even wished to adopt mto
the pagan system the potent Mstitution of peMtential discipline, to

3 1 6 The Age of the Fathers. [Chap.
found monasteries for "philosophic" asceticism, to open hospitals
for the relief of needy strangers, in wMch Hellenic philanthropy
should prove itself a match for Christian love ; and he was yet
more earnestly bent on introducing the system of " letters of com
mendation " wMch, as worked by Christian prelates, had been so
efficacious M consolidating the Christian brotherhood. It is piteous
to see the " Apostate " thus elaborately struggling to obtain, so to
say, the flowers and the fruit, in separation from the stock which
alone could produce them : in tMs, as M other cases, he exhibits
the superficiality of Ms own acquaintance with the religion wMch
he had abjured, but whose strength and charm he could not
wholly ignore. Nay, more ; we may well say that he was utterly
blMd to the Mgrained corruption of the system which he sought
to rehabilitate. It was hopelessly vicious, incurably frivolous ; it
neither would nor could be made serious and moral ; to attempt
its regeneration was like breatMng into the mouth of a corpse.
In his treatment of the Jews, the Emperor gave expression to
a very different feelMg : he had a certam sort of liking for their
nationality ; although he denounced the Old Testament theology
as immoral and degrading, and sneered at the prophets as fit only
to talk to old women, he thought he saw his way to employMg
their ardent hopes and aims m a direction which might tend to the
discredit of Christianity. TaMng advantage of the answer which
some of their number made to his question, " Why do you not
offer the sacrifices which Moses prescribed to you ? " Julian per
mitted them to undertake the rebuilding of their temple, and
exulted M the prospect of thus falsifyMg the prediction ascribed
to Christ. He intrusted the superintendence of the work to
Alypius of Antioch, who had previously held command in Britain.
TMs officer had now an opportuMty of seeing the Jewish character
M all its Mtense energy, starting up with buoyant hopefulness to
take m hand a busmess wMch beyond all others appealed to the
Jewish heart. He might watch the eager crowds throngmg into
Jerusalem, their faces bright with suddenly rekindled hope, and
expressive, no doubt, of defiant exultation as they passed before the
eyes of Christian spectators ; he might see Jewish ladies, regardless
of their dresses, carryMg in their arms earth for the purposes of
the workmen; he might observe the spades and mattocks of
silver which, at the cost of treasured pieces of family property,
were procured for the rebuilding of the " holy house ; " he might
hear how Bishop Cyril had calmly reminded his fellow-Christians

xvi.] Julian. 3 1 7
of the Mfallible prophecy that no stone should be left upon
another withM the precMct of that temple which had been
abandoned and doomed by God. And he would be among the
first to receive tidings of the strange, the appalLMg obstacles which,
as the pagan Mstorian affirms, defimtely cut short the work, and
disappointed the hopes of the Jews and his master. Ammianus was
not a man to be imposed on by a Christian invention ; and he says
that " terrible balls of fire burst forth near the foundations, and by
their repeated attacks drove the workmen, after several scorcMngs,
from the spot ; and thus, the element obstinately repelling them,
the work which they had begun was broken off." Gregory adds to
this statement that a wMrlwind and an earthquake drove some
who were standmg by to take shelter m a neighbouring church,
that a luminous cross, surrounded by a circle, appeared in the sky,
and that the marks of crosses were impressed on the garments of
beholders. To these portents, which CMistian fancy might easily
create, other details are added by later writers : as by Rufinus, who
tells us that the marks proved ineffaceable ; by Socrates, who
depicts the fire preying for one whole day on all the workmen's
tools ; by Sozomen and Theodoret, who speak of the crosses on the
garments as star-shaped and of a blackish hue. The fact of the
eruption of fire from the recesses below the temple area must be
considered as proved beyond dispute, whatever cause we may prefer
to assign for it : we may, as Robertson says, " reverently believe "
that this was an occasion on which natural forces might be not
only permitted to act, but combined and Mtensified in their de
structive energy, for the Mgh purpose of vindicating the Divine
word, and confounding the project of an anti-CMistian power ; so
that although the agencies employed were in themselves natural,
their concurrence with a moral order of tMngs might constitute
a " sign " from God. But perhaps the practical aspect of Julian
towards the CMistians is exhibited with the most significant, M
one case with the most dramatic vividness, by his proceedings in
regard to the city of Antioch, and to the archbishop of Alexandria.
Let us follow him to the birthplace of the CMistian name. He
had qMtted Constantinople in May, 362, and travelled, as Am
mianus tells us, by way of Galatia, taking care to visit the ancient
shrine of Cybele at PessMus, and thence tMough Cilicia to the
" beautiful crown of all the East " — that Antioch wMch he had so
oreatly longed to see, but for which a few months' residence was
to <nve him a fixed and bitter aversion. The eager welcome of an

3 1 8 The Age of the Fathers. [Chap.
advancing crowd, the cry of " Lo, a star of safety risen over the
East ! " was strangely followed up by the wailMgs of the pagan
women for Adonis, at their midsummer commemoration of his
fabled death, the symbolic representation of the waMng and decay
of physical forces. " It seemed a mournful coincidence," says
Ammianus, naturally enough. We are not concerned to trace the
growth of Ms disappointment with the Antiochenes. Enough to
say that while he was, morally speaking, too elevated M tone, too
Mtolerant of coarse or ignoble pleasures, to harmonize with the
extravagant pleasure-seeking wMch then, as later, characterized
the voluptuous " Oriental " capital, and which seems to be illus
trated by Libanius's complaint that professors were better paid at
Caesarea in Cappadocia, Julian had an opposite reason for disgust
in the evident predorMnance of the Christian profession even at a
place where, as it might seem, there was so much that offended
Christian purity. The city, he says, was more abandoned to
luxury than Tarentum itseK; it contrasted with the decorum of
Athens ; it contaMed more actors than citizens ; it was impatient
of all restraint, as of mere slavery ; but, he complains almost in
the same breath, the great majority of its inhabitants took CMist,
not Zeus or Apollo, for their Protector, and expressed in a well-
understood phrase their ill-feelMg towards a prince who had
" made war upon the Chi" — M contrast to neighbouring cities
which at his bidding had joyfully destroyed " the sepulcMes of the
atheists," and avenged the cause of the gods more severely than he
had himself desired. They had never been accustomed to restraM
their sarcasm as to royal eccentricities which invited it ; they had
applied nicknames to their Seleucid kMgs, and they were not at all
disposed to be respectfully silent about an Emperor whose out
ward man was conspicuously unmajestic. The short stature, the
shabby dress, and still more the long untrimmed beard which
" might be made Mto ropes," were constant themes for their acrid
wit : they called Mm " the Man of Victims ; " they resented his
rare attendance at the circus-games, Ms hurryMg away before they
were half over, his want of sympathy with " pleasure," much in
the same temper in wMch pagan populations had resented the
Christians' absence from public festivities, their "unsocial" anti
pathy to popular enjoyments ; and he replied, in a work called
"The Beardhater," by lasMng their vicious frivolity on one
hand and their predilection for Christianity on the other, and
remarked with special annoyance that Christian wives exercised

XVI.] Julian. 319
influence over husbands who did not profess ChristiaMty. A few
weeks after his arrival, M the month of Lous or August, he repaired
to the temple of Apollo M the " polluted but most lovely grove "
of Daphne, rich m the foliage of bay and cypress fondly imagined by
pagans to baMsh all maladies, but associated with a legend wMch
Ms contempt for sensual debasement would doubtless lead Mm to
explain away, and with a practical consecration of vice which
would be as odious to him as it would have been to Constantius.
In expectation of a gorgeous festal sacrifice, the imperial enthusiast
for pagan ritual, and particularly for the worsMp of Helios, arrived
at the temple-gate, and found no worsMppers, no Mcense, not a
cake or a victim for sacrifice. Where were the people ? he asked.
Were they outside the precinct, awaiting a signal from himself as
supreme pontiff ? What sacrifice was the city going to offer on
that great anniversary solemmty ? One priest alone was there to
answer : " The city sends nothing, but I have a goose which I will
offer to the god ! " The poor priest had a young son, who went
tMough his function of pouring sacrificial water on the food after
wards presented to Julian, and then — being secretly a convert to
ChristiaMty — hastened to a deaconess at Antioch, who had taught
him the faith, and who found him shelter, for a time, in the house
of the bishop Meletius. This was the first scene of the drama, so
to speak, of Julian at Daphne. The second opened with his con
sultation of the Daphnaean oracle, connected with the " Castalian
fount." But " there was no voice, nor any to answer." The dis
appointing silence was explained to Julian as the result of a
profanation : the body of Babylas, a bishop martyred in the third
century, had been buried by the late Caesar Gallus M the midst of
Apollo's sacred grove, and the god could not speak until " the dead
man " was removed, or, as Libanius expresses it, until he was
" relieved of a pestilent neighbour." Julian promptly answered,
" Then let the Galilaeans take the body away." The order was
obeyed with an enthusiasm wMch he had not'reckonedupon evoMng ;
a vast crowd of CMistians took possession of the venerated remaMs,
elevated them on a lofty chariot, and conveyed them to Antioch
(five miles' distance) in triumphant procession, with a thunder of
choral psalmody, M which one emphatic verse, repeated at intervals
like a refraM, expressed their defiance alike of Apollo and Ms
imperial votary, "Confounded be all they who worship carved
images, and that delight in vain gods ! " The Emperor could not
but be incensed at such a demonstration : he ordered his friend the

320 The Age of the Fathers. [Chap.
prefect Sallust to make an example of some offenders ; and accord
ingly a youth named Theodore, the first person who was caught,
was next day put to the torture from daybreak until 4 p.m., with
no other effect, says Rufinus — who afterwards heard Mm tell the
story — than to draw forth from Ms lips the same verse which he
had sung in the procession. The precinct was, as Julian expresses
it, " given back to those who were Mdignant about the remaMs of
the dead man ; " m other words, a process of lustration was begun,
and Julian was awaiting its completion when, on the 22nd of
October, the temple itself was suddenly burnt down, while its
ancient splendour was being renewed by a stately colonnade.
Julian suspected the CMistians of havmg caused this calamity:
they, for their parts, were not slow to point to the judgment of
God on a stronghold of evil spirits. Another account described the
fire as accidental ; a pagan philosopher had placed a little image
at the feet of the great statue, had lighted some papers, and had
forgetfully left them burning, so that their sparks caught the
buildMg at dead of Mght. Tortures were employed, with unusual
severity, to discover the guilty parties, but in vaM ; whereupon
Julian ordered the cathedral, " the Golden Church," to be closed,
and its Arian occupants were thus compelled to assemble else
where. A namesake of his, Julian, " Count " (equivalent to
"Vicarius") of the "diocese of the Orient" of which Antioch
was the capital, went with " Counts " Felix and Elpidius Mto the
sanctuary, under orders to carry off the altar-vessels. Euzoius
accompanied them, and tried in vaM to restrain Count Julian from
insulting the sanctity of the place. Felix looked at the chalices,
which were the costly gifts of Christian monarchs : " See," he said
with a scoff, " in what kind of vessels they do service to the Son of
Mary ! " Count Julian's death soon followed, and was ascribed by
the Christians to a divine judgment ; and Felix, we are told, who,
like Julian and Elpidius, was an apostate, was seized with a pro
fuse haemorrhage wMch proved fatal. An aged deaconess, in whose
house lived a number of devoted women, contributed to the
Emperor's irritation by sMgMg when he passed by — in spite of
rebukes, and even of blows from a soldier's hand — psalms directed
against idolatry.
These were among the many mortifications which embittered
the Emperor's stay at Antioch, and contributed to produce m his
mMd a detestation of that city, which all the eloquence of LibaMus
was insufficient to soften or to soothe. But he had already, m the

XVI.] Julian. 321
year -preceding that early spring of 363 in which he quitted
Antioch for Ms fatal Persian expedition, given full expression to
his aversion for the one man who represented the Christian cause
more effectively than all its Antiochene adherents. From the very
outset, he had, as Gibbon tersely words it, " honoured Athanasius
with his smcere and peculiar hatred." "Towards Athanasius,"
says Rufinus, "he could not keep up the appearance of Ms
affected philosophy." The bands of magicians, pMlosophers,
haruspices, and augurs, who came flocking around his throne, are
credited by this writer with persuadmg Julian that their plans
" would never prosper until Athanasius was out of the way." The
great archbishop had taken advantage of the edict recalbng the
exiled bishops, which had reached Alexandria on the 8th of
February, 362, just six years after the memorable attack on St.
Theonas's church. In pursuance of this mandate, the prefect
Gerontius, taking for granted that it was to apply to the case of
Athanasius, put forth an official notice, Mviting him to return.
AccordMgly, he entered Ms church on the 27th of Mechir, or 21st
of February, according to the Maffeian " CMonicler ; " and was doubt
less received with rapturous welcome, even if the description
previously quoted from Gregory pertaMs, in fact, to an earlier
return. The Arians had, after the death of George, set up Lucius
as their chief; but he could only meet Ms adherents m "mean
little houses," and was constrained to abandon all contest with the
mighty and, as it seemed, invMeible representative of the Nicene
faith. The ecclesiastical proceedMgs of Athanasius during eight
months of tranquillity were among the most characteristic and
most fruitful of all Ms episcopate ; but they will be more con
veniently considered hereafter. It appears that soon after Ms
return Julian wrote to the Alexandrians, MtroducMg, as Gibbon
says, an " arbitrary distinction " to the effect that he had never
intended the bishops who returned from exile to resume their sees :
he was afraid that Athanasius had done so, and therefore ordered
that he should at once depart from Alexandria. He seems to have
taken for granted that tMs order would suffice, and dismissed the
matter from Ms consideration. But in the October of 362, when
fresh from the irritations of the scenes connected with the sanctuary
of Daphne, he was only too ready to listen to complaints, denun
ciations, passionate cries for imperial interference, which poured in
upon Mm from the pagans of Alexandria after their new ex
perience of the success of Athanasius in the consolidation of the
VOL. 1. v

322 The Age of the Fathers. [Chap. XVI.
CMistian body, and the reMndling of its energy and zeal. In
particular, they informed Julian that, instead of obeying the com
mand to depart, Athanasius had converted and baptized several
high-born pagan ladies. On the other hand, the CMistians of
Alexandria had petitioned for a remission of the sentence against
then- bishop. But Julian was not likely to grant such a request.
In Mgh wrath, he wrote to the Alexandrians, reproacMng them for
being thus Mfatuated on behalf of Athanasius, as if no one could
gratify their morbid eagerness for Christian sermons but a man
dangerous as a popular busybody; and informing them that he
long ago ordered that " despicable manMkM " to leave Alexandria,
and that he now commanded him to depart from Egypt. Another
letter, to the prefect Ecdicius, exhibits still keener animosity :
Athanasius is called an "abominable wretch, the enemy of the
gods ; " and the prefect's official staff is threatened with a heavy
fine if Athanasius is not out of Alexandria, or rather out of Egypt,
by the 1st of December. The letter concludes with one emphatic
word, " Let Mm be persecuted." The archbishop obeyed the order
before the time here designated : the Alexandrian documents make
him depart before the end of October, and we know that he con
soled his friends by the prediction, " It is only a little cloud, it
will soon pass." He was pursued, perhaps by the over-zealous
promptitude of Julian's messenger, on Ms voyage up the Nile :
with ready presence of mind he turned his boat's head round, and
so met the pursuer, who did not know him, and demanded, " Have
you seen Athanasius ? " " He is not far off," replied some of the
archbishop's companions; the hostile party shot on ahead, and
Athanasius quietly returned to the neighbourhood of Alexandria,
to a place called Chereu, and then, somewhat later, repaired to the
Thebaid, where he waited for the " passing of the cloud."
That event came sooner than those CMistians could have
expected, who saw the year 363 open with such elaborate prepara
tions for a grand Persian campaign. But as the Emperor advanced
further eastward, his prospects of success grew darker ; and it was
after such a display of bad generalsMp, contrasting with previous
military skill, as a CMistian might ascribe to mysterious infatua
tion, that, on June 26, 363, the Apostate's death — though not his
dying words, which exhibit a " pMlosophic self-complacency " — pro
claimed that "the Galilaean had conquered." Let us part from
this most unhappy man with the recollection that he had not really
forsaken Christ, for he had never learned Him nor known Him.

CHAPTER XVII.
INTERNAL CHURCH AFFAIRS UNDER JULIAN.
We have taken a general survey of the reign of Julian considered
M its relations to Christianity and the Church. It remains to pay
attention to two events, of great, though not, perhaps, of equal
importance, wMch belong to the internal life of the Church during
his reign. One of these is the memorable Alexandrian Council,
held by Athanasius between Ms " third return " and his " fourth
exile ; " the other is the renewed outbreak of the Donatist troubles
M Western Africa.
Gibbon, who had a genuine admiration for the greatness of " the
primate of Egypt," admits that when he reassumed his throne in
February, 362, " the exercise of his authority tended not to inflame,
but to reconcile, the minds of the people ; that his age, merit, and
reputation enabled him to assume, in a moment of danger, the
office of ecclesiastical dictator." TMs, however, is not by any means
a correct description of his position in the year 362, or indeed at
any time. He was a moderator, a reconciler, a general adviser, a
poMt of attraction, a moral centre of unity. If Tillemont calls him,
M tMs crisis, a virtual " legislator " of Christendom, it was by the
exercise of an Mfluence Mseparable from Ms character, with its
wonderful uMon of strength and tenderness, of immovable constancy
and patient eqMty, that he who could so truly, M the Pauline sense,
make Mmself all thMgs to all men, impressed his own mind on a
distracted Church, and stood forth as its practical reorganizer.
The Edict of Recall had brought Eusebius of Vercellae and
Lucifer of Caliaris from their places of exile, in the Thebaid, into
Lower Egypt. Eusebius entreated Lucifer to come with Mm to
Alexandria, and visit Athanasius, that a conference might be held
upon some questions of urgent importance. These were five in
number. Two of them related to troubles and scandals wMch

324 The Age of the Fathers. [Chap.
directly affected the unity of the Church. Three others related to
theological differences, or to tendencies of unsound thought, wMch
appeared likely to produce fresh confusion, and therefore demanded
prompt and judicious treatment. We must now describe them
more particularly, and explaM the treatment wMch they received
from a small Council of some seventeen bishops wMch met at
Alexandria in the spring of 362, but without the presence of the
impatient Sardinian, who had hurried on to Antioch.
(1) The Orthodox of Antioch were now a twofold body. The
Old-Churchmen, so to call them, or " Eustathians," with whom
Athanasius had fraterMsed in 346, worsMpped under the care of
the highly respected presbyter PaulMus, in a small church withm
the " New City," wMch Euzoius — with a liberality, and respect for
Catholic earnestness, which did him credit — permitted them to use.
They would not joM with the adherents of Meletius ; their view
was, that although Meletius had, before Ms exile, professed,
essentially, the Catholic faith, yet Ms antecedent connexion with
Arians was fatal to the legitimacy of Ms episcopate. On the other
hand, " the Meletians," as they might be called, if the term had
not been otherwise appropriated, were doubtless indignant at the
" stiff obstinacy" of these "ultra-Catholics," and regarded them as
narrow-minded sectarians, who were blind to the duty of uMting
with a bishop of orthodox belief. The " Apostles' church " m the
Old City was thus the stronghold and sanctuary of a large body
of orthodox Antiochenes who, disowned by the Eustathians, and
abjuring the Arian communion of Euzoius, were clingMg with an
ever-growing affection and reverence to a prelate who had suffered
exile for disappoMting the expectations of heretics. Could nothmg
be done — it might well be asked — to heal tMs division, which, if
perpetuated, would be a standing disgrace and source of weakness
to the Catholic cause tMoughout the East ? It was resolved that
the Eustathians, who were regarded as " in their rights," should be
advised to offer their commuMon to the adherents of Meletius on
the simple condition of the latter professing the Nicene faith and
rejecting every heresy.
(2) Again, there was the great Western difficulty of the
Ariminian Confession subscribed and accepted by so many bishops,
who now bitterly regretted their weakness or their carelessness.
How should they be treated ? With what conditions should their
request for reconciliation, their application for Catholic recogMtion
and forgiveness, be met by those who had been loyal to Nicene

xvil] Internal Church Affairs under Julian. 325
orthodoxy ? The question Mcluded two difficulties. On the one
hand, there was a risk of open schism if extreme measures should
be taken agaMst all these numerous bishops ; on the other hand,
there was great reason to tMnk that they had, in many cases at
least, been really deceived and beguiled Mto subscription, without
fully appreciating the merits of the case : they had erred, in short,
" M their simplicity." A rigorist view, although it found expres
sion in the synod, was put aside, and the condition above mentioned
was alone required from the persons in question.
(3) A third point was the question origMating M the variations
of language as to the term Hypostasis. The Mstory of this cele
brated term is curious. Socrates says that it was first used for an
ambush, as under cover, or for the sediment of liqmd, as the lees
of wine at the bottom of a jar : it would thus come to be used for
ground " under deep mire" (as M LXX. Ps. lxviii. 2), and meta
phorically for whatever might serve as a support of physical life, as
food (Wisd. xvi. 21) or goods (Deut. xi. 6). Then would follow
applications of the word, still M view of the original import, to
whatever might be a basis of confidence (2 Cor. ix. 4, xi. 17 ; Heb.
iii. 14), or might give subjective reality to, and m that sense
substantiate, tMngs hoped for (Heb. xi. 1). Again, it might be used
for being or essence, as the substratum of properties or attributes,
with reference to man (Ps. xxxviii. 6) or to God (Heb. i. 3). And
when thus introduced into the field of theology, the word might
take a slight turn or extension of meaning to signify " being " in the
sense of " personal " subsistence, as if to say, " There is a really
existing Father, or Son, or Holy Spirit." Now the Nicene Council,
in its " anathemas," had clearly employed " hypostasis " as equiva
lent to " Ousia," that is, essence or being, as the Council of Antioch
m 269 had spoken of the Son as "M ousia and hypostasis God."
In this sense, the Son was to be confessed as of "one hypostasis "
with the Father. Athanasius Mmself represents this language,
for the most part, although he occasionally favours the derived
sense of "person" or "subsistence," which had been employed
by some of the Alexandrian Ante-Nicenes, and had been, sMce
the Nicene Council, coming into use among Arianizers — as m the
Creed of the Dedication — and among those Churchmen who had
been more or less connected with Semi-Arians, and who were
specially anxious to exclude Sabellianism by insisting that the
Son and the Holy Spirit were not mere " modes " of the exist
ence of the Father. Among these men it was becoming usual to

326 The Age of the Fathers. [Chap.
speak of " Three Hypostases : " and how was this phrase to be
dealt with, M regard to the claims, so to speak, of the pMase
Mvolved M the Nicene formula, wMch represented the Divine
Hypostasis as " One " ? Athanasius took the opportunity of goMg
below pMases into ideas. He asked the maMtainers of "Three
Hypostases," " Do you mean three essences, three separate Bemgs,
three Gods ? " " Far be it from us ; we mean simply to safeguard
the true personal subsistence of the Father, the Son, and the Holy
Spirit." He turned to those who spoke of " One Hypostasis."
" Do you mean anythMg like Sabellianism ? " " Assuredly not ;
we use Hypostasis, as the Nicenes used it, for essence, and we
mean to assert the co-essential Unity." These mutual explanations,
so wisely and kMdly elicited, were deemed satisfactory ; but when
the bishops went on to deprecate the use of either phrase (not, as
Socrates strangely imagMed, of the term Ousia), they forgot that
the sense of Hypostasis M the Nicene anathemas could not but
come into question, and that, according to the answer given,
"tMee Hypostases," or "one Hypostasis," would be implicitly
affirmed. (4) Again, a tendency was now apparent among persons of un
suspected and even strongly pronounced orthodoxy on the great
question of the time, towards a mode of thought and speech wMch
explamed away, or virtually nullified, the human side of the
" mystery of godliness." Somewhat of tMs mistaken reverence
was fostering a reluctance to admit that Christ, as man, was sub
ject to human limitations, or, for instance, to attach a real import
to the prayer of the Agony. But these were only the begMnings
of a movement which was taking fuller form M a mind at once
MgMy cultured and exceptionally versatile. ApollMaris of Laodicea,
eagerly bent on carryMg on the war with Arianizers, was unhappily
led to minimise, if we may so say, the human element M the
Incarnation, and, by way of safe-guardMg the divme sMgleness of
our Lord's personality, to exclude the nous, or mind, from His
manhood. The Arian notion that the titular " divMity " of the
created "Son" discharged in CMist the function of a psyche, or
" animal soul," was Mgeniously utilised, so to speak, by suggesting
that the " rational soul " was, in Him, superseded by the presence
of the DivMe Logos. TMs was the first stage of that " Apollina-
rian " error wMch afterwards, as if M obedience to the downward-
leading destiny of all non-Catholic speculations, proceeded to deny
the human reality of Christ's body, and to regard it as a portion of

XVII.] Internal Church Affairs under Julian. $27
the Godhead " converted mto flesh." This extremity, however,
was not reached at the time when a growMg disbelief in the reality
of our Lord's human mind began to produce anxiety ; and when,
as it seems, those who were, or appeared to be, inclined towards it
were disposed to suspect others of denying the true personal one
ness of the as yet unMcarnate Son with Him who was born of Mary
— in other words, when they showed a fear of encouraging the
form of thought afterwards known as NestoriaMsm. But we
must pause a little longer over the first appearance of the original
ApollMarianism. Its author did not merely assume that a man
hood "complete," includmg a mind, would M effect involve a
distinct human personality, whereas it was held on the other side
that the Divine Son could adopt manhood into union with His own
Mdivisible self; he further assumed that a human mind, being the
seat of will, would mvolve the possibility of an evil choice, that is,
of sin. This raised a vital question. Christ was sinless ; but was
He peccable ? Granting that His human nature was free from
any inherited taint, from what is called " original sin : " was He M
the condition of man unfallen, capable at once of faithfuMess and
of revolt, and therefore open to the attractions which disobedience
might offer ? Was He, M tMs respect, dependent simply on His
human resolution sustaMed by the Holy Spirit ? In other words,
was it possible for Him humanly, until the close of His human
probation at death, to entertain the wish, not to say to form the
purpose, to defy the known will of His Father ? Unquestionably,
an internal act of this kMd would " mvolve a centre of Mdependent
personality M His human nature," distinct from, and capable of
antagonism to, the personality of the Divine Son. So far Apolli
naris was right ; but he was wrong in supposing that, in order to
avoid so destructive a consequence, it was necessary to eliminate
the human mMd from CMist's humaMty, and thereby to accept
other consequences not less disastrous, as the unreality of our Lord's
language M the expression of human surprise, human disappoint
ment, human anxiety, above all, human sympathy — and of that
human will whereby He gave Himself up to death. TMs revived
Docetism could not be required as a safeguard of His impeccability :
for He, beMg one with the Son of God, could humanly desire
tMs or that object, but could not will to obtain it by an act of
moral rebellion. ApollMariaMsm itself seems to modern Christians
so paradoxical that it is necessary thus to recognise the force of
its appeal to Christian piety and loyalty.

328 The Age of the Fathers. [Chap.
(5) Lastly, there was a somewhat less pronounced tendency to an
opposite form of error. Some had taken up pMases wMch implied-
that the relation between the Logos and the manhood of Christ was
essentially the same as that wMch had existed when " the Word of
the Lord came to " tMs or that prophet or other holy man. This
was in effect the Photiman view, according to which the Word was
impersonal ; but in so far as it saw M CMist a distinct human
person, it was a preparation for the Nestorian theory of an association
between the Son of God and the Son of Mary, which, as we shall
find, reduced the difference between Christ and the saints to a
superiority of degree only, and thereby nullified the Incarnation
as a veritable entrance of God into human life.
In regard to these two questions, some representatives of
Apollinaris declared that he fully recognised the reality of a
human soul and mind in the " Incarnate," and those who had been
supposed to think of CMist as a signally favoured saMt protested
that they believed Him to be the very Son of God, who had
become Son of man without prejudice to His Divmity.
It would also seem that the question of the Divmity of the
Holy Spirit came M some form before the Council.
The Council transacted its busMess M a spirit of admirable fair
ness, patience, equity. A Tome, or synodal letter, was addressed to
" those at Antioch," that is, to the Eustathians (whose pastor was
represented by deacons), and to Lucifer, Eusebius, and tMee other
prelates. It was evidently drafted by Athanasius, and, as we have
described, bears the mark of his comprehensive theological insight,
wMch could do justice to different sides of the same divine truth;
and, not less clearly, of the lovmg earnestness which, pre-eminently
at tMs anxious crisis, he showed for the great object referred to M
the toucMng words, " If haply the Lord will pity us, and jom
together what has been divided, so that when there is again one
flock, we may all have again one Gmde ! " It was natural indeed
for the great champion of the Truth to be the great peacemaker
among those who really agreed in receiving it. Eusebius added a
Latin note of Ms own, by way of emphasizmg Ms acceptance of
all the resolutions of the Council on the question of the Hypo
stasis — on the assumption by the Incarnate Saviour, the Divine
Son, of entire humaMty, sin only excepted — and on the falsity of
any so-called Sardican document which might seem to derogate
from the position held by the Nicene Creed.
He qMtted Alexandria, at the conclusion of the Council, in

xvii.] Internal Church Affairs under Julian. 329
order to bear its decrees to Antioch. What he found there was,
to his Mexpressible disappointment, simply an enlargement of the
existing wound. The Council, distinctly regarding the EustatMans
as properly the Antiochene Church, had exhorted them, indirectly,
to stretch out the hand of fellowship to the Meletians, so called,
on proof beMg given of the orthodoxy of the latter. How little
could the good fathers have imagined that, before their deliberations
were over, Lucifer had taken a step which was, in fact, to keep
the two orthodox bodies apart for more than fifty years to come !
It was Ms busmess, Rufinus Miplies, to promote the settlement
of affairs under a bishop whom each party could recogMse ;
but "M Ms impetuosity," his eager sympathy with "thorough
going persistence," and Ms intolerance of whatever had at any
time been tamted by Arianizing connexions, he abandoned the
task of a mediator in order to satisfy Ms feelings as a partisan.
In conjunction, says Jerome in Ms CMonicle, with two other
confessors, he laid his hands on Paulinus and consecrated Mm
bishop. Well qualified as that good man was for the episcopate,
to confer it on Mm M such circumstances was hopelessly to
alienate the orthodox of the " Old City," and to turn a present
discord into an abidMg schism. " It was not right," says
Theodoret with significant conciseness ; " it did but protract the
dissension " — wMch was not, in fact, really healed until the
EustatMan remnant, as it then was, yielded at last to the peace-
loving goodness of a bishop named Alexander, who had the joy of
seeing the two bodies unite in worsMp in the year 415. Finding
that Lucifer's hot-headedness had, as Tillemont observes, applied
" a bad remedy " to the evils of the Antiochene church, Eusebius,
in Ms vexation and distress, departed from Antioch, preservMg
his own communion with each of the two separated parties.
Athanasius and the Egyptian church, although disapproving of
the conduct of Lucifer in the consecration of Paulinus, and at first
desiring to form relations with Meletius, ultimately retaMed their
ecclesiastical fellowsMp with the EustatMans, as did the church of
Cyprus and the whole of the West, whereas the Eastern orthodox
were ardently attached to Meletius and that body — now the more
numerous — wMch gloried M calling him its pastor. He himself,
it appears, had not returned home when Paulinus received conse
cration: he arrived somewhat later, perhaps in September, 362.
Meantime Lucifer, indignant at the dissatisfaction wMch Ms
proceedings had excited, broke off communion with Eusebius ; and

330 The Age of the Fathers. [Chap.
although he did not formally disavow the action of Ms deacons,
who in Ms name had assented to the resolutions of ^the Alexandrian
Council, he appears to have separated himself ecclesiastically from
all the members of the Council itself.
Hence arose the rigid little sect of Luciferians, who reproduced
in regard to doctrmal backsliding or weakness that unkindly and
unevangelic rigorism wMch the Novatians exMbited towards the
case of the lapsed ; and whose " fall Mto the darkness of schism,
through loss of the light of charity," is mentioned by St. Augustine
as akin to the temper of the Donatists. For the bishop of Caliaris
Mmself it may be pleaded that Ms cruel wrongs had done much
to exasperate his temper: he had naturally, as it seems, a hard
stern spirit, and in Ms exile he had accustomed himself to pour
out the most vehement streams of passionate Mvective against
the " idolatry " and " apostasy " of an Arian court, until, to adopt
some famous words, the "fierce Mdignation wMch had lacerated
his heart " destroyed M Mm all sobriety, forbearance, and considera
tion. The unbendmg confessor became, tMough want of charity
and patience, first of all the furious declaimer, and then — when
blamed by Ms own bretMen, faithful and brave as Mmself, for
hasty wrongheadedness and self-willed zeal — the revolter and
the schismatic; a melancholy sample of deterioration, but surely
Mstructive as to the need of balance and harmony M the cha
racter of those who would work in the cause of divine Truth, and
as to the sterility of many endurances, many witnessmgs, many
efforts, for lack of " the very bond of peace and of all virtues."
Lucifer, the Catholic Confessor, tarnished his renown by a schism
wMch his previous acerbity may go far to account for ; he died
out of the Catholic Communion eight years after he had qMtted
it. Jerome, wishing to speak of him kindly and respectfully, calls
Mm " blessed ; " but wMle rejecting the imputations of personal
ill-temper or of morbid vamgloriousness, made against him by some
churchmen with much confidence, is yet " constrained by truth "
to say that Lucifer " did, in a great crisis of the Church's history,
separate off a small number of sheep, and leave the rest of the
flock to themselves." This "small number" — so small at that
time, though larger afterwards, that Jerome says in the same
dialogue "Agamst the Luciferians "• that, if Christ's Church be
confined to Sardinia, He has become poor indeed — was generally
acknowledged to be free from heresy, and for that reason, as
Augustine considers, was not treated of in the great work of

XVII.] Internal Church Affairs under Julian. 331
Epiphanius; but Theodoret speaks of Lucifer as having added
some strange doctrines to those of the Church, possibly some
speculations as to the origM of souls. These did not, practically,
exercise much influence ; they were soon, Theodoret says, forgotten.
Though Lucifer himself did not rebaptize proselytes, yet the
inevitable destiny of such a schism as he inaugurated might seem
to have impelled the deacon Hilary, who had suffered for orthodoxy
as Roman legate at Milan, and who followed Lucifer in his secession,
to organize a little following of Ms own, which indeed, for want
of priests and sacraments, " died with him," — for, says Jerome in
regard to this, " Ecclesia non est quce non habet sacerdotes," — but
which, in contravention of Hilary's own former practice at Rome,
ignored the baptism of heretics, and reproduced the old Cyprianic
view with an acrimony which, as Jerome observes, was very
un-Cyprianic. The stern bigotry of the Luciferians is exhibited
in the Memorial of Marcellinus and Faustinus, presented, many
years later, to Theodosius I. They speak of the Council of
Alexandria as a certam number of "wearied confessors," who
made concessions in defiance of prophetic and apostolic teachMg ;
who allowed to bishops that had denied the Son of God, not only
admission Mto the Church, but the possession of their forfeited
digmty ; " cloakMg impiety under the name of peace, eontammating
the whole body of Church-people with heresy," and entailMg on
their whole commuMon "confusion and ignominy and the most
pernicious consequences," among which, accordMg to their state
ment, oppression and persecution of Lucifer's adherents must be
reckoned. It would appear from this document that Lucifer, and
those who adopted Ms LMe, disbelieved in the sincerity of the
professions made by so many bishops who had accepted the
Ariminian formula : even as Lucifer himself, it is there said, on
comMg to Naples, indignantly denounced Zosimus, who had been
intruded into the see of the faithful Maximus, and who professed
to have since then " risen up from Mipiety."
It was a very different judgment that was formed, as we have
seen, by the " Council of Confessors," and by the great lights of
the Western Church, Eusebius of Vercellae and Hilary of Poitiers.
MarcellMus and Faustinus spoke of Hilary as havMg " shown
favour to transgressors;" the truth being that Ms gentle, peace-
lovMg nature, and Ms persuasive powers, were appropriately
exercised M the task of unravellMg for some bewildered minds
the intricacies of Arian subtlety, and of encouraging others who

332 The Age of the Fathers. [Chap.
saw the error mto which they had been drawn, frankly to confess
it, and to return in sMcerity of heart to the confession of the
Homoousion. In tMs beautiful and inspiriting work, worthy of a
Christian bishop whose own faith and steadfastness had been so
illustriously proved, Eusebius found Hilary engaged, when he
returned from Antioch to Italy, and Italy on his return, in
Jerome's vivid language, " laid aside her mourning robes." Then,
Jerome proceeds, "the bishops who had been entangled M the
wiles of ArimMum, and, without intendmg it, been accounted
heretics, came eagerly together, protesting by the Body of the
Lord, and by every holy thMg in the Church, that they had
suspected nothMg evil in the creed which they had made their
own. ' We thought,' they said, ' that the sense agreed with the
words : we never apprehended that m the Church of God, where
simplicity and purity of confession dwell, one tiling could be
uttered by the lips, and another Mdden in the heart.' . . . Much
else," he adds, a little further on, " I pass over, wMch they uttered
with tears, beMg ready to condemn their former subscription and
all the blasphemies of the Arians." He says that, at least in some
cases, it was attempted to substitute new bishops for these peMtent
or professedly penitent ones ; but that the people, being attached
to their old prelates, were nearly ready to stone or kill those who
would depose them. And, as he further remarks, it would have
been absurd for Eusebius and his brethren to hold no Mtercourse
with tMs large body of prelates who in their real convictions and
belief were not Arians, but whom a rigorous treatment might have
goaded Mto becoming so. Hilary, no doubt, had much success M
Ms policy of reconciliation and reunion : the melancholy language
M which, writing about two years later, he speaks of Ms efforts
as baffled and fruitless, must be connected with the special
difficulties of the church of Milan, wMch then occupied Ms mind.
Rufinus associates him with Eusebius as "irradiating" Italy,
Illyricum, and Gaul; and we may doubtless apply to Mm also
the same historian's beautiful description of Eusebius's activities
m the work of a healer and a priest. Councils were held in Italy :
Hilary gives us a synodal letter of Italian bishops to those m
Illyricum, rejoicing in the restored unity of faith, announcmg the
detection of the ArimMian trickeries, and the formal abrogation, by
general consent, of the ArimMian Council's decrees. Liberius wrote
to the bishops of Italy a letter, of wMch the terse lacomc opemng
might be thought to imply some recollection of Ms own case :

xvn.] Internal Church Affairs under Julian. 333
" Repentance effaces the fault of Mexperience." He refers to a
Council in Achaia, as havMg accepted the resolutions of Alexandria ;
and m this he is borne out by Athanasius, who, in a letter to a
bishop named Rufinianus, mentions Councils as held with the
same object M Greece, SpaM, and Gaul. And as Athanasius
desires Rufinianus not to blame the Alexandrian Council's lenity,
Liberius announces that on the condition, "wMch some persons
tMnk too easy and lax," of simply accepting the Nicene Creed,
any one deceived by Homoean astuteness may regain all "that
he had lost."
Another Council was held, with the same results, in Macedonia,
as St. Basil was Mformed by a letter from Athanasius ; and
Athanasius's statement, M the later summer months of 363, to
the Catholic Emperor Jovian, implies the assemblMg of other
Catholic Councils, evidently about this same time, in Dalmatia,
Dacia, Pamphylia, Lycia, Pontus, Cappadocia, and several other
districts. In these assemblies, all of which wrote letters to the
archbishop of Alexandria, the mind of the several churches in regard
to the question, so to speak, between Nicaea and Ariminum was
emphatically attested. At Ariminum there were, said the Arian
Auxentius, six hundred bishops present : tMs was a sample of
Arian exaggeration — exaggeration which afterwards mounted to a
higher figure ; the Anomcean Philostorgius, who, of course, had no
respect for the Council which confessed the Homoion, understates
its numbers as erroneously. But, granting that it was, as indeed
it was, a larger Council than the Nicene, the Church disowned it,
acknowledged the Nicene as sacrosanct, and thus established the
principle that no Council, however numerous, is exempt from the
test of subsequent acceptance. Thus the authority of Ariminum,
in the provinces represented by these various synods, was of no
more account than that of the gatherings of the Semi-Arian or
Macedonian party in the year which was signalised by this memor
able Alexandrian Council— gatherings M which, as SopMoMus
complacently observed, the just mean was kept between the
Westerns' Homoousion and the Anomoion of Aetius. These Msig-
nificant utterances counted for as much, and as little, as the ac
ceptance of the Homoion by a great body of bishops, whose act the
Church disowned as a weakness, if not a treason. Arimmum was as
Seleucia, or Ancyra, or Antioch ; Nicaea remained m its Malienable
majesty.' To Athanasius, and to thousands whose spirit was as
Ms spirit, the ever-shifting forms of anti-Catholic thought, the

334 The Age of the Fathers. [Chap.
manifold ingenuities of Arian creed-makMg, were but, as he ex
presses it, plants destmed to be rooted up. " But the word of the
Lord, spoken by the OecumeMcal Nicene Council, endureth for
ever." And yet the prestige of Ariminum was tenacious of life ;
we find that when the SpaMsh Goths adopted Catholicism towards
the close of the sixth century, it was found necessary to insist that
all should " heartily reject and condemn " that Council.
In turmng to the renewal of Donatist troubles M Western
Africa, we may first recall the manner M wMch, after several years
of tumult and resistance, the " Union " of all CMistians in, or
rather an outward conformity to, the Church, had been effected by
means of Macarius and Paul. The Donatist bishops, except
those who were content to joM the Church, had been driven into
exile. When Julian came to the tMone, they addressed a singu
larly worded petition to him as to a prince whose actions were
swayed by just principles only, or, as they expressed it, " with
whom justice alone had a place." There was no wonder that the
Catholics took advantage of such a phrase; but Augustine does
them plain Mjustice by saying that it implied approbation of the
Emperor's apostasy. They meant that he, standmg outside the
Christian body, could have no interest to bias him in favour of this
or that party of CMistians. In that view, they entreated him to
recall them from exile, and restore to them their churches ; and
they alleged records of former legal investigations as bearing out
their claim. Julian was ready enough to grant their petition. He
replied by a rescript to the officials of Africa, M wMch, referrmg
to this petition of " Rogatianus, Pontius, Cassianus, and the other
bishops, and also clerics," he ordered that whatever had been un
lawfully done against them should be annulled, and all things
recalled to their former state. The result of tMs order was, of
course, the return of the exiled prelates, among whom Pontius
appears to have been the most active and pertinacious. " It was
Pontius who did it," exclaims Augustine ; " it was Pontius who
drew up the petition, it was Pontius who called the Apostate
' most just.' " The restoration of tMs bishop and his colleagues
was followed by a renewal of the violences and outrages of former
times. Optatus exhausts his power of invective against the Dona
tists who " returned M frantic fury, subtle in misleading, pitiless
in bloodshed, challenging the ' sons of peace to war.' " They drove
out many Catholic prelates ; they came with hired bands to attack
churches — doubtless, in many cases, to resume possession of

xvii.] Internal Church Affairs under Julian. 335
churches from wMch they had formerly been expelled : we are told
of Felix and Januarius, who entered a place called Castellum
Lemellense, found the church closed, unroofed it, and killed two
deacons who were defending the altar. In Mauritania two " fire
brands," Donatist bishops both, assisted by the local authorities of
Tipasa, drove out the Catholics with violence and bloodshed, in
which women were not spared, and unborn infants perished: a
bottle of chrism was flung out of a church wMdow, and, as if to
exMbit M the most audacious way the disbelief in the vaKdity of
Catholic ordinances, " they commanded the Eucharist to be thrown
to the dogs." In various places they caused the church altars —
which, as in the famous case of,, the outraged church at Alexandria,
were evidently of wood — to be broken, scraped, and carried away,
as if they had been defiled by contact with the Catholic Sacrament.
The chalices, which, says Optatus, " had carried the Blood of CMist,"
were broken and melted down, and sold with every mark of insult.
The very walls of the churches were washed, as unclean ; the
pavements were sprinkled with salt water ; the linen coverings
or " palls " of the altar, and the sacred books, were extorted from
Catholic keeping by legal process ; the cemeteries were closed
agaMst Catholics when dead. Church-virgins were compelled to
put off their purple caps, and receive new ones from Donatist hands,
in token of the nullity of their former dedication. The Donatists,
says Tillemont, after seizing the churches with such violence,
worked hard to fill them with apostates from Catholic unity. They
went about saying, "Look to yourselves," "Redeem your souls,"
"Become CMistians," "Why, So-and-so, are you still a pagan?"
as if Catholics, or, as they would say, communicants with Traditors,
had as such no real claim to be considered CMistians at all, and
needed to be baptized de novo. Those who came over to their com
munion were put under penances of imequal length, without any
pretence of equitable or discrimMating adjustment : " one man, at
their biddMg, did penance for a whole year, another for a month,
another scarcely a whole day." " They extended their hands," as
Optatus says with a reference to the usual form of absolution, " over
members of all the four orders in the Church, bishops, presbyters,
deacons, and faithful." " By putting the faithful to penance, by
deoradMg presbyters and deacons Mto laymen, they ' overtMew
souls.' " Several bishops are mentioned whom they degraded from
the episcopate ; one of these was a very aged man, a bishop of
seventy years' standing, bearing the very common name of Donatus.

336 The Age of the Fathers. [Chap.xvii.
This bitter and factious spirit of the leaders infected the proselytes
whom they gamed ; they were seriously lowered in moral tone,
became " furious instead of patient, contentious instead of peace
able, Msolent instead of modest, malignant instead of harmless,"
eager and vehement in drawing over their friends who still
remained M then old communion. Such persons as declined to
secede after their example were taunted with slowness and stupidity.
" How long are you going to stay there?" was the frequent ques
tion of the proselytizmg convert. Yet tMs Mtolerant and fierce-
tempered sect, preservMg carefully the forms of Church ritual, was
wont to pray daily M its celebrations for " the One Church dis
persed tMoughout the world ! " This picture of Donatism rampant
and triumphant was drawn by Optatus within a few years after
the recall of Donatist exiles, and prepares us for the evidence
furnished by St. Augustine of the prodigious force and vitality of
a schism wMch to us appears so signally repulsive that we can
hardly conceive of it as swaying the convictions of any truly
Christian man.

CHAPTER XVIII.
AFTER THE PAGAN REACTION.
It was impossible for the CMistian community not to watch with
awful interest the fortunes of Julian's fatal campaign in the spring
of 363. Many CMistians persuaded themselves that he had
threatened to signalise Ms expected triumphant return by " utterly
destroyMg the very name of ChristiaMty," or at any rate, to carry
on the contest with Christianity in a more definite form and to a
more satisfactory result. This interpretation of his purposes and
hopes was also current among his own friends and supporters ; and
Libamus's famous question to the Christian " pedagogue " at Antioch
was propounded in a mood of exultant confidence, when Julian's
menaces against Christianity were filling his mind. " Well, what
is the Carpenter's Son doing now ? " " The Maker of the world,"
was the stern prompt answer, " He whom you scoffingly call the
Carpenter's Son, is now at work on a coffin ! " It was felt on both
sides that on the issue of the Persian campaign depended M great
measure the Church's prospects as to renewed tranquillity or overt
persecution. If Julian should return flushed with victory, he
would probably forget his former professions of supercilious toler
ance, and act upon alleged later menaces (which, however, might
be unauthentic, or exaggerated by report) of downright attack on
the worsMppers of the Crucified. But should Ms Eastern war be
termMated by defeat or death, it was inconceivable that any one
else would be able to reign on the basis of Ms anti-CMistian policy.
The suspense wMch had lasted for several months would be ended
M one way or another, and the Church would know what lay
before her — whether she must prepare for a new period of martyr-
conflict, or might pour forth her thanksgivings for a great deliver
ance, and triumph in the vindication of her Master's outraged
Name. For the Christian heart would be stirred with a yet deeper
VOL. i. z

338 The Age of the Fathers. [Chap.
interest by the consciousness that Julian had manifoldly set Mmself
to defy not only the Church of Christ, but its divine Head, whom
he usually spoke of as " the Dead Man." He had, m the winter
of 362, spent the long nights M composing his work agaMst CMis-
tiaMty, of which so many important passages are preserved M
the reply of Cyril of Alexandria. Thus it would be felt that he
was, more distinctly and consciously than any previous anti-
Christian ruler, challenging to a trial of strength the Lord whom
he had rejected, and prayer would often take the impatient form
of Usquequo Domine ? In tMs hush of high- wrought expectation
it is touchMg to find, at least in the case of one illustrious
Churchman, that Christian charity still followed, as it were,
m the track of the abhorred and dreaded " apostate," pleadmg
with Heaven for his conversion, as well as for the relief of
the Church. This was Didymus, the blind scholar and teacher
of Alexandria, whom the heathen historian calls by a name
descriptive of Ms intense mental energy, and praises as me
morable for writings M every branch of knowledge — who, as
Socrates and Sozomen tell us, was eminent in all learning,
grammar, rhetoric, philosophy M various departments, and com
petent on the shortest notice to enter on the gravest discussions.
He had been consoled by Antony for " possessMg the eyes of an
angel, wMch might well compensate for the loss of bodily sight,"
and had become, M Ms office of Principal of the Catechetical
School and elsewhere, a great champion of the Catholic faith, and
a successful opponent of the Arians, whose sopMsms, we are ex
pressly told, he overtMew not merely by logical force, but more
effectively by his persuasive fairness and candour. It was his
happiness to retaM a geMal tenderness of heart amid lifelong
bLmdness and protracted public anxieties ; he " was sorely dis
tressed," says Sozomen, " at the Emperor's offences against true
religion, both on account of his having thus gone astray, and
because of his contemptuous bearing towards the churches: he
fasted and prayed to God on account of this." And it was, the
story proceeds, while sleeping in a chair after these prolonged
devotions that he, " as it were in an ecstasy, seemed to see white
horses traversing the air, while the riders on them proclaimed,
' Announce to Didymus that this day, about this hour, Julian has
been slam; let him signify tMs to Athanasius the bishop, and
arise and take food.' " We cannot wonder that various reports
were current as to mysterious mtimations, received by various

xviii.] After the Pagan Reaction. 339
persons in the Church, of the same or a like tenor ; or that when
the news of Julian's fate was actually received in Antioch, the
CMistians, for the moment, were carried away by the mere inten
sity of their exultation, " not only leaping for joy in the churches
and at the shrines of martyrs, but even in the theatres proclaiming
that the Cross had triumphed, and shouting with one voice," as in
scorn of the impostor who had been the main agent in Julian's
perversion, " Where are now tMne oracles, 0 foolish Maximus ?
God and His Christ have conquered." Gregory, writing some
months later, records his own instinctive outburst of triumph:
" Where are now the sacrifices, and mysterious rites, and victims
slain openly and in secret ? where the much-praised art of divin-
mg from their entrails ? where those gods that went before thee
and with thee ? where those oracles against Christians, and those
tMeats of anMhilating the Christian name ? All gone — falsified —
vanished away — the boastings of the impious are proved to be but
a dream ! " But a little further on he " laments the destruction
of the impious," and would fain hope that pagans might be moved,
by this great ruM of their plans, to forsake their errors and follow
after the Truth ; he warns his fellow- CMistians, in their day of
joy and amid their songs of deliverance, to profit by their recent
chasteMng, to lay aside all thoughts of vengeance ; not to drag the
pagan oppressors before the tribunals, not to inflict on them what
they had inflicted on the Church, but rather to soften them by
the example of CMistian forbearance ; not to abuse the present
opportumty by pressing hardly on those who in their turn were
prostrate, but to show the difference between pagan and CMistian
teachMg by a generous unreserved forgiveness, and to "magnify
by kmdness the mystery," — the wonderful mercy which demanded
such thanksgivMgs as would be most M harmony with the Charity
of God. The successor of the " Apostate " was Jovian, who is said to
have manfully stood up for his CMistian faith while yet a soldier
in Julian's army, where, at his accession, he held the rank of First
of the bodyguards. The announcement which Jovian made, when
hailed as Emperor, to the effect that he was a Christian, could
hardly have been followed, as Socrates and others tell us, by a
declaration similar in purport proceeding from the whole body of
soldiers ; for Ammianus speaks of sacrifices and inspection of
victims being made on behalf of the new sovereign, and it may
well be that, in such a moment of agitation and at so perilous

340 The Age of the Fathers. [Chap.
a crisis, the usual pagan forms were gone through. Jovian is
described by Ammianus as a man who possessed some claims to
respect on the score of Ms father's services, was moderately well
educated, but was given to sensual gratifications — a fault wMch,
says the candid pagan, "perhaps he would have corrected from
an Emperor's self-respect," and brief phrases of Ammianus do not
justify Gwatkin's parallel between Jovian and such an Mfamous
debauchee as Michael the Drunkard. Our CMistian authorities
dwell fondly on his piety and gentleness — two virtues admitted by
Ammianus, who calls Mm " zealous for the CMistian law," and on
the whole of a kMdly disposition, and likely to be careful in the
choice of magistrates ; but they also go so far beyond facts as to
speak of him as " truly worthy of the sovereignty," and even as
" distingMshed for various high qualities," and somewhat unfairly
tMow the whole blame of that "ignommious treaty" wMch gave
back five provinces to the Persians on what Gregory Nazianzen
calls the " smcidal rashness " by which Julian had imperilled the
army. Of Jovian's outward appearance we can form as vivid an
image as of his predecessor ; and the two men were, in tMs as in
all points, contrasts to each other. Jovian was a man of almost
gigantic stature : for some time, we are told, " no imperial garment
could be found long enough to fit him ; " he walked with a heavy
step, casting keen glances around, and winning hearts by his
cheery expression of countenance, and ready, even in public, to
talk pleasantly with those nearest to Mm; altogether a frank,
easy-going, straightforward soldier — commonplace evidently as to
imperial qualifications, but one who, had he reigned longer than
the few months allotted to him, might probably have commanded
sincere attachment. He wrote, says Sozomen, "without delay to
the provMcial governors, ordering that the people should freely
assemble M the churches ; " he " restored to the churches and
clergy, the widows and virgms, all their numerous immunities,
and whatever had been granted for the benefit and honour of
religion by Constantine and his sons, and taken away under
Julian ; " and by a special order to a praetorian prefect, he placed
the church-virgms under the particular protection of the law.
NotMng less could be expected from one who had never compromised
Ms ChristiaMty, and who marched westward with the Christian
Labarum once more " displayed at the head of the legions."
But the question was asked on all hands, What line would the
new Augustus take M regard to Arians and Catholics ? We are

XVI 1 1.] After the Pagan Reaction. 341
told that " the leaders of the various communions repaired to the
Emperor, tMnking themselves respectively sure of obtammg from
him full license to speak against those whom they regarded as
their opponents." There is a subtle sarcasm latent M the words
of Socrates, which Gibbon takes pleasure in expanding into a
picture of " Homoousian, Arian, Semi-Arian, Eunomian bishops,
struggling to outstrip each other in the holy race" to Jovian's
audience-chamber. According to Socrates, the " MacedoMans "
came in foremost, and presented a memorial denouncing the
Anomceans. TMs was, in fact, a Semi-Arian deputation, led by
Basil of Ancyra, Silvanus, and Sophronius ; and according to Sozo
men, their request was — Either let the decisions of Seleucia and
Ariminum remain valid, or let the division which preceded those
Councils be respected, so that the several parties may meet in
distinct assemblies, where they will ; but let not the partisan
intriguers (i.e. the Acacians) who triumphed under Constantius be
allowed to have their own way. But Socrates and Sozomen seem
at issue on this matter : the former says that Basil and Ms com
panions appeared before the Emperor ; the latter makes them say
in their memorial that they have forborne to trouble him by re
pairing to his "camp" — a phrase often sigmficantly applied, as M
the Sardican canons, to the court of the " imperator " wherever
situated — but that if he wished to see them, they would come at
their own expense. Probably this may be reconciled by supposing
that the deputies, Basil and the rest, spoke in the name of their
absent brethren. But it is inconceivable that Semi-Arians could
have requested that the Ariminian settlement should hold good':
on this poMt Sozomen is evidently mistaken, for even if he is
referring to the first proceedMgs of that Council, wMch included
the deposition of Valens and Ursacius, those proceedMgs were dis
tinctly Catholic, in opposition to all forms of AriaMsm. Jovian's
answer, as given by Socrates, is as evidently genmne : " I hate con
tentiousness, and love and honour those who study unanimity."
He had resolved, says Socrates a little further on, to " cut off con
tentiousness by a bland and persuasive demeanour." So too, when
— if Philostorgius is correct — two Anomoean bishops, relations of
his own, presented themselves even before he had reached Antioch,
he preserved the same tone, and declMed to commit himself. The
Anomceans just now were in great need of Mternal uMty, as well
as of political countenance; for in Julian's reign, Eudoxius had
Mdeed prevailed on Euzoius to take some steps for the restoration

342 The Age of the Fathers. [Chap.
of Aetius (whom *the Acacians had used as a scapegoat) — accord
ing to Philostorgius he had even repeatedly voted for the elevation
of that heresiarch to the episcopate, which actually took place at
Constantmople ; and Euzoius for his part had held a little synod,
which reversed the sentence agamst Aetius ; but the troubles of
JMian's later months had prevented further action. Jovian's
accession did mdeed induce Euzoius to send the synodal letter to
Eudoxius : Aetius and Eunomius thereupon sent Theophilus, sur-
named " the Indian," to urge Euzoius to greater activity ; but by
the foolish resolution to consecrate, as Anomoean bishop of Con
stantinople, a person named Pcemenius, they alienated Eudoxius ;
and even a very extreme Anomoean bishop, Theodosius of Phila
delphia — who had maMtained that Christ was by nature morally
mutable, but had by Ms complete practice of the virtues been
lifted up into a fixed condition of goodness — himself declared
against the consecration of Aetius, and allied himself with eight
other prelates in a movement wMch Eudoxius gladly sanctioned,
being wont, we are told, to sneer at Ultra- Arians as " Mgh-flyMg "
and impracticable.
So turbid and restless at this crisis was the little pool of ex
treme Arianism; while, as we have seen, the Semi-Arian party
were calling for the ejection of all Ultra- Arians, and the establish
ment of the Seleucian Council's form of faith, or at least of the
status quo before that Council. And what was the IMe of the
Acacians ? It was eminently characteristic of the shiftMess of
their versatile cMef. When Jovian had arrived in Antioch, M the
October of 363 — under menacing tokens, as the pagans thought,
of the offended majesty of the gods whom he disowned— -he showed
great respect to the bishop Meletius : whereupon, as Socrates tells
us, Acacius and his companions entered Mto a negotiation with
the favoured prelate, and actually professed their acceptance of
the Nicene Creed. They then united with him in a synod,
and addressed a synodal letter to their " most religious sovereign,
beloved of God, who, as they were aware, had rightly regarded
the accurate representation of the orthodox faith as a main ele
ment of Christian uMty." The term Homoousion in the Nicene
Creed, says tMs document as given by Sozomen, was thought
strange by certaM persons; but it had been interpreted by the
fathers in a sound sense, as signifying that the Son was " begotten
from the Father's essence," and was "like in essence to the
Father ; " it involved no carnal conceptions of the divine Sonship,

XVI 1 1.] After the Pagan Reaction.

o^o

nor was " essence " to be understood in the sense which it bore
m Greek philosophy (i.e., probably, M a materialistic sense): it
was an effective barrier to Arius's impious assertion that the Son
was " made out of what did not exist," and was, as such, yet more
necessary than ever M presence of the audacities of Anomoeanism.
Accordingly, the writers of this letter informed the Emperor that
they were not to be reckoned among the perverters of orthodoxy,
but embraced and held the Creed of the holy Council of Nicaea ; a
copy of which was appended to their statement. This letter was
signed with twenty-seven episcopal names, some of them beMg
affixed by presbyters on behalf of their absent prelates. One may
well suspect the sincerity of a person like Acacius, but among Ms
party there may have been men who were sincerely persuaded that
the old objections to the Nicene formula were grounded on mis
apprehension ; and yet, with every disposition to put a good con
struction on tMs document, an observant Churchman would feel
that when the matter in hand was to give assurance of a genuine
acceptance of the Homoousion, the reference to a Nicene phrase
which that term had been Mtended to elucidate and safeguard was
spoilt for its purpose by the juxtaposition of another term which
had long been used with an anti-Nicene Mtention, and which of
itself suggested that there were two essences, one of them " like
to " the other, but not the same, therefore not both Divine.
Whether Meletius was conscious of this or not, he could hardly
expect that the suspicions of consistent Catholics would be allayed
by what would seem an evasive adoption of their test-word ; and
we know what Paulinus must have thought of tMs new Antiochene
declaration — perhaps we may ascribe to him an extant bitter
attack upon it. But what of a greater than Paulinus ? The Em
peror had, Mdeed, shown favour to Meletius ; but he had already
opened commuMcations with that one peerless representative of
orthodoxy " who transcended all other bishops in virtue, and who
had been so conspicuously persecuted M the cause of true religion."
A letter of greeting from the Emperor to Athanasius had dwelt on
his fearless contempt for suffering in behalf of the orthodox faith :
" You counted as notMng all perils and menaces of death. Our
Majesty therefore recalls you, and wills you to return for the
purpose of teachMg others the way of salvation. Come back to
the holy churches, and act as shepherd of the people of God, and
send up earnestly to Him your prayers in behalf of our Clemency.
For we know that by your supplications we and all the Christians

344 The Age of the Fathers. [Chap.
who are with us shall receive great assistance from the Most High."
Athanasius had already returned to Alexandria: the story of
Sozomen, that after Julian's accession he suddenly appeared M his
church, evidently fits in better with the circumstances of 363.
From Gregory's account it would appear that he received a second
letter from Jovian, requesting him to send a statement of the true
faith : by a sure Mstinct, the plain blunt soldier had discerned Ms
right gMde, and determined to believe with Athanasius, who, in
reply, presented to him what Gregory calls "a truly royal and
majestic gift," the " Epistle," as it is called, " to Jovian on Faith,"
wMch was framed in a Synod, McludMg the most learned of the
Egyptian bishops. The substance of it is as follows : " A religious
Emperor does well to be desirous of heavenly lore ; and we, after
givMg God thanks for this evidence of your piety, have thought it
best to remind you of the Nicene faith. TMs is the true faith, as
it may be known and read out of the DivMe Scriptures. For M
this faith did the holy martyrs die, who, beMg released from the
body, are now with the Lord; and it would have remaMed un
injured for ever, had not the wickedness of some heretics ventured
to falsify it, by describmg the Son of God as made out of nothmg,
a creature, and morally subject to change. Many were deceived,
even among those who were M Mgh repute, by these representa
tions, notwithstandmg the warnings of the Nicene Council. Now,
some are trying verbally to admit this creed, but to explain away
the force of its central term Homoousion; and these men, too,
blaspheme the Holy Spirit, by callMg Him a creature made by the
Son. But this Nicene faith is the original Christian faith, and is
now confessed by a vast number of different Churches," — here
Athanasius enumerates twenty, besides those of Egypt and " the
East ; " among the Western Churches he expressly mentions " all
Italy," and BritaM together with Spain and Gaul. "There are
exceptions," he admits, but he describes these adherents of AriaMsm
as "few" — a representation which, if strictly taken, must be
called a serious understatement ; and he appeals to the written
letters of the great majority of Churches, then in the arcMves of
the Alexandrian Church. The letter then recites the Nicene
Creed, and urges that all must needs adhere to tMs faith, as " apos
tolic and divMe" — all "subtleties and verbal arguments" beMg
laid aside. After repeating the main points of the old AriaMsm,
excluded by the Nicene anathemas, Athanasius remarks that the
formula of " Like " was not used by the Nicene fathers, because it

XVI 1 1.] After the Pagan Reaction. 345
did not express the full truth that the Son was " Very God from
God ; " and the formula of " Homoousion " was adopted, because
it expressed the truth that He was " genuine and true Son of One
who was true and essential Father." " Nor," he concludes — M-
ferring the one remainmg point from the brief Nicene reference
to the Holy Spirit — " did the Nicene fathers separate the Spirit
from the Father and the Son ; on the contrary, they glorified Him
with the Father and the Son in the one faith of the Holy Trinity,
because in the Holy TriMty there is but one Godhead " — alluding,
no doubt, to the wording wMch placed " belief in " the Holy Spirit
along with " belief m " the Father and the Son.
Such was the synodal letter which, in the September of 363, was
brought by Athanasius in person ; he was graciously welcomed,
and under the influence of his presence Jovian repeatedly, and with
not a little of humorous bluffness and occasional irritability,
repelled the pertmacious importunities of Lucius and some other
Arians of Alexandria, who endeavoured to detach him from
Athanasius by representing the archbishop as a man of demon
strably evil character — intolerant also, tyranMcal, and insMcere.
There was no one, said they at one point of these strange con
ferences, who woMd join with him in worship ; at another, they
admitted that he spoke well, but accused Mm of dissimulation ;
they complained of him for denouncing them as heretics, and for
takmg from them the ecclesiastical property. There needed not, it
would seem, the warning which some of the people, especially a
soldier, thought it right to give the Emperor as to the true character
of these memorialists, " the remnant of the party of that wicked
George ; " it was plam from the outset that Jovian could hardly
listen to them with patience : he relieved Ms feelMg of disgust by
sharp retorts, and also, once by spurring his horse and riding on
into the country, once by saying M his native Latin, " Strike !
Strike ! " and once, when Lucius craved a hearing, by an impatient
curse on those who had sailed with him and had not flung him
overboard. But he did not, even M his irritation, trench on the
maxims of toleration which he consistently observed M Ms public
conduct : " Who Mnders you," he asked, " from meeting for wor
ship ? " The request for another bishop — " any one rather than
Athanasius " — was contemptuously refused ; and Lucius and Ms
friends returned home in disappointment. It may here be observed
that Sozomen is mistaken M thinkmg that Euzoius wished to pro
mote an Arian eunuch named Probatius to the Alexandrian see :

346 The Age of the Fathers. [Chap.
Probatius was, mdeed, enlisted in the interests of Lucius through
Euzoius, but was punished with torture for lending Mmself to the
Arian Mtrigue. Jovian further showed his favour to the orthodox
of Antioch by placing them in possession of a new-built church.
Beside the proper busMess which had brought him to Antioch,
Athanasius had some part to take in the very delicate and perplex
ing question between Meletius and Paulinus. Seventeen years
before he had worshipped with the EustatMans ; and he must have
felt that they, under the gmdance of PaulMus, had borne the burden
of the day with unflinching firmness. But from the language of
Epiphanius and Basil, combined with what we know of Lucifer's
self-willed conduct, it appears that there were, on the other hand,
grave difficulties in the way of his continuMg to countenance his
ancient friends, now that their pastor had become a claimant for
the position of bishop of Antioch. As far as we can put together
the various indications into an intelligible narrative, Athanasius
came to Antioch with a disposition not to recogMse tMs clama on
the part of Paulinus, but rather to admit it on the part of Meletius.
He would feel, probably, that the Eustathians, in so far as they
had consented to Lucifer's act, had put themselves in the wrong,
and had no right to expect his support. The Alexandrian Council
had marked out a scheme for the reconciliation of the two parties :
that scheme had been traversed by Paulinus's consecration. The
Council regarded Meletius, his Arian consecration notwithstand-
mg, as validly a bishop, and also, on the ground of Ms inaugural
sermon, as essentially orthodox ; his position was thus recognised
before Paulinus received the laying-on of Lucifer's hands : on the
whole, therefore, he was to be preferred to Paulinus, M the matter
of the claim to the Antiochene prelacy. Thus we can understand
Basil's assertion, that Athanasius was "altogether desirous of entering
Mto commuMon with Meletius ; '' and he had a further reason for
holdMg aloof from Paulinus, in that the latter was represented to
Mm as havMg tendencies to Sabellianism, and to that Miperfect
recognition of Christ's perfect manhood wMch was formMg itself
into Apollinarianism. But, on the one hand, Meletius permitted
Mmself to show some coldness in regard to the desired uMon with
Athanasius ; unfriendly counsellors put obstacles in the way ; and
in spite of the wishes of the Alexandrian primate, notMng was
actually arranged. On the other hand, it is more than probable
that Athanasius Mmself was dissatisfied at the co-operation of
Meletius with Acacius in the recent Antiochene Council ; and it is

XVIII.] After the Pagan Reaction. 347
certain that his misgivmgs as to the orthodoxy of Paulinus were
removed by a statement of belief drawn up by Athanasius with Ms
own hand, presented by him, as a test, to the Eustathian bishop,
and thereupon formally accepted. " I Paulinus," the document
began, " thus think, as I received from the fathers ; that a perfect
Father exists and subsists, a perfect Son subsists, a perfect Holy
Spirit subsists," which is precisely what those meant to affirm who
spoke of TMee Hypostases. He accepts the language of the Alex
andrian Council M regard to the term " hypostasis ; " he believes that
M the Incarnation the Word was made flesh for us, of the Virgin
Mary and the Holy Spirit, without any change in His Godhead;
and that His Body was not destitute of soul, of perception, or of
" mind." He anathematizes the rejecters of the Nicene faith, the
asserters of the new theory which regarded the Holy Spirit as a
creature, the heresies of Sabellius and Photinus, and any others ;
and declares Mmself to keep the line of Nicene faith, and of the
statements abovewritten. Under these circumstances — havingfailed
to meet with any response from Meletius, and havMg succeeded in
obtaMing this full evidence of orthodox fidelity from Paulinus —
Athanasius saw no other course open to Mm than that of recognis-
Mg Paulinus and the Eustathians as the legitimate bishop and true
Church of Antioch ; and on Ms return, as it appears, to Alexandria,
he wrote a letter to Paulinus in that capacity — a letter which was
long exMbited with triumph by the EustatMans, although, if we
may rely on Basil's Mformation, the circumstances which had led
Athanasius to write it were not always fully stated or understood.
Athanasius, on Ms return home (February 19, 364), while he
reviewed the events which had occurred sMce Julian's death, would
cherish many a bright hope of peaceful days for the Church under
the sway of an honest and kindly prince who had defiMtely espoused
the side of the Catholic faith, but had as plaMly adopted a policy
of general toleration. To tMs the pagan orator Themistius alludes
when, as deputed by the senate of Constantinople to " express their
loyal devotion " to Jovian at Ancyra at the opeMng of the new
year 364, he not only dwelt on the impossibility of coercMg opMion
on religious matters, but says that the Emperor has established
religious freedom by a " law." Such a policy ought, in all fairness,
to procure some respectful consideration for the memory of an
Emperor who, however devoid of brilliant qualities, at all events
demonstrated the compatibility of orthodoxy with fair-mindedness,
on that tMone which, but a few years back, had been the seat of a

348 The Age of the Fathers. [Chap.
heretic and a persecutor M one. But the young Augustus, who
was only M his thirty-third year, died from sleepmg in a damp
bedroom, after a reign of less than eight months, on the 17th of
February, 364. He was succeeded, after ten days of interregnum,
by one who resembled him M military antecedents and statelMess
of outward bearing, and greatly excelled him M vigour and energy.
But while ValentMian I. might in two other respects be compared
with Jovian, M that "under the reign of an apostate he had
signalised Ms zeal for Christianity," and that as a sovereign he
was consistently tolerant of all forms of worsMp, proscribMg only
" those secret and crimMal practices wMch abused the name of
religion for the dark purposes of vice and disorder," he was never
theless one of those whose lack of self-control on one critical poMt
has brought scandal on the faith which they held. Valentinian's
besetting faMt was a temper not only irritable, but on slight pro
vocation apt to become savage. At first he took some pains to
curb it, but ere long it broke through all restraints, and showed its
tremendous energy, as in our own early Plantagenets, by outbreaks
wMch changed his voice, his countenance, Ms bearing — and M
judicial proceedMgs by the infliction of Mtense and protracted
torture. An MgraMed Illyrian hardness was M him enhanced by
a jealousy of conspicuous abilities, wealth, or even learning : he
was said even to have disliked men who were well dressed, and,
although wont to call timid people " filthy," he himself became a
prey to ignoble suspicions and irrational fears, which occasioned
the death of not a few persons, McludMg a lad of noble family, on
the charge of dealMg M magic. Personally ValentMian was blame
less in one momentous particular, " strictly pure in life whether
at home or abroad : " he disliked vulgar profuseness at table ;
he had a conscience awake to the duty of sparing the overtaxed
provMcials and of appoMting trustworthy officials, although, if he
heard that any of them were pitiless, he would say he had " found
a Lycurgus or a Cato ; " and he showed a certain vulgarity of mind
by graspmg at gain in disregard of justice. The grim story of his
pet she-bears, " Bit of Gold " and " Innocence," brought home to
the popular mind, perhaps with some exaggeration, the idea of Ms
cruel disposition. The heathen historian, after summing up Ms
character, praises him for having " stood midway between different
forms of religion," — meaMng, of course, in his public action as
Emperor. " He never disturbed any one on tMs head, nor com
manded that this or that should be observed in religious worship ;

xviii.] After the Pagan Reaction. 349
nor did he, by threatening prohibitions, bend the necks of his
subjects towards that which he Mmself observed, but left that
whole side of life, as he found it, undisturbed."
The accession of ValentMian forms a great epoch in the later
history of the empire; for he, by a virtual concession to the
demands of his troops, established once again the principle of a
divided sovereignty, which, except for two short periods m the
reigns of his son and of Theodosius I., was thenceforward accepted
and carried into effect under all the sovereigns who still bore the
Roman name, until the deposition of Romulus Augustulus in 476.
East andWest became, in one sense, two dommions; and ValentMian,
M disregard of a bold and faithful warmng, committed the grave
mistake of entrusting the East to the unworthy hands of his younger
brother Valens, a man who, although not wholly destitute of merits,
beMg firm in Ms friendsMps, and capable of showing a kindly con
sideration for Ms people when burdened by heavy taxation, was
grossly deficient M mental culture, pitiably dependent on advisers
who dictated Ms conduct, and ready at any moment, especially
when Ms timorous anxieties were awakened, to emulate Ms brother's
ferocity, to "keep the word 'death' on the tip of Ms tongue," and
to press for the extremest inflictions on men whose gMlt was but
suspected or inferred. Ammianus, after describMg his cruelties
toward persons suspected of using occult arts — especially M order
to ascertain the name of his successor — exclaims in an impassioned
paragraph that if Valens had received any " Mstruction," he would
have avoided the enormities mto which his ignorance and Ms fears
combMed to betray Mm. We shall soon see the line of policy
wMch he adopted in matters ecclesiastical : for the present let us
follow ValentMian Mto the West, where the central scene of Church
Mstory for the year 364 is laid at Milan, and the central figure in
it is Hilary.
The capital of Northern Italy had seen, withM the past sixty
years, much that was momentous for the interests of CMistianity —
the solemn legal establishment of equality of rights for professors
of all religions, the visit of Athanasius to Constans shortly before
the Sardican Council, the condemnation of PhotMus, the rejection
of the Semi-Arian "Macrostich," but also the triumph of an
AriaMzing tyrant over the conscience and steadfastness of a great
episcopal assembly. And now the tMone of this great church, but
lately occupied by that " metropolitan of Italy " Dionysius, whom
Athanasius, in spite of his momentary weakness which indeed was

350 The Age of the Fathers. [Chap.
soon repented of, calls a glorious confessor — tMs throne was, as it
had been ever since Dionysius's bamshment, occupied by Auxentius,
a Cappadocian, who had been condemned in the first session of
the ArimMian Council, and who possessed M ample measure the
resourceful and diplomatic promptitude wMch distinguished several
of the AriaMzing chiefs. He was regarded with repugnance and
distrust by the more intelligent churchmen M spite of Ms profes
sions of orthodoxy ; but Hilary, successful as he had been else
where in restoring Church unity on the basis of the Nicene faith,
found on his arrival at Milan late M 364, that he had a specially
difficult task before him. He set himself energetically to consoli
date a Catholic opposition to Auxentius (who, as Dr. Cazenove has
said in his "Life of Hilary," was indeed a "peculiarly treacherous
and aggravating specimen of Arian "), and to organize meetMgs of
hearty Catholics for worship, outside the churches of the city. In
tMs state of thmgs ValentMian came to Milan, in the summer
of 364. Impatient of all religious dissensions, and studious, like
Constantine, of religious as well as civil union among Ms subjects,
the Emperor put forth an edict which, as Hilary says, while pro
fessedly aimMg at the establishment of peace, seriously dis
turbed the church of Milan. He ordered, it seems, that the two
parties should again meet in the churches, under the episcopal rule
of the existing bishop. Hilary stimulated the Catholics to resist
ance, and at the risk of being thought an importunate meddler,
and without considering whether unrestraMed invective was likely
to serve the cause that he had at heart, he presented a memorial to
the Emperor, to the effect that Auxentius was " a blasphemer and
an enemy of CMist," and did in fact believe far otherwise than the
Emperor and everybody else supposed him to do. ValentMian was
moved by this declaration, and ordered Hilary and Auxentius, with
about ten other bishops, to hold a conference in presence of the
" Quaestor " (whose function was to draft the imperial edicts) and
the " Master of the Offices " (or cMef of the civil administration).
Auxentius began by challengMg Ms accuser. " This Hilary," he
said, " is not to be regarded as a bishop : he was condemned by
SaturnMus of Aries." The objection was overruled, and it was
ordered that the question of doctrine should be discussed. Embar
rassed by this requirement, Auxentius professed his belief M the
true Godhead of Christ, and His oneness in Godhead and sub
stance with the Father. " Let tMs statement," said the presidMg
officials, "be written down." Hilary also at once presented to

XVin.] After the Pagan Reaction. 351
the Quaestor, for the Emperor, a memorial or " libellus," recordMg
what had passed on this matter. It was next resolved that
Auxentius, having written down Ms own declaration of belief,
should read it in a public assembly. TMs he managed to evade,
but presented to ValentMian a memorial to the following effect :
"I do not see why the resolutions of six hundred bishops at
Arimmum should be reconsidered at the urgency of men like
Hilary and Eusebius, who were deposed from the episcopate, as
records prove, ten years ago. Some of the people, who have all
along held aloof from the communion of their bishops, have been
stirred up by these men to a yet bitterer hostility, and the recent
conference has been the result. In that conference I told the
imperial delegates that I never knew Arius, never saw him, never
knew what he taught. I hold what I learned from my earliest
childhood — the belief in one only true God the Father Almighty,
and in the true Son, God born of the true God the Father before
all ages and before every begMMng, and M His creative agency
and earthly life, death, resurrection, ascension, session M heaven,
and future return to judgment : also m the Holy Spirit, sent by
our Lord God and Saviour to His disciples. I never spoke of two
Gods : I know that there is but one God, and one Son from one
Father, God from God. I condemn every heresy, and especially
what was condemned by the Ariminian Council, an account of
whose acts I send herewith, and pray your Seremty to order it to
be read." This statement satisfied the government officials: the
rumour was rapidly disseminated among the people, that Auxentius
had made a very orthodox profession of faith, and was, after all,
agreed in faith with Hilary ; and ultimately ValentMian Mmself
came publicly to the cathedral, and received CommuMon from the
bishop. Hilary, of course, was Mdignant : " It is a mystery of
iniqMty ! Auxentius has deceived the Emperor : he has mocked
both God and man." ValentMian was not likely to tolerate further
inroads upon " peace ; " and an imperial order compelled Hilary
to leave Milan. He discharged his conscience under these dis-
couragmg circumstances by writing a fiercely polemical pamphlet
agamst Auxentius, in wMch, after dwelling on the Arian misuse
of Scripture language, he criticized severely the Arian bishop's
statement, and scornfully tirrew aside, in the first instance, its
appeal to the authority of Ariminum. That synod had been
deprived of all authority by the subsequent expression of the
Church's deliberate mind : its creed was a document framed at

352 The Age of the Fathers. [Chap.
Nice in Thrace, imposed by force on reluctant Western bishops.
What more need be said ? Then, Auxentius had dealt M carefully
pMased ambigMties as to the " true " Sonship or " true " Godhead
of the Son ; but his context showed that, in fact, he thought of the
Father as alone " true God." After referring to some points in the
Ariminian Creed, particularly the " Like to the Father according to
the Scriptures," Hilary accused Auxentius of using the term " God "
in regard to the Son, and other terms such as " Only-begotten "
and " born before time," M senses compatible with Arianism. " To
me," he proceeded, " that man is Antichrist, who does not confess
the Son to be of one Godhead with the Father ; and who does not
in such sort affirm the Father to be the one true God, as to
recogMse also true Godhead M the Son." And finally, in a fervid
address to those whom he could only reach by writing, on account
of his enforced departure from Milan, he warns them to beware of
Antichrist. " 'Tis an evil love of walls that has taken hold of you :
in an evil hour do ye revere God's Church as consisting of build
ings, and under their shelter talk complacently of peace ! Do you
not know that it is M these places that Antichrist is to take his seat ?
To me, far safer are hills, and woods, and lakes, and prisons, and
gullies : for there prophets have prophesied. Hold aloof, there
fore, from Auxentius as an angel of Satan, a foe of Christ, whose
professions to the Emperor were deceitful, whose deceits involved
mere blasphemy."
And so Hilary of Poitiers disappears from the general field of
Church life. He lived for some three years longer ; if, as Sulpicius
says, he died in the sixth year after his return, which would take
place about the end of 360 or the begMMng of 361, Ms life could
not extend beyond 367, and probably Ms last literary work
was the lost book " AgaMst Ursacius and Valens." But his last
act as a general Church leader was tMs stormy protest against the
success of heretical astuteness, and the failure of his struggles for
the Nicene faith in the second city of Italy. Yet his work on the
whole was no failure : it could truly be said of him, as in the
Parisian Breviary collect for January 14, that he "preserved
tMoughout all the Gauls the faith of the Consubstantial Word."
If we can believe the account given by Sozomen, the Emperor
Valentinian had already been appealed to by some of the Eastern
bishops M the revivMg contest between Catholicity and Arianism.
On Ms journey westward in the spring of 364, he was asked by
some prelates of the Hellespontine and Bithyman churches to

xviii.] After the Pagan Reaction. 353
permit them to meet m council: he answered their delegate
Hypatian of Heraclea, " For me, who rank as a layman, it is un
lawful to meddle in such matters ; but let the bishops, whose affair
it is, meet by themselves wherever they will." Sozomen proceeds
to say that the bishops, on receiving this message, assembled at
Lampsacus, and, after a two months' session, annulled the Ariminian
settlement as tainted by fraud, and affirmed the Homoiousion, in
sisting that the prelates deposed by the Anomceans should resume
their own sees, as having been ejected contrary to law. He
adds that the Lampsacene Council circulated its decrees, and sent
deputies to the Eastern Emperor, to inform him of their proceedings,
and to anticipate the exercise of the influence of Eudoxius ; that
these deputies found Mm at Heraclea in TMace, where he was
staying for the time, on Ms return eastward from parting with Ms
brother ; that Eudoxius had been beforehand with them, and had
so prejudiced the mind of Valens, that after finding it vain to
exhort them to keep on good terms with Eudoxius, he condemned
them to exile, assigned their churches to the partisans of Eudoxius,
and passed onwards into Syria. Socrates's account is very much
shorter : he says that the MacedoMans asked Valens, not ValentMian,
for leave to hold a synod ; that Valens, imagining them to agree
with Eudoxius and Acacius (Acacius, be it observed in passing,
who had but lately professed to accept the Homoousion), permitted
them to do so, and then proceeded to Antioch ; and that they
accordMgly met at Lampsacus in 365, seven years (by a lax
reckoning) after the Council of Seleucia, condemned the Ariminian
settlement and the Acacian and Eudoxian party, and, as a civil
war (of wMch more presently) was then engagmg public attention,
were able by this synodal action to strengthen MacedoniaMsm, and
bring its theory Mto prominence. The account of Socrates seems
decidedly preferable to that of Sozomen. It was hardly likely that
Eastern bishops should request license for assembling not from
their own sovereign, but from the Western Emperor ; and as it is
certain that ValentMian and Valens travelled westwards, not in
365, but in 364, while the civil war did not begin until the end of
September, 365, Socrates's arrangement of events seems in two
respects more probable than Sozomen's, — as to the sovereign whose
license was asked, and as to the time of meeting of the Council.
We may therefore suppose that the speech ascribed by Sozomen to
ValentMian must have been uttered, if at all, in different circum
stances ; and it must have been at the close of 364, just when
vol. 1. 2 a

354 The Age of the Fathers. [Chap.
Valens had returned to Constantinople, after parting from his
brother at Sirmium, in July, that the Semi-Arians, now also called
Macedomans, besought Ms permission to hold a synod. He was,
indeed, even at that time decidedly biassed in favour of the real
Arian party, although it was not until 367 that he received baptism
from their cMef Eudoxius. It is conceivable, to be sure, that he
was but imperfectly informed as to the various schools or sects of
Arianism, and so might be willMg to grant Ms license to an im
portant number of bishops without tMnkmg it necessary to consult
Eudoxius on the matter, and that thus the Semi-Arian Council
met at Lampsacus, probably at the beginning of 365. It reaffirmed
the position taken up by previous Semi-Arian assemblies at Ancyra
and Seleucia, severely condemned the ArimMian formulary, and
annulled the sentences passed by Acacians or by Anomceans
agaMst Semi-Arians in 360 ; but it also declared that any of its
members against whom charges had been brought should be open
to trial in a regular way before the neighbouring " orthodox "
bishops, — the accusers, as usual, incurring, on failure to prove their
case, the penalties wMch the charges, if established, would have
involved. The Council sat probably for two months, and then
its members dispersed under the complacent persuasion that they
had consolidated the " Homoiousian " position, and struck a tellMg
blow against the party wMch had triumphed under Constantius.
But they did not foresee the impression which such stringent dealing
would produce upon Valens. He was on Ms way tMough Asia
MMor to Antioch when the Lampsacene deputies sought a hearing.
He at once commanded them to profess agreement with Eudoxius :
they of course refused, for their very aim was to counteract that
prelate's tactics ; perhaps they even ventured to poMt out the
MsMcerity of his disavowal of AnomceaMsm at the end of 359.
Valens replied by a sentence of exile : he summoned a meeting of
Eudoxius's adherents, and ordered Eleusius, bishop of Cyzicus, a
prominent Semi-Arian, to attend. Eleusius was commanded to
concur M faith with the prelates assembled ; after some resistance,
he yielded to threats of exile and confiscation of his property. But
no sooner had he returned home than his conscience smote Mm for
his weakness, and he made public confession of his lapse before Ms
people assembled in church : " I am unworthy to be your bishop
any longer ; choose for yourselves another in my place." The
Cyzicenes woMd not hear of it : Eleusius had endeared himself to
them, and they constrained him to continue at his post.

xvi 1 1.] After the Pagan Reaction. 355
It was at this time that Valens began definitely to persecute
the Catholics. He sent Meletius of Antioch into exile ; but, to ;his
credit, as well as to that of Paulinus, the bishop of the Eustathians
was left undisturbed. He struck, however, with special directness
at the representative and natural leader of all "Nicenes." A
fragmentary Egyptian cMonicle says that Athanasius, in 365, was
attacked on the ground of many accusations ; and on the 5th of
May an imperial order was sent to Alexandria, commanding the
ejection of Athanasius under penalty of a large fine to be laid on
the civic authorities. The Church-people assembled m the Caesarean
church, and remonstrated so resolutely against tMs order, that the
magistrates, fearing a tumult, consented to refer the case to the
Emperor's further consideration. But this concession was only
obtamed after a month's agitation ; and from the end of the first
week of June several months passed over qmetly. Then, on the
even i ng of October 6, Athanasius, doubtless forewarned of danger,
left his abode in the precinct of the Dionysian church, and took
refuge in a country house near a cutting of the Nile called the New
River — for which, as the story grew, was substituted " the tomb of
Ms family." The flight was not an hour too soon. TMnkmg to
seize their prey while the people were asleep, the prefect Flavian,
and the " dux " or commanding officer Victorinus, came that very
night to the church, broke open the outer gate, entered the " atrium,"
and reached the upper rooms where the bishop usually lodged.
He remained in Mding, says the chronicler, until the 1st of February,
366, when an imperial emissary called Barasides or Bresidas
arrived with a letter from Valens. It was read publicly before the
prefect and the " dux," and was found to contain an order for the
restoration of Athanasius. No time was lost about obedience to
tMs new mandate; on the same day, attended by the municipal
authorities or "curiales" and a multitude of the Christian Mhabitants,
Barasides formally reinstalled the bishop in the church of Dionysius,
and so put an end to the last of five absences from Ms people,
nearly thirty-one years after that enforced journey to Tyre which
led to his first banishment. If we ask why Valens thus altered
Ms policy, the answer is probably to be found M a natural
apprehension of sometMng Like insurrection on the part of the
Athanasians, combined with the fact that his attention was
absorbed by the formidable revolt of Procopius, Julian's kinsman,
whom a sensational but fictitious story asserted to have been
secretly and solemnly designated by Julian as Ms successor. TMs

356 The Age of the Fathers. [Chap.
adventurer, after maturing Ms plans during the absence of Valens
from ConstantMople, suddenly appeared there at the new baths
of Anastasia, hastily arrayed in a gold-embroidered tunic, holding
a bit of purple cloth in one hand, but betrayMg his anxiety as to
the result in the pallor of his downcast face, in the quivering of
his limbs, and in the extreme difficulty with wMch he uttered, — as
Ammianus describes it, with " a faltering and dying voice," — a few
words to the soldiers, who answered by the shout of " Procopius
Emperor ! " The movement was not without elements of strength :
Procopius, weak-kneed as he was, might be called the heir of the
ConstantMian house, and would be regarded by the pagans as
their natural representative ; and the ignoble sovereign of the East
was then involved in all the odium of wMch his father-in-law and
minister Petronius had by pitiless exactions made Mmself the
object, M regard to the many poor and noble houses wMch were
" closed," says Ammianus, by his rapacity. Valens had heard of
the rebellion in the autumn of 365, while staying at Caesarea in
Cappadocia, where Ms attempts to disturb the Church were resisted
by the bishop Eusebius, with the assistance of the future bishop Basil,
who, although he had reason to complain of Eusebius, came from
his retreat expressly to support Mm in tMs emergency. Easily
scared by any peril, Valens was at first disposed to " tirrow aside
the imperial attire as a heavy burden," and although restrained
by Ms friends from " so unworthy a step," and induced to return
westwards, was discouraged by the failure of Ms attempt to take
Chalcedon, incensed by being taunted from its walls as an " Illyrian
beer-drinker," and obliged to see Bithynia pass under the domMion
of Procopius. In this unhopeful state he spent the main part of
366 ; and it was not until the end of May in 367 that the betrayal
of Procopius into his hands delivered him from anxiety. The pre
tender was instantly beheaded by his order : the story told by
Socrates, as to the hideous mode of death devised for him by the
cruelty of Valens, is refuted by the statement of Ammianus.
Valens was now free to turn his thoughts agaM to Mternal and
ecclesiastical affairs ; and the persecution which he had begun in
the precedMg year, and which the revolt had suspended, was
resumed under the auspices of Eudoxius. It was at tMs time,
probably, if not in the year precedMg, that he expelled from
Constantinople the congregation of Catholics, and closed the four
churches belongMg to the Novatians, who, as holding the Nicene
faith were not less obnoxious to the Arians. Their bishop Agelius,

xviii.] After the Pagan Reaction. 357
who led a life of austere simplicity, walking barefoot and using but
one scanty coat, was also sentenced to exile. But these severities
towards the sect whose members had, by recent troubles, been drawn
nearer to the Church, were presently abandoned out of respect for
a Novatian priest — afterwards a bishop — named Marcian, who had
once, before his ordination, held a post at court, and was now a
teacher of grammar to the daughters of Valens. For his sake, and
doubtless at his urgency, the Novatian churches were again opened.
But the domMant Arian party continued to make the Novatians
feel their enmity.
It was in the deep distress and perplexity inseparable from
such a time that the Semi-Arians, whose hopes as to the result of
their Council had been rudely interrupted, and who saw themselves
marked out, equally with the Catholics, as objects of Arian per
secution, held various consultative meetMgs, at Smyrna, M Pisidia,
in Pamphylia, and elsewhere M Asia MMor, the result of wMch
was a resolution to abandon their objections to the Nicene formula,
and to follow therein the example of Meletius. What help could
they hope for save M the protection of the Catholic West — of
ValentMian and of Liberius ? They resolved, says Sozomen, to
write to "the Roman bishop, and to the bishops M the West,
as to men holding a firm faith received from the Apostles, and
being pre-emMently bound to take forethought for religion." They
accordMgly deputed tMee bishops, EustatMus of Sebaste, Silvanus
of Tarsus, and Theophilus of Castabala, to visit the West, and to
present to its Emperor and cMef prelates the assurance of their
acceptance of the Homoousion. These deputies were Mstructed
not to express any dissent from Liberius M point of doctrine, but
to sign the Nicene Creed, and commuMcate with the Roman
Church. On arrivmg in Italy, they found that they could not
see ValentMian, who was then m Gaul, and principally at Reims ;
but Liberius, who was still in the Roman chair, although drawing
very near to the end of his episcopate, received them, and read
the letters wMch they brought. It was Mne years sMce he had
dishonoured Ms high place by compliance with the AriaMzing
party for the sake of regaining his home and see — a lapse repaired
by subsequent faithfulness. He was, at first, entirely Mdisposed
to trust or welcome Ms visitors : he bluntly told them that they
were Arians. They answered, if Socrates was correctly Mformed,
by assuring him that they had repented of their errors — that they
had already " denied " AnomoeaMsm, and had confessed the Son

358 The Age of the Fathers. [Chap.
to be " like in all tMngs to the Father," which confession, they
said, was nowise different from that of the Homoousion. If
this was so, they apparently meant, "The 'entire likeness,'
wMch covers Homoiousion, amounts, in our apprehension, to
Homoousion." This was, M effect, to repeat the evasion re
sorted to at Antioch in 363, and Liberius was by no means
satisfied; for Mdeed he had reason to be cautious M such a
busmess, and yet more so if he had known that Eustathius, though
a professed Semi-Arian, had twice accepted the ArimMian creed.
He required from his visitors a written statement of their belief ;
whereupon they drew up and presented to their " lord, brother,
and fellow-mMister Liberius," a document, m which they informed
Mm that, as representing the mMd of the bishops who had met at
Lampsacus, at Smyrna, and elsewhere, they desired to profess to
him, and to all the Italian and Western bishops, their acceptance
of the Creed of the 318 bishops of the holy Nicene Council, in
which "the Homoousion was holily and religiously asserted M
opposition to Arian perversity." TMs Creed they, and those for
whom they spoke, held and would maMtain to the end, as they
testified under their own hands, condemning Arius and his dis
ciples, and all who thought with him, and SabelliaMsm, " Patri-
passiaMsm " (an old Latin Mckname for the crudest form of Sabel
liaMsm), and all other heresies contrary to this Nicene faith ; and
especially anathematizing the ArimMian formulary, framed at
Nice M Thrace, and subscribed, " by means of fraud and perjury,"
at ConstantMople. They then added the Nicene Creed, with its
anathemas ; and with the variation, " And M one only-begotten God,
Lord Jesus CMist : " and appended a request (rather too like one
made by Ursacius and Valens to Julius) that if, after this voluntary
declaration of their faith, any one should calumniate them or those
whom they represented, such a person might come with letters
from Liberius to any orthodox bishops whom he should approve,
in order to a fair trial of the question. Liberius, on receiving tMs
paper, felt warranted in admitting the three delegates to com
munion, and gave them a letter, addressed in his own name as
"bishop of Italy," and on behalf of the Western bishops, to
sixty-four Eastern bishops as represented by the delegates, of
whom Cyril of Jerusalem was named second. He greeted them
as " brethren beloved," spoke of their document as " resplendent
with the light of the faith," accepted the doctrinal statement of
the deputies as orthodox and Nicene, and declared that it had

XVI 1 1.] After the Pagan Reaction. 359
"done away with every trace of suspicion." He annexed that
statement to his letter, as the best means of preventing all mis
apprehensions ; enforced the supreme authority of the Creed which
had been framed at Nicaea under divine guidance by a number of
prelates, equal to that of the servants "by whose aid Abraham,
through faith, overcame so many thousands ; " described that Creed
as " containMg the perfect truth, and as silencMg and overthrowmg
the whole multitude of heretics," as a "strong and insuperable
bulwark of the faith, beMg comprehended in ' the hypostasis '
and ' the name of the Homoousion ' " (a phrase which shows, as one
might expect, that he understood " hypostasis " in the Latin sense
of " substantia," as equivalent to " ousia "). He then enlarged on
the crimMal subtleties of ArimMum, and on the subsequent
rejection of the Ariminian " blasphemy " by almost all who had
been begMled, or rather coerced, Mto accepting it, among whom he
included the prelates addressed ; and concluded by a sigMficant
observation-^all the more sigMficant because connected with the
remark that the Easterns had now evidently come to a better
mind — " Whosoever, after this Council (of Western bishops), shall
declMe to anathematize Arianism, must be held excommunicate
from the Church, wMch does not recognise children of adultery."
TakMg their leave of Liberius, the delegates sailed for Sicily,
where a Council of bishops assembled to hear their profession of
Nicene faith, and to give them a letter of fraternal recogMtion ;
and it is evident that other councils were held for the same purpose
M other parts of the West. Fortified by a variety of synodal
letters, the Eastern deputies returned home, and a Council was
held at Tyana, in Southern Cappadocia, at the foot of Mount
Taurus, M the spring of the following year, 367. Eusebius of
Cappadocian Caesarea was the most distingMshed prelate M this
assembly, wMch Mcluded many who had accepted the Homoousion
with an evasive explanation, at Antioch, in 363. The documents
produced by the delegates were read and approved ; and a circular
was written to all those who had accepted the Antiochene
resolutions of 363, announcing the general agreement of a "far
greater number of bishops than those who had met at ArimMum,"
and exhorting the bishops to concur in the steps recently taken,
and to assemble at Tarsus before the end of the spring, in order
to a final synodal settlement on the basis of the Nicene Creed.
And now Mdeed it might seem as if the wounds of
Christendom were about to be healed by that general return

360 The Age of the Fathers. [Chap.
of the Semi-Arians to Nicene orthodoxy, wMch Athanasius
and Hilary, years before, had loved to anticipate. But tMs was
not to be. On the one hand, thirty-four Semi-Arian bishops
assembled at Antioch in Caria, and declared that, with all their
desire to promote unity, they could not accept the Homoousion,
and must stand by the Creed of the Dedication Council, ascribed
to " Lucian the martyr," and maMtaMed by many of their pre
decessors M the midst of great tribulations. On the other hand,
Eudoxius, naturally alarmed at the prospect of a reMforced and
united Catholicism, induced the Eastern despot to proMbit the
meetmg at Tarsus under severe penalties. And thus, in the
weighty words of Newman, after " enough had been done, in
the external course of events, to unite the scattered portions of
the Church, and that end was on the poMt of accomplishment, the
usual law of Divine providence Mtervened, and left the sequel
of the union as a task for CMistians individually." It may here
be observed that of the three -delegates, Silvanus alone proved
steadfast M Ms Nicene profession; Eustathius relapsed into Ms
" Protean " instability, and Theophilus was his thorough-goMg
supporter. The failure of the attempt to hold a Council of Reumon
at Tarsus in 367 is an epoch in the doctrinal history of the Church
in that age; and it was also connected with more definitive
resolutions on the part of Valens agaMst the orthodox, for it was
M that year that he received baptism from Eudoxius, their most
formidable foe. But it seems that his first war with the Goths,
wMch broke out M 367, and was the immediate occasion of his
application for baptism, suspended for nearly three years any
purpose which he may have formed as to a more systematic attack
on the adherents of the faith of Nicaea.
In turnMg our attention, as we may now do, to the Western
part of the Church, we have first to record the death of Pope
Liberius, who closed an eventful episcopate in circumstances
wMch might make men forget the dark episode of his temporary
failure. He had returned to full Nicene orthodoxy; he was
agam a representative of the traditional faith of the Roman Church ;
and having been " converted," he had been permitted to " strengthen
his bretMen " by furthering the reunion of a large body of Semi-
Arians with the Church in the summer of 366. On the 24th of
September he died ; and a series of unhappy events is associated
with the establishment of his successor. In order to appre
ciate it, we must look at the condition of the CMistian Church

xviii.] After the Pagan Reaction. 361
and clergy M the capital of the West, the ancient capital of
the world.
Several high Roman families had by tMs time embraced
ChristiaMty. Emment among these patrician Christians was
Sextus Petronius Probus, praetorian prefect of Italy and Illyricum,
the head of that great AMcian house which was the first of the
senatorial families to embrace the faith, and which afterwards,
under the Gothic monarchy, had a representative in BoetMus.
Probus is depicted by Ammianus in not very pleasMg colours, as
" pMMg when apart from prefectures," disposed to be " haughty
towards the timid, and timid towards the bold," and as having
oppressed the provMcials M order to gratify Valentinian's greed
for money. We cannot, then, attach much value to Claudian's
praise of Mm as largely beneficent, and unspoiled by prosperity ;
and Ms Christianity seems to have been, for practical purposes,
superficial. But Ms wife Anicia Proba, who lived to receive from
St. Augustine a letter of religious advice, was famed for her chari
ties and good works ; and their palace, renowned for its magmficent
marbles, was the "rendezvous," as De Broglie expresses it, of
Christian senators, and a scene of princely hospitalities and rational
pleasures which attracted the younger Christians of Rome. In
short, the Christian community of Rome at this time was M a
condition Mgh above social insignificance : it was but a few years
before that the burial of Junius Bassus, who died prefect of Rome,
and a " neophyte," m 359, had been the occasion of a great work
of CMistian art M the form of a marble sarcophagus, representing
m its sculptures " a cycle of consecutive ideas, all centring in
Christ," as enthroned above heaven and between two apostles, and
combMing Old Testament scenes from the Fall onwards, with
Mcidents of Holy Week ; and a similar tomb, equally Christian in
its symbolism, was to be erected, several years later, in memory of
Probus and Proba. And in many a household less dignified than
the AMcian, there was wealth enough to be lavished on Christian
objects of all kinds, among wMch, naturally, offerings to the
bishop and to the various churches would hold a prominent place.
Liberius doubtless received many such tokens of religious attach
ment, especially from Christian ladies of high condition : when he
sate on his throne in the apse of the broad five-aisled St. Peter's,
and looked across the Apostle's tomb towards his people m the
stately pillared nave, he must have presented an appearance of
unusual majesty ; and his carriage, as it traversed the city on the

362 The Age of the Fathers. [Chap.
east bank of the Tiber, would be recognised by many respectful
salutations from heads that carried themselves proudly enough in
Rome. The advantages and comforts of Ms rank had been but
too vividly present to Ms MiagMation during exile; and Felix,
his rival, had struggled hard to retain Ms hold upon them. The
heathen Mstorian could not wonder that such a position should be
an object of passionate contention ; those who desired it, he says,
had reason to strive energetically for it, although they would be
the happier for ignoring Roman grandeur altogether.
And so it came to pass that, on Liberius's death, a fierce com
petition ensued with results both scandalous and tragical. The
friends of Felix put forward Damasus, priest of the church of St.
Laurence, a mile outside the Tiburtine gate — the least altered of
all the " patriarchal basilicas," and full of interest for every visitor ;
while the deacon Ursicinus or Ursmus had the support of the late
bishop's special circle. AccordMg to what Jerome says and
Ambrose implies, Damasus had the majority of votes, and was
duly elected ; but Ursinus was shortly afterwards consecrated by
the bishop of Tibur and a few other prelates, M a corner of the
new basilica on the Esquiline, wMch bore the name of its founder
Liberius, and also of an unknown SicMinus, and "under many
popes," as Marion Crawford says, " was rebuilt and grew until for
its size it was called, as it is to-day, ' The Greater St. Mary's.' " On
Ms takMg possession of this church, the Damasine party attacked
his supporters ; a conflict ensued, and persons of both sexes were
"slaughtered," Jerome admits, "with the utmost cruelty;" on
that one day, says Ammianus, 137 corpses were found on the
floor of the church. He throws the blame of these horrors on both
parties : the detailed story of the Ursinian faction, preserved M a
memorial by two Luciferian sectarians, insists that the priority and
legitimacy of election was with Ursinus, the candidate of those who
had been faithful to Liberius in Ms exile ; that Damasus, on the
other hand, represented the Felix party, and after the consecration
of Ursinus Mvaded the Julian church (S. Maria M Trastevere), at
the head of a mob of charioteers and low fellows armed with clubs,
committed a slaughter wMch lasted three days, then forcibly got
possession of the Lateran, and there caused Mmself to be conse
crated, and bribed the authorities to banish Ursinus ; that he then
tyrannized over the faithful, imprisoned seven priests, and after
they had been rescued, pursued their deliverers, at 8 a.m. on October
26, to the Liberian church, where his supporters — here described as

xviii.] After the Pagan Reaction. 363
charioteers, gladiators, grave-diggers — "together with the clergy,"
slew 160 persons (observe how numbers mount up) and wounded
many more. Three days later, the Ursinians recited Ps. lxxix. in the
church, demanded a council, and procured the recall of their bishop ;
but he was again exiled, and Damasus then committed a third
massacre M the church of St. Agnes outside the Walls. It would
be absurd to accept such a statement as trustworthy : and it is
difficult to resist the evidence in favour of Damasus's right as
regularly elected ; even if we suspected Ambrose of prejudice, the
impartial pagan Mstorian would decide our opmion by saying that
the expulsion of UrsMus was due to " the just suffrages of truth ; "
but it is at least as difficult to reject the conclusion that Damasus
was, to some extent at least, cogMsant of, and so far responsible
for, the Mdeous results of those forcible means wMch were taken
for the defeat of Ms adversary. He may have shut his eyes to
them, or persuaded himself that for the maMtenance of legal right
it was sometimes necessary to employ very rough agencies ; but
they must have remMded Mm of what he has himself put on record,
the fierce party contests of Roman Christians shortly before the
edict of Milan, as to the treatment of the lapsed — contests wMch
repeatedly disturbed the public peace, and passed through "sedition"
into " slaughter." And we cannot ttrink of Ms accession without
a melancholy reflection on the extent to which the secular spirit,
with its accompaniments of violent partisansMp and the free use of
" carnal weapons," had profaned the house of the Lord, the Church
of Christ, M the ancient centre of Christendom. And when we
connect tMs unhappy event with the sarcastic saying of the typical
pagan aristocrat Praetextatus, prefect of the city, to Damasus, " Do
you people make me bishop of Rome, and I will forthwith turn
Christian," we cannot but acknowledge that the fine gold of the
Roman episcopate had become dimmed by worldly prosperity, even
as the ArianizMg bishop of ConstantMople, some years later, had
become secularised by pompous surroundings ; and that Ammianus
was not unjust when he mdirectly warned the prelates of great
cities to avoid temptations wMch might place them M unfavourable
contrast with their provMcial bretMen, whose " frugality of habits,
humility, and simplicity of bearing recommended them as men
of pure and modest character to the everlasting Deity and His true
worsMppers." CMysostom, we may be very sure, would have
disapproved the pomp wMch encompassed the ordinary life of a
Roman bishop : Ms own tendency, Mdeed, was to an error M the

364 The Age of the Fathers. [Chap.
opposite direction: but Tillemont's comment is significant when
(with an eye, no doubt, to some lordly French Merarchs) he applies
Ammianus's words to show that " prelates who tMnk to exalt their
digMty and attract popular veneration by external magMficence
se trompent extremement." That statelMess, m Damasus's own
case, gave an impression of haughty coldness, we Mfer from some
expressions of St. Basil ; but it is only eqmtable, and it is certaMly
pleasant, to bear M mind Ms worthier activities — to tMnk of him as
vigilant agaMst the lures of ApollMarianism, corresponding with
Jerome on Biblical questions, draining the waters of the Vatican
hill Mto a channel still M use, erectMg a baptistery on the north
side of St. Peter's, and making the catacombs more accessible.
We can best understand the pertinacity of the UrsMian opposition
by considering the evil associations attachMg to the party of the
Mtrusive Felix, wMch Damasus would be regarded as representing.
UrsMus was recalled by ValentMian on the 15th of September of
the next year, 367, but was again baMshed on November 16,
together with seven of his partisans, in consequence, says the
" libellus," of bribery freely used by Damasus ; and thus, by the
agency of Praetextatus as prefect of the city — an office wMch he
exercised, we are told, with a happy uMon of vigour and benevolence
— "the disturbance excited by the strifes of the Christians," as
Ammianus expresses it, "was allayed," and Rome enjoyed "a
profound peace most agreeable to the feelMgs of her citizens."
MeanwMle, one fruit of tMs unhappy strife was an ordmance
highly congeMal to the feelMgs of the Roman clergy : ValentMian
enacted that causes in which prelates, as such, were concerned
should be tried not by the civil tribunals, but by the bishop of
Rome and Ms colleagues. To this enactment the bishops assembled
at Rome, some years later, appealed ; and to it also Ambrose made
explicit reference when M his 21st epistle he quoted, as " the words
of the rescript," Valentinian's order that M matters purely
ecclesiastical " the judge should be one who is neither mferior in
office, nor different m right (nee munere impar, nee jure dissimilis),
from the parties concerned : " the sense of wMch Ambrose con
denses M the pMase which he ascribes to that Emperor, " It is not
my busMess to judge between bishops." It will be observed that
tMs does not bestow on the clergy any such immunity from civil
tribunals in causes not spiritual as was partially conceded by
JustMian, and more fully by Charles the Great, with results
calamitous alike to society and to religion.

xvi 1 1.] After the Pagan Reaction. 365
As soon as the abatement of these troubles allowed the new
pope to attend to general Church affairs, he held, perhaps in
368 or 369, a Council, wMch excommunicated the veteran
Arians Ursacius and Valens, and enforced the authority of the
Nicene Creed. Athanasius received the synodal letter, and in
reply expressed some surprise that the same measure had not been
dealt out to Auxentius of Milan ; a suggestion which was adopted
by a subsequent Council at Rome (which addressed an extant
letter to the Illyrian bishops), and by others M Spain and
Gaul. Athanasius at the same time wrote his celebrated " Letter
to the Africans," i.e. to the bishops of Western Africa, Msisting on
the contrast between the numerous Arian formulas and the sMgle
and all-sufficMg creed of the Church, exposing the futility of
Arian attempts to claim authority for the later, as distinct from
the earlier, proceedMgs of ArimMum, and (as in his work on
" The Councils ") assuring those who disliked the term Homoousion
that if they believed in the Son as eternal and uncreate, they
believed all that Homoousion implied.
The Roman clergy were obliged to submit to what must have
been a severe humiliation when ValentMian put forth a law,
addressed to Damasus, and read M the Roman churches on July 29,
370, to the effect that ecclesiastics, and those who styled themselves
" Continents," or celibates, were to abstaun from visiting widows
and heiresses under ward, and were also declared incapable of in
heriting, or of otherwise acquiring, anything from women to whom
they might have attached themselves on a religious pretext : any
such bequest or donation was to be forfeited to the imperial
treasury. The " religious pretext " seems to indicate the position of
a spiritual adviser or director ; and Gibbon praises the " honesty "
of Jerome's admission, made twenty-four years later — " I am not
complaming of tMs law, but I am sorry that we should have
deserved it. The proMbition was made with foresight, and in the
interests of strictness ; yet, after all, it has failed to curb the
avarice of the clergy." We may return to this poMt further on,
M connexion with Jerome's experience during his own acquamt-
ance with Roman society.
The seventieth year of the century was, however, destined to
be marked by far different warnMgs for CMistendom than a gentle
restriction on clerical avarice could express. WMle ValentMian
was thus correcting the worldliness of Roman ecclesiastics, and
Damasus was fortifying Ms position against Ursinian intrigues, a

366 The Age of the Fathers. [Chap. XVIII.
great epoch was at hand for the distracted Eastern Churches : a
great persecution in the Mterests of heresy was to be Maugurated
by a worthy successor of Constantius ; and a great episcopate,
remarkable for its concentrated and accumulated sorrows, and for
the nobleness and fervour of spirit wMch confronted and endured
them, was to immortalise a name only second to that of
Athanasius.

CHAPTER XIX.
THE EPISCOPATE OF ST. BASIL.
The Eastern Emperor Valens returned home, after concluding a
peace with the Goths, towards the end of 369. His designs for
harassMg Ms Catholic subjects were now revived, and by no means
checked by the death of his spiritual counsellor Eudoxius. That
unprincipled diplomatist, the representative of the political Arians —
whose influence, two years before, had frustrated the effect of the
recall of Eunomius, during the Gothic war, by prevailing on Valens
not to give Mm an audience — closed Ms career in May, 370, when
he had gone to Nicaea for an episcopal consecration. Thereupon
the small number of Catholics at Constantinople ventured to make
a certain Evagrius their bishop ; but Valens, indignant at their
boldness, drove the new prelate away, and gave Ms sanction to the
election of DemopMlus, a nobly born ThessaloMan, and a moderate
Arian, with considerable persuasive ability, who, as bishop of Bercea
in TMace, is said by Hilary to have recommended an Arian creed
to Liberius. TMs translation took place shortly after midsummer ;
and accordMg to the unfriendly (because ultra- Arian) Philostorgius,
the usual acclamation "He is worthy," at the entMonement of
DemopMlus, was interrupted by some outcries of "He is un
worthy." His accession was the signal for an outbreak of Arian
cruelties ; against which, we are told, eighty ecclesiastics of Mgh
character, of whom Urbanus is named the first, were sent to re
monstrate with Valens, or petition for his Mterference. They saw
Mm at Nicomedia : he dissembled his wrath, and, it is said, ordered
the prefect Modestus to seize and destroy them. This was done,
probably on the 5th of September, by placing them on board sMp
as if they were to go into exile, and ordering the sailors, when they
were well out to sea, to set the vessel on fire and abandon it. It
has been proposed to explaM the deaths of these men by the
hypothesis of accidental fire, or to suppose that the death of one or

368 The Age of the Fathers. [Chap.
more was exaggerated Mto that of eighty by the tradition wMch
Socrates had received. The strongest objections to the story are
the mention of " one presbyter " by Gregory Nazianzen when he
is professedly givMg an account of " the tragedy " (although else
where he uses the plural), the silence of Basil about so great a
crime on the part of Arians, and, perhaps not less, his friendly
correspondence with Modestus in after-days. Whatever was the
fact, it was the commencement of a reign of terror, on which
Gregory expatiates with indignant energy. But before it assumed
its full proportions, an event took place wMch, if its sigmficance
was at all adequately perceived, must have tended to brace and
cheer the spirit of the menaced Catholics of Asia MMor.
Basil, well named the Great, was at tMs time a priest at
Caesarea M Cappadocia, the city of Ms family and Ms birth, wMch
in the third century was credited with a population of four hundred
thousand. He had been born of noble and MgMy esteemed parents
about 329, and M early youth had frequented the celebrated schools
of Caesarea, where he excelled Ms fellows and equalled Ms teachers ;
and after some stay at Constantinople, where he attended the
lectures and secured the regard of LibaMus, had gone to study
at Athens, where he found intellectual activity M combination
with rough modes of " taking the conceit out of freshmen "- — from
wMch, however, he was exempted, partly tMough the mfluence of
Gregory, with whom he formed a close and religious friendsMp.
They lodged and read together, and ere long Mcurred some jealousy
tMough the exclusiveness of their compaMonsMp. TMs was when
Basil was about twenty-one. He became proficient M all secular
studies, McludMg that of medicine, which, we are informed, was
forced on him by Ms weak health. But the academic life was to
Mm " an empty happmess ; " it did not satisfy Ms spiritual
aspirations; disregarding all remonstrance, he tore himself away
from the society of fellow-students and lecturers; returned for
a while to Caesarea, was there detained, says Gregory, "M the
public interest," and so came under the Mfluence of his pious
sister MacrMa, who saw that his weak point was the literary vanity
of a clever young man, and induced him to study ascetic types of
devotion by visiting the monasteries of Syria and Egypt. In 358
he took the first step towards a ministerial career by becoming a
Reader, and then went into religious retirement on the banks of
the river Iris in Eastern Pontus, wMch, M order to allure Gregory,
he describes in terms that indicate an almost modern appreciation

xix.] The Episcopate of St. Basil. 369
of Mghland scenery. " A lofty mountain, thickly wooded, watered
by broad streams ; below it a level space fenced by trees, enclosed
on two sides by glens — like an isle of Calypso ! " Gregory, to tease
Mm, caricatures the scene as "your mouse-hole, with sunlight
peering as through a chimney ; your breakneck precipices, and
the ceaseless roar of your cataract ! " and after paying him a visit,
makes fun of the rude cell, the coarse fare, the toilsome vine-plant
ing. A recluse so distingMshed as Basil could not but do much
to promote monastic life M that country ; while at the same time
he was active M conducting what we should call missions, and
awakening religious fervour. EmergMg from tMs tranquil retreat
in the year of the Council of Seleucia, he accompanied Ms name
sake, the eminent Semi-Arian bishop of Ancyra, to ConstantMople,
and was a witness of the disastrous triumph of the Acacian
Arianism. In 362 he returned to Caesarea and was ordaMed priest,
but very soon incurred the selfish jealousy of Ms bishop Eusebius,
a pious but very Mferior man, who had been abruptly transferred
from a lay condition to the episcopate before he had acquired the
clerical spirit. In order to prevent an outbreak of party feeling,
Basil returned for a time with Gregory Mto Pontus, where he had
a curious correspondence with Julian, but was recalled by Eusebius
— in consequence, it appears, of earnest remonstrances from
Gregory — amid the difficulties attendant on an expected visit of
Valens in 365. He " made out the programme of resistance, and
at the same time showed all possible respect to Ms bishop," whose
entire confidence he thus secured, becommg "a staff to Ms old age,"
and practically vicar-general of the diocese, although, as Gregory
says, he was still in the secondary place of a presbyter. He had
been consulted by Eustathius and other bishops when on their way
to the Lampsacene Council; and he now stood out as the most
conspicuous ecclesiastic under the degree of bishop tMoughout
Asia MMor. In Ms own city, beside Ms spiritual work, such as
framMg of prayers and monastic rules, and the good ordering of the
clergy, he knew how to wM hearts by providing for bodily needs,
entertaiMng foreigners, taking care of virgMs, and especially by
using Ms influence to procure relief for the poor M a famine the
most grievous witMn memory ; and it is expressly recorded that
Ms charity on this occasion extended to "the children of the Jews."
Naturally, he was admired and almost idolized ; persons used to
imitate his outward man, his slow walk, Ms deliberate speech, Ms
absorbed look — with results more or less ridiculous, and perhaps
vol. 1. 2 b

370 The Age of the Fathers. [Chap.
not without a needless increase of Ms "donnish" stateliness of
bearing and his inaptitude for general conversation, wMch Gre
gory admits, while he says that amid intimate friends he could be
playful and tell a good story. But a change was at hand. It
was apparently in June, 370, that the archbishop or " exarch " of
Caesarea " gently breathed Ms last," as Gregory says, " in the arms
of Basil ; " and the election to tMs illustrious see became instantly
a subject of absorbMg interest tirroughout the Pontic "diocese,"
which included Cappadocia and Eastern Pontus among its
provinces, and had Caesarea for its head-city. The religious
feeling of Caesarea was naturally favourable to the appoint
ment of Basil as the successor of Eusebius ; but strong objec
tions were raised — partly, or professedly, on the score of his weak
health, but more really, although of course less openly, from a
dislike and dread of Ms lofty and single-minded character — among
the upper classes, the holders of Mgh civil office, on the one hand,
and the coarse, irreligious, and dissolute, on the other. TMs
opposition possessed the sympathy of several of the suffragans of
the archbishopric. These prelates had their own reasons for depre
cating the elevation of one so majestic in Ms spirituality, and
certain, as events proved, to be so severely observant of episcopal
irregularities ; they therefore set themselves to work — as Gregory
says, by Mtrigues and conspiracies — against his election. But they
did not succeed. Eusebius of Samosata, and the elder Gregory,
bishop of Nazianzus, exerted themselves in his favour. The latter
" wrote, advised, gave his testimony " successfully for Basil, and M
that sense, as his son expresses it, " voted ; " and although so weak
and ill that he looked like a corpse on its bier when he was laid on
his travellMg litter, insisted on making the short journey from Ms
own "rustic" church to Caesarea, and there had the happMess
of laying Ms hands on Ms son's dearest friend, and placing him,
duly consecrated, M the episcopal seat, after which he returned
home with health improved by the effort. When thus enthroned,
the new primate was far from disappointing the high expecta
tions that had been formed about him. His affectionate solicitude
for all orders of Ms flock, especially for all sufferers, as the
lepers and the poor ; Ms foundation of a hospital " like a town
in itself" outside the city, well furnished with all medical
appliances; his erection of a new cathedral with adjacent build-
Mgs ; Ms conscientious strictness M the ordination of clergy ;
his zeal in the exercise of discipline ; his activity in preaching ;

xix.] The Episcopate of St. Basil. 3 7 1
his readMess as an adviser and a comforter ; — all this gave token
of a spirit which proved its right to rule ; and it is significant that
once when he was rudely menaced by a Mgh civil functionary,
the " armourers and weavers " were foremost in the popular
demonstration thus provoked. At the same time his digmfied
gentleness, devoid of all ignoble flattery, and exMbitmg itself in
action rather than in language, overcame the unfriendlMess of the
malcontent suffragans, until they learned to thMk that their well-
beMg lay M close union with their chief.
TakMg, then, the episcopate of Basil for our central point, it
may be convenient to review the three main districts, so to speak, of
labour or of solicitude, into which Ms maMfold cares and burdens
might divide themselves. These are — the persecution by Valens
— the distractions and troubles of the whole Church — and the local
or personal difficulties which beset the great bishop nearer home.
I. First, then, for the new Arian persecution, the fourth as we
may reckon it with reference to those of 340, 355, and 360.
It differed in one important feature from those for wMch Con
stantius was responsible, in that the Emperor did not, in this
case, profess to be a theologian, and simply lent Mmself to the
purposes of that party to wMch, when represented by Eudoxius,
he had once for all entrusted the keepMg of his conscience
and the shaping of Ms religious policy. Valens was notoriously
illiterate, and his addiction to AriaMsm was a mere dogged
unmtelligent acceptance of the creed of the bishop of Con
stantMople. But princes who were consciously in the dark as to
the merits of a theological question have — as M the case of Louis
XIV — been capable of determinately oppressMg the maMtainers
of a particular side, under the dictation of those who represented
the other. TMs was the case with the brother of the tolerant
ValentMian. We have seen how he had acted M BithyMa, when
exasperated by the Catholics of Constantinople ; he found no
difficulty in enforcing conformity to AriaMsm in Galatia ; and we
find Mm at Ancyra, the Galatian capital, M July, 371, when he
was travelling leisurely through Asia Minor. He was preceded
in tMs journey by Domitius Modestus, praetorian prefect of the
East, a partisan of the Arians, and a gross flatterer of Valens
for Ms own purposes ; and Modestus's approach was M turn
heralded by Arian bishops, of whom the aged Euippius, with
whom Basil had been on friendly terms, was the chief. Their
object was either to lure Basil into some concession, or to find

372 The Age of the Fathers. [Chap.
matter for an accusation to be laid before Valens. Basil steadily
refused to admit Emppius to Ms commuMon. This, of course,
Mcreased the exasperation of the Arians; and at last, in
November, Modestus arrived at Caesarea, and summoned the
archbishop to his presence. He came, says Gregory, as readily
as if he were coming to a festival. Then ensued one of the
most memorable conversations in Church Mstory, which has
doubtless been amplified by Gregory's rhetorical vein, but the
substance of which seems trustworthy. After trying the effect
of persuasion, or, as Theodoret says, of "gentle words," and
advising the bishop not to stand out agaMst the Emperor's religion
" for the sake of a little dogmatic Mcety," he took a more impera
tive tone. " What do you mean, Basil " (for he would not call
Mm bishop) " by settMg yourself up alone against the will of
the Emperor ? " " Explain," said Basil. " Why, you do not
accept the Emperor's creed, to wMch all others have given in their
submission." " That is because I, who am one of God's creatures,
cannot worsMp a being supposed to be a creature ; " he alluded
mamfestly to the idolatry involved, on the Arians' own showmg,
in their worship of the so-called Mghest of creatures, as elsewhere
he says that with Arians " polytheism is dominant," that " they
have a great God and a little one." Modestus made a foolish
rejoinder about his own digmty. Would it not be an honour to
Basil to take his side, and be associated with Mm ? " You are, no
doubt, a prefect," said Basil, " and one of those who rank as
' Illustrious ' " (the Mghest class of officials of the empire) ; " but
as for the honour I should get by beMg associated with you, it is not
greater than that of being associated with any of my own people."
Modestus, losing his temper, began to tirreaten : " Don't you fear
what my authority can Mflict, the penalties which I can Mapose ? "
" What are they ? Let me hear." " Why, confiscation, exile,
torture, death." "Try somethMg else; nought of tMs kMd
frightens me 1 I have no property — I can find a home anywhere ;
my body is so weak that the first blow would Mil me; and
death would send me all the sooner to my God." Modestus was
astounded : " No one ever spoke so boldly to Modestus before ! "
" Perhaps," said Basil, " you never before fell M with a bishop !
We bishops are ordinarily gentle and humble, not only before
the Emperor, but before the meanest of the people. But when
God's honour is at stake, we look to Him oMy, and count
all else as nought. Do what you will with me — you have the

xix.] Tim Episcopate of St. Basil. 373
power ; but let the Emperor know that no menaces whatever shall
make me assent to heresy." Modestus had enough good sense
to " admire the manlMess " of Basil ; he gave up, for the present,
the attempt to overawe him, and reported to his master that he
had been baffled by a prelate who was superior alike to menace
and persuasion. But, as Gregory of Nyssa tells us, another agent,
Demosthenes, who held the emMent office of cMef cook M the
imperial household, and whom Basil once calls a " huge fat fish,"
tried Ms hand at the same task. After his failure, Modestus
seems to have reappeared on the scene, surrounded by all the
imposMg terrors of a high imperial magistrate, within Ms railed-off
and curtaMed place of judgment, with Ms criers, apparitors, lictors
— all powerless before the bishop's Mgh-souled constancy. Valens
Mmself, on hearMg of that constancy, could not but respect it. He
arrived at Caesarea about the end of 371, or the very begMMng of
372, and on the feast of the Epiphany he repaired to the cathedral.
He found it filled with an enthusiastic multitude, "a sea of
people," as Gregory tells us ; the majesty of the service, the solemn
and graceful order wMch prevailed tirroughout the buildMg, the
" thundering " chant of the psalms, impressed him M spite of
himself. But he was more than impressed, he was fairly overawed,
by the sight of "the ruler of the people" standMg calm and
motionless in the sanctuary, evidently behind the altar, and, as M
the "basilican" arrangement, with his face turned towards the
congregation, but as it were absorbed in the consciousness of a
DivMe Presence. Around him stood Ms attendant mMisters, with
faces expressmg the like religious awe. It was too much for the
Arian despot ; this manifestation of a DivMe kMgdom, independent
and regardless of him and his, bowed Mm down. " His eyes," says
Gregory, " were dimmed, Ms nerves shaken ; " and when, after the
dismissal of the catechumens, he came forward to present Ms gifts,
and no one seemed ready to receive offerings from a heretic, he
was only kept from faMting by being supported in the arms of
one of the clergy. Nothing more passed on that day ; but Valens
soon afterwards paid another visit to the church, where Basil even
admitted Mm into the sanctuary. A conversation took place, in
the course of which, according to Theodoret, Basil put Demosthenes
to silence, and the result of wMch was to enhance the Emperor's
admiration for the bishop, whose hospital for the sick poor he
enriched with the best imperial estates in the neighbourhood.
But these good feelings were transient. The Arians ere long

374 The Age of the Fathers. [Chap.
induced Valens to pass sentence of exile against Basil. He was to
depart under cloud of night; the carriage stood ready, the arch
bishop's friends were clMging to him for a farewell, when suddenly
he was summoned to the palace. Valens Galata, or Galates, the
only son of Valens, a boy of six, had been taken seriously ill ; the
Empress DomMica was agonized by fear for her child's life, and,
as she said, by terrific dreams which made her feel sure that this
illness was a punishment for the measures taken agaMst Basil.
Valens sent for Basil, and urged Mm to pray for the child's
recovery. He did so; the illness seemed to abate: but some
Arians were called in to pray over the boy, and the Catholics
(with a too common readiness to interpret events as judgments)
persuaded themselves that this was the cause of the fatal relapse
that followed. Once more, it is said, Valens resolved to banish
the archbishop ; the mandate was ready for signature, but he
took the repeated splitting of his pen for a deterrent sign, and
definitively abandoned all hostile intentions towards Basil; and
Modestus himself, according to Gregory, being soon afterwards
taken ill, eagerly besought Basil's attendance and prayers, and on
recovering ascribed his restored health to the archbishop, told the
Mcident to many, and continued to be his admirMg friend.
Thus calm days ensued, in regard to the Arian persecution, for
Cappadocia and for Pontus. But the hearts of Basil and of his
people must have been wrung by the tragical tidmgs that woMd
reach them, in the summer of 372, from the south. An Arian was
placed M the see of Tarsus ; the orthodox presbyters stood aloof,
and Basil exhorts them to require from ex-Macedonians only the
Nicene Creed and an acknowledgment that the Holy Spirit was
not a creature. At Antioch matters were very serious. Valens had
arrived there M the spring or even earlier ; Meletius had already,
about the end of 370, been driven into his thud exile ; the banner
of the faith was upheld once more by Flavian and Diodore, who
now, M their office as priests, were as zealous and energetic as when,
M the condition of laymen, they baffled the artifices of the crypto-
Arian Leontius. " They stood up like rocks," says Theodoret, " to
break the beating waves." Paulinus was doubtless as stead
fast and faithful. The Catholics, we are told, were driven from
their churches, and had to meet, first at the foot of a mountaM,
then on the bank of the river ; then, when expelled from tMs spot
(perhaps it was on that occasion that some were drowned in the
Orontes), they resorted to the soldiers' exercise-ground, on the

XIx.] The Episcopate of St. Basil. 375
north of the city. Their preacher was Diodore, who, according to
Basil, was such a charming speaker that many who heard him
became better; but Theodoret says that he was supplied with
controversial topics by Flavian. A famous monk named ApMaates,
and another, Julian, whose Syriac name was Sabas, came to Antioch
to assist the faithful. Diodore, as specially obnoxious from his
activity, was banished into Armenia. The church of Edessa, so
long renowned for its fervour and zeal, was deprived of its bishop
Barses, who was sent to one place of exile after another; and
Valens commanded Modestus to disperse the Catholics when,
disowmng an Arian intruder into the bishopric, they met for
prayer outside the city. Then it was that Modestus, passing
through the market-place at daybreak in order to execute this
command, saw a woman walkMg very fast, with an Mfant in her
arms. " Whither away ? " he asked. She replied, qMte simply,
" To share the fate prepared for my fellow-believers." " But that
child ? " said Modestus. " That it may share in such an enviable
death," was the mother's instant answer. Modestus reported this
to the Emperor, and dissuaded him from carrying out his intentions
towards the people. " Well," said Valens, " but at any rate give
the priests and deacons their choice — communion with the new
bishop, or exile." Modestus assembled them, and addressed them
M "gentle words." Eulogius, the leading presbyter, replied to
the prefect by askmg whether the Emperor were also a bishop.
TMs sarcasm, of course, provoked Modestus ; he commanded
Eulogius to communicate with those with whom the Emperor was
in communion. " We obey our legitimate pastor," said Eulogius.
Upon this, eighty of these ecclesiastics were sent to Thrace ; but as
the towns and villages tMough which they passed received them
with applause, they were separated, and Eulogius, with another
named Protogenes, was carried to Antinous in the Thebaid. There
the bishop was Catholic ; they went to church, but found a very
small congregation. "Why is this ? " " Because most of the people
are still pagans." The two exiles immediately recognised the work
set before them. Eulogius devoted Mmself to intercession in a
cell. Protogenes, who was highly educated, turned schoolmaster ;
he found a commodious place, gathered some boys around him,
taught them to write, and combined with this Mstruction the
reading of Scripture, dictating parts of the Psalter, and makmg
them learn by heart passages from the Epistles. His prayers are
said to have in some cases been followed by recovery from illness ;

376 The Age of the Fathers. [Chap.
but, with an unfortunate disregard of the necessary disposition, he
made the acceptance of baptism a condition of being prayed for ;
and whenever he could persuade a person in health to ask for
" the seal of the Lord " — that is, as Theodoret uses it, not con
firmation as such, but baptism — he knocked at Eulogius's door and
desired him to officiate. Eulogius, it is said, would sometimes
complain of the interruption. " The salvation of the erring," was
the answer, "is yet more important than your prayers ! " The two
good priests continued at Antinous tMoughout the persecution,
and the tears of the townsfolk at their departure attested the value
of their holy work.
While they were but entering on that work, the church of Egypt
was, as it were, watching with Mexpressible grief the gradual with
drawal of its own peculiar treasure. Athanasius was approaching
Ms end. He must have been annoyed by the terms of an edict of
Valens, stigmatizing certain Egyptian monks as havMg abandoned
their muMcipal obligations through idleness — a law wMch Gothofred
assigns to January 1, 373. It was on Wednesday, May 2, in the
same year, that the end came. He died qMetly in his own house,
" after so many conflicts," says Rufinus, " after so many rewards
of endurance " — the greatest, the most glorious, of all the men who
in the post-apostolic Church have "contended for the faith once
delivered ; " the man who towers above all contemporaries, however
able, however earnest, as supreme in unity of aim, M variety of
gifts, in force and tenderness, " M qmckness," as Basil says, " to see,
M energy to execute, in large-heartedness to sympatMze ; " he, the
unbroken, the " unwearied," the living symbol of the " immortality "
of the faith ; he, so kindly and eqmtable towards weaker brethren,
so generously hopeful as to apparently erring friends, so ready to
discern " the difference between thMgs and names," so " royal-
hearted " amid storms of suffering, so absolutely loyal, not simply
to a Council or a doctrine, but to an ever-living, ever-present Head
and Lord. The Catholic heart, tMoughout all churches, must have
been pierced, at the tidMgs of Ms death, with the sense of havMg
lost, M Gregory's words, the " guide and teacher of its confession,"
M Basil's, " the pinnacle of the whole structure." " The master
had been taken away from their head." At Alexandria, he was
succeeded by Ms old compaMon Peter, whom he Mmself, no doubt
at the request of his people, had consecrated five days before Ms
own death as his successor. But Palladius the prefect, who, as
Peter says, was an avowed and very zealous pagan, headed

xix.] The Episcopate of St. Basil. 377
a band of soldiers, and, attended by a brutal heathen crowd,
attacked the same church of St. Theonas wMch Syrianus had
invaded M 356, insulted the Christians, profaned the church, the
very altar, with Mdeous orgies, and perpetrated violences wMch in
some cases produced death. Peter escaped from tMs scene of
horrors, and after a short interval, betook himself to Rome, as his
predecessor had done at the intrusion of Gregory the usurper;
meanwhile another Gregory, or another George, was Mfiicted on
the Alexandrian church M the person of that Lucius who had
vainly attempted, ten years before, to make an impression on Jovian.
A few days after the sacrilege at the church, he was installed by
aid of Euzoius, who would thoroughly enjoy the triumph of thus
dominating in his native city ; we are assured that the pagans ex
pressed their satisfaction m a shout of " welcome to the bishop who
demed the Son, and whom Serapis must have brought to Alexan
dria : " and, on the other hand, there was some resistance on the
part of the clergy and other Catholics, of whom some were arrested,
imprisoned, and tortured with lighted torches or iron nails, under
the authority of Magnus, count of the imperial treasury, who
endeavoured, but M vain, to extort a promise of outward conformity
from mneteen clergy ; they bravely answered, " It is nothMg new
for us to serve God ; as for our belief, we never will believe that
the Son was created ; we know that the Homoousion is grounded
on Scripture itseK." They were baMshed to Heliopolis M PhceMcia,
a town which had been the scene of a furious pagan outbreak under
Julian, and where "no one could bear to hear the Name of CMist."
Eleven bishops were exiled to a town called Diocaesarea, Mhabited
by Jews, and situated in Palestine ; many persons who expressed
their grief at these cruelties were scourged, tortured, and sent to
work M the mMes — a fate like that wMch befell Catholic clergy
of Egypt in 356 ; a Roman deacon who had brought the letters of
communion from Damasus to Peter was beaten on the neck with
stones and lead, and put on board ship for the mines of Phennesus :
he silently made the sign of the cross on his forehead. There is
no need to pursue the tale of these enormities. About two years
later, or more, at the end of 375, the usurper attacked the
monasteries of the desert, and some of the monks were sent to
an island in the marshes, where the Christian faith had never been
heard of : we are told that they converted the inhabitants. A monk
named Moses, demanded by the queen of the Saracens as a bishop
for her people, was ordered to repair to Alexandria for consecration ;

378 The Age of the Fathers. [Chap.
but on arriving, positively refused to receive the episcopate
from the hands of Lucius, and was, in fact, at his own desire,
conveyed to the abode of other bishops, doubtless exiled for
Catholicism. Another Mcident of tMs persecution was the exile of Eusebius
of Samosata. It took place M 374 : the bishop, advisMg the im
perial officer for Ms own sake to conceal the nature of his errand,
quietly performed the eveMng service as usual, and then, attended
by one servant carrying a cusMon and a book, crossed the
EupMates by Mght, was followed by his people next mornMg to a
place called Zeugma, exhorted them to be tranquil and orderly, and
set out for Ms place of exile M what Gregory calls a noble spirit.
He was accompaMed into exile by his nephew Antiochus, whom
Basil congratulates on such a privilege. We are told that Ms
successor, a certain Eunomius, a gentle and amiable man, was
horrified at findMg that the people would not speak to Mm,
would not even bathe in the same water that he had used. He
abandoned Ms Mtolerable post : a sterner Arian succeeded him, and
although equally detested, made the clergy who disowned him feel
Ms power. By such means as these, wholesale expulsion, banish
ment, and other severities, the intrusive prelates succeeded M
holding their ground.
Gregory of Nyssa, Basil's brother, was one of those theologians
who fail as bishops. He showed a want of common sense wMch
provoked Basil to say that a Christian really ought not to be " so
silly ; " and after tMee years of episcopal life he was still " totally
mexperienced M church affairs." He was harassed in 375 by
Demosthenes, once the Emperor's cook, now " Vicar," or vice-
prefect, of the Pontic " diocese : " this old foe of the Catholics now
endeavoured to seize Mm on some vexatious charge, brought forward
by an MsigMficant person named Philochares at an Arian meeting
at Ancyra. Gregory succeeded in concealMg Mmself : Demosthenes
caused another meeting of Arians to be held at Nyssa, and Mstalled
in the see, by their agency, one whom Basil scornfully described
as "a slave worth a few obols." "The creature," "the messenger
of Satan," as he calls Demosthenes, who seemed to know and care
nothing about doctrine, but certainly " was a friend of heretics,"
troubled the Church of Basil's exarchate to the full stretch of his
power : he subjected the Caesarean clergy to the oppressive burdens
of civil office, did the like to those at Sebaste who commuMcated
with Basil, and caused a Catholic named Asclepius, for refusMg

Xix.] The Episcopate of St. Basil. 379
Arian communion, to be beaten till he died, " or rather, until by
scourgmg he was transferred to life. TMs crime," Basil adds,
"is M keeping with all the rest, persecutions of presbyters and
teachers, and everythMg else that is like to be done by men who
use the imperial authority at their pleasure."
Such were some of the main features of tMs fourth Arian perse
cution. It lasted eight years, reckoning from that year 370 in wMch,
after two previous threatenings in 365 and 367, it broke forth M
earnest. Gregory compares it to a wild hailstorm and a barbaric
raid, and enumerates irruptions Mto churches, Msults to " beloved
altars," bodily inflictions on aged bishops, plots secret and open,
banishments, confiscations. Basil, writing in 376, calls it the
" heaviest of persecutions," because the persecutors bear the CMistian
name; and depicts the desolation of churches, the cessation of
services, the privation of festal joy, the gatherings of Catholics,
including the old, the Mfirm, the children, for prayer in the open
country amid rain or snow. But two years later, pressed by a
second war with the Goths under Fritigern, Valens stopped the
Arian terrorism M 378 — giving, perhaps, a verbal promise to recall
the exiled confessors, or in some cases actually summomng them
from exile. On the 9th of August in that year he perished M the
battle of Hadrianople, or, by one account, immediately after it,
while sheltering himself with some attendants in a cottage to
wMch the enemy set fire. It was believed that a monk named
Isaac had warned Mm that, if he went to war without " restoring
the pastors to their flocks," he would never return. But no such
alleged prediction, with its fulfilment, is needed to deepen the
solemn gloom of that dire disaster — a disaster which was, as
Rufinus says, " the begMMng of evil to the Roman empire, then
and thenceforward."
II. And now as to that multiform anarchy and confusion, caused
by the prevalence of heresy M the East, which so constantly
occupied the thoughts and saddened the heart of Basil, who M one
passage illustrates it by a sea-fight during a storm. AriaMsm was
ridMg on the high places of the earth, as Msolently as in the worst
days of Constantius : not one or two churches were shattered by
the storm, for in fact, says Basil, varyMg Ms imagery, " the pest of
heresy was spreadMg from the borders of Illyricum to the Thebaid.
The doctrines of true religion were overtMown, the rules of the
church were M confusion ; " heretics, sometimes the meanest of
men, were getting hold of bishoprics ; the flock was bereft of true

380 The Age of the Fathers. [Chap.
pastors ; discipline was extMct ; a fierce party-strife was raging
everywhere ; unbelievers were laugMng at Christian discord ; un
settled minds were losing their faith ; the orthodox were avoidmg
the churches profaned by heresy, and " lifting up their hands to
God in the wilderness." " The wisdom of this world had super
seded the doctrme of the Cross : " there was every variety of
heretical thought, from Sabellianism, recently revived in full force,
to Eunomianism which tried to perplex simple Churchfolk by
playmg on the double import of the phrase "knowing God."
Apollinaris was assailMg the belief M CMist's assumption of our
whole manhood, and advancMg to strange varieties of doctrinal
Mnovation : MacedoManism was degradMg the Holy Spirit to the
level of created beMgs, and borrowing " fallacies " and verbal re
finements from Anomceanism ; but its adherents were comparatively
few. Basil exerted Mmself in personal controversy with heretics ;
but he craved earnestly for sympathy and aid from the more
fortunate, more united Westerns. With piteous emphasis he
begged them to remember the duty of supporting the weak ; he
asked for a deputation of Western prelates to visit the East, and
support those who, like himself, were struggling to uphold the
Nicene Confession. TMs was the great subject of Ms anxiety ; but
beside this there was the disappoMtment caused by the failure of
attempts to reumte the Semi-Arians to the Church — the failure
wMch dated from the abortive scheme for a synod at Tarsus ; and
there was the distressMg schism between the two orthodox com
munities at Antioch, the adherents of Meletius and of Paulmus.
In tMs latter case, the difficMty was how to get the claims of
Meletius recognised without alienating the " EustatMans." Basil
knew that the Westerns stood by PaulMus, while he and Ms
Eastern bretMen were in close relations with Meletius. He
endeavoured to secure Athanasius as a mediator between Meletius
and the West ; he entreated him to " suggest some method of help,
to act as a Samuel for the churches : " he was aware that Athanasius
was not M communion with Meletius, but he persuaded himself
that by argument and negotiation, by the exercise of some mutual
forbearance, the venerable father of the orthodox and the sweet-
tempered representative of converts to orthodoxy might still be
brought together, and some arrangement might be made, satisfactory
to all parties, on the basis of a general recognition of Meletius as
the true bishop of Antioch. In tMs hope he was, as at several
other times, over sanguine. When, for mstance, he proposed that

xix.] The Episcopate of St. Basil. 381
Athanasius should write first to Meletius, he was expecting more
than at that point in the affairs could be granted. Athanasius
could not abandon Paulinus ; and there were misgivMgs which he,
and such as he, might not unreasonably feel as to the Semi-Arian
tendencies wMch had been observable, some time back, in many
who supported the rival prelate. The real gain to Basil from these
efforts was the formation of a sort of Mtimacy, by means of
correspondence, with the man to whom, above all others, he looked
up : an intimacy full of beauty and pathos, a bond between the
elder and younger generation of Catholic doctors and confessors —
one remarkable expression of which is Basil's proclamation, M
Ms own church, of Athanasius's excommuMcation of a wicked
Libyan governor ; another is Basil's habit of showMg to his friends
a letter from Athanasius, to the effect that the Nicene Creed should
be the one test for converts from Arianism ; and yet another is
Athanasius's exhortation to some who suspected Basil of Mace-
doniaMsm, " Let them put away all suspicion, and thank God
for so glorious a bishop ! " On this subject four of Basil's letters
are well worth readMg — the 66th, 67th, 69th, and 82nd — all to
Athanasius, together with the brief 80th, M wMch he says that " if
he could have personal intercourse with so great and apostolic a
soul, it would well make up for all the afflictions of Ms life."
In regard to the wider prospect of possible help from the West
in the contest with Asiatic heresy, Basil was doomed to a yet more
trymg disappoMtment. He sent messenger after messenger ; after
correspondMg with Athanasius, by means of Dorotheus, a deacon
of the Church of Antioch, he wrote to an eminent Western prelate
(most certainly Damasus) to express Ms regret that as yet no
succouring hand had been held out to the suffering Eastern Church,
as M those days when Dionysius of Rome exhibited his practical
sympathy for the afflicted Christians of Cappadocia. Now, he
wrote, the evil was more pressmg : it was not the demolition of
buildmgs, but the ruM of Churches ; not the captivity of the body,
but the worse tMaldom of the soul ! Dorotheus was sent with this
letter, in the first instance, to Alexandria, whence Basil hoped that
some of Athanasius's clergy would be sent on with Mm to Rome.
But some delay ensued. At last Dorotheus was enabled to go to
Rome, and was there furnished with letters from Damasus and
other Western bishops : these were written after a large Council
had met at Rome, probably, as Tillemont and Father Puller thMk,
in the end of 371, or at least, as Maran says, not later than the

382 The Age of the Fathers. [Chap.
opening of 372, in reference, for the most part, to Church affairs M
Illyria. The synodal letter announces the deposition of Auxentius
of Milan, deMes the right of the Ariminian Council to be regarded as
an expression of the mind of the Church, and sums up the Catholic
faith as the confession of " the one Godhead, power, and beMg of
the Father and the Son, and of the unity of the hypostasis " — mean-
Mg essence — " in the Holy Spirit with the Father and the Son."
Dorotheus was accompanied on his return by a Milanese deacon
named Sabinus, by whom Basil sent, in reply, letters to the
Westerns, Mcluding one which was drawn up in the name of the
Eastern bishops, and probably by Basil's own hand. One letter,
to Valerian of Aquileia, expresses the warmest gratitude for that
prelate's kindness in writing to him, and quotes the text about
" cold water to a thirsty soul." " Most honoured brother, there is
a terrible famine of charity among us, and tMs makes your letter
the more valuable." He must have been gladdened by this amount
of personal kMdness, and yet more by the synodal declaration of
orthodox faith, "marked with the impress of Apostolic truth."
But he wished for a more definite Western Mtervention : and notMng
came. At last, M the summer of 375, a large Council of Illyrian
bishops received a report from a bishop named EustatMus as to
the prevalence of the Macedonian heresy M the Churches of the
provMce of Asia and of PMygia, and also as to irregularities
subsisting among them in regard to the appointment of bishops,
priests, and deacons; thereupon the Council framed a synodal
letter to the Easterns, enforcMg " the co-essentiality of the Trinity
of Persons coinhering in each other," giving some counsel on the
subject of ordMation, and also announcing the deposition of six
(apparently Illyrian) bishops for not confessing the Son and the
Spirit to be, M Nicene pMase, " from the essence of the Father," —
in a word, for Arianism. This letter, entrusted to a bishop named
Elpidius, was accompanied by one from ValentMian Mmself, who
was in Illyria at the time. The imperial document is remarkable ;
it was doubtless written by a bishop, and adopted by the Emperor.
He refers to the unconscientious acquiescence of many persons
in the creed patroMsed by their sovereign — clearly with a view to
the AriaMsm of his brother. He exhorts the Asiatic bishops not
to persecute the orthodox : he tells them that he has often sent like
exhortations ; he would now, once agaM, be clear of all responsibility
for their misconduct. He affirms the Homoousion on Nicene
authority, and expressly bars out the gloss wMch would take it as

xix.] The Episcopate of St. Basil. 383
synonymous with Homoion, so as to make the Son merely an
emMent creature : he holds, with councils recently assembled in
Rome and Gaul, that there is one and the same essence of Father,
Son, and Spirit, M tMee Persons, that is (a remarkable phrase for
a Western) "three perfect hypostases." In a terse antithetical
phrase he asserts the DivMe personality of the Redeemer, very
much as Cyril of Alexandria long afterwards asserted it against
Nestorius : He was " God clothed with flesh, not a man clothed
with God (Theophoros)." It will be observed that the synodal
letter has notMng equivalent to tMs passage. The hnperial letter
concludes with a condemnation of the doctrine (ascribed to Marcel
lus) as to the originally " potential " character of the Sonship, and
with an assertion of the Eternal Filiation.
Had ValentMian lived some few months longer than the
autumn of 375, he might have followed up this letter by a pressure
on Valens which would have delivered the Eastern Catholics from
their misery. But he died, in a manner very little M accordance
with the devotional earnestness implied M this letter, from the
bursting of a blood-vessel in a fit of violent wrath against some
envoys sent by the Quadi to deprecate his revenge, at a town on
the Danube, on November 17, 375. Thus Valens was left free
from the ascendency of the brother to whom he owed his crown ;
and the Eastern Church would know that it had lost a protector.
Basil had written to the Italian and Gallic bishops, by Sabinus,
who had brought him the letter from Valerian of Aquileia ; he had
learned M 373 that Eusebius proposed another mission to the
West, but had answered that " after looking all around he knew
not whom to send," and he Muted that Meletius Mmself, then in
exile, might prove somewhat " punctilious " if dealt with by a
letter, which could not put before him all the difficulties of the
case. In 375 he had been advised to send his brother Gregory ;
but had answered that perhaps Gregory might declMe the mission,
and that certaMly he was not sufficiently a man of business to
discharge it alone. And, he added with some bitterness and
some resentment at what he thought the unsympatMzmg formality
or haughtiness of Damasus, "what could a man Mcapable of
flattery say to one who sits on his own lofty emMence, too Mgh
up to hear those who speak the truth to him from the ground ? "
The fact was, he had been sorely vexed by hearing first, that
Damasus was displeased with a memorial of Ms, probably relating
to Meletius, and had sent him a draft memorial wMch he was

384 The Age of the Fathers. [Chap.
expected to adopt " word for word " as a prelude to any action on
the part of the West; and afterwards, that the adherents of
PaMMus were boasting of a letter M wMch Damasus had (quite
consistently) addressed that prelate as the bishop of Antioch. " I
am not surprised," he wrote ; " the Westerns know nothMg at all
about Eastern affairs." And when, M the spring of 376, Dorotheus,
with Sanctissimus, probably a priest of the church of Antioch, that
is, of Meletius's commuMon, beMg ardently desirous of promoting
reunion between East and West, obtained from the Easterns a
commission to go to Rome, Basil, although he did not oppose it,
was not hopeful. " If God's wrath still presses on us, what help
can we get from the superciliousness of the Westerns ? They
neither know the truth nor endure to learn it ; they act on their
own preconceptions. I had thought of writing Mdividually to their
' coryphaeus,' but as to Church matters I should oMy have just
hMted to him that they do not understand our case, and will not take
the way to understand it ; and generally I should have admoMshed
Mm that it was not right to insult those who are brought low by
trial, nor to mistake arrogance for digMty ! " Here we may
observe that he was not in a position to know the better pomts M
Damasus's character : at the same time, if he wrote M " a temper,"
much must be allowed for Ms repeated disappoMtments. However,
he sent two letters — the first, M the name of the Easterns to the
Westerns ; the second, individually, to the bishops of Italy and
Gaul. In the first, the Westerns are remMded that hopes have
often been entertaMed in regard to their assistance, and have
often been proved illusory. " Neither found I," he quotes, " any
to comfort me." " Why do not Westerns write ? " and, still
more, " why do not some of them come ? " He reckons tMs year
376 as the thirteenth of Arian domination ; meamng that Valens,
almost from the outset of Ms reign, wMch began M 364, took Ms
side agaMst Catholicism. He entreats the Westerns not only to
write letters, but to send deputies ; the friendly voice of a foreigner
would be a great comfort. The second letter, expatiating on the
misery of the persecution, Mtimates that it may M time reach to
the West ; and prays that the Western Emperor (Gratian) may be
Mformed of the afflictions of the Easterns, or, at any rate, that
some may come Mto the East from the West who may see with
their own eyes a complex tragedy wMch no words can adequately
describe. Sometiiing was gaMed by tMs mission of the two
priests, but that somethMg was no more than kindness expressed

xix.] The Episcopate of St. Basil. 385
M letters ; and in the next year, 377, they were again sent to the
West with a letter begging for a visit, if possible, from Western
brethren (it would be like " visiting the sick "), and MtimatMg a
grave suspicion of the orthodoxy of Paulinus. In tMs latter object
they signally failed. Dorotheus, on arriving at Rome, heard Peter
of Alexandria, M the presence of Damasus, reckon Meletius and
Eusebius among " heretics," and broke out into expressions of
indignation, of which Peter complained to Basil, who in reply
ascribed the irritation of Dorotheus to " the difficulty of the times,"
and added mournfully, " I seem for my sins to be unsuccessful in
everytMng ! "
There was, however, one great Western Church to which Basil
might well look with hope and satisfaction, ever since the close of
374. The see of Milan had, on the 7th of December of that year,
been redeemed from its recent disgrace by the consecration of
Ambrose, who at the time of his most unexpected election was
unbaptized, and was acting, by the appoMtment of Probus, the
praetorian prefect, as governor of Liguria. The well-known story,
first published nearly forty years afterwards by his secretary
Paulinus, is to this effect. WMle he was exhorting the people to
observe due order in the election of a bishop, a cMld's voice was
heard to say, "Ambrose Bishop," and the whole people, as if under
some overpowering mysterious impulse, took up the cry ; whereupon
Ambrose, in consternation, tried to escape by ascending his tribunal
and "torturing" some prisoners, by returmng home and pretending
to profess philosophy, by taking the strangest means for blackemng
his own character, and by qMtting Milan at night ; this last
attempt was baffled, for he was found in the mornMg at the Roman
gate of the city. Reference was then made to ValentMian, pending
which Ambrose concealed himself on the estate of one Leontius.
The Emperor signified his assent ; Leontius then gave up Ambrose,
who, finding further resistance hopeless, declared that, at any rate,
none but a Catholic prelate should baptize him. After Ms
baptism on November 30, he strove to get the consecration
deferred, but M vain ; he was made to pass rapidly through all
the grades of the ministry, and was then on the eighth day,
December 7, made bishop— the case being so special, and marked,
as men thought, by so striking an indication of Divine direction,
as to dispense with the rule about the necessity of a probation-
time between secular office and the episcopal consecration, but
still not so as to abate Ms own sense of the abruptness of the
vol. 1. 2 c

386 The Age of the Fathers. [Chap.
transfer, wMch had constrained him " to teach while he had yet
to learn." All this would not, in detail, be narrated in letters
from Italy to Asia Minor ; but Ambrose sent some of his clergy
to request of Basil that the remains of his exiled predecessor
Dionysius might be restored to the Church of Milan. And from
these messengers the Caesarean primate heard how his new Italian
brother — eleven years younger than Mmself — had been brought
by strange paths, under a marvellous process of framing and
guiding, to the second bishopric of the West. " I glorified our
God," Basil wrote in answer, " who in every generation chooses
out those that please Him ; who of old raised up a ruler for His
people from the sheepfolds, and who now has drawn a man from
the imperial city, entrusted with the government of a nation, a
man of lofty spirit and noble birth, of conspicuous position, of
well-known eloquence, to take charge of the flock of Christ.
Come then, 0 man of God, since thou didst not receive Christ's
Gospel from men, but the Lord Himself removed thee from the
civil judgment-seat to the chair of the Apostles; fight the good
fight ; heal any that are diseased with Arianism ; renew the
ancient footprints of the fathers ! " He goes on to eulogize the
modest and courteous manners of the messengers from Milan,
and to narrate briefly the discovery and authentication' of the
remains of Dionysius the Confessor, wMch were found in the
place where they had been laid, in a chest which contained no
other bones.
In another matter, which deeply interested Basil, the Roman
Church, after some indications of what he would call a want of
keen insight, declared emphatically on the orthodox side. Vitalis,
a priest of Antioch, had visited Rome in 375, and had given to
Damasus a statement of faith which the Pope was disposed at
first to tMnk satisfactory. But on second thoughts he referred
the matter to Paulinus, whom he had recognised as the true bishop
of Antioch, after being asked by Jerome (in letters wMch sug
gested that the best right lay with Paulinus) to direct him as
to the rival claims. By so acting, Damasus ignored Meletius.
Vitalis, failmg to secure the support of Rome, caused himself to
be consecrated bishop for the Apollinarians at Antioch, in 376.
Soon after EpiphaMus, visiting Antioch, heard Paulinus accused
of Sabellianism, and ascertained the falsity of the charge by exa
mining the statement of faith presented by PaulMus to Atha
nasius in 363. He also elicited from Vitalis an avowal of heresy

xix.] The Episcopate of St. Basil. 387
on the crucial poMt of the Apollinarian question, that the Incar
nate Word had not a "rational human soul." Basil, who, as a
partisan of Meletius, was prejudiced against Paulinus, did not
feel satisfied with what he heard of the latter's orthodoxy; he
suspected Mm, without evidence, of SabellianizMg, and complaMed
that Paulinus had been too easy in admitting some of the adherents
of Marcellus of Ancyra to his communion, as were also certain
bishops exiled from Egypt, who were won over by the Marcellians
on the ground that Athanasius and his colleagues had in 371
accepted a statement of belief presented on behalf of his former
friend. With all his reverence for Athanasius, Basil did not
refraM from blamMg Paulinus on this score, in a letter to the
Westerns (assigned to the year 377), in which he expressly
denounces Apollinaris as a heretic, and assumes that Paulinus is
Mclined to that Marcellian error which " nullifies all our hope."
And one result of that letter was, in the opimon of Tillemont and
the BenedictMe editors of St. Basil, the formal condemnation of
ApolLMaris, Ms disciple Timotheus, and Vitalis, by a Roman synod
in the presence of Peter of Alexandria. This Council, however, is
dated by Hefele and (with some hesitation) Puller in 376. It was
referred to afterwards by Damasus, when writing to some particular
church which asked him, it seems, to condemn Timotheus.
One other event in the history of theology has a close connexion
with the subsequent fortunes of Western Europe. We have seen
that Ulfilas, bishop of the Goths, was not perverted from Catholicism
to Homcean AriaMsm in 360, but had all along been an Arian — at
first a follower of Eusebius of Nicomedia, and afterwards a Homoean
or Acacian. That there were among the Goths some orthodox
Christians, who held the " exact faith," is indisputable, for it is
affirmed by Basil in a letter of the year 374 ; but when the Huns
pressed Fritigern and his Goths southward to the banks of the
Danube, it was natural that their petition to be received within the
empire should be accompanied by an offer to adopt the Emperor's
Arian faith, and by no means improbable that some direct or
indirect influence on the part of Ulfilas should have materially
contributed to such a resolution. The immigration, permitted by
Valens — who could hardly have effectively prevented it — took
place in 376 ; and that year may be called an epoch in Church
history, inasmuch as the example set by the immigrant Goths was
followed by the rest of their race ; and thus a large and energetic
force of Teutonism, destined to play a great part M the " barbaric "

388 The Age of the Fathers. [Chap.
occupation of the West, became self-committed to a spurious and
degraded CMistiaMty, and the Church found herself disabled from
entirely friendly relations with, for instance, so great, and on the
whole so just, a prince as Theodoric, and even with " the first of
the kmghts," the Mgh-souled and generous Totila. Burgundians,
Suevi, Vandals, and afterwards the all but savage Lombard invaders
of Italy, followed sMt, and made " barbarian " almost a synonym for
" heretic ; " the persecuting Mstinct of the Arian Constantius revived
M the Vandal Gaiseric, still more in Hunneric ; and Catholic
Christianity had to wait more than a century for the conversion, if
such it could be called, of Clovis, and some two centuries for the
more genMne conversion of Reccared and his Visigoths M Spain.
III. Of the personal sorrows of Basil, and the troubles which
beset him in the primacy of Pontus, little can here be said. They
were a series of vexations apparently Mexhaustible — clouds return
ing regularly after rain. Troubles caused by the persistent un-
friendlMess of those comprovMcial bishops who had opposed Ms
election ; troubles arisMg from the still more unexpected coldness
of Ms naturally good-hearted uncle Gregory, who was not mollified
until a pathetically humble entreaty on Basil's part had led to a
personal Mterview ; troubles consisting M the misconduct of the
" chorepiscopi " of the diocese of Caesarea, who were accused of
staining their hands by simony, and of ignoring his ultimate
authority M regard to postulants for minor orders ; troubles from
the alienation of the bishops on the coast of Pontus, whom, with a
noble humility and frankness, he urges to meet Mm and state their
grievances ; troubles, agaM, from the irregular and lawless mis
conduct of some of Ms own clergy. The people of Neocaesarea,
who were more than inclined to Sabellianism, and narrowly con
servative in temper, could not understand why the archbishop
shoMd encourage monasticism, nocturnal services, antiphonal or
other kMds of psaMiody, which they had not inherited from their
own first father M the faith, Gregory " Thaumaturgus." Encouraged
by their bishop Atarbius, they greedily caught up false charges
against Basil, as if Ms teaching were " injurious to souls ; " at
" public entertaMments " abuse of Mm became a favourite topic, and
he was obliged to demand, M the name of mere justice, a fair oppor-
tuMty for clearing Ms character M the eyes of a Church whose
leading men had once tried hard to secure him as an educator.
His learnMg, it seems, was made a ground of offence ; Ms theology
was " the wisdom of tMs world ; " and he caustically asks whether

xix.] The Episcopate of St. Basil. 389
on such themes every one who thought himself an authority was
accepted, although on agriculture or on music experts alone were
allowed to speak. Some years before, in 372, a monk, sitting at a
dinner-party in company with Gregory Nazianzen, complained of
a sermon wMch he had heard Basil preach on a saMt's day. " He
spoke well enough as to the Father and the Son, but was wrong
fully reticent on the divMity of the Holy Spirit : this might be policy,
but it was not piety." Whereupon Gregory explaMed Basil's
motives for a certain reserve or " economy " as to the application
of the Divine title to the Third Person, when His DivMity might
be Mferred from other phrases ; but the rest of the company scouted
such a proceedMg as cowardly, and the dissatisfaction grew and
spread until it reached the ears of Athanasius, who wrote rather
sharply in rebuke of these suspicions, and exhorted the malcontents
to obey a bishop " such as any country might long to have," and
who had only " made himself weak in order to gain the weak."
The fact was, that Basil — rightly or wrongly — had considered how
he could disarm that Arianizing hostility which might silence the
truth by expellMg him, and had thought of securing this poMt by
speakMg of the Holy Spirit not explicitly as " God," but as " un
created," so as to suggest the idea of His true DivMity without
prematurely imposing it on prejudiced minds. That he had no
tenderness for Macedonianism itself appears repeatedly M Ms
writings : he says, for instance, that " those who reduce the Spirit
into the class of ministering beings are far from the truth, and that
those who call Him a creature ought not to be admitted to com
muMon." Another calumny was based on the use of the phrase
" Three Hypostases." The old inference that it implied Tritheism
— an Mference disposed of at Alexandria in 362 — was revived to his
discredit ; and he had to give the usual explanation that he took
"hypostasis" to mean, not essence, but real subsistence M the sense
of personality, and that prosopa, if used instead of hypostases, would
suggest SabelliaMsm. A more painful trouble was brought upon
him by Eustathius of Sebaste. TMs man's theological Mstability was
singularly combMed with an excess of asceticism, which incurred
the censures of the Council of Gangra at some date not precisely
ascertaMed. EustatMus had begun life as a pupil of Arius, but
had become conspicuous as a Semi-Arian : as we have seen, he had
been one of the delegates of that party who signed the Nicene Creed
at Rome in 366; but this " conversion " was mistrusted, though Basil
for some time hoped that its sincerity would be practically proved.

390 The Age of the Fathers.. [Chap.
EustatMus, however, " shifted like a cloud." Basil Mmself was
involved M suspicion, Msomuch that a zealous bishop, Theodotus
of Nicopolis, declMed to join with him M Church service. He pre
vailed on EustatMus to sign an elaborately orthodox profession
of faith, but speedily learned that this impracticable person was
charging him with various misdeeds, Mclucling that of procuring
Ms signature by unfair pressure, and was also inferring that because
Basil, twenty-five years before, had written a letter to Apollinaris
(a letter, too, which had been tampered with), he must needs be
in effect an Apollinarian. This hostility, which Basil endured for
some tMee years M silence, had two motives : EustatMus was
irritated at having been Miportuned to reaffirm his " Nicene "
conformity, and was desirous of standMg well with the dominant
Arian party at Antioch. AccordMgly, he showed his hand in
375 by signing at Cyzicus a formula expressive of MacedoMamsm,
and by denouncing Basil as a " Homoousiast ; " yet he failed,
says Basil, to gaM the countenance of the Arians, who probably
knew what Ms adhesion was worth. Two years later Basil spoke
of Mm as a leader of the Macedonian heresy, and urged the
Westerns that, as he had been rehabilitated by them under
Liberius, they should now expose Ms tergiversations.
Again, during Basil's episcopate — towards the close of 374 —
the partition of Cappadocia into two provMces brought difficulties
and annoyances wMch Basil had never looked for, and M the
treatment of wMch he did not act very wisely. Tyana, the scene
of the Council held in order to Reunion, was made the capital
of the new provMce of Second Cappadocia; and tMee months
later its bishop, Anthimus, assuming that ecclesiastical divisions
must of course adapt themselves to civil, claimed the rights
of a metropolian, treated the primate with strange rudeness,
and even Mtercepted some baggage-mules laden with provisions
(" suckMg-pigs and fowls," says Gregory) from the estates of the
Caesarean see. It then occurred to Basil that he might, at any rate,
secure Ms own jurisdiction over Sasima, a little town belongMg to
the new provMce, and near the spot where tMs robbery was com
mitted. It had no bishop, but it should have one, and Ms friend
Gregory should be the man : with him there, Basil would have an
effective hold on that bit of the frontier. Gregory sMank from the
proposal : the place was odious in Ms eyes, a " disagreeable little
village, all dust and noise, in the highway traversed by tax-
collectors and prisoners, with a floating population of diverse

XIX.] The Episcopate of St. Basil. 391
habits." Basil urged Mm to accept the bishopric as an act of
loyalty to the Church, and of friendsMp for himself, and pressed
the point so strongly as to overbear opposition. He spoke of high
aims, of piety, of duty, of sacrifice, of personal regard ; he brushed
aside Gregory's objections as due to a spiritless Mdolence ; and the
consecration took place at Nazianzus : but Gregory never resided at
Sasima, and renounced all obligations to it M order to act as his
father's coadjutor. Anthimus tried to enlist him agaMst Basil, and
Gregory gives a lively description of an interview in which
Anthmaus "asked about the marshes of Sasima, entreated and
tMeatened, extolled Tyana as if greater than Caesarea, and at last
went off unsuccessful, sMffing and calling Gregory a ' Basilizer.' "
He afterwards sent him a summons to a synod, which was of course
ignored. This busMess was one of the few grave mistakes of Basil's
life. Absorbed M his own schemes, he set Ms strong will agaMst
the weaker will of Ms friend, who, even while yieldMg, felt that he
had been treated with great want of consideration, and in his sore
ness attributed the proceedMg to a " love of ruling " on Basil's
part. Basil on his side was evidently disappointed by an unrespon
siveness wMch he set down, not perhaps qmte erroneously, to a
selfish love of ease. Their old Mtimacy was thus broken; and
Basil must afterwards have regretted that he had lost the sweet
and cheering friendsMp which might have helped him through
many a pamful hour. And he had not too many friends : a reserve
and stateliness of manner kept most people at a distance, and
Gregory had once told him that he did not sufficiently provide
agaMst misconstruction ; he says Mmself that he was apt to forget
small matters ; Ms many disappointments, the suspicion and the
opposition wMch hung heavy over his path, made him morbidly
sensitive, and dulled his power of understanding the feelings of
others. But it is pleasant to know that he and AntMmus were
soon again on friendly terms ; and he derived much comfort from
the hearty and confiding regard of Eusebius of Samosata, with
whom, he says, he was ready to face great trials, and without whom
he " could hardly look at slight troubles." Of his veneration and
affection for Meletius there is no need to say anytMng; the
honour, the dignity, the tranquillity of Mm who was, M Ms eyes,
the one legitimate bishop of Antioch, were matters of lifelong
Mterest for Basil: and he also rejoiced in the friendship of the
learned and warm-hearted Amphilochius, who Mduced Mm to
write M 376 his work "On the Holy Spirit," and to whom he

392 The Age of the Fathers. [Chap.
addressed M 374-5 three letters on points of canomcal discipline.
This good prelate held a Council M Ms city of Iconium, in wMch
the MacedoMan heresy was condemned, the belief M "tMee
Hypostases" was poMtedly distingmshed from Tritheism, and
the faithful were exhorted to umte the Holy Spirit "with" the
Father and the Son in their doxologies. Basil's treatise was
devoted in part to the defence of tMs form of doxology, and M part
to the refutation of Macedomanism by an exposition of the
baptismal formula and of other texts bearing on the DivMe co-
equality of the Holy Spirit. The conclusion is pathetic : " The
Lord will give you — by us or by others — satisfaction as to any
poMts still unsettled, according to the knowledge supplied by the
Holy Spirit to those who are worthy of Him."
As we observe the multifariousness of Basil's correspond
ence, we are especially struck with the abundant verification, in
his experience, of that deep sayMg of St. Paul as to the relation
between affliction and the power of admMistering comfort. He had
once feared that Ms troubles would affect Ms reason, but had
added, " The more we need God, the more let us trust M Him ! "
One who could thus trust, could help others ; and so, out of the
deep well of his own sorrows — especially, perhaps, of the distress
produced by an indomitable enmity which struck at him with the
most varied slanders — and also out of his frequent suffering from
illness (chiefly M the form of liver-complamt), wMch was probably
induced by an ill-regulated " asceticism " regardless of the ordMary
laws of health, and wMch seriously impeded Ms power of sitting
over books — there springs up M his letters that marvellous readi
ness of sympathy wMch can identify itself with every form of
trouble, the miseries of a whole provMce, or the religious anxieties
of a pious widow, or the troubles of another widow, a relative of Ms
own, under severe exactions, or the difficulties of a conscientious
soldier, or the excessive taxation of church property, or the case
of some distingmshed persons suddeMy afflicted, of an old man
suddenly impoverished, of a bereaved wife or husband, of a father
whose son has been taken away in Ms prime of youth, of a priest
whose stock of corn has been carried off, of monks whose buildings
have been burnt by Arians, of peasants compelled to swear that
they would pay their taxes : be the form of evil or suffering what
it may, the sorely tried, much-enduring archbishop can throw Ms
great heart Mto it with genuine tenderness and appropriate conso
lations. He reminds a kinsman of the various classes of persons

xix.] The Episcopate of St. Basil. 393
prayed for in church — " bretMen travelling, those who serve M the
army, those who speak boldly for the name of the Lord, and those
who exMbit the fruits of the Spirit ; " and adds, " I think you
must be included M all of these classes." We seem to be admitted
Mto the depths of his inner life, when he reiterates the exhortation
to take all trouble patiently from the hand of God, to submit to
a benignant Fatherly discipline, to play the athlete at God's
biddMg with a braced-up spirit, to look through all clouds or
storms to the inexpressible radiance of the future glory. His
frequent topic is that the contest must come before the crown, but
that the crown is assured by the Lord's promise.
Such was the life-work of him whom we may, perhaps, call the
most heavily afflicted of all the great Fathers : he seemed often
enough to fail, to meet with impassable walls of difficulty, to spend
his strength for nought ; but when he died, worn out before his
time, at the age of fifty, on the New Year's Day of 379, a few months
after peace had been granted to the Eastern Churches, and, as
Gregory of Nyssa says, early in the ninth year of Ms episcopate,
those who heard Mm murmur with his last breath a commendation
of his spirit into the Redeemer's hands, might be well assured that
Ms work was well done, and that his labour had by no means been
in vain M the Lord. Truly might his dearest friend say of him,
that " all Ms life long he had kept in view the end of life, the
going forth from the body to be present with the Lord." In days
so wild and dark as those which were assigned for his ministry, the
Church was clearly all the richer and stronger for such an exhibi
tion of steadfastness in the faith, and of the power of Christianity
to disciplMe and to ennoble a strong character, as was contained
in the short and troublous episcopate of St. Basil.

CHAPTER XX.
GRATIAN AND THEODOSIUS.
The dire catastrophe of the battle of Hadrianople, marked as it
was in secular history by a carnage only equal to that of Cannae,
was an event wMch, in its results as regarded the Eastern Church,
might be recollected by members of that Church with the feelings
wMch a great deliverance must Mspire. It closed the period
during wMch the Arian heresy was able to use the imperial power
as its instrument. It placed the dominion of the East, and prac
tically of the whole empire, in the hands of a well-disposed and
accomplished youth, the docile pupil of the great Churchmen of
Ms time — too ready, mdeed, to use Ms power not only for the
protection of the Church, but for the coercion and oppression of
dissident Christians ; a prince personally gracious and amiable —
deficient, as events proved, in force of character, dependent on his
nearest advisers, passionately addicted to amusements, particularly
that of hunting, as to which Sozomen tells a story of a pagan
official whom Ambrose saved from death by Mterrupting Gratian's
sport and pleading for Ms pardon. In short, Gratian was one of
those M whom boyhood is unduly prolonged, but still one who
must have inspired a peculiar Mterest, and who must always be
thought of with tenderness, and, in regard to his early and
tragical death, with compassion. " Faithful in the Lord, kMdly
and gentle, pure in heart," such are the simple emphatic words
M wMch Ambrose embalms the treasured memory of Ms beloved
young Emperor.
This prince, the eldest son of ValentMian I., was born M the
year of the Council of Ariminum. On August 24, 367, before he
was nine years old, he was solemnly presented by his father at
Amiens to the assembled troops, with the diadem and imperial
ornaments, as "Augustus" and associate Mthe sovereignty. Since

Chap, xx.] Gratian and Theodosius. 395
that splendid inauguration, he had been called by his father's
death M 375 to take possession of the government, and had shown
prudence as well as moderation M accepting the irregular military
investiture of his little half-brother ValentMian (then four years
old) with the ensigns and titles of supreme power. He secured
for Mmself a practical supremacy tMoughout the West ; while the
son of the Empress Justina resided at Milan under his mother's
tutelage, Gratian, the son of Severa, kept his court at Treves, " the
illustrious abode of monarchs," as Ammianus calls it, and the
birthplace of the great bishop of Milan, who became Ms chief
ecclesiastical adviser.
Ursinus, not content with harassMg the Roman Church, was
also intriguing at Milan ; " now," as Ambrose tells us, " before the
doors of the synagogue, now in secret — for he durst not do so in
public — joining hMiself to the Arians." It was apparently for tMs
that Gratian bamshed him to AgrippMa (Cologne) ; and when he
did at length grant him a hearing, it was to exhort him to abandon
his position as a party chief — an exhortation which, naturally,
proved unsuccessful. The UrsiMans next suborned a Jew named
Isaac, who had for a time professed CMistianity, and had then
" profaned the holy mysteries " by a relapse, to denounce Damasus,
and invoke the imperial authority agaMst Mm ; but Gratian, after
ascertaMMg that Isaac's accusations could not be substantiated,
pronounced Damasus Mnocent, and banished the accuser into
Spain. The Church of Rome was vexed by other attacks on
ecclesiastical order and uMty, besides those wMch proceeded from
the faction of the disappointed aspirant : for the Luciferians up
held their own bishop, named Aurelius, at Rome ; and Florentius,
bishop of Puteoli, deposed by a Roman Council M 372 for co
operating with the Luciferian sect, succeeded M regaining his see.
Moreover, the Donatist conventicle, commonly called Hillfolk (a
name that recalls the Scottish Covenanters) because their meeting
place was M a cave or hollow of a hill beyond the walls, were not
overawed by Gratian's edict of 377 for the expulsion of the African
" rebaptizers " from the churches wMch they had resumed. These
Mdomitable sectarians sent to Rome a bishop named Claudian,
who boldly denounced the Catholic succession as so many " pagans "
devoid of power to administer the sacraments ; and M defiance of
all sentences and prohibitions, this sixth overseer of the Roman
Donatists retained his stronghold on the " Hill," and was suffered
to buy over some of the poorer Church-people and to receive them

396 The Age of the Fathers. [Chap.
by iteration of baptism into his sect, or rather, in the view of a
Roman Council of 378 or 380, wMch gives us this Mformation, to
deprive them of what they had already. TMs Council, at Dama-
sus's request, freely examined the charges made agaMst Mm,
pronounced him innocent, and then addressed a memorial to
Gratian. The young Emperor had already shown Ms attachment
to the Church by providMg, in a law of May 17, 376 (Qui mos), that
matters affecting religion in which clerics were litigants — as distinct
from purely crimMal cases (a distinction afterwards unfortunately
ignored) — should be tried first by their own bishop or by a pro
vincial synod, and then, on appeal, by a synod of the " diocese "
itself: and he had also departed from his father's tolerant policy by
ordering the confiscation of sectarian places of worsMp.
In order to understand the language of the Council's memorial,
it is necessary to observe that under the praetorian prefects of
the empire were deputy rulers of " dioceses," mostly bearing the
title of " vicarii : " thus we have the " vicarius " of " Italy," of
Africa, of Spain, of Gaul proper, of BritaM, of MacedoMa, TMace,
Pontus, "Asiana," respectively subordinate to the prefects of
" Italy," Gaul, Illyricum, and " the East." But some confusion
was caused by the use of " Italia " and " Oriens " M two senses, for
the prefecture and the " diocese governed by a Count," and also
by the use of "prefect" for the governor of Rome itseK with its
neighbouring territory, while the " Vicar of the City " had several
" suburbicarian " provinces under Ms rule, being one of four
" vicarii " of the praetorian prefect of Italy.
The Council then asked : " Let those whom we have con
demned, but who, like the bishops of Parma and Puteoli, ignore
our judgment, be sent to Rome by the praetorian prefect of Italy
and the ' vicarius ' of Rome ; or, if their sees are in remoter parts "
(which would include at least the larger part of the West) "let
them be sent to their own metropolitan for trial. If the con
tumacious prelate is Mmself a metropolitan, let Mm be sent to
Rome, or be tried by judges — say fifteen — to be named by the
Roman bishop; and if Damasus is again accused, let Mm be
exempted from ordinary civil jurisdiction, and allowed to plead
before the Emperor himself." Father Puller, M the third and
revised edition of his "Primitive Saints and the See of Rome,"
observes that Gratian not only conceded the request, but even
enlarged its scope in Ms rescript beginning Ordinariorum, by
providing for what had been overlooked, i.e. that " suburbicarian "

XX.] Gratian and Theodosius. 397
bishops who had fled Mto " remoter parts " should be sent to Rome
by the local authorities ; for he, Gratian, in his reply associates with
the Italic prefect and the Roman vicarius the prefect of "the
Gauls," whose rule extended over Gaul proper, " Germany," Spain,
and Britain. This was in effect to create for the Roman see, by
sheer imperial authority, a patriarchate as wide as the West. He
followed up these acts of favour by renewing the decree of confis
cation, and by baMshMg the chief Roman Donatists to a distance
of a hundred miles from the city.
And he was hardly less decided in Ms line of action agaMst
paganism. If he did not until the close of Ms reign efface from
his coMs the title of Supreme Pontiff, he declared his hostility to
the ancient worsMp by refusing to wear the ornaments of that
dignity, by seizing on the revenues, and abolishing the immunities,
of the pagan priests and the vestals, and by removing the altar
consecrated to Victory, which, with its image of the goddess hold
ing M her hand a laurel wreath, stood in the senate-house, and
was honoured with an offering as the prelude to senatorial delibe
rations. Of tMs we shall hear more later on.
Before we follow Gratian into his settlement of Eastern affairs
we may observe that the Western Church at this period, although
it had its own troubles, had on the whole been exempt from
the tumult of confusion and strife which raged so disastrously
among Eastern Churches. It had two pre-eminently great bishops,
Ambrose and Martin : but before we speak of the noble missionary
bishop of Gaul, we may remember Valerian, metropolitan of
Aquileia, and Philastrius, who, having " guarded the Lord's flock in
Milan during the episcopate of Auxentius," had made many con
verts to the faith at Rome, and, on becomMg bishop of Brescia, had
found there an ignorant, but honest-mMded and receptive popula
tion ; Eusebius of Bologna (Ms eminent namesake of Vercellae had
died M 370), who, when he visited Milan, assisted Ambrose in his
episcopal work ; M Spain the aged Pacian of Barcelona, " on the
heights," as Jerome says, " of the Pyrenees, a man of chastened
eloquence, eminent for his writings and for his conduct," who had
written agaMst the Novatians, on Penance, and on Baptism, and
in whom, while he lived, the Church of Spain possessed a lMk
with the disciplmarian prelates of the Council of Elvira. Looking
Mto Gaul, we find Phoebadius of Agen, the author, as Jerome
records, of a work agaMst the Arians, in which he pleaded strongly
for the Homoousion, and one of those who held out longest at the

398 The Age of the Fathers.- [Chap.
Council of Ariminum. although, as Tillemont expresses it, he and
Ms venerated companion Servatius of Tongres — who had once
visited Athanasius at Alexandria — " had not quite enough intelli
gence to cope with their artful Arian foes." Phoebadius had,
perhaps, presided at a Council of Gallic bishops wMch met at
Valence in 374, at wMch Council was also present Justus bishop
of Lyons, who, some years later, was to signalise Mmself by
resigning his see, and embracing a solitary life in Egypt, out of
grief for a popular outbreak of fury wMch, in spite of Ms efforts,
had ended M murder. But all Gallic sanctities of tMs period
appear to be gathered up and represented in the truly glorious life
of one man, whose name, perhaps, has been associated through
more than fourteen centuries with a larger amount of popular
enthusiasm and affectionate reverence than that of any other
eminent Western saint, and attached to some church of old
foundation in many an English city, the most venerable being that
wMch looks down from its hill on Canterbury. This man was
Martin of Tours, whom the historian and last rector of his Oxford
parish justly describes as " a samt to be proud of."
When Gratian took possession of the East, Martin was rather
more than sixty years old. He had been born as the son of a pagan
tribune in the army at Sabaria, M Pannonia, now Lower Hungary,
in 316 or 317 : when he was ten years old, he caused himself —
against his parents' wishes — to be made a catechumen ; at twelve,
he was only hindered by his youthfulness from retiring into a
monastic solitude; but at fifteen his father constrained him to
enter the army in obedience to an imperial decree which called
the sons of veterans into the service. Thus, " seized by force, and
bound," says his biographer, Sulpicius Severus, " he was involved
in the obligations of the military oath, being contented with one
servant as a companion," to whom he insisted on making return
of all kMdly attendance, often handMg him Ms food, or drawing
off and cleaning his shoes. A kinder, simpler, more genial bearing
than his, towards all his comrades, could never have been seen.
"His patience and humility were beyond all human standards."
All his pay, save what was necessary for his daily wants, went in
feeding the poor, clothing the naked, assisting the distressed. It
was while he thus gave token of that Christian tenderness which
tMoughout Ms life was one of his characteristic graces, that the
memorable incident took place which Christian art has so per
petually connected with Ms memory. The young soldier-boy — he

XX.] Gratian and Theodosius. 399
was but just eighteen — was serving in Gaul, and on one bitter day,
in the middle of an exceptionally severe winter, he met at the gates
of Amiens a poor man miserably destitute of clothing, who begged
charity of the passers-by, but in vain. Martin gazed at the help
less sMvering figure, and having no money, drew the sword which
he wore, and cut in half his wMte woollen military cloak ; one half
he threw around his own shoulders, the other he gave to the
beggar. On the next night, while asleep, he dreamed that he saw
Christ wrapt in that very half-cloak which he had thus, for Christ's
sake, given away, and that he heard Him say to the attendant
angels, " Martin, though as yet only a catechumen, hath clothed
Me with this garment." He at once presented Mmself for baptism,
A.D. 334, and for nearly two years afterwards remaMed in the
Emperor's service, at the special request of his tribune ; at the end
of that time he came into collision with the prince who held supreme
command in Gaul, and who perhaps, as Tillemont says, was Con
stantine II., by refusMg a donative on the somewhat fanatical
ground that military service in itself was incompatible with Chris
tiaMty — a view sometimes taken by enthusiastic Christians, as by
Maximilian, a young Numidian martyr, in 295, but never adopted by
the mind of the ancient Church. Several years afterwards he paid
a visit to Hilary, who had become bishop in 353 ; Hilary, having
ascertaMed the peculiar nobleness and genMneness of his character,
wished to ordain him deacon, but Martin exclaimed, "I am un
worthy ; I will only consent to become an exorcist ; " and afterwards
went to visit Ms parents in Illyria. On the way he fell among
robbers, impressed them by his religious courage, and converted
their chief. Arriving at home, he converted his mother, not his
father, to CMistianity, and (not unnaturally in the land of Ursacius
and Valens) endured scourging and other ill-treatment from Arians,
in the cause of Catholic belief, or, as Sozomen (after Origen) calls
it, of " the dogma." Returning westward in 356, he made a cell
for Mmself at Milan, but was driven away with much violence by
Auxentius, and retired with one priest as his compaMon to Galli-
naria, a little desolate islet off the Riviera coast, where they lived
on roots of herbs. Learning M 360 that Hilary's exile had come
to an end, he went to find him in Rome, and then followed Mm to
Poitier3. There at Locociagum, six miles from Hilary's own city,
he established his " monasterium " or cell, and was soon believed
to exMbit wondrous powers of procuring, by intense prayer, the
recovery of persons already dead. In 371 or 372, the see of Tours

400 The Age of the Fathers. [Chap.
being vacant, the ardent desire of the people to have Martin for
their bishop was accomplished, but not without some opposition —
as in St. Basil's case — on the part of some of the comprovMcial
bishops, particularly of one prelate named Defensor. However,
the " united desire and opMion," or earnestly repeated wish, risMg
into the emphasis of a demand, wMch expressed the mind of the
laity, overcame the idle cavils of prelates who sneered at Martin's
mean garb, his rough hair, and his undigmfied aspect. The conse
cration, destined to have such momentous results M the extension
of Christianity through central Gaul, took place on July 4 ; and
Martm forthwith showed that he was unchanged by this accession
of dignity. He insisted on having a place for monastic retirement.
At first he used a little cell, built up against the wall of the church ;
but the crowd of visitors proved too great, and Martm founded, at
about two miles from the city, and on the other side of the Loire,
under the shelter, in part, of a high rock, and in a spot peculiarly
difficult of access, the monastery wMch even M his own lifetime
became famous, wMch through the Middle Ages was venerated as
one of the great sanctuaries of Europe, the " Majus Monasterium,"
or Marmoutier. Humble and poor indeed was the first begMMng
of that illustrious house : a little wooden cell was bMlt by Martin
for himself, and near it some eighty disciples of Ms, livMg M strict
community, taking food only M the afternoon, abstainMg (save in
ilMess) from wine, mostly wearing a camel-hair dress, practising
no manual art save that of writing, and spending much time in
the study of Scripture, dwelt in cells of which some were actually
hollowed out of the rock. Among these monks were many of high
birth ; and it was edifying, we are told, to see how they forced
themselves to practise this humility and patience : most of them
afterwards rose to the episcopate, for many a church longed to
secure as its bishop some one " from Martin's monastery." When
Martin came to officiate in his cathedral, it was observed that he
remaMed silent and absorbed M Ms little business-room until the
hour of service arrived : M that room he used to sit on a little
rustic seat such as slaves were wont to have, called M the Gallic
tongue " tripetia," but by educated persons a " tripod." He was
never seen to sit down in church. One of Ms first proceedMgs,
after he became bishop, was a visit of necessary busMess^to the-
Court of ValentMian I. at Treves : he found the palace-doors closed
agaMst Mm by the malign Mfluence of the Arian Empress Justina,
who was afterwards to cause such annoyance to Ambrose. Twice

xx.] Gratian and Theodosius. 401
the bishop attempted to gaM an audience ; after the second repulse
he had recourse, we are told, to fasting and prayer, sackcloth and
ashes ; on the seventh day (not, according to Sulpicius, without
extraordmary tokens of his sanctity) the admission which had
been sought was granted, and ValentMian treated him with
cordiality and respect. It was probably soon afterwards that he
became so well known to, and so much dreaded by, the heathen
priests of Mland Gaul. Tours, as a central position, could give
him great facilities for mission circuits; and Gregory of Tours
describes his evangelical activities M a few words : " He wrought
the conversion of many pagans, and broke in pieces their temples
and statues." Sulpicius tells the famous story of " St. Martin's
pine," how he had destroyed a very old temple, and had announced
his intention of cutting down a sacred pine tree that grew close to it.
The priest of the pagan rustics, at the head of a fierce rough band,
asserted Ms right in the tree : it should not be cut down. " There
is notMng sacred in the trunk of a tree," said Martin : " why do
you not rather confess the true God whom I serve ? " The story
goes on to tell how he was challenged to stand beneath it and abide
the certain consequence of its being cut down by the pagans' own
hands. " Catch it as it falls, and if your God is with you, then you
will be scatheless." Martin agreed. A vast crowd assembled : the
pagans plied their hatchets ; the huge tree quivered, tottered, and
seemed about to fall upon Martin ; he raised Ms hand, and signed
the cross ; the tree swerved round, and fell in the opposite direc
tion : whereupon the great multitude of pagans, overawed by what
they deemed a manifest sign from above, impetuously demanded
to be made catechumens by the laying on of the hands of the
bishop. And thus a district, which before his time was almost
devoid of Christians, became ere long distinguished by the number
of its churches and monastic settlements. Of course, at times his
attempts were violently resisted. On one occasion, at Leprosum, he
was repulsed with blows ; on another, in the territory of the iEdui,
a ferocious pagan pursued him with drawn sword. Sulpicius, under
an evident preconception, covers his path with " miracles." He does
not compare or classify the stories which he gives : he displays,
says Dr. Cazenove, "no perception of the meanMg of the word
evidence ; " and he actually argues that to disbelieve that Martin
did such and such wonderful works is to disbelieve that Christ
spoke the words recorded in John xiv. 12. Some of Ms tales imply
no more than the impressiveness of a strong personality ; as when
vol. 1. 2d

402 The Age of the Fathers. [Chap.
he says that if a rustic population withstood Mm in defence of
their temples, he would so mightily sway their minds by " holy
preaching, that they, as if beholding the light of truth, would them
selves overthrow their own temples " in a fervour of newly kindled
zeal. He had the Mfluence of a true enthusiast, and was also
sometimes observed to be in a state of visionary ecstasy. But
there was about him evidently an irresistible moral fascination :
his beautiful tenderness of heart, shown M the kiss which he
gave to a loathsome leper at the gates of Paris, the immovable
sereMty of Ms face, the bright sweetness of expression Mdicating,
as Sulpicius says, the heaveMy gladness wMch filled Ms soul, the
voice which was for ever speaMng of Christ, the tears shed over
personal enemies and detractors (for he had such), the patience
which tolerated injurious attacks even from the inferior clerics, the
manifest yearning over benighted souls, as when Ms impassioned
sermon to a gazing crowd of pagans near Chartres was interrupted
by his groans and mournful exclamation, " Why should so great a
multitude be ignorant of the Lord and Saviour ? " — all tMs com
bination of charity, enthusiasm, unsparing self-sacrificing energy,
intense faith, entire devotion to the cause of that Saviour, was
doubtless as impressive as any instances of remarkable answers to
his prayers in rendering Martin the most successful missionary,
and the most beloved and honoured bishop, that Western Europe
had yet seen.
Gratian was resident at Treves during the first four months of
the eventful year 378. He had been contemplating for some time
past the impending necessity of taking part M Ms uncle's Gothic
war; and it was wMle thus preparing for an eastward journey
that he requested Ambrose to draw up for Mm a compendious
treatise on the Christian faith. The request was readily granted.
Ambrose wrote the first two books of his treatise " De Fide," —
about the close, apparently, of 377, — and set forth M them the unity
of God as preserved in the Trinitarian confession ; the essential
oneness of CMist with the Father in regard of the DivMe attributes ;
the multifarious Mcoherencies of Arianism ; the true significance of
Christ's title as " Image of God ; " the comprehensiveness of the
prologue of St. John's Gospel in its assertion of the truths denied
by various heresies ; the " change " in God Mvolved in the Arian
notion of a Sonship not strictly eternal ; the unique mysterious-
ness of the true Sonship as necessarily and properly divMe ; the
affinity of AriaMsm to pagan polytheism; the self-assertion of

XX.] Gratian and Theodosius. 403
Christ as inconsistent with a created personality ; the decision of
the controversy by the great Council of "the 318 ; " the orthodoxy
of the first determination of the ArimMian Council ; the Judas-like
death of Arius ; the futility of the Arian concession that the Son
was " not a creature like other creatures ; " the various names
applied to Christ and significant of His uniqueness, and His like
ness to, and eternal oneness with, the Father ; the Arian misinter
pretation of such a text as " None is good, save one, God ; " the
attribute of OmMpotence assigned to Christ M Scripture ; the
reference of certain texts to the human feelMgs and thoughts of
Christ, not to His divMity ; in connexion with tMs poMt, the
true Mterpretation of the texts, " My Father is greater than I,"
" He became obedient unto death," " If it be possible," and, which
is remarkable, of " neither the Son ; " and, finally, the answers
which CMist as Judge might be supposed to make to the various
professions of heretical opMion. At the end of the second book,
Ambrose promises Gratian a victory over the Goths, who, as he
says, were foreshadowed M the mysterious language of Ezekiel
(xxxvm. 2), and whose insurrection had brought distress on the
very districts wMch Arian persecution had already visited. " It
has been clearly shown," he wrote, " that those who have violated
the faith cannot be safe : now an army will be led, not by military
eagles, but, 0 Lord Jesus, by Thy Name and worsMp. This army
is sent forth, not by some unbelieving country, but by that Italy
which is wont to send forth confessors : in tMs case, an Emperor
appears whose mind is not wavering, whose faith is fixed. May
he who owns Thee to be the true Power and Wisdom of God, not
temporary but eternal, be supported by Thy Majesty, and attain
the rewards of his faith ! "
Such was the expression of devout hope with which Gratian
was followed M Ms eastward journey. He was, says Gibbon, " far
advanced on his march towards the plaMs of Hadrianople," when
he heard of the tragedy which they had witnessed on the 9th of
August, 378. He did not verify the confident auguries of the
bishop of Milan ; he " was too late to assist, too weak to avenge,"
Valens. He retreated to Sirmium ; and there it was that he put forth
an edict of general toleration, from the benefits of which only three
sects were excluded — the Eunomians, the Photinians, the Mani-
cheans. All others might " freely and without restriction hold
assemblies M their houses of prayer." This concession was too
clearly wrung from Gratian by the peculiar difficulties of the

404 The Age of the Fathers. [Chap.
time ; and, as we shall see, he returned, as soon as he thought it
safe, to the repressive policy on which he had previously entered.
Of course he recalled the Catholic exiles ; and he sent a distin
guished military commander, bearing the dreaded Persian name of
Sapor, to drive out the Arian prelates, and, as Theodoret expresses
it, to "restore the sheepfolds to the good pastors and religious
flocks." For the most part, tMs mandate was executed without
opposition ; but in Antioch a remarkable scene took place.
The Arians of that city had Dorotheus for their bishop : he, of
course, was expelled. But as to the question between PaulMus
and Meletius, there was some attempt made to effect the associa
tion of Meletius with Paulinus, who was by this time an aged man,
in the bishopric. Theodoret (who, however, must be regarded as
a partisan of the Meletian side in this controversy) describes
Meletius as addressing his rival with friendly kMdness : " SMce
the Lord of the sheep has entrusted me with the care of this flock,
and you have received the oversight of another, and both the flocks
are agreed in faith, let us, my friend, combMe the flocks, and put
an end to the contest for priority. Let us feed them M common,
and let us set the holy Gospel on the central seat — the episcopal
tMone — and let us take our places each on one side of it, and let
the survivor govern the flock alone." We are told that PaulMus
refused this proposal, allegMg that he could not, consistently with
Church rules, admit as a coadjutor a prelate of Arian consecration.
Meletius was thereupon forcibly installed in one of the churches
outside the city ; and ultimately, according to Socrates and Sozomen
(whose account is confirmed by the older authority of two Italian
Councils, those of Aquileia and Milan, but is ignored by Theodoret,
very likely under partisan feeling), six of the leadMg clergy, M-
cludMg Flavian, were induced to bind themselves by an oath to
advance no pretensions to the bishopric on the death of either
Paulinus or Meletius, but to permit the survivor to act as un
questioned bishop of Antioch. This concordat, wMch (early in
381) virtually made peace between the two parties, appears to
have had the approval of the bishops of Northern Italy.
Before tMs, and about Mne months after the death of St. Basil,
i.e. about September, 379, a Council of 146 bishops met at Antioch,
under Meletius's presidency, and accepted the " Tome " or letter
of a synod or synods under Damasus, which was strong agaMst
MacedoMan, ApollMarian, and Marcellian errors. It dwelt on the
practical result of belief in a mindless Saviour : " If manhood was

xx.] Gratian and Theodosius. 405
assumed in an imperfect state, then God's gift is imperfect, and
our salvation is imperfect because the whole of man is not saved."
AgaM, the Holy Spirit was to be " venerated with the Father and
the Son as perfect in majesty and deity ; " and the Word of God
was not " put forth " like an attribute, but born as eternally sub-
sistent (or personal). The document referred to by the Council held
at ConstantMople in 382 as "the Tome made at Antioch" (see p. 452)
apparently dealt with similar subjects, and is perhaps only the
Roman Tome under another name. Meletius was the first of the
Eastern bishops to sign the Tome : next to him comes the name of
Eusebius of Samosata. That good prelate, on his return from exile,
employed himself (whether by direct commission from a Council,
or as considering that the emergency dispensed with ordinary
forms) M consecratMg orthodox bishops for various churches. He
stationed Acacius at Bercea, Theodotus at Hierapolis, Eusebius at
Chalcis, Isidore at Euphratesian Cyrrhos — afterwards Theodoret's
own see ; it is said that he also appointed Eulogius to the see of
Edessa, now vacated by the death of Barses ; and later on, when
visiting a little town called Dolicha — at that time, says Theodoret,
much infected by AriaMsm — in order to install in its bishopric a
man of high religious character named Maris, he gained, by a
sudden and strange fate, the honours of a martyr in the Catholic
cause. He had just passed witMn the gates, when a woman,
fanatical m the Arian cause, threw down a tile from a housetop on
the head of the obnoxious visitor : and this repetition of the deed of
the female zealot of Thebez proved fatal to Eusebius, who closed
Ms truly noble career by the characteristic demand — enforced, it
is said, on his friends by an oath or solemn promise — that no
penalty should ever be Mflicted by legal process on the authoress
of Ms death. This, says Tillemont, was " the end of his holy life,
his many conflicts, his glorious labours." Meletius, on Ms part,
appointed several new bishops : the learned, but, as was afterwards
too well proved, the heterodox Diodore was raised to the see of
Tarsus ; John, the son of that deaconess Publia who had so boldly
defied the wrath of Julian, was made bishop of Apamea ; and
Stephen, who had been his fellow-labourer M upholding the
Catholic cause during persecution, and who combined " Hellenic "
culture with theological erudition, was sent to preside at Ger-
manicia over a people whose faith had been perverted by Eudoxius.
"The expectations formed of him," says Theodoret, "were not
disappomted : he turned the wolves into sheep," no doubt by

406 The Age of the Fathers. [Chap.
exhibiting Catholicism in combination with gentleness and charity.
There were several instances of this happy combination ; for
Sozomen tells us that several of the bishops who had been restored
from exile offered very conciliatory terms to the Arianizers who had
superseded them. Eulalius of Amasea found that hardly fifty of
his people had submitted to the authority of Ms successor. He
went so far as to propose that the latter should be associated with
him M the church, and even should take rank before him. The
other scorned this extraordinary concession, and ere long found
Mmself deserted even by Ms own scanty followMg.
The edict of toleration had emboldened certain MacedoMans to
assemble at Antioch in Caria, and pronounce for the Homoiousion
as agaMst the Homoousion. But others of the party drew closer
the bonds that they had formed with the Catholic Church, and
adhered to the settlement of the Council of Tyana.
The Macedonians proper were included M a list of more
than twenty anathemas, which has been variously dated, but was
certaMly drawn up by a synod under Damasus — according to
PMler, who dates it M 380, the fourth of Ms synods wMch dealt
with doctrine. The other errors thus condemned were the Arian
in all its forms, the Sabellian, the Photinian — described as a re
newal of Ebionism, — the theory which (anticipating Nestorian-
ism) asserted two Sons, the Apollmarian, and the Marcellian;
anathemas also were levelled at the notion wMch would ascribe
Christ's sufferings to His Godhead, at the denial of His true
bodily session at the Father's right hand, at every form of anti-Trim-
tarianism, at all Tritheism — at everything, M short, wMch could
savour of heresy on the truth enshrined in the baptismal formula.
The thirteenth of these is apparently the origmal of the twelfth of
the famous " articles " of Cyril of Alexandria in 430 : it affirms that
the Word suffered, and tasted death in flesh, and became firstfruits
from the dead M so far as He is life and life-givMg as beMg God.
" TMs then," the document concludes, " is the salvation of CMis
tians, that we believMg in and being baptized Mto the Trinity, that
is, the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, should undoubtingly
believe It to possess the one, true, and only Godhead." Antipathy
to Macedomanism was very apparent in tMs Roman document,
wMch employed one anathema after another to emphasize the
orthodox confession of a true, proper, indivisible, co-equal Triune
Godhead. It was addressed to Paulinus; and there can be no
doubt that this was Paulinus of Antioch. Theodoret's words, " to

XX.] Gratian and Theodosius. 407
bishop PaulMus who was at Thessalomca," have drawn down on
him severe censure, as if he had attempted to conceal this recogni
tion by Rome of Meletius's rival. But Valesius defends Theodoret
from this obviously improbable charge, and observes that he can
only mean that PaulMus was at that time staying in the capital of
MacedoMa. The first day of 379 had witnessed the death of the greatest of
Eastern bishops. The nineteenth day of that same January was
signalised by the association of Theodosius, afterwards not unduly
styled the Great, in the full imperial honours, and the committal of
TMace, Asia, and Egypt, — that is, of the whole realm of Valens, —
to the government of this able Spaniard, whose father, only three
years before, had been ignommiously and unrighteously put to
death under the authority of the young Emperor, who now, " op
pressed and distracted " even with the government of the West, had
the wisdom to " select a hero and a statesman " as the successor
of his unhappy uncle in the East, as the one man who seemed
capable of saving or restoring what had been lost or imperilled
by Valens. Gibbon tMnks that all history can hardly " afford a
similar example of an elevation at once so pure and so honourable."
Gratian further made over what had been called the diocese of
the Mcesias, afterwards divided into those of Dacia and Macedonia.
TMs great territory formed the Eastern Illyricum, and included
Greece. Illyricum proper — a single " diocese," at first called " of the
Pannonias," and contaMing seven provinces — was retained as part
of the Western dominion, and therein of the Italian prefecture.
Thereupon Damasus, with true Roman tenacity of power, took
steps for retaimng a hold over the churches of Eastern Illyricum
by appointing Ascholius, bishop of Thessalonica, Ms deputy for its
ecclesiastical affairs. TMs relation between the two sees lasted for
about a century, but it soon became rather nominal than effective :
there was, as Duchesne observes, a natural attraction of Greeks
and Macedonians to the Eastern capital; and Theodosius II. M
421 enacted that questions arising in Eastern-Ill yrian churches
should be settled by the synod of the " diocese," but not without
the knowledge of the bishop of ConstantMople." Theodosius I.
was in Ms thirty -thud year when he began that illustrious reign
which, although darkened by some grievous shadows, was destined
on the whole to lift his name above all others in the Christian
imperial line.

CHAPTER XXI.
THE CATHOLIC REVIVAL AT CONSTANTINOPLE.
The first ecclesiastical event of importance wMch marked the
reign of Theodosius was the revival of Catholic faith and worship
at Constantinople. That capital had been M the possession of
Arianism for some tMrty years, ever since the final expulsion of
the orthodox Paul. Heresy had acquired M the minds of many
of the citizens a sort of prescriptive right ; it was Mvested with the
respectability of a long-established and traditional religion : as
Hilary said years before of Eastern AriaMsm M general, " it had
so long been taught as the truth that it had come to be taken for
the truth ; " and it was represented at ConstantMople M a moderate
and attractive form by a prelate who exhibited great aversion for
Eunomian rationalism and "impiety," wMle at the same time the
Eunomians had their own bishop, one Florentius. The Arians,
says Gregory, bragged of possessmg "theatres and Mppodromes,
palaces and porticoes, the pillar of Constantine, the surgMg popu
lace, the senate of high-born men." There was a Catholic minority,
" the mere relic of a flock, disorgamzed, without an overseer,"
sMunken and enfeebled under the persecution of Valens, and no
longer animated by the courage which had been shown in the
attempt to establish Evagrius as Catholic prelate of Constantinople
after the death of Eudoxius M 370. However, tMs faithful
remnant retaMed, as Gregory says, a thoroughgoMg loyalty to
Nicene doctrine, and thus constituted " a little seed of the breath
of life " amid the wide-spreading " death " of fashionable hetero
doxy. They would look with horror at the Arians who made the
great Church of the Eternal Wisdom a stronghold' and centre of
heresy ; at the fanatical Arian women who " outdid men them
selves in activity for the cause of misbelief;" at the crowd of
irreverent talkers who haunted the public places, and disturbed

Chap, xxi.] The Catholic Revival at Constantinople. 409
even private supper-parties with a flood of incessant flippancies and
sarcasms on the most sacred of all subjects : in the language of
Gregory of Nyssa, " If you ask the price of a loaf, you are told that
the Son is subject to the Father; if you ask whether a bath is
ready, the answer is that the Son was made out of nothmg." This
was in perfect accordance with that intense disputatiousness which
(as Athanasius, years before, had testified) led the Arians of Alex
andria to question the very boys and women in the streets as to
the singleness of the " Ingenerate," or the possibility of an " Eternal
Son." The Thalia of Arius, written for the very purpose of popular
ising Ms denial of the Son's co-equality, had given the original
impulse to this voluble profaneness ; and wherever Arianism was
domMant, tMs bad sign of its presence would hardly be wanting.
Could anything now be done for the reorganization of Catholic
ChristiaMty in the Eastern capital ? This was a question anxiously
considered by the leaders of Catholicism even before the death of
St. Basil. If we can trust Gregory the presbyter, the biographer
of Gregory Nazianzen, Basil had concurred with many other
bishops, and with the faithful of Constantinople, in desiring his
old friend Gregory Nazianzen to undertake the task. Yet tMs is
improbable, for he had already had experience of the peculiarities
which had defeated Ms plans for Sasima. One great gift Gregory
had, and that the bishops expected to prove sufficient — Ms power
as a preacher. He was at this time enjoyMg that retirement wMch,
throughout his life, possessed for Mm so irresistible a charm, and
which, as he had MtMiated in his " defence" for returning Mto Pontus
after beMg ordaMed priest, was connected M Mm with a species
of mysticism. His father was dead, and he had been living since
375 at Seleucia in Isauria, the city of the Semi-Arian Council of
359. But the call to Constantinople was addressed to him so
urgently that he did not feel able to resist it. In his own language,
he " went tMther, not of his own free will, nor as offering himself
to the work, after the fashion of many who were wont to leap
eagerly Mto places of pre-eminence, but in obedience to a summons,
or even yielding to pressure, and beMg guided by religious awe and
by the Spirit." Or, as he says in his autobiograpMcal poem, " It
was the grace of the Spirit that sent me, by the summons of many
pastors and flocks: thus I came, not willingly, but under the
influence of men who constraMed me ; " and he intimates that he
was expected to do good service, not only agaMst the Arianism
M its various forms, moderate and extreme, wMch prevailed M

410 The Age of the Fathers. [Chap.
ConstantMople, but agaMst the Apollinarian error which nullified
the humanity of Christ, and agaMst an opposite tendency to dis
tinguish between the Son of God and the Son of the Virgin, as
two persons — the same tendency wMch, as we have seen, had
caused anxiety to Athanasius, and was to constitute the heresy of
Nestorianism. Thus Gregory, " thinking it better to suffer something in the
flesh than to sustain injury in the spirit," and praying to have " the
rough steep way made smooth for Mm," obeyed this unwelcome
call, and went to Constantinople about the end of 379, fortified by
letters of recognition from Peter of Alexandria, who, as he says in
his poem, " honoured Mm with the tokens of establishment M his
new dignity" — a phrase wMch Tillemont does not undertake to
explain, but which probably indicated some vague and unwar
ranted claim of Alexandrian authority over the Church in " New
Rome." The enterprise was an extremely bold one for a man of
fifty, conspicuously deficient in practical and administrative ability,
nervously reluctant to confront the society of a great capital,
devoid alike of personal dignity and of colloqmal agreeableness,
accustomed to rustic seclusion, and, it is said, betraying his ante
cedents by a rough unpolished dialect. No adventitious resources
had he, tMs poor-looking attenuated recluse with downcast melan
choly face, shy and unsocial, penniless and meanly attired, who
had come M simple loyalty to duty on this great errand of build
ing up the ruMed fabric of orthodoxy at Constantinople. He was
welcomed by a niece and her husband to their own house, which
was to him, he says, what the Shunammite's was to Elisha ; and
there the scanty band of Catholics had to assemble — not without
peril from the intolerant bitterness of the Arians. TMs house
became famous under the name of " the Anastasia " — the place of
the resurrection of the Catholic faith : it stood M what was called
the seventh quarter of the city, at some little distance from the
western end of the Hippodrome. The congregation was organized,
apparently, M April ; and forthwith Gregory, as its cMef, became a
mark for popular denunciation on the part of Arians, who, posing
as conservatives in possession, determMed to put down the intru
sive innovator. " He is denying the one God, and setting up more
Gods than one." "They knew no better," was his comment:
" they had never been taught that the Unity is triune, and the
Trinity is one ; " or as he says in one of Ms discourses, in language
exactly reproduced in the " QMcunque "¦ — " that the UMty is to

XXL] The Catholic Revival at Constantinopte. 411
be worshipped (as existing) in a TrMity, and the TrMity (as) M a
Unity." One of his first cares was to inculcate a great moral
principle which was daily and hourly outraged by the disputatious
rationalism of the Ultra- Arians — the principle of reverence in the
treatment of Divine truth. Of such reverence, and withal of the
single-minded devotion to religious interests which alone could
then, or at any time, give real vitality to a religious teacher's work,
he Mmself was a consistent and conspicuous example. " One
must purify oneself," said he in one of Ms earlier sermons delivered
in the Anastasia, " before one holds converse with Him who is
pure." " I wish it may befall me neither to thMk nor to speak,
concernMg God, anything that is my own." " Ascend by holiness
of life, if thou desirest to become a theologian ; keep the com
mandments, for action is the step to contemplation : even Paul
confessed that he could only see through a mirror and dimly."
When he spoke of the great doctrine which he had come to preach
— the mystery of the Trinity — he had to guard against the Sabel-
lian " confusion " and the Arian " severance," agaMst that false
kind of Monotheism wMch would make the TrMity "merely
nomMal," and that " Judaizing " error which would confine Deity
to the Unbegotten Father, or that other which would constitute
three independent principles or three separate Gods : it was neces
sary to secure what of old was called the " MonarcMa " by referring
the Son and the Spirit to the Father as causative Principle ; and
at the same time to exclude any confusion of the three " hypo
stases " or " persons," and to insist on the reality of the Unity as
existing in TrMity— of the " one glory in three brightnesses."
But he was also most earnest in protesting agaMst any attempts
to measure the divme Sonship by earthly standards, to rationalise
as to the " procession " of the Spirit— M short, to ask unbefittingly
" How ? " And whatever he said to his people on tMs fundamental
mystery was pervaded and illumMated not only by the reverent
caution which discouraged all attempts to comprehend the Infinite,
to grasp the supreme essence M a formula, but by the adoring
devotion of one whose spirit lived on the truths which he was
defendMg, and by the profound conviction of their practical bear-
Mg upon life. The habit of Ms mind and the tone of Ms teachMg
on these poMts may be gathered from some vivid passages in his
twenty-third sermon, particularly devoted as it was to the question
of peace between different parties of Catholics, and written, M fact,
after the "concordat" between the adherents of Paulinus and

412 The Age of the Fathers. [Chap.
Meletius had for the time restored peace to the Church of Antioch,
and therefore to other Eastern Churches, M so far as they were
affected by Antiochene quarrels. The discourse soon glides into the
great theological subject which was always nearest Ms heart, and
wMch Ms hearers seemed well disposed to entertaM ; and treats it,
not with dry techMcal exactness, but with the glowMg earnestness
of a worsMppmg and obedient soul. " The TrMity, bretMen, is a
real TrMity, not a number of unequal elements. To dishonour any
one of the TMee, or to separate one from another, is to dishonour
our confession, our regeneration, and our hope." "To serve the
Trinity well," he says, as if anticipating the " cui servire regnare "
of the collect, " is to rise above service. 0 holy, adorable, long-
suffering TrMity ! 0 TrMity, one day to be known by all, either
for illumMation or for punishment ! Mayest Thou accept as wor
sMppers those who now insult Thee, and may we lose none of
them, even of the least ! " This fervid charity was another point
M Gregory which contributed much to his success in the work of
" resuscitating " orthodoxy. He taught an inestimable lesson to
theologians of all time by abstaMing from everything like fierce
invective : he did not, like some dogmatic zealots — to use Ms own
sigMficant words — " conceal argumentative weakness under over
bearing declamation ; " he strove to " show Mmself to be fighting
in CMist's cause by fighting M Christ's way," by imitating Him
" who was peace-makMg and gentle ; " and at the same time he
avoided that false and un-Christlike softness which would buy the
reputation of good-nature by sacrificMg sacred truth. He spoke
"gently and earnestly, not with bitterness," remembering that
"argument and imperiousness could not go together;" he ap
peared as the champion of a doctrine that was " sympathetic and
tender ; " he overcame by the power of persuasion.
Such was Gregory in the Church of the Anastasia. He de
scribes it in his " Dream," where he speaks of himself as occupy
ing the episcopal seat, as in the apse of a basilica, with presbyters
sitting below Mm on either hand, and deacons " m shining vest
ments, symbolic of the splendour of angels," standing in their due
place, wMle the congregation pressed as near as they could to the
chancel screen. His exhortations repeatedly enforced the combina
tion of practical religious earnestness — devotion, abstinence, alms
giving, and watchfuMess against evil temper and sensuality — with
the maintenance of Trinitarian faith ; and his personal life, cha
racterized by an absolute unworldliness, a genuine simplicity and

XXL] The Catholic Revival at Constantinople. 413
spirituality, such as few bishops, perhaps, of that time had equalled,
enforced his teaching by the exhibition of that thorough con
sistency wMch alone could secure its moral force. " Never," said
Rufinus, " had been known a life more holy and unblamable, or
eloquence more vivid and brilliant, or faith more pure and ortho
dox, or knowledge more perfect and entire." Thus it was that, as
he says, men came to him as thirsty travellers to a spring of
water ; the Church of Constantinople, but lately so scanty and so
weak — so that it might be compared to a mere "handful" —
rapidly grew under his care, spreading out to the right hand and
to the left, until the measure of DivMe benignity in its restoration
exceeded the measure of its previous abasement.
But it was not likely that such a work as this would be allowed
to go on unmolested. Several who heard Gregory preach were
but the more embittered agaMst Catholicism. From denouncing
Mm as a Tritheist, the Arian party proceeded to violent interrup
tions of the services of the Anastasia. The bishop was pelted in
the streets : at a great solemnity wMch seems to have been the
WMtsun-eve baptism of 379, a brutal mob, Mcluding not only
" beggars," or some of the lowest of the people, but Arian monks,
and women "like so many furies," who had issued from the
cathedral itself, burst mto the temporary church while Gregory
was officiating, " insulted the mysteries," and threw stones at those
who were, as he says, " being Mitiated " (that is, who were on the
poMt of being baptized), while Gregory stood between them and
the ruffians. They set their leader, whom Gregory calls their
Corybantian, on the episcopal seat. Other injuries were added to
these ; a zealous member of Ms flock was beaten through the city
and left for dead. Gregory himself was accused before the magis
trates, whom he depicts as scowling superciliously at the repre
sentative of an unpopular religion. His quiet firmness and
gentleness apparently disarmed his assailants ; they fell back, it
would seem, on satire and affected scorn. " Look at his bald head,
his melancholy face, his worn-out garments — what a poor-lookmg
vulgar fellow he is, how unfit for city life, how spiritless, how
incapable ! " Such sneers would have some effect in a luxurious
and arrogant society. Gregory could only repel them by the
dignity of his own sMgle-minded earnestness, and indulge the
hope that if his flock were small, it would ere long be increased by
the conversion of some of the " wolves " outside it into " sheep."
He had, for a time, some trouble M consequence of the Antiochene

414 The Age of the Fathers. [Chap.
dissensions, wMch enrolled the Catholics of Constantinople under
opposite party-standards, while he himself was impartial as to the
two claimants ; and when this evil was abated by the accommo
dation above mentioned, a different peril arose in 380 from the
intrigues of an adventurer named Maximus, who, professing to
be a zealous Christian, and even to have been a confessor for the
faith in Egypt, while retaining the garb of a Cynic philosopher —
the fact being that he had been scourged for misconduct — came to
ConstantMople with a design of securing the episcopate. Gregory,
who was like a child in knowledge of the world, and who owns
that he " often made like mistakes," was easily taken in by the
man's pretended earnestness, and actually panegyrised him in a
sermon with grotesque reference to his philosophic profession as
" a dog, not in impudence, but in boldness." There must have
been in Mm a good deal of rascally cleverness, for he afterwards
imposed even upon Ambrose. No wonder then that the simplicity
of Gregory, who had received Maximus into his house, and treated
him with confidence as well as kindness, was scandalously abused :
one of his clergy (a barbarian by descent) lent his aid to the
intrigue ; and Peter of Alexandria himself, who must have been
getting into his dotage, was persuaded to commission some bishops
of Egypt to visit ConstantMople and consecrate "the Cynic."
One night, when Gregory was ill, the conspirators, who had hired
the support of some Alexandrian sailors, forced entrance mto the
Anastasia, placed Maximus in the episcopal seat, — were compelled
to evacuate the place as soon as the clergy became aware of the
proceedMg — and took Maximus to a mean house belonging to a
flute-player, where they cut off his " yellow curling '' false hair,
and consecrated him a bishop. The result of this audacity was
the compulsory departure of Maximus and Ms consecrators from
ConstantMople. He vainly endeavoured to obtain the countenance
of Theodosius, then at Thessalonica ; he was denounced, in a letter
to Damasus, by Ascholius, bishop of that city (whom the Latins
call Acholius), and Damasus treated him accordingly ; and after
attempting to intimidate the aged archbishop of Alexandria on
whose credulity he had practised, but whose eyes were now
opened, he was expelled by military authority from the capital
of Egypt, and Peter lived long enough to assure Gregory of Ms
friendsMp and communion. Meantime, Gregory, whose nature
had a feminine element, had at first determined to retire from
the city where he had received such a shock, and would have

XXL] The Catholic Revival at Constantinople. 415
carried out his intention but for the vehement remonstrances of
persons of all classes, high and low, magistrates and soldiers, " on
fire alike with anger and affection." They crowded the Anastasia,
Msisting that he should promise not to go: he was silent, but
they declared that they would not depart, in spite of the heat and
pressure, until he gave them some assurance. " If you leave the
city," said one of them, " you will cast out of it, at the same time,
the faith of the Trinity." At length, as the evening was closing
in, Gregory so far yielded as to promise that he would stay until
the expected arrival of some bishops. In fact, he did retire for a
short time to a place on the seashore, and then returned to the
city in renewed strength and spirits, and delivered a discourse
wMch began with the emphatic words, " I longed for you, my
children, and I know that you longed as earnestly for me."
But the time was now at hand at which the Catholics of the
Eastern empire were to have their day of triumph, under the
auspices of a vigorous sovereign devoted, with personal zeal and
thoroughgoMg sympathy, to the cause which had for years been
struggling agaMst the hostility of an imperial court. Gratian
had, on the 3rd of August, 379, cancelled his recent edict of tolera
tion, and re-enforced all the provisions which had formerly been
made in favour of " the Catholic observance." And Theodosius, after
having received baptism, during a dangerous illness, from the
bishop of Thessalonica, whose orthodoxy he had in the first Mstance
ascertained, addressed to the people of Constantinople the memor
able edict, Cunctos populos, dated at Thessalonica on the 28th of
February, 380. "We will," wrote the Emperor, in the Mgh
Caesarean strain to which Constantine had given an impulse, " that
all peoples governed by our Clemency shall live in that religion
wMch the holy apostle Peter delivered to the Romans, as is
proved by the religion handed down to the present time on his
authority, and wMch is evidently followed by the pontiff Damasus,
and by Peter, bishop of Alexandria, a man of apostolical holiness ;
to the effect that, according to the Apostolic teachMg and the
Evangelical doctrine, we believe the one Godhead of the Father,
the Son, and the Holy Spirit, under " (i.e. existing in) " an equal
majesty and under a sacred Trinity : we command that those who
follow this law " (or religion) " shall bear the name of Catholic
Christians ; but that the rest, whom we regard as mad and frenzied,
shall be loaded with the opprobrious name of heretics, and that
their conventicles shall not take the name of churches ; and they

416 The Age of the Fathers. [Chap.
are to be smitten, first by Divine vengeance, and afterwards by
pumshment proceedMg from our action, which we shall have
taken under the Heavenly will." It has been thought that Peter
of Alexandria had died a few days before the issMng of this edict ;
but Ambrose, writing Ms work " On the Holy Spirit " M 381,
supposes Mm to be still living, and would certainly have been
informed if he had been succeeded by Timothy M the February of
380. Moreover, if the affair of Maximus is assigned to 380, time
must be allowed for Peter to renew his friendly relations with
Gregory ; hence his death may confidently be fixed on Feb. 14 of
the next year, 381. On the same day with Ms great edict, Theo
dosius made a law against the promotion to bishoprics of men
ignorant or negligent. He remained at Thessalonica until August,
and Zosimus connects Ms stay there with a needless increase in
the number of military officers and a development of courtly
extravagance. He then proceeded to Hadrianople, and arrived at
Constantinople on the 24th of November, 380.
Gregory in opposMg the Ultra- Arians during the summer of
this year had become acquainted with an " Mtroductory " manual
intended to prime their followers with argumentative points, and
had inaugurated the series of Ms five great " Theological " Dis
courses. In the first two of these he contends, somewhat M
Butler's manner, for the absolute necessity of " seriousness " in the
•treatment of a subject so sacred : he urges that flippant " talk,"
misnamed " speculation," is precisely not the way to truth ; that
God can Mdeed be known to exist from all eternity, and apart
from all limitations, and that nature testifies to His creative and
providential agency, but to affirm this is not to fathom the depths
of His infimte beMg, nor to see Him as He is ; that a " compre
hension " of God may be attainable in a Mgher state of being, but
that in tMs life all that can reach us is but as " a little ray from a
vast body of light;" and thus that the " knowledge of God," ascribed
in Scripture to His holy servants, is but a relative and comparative
illumMation, even as a Paul could only say, " It is in part that we
know." In the third discourse he proceeds to guard the Catholic
doctrine of the TrMity from misconstruction, by exMbiting its
agreement with the primaeval belief in the DivMe Unity; to
insist on the real eternity of the existence of the Son and the
Spirit, without prejudice to their dependence on the Father as
OrigM or Principle; to consider certain Eunomian objections, as
that co-eternity would imply " uncausedness " and co-essentiality

XXL] The Catholic Revival at Constantinople. 417
" unbegottenness ; " to retort on Eunomians that on their showing
the human soul woMd either have no begMMng or be imperfect, and
that a titular deity is, as such, unreal ; to adduce Scriptural texts
for the Son's Godhead, and to deal with Arian arguments from
other texts, which refer for the most part to the condescension and
to the self-limitations involved in it. The subject is continued M
the fourth discourse; and it is observable that Gregory explains
Mark xiii. 32 as referring to " the manhood," but is not satisfied with
that explanation M regard to John xiv. 28, and reduces Matt, xxvii.
46 and Heb. v. 8 — very unsatisfactorily — to representations of
the general case of men. Here and there he uses phrases which
of themselves might be construed in a "Nestorian" or in a
" Eutychian " sense, but his general meanmg is abundantly clear :
he sets forth the combination of Godhead and Manhood in Him
who, M becoming Incarnate, " remaMed what He was, but took to
Himself what He was not" (a pMase wMch, in later forms,
became a commonplace with St. Augustine) ; Him who, while
lying M the manger, was still, as always, glorified by the angels ;
who was baptized as man, but " loosed " our sins as God ; who
asked, as man, where Lazarus was laid, but, as being God, raised
him up ; who died, but gave life, and by His death destroyed
death. In the fifth of these discourses he had attacked not
only the Macedonian heresy, wMch, while fairly sound as to the
Son, objected to the divMity of the Spirit as Mtroducmg a strange
God, but the notion wMch reduced the Holy Spirit to a mere im
personal energy of God, and also any inadequate recogMtion of His
proper Deity : for, unlike Basil, and probably taught by experience
of what had resulted from Basil's reserve on this point, Gregory
expressly called the Spirit " God," and therefore " co-essential," and
M reply to the argument that His Deity was not clearly expressed
in Scripture, observed not oMy that several passages implied it, but
that the full maMfestation of it was Mtended to be a gradual work,
following on the revelation of the divMity of the Son. It should
be added that Gregory does not approach to the doctrine of the
Double Procession, although (as we have seen) in several of Ms
TrMitarian statements he almost anticipates the "Quicunque."
He had followed up these discourses by a further warnMg against
a contentious verbosity on sacred subjects, and an exhortation to
speak but little, and that little very cautiously and modestly, on
themes which taxed all the ability of trained theologians, compelled
by their duty to break that silence wMch an adoring heart would
VOL. 1. 2 E

418 The Age of the Fathers. [Chap.
often prefer. While enforcing the distMction between teachers and
taught, he pleads for a patient and modest consideration of the
difficulties and anxieties of the former — " You do not know what a
blessMg it is not to be under the necessity of sayMg something ; "
and with an obvious allusion to the Eunomians, he likens the
technicalities of Greek schools to one of the plagues of Egypt.
These addresses of Gregory's are matters of interest to students
of Church Mstory as well as of theology ; for they doubtless con
tributed to the settlement of Church matters M ConstantMople
wMch followed on the arrival of Theodosius. The Emperor, m the
first instance, sought to reunite the Christian commuMties of
Constantinople by prevailMg on Demophilus to accept the Nicene
Creed, and thus combMe Ms adherents with those of Gregory. " I
cannot do it," said Demophilus. " Then," said the Emperor, " if
you thus refuse to be uMted with the believers M the Nicene faith,
I must order you to quit the houses of prayer." Demophilus
assembled Ms flock M St. SopMa, and standmg up in the midst
of them, said, " BretMen, it is written m the Gospel, ' If they
persecute you from this city, flee ye to another.' SMce then the
Emperor excludes us from the churches, I give notice that we will
henceforth assemble outside the city." He acted on tMs resolution ;
and with him, says Socrates, there went out also Lucius — a much
worse specimen of the Arian party than Mmself — who, after Ms
abomMable proceedMgs as Arian bishop at Alexandria, had fled to
ConstantMople when Peter's return made his position in Egypt
untenable. These two Arians, we may observe, were named toge
ther by the Council of Aquileia in 381, in a letter to Theodosius,
as havMg repeatedly harassed the Catholics of the East.
The departure of DemopMlus, wMch finally closed the period
of Arian ascendency at Constantinople, took place on the 26th
of November, 380. The Arians probably chose for their place of
meeting a suburb just outside the Wall of Constantine ; while the
Catholics were put M possession of the churches, accordMg to the
express promise of Theodosius to Gregory, " God gives the temple,
by my means, to you and to your labours." Gregory was fully
aware of the danger wMch he might Mcur from the resentment of
the Arian population. Anxiety was mingled with Ms joy : he felt
that even imperial favour and the strong hand of civil power might
not be able to ensure him a peaceable entrance mto the great
church, wMch was now guarded by the imperial troops, M the face
of an excited multitude, storming agaMst the Catholic bishop as an

xxi.] The Catholic Revival at Constantinople. 419
intruder, and passionately entreating that the Emperor would re
consider his resolution. He shows us " streets and public places
filled with crowds tMck as snowflakes, and restless as surging
waves — eager faces, old and young, looking down from second
and third stories — cries of grief and groans of anger blended in a
chorus of popular protest : the city resembled one that had been
suddenly captured." It was morning, but no brightness shone
upon the military pomp that took its way, in steady orderly move
ment, towards the cathedral : the heavy November clouds, hidMg
the sun, deepened the sombre and menacing gloom which, to
Catholic eyes, must have ushered in the day of Gregory's enthrone
ment. He Mmself, weak and ill in body, hardly able, as he says,
to breathe, moved on between the purple-clad Emperor and the
guards, lookMg fixedly heavenwards, and doubtless absorbed in
prayer. They entered the basilica, which, as Gregory afterwards
said, was on that day turned from a Jebus into a Jerusalem ; and
he, with Theodosius, passed up the nave into the sanctuary. The
service began : the Catholics uMted in a loud burst of psalmody,
and intermingled with it, in the strange fasMon of the day, enthu
siastic exclamations and eager stretching out of hands ; and then,
as in a moment, the sky brightened, the sun came out in full
splendour, and the church, from one end to another, was bathed in
vivid light. The sudden brilliancy at such a moment, which Gregory
compares to the " divMe splendour that filled the ancient taber
nacle," impressed great numbers of the people, as if it had been an
actual sign of divine approval. With one of those rapid revolu
tions of feeling which have often been exhibited by Southern races,
the popular voice now requested that Gregory should be enthroned
as bishop. Men in office, men of the people, and women — " almost
forgetting," says Gregory, " their womanly reserve " — joMed M the
" thunder," as he calls it, of tMs general demand. Gregory was
too much agitated, and, even yet, too much alarmed, to speak : he
had seen one man draw a sword as if to attack him, but almost
immediately replace it in its scabbard. He asked one of the clergy
to address a few words to the multitude. " Cease your clamour,"
exclaimed the bishop's mouthpiece : " for the present, our duty is to
give thanks to God ; weightier matters will come on in due time."
The scene terminated amid the plaudits of the people, who
certaMly had very different feelings from our own as to the
reverence due to a sacred place : but this termination did not, in
effect, abate all the exasperation which the ejection of Demophilus

420 The Age of the Fathers. [Chap.
had provoked. The Arians murmured under the pressure of the
imperial mandate, "like Enceladus," M Gregory's quaint Miage,
under the superincumbent weight of Etna ; and " volcaMc " out
breaks of wrath, occurring from time to time, had to be dealt with
patiently and considerately. Gregory, M telling the story, asks
those young and hot-headed zealots who blamed Mm for excessive
lemty whether they would have had Mm employ agaMst his
opponents the resources of the civil power ; whether it were better
to " thrust out, drive away, Mfuriate, Mflame " by an unsparing
use of the strong arm of government, " or to heal with salutary
medicines " the irritation which disappoMtment had naturally
produced. He, for Ms part, could not doubt what was his duty.
As he markedly avoided the path on wMch so many bishops had
trodden — the path of courtiers and time-servers ; as he sMank from
contact with the Mcurably vicious class of palace-mMisters, and came
so seldom Mto the Miperial presence that Theodosius longed for his
visits as a rare enjoyment ; as he held that persuasion rather than
coercion was the method approved by God ; so he did all he could to
soothe the anxieties of those who were conscious of havmg opposed
him, and won over by unexpected geMality and effective benevolence
many who probably had expected very different treatment at Ms
hands. He tells a memorable anecdote of a visit wMch was once
paid to him during one of Ms frequent illnesses. Some of the people
came to see Mm, and with them " a young man M mournMg, with
unshorn hair and pale face." Gregory lifted himself up from the
bed. The others paid him some compliments, or expressions of
respect and attachment, and withdrew. The youth stayed beMnd,
threw Mmself on Ms knees, and clasped the feet of the bishop.
" Who are you, and what do you want ? " No answer came except
loud weepMg and passionate wringing of the hands. The tender
hearted Gregory felt Ms own tears come; one of Ms attendants
forcibly removed the speechless visitor, and then said to the
bishop, " That is the man who drew a sword against you ; he has
come to show Ms pemtence." Gregory was overpowered: on
recovering himself, he sent for the young man, and said to Mm,
" God bless you ; as He preserved my life, it is not much for me to
feel kmdly towards you ! You now belong to me ; strive to live
worthily of God, and of me." The news of this scene produced a
great effect in the city. Gregory had not as yet formally taken Ms
seat as bishop of ConstantMople : he did, indeed, very shortly after
Ms first entrance into St. Sophia, address his people, m a joyous

XXL] The Catholic Revival at Constantinople. 421
and exulting strain, on then triumph over heresy ; and erelong it
seems that he was constrained by their fervid zeal and enthusiastic
loyalty to ascend the throne, wMch he afterwards called " that
perilous eminence, exposmg its occupant to jealousy." He
referred to this irregular enthronement in Ms thirty-sixth discourse
— a sermon delivered about the middle or end of December, and
apparently in the presence of Theodosius — of which a part was
dnected against the accusation of ambition, as if he had eagerly
desired to obtaM " this chair," whereas he should have been ashamed
of any such feelMg. On Christmas Day he poured out all his joy
and devotion in a sermon on the Lord's " Nativity or Theophany,"
describing His Incarnation as an " emptying, to a slight extent,
of His own glory : " he preached again on "the holy day of Lights,"
the Epiphany as we call it, wMch was observed in honour of
Christ's baptism, and took occasion to censure the Novatian
rigorism ; and on the next day he delivered a discourse on Baptism,
settMg forth its benefits in all the splendour of Ms oratory as " a
gift, unction, illumination, a laver, a seal," etc., and warnMg his
hearers agamst the frequent abuse by wMch it was deferred until
times of serious illness. In this elaborate discourse he referred
to certain ceremonies used at baptism : for example, the neophyte,
on emergMg from the water, was made to stand in front of the
sanctuary amid the chant of the psalms and the blaze of lights.
Of Gregory's administration M the months which followed his
appointment we may gain some idea from Ms autobiograpMcal
verses, whereM he tells us that he could find no complete register
of the revenues or the furniture of the church : he was advised to
employ a " stranger," probably not an ecclesiastic, but a good man
of busMess, as treasurer ; but, for whatever reason, he refused. That
under him the Catholic community grew from " a little one " into
" a thousand," is attested not only by his own words, for Mstance
by what he says about the clergy and the laity of all ages and both
sexes whom he had gathered round Mm, but by Ambrose's remark
in 381 as to the cleansing of spiritual leprosy in the city which
had recently " fostered Arianism," but had now agam " received
the word of God." It would appear, from a recently discovered
Arian account of a Council held at Aquileia and to be presently
described, that Ulfilas and other Arian bishops repaired about this
time to Constantinople, and made some representations to Theodosius
in order to the assembling of a general Council, at wMch the whole
question between Arians and Catholics should be reviewed. If, as

422 The Age of the Fathers. [Chap.
this narrative says, Theodosius gave them any promise, he was
soon Mduced to draw back from it ; the writer even says that he
cancelled it by a decisive enactment, but it is probable that the
Arians built too much on a few fair words. At any rate, the great
edict of the 10th of January, 381, Nullus hcereticis, would over-
tMow any such hopes on their part. The opemng clause was
sufficiently explicit : " Let the heretics possess no place for celebrat
ing their mysteries." Every concession obtained, as the Emperor
chooses to say, "by fraud," is revoked. The Catholic faith as
formulated at Nicaea is alone to be sanctioned, is to remain in
perpetual observance. The "contamination of the Photinian
pestilence, the poison of Arian sacrilegiousness, the crime of
Eunomian misbelief," as they are described in the copious verbiage
of imperial orthodoxy, were — as far as a legislator coMd effect it — to
be " not so much as heard of agaM." A true Catholic was defined
as one who confessed God Almighty, and Christ the One Son of
God, by name — God of God, Light of Light : who did not insult,
by denying, the Holy Spirit, through whom we receive that which
we hope for from the Supreme Parent of all thMgs ; and M whose
mMd, by the perception of undefiled faith, there dwelt a sound
belief in that undivided substance of the Mviolable TrMity, which
true believers, employing a Greek word, call " ousia." Those who
did not accept this faith were to cease from their disMgenuous
assumption of the name of the True Religion, to which they had no
title : they were to be debarred from entering the churches, and
from holding meetMgs elsewhere than outside the towns ; and if, in
these circumstances, they made any factious outbreak, they were
to be driven away " even from the city walls." The statement of
Sozomen, that Theodosius forbade all discussions or meetings in the
agora, refers of course to tMs law, and falls in with the complaint
of Palladius that the Emperor, under the urgency of "heretics,"
forbade all disputation about the faith ' " whether in public or in
private," as the text of Ms new law expressed it.
" It might have been wished," says Tillemont, " that Theodosius
had found it as easy to restore peace and union to the Catholics as,
by this law of January 10, to restore to them the churches which
had been occupied by the Arians." The Western Church was,
generally speaking, in the enjoyment of such peace, but in SpaM
there was an important exception. The strange phenomenon pre
sented by what is known as Priscillianism takes us qMte away
from the atmosphere of the Arian controversy: we find Spanish

XXL] The Catholic Revival at Constantinople. 423
ecclesiastics and lay people exciting themselves for and agaMst a
weird " witch's caldron " of Manichean, Gnostic, and to some extent
Sabellian or Photmian notions, scraps of this heresy and of that
mixed up with astrological superstitions tending to fatalism, an
unhealthy and un-CMistian " asceticism," a false spiritualism which
in effect set aside the Incarnation, and an unscrupulous readMess
to disclaim or conceal opmions which, if avowed, might mean
danger. An Egyptian, Marcus, had brought tMs medley of errors
from Memphis; a lady named Agape, and a rhetorician named
Elpidius, took it up eagerly, and communicated the new ideas to
Priscillian, a man of birth and wealth, who is described by Sulpicius
Severus (our maM authority on the subject) as learned, eloquent,
keen-witted, apt for discussion, skilful in persuasion, superior to
all vulgar passions, but possessed, like Julian, with a morbid
curiosity which orthodox CMistianity refused to satiate. Many of
his own class, and still more among the common people, were
fascMated by this new mystic lore, as imparted by one whose
attractiveness as a teacher was enhanced by his engaging manner
and modest tone. He actually perverted two bishops, Instantius
and Salvianus ; but another, Idacius of Merida, opposed him with
an Mtemperate zeal wMch did no service to orthodoxy. The con
troversy assumed serious dimensions : at last a Council met at
Saragossa M the October of 380, wMch did not scruple to condemn
the Priscillianists in the absence of their leaders, on such charges
as deserting the churches at Christmastide, and going barefoot into
the mountaMs, and fasting on Sundays from a heterodox motive. But
Instantius and Salvianus were so far from being daunted by tMs
ecclesiastical censure, that they proceeded to consecrate Priscillian
as bishop of Avila ; and their defiant attitude provoked the Spanish
Merarchy to appoint one of its number to see its decrees carried out
by aid of the secular power. This man, Ithacius, was a spechnen
of the worst type of heretic-hunters — an Mquisitor without any
redeemMg virtue, rash to audacity, self-indulgent, a babbler, devoid
of tact and prudence. He associated Mmself with Idacius, but
surpassed him in headlong fury of zeal ; and between them they
induced the civil magistrates to expel the Priscilliamsts from cities,
and procured from Gratian in 381 an edict baMshMg them from
SpaM. They took advantage of tMs edict to visit Rome and Milan,
in the hope of obtaMMg ecclesiastical support. Priscillian addressed
a treatise to Damasus, whom he calls " semor and first bishop," and
also " your crown," and professed Ms faith in orthodox language,

424 The Age of the Fathers. [Chap. XXL
such as, on the whole, characterizes the rest of Ms recently dis
covered writings, although here and there may be found in them
expressions of a Sabellian or an Apollinarian colour. If they are to
be treated as conveying Ms real mMd, it would be unfair to regard
him as theologically a heretic ; but much was said against his party
on the score of esoteric teacMng wMch nullified their orthodox
professions. Priscillian could gaM nothMg either at Rome or
Milan ; but he managed to set M motion the Mfluences of Mace
donius, Gratian's Master of the Offices, who procured from Gratian
the recall of his sentence of banishment.
TMs was the extent of trouble M the Western Church ; but the
East was distracted not only by the numerous heretical sects, but by
the divisions of Catholics themselves. Among these must still be
reckoned the feud between the two parties at Antioch, wMch had
been but superficially healed by the " accommodation " of 379 ; the
agitation caused by the intrigues of Maximus at ConstantMople ;
and the opposition encountered by Timothy, the new bishop of
Alexandria. Yet these troubles were not so paMfully felt by
Theodosius and his ecclesiastical advisers as the obstinate vitality
of Arianism among numerous Eastern Christians, the wide-spread
ing diffusion, in popular forms, of the opposite heresy of Apollinaris,
and the disappointment of hopes which had once been entertaMed
as to the absorption of the MacedoMan party into the Church. In
order to provide some remedy for these evils, and to effect a per
manent settlement as to the episcopate of ConstantMople, wMch
Gregory had but provisionally accepted, Theodosius resolved to
assemble a great Council of Eastern prelates in that city ; and
this was, in fact, the occasion of the meeting of what has since
been regarded as the Second OecumeMcal Synod.

CHAPTER XXII.
THE " SECOND GENERAL COUNCIL."
The Council of ConstantMople met, it appears, some time after the
Easter of 381, wMch fell on the 28th of March ; for Socrates says
that the bishops were assembled in the month of May. There
were but 150 Catholic prelates present : of these, the most eminent
were Meletius ; Timothy, the new archbishop of Alexandria ; Cyril
of Jerusalem, who had returned from his third exile at the accession
of Gratian, and who now explicitly confessed the Homoousion
wMch he had all along, or at least for years, virtually accepted ; Ms
nephew Gelasius, who now held the metropolitan see of Caesarea ;
Helladius of Caesarea in Cappadocia, the successor of Basil ;
Eulogius of Edessa ; AmphilocMus of Iconium ; Gregory of Nyssa ;
Acacius of Beroea in Syria ; Diodore of Tarsus ; Ascholius of
Thessalonica, — with Gregory Nazianzen. But some of these, as
the bishops from Egypt and Macedonia, appear to have come
later than others: Gregory Nazianzen's account would seem to
imply that they did not arrive until pressing messages had been
sent to them by the Council. In the hope of accomplishMg the
work which had been begun in the last year of pope Liberius, and
had been interrupted by the failure of the plan for a Council of
Tarsus, thirty-six bishops belonging to the party of Macedonius —
chiefly from the Hellespontine towns — were invited to the Council.
The place of president was assigned to Meletius, who, according
to Socrates and Sozomen, had arrived at ConstantMople before the
rest, in order to assist at the settlement of Gregory M that see ;
but this, as Tillemont remarks, is an exaggeration, or misstatement,
of the fact that Meletius's action in that matter took place before
the arrival of the bishops from Egypt and Macedonia. Accordmg
to Theodoret, the Emperor Theodosius, without being told wMch of
the bishops presented to him was Meletius, at once singled him out

426 The Age of the Fathers. [Chap.
as the person whose likeness, in a dream, had seemed to invest him
in imperial robes, and to place a crown upon Ms head. He kissed
the bishop's eyes, lips, bosom, and head, as a son after long separa
tion might greet a father. But he addressed the other prelates
also M terms of filial respect, and exhorted them to proceed to
busmess, and, M the first place, to settle the Church affairs of Con
stantinople. The inqMry mto the pretensions of Maximus was not
difficult. It was resolved that his consecration, and all ordmations
performed by him, should be treated as null and void; and this
resolution became eventually the fourth canon of the Council.
Gregory was now, at last, in the most formal and fully ecclesiastical
manner, established as bishop of Constantinople ; he Mmself says
that the oMy reason he had for satisfaction M this appointment
was that, in Ms usual hopeful straM, he " thought that he might
be thus enabled to unite discordant parties, to be a choragus to
bring two choirs together."
TMs was the last Church act of Meletius, for he died very soon
afterwards, havMg earnestly exhorted Ms brethren to labour for the
Church's peace. Gregory of Nyssa preached his funeral sermon :
it began by describmg the departed prelate as a new apostle just
added to the apostolic company, and then descanted on the
bereavement of the Church at a crisis which loudly called for
a "counsellor" and a "healer." "But lately," said the preacher,
alluding to his namesake's installation, "we were sMging as it
were a nuptial song ; to-day, we sMg a dirge ! We had," he con
tinues, " M Mm that is gone, a firm pilot, and the anchorage of a
steadfast judgment." His had been a presence sMgularly winning
and lovable : " Where is now that sweet calm glance, that radiant
smile on the lips, that cordial right hand, that used to move its
fingers in unison with the blessing that flowed from the tongue!"
TMs agrees with Nazianzen's estimate : " simple, artless, tranquil
M look, inspiring at once confidence and reverence." Nor can he
refrain from the obvious pun : " honey-like in conduct as in name."
The funeral was stately and majestic : the Emperor left his tMone
to take part M it ; the whole city went forth to escort the venerated
remaMs on their homeward journey. Gregory Nyssen speaks of
the vast crowd of people, "like a sea," surrounding the bier of
Meletius, and the lights wMch, stretchMg in long lines as far as the
eye could reach, seemed like rivers of fire. And as the corpse,
after bemg borne across into Asia, passed from town to town,
psalms were chanted, and an observance which Sozomen marks as

xxil.] The "Second General Council" 427
contrary to the Roman custom added a signal distMction to these
obsequies ; for, by special imperial orders, it was received within
the various cities on its way. One of John Chrysostom's sermons,
devoted to the praises of Meletius, expresses his own recollection
of the day on which the remains of the prelate who, a few months
before, had ordained him deacon, were received by the Antiochenes,
whose loyal affection had been so long attracted and secured by the
beauty of Meletius's character, that they called their sons by his
name, and put his likeness on seals, on rings, on cups, on the walls
of their rooms. The city, he tells us, sent up one cry of grief.
His grave was made beside the tomb of one of his predecessors,
St. Babylas, " in the church which he had himself recently erected
in honour of that holy martyr on the bank of the Orontes."
There is one fact of great sigMficance which must not be over
looked in connection with the death of tMs famous prelate. He
died as a saintly man revered by the great majority of Eastern
Churchmen, but outside the communion of the Western Church
and the Roman see ; for the West, and Rome in particular, un
swervingly recognised Paulinus as bishop of Antioch, and there
fore could not but regard Meletius, whatever might be his personal
merits, as a schismatical pretender to the see. Even those who,
like the bishops that met at Milan in the early summer of 381,
were beguiled by the pretensions of Maximus, woMd be as resolute
m disownmg Meletius as any " Eustathian " who looked on
Paulinus as Ms pastor.
The death of Meletius ought certainly to have healed the
Antiochene divisions. There was a distinct compact, as we have
seen, actually established, to the effect that the survivor of the
two rival bishops should be acknowledged by both parties as the
legitimate possessor of the see. Now was the time for tMs arrange
ment to be carried out. But not such was the opinion of several
bishops who took an active part in the Council of Constantinople.
They had been partisans of Meletius ; they had an MvMcible aversion
to Paulinus. They proposed that, the concordat notwithstandMg, a
new prelate should be appointed for Antioch. Gregory Nazianzen
threw all Ms energy Mto the opposite scale : highly as he had
esteemed Meletius, he was Mdignant at the notion of violating the
concordat, and dismayed at the prospect of a perpetuated schism.
When these bishops, therefore, requested Ms concurrence in then-
design, he answered by a vigorous remonstrance. " So long," he
said, " as Meletius lived, and might be regarded with unfriendly

428 The Age of~the Fathers. [Chap.
eyes by the Westerns, who treat Ms appoMtment as originally
uncanonical, it was right for us to support Mm, even at the cost
of givMg some annoyance to them. But now he is gone, there is
no further call to guard Ms interests ; and, M my judgment, there
is no further doubt as to our duty. We must recognise PaulMus
as the true bishop of Antioch. He is an old man ; M the natural
course of tMngs he cannot live much longer, and when he is called
away to the rest wMch he has long desired, then we can hold a
fresh election with the concurrent voices of bishops and people,
and give to the see another occupant. TMs is the only solution
of the difficulty. It will probably conciliate the Westerns, now
estranged from us by their connexion with Paulinus ; it will, at
least, as the next best, give peace to the ' wearied ' Church of the
great Syrian capital. Observe what certain peril to the faith
itself is Mvolved in the continuance of the scMsm. And if it costs
any of us sometMng to acquiesce M the episcopate of Paulinus, let
us make that sacrifice for the sake of a great religious gain. Let
us be overcome to a slight extent, that we may win a greater
victory in the end. If any one suspects me of corrupt or ambitious
motives in regard to this proposal, all I can say is that I appeal
to the future Divine judgment, and that I would gladly be free of
the burden of the episcopate, and permitted to live M tranquil
privacy. Deliberate on the matter: I have now said my say."
But racial feeling silenced counsels of peace. The younger
bishops, whom Gregory bitterly compares to a flight of crows,
to geese or cranes M a quarrel, to a whirlwMd raising a cloud
of dust, to a swarm of wasps darting against a traveller's face,
msisted that to accept PaulMus would be to give a triumph to
the West, whereas the East, where CMist had appeared, had an
Mtrinsic right to the ascendency. Such an argument, Gregory
assures us, was actually used, as if men had forgotten that it
might be retorted " The East was the land where Christ was
slaM ! " and it also implied a forgetfuMess that Egypt, Arabia, and
Cyprus were ranged with the West M this question. Graver and
elder bishops followed the lead of those hot-headed juniors whom
they ought rather to have corrected. Some who called themselves
"moderate men," and had no strong convictions, allowed them
selves to be drawn into this extreme of partisanship ; and it was
resolved that a new appointment should be made at Antioch, as if
for a duly vacated see. The person recommended, and ultimately
consecrated at Antioch after the close of the Council, was Flavian,

xxii.] The "Second General Cotcncil." 429
who, if the story of Socrates and Sozomen be true, was one of those
ecclesiastics of Antioch who had bound themselves not to come
forward as candidates for the bishopric: he was elected by the
suffragans of Antioch, and doubtless much was said M favour of
his elevation by those who could tell how, M the days of Leontius,
he, as a layman, had stimulated the devotion and upheld the faith
of Antiochene Churchmen, and how, when Meletius was M exile
under Valens, Flavian " the presbyter " had furnished the orthodox
cause at Antioch with a long array of Scriptural arguments. As
Theodoret says, Flavian was eulogized by the bishops as " illustrious
for Ms labours, and for perils encountered in the cause of the flock."
Yet the election was unquestionably an error ; and it inflicted
on Gregory a disappointment which revived, or rather Mtensified,
all Ms dislike of the office which he had accepted in the hope of
becoming an instrument of peace. He was, he says, fortunate for
a time M being detamed at home by an attack of illness : he was
then beset by urgent entreaties that he would still act with the
other bishops. Afterwards he changed his residence from the
episcopal house to another lodging, and gave Mdications of Ms
intentions, or Ms wishes, sufficient to excite alarm M the mMds of
his affectionate adherents, who besought him, with tears, not to
think of abandomng them, after so rich a blessing had attended his
mMistry as their pastor. He was touched, but unshaken : he also
felt that those bishops who urged him to remain wanted to have
his sanction for their own proceedMgs ; and an incident now
occurred to facilitate Ms plan of abdication. Timothy of Alexandria,
and other Egyptian bishops, who had either not been summoned
in the first instance, or had, since Meletius's death, been invited
a second time, and more pressingly, to attend the Council, now
arrived ; there came, too, the bishops of Macedonia, who acted with
them and agaMst the Eastern bishops. These new-comers imme
diately declared war, so to speak, against the majority of the
Council ; and they found an engMe for this attack M a technical
objection to the appointment of Gregory as bishop of Constantinople.
They privately assured Gregory that they had no personal objection
to him : but they urged what Rufinus calls Mvalid reasons against
the regularity of Ms elevation, invoking, as Gregory Mmself
describes it, the authority of obsolete canons against what they
represented as Ms " translation " — an incorrect phrase for his
appoMtment, smce he had never acted as bishop of Sasima, nor ever
held the see of Nazianzus ; and Theodoret adds that Meletius, when

430 The Age of the Fathers. [Chap.
he acted in the matter, was well aware of the real " aim " of the
old Church legislators, who in prohibitMg episcopal translations
had Mtended to frustrate episcopal ambition. However, the objec
tion was put forward; it could not be denied that Gregory had
received consecration when Basil meant Mm to live at Sasima;
and the feud between the new-comers and the majority became
serious, when Gregory, " seizing " as it were on an " opportunity "
for making good his retreat, reappeared M the Council, and entreated
the disputants to accept the means of reunion wMch he was only
too glad to offer. " BretMen, God has at last brought you together ;
do not contend with each other on my account ; let me be like Jonah,
— cast me into the sea, and it will be calm to you ! I was most
unwilling to ascend this throne, and most gladly do I resign it :
my only anxiety is, that the faith of the Trinity may be upheld.
Farewell, and remember my labours."
This was Gregory's celebrated Resignation : Sozomen thMks it
the most signal proof of what he calls the " wisdom " of one who
thus modestly and unselfishly " resigned the deposit " of the
bishopric Mto the hands of his brethren, without a word as to the
perils and endurances wMch it had involved. Tillemont exag
gerates it into an eminent instance of heroism ; but it must be
remembered that Gregory was all along conscious of peculiarities
of character which made him " unequal to the government of the
church and provMce of Constantinople," and which were urged by
critics and censors as reasons for desiring or accepting his retire
ment. He was advanced in years, sickly in body, weary of a public
life, ill qualified to bear its burdens ; he had not been able to cope
with all the requirements of such a bishopric ; he had not, as he
somewhat sarcastically expressed it, " known that he would have
to vie with consuls and prefects" in state and splendour, or to
make an impression, outside the church walls, on the population
of an imperial city. His very gentleness was brought up against
Mm by angry partisans of Catholicism, who complamed that he
had not used his position so as to give them vengeance on their
former oppressors.
For various reasons Gregory might feel that his work at
Constantinople was now done. Yet he admits that he felt a
certain sorrow when he thought of those whom he had so heartily
loved and striven to guide in the right path. What would now
become of them ? He must leave that to God. He repaired to
the Emperor's presence, but did not stoop to any undigMfied

xxn.] The "Second General Council!' 431
entreaties : in the presence of many courtiers, he asked, as he says,
not for " gold nor glistenMg tablets, nor coverings for the table of
the Mysteries," or high preferment- for any of his kindred, but simply
for permission to " yield to jealousy." "I am weary of incurring
odium even with friends, because I cannot look to anytMng save
God." Theodosius, he says, in the presence of Ms court applauded
this address : he was naturally reluctant to lose Gregory, but he
did not refuse the desired permission. Of the Church-people, as
Gregory tells us, the general feeling was very averse to his
departure : among the bishops of the Council, some were unequi
vocally glad to get rid of a man whose unworldly sanctity wag
uncongenial to their taste, or whose counsels as to the see of
Antioch had galled their party feeling ; but others were thunder
struck at the prospect of his departure, and " stopped their ears
and struck their hands together," in token of their repugnance to
seeMg any other person installed M Ms place. To such prelates as
these, and to Ms clergy and laity, he specially addressed himself
in his celebrated farewell sermon — the 42nd of his orations —
delivered in St. SopMa, about the close of June, 381. The whole
Council was present, and its members must have listened with
very mixed feelings to this brilliant and impressive discourse,
wMch began with a significant reference to the unfriendly treatment
he had received. " Do you now understand ? are you become
kinder judges of my case ? " He then gave a summary of Ms work
at ConstantMople, and contrasted the present with the past con
dition of Church Mterests in the capital. The little drop of
Catholicism had swollen Mto a river; the spark had become a
torch flaring up skyward; the grain of mustard-seed had grown
into a tree, the handful into a crop ; the flock was in good condi
tion and gradually McreasMg. Surely it was a great tMng to
have " consolidated by sound doctrine a city to which the extremities
of the world converge, and from wMch they start as from a common
mart of the faith : " words wMch, wMle they resemble a Gothic
king's comparison of the New Rome to a fountain fed by many
rivulets, clearly point to what it had become religiously, in so far
as it was now orthodox — a central poMt to which visitors brought
Catholic ideas, and also from which they carried them back. He
briefly stated his belief as to the Trinity, pointing out, much in the
spirit of the Alexandrian Council, the essential agreement between
tne asserters of three " hypostases " and of tMee " prosopa," and
protesting, in Samuel's tone, that his admMistration had been free

432 The Age of the Fathers. [Chap.
from self-seekMg and Mgh-handedness. And then he formally
requested leave to depart. " Show some respect to my grey hairs.
Choose another bishop," he proceeds in that tone of suppressed
bitterness which recent vexations made natural to Ms sensitive
temper — " another who can be persecuted for you ; who can gratify
you m all things ! " He dwelt on the quarrels between different
bishops, Eastern and Western; asked how long such terms as
" mine and thMe," " old and new," " more eloquent " or " more
spiritual," would disturb the peace of brethren ; compared these
ecclesiastical contests to those of the circus and theatre (a com
parison the most disparagMg that he could thMk of) ; alluded to
the criticisms passed on Mmself as too gentle towards opponents,
too simple M personal habits, unfit to represent the Church in its
majesty; and then besought them again, with deeper solenmity
and earnestness, yet not without a touch of soreness, to " grant
him Ms papers of dismissal, with or without certificate of good
conduct," and suggested that they should set one in Ms place who
would not try to please everybody in everytMng, but be willing to
offend some in the cause of right. He ended with a farewell
which even Gibbon describes as " pathetic and almost sublime."
" Farewell " to the Anastasia, that new SMloh — to the great temple,
Ms new Mheritance, in wMch they were assembled — to the churches
which lMked the other regions of the city to the cathedral ; to the
relics of the apostles in the church bearing their name ; to the
episcopal seat, the body of clergy, the monastic or " Nazarite "
commumties, the widows, the orphans, the poor ; to the households
which for CMist's sake had tended Ms Mfirmities ; to the audiences
wMch had pressed up to the very chancel-gates when he preached,
with writing materials (here comes M a touch of self-complacency)
sometimes concealed and sometimes displayed ; to the Emperor, to
the palace and its tram of servants, whether faithful to their master
or not, he did not profess to know, but he did know (here the rapier
seems to flash out) that for the most part they were unfaithful to
God; to the great Christian city whose citizens might well be
urged to serve God more earnestly and more intelligently ; to the
East and to the West, in the cause of wMch, and by wMch, he was
alternately assailed, which he had striven to reconcile, which
perhaps could be reconciled if others would imitate Ms abdication :
" for those who quit their tMones do not lose their God, but will
rather secure a higher tMone in heaven." FMally, after bidding
farewell to the " Angel-guardians of tMs church," and praying that

xxii.] The "Second General Council." 433
the Holy TrMity might be therein continually acknowledged and
increasingly worshipped, he exhorted the people whom he tenderly
described as still his own — " My dear children, keep, I pray you,
the deposit ; remember how I was stoned : the grace of our Lord
Jesus Christ be with you all ! "
So ended Gregory Nazianzen's public life. He quitted Con
stantMople immediately afterwards ; and it became necessary to
elect his successor. That successor was found in an elderly man
of high birth and winning manners, who held the rank of a praetor,
but who was still unbaptized when elected, or rather, it is said,
selected by Theodosius, perhaps under the influence of Diodore of
Tarsus, from a list of persons suggested to Mm by the bishops.
His name was Nectarius. In early life, he had been staMed by
some immoralities ; but they had not been sins against Christian
grace, and were not regarded as Mndrances to his elevation. There
were serious remonstrances against tMs choice — remonstrances
justified by the subsequent laxity of Nectarius's episcopal adminis
tration ; and Tillemont, who speaks of Mm severely, is indignant
with Sozomen for seeMg M the circumstances of Ms appointment
a special mark of Divine approval. Undoubtedly his case was
very different from that of Ambrose ; the rule agaMst appoMting
" neophytes " could hardly have been superseded in Ms favour by
any solid proof of merit. Yet he was probably acceptable — by Ms
very unlikeness to the " austere, unsocial " Gregory, by his suavity
of address and dignity of bearing, and by his " senatorial " blood —
to large classes of the people, who, if Socrates was well informed,
insisted vehemently on having Mm for their bishop. They were
gratified ; Nectarius was baptized, and consecrated in Ms white
baptismal garments — the whole synod ultimately concurring in his
appoMtment (although some of its members had, as we have seen,
at first protested against it as a manifest breach of rule), and " the
whole clergy and people sigmfying their acquiescence." It did
not turn out very well.
The Council now proceeded to the doctrinal business which lay
before it. The hopes which had been entertained, as to an absorp
tion of the Macedonian sect or party into the Church, were found
fruitless ; its leaders, who had been invited to the Council, per
sistently refused to abandon their peculiar position, retired to their
own homes, and encouraged their followers, by circular letters, to
hold out. The " hundred and fifty " orthodox prelates drew up,
we are told, in the first instance, a " Tome " or doctrinal statement,
vol. I. 2 F

434 The Age of the Fathers. [Chap.
involving a " more expanded confession of the faith," part of which
was evidently devoted to the condemnation of ApollMarianism ;
for, says the address of the Council of Chalcedon to the Emperor
Marcian, " those who in this city," meaning Constantinople, " ex
posed the pestilent doctrine of Apollinaris, made known their
decision to the Westerns." A remnant of this Tome apparently
exists in the "fost canon of Constantinople," which, confirming
the Nicene Creed, condemns every heresy, and specially (1) the
" Eunomian or Anomoean ; " (2) the " Arian " (as distinct from
Ultra- Arian) or " Eudoxian " — the Homcean or Acacian form of
Arianism ; (3) the Semi-Arian, Macedonian, or " Pneumatoma-
chist ; " (4) the Sabellian, (5) Marcellian, (6) PhotMian, and (7)
Apollinarian errors. But when this " canon " speaks of retaining
the Nicene Creed inviolate, is this to be understood of that altered
form of creed wMch in the Council of Chalcedon was ascribed to
that " of Constantinople," which, with one important Latin addition,
we still use, and which was apparently, as Hefele tMnks, the
" qumtessence " of the Tome ? What can be ascertained as to
the formation of this " Creed of Constantinople " ?
In Ms book called "Ancoratus," written m 373, eight years
before the Council, EpiphaMus, after msistmg on the necessity of
an orthodox faith, presents as Nicene — or in Ms own words, as set
forth by the 318 — a formula nearly identical with the creed which
we use at present ; and adds a longer formulary to which (with
strange laxity of statement) he assigns cecumenical authority, but
which, for our purpose, we may ignore. The shorter " Epiphanian "
creed differs from the original Nicene, and agrees with the creed of
Jerusalem, as gathered from Cyril's Catechetical Lectures, in several
respects. Cyril's creed has indeed some common points with the
Nicene : for instance, " We believe in one God, Father Almighty,
Maker of all thMgs both visible and Mvisible, and in one
Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, Only-begotten, begotten of
the Father " (here the order of words is different, and the Jeru
salem creed has the article before " Only-begotten "), " Very
(true) God," "tMough whom all things came into beMg," "was
incarnate and made man," " rose (again) the third day," " ascended
mto the heavens," "is coming to judge (the) livmg and dead,"
" and in the " (Nicene) " one " (Jerusalem) " Holy Spirit." But the
distinctively Jerusalem points are, that whereas in the Nicene
"heaven and earth" come in with reference to the Son's agency M
creation, the Jerusalem form mentions them M the first sentence,

xxii.] The "Second General Council." 435
with reference to the Father as Maker ; it also describes the Son's
Filiation as " before all the ages ; " it speaks of Him as " crucified
and buried " (omitting the " suffered " of the Nicene), and as having
" sat down on the right hand of the Father ; " it adds " in glory "
to the mention of His second "comMg;" and it affirms that of
His " kingdom there shall be no end." It also adds to the belief
in the Holy Spirit the description of Him as " the Paraclete," and
as having " spoken tMough the prophets ; " and it concludes, " And
in one baptism of repentance unto remission of sins, and one holy
Catholic Church, and M resurrection of flesh, and M life eternal."
Taking then the " shorter Epiphanian " creed, and supposing, as
is reasonable, that Epiphanius had acquired it through Ms frequent
intercourse with the Church of Palestine, we find that it agrees
with Jerusalem as to "Maker of heaven and earth, and of all
tMngs," etc., " the Son of God, the Only-begotten, who was begotten
of the Father before all the ages " (where the Nicene reads, " the Son
of God begotten of the Father, Only-begotten, that is, from the
essence of the Father ") ; as to " was crucified and was buried ; " as
to the " sitting at the Father's right hand " (but here the Jerusalem
phrase, " sat down," is altered into " sitteth "), the " glory " of His
second coming, the endlessness of His kMgdom, the fact that the
Holy Spirit spake through the prophets, the mention of baptism,
but without " of repentance," the description of the Church as " one,
holy, catholic," and the confession of resurrection (but " of dead
persons," not " of flesh ") and of life, but amplified into " Life of the
age to come," Mstead of "life eternal." Secondly, we observe
that it agrees distinctively with the Nicene form in the following
features : " that is, from the essence of the Father," " Light from
Light," " very God from very God " (the Nicene " God from God "
before " Light from Light," beMg omitted, evidently because the
subsequent " very God from very God " covered it amply), " be
gotten, not made," " coessential with the Father," " who for us men
and for our salvation came down," and " who suffered." Thirdly,
there are several points M wMch this formula differs both from
Nicaea and Jerusalem ; as " from heaven," " (was incarnate) " " of
the Holy Spirit and Mary the Virgin," "for us under Pontius
Pilate," " according to the Scriptures," " again " before " cometh,"
" who proceedeth from the Father," " who is jointly worshipped
and joMtly glorified with Father and Son ; " the addition of "Apos
tolic " as descriptive of the Church, and the alterations above
mentioned m the articles of Resurrection and of Life.

436 The Age of the Fathers. [Chap.
On the whole, then, it is clear that this creed is a compilation
from Jerusalem, Nicene, and other elements, evidently used to
supply a safeguard against the Apollinarian denial of the human
reality of our Lord's flesh. But what is the proper basis ? Had
EpiphaMus any right — what is of more moment, have we any right
— to treat it as " Nicene " ? If we look at the document from a
purely literary point of view, we must answer that its basis is the
Jerusalem creed; for after reckoMng up the distinctively Jeru
salem elements and the distinctively Nicene, we find that the
former decidedly outnumber the latter. But tMs does not settle
the question. The elements which M tMs comparison are the
fewer are much more critical and momentous than those wMch are
more numerous. They contain what is the very pith and essence
of Nicene belief, as it was understood M that century. The con
fession of a Son of God who was " begotten, not made," who was
" very God from very God," and, above all, who was " from the
Father's essence " and " coessential with the Father," — this cha
racteristically Nicene matter, introduced among the " Jerusalem "
features, leavens the whole lump, and makes it in an effective
sense Nicene. For in those days, to be " Homoousian " was to be
" Nicene " to all intents and purposes ; and when the Homoousion
was deliberately retained and treated as indispensable, it would
amply cover the true import of the Filiation, and therefore the
explanatory clause of the origMal formula, " that is, of the essence
of the Father," wMch was retained m the Epiphanian, might be
omitted in the " ConstantMopolitan " edition. No one can doubt that
(as Mr. T. H. Bindley says in his " Oecumenical Documents of
the Faith ") the " ConstantMopolitan," both M stateliness of rhythm
and M fuMess of doctrinal statement, is superior to the Nicene
proper ; but was it sanctioned by the " Second Oecumenical
Council " ? We have no contemporary evidence of the fact, wMch
is first distinctly asserted by Flavian of Constantinople M 449
and at the Council of Chalcedon M 451, although there are indica
tions that it was in vogue at Constantinople shortly before the
Council of Ephesus. Four years before the Council of Constanti
nople, Basil, in writing to Epiphanius, had declined to express any
opMion on additions made to the creed on the subject of the
Incarnation, but had implicitly admitted that an addition might
be desirable M order to the due " glorifying " of the Holy Spirit.
But Gregory of Nazianzus, writing in the very next year after the
Council of Constantinople, says distinctly that "we never have

xxi i.] The "Second General Council!' 437
preferred, nor can prefer, anytMng to the creed framed at Nicaea ; "
the Church of Constantinople, in correspondence with the African
bishops in 419, recogMsed the origMal Nicene Creed, and sent a
Latin version of it; the Council of Ephesus, gmded by Cyril,
recited the same original Nicene Creed, and prohibited any different
creed from being framed as a test of orthodoxy; and even the
" Oriental " or Antiochene party, for all their dislike of Cyril and
Ms policy, agreed with Mm in professmg the unaltered Nicene
Creed. Again, even at Chalcedon, Egyptian bishops protested
when a bishop M close relations with ConstantMople referred to
the creed before us as a " symbol of the holy fathers," and must
have dissented at heart from the formal association of it, as the
creed of "the 150 fathers," with the Nicene Creed proper. On
the whole, it seems most reasonable to suppose, with Dr. Hort,
that tMs " EpiphaMan " creed was not formally authorised by the
Council of Constantinople; but that it did probably receive a
certaM amount of countenance from the bishops there assembled,
who would have a special motive for viewMg it favourably, mas-
much as they were particularly desirous of vindicating the ortho
doxy of Cyril of Jerusalem, whose native creed, as we have seen,
was so largely represented by it.
The Council of Constantinople passed four canons. The first
has been already described as a specimen of its doctrinal " Tome."
The second was a development of Nicene legislation as to the
territorial limitations of episcopal action. It presupposes, accord-
Mg to the general Eastern principle, the conformation of ecclesias
tical boundaries to civil. The Roman world was divided Mto
" dioceses " (of wMch there were six M the West, beside the
Roman prefecture, and seven in the East), presided over by a
" count," a prefect, or a vicar. A diocese was formed out of the
aggregation of several provMces: thus one Eastern diocese con
tained eleven provinces, another Mne, another five, and so on :
and every province was ruled by a president, or proconsul, or
consular, or "collector." For ecclesiastical purposes, the exarch
or primate, not yet called technically " patriarch," was analogous
to the count, prefect, or vicar ; while the subordinate civil
o-overnor of a province had his ecclesiastical reflection, so to
speak, M the metropolitan bishop. TMs being understood, we now
observe that the Council in tMs second canon orders —
(1) That the bishops belonging to one "diocese" or group of
provinces should not meddle with the affairs of churches beyond

438 The Age of the Fathers. [Chap.
its limit ; agreeably to the fourteenth (so-called) Apostolic canon,
which forbade any bishop to Mtrude Mmself Mto another's terri
tory, and only permitted Mm to visit it at the entreaty of many
bishops, and M order to give it the benefit of his teachMg. TMs
restriction, as Hefele says, would apply M the fullest sense to the
cMef bishop of the " diocese." Socrates adopts the words of the
canon when he describes the Council as ordering that the bishops
residMg outside the limits of a " diocese " should not pass beyond
their own limits into churches over the border.
(2) In particular, as to the several Eastern " dioceses," it is
ordered (a) that the bishop of Alexandria should, accordMg to the
canons, admMister the affairs of Egypt alone : tMs was a virtual
repression of the mterference of the see of Alexandria in the affairs
of the Church of Constantinople in the case of Maximus. (b) That
the bishops of the " Oriental " diocese (the eleven provinces of
wMch looked to Antioch as their capital) should administer " Ori
ental " affans only, saving the rights guaranteed at Nicaea to the
see of Antioch — these rights or privileges beMg those of primacy
and synodical presidency — whereas the bishop of Alexandria is
here recognised as possessing larger powers throughout the Egyptian
" diocese," he being virtually the only metropolitan, as well as the
"archbishop," or chief prelate, of the Church m those countries.
(c) Similarly, the bishops of the Asiatic " diocese " (which may
generally be described as equivalent to Western Asia Minor)
shall confine themselves to " Asia," and (d) those of the Pontic to
Pontus, and (e) those of the Thracian to Thrace.
(3) Generally, again, it is ordered that no bishop shall go
beyond his own " diocese " to perform episcopal acts, unless he be
invited. (4) Each provincial Church is to be admimstered by its pro
vincial synod, according to the Nicene rules, so that the metro
politan's power is limited by canons ; and the same holds good of
the chief bishop of a " diocese."
(5) "The churches among the barbarians must be governed
according to the custom received from the fathers," that is, must,
so long as they are not strong enough to form independent
churches, receive help and guidance from bishops within the
Roman empire.
Such was the second canon of Constantinople. Socrates's
account of it has raised some controversy. He says, " The bishops
distributed the several provinces, and appointed patriarchs." It

xxil.] The " Second General Council!' 439
has been thought that " patriarchs " here meant temporary com
missioners, invested with high exceptional powers. TMs is Valesius's
theory, advocated on the grounds that the patriarchal dignity was
of much earlier origin, and had been "confirmed" by the sixth
Nicene canon, and that Socrates goes on to speak of three bishops
as obtaining " patriarchal " authority conjointly in the " Pontic "
diocese, and two in the " Asian." But against tMs Beveridge contends
that the Nicene canon had not dealt with " patriarchal " privileges at
all, but with those of each province and metropolitical church ; that
the several bishops named by Socrates were not appointed by the
Council itself, but were in fact those whom Theodosius, as we shall
see, selected as centres of Catholic communion ; and that, although
the term " patriarch " was not techmcally in use at the time of the
Council of Constantinople, it was this Council which actually con
stituted or organized the patriarchal system, inasmuch as it " made
that distribution of the provinces on which the whole patriarchal
system depended." But the probability is that Socrates is using
" patriarchs " loosely for all the great metropolitans of the East.
The third canon of Constantinople was very brief, but very
momentous. It ordered that the bishop of Constantinople should
" hold the pre-eminence of honour after the bishop of Rome, because
Constantinople was New Rome."
To explain this, we must observe that Byzantium had been
greatly humbled as a city in the reign of the Emperor Severus, and,
after a three years' siege had ended M its surrender, it was made
subordinate to Heraclea Perinthus. And thus it came about that
the bishop of Byzantium — when Byzantium became an episcopal
see — was subject to the bishop of Heraclea, who in due time ac
quired the position of exarch or primate of the Thracian " diocese ; "
and when Byzantium became ConstantMople, the same relation
between the two sees was still maintained. Now, however, the
Council assigned to the bishop of Constantinople a peculiar dignity,
although it did not alter his position in regard to the authority of
Heraclea, nor in regard to the rights of other churches. The canon
ordered that the bishop of New Rome should enjoy an honorary
pre-eminence next after the bishop of Old Rome — as to which, we
must observe (1) that the Greek commentators, Balsamon and
Zonaras, reject the gloss of some Greeks, to the effect that "after "
denoted mere posteriority in order of time, and not any kind of
superior dignity as belonging to the Church of the ancient capital ;
(2) that the pre-eminence universally recognised as belonging to

440 The Age of the Fathers. [Chap.
the Roman Church was derived mainly from the secular dignity of
the Roman city, but also had some relation to its peculiar eccle
siastical and religious associations as connected with the apostolate
of SS. Peter and Paul, an idea wMch had been enhanced by the
erroneous supposition that St. Peter Mmself had been the first
Roman bishop ; (3) that tMs grant of pre-eminence in the second
degree, to the Church of Constantinople, did not (a) abolish its
dependence for certain purposes on the Church of Heraclea, nor
(b) confer on it any "patriarchal " jurisdiction, such as it irregularly
acqmred under subsequent episcopates, and which was formally
guaranteed to it by the Council of Chalcedon ; but that (4) it
certainly did involve a degradation, in regard to digMty, of the
great sees of Alexandria and Antioch ; and (5) it was for some
time ignored by Alexandria, and persistently rejected by Rome.
The fourth canon of Constantinople was against MaxMius, and
has been already brought before us. The canons reckoned as fifth
and sixth should be assigned to another Council, which, as we shall
see, was held at Constantinople in 382 ; the so-called seventh
canon, which is not in the collection of John of Antioch made M
the sixth century, nor in any of the ancient versions, is, in fact, not
a canon at all, but merely a statement of Church-practice in
regard to the reception of heretics, and probably forms part of a
letter written by a member of the Church of Constantinople in the
middle of the fifth century to Martyrius, bishop of Antioch.
The Council, on concluding its labours, requested Theodosius to
" set Ms seal " of approbation to what had been done. He complied
by a law dated July 30, 381, addressed to Auxonius, proconsul of
Asia. "We command all the churches to be delivered to those
bishops who confess the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit
to be of one majesty and power, of the same glory, of one bright
ness ; making nothing discordant by a profane division, but
observing the order of the Trinity, the distinction of the Persons,
the unity of the Godhead. Those who shall be proved to be in
communion with Nectarius bishop of Constantinople; in Egypt
with Timothy bishop of Alexandria; in the East with Pelagius
bishop of Laodicea, and Diodore of Tarsus; in Proconsular Asia
and the Asian diocese with AmpMlocMus bishop of Iconium, and
Optimus bishop of Antioch (i.e. in Pisidia) ; in the Pontic diocese
with Helladius bishop of Caesarea, and Otreius of Melitene, and
Gregory of Nyssa ; and in Thrace and Scythia with Terentius of
Tomi and Martyrius of Marcianopolis, — will possess a right to be

XXII.] The "Second General Council!' 441
allowed to occupy the Catholic Churches, on account of their fellow
ship and association with approved bishops. But all those who
dissent from commuMon of faith with the bishops here expressly
named, will have to be expelled, as manifest heretics, from the
churches, nor will they, hereafter, be in any way capable of exer
cising the episcopal government m the churches ; in order that the
bishoprics may continue in the possession of those who hold in its
purity the true and Nicene faith, and that after tMs plain declara
tion of our commands no place may be given to malignant subtlety."
So ended the Council wMch ranks as the Second of the Oecu
menical Synods, but which certaMly was not at the time, nor for a
long time afterwards, regarded as Oecumenical. It acquired that
dignity in virtue of the reception by the East of what was called
its version of the creed, from the time of the Council of Chalcedon ;
but its legislation was not umversally accepted even at that epoch,
for the representatives of Rome protested when the Chalcedonian
bishops renewed and developed the third canon of ConstantMople.
It was not until the sixth century that tMs synod was treated by
the Roman Church as of anything like Oecumenical authority, and
then oMy as to the condemnation of MacedoManism ; while both
then, and onwards into the beginning of the thirteenth century,
until the great Lateran Council of 1215, the Popes disclaimed the
obnoxious " third canon."
It is remarkable that while the Council of Constantinople was
summoned as not properly General, but Eastern, another Council
was gathered that same year M the West, which has never M any
sense been regarded as General, but which was Mst asked for, like
the Sardican, in the hope that it would be General, not simply
Western. This was the famous Council of AqMleia. Palladius
and Secundianus, two Illyrian bishops, had been accused of
AriaMsm. They resented the charge, and as early as the begMMng
of 379 besought Gratian, who was then sole head of the empire, to
have their case examMed by a Council representing the whole
Church. Gratian, it seems, acquiesced M their desire : he told
Palladius — if the latter may be trusted — that he had bidden the
Easterns to attend ; but Ambrose, who about tMs time was com
posing, for Gratian's use, his work " On the Holy Spirit," persuaded
him that an Italian Council would suffice for the purpose, and thus
changed the plan which had been at first approved by the Emperor.
We are also told that Ulfilas and other Arians requested Theodosius
to summon a general synod, but that " the Athanasians " defeated

442 The Age of the Fathers. [Chap.
the project in that quarter also. Both Emperors were easily per
suaded to deem it unadvisable. The Eastern bishops, having been
summoned to Constantinople, did not think it necessary to attend
a Western synod ; for, it must be observed, difficulties intervened
to delay the assemblMg of this synod until the same year as that
in wMch the Council met at Constantinople. It was after mid
summer in tMs year 381, that thirty-two Western bishops — some
of them representing numbers of their absent colleagues — assembled
at Aquileia, the great military and commercial city at the head of
the Hadriatic, destined to be destroyed by Attila and his Huns in
452, but now the metropolis of Venetia and Histria, which together
formed one of the seven provinces of the " Italic " diocese properly
so called, under the jurisdiction of the " Vicar of Italy," the re-
maMMg Italian provinces being specially subject to the "Vicar of
the City of Rome." Valerian, metropolitan of AqMleia, whose see,
like that of Milan, was practically independent of Rome, was sup
ported by Ambrose Mmself, by Anemius of Sirmium, Bassian of
Lodi, Philastrius of Brescia, Eusebius of Bologna, Abundantius of
Trent, and others, chiefly from the " Italian " Vicariate, or from
Western Illyricum, there being also three Gallicans and two
Africans, while Rome sent no deputies, nor did any one appear for
the Church of Southern Italy, nor for that of Spain. Palladius
and Secundianus were the only prelates connected with AriaMsm ;
but an Arian priest named Attalus appeared on their side, who had
been more than once condemned for his adhesion to the heresy.
It was on Friday, September 3, according to the record of the
Council wMch precedes the ninth epistle of St. Ambrose, that
after several informal discussions had taken place, a regular sitting
of the Council was held, in compliance with the request of Palla
dius ; and Ambrose began by remMding Mm that Arius's letter to
Alexander had been already read before the bishops, and proposing
that he should, if he could conscientiously do so, condemn its
propositions ; or that, if he assented to them, he should argue in
then defence. The Gospels were, as often, laid open before the
assembly; and "the Apostle," i.e. the Epistles of St. Paul, and
indeed the whole Scriptures, were at hand for reference. What
would he say of the Arian statement, " the Father only is eternal " ?
After some objections taken by Palladius to the absence of Eastern
bishops, wMch in his view was contrary to the understanding which
had been presupposed, the Council anathematized all who did not
own Jesus Christ to be " eternal ; " the Gallican deputies expressly

xxii.] The " Second General Council." 443
attesting their Church's belief in tMs truth, and being followed by
the representatives of the African and Illyrian Churches. The
next point taken was, whether Palladius would own the Son to be
" very God." Palladius at first tried to meet this by calling Him
" very and Only-begotten Son." No, that was not sufficient, said
the bishops : would he call Him " very Lord," and, according to the
final passage in St. John's first Epistle, " very God " ? One of the
prelates said, " AccordMg to the faith of all, and the Catholic pro
fession, Christ is very God : do you hold Him to be not very God ? "
Palladius, after an evasive admission of His " true DivMity " (for
the word " divine " was then, as now, often used in a vague inade
quate sense), ended by callMg Him " the Power of our God." The
Council declared Him to be " very Lord," and proceeded to ascer
tain whether Palladius held Him to have immortality accordMg
to His DivMe Sonship ; and the result was that the suspected bishop
refused the test, and declined, moreover, to condemn Arius. There
was some further discussion as to the wisdom, goodness, power, and
judicial office of the Son, and then as to His co-equality. Palladius
urged that the Father was "greater," and Ambrose explained, in
the Latin manner, exhibited for us in the " Quicunque," that He
was so " accordMg to the flesh ; " and the Council affirmed the Son
to be co-equal to the Father accordMg to His Divinity. Some
more fencMg followed on Palladius's part, although he had once
risen, as if intendMg to leave the church: he would not say
whether he admitted Christ's " subjection " to pertain to Him as
to His manhood, or whether he would disown the statements
that Christ " was a creature, that once He did not exist, that He
did not always exist as the Only-begotten Son." Palladius per
sisted in declinmg to answer except Ma" full Council : " sometimes,
however, he dealt summarily with the doctrinal question by callMg
Ambrose impious or a transgressor, which,. of course, amounted to an
indirect rejection of orthodoxy. Again he demanded an adjourn
ment until lay auditors of high rank could attend. When Valerian
formally gave his opinion, to the effect that Palladius, in that he
did not, and would not, condemn Arius, was himself an Arian, a
blasphemer, and merited deposition, Palladius scornfully observed,
" You have begun to play — play on ! We shall not answer you
without an Eastern Council." The bishops, one after another, gave
their votes for Ms condemnation, and went on to deal with his
companion Secundianus, who steadily refused to admit that Christ
was " very God." It was not, he said, a phrase found in Scripture :

444 The Age of the Fathers. [Chap.
he would own Christ to be verily the Only-begotten Son, but
notMng more. He also was deposed from the episcopate, and
Attalus from the priesthood ; and the Council thus finished a weary
dispute wMch had begun at daybreak, and lasted until 1 p.m.
The next business was to draw up synodal letters. One,
reckoned as the ninth in the Ambrosian series, was addressed to the
bishops of tMee Gallic provinces, " Viennensis," and " Narbonensis
prima " and " secunda," and contaMed a brief account of what had
been done. Another letter was to the three Emperors, Gratian,
ValentMian II., and Theodosius, M which it was observed that,
owMg to the freedom left by the terms of the imperial letters to
attend or to stay away, no bishop had been constraMed to attend
the Council M spite of infirm health, old age, or distance of abode,
probably with a covert reference to the inconveniences and hard-
sMps which had been felt, with such unhappy results, in the
ArimiMan Council ; but, it was added, nearly all from all provMces
of the West were present by their legates. The sovereigns were
then Mformed of the IMe wMch had been taken in dealing with the
two heretical bishops, who stood alone, or nearly alone, in the West —
a Mnt that a General Council would have been needless for dealing
with them — and who had " chosen to follow Arius rather than to
confess the Son of God to be everlasting God." " We spent many
hours M vain : their impiety did but grow, and could in no way be
corrected." At last, proceeds the document (to summarise its state
ments), they interrupted the reading of Arius's letter, and asked
us to reply to what they put forward, i.e. to their quotations from
Scripture : they would not admit that Christ's inferiority to the
Father must be referred to His humanity ; they even referred the
cause of His death to a certain inferiority of Divinity. For this
latter imputation there was, apparently, no sufficient proof. The
Council proceeded to describe the condemnation of the two bishops
and the presbyter, and to denounce Valens, an Arian (not him of
Mursa, but a younger man) who had been Mtruded into a PannoMan
see, had betrayed the interests of the empire to the Goths, was
reported to have put on a GotMc collar and armlet, and was now
Mtrigmng at Milan, and makMg up a party by means of ordinations.
The letter concludes by asMng that the law may be carried out
against the Photmians, who were still attempting to hold meetings
at Sirmium, wMch had for so many years been their fortress.
Another letter, addressed to all three Emperors, was specially
meant for Gratian : it referred to the trouble still caused by Ursinus.

xxii.] The " Second General Council!' 445
That persistent enemy of Damasus had now, during fifteen years,
been avenging himself by a harassing policy for his defeat M the
great contested election ; released in 371 from Ms exile M Gaul,
he had kept up Ms restless intrigues, and had even joined the
Arians in disturbing the Church of Milan, and was still active in
sending memorials through Paschasinus, an excommunicated person,
renewmg the old charges against Damasus ; and these memorials
had been formally made known to Gratian by the prefect of the
city. The pagans were exultant, the faithful were in great anxiety,
the whole Church might be involved M serious trouble: and the
Council begged Gratian to secure the peace of the Roman Church,
the centre of ecclesiastical communion, by finally discountenancing
Ursmus. In a fourth document (the twelfth Ambrosian letter) the Council
thanked the Emperors for the restoration of Eastern Catholics
to their Churches and the ejection of Arians (alluding to the law
of January 10, 381), but asked them to consider the cases of
Timothy and PaulMus — respectively, in the Council's view, the
bishops of Alexandria and Antioch. Both, they say emphatically,
have all along enjoyed their communion : a statement this, which
shows_ decisively that these North-Italian bishops were not in com
munion with Meletius at the time of Ms death ; and if they were
not, Rome certainly was not either. The letter proceeds, in effect,
" Some persons, whose orthodoxy was M former times doubtful,
harass both prelates by opposition : we of the West would not be
unwilling to extend our communion to these men if we could be
assured of their soundness in the faith ; but our first duty is to
•our own constant friends, the supporters of Paulinus. We received,
some time ago, letters from both sides, and had thought of sending
envoys to effect a reunion ; but the times were not propitious, and
we were only able to address you in support of the concordat made
between the two parties as to the recognition by both of the sur-
vivmg episcopal competitor." In these circumstances, the Council
asks that a new General Council may be held in Alexandria. Two
things are here obvious : the bishops would have spoken other
wise if Rome had entered into relations with Meletius, and they
were unaware — strange as it may seem — of a Council havMg
recently met at ConstantMople. We also gather that they had
become aware of the Antiochene compact made very early m 381,
,and had approved it. And perhaps Anglicans have not always
recognised what was strong in PaulMus's case, and what was weak

446 The Age of the Fathers. [Chap.
in that of Meletius. It has been well said that " to acknowledge
Paulinus was m effect to repudiate Meletius ; " and this Rome
had done.
The Council of AqMleia was speedily followed by a smaller
council of " Italy," that is, of the bishops of the " Italic diocese " or
Northern Italy, who would naturally meet at Milan. The date
was early in 382, and Ambrose of course presided. The mind of
the assembly is expressed in a letter to tMs effect. " Some time
ago," they tell Theodosius, " we wrote to you in support of the
Antiochene compact, wMch provided for the succession to that see.
Now we learn that in a recent council of Easterns that compact
has been set at nought — that a new bishop has been appointed to
succeed Meletius, with the advice of Nectarius as bishop of Con
stantinople. But we demur to Nectarius's right to that position,
and after Maximus had proved his own claim, to our satisfaction,
in a synod, we wrote to you on the subject, having learned that
Gregory was irregularly acting as bishop of Constantinople, and
asked that the question should be deliberately and fully examined
M a General Council." This must refer to the early part of 381,
when such a council seems to have been M contemplation ; but (the
bishops proceed) the Easterns " declined such a meeting," i.e. pre
ferred to meet by themselves ; and how did they act ? They knew
that Maximus, following the precedent set by Athanasius, had come
to urge his claims before us ; but they chose at once to appoint
Nectarius, whereas they should have waited to know the mind of
the Westerns, who claim, indeed, no predominance M such a dis
cussion, but a fair and equal share in a joMt conclusion. "Here,
then, we Westerns find ourselves precluded from commuMcating
with the East ; and the solution of the difficulty will be found in a
General Council, which, we suggest, had better be held at Rome.
Easterns, who thought it worth while to Mvite a single Western
bishop (Ascholius) to their council at ConstantMople, may fairly be
asked to let this question be discussed with them by the Roman
prelate and the bishops of districts near to Rome (finitimi) and of
Northern Italy." There are some difficulties in this letter as to
the time at which a General Council was proposed, and as to
the time of that Italian synod which was misled by the false
representations of Maximus, who, we learn, complained of being
deserted (i.e. by Alexandria) : Tillemont dates it after that of
AqMleia, but it seems rather to have been held before the
Council of Constantinople, soon after Maximus's repulse from

xxii.] The " Second General Council!' 447
Alexandria, and, in fact, as Father Puller thinks, in the early
summer of 381. But it is clear enough that the Milanese Council
defines the claim wMch it makes for Westerns, and wMch it con
siders the Easterns to have ignored. The Easterns, it says, " should
have waited for our opiMon ; " it would be absurd to construe tMs
as meaMng a decision from Rome — indeed, Rome had taken an
opposite view of the case of Maximus ; and in other passages of the
letter what is demanded is not any overruling part for Rome or for
the West in general, but only a fair share in the decision to be
arrived at in a new Council. The Westerns were evidently aware
that the Easterns (like the Eusebians in their correspondence
with Julius) suspected them of unfair self-assertion ; " what moves
us," they say, "is no eagerness about ambitious projects of our
own." Gratian was, as we have seen, a facile prince ; and he was
particularly unlikely to neglect a request from Ambrose and Ms
brethren. He issued letters inviting the Eastern bishops to attend
a General Council to be held at Rome in the end of the current
year, that is, of 382. But he was reckoning without his host ;
Theodosius did not approve of this Latin scheme. If there was
to be a new Council, he naturally preferred to have it under Ms
own eye M the New Rome. So it was that a number of bishops
assembled there in the summer of 382, and their meeting might
fairly enough be called a second session of the Council of 381.
Gregory was expressly Mvited : he had spent the latter half of
381 at Ms old home of Nazianzus, where he endeavoured in vain to
settle and to fortify the Church-people against ApollinariaMsm.
The prophet had but little honour in his own country. His motives
were misunderstood, his manner was complained of, the presbyters
as a body were uMriendly, and some of them put difficulties in the
way, while the neighbouring bishops gave him no help; of one,
especially, he complaMs in Ms poetic narrative of these troubles.
He retired to Ms estate at Arianzus, where he passed the Lent of 382
in absolute silence, and wrote to CledoMus, " a zealously orthodox
priest " of Nazianzus, his famous theological letter agaMst Apolli
nariaMsm, insisting on the oneness of Christ's Person, speaking of
Mary as "Theotocos," that is, as havMg given birth to Him as
Man who was personally God, distingMsMng between the God
head and Manhood in Christ, and comparing them (as does the
" Quicunque ") to body and soul in man ; but at the same time
condemning any notion (such as was afterwards developed into

448 The Age of the Fathers. [chap.
Nestoriamsm) which would level Christ to the position of a highly
favoured prophet, or would not admit the Crucified One to be lite
rally adorable, and any such speculation as that of Paul of Samosata
to the effect that CMist was made Son of God after He became
perfect M holiness, and also any denial of His permanent assump
tion of a real human body. In order to appreciate Gregory's
earnestness agamst ApollMarianism, we must remember the active
propaganda which Basil had described some five years before as
having filled the world with the writings of Apollinaris, the " most
copious writer in the world " — a pMase wMch apparently would
include those of disciples as well as of their clever and versatile
master. Some of them were even fraudulently assigned to great
Catholic names with very miscMevous effect. Missionaries, claim
ing the title of bishop, went about spreadMg Ms views as repre
senting the only true and orthodox Christology. Thus, some tMee
years later, we find Augustine's friend Alypius, at Milan, was for
a while repelled from the Catholic faith by imagMing it to be
identical with ApollMarianism, which was to Mm unthinkable
because the actions ascribed to CMist could not be performed without
a soul at once " vital and rational." And the theory had far-reach
ing consequences : it ignored the office of Christ as Second Adam,
in the work of our redemption ; it left no room for any efficacious
union between CMistians and His life-giving Humamty; it
obscured, or practically nullified, His Atonement and Mediation
by regardMg the Incarnation simply as a manifestation of the
invisible Deity M a visible form ; and we are assured by Basil that
it connected itself with SabellianizMg language as to the Trinity,
and, stranger still, with what looked like an intention of returning
to Jewish ceremonial, and perhaps might be connected with Apolli
narian Mability to lay stress on CMist's death as a sacrifice. Thus
the Apollinarian " novelties " might well be called, as Basil had
called them, " onmigenous," and they were the more formidable
for tMs variety of their attractions. How does Gregory m tMs
letter deal with them ? On the two great poMts of ApollMarian
ism, the denial of Christ's rational human soul, and the denial of
His truly human body — in other words, the assertion that the Word
was to Him in place of a mind, and the assertion that His body was
derived from the Divine essence — Gregory enlarges with trenchant
emphasis. " Anathema to Mm who says that His flesh descended
from heaven, and had not the same human source as ours, though it
be above us. . . . If any one puts his trust in a man who was without

xxi L] The "Second General Council!' 449
a mind, he is indeed mindless, and deserves not to be saved in Ms
own entirety. ... If Adam fell only by halves, then (but only
then) may what was assumed and saved be but a half." He next
proceeds to compare the Apollinarian with the Arian view, which
deMed to CMist, as Man, an animal soul, " in order that the suffer
ing might be ascribed to the Godhead," i.e. to the pre-existent
nature which Arians laxly called divMe. He rejects the Apolli
narian suggestion, " His Godhead is a substitute for a mind ; " he
contends that if any part of our humaMty was not assumed by the
Saviour, it could not be saved — that as the whole of human nature
fell, so the whole needs to be restored ; he distinguishes between
material and spiritual things, as to their power of combiMng " two
tMngs " M completeness ; he observes that a human mind cannot be
called " perfect " m comparison with the Godhead ; he urges that
the objection, " The mMd was condemned (by the Fall)," would be
still more fatal to Christ's assumption of a body, and that if the
mMd were not assumed, and thus healed, sins of the mmd must
lose their gravity. He notices the ApollMarian argument from
" the Word became flesh," saying that " flesh " in that text stands
for the whole man ; he pomts (as Basil had done) to the strange
Judaizing fantasies current M the sect, and to the speculations of
Apollinaris, opeMy expressed in Ms writings, as to degrees of God
head M the TrMity. Such was the substance of this letter, after
wards followed up by another on some Apollinarian glosses, which
had attained considerable popularity.
It was when Gregory received the invitation to the Council of
382 that he wrote the famous letter, reckoned as Ms 130th, and
repeatedly cited as agaMst all ecclesiastical Synods. " If I am to
tell the truth," he writes to Procopius the prefect, who had trans
mitted to Mm the summons, " I am disposed to avoid all assemblies
of bishops; For I never saw any good end to a Council, nor any
remedy of evils, but rather an addition of more evil, as its result.
There are always contentions and strivmgs for domiMon, beyond
what words can describe. Therefore I have retired into myself, and
deem quiet the only safety of the soul. Besides this, my resolution
to tMs effect is confirmed by illness ; I can hardly breathe, and
I feel good for nothMg. Persuade the most pious Emperor not
to impute to me Mertness, but rather to excuse my weakness,
which, as he knows, was the reason for which, at my own earnest
request, he permitted me to retire from ConstantMople." The
petition was not granted, for the excuse of illness, so freely
VOL. I. 2 Q

450 The Age of the Fathers. [Chap.
made in those days, was not taken as serious; a second and
more urgent summons came, and Gregory had to write agaM to
Olympius, " president " of the provMce of Cappadocia secunda, who
was one of its bearers, and to Icarius, who was the other. The letter
to Olympius is extant, and dwells briefly on his bad health and Ms
entire unfitness to undertake a long journey and to plunge anew
into " disturbances." Now, what importance is to be attached to
Gregory's testimony as to the uselessness or even mischievous-
ness of Councils ? We may admit that the confusions of the Arian
controversy, and the intense and passionate partisanship wMch it
had called forth on both sides, had told unfavourably on the temper
and character of many a Catholic prelate, and the unhappy strife
in which the Church of Antioch had been involved had tended to
increase the evil. Nor is it possible to ignore Gregory's repeated
assertions, elsewhere made, as to the unworthy means by which
several men rose to the episcopate, when imperial favour once more
shone on the cause of Nicene orthodoxy. If we could deem him
an unbiassed witness, his writings might furnish heavy Mdictment
against the general run of Ms episcopal contemporaries. Some, he
says, had come to the chief pastorship straight from secular call
ings, from the bar or the army, or even " from the plough or the
smithy," and had by no means justified the experiment of such a
sudden promotion. Some fawned on the great, paid court to the
rich, preached smooth things to the people, professed to be "moderate
men " when in fact they had no settled convictions, and he adds
the scathing judgment that they might perhaps have improved, if
it were not for their bishoprics ; as it was, they verified the saying
that power often makes men worse. He relieved his feelMgs by
such denunciations ; but we cannot take them, or other " jeremiads "
of Ms, as dispassionate, and proceed broadly to condemn, on such
evidence, the episcopate or the councils of the time. The letter is
written under exhausting illness, by a worn-out and heart-wounded
man advancmg towards his sixtieth year ; ten years before he has
written, " To me inaction is the chiefest action ; " he has all along
been averse to publicity — a man of contemplation forced for a time
into a life of action, but shrinMng from the stress and effort, the
endurances and the conflicts, which such a life involved ; he has
resigned Ms bishopric, has regaMed Ms beloved seclusion, and made
up his mind to end Ms days in it : just then he is urged to return
to public Church work, and that in co-operation with the very
bishops whose jealousies and unkindnesses, in the Council of the

xxii.] The " Second General Council!' 45 1
preceding year, had wounded him to the quick, and drawn forth
from him as much bitterness as his gentle nature could express.
We can hardly wonder that, at such a moment, he should write
exaggeratedly or irritably ; and to quote Mm unreservedly agaMst
Councils, when M this selfsame passage he is also declaring his
mtention to avoid all united action, and let Church business
shift for itself, is to prove too much, and therefore to prove
notMng. The Council, then, when it reassembled at Constantinople in the
summer of 382, had not the advantage, or the embarrassment, of
Gregory's presence. It received a letter " from the bishops of the
West," says Theodoret, inviting the presence of Eastern prelates
at the General Council which was to be held at Rome. The
Easterns, however, were in no mind to comply with such an Mvi-
tation. They proceeded with their own busMess, ratifying the
appoMtment of Flavian to the see of Antioch, condemning Apolli-
narianism, and equally condemnMg the Sabellian and Eunomian
errors. They drew up a letter to the bishops who were to meet
at Rome, especially mentioning Damasus, Ambrose, Valerian,
Ascholius, and others. After dilating on the, miseries of the
Arian persecution, not without an allusion to the want of sympathy
which had been shown by the Westerns under an Mfliction from
wMch the East could only hope gradually to recover, the bishops
advert to the trouble still caused by " wolves who, even after being
driven out of the fold, are seizing on the sheep in the forest."
There is much for the Eastern Church to do. Her bishops would
gladly have complied with the invitation to the Roman Council as
given by the Western Emperor, but they cannot go so far away from
their own flocks at so critical a time. They have assembled at Con
stantMople in consequence of the letter addressed in the preceding
year by the Council of Aquileia to Theodosius. TMs statement
was hardly ingenuous, for the Aquileian letter had asked for a
Council at Alexandria; but the bishops explained themselves to
mean that they could not do more, M the way of complying with
the Aquileian request, than they had done by coming to Con
stantMople. It is probable enough that when they came tinther
they had not — or, at least, most of them had not — been informed of
the request of the Council of Milan, only a few months earlier, for
a new Council to be held at Rome. This, in fact, is what they
plead ; they urge that they had no commission from their brethren
M regard to any such Council, and that they could now do no more

452 The Age of the Fathers. [Chap.
than send this synodal letter by the hands of tMee bishops, Cyriacus,
Eusebius, and Priscian, who could make known to the Westerns
then desire of unity, and their zeal for that true Nicene faith, which,
as " based on the Name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, is a
belief in the one Deity, power, and essence, the equal digmty, the
co-eternal kMgdom, of the tMee all-perfect hypostases or prosopa
of a Trinity uncreate, co-essential, co-eternal." Then follows a
reprobation of Sabellianism, as confusing the "hypostases" and
destroying their " proper " characteristics ; and of all schools of
Arians as dividing the essence, and introducing into the Trinity a
created nature, different in essence and subsequent in origM. But
tMs is not all ; the Council takes care to guarantee its orthodoxy
on the Christological side also ; the Word, it says, perfectly assumed a
perfect humanity consisting of body, soul, and mind, but continued
to be One, who, having been perfect Word of God before all ages,
became M the last days perfect Man ; language akin at once to
the "Quicunque" and to the "DefiMtio Fidei" of Chalcedon. The
bishops then refer to what they call " the Tome of the synod of
Antioch," which is supposed to be a compilation from several
Roman synods, accepted by the Council held at Antioch under
Meletius M September of 379 — and explicit enough on the Trinity
and the Incarnation — and to the " Tome " of the recent synod of
Constantinople, wMch they venture to call Oecumenical. They hope
that the Westerns will rejoice with them M what they have decided
as being lawful and canoMcal ; they vindicate the appointments of
Nectarius and Flavian by what they describe as the Nicene rule
that bishops should be consecrated by their comprovincials with
the co-operation, if necessary, of neighbouring bishops — a polite way
of intimating that Westerns had nothing to do with these two
appointments, wMch however, at any rate as regarded Flavian, was
rather technically than morally correct, for the Antiochene dis
sension had been matter of serious interest to all Christendom.
We must add that the clause about neighbouring bishops is not in
the fourth Nicene canon, but something like it is in the Greek
form of the sixth Sardican — wMch looks as if the Sardican canons
had come (not without confusion) to the knowledge of the Eastern
bishops. To proceed ; they mention Cyril as rightful bishop of the
mother-church of Jerusalem, and eMogize his various endurances
in the contest with AriaMsm. And they conclude with an
emphatic plea for Christian unanimity, as to be attained by the
Western recognition of these Eastern prelates ; so that, East and

xxil.] The "Second General Council!' 453
West being uMted in faith and love, there may be no more of
partisanship for Paul, Apollos, or Cephas, and all may be seen to
belong to the one undivided CMist. " NotMng," says Tillemont
in Ms quietly caustic style, "can be more courteous and more
Christian than tMs letter, provided that it is sincere." It shows
a touch of Greek cleverness and special pleading ; and perhaps a
Latin mMd would not be quite well pleased on reading it tMough.
To this Council, or this meeting of the Council, belong really
the so-called fifth and sixth canons of the Council of 381. The
" fifth " is somewhat provokingly curt. " Concerning the Tome of
the Westerns, we recognise those at Antioch who confess one God
head of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit." Here is another " Tome "
at first sight ; but probably the Council means what it has already
called the Tome of the Synod of Antioch. The "sixth" canon
deals with the subject of accusations brought agaMst orthodox
bishops. Any charges not affectMg religion — i.e. charges referring
to personal conduct — must be admitted without asking questions
as to the character or religious belief of the accuser. But heretics
and scMsmatics must not be allowed to accuse bishops on religious
grounds ; nor must persons excommuMcate, until they are them
selves clear of guilt; and similarly, no person already under
accusation must accuse a bishop or cleric, until the charge against
Mmself is disproved. Competent accusers of bishops for ecclesias
tical offences must bring their cases before the bishops of the
province, and may then appeal to those of the whole " diocese " or
group of provinces; and any accuser who, despisMg tMs latter
tribunal, "shoMd trouble the Emperor's ears, or the courts of
secular magistrates, or an OecumeMcal Council, is not even to be
allowed a hearing, as havMg insulted the canons, and violated the
good order of the Church."
We must now follow the three delegates of Constantinople on
their westward journey. It is possible, as Tillemont suggests, that
they brought with them, besides the synodical letter, the letter (not
extant) from Theodosius to the bishops of Northern Italy, stating
the facts as to Maximus, and explaMMg the reasons for not holding
one general synod for the settlement of Eastern affairs ; reasons in
wMch, as it appears from the 14th Ambrosian letter, wMch was
the answer of the North-Italian prelates to these explanations, the
latter felt it necessary to acqmesce, wMle in doMg so they repelled
with some dignity the Easterns' charge of partisan feeling. At
Rome the Council met in the latter part of the year 382 ; it was

454 The Age of the Fathers. [Chap.
attended by Ambrose, by Anemius of Sirmium, by Ascholius of
Thessalonica, who, on arriving, found Ambrose ill, and went at
once to visit him ; and who, although his country was now part
of the Eastern Empire, had been, as we have seen, entrusted by
Damasus with what may be called a Vicarial authority over the
churches of the so-called Macedonian and Dacian dioceses, in-
cludMg Achaia, Crete, and Epirus, by way of retaMmg them under
the control of the Pope. But there were also at this Council some
eminent representatives of the East. Epiphanius, bishop of Salamis,
came to Rome m company with PaulMus, who, of course, would be
received with all honour as the legitimate and ever-faithful bishop
of Antioch. He had now been a bishop twenty years, Epiphanius
about fifteen. They were accompanied by a visitor who was
destined to make Ms mark alike in Eastern and Western Church
Mstory. Hieronymus, or Jerome, born in Pannonia in 346, the year
of Athanasius's second return, had already seen much of the world ;
he had studied rhetoric and been baptized at Rome, had sojourned
in Gaul, and studied theology amid a circle of friends at AqMleia,
had visited Antioch, had retired Mto the Syrian " desert," and had
there written to Damasus a letter of enthusiastic deference, for
instruction as to the Communion which M Antioch might represent
the Church, and had professed to " abhor Meletius " and to " ignore
Paulinus ; " but two years later he thought better of the latter
declaration, and in 378 had received from Paulinus ordination to
the priesthood. Since that time he had visited ConstantMople,
and studied under Gregory Nazianzen, whom he calls "Ms pre
ceptor, by whose aid as a commentator he studied the Scriptures,"
and M whose company he heard Gregory of Nyssa read his own
work against Eunomius.
EpiphaMus was lodged in the house of Paula, who was to become
so famous among the Christian women of that century ; she had
lost her husband two years before, and although the shock of grief
had well-nigh proved fatal, she had speedily " turned herself " most
thoroughly "to the Lord's service." PaulMus was received into
another house, where Paula could still enjoy his society ; and the
conversation of the two bishops had a great effect m bendMg her
mind towards monastic seclusion. Their presence in the Council
was of course a most Mteresting event ; Flavian's appointment was
treated as null, and he himself as out of communion with the West,
together with Diodore of Tarsus and Acacius of Beroea, who had
been his consecrators ; but it does not appear that anytMng was

xxii.] The "Second General Council" 455
said or done agaMst Nectarius, and the facts of the case as to
Maximus were doubtless by tMs time made known to Ambrose.
The Apollmarian question had already been formally handled by a
Roman synod, or rather by more than one ; but, by one account,
the Pope on this occasion drew up a formulary which might serve
as a test, employMg for tMs purpose a learned priest, who was, m
fact, Jerome. In this formulary, the term " Man of the Lord " was
used, as applicable, on Mgh authority, to CMist ; but an Apolli
narian, on being shown it as occurring in St. Athanasius, attempted
by a mean trick to represent it as a spurious addition, and it
became evident that the pMase might suggest a heterodox idea.
The two Eastern bishops spent the winter in Italy, and returned
home in the spring of 383. But the presbyter, who was greater
than either prelate, was retained in Rome by Damasus to act as
his secretary. He found for himself also a distinct and attrac
tive sphere of Mterest as the adviser and Mstructor of a clique
of aristocratic ladies, whose centre of devotion and study was
the ample mansion on the Aventine inherited and occupied by
Marcella. In tMs congenial atmosphere Jerome spent a few
qMet years. The details of his occupations may be considered
hereafter : at present it suffices to say that while CMistendom in
some important respects owes him an immense debt of gratitude,
modern Christians will find it hard to love Mm, hard even to bear
with what Dean Church calls his "ruggedness, irritability, and
coarseness, Ms utter want of taste or justice or moderation " — hard,
perhaps, to understand how a man could be so self-denying and
earnest, and yet so passionate and so little softened by Ms religion.
He is a study m contrasts M the anomalies of the human tempera
ment ; but if it costs us an effort to appreciate his goodness, let us
remember how his heart went forth to those good women at Rome
for whose rank and riches he cared simply notMng.
The Council of the Eastern bishops was again summoned to
meet M the June of 383. Theodosius clung to the hope that, by
further discussion in such an assembly, the dissident sects might
be reconciled to the Church, and the disturbances which their
hostility excited might be brought to an end. He had dechned,
says Theodoret, to follow the suggestion of AmphilocMus, the
bishop of Iconium, and prohibit the Arians from holdMg any
meetMgs withm the cities : he thought such a measure " over-
severe," although one of his edicts had embodied it. Much might
foe done, he conceived, by fair reasoMng. He began by desiring

456 The Age of the Fathers. [Chap.
Nectarius to confer with him : " We must have a full debate on
all the doctrinal questions at issue." The bishop, m Ms natural
anxiety, consulted, on his return from the palace, with Agelius,
the ascetic Novatianist bishop, who still lived amid the veneration
of his followers, and who had been, for a short time, a coMessor
under Valens. He had as little skill in controversy as Nectarius,
and at once fell back on Ms Reader Sisinnius, a man of some mark,
who, though not distingMshed for any austerities, was a con
troversialist formidable even to Eunomius, familiar with secular
as well as with sacred learMng, and smgMarly apt at lively
repartee, some mstances of which are complacently given by
Socrates. TMs adviser showed Ms ability by a proposal wMch, as
he considered, would bring matters to an issue, and avoid intermin
able debates. "Let the Emperor," he said, "ask the heterodox
leaders tMs plain question : ' Will you accept the authority of
those Christian teachers who lived before the Arian controversy ? '
They must M that case either accept those fathers as witnesses of
Christian truth, or disown them ; and if they disown them, they
must be consistent and condemn them. If they condemn them,
their own followers will instantly cast them off; and if they
accept them, we can produce the books of those fathers as evidence
of their belief in a divine and co-eternal Son. For none of those
early writers ever laid down that proposition which is the basis of
AriaMsm, ' Once the Son did not exist.' " The bishop of Con
stantinople hurried back to the palace, fortified by this ingenious
suggestion, wMch would commend itself to his mMd as accordant
with the claim of Catholicity to be the historical, traditionaL
primeval belief. Theodosius, we are told, at once appreciated the
proposal, and acted upon it. He asked the several representatives
of heterodox sects, who had been assembled M Constantinople
with a view to the proposed discussion, whether they woMd stand
by the theology of the ancient divMes ? " Yes," was the answer,
" we revere them as true teachers." " Will you, then, take them
as competent witnesses of the true sense of Scripture ? " This
question produced a Babel of discordant utterances : for some
professed their readMess to appeal to antiquity, others — even among
representatives of the same school or commuMty — declined the test,
conscious that antiqmty was against them. Theodosius, not with
out some words of reproach, adopted another plan, and ordered each
of the contendMg parties, orthodox or heterodox, to draw up a
written statement of belief and present it to him on a certain day.

xx 1 1.] The "Second General Council" 457
Nectarius and Agelius acted together in framMg, or, most
probably, employing their theologians to frame, a doctrinal for
mulary. Demophilus, the moderate Arian bishop, who, some three
years before, had refused to adopt the Nicene faith at Theodosius' s
exhortation, and had transferred his congregation to a place outside
the walls, appeared with a paper wMch probably embodied the
Homoion. There too was seen Eleusius of Cyzicus, who had stood
up so firmly at the Council of Seleucia for the " faith of the fathers,"
meamng the Creed of the Dedication Synod; who had been
deposed by Acacians at Constantinople; had been expelled by
Julian for having destroyed some temples and converted many
pagans ; had yielded, under terror of Valens, to the dominant
AriaMsm; had bitterly repented in presence of Ms flock, and
vainly endeavoured to resign his see ; and now, in old age, after
havmg once before resisted the persuasions of Theodosius and his
bishops, came forward as a specimen of those Semi-Arians who,
decliMng to adopt the Nicene Creed, had identified themselves
with Macedomanism. One other figure of importance was seen
among the group — a digMfied and graceful one, as PMlostorgius
tells us from his own recollections, although the face was marked
by the " white leprosy," and the voice, so often triumphantly per
suasive, so skilful m all emergencies, could never get rid of a lisp,
which his admirers professed to tMnk attractive : such, M outward
fasMon, was the great Anomoean controversialist, Eunomius, as he
stood face to face with enemies who must have looked upon Mm
with mingled fear and abhorrence, as a special Mstrument of
" seducing spirits,' ' as the great destructive rationalist of Ms time.
Eleusius, whom he had superseded at Cyzicus, would doubtless
frown or shudder at his presence ; and Demophilus would see in
Mm the representative of that Mtense and thorough-going Arianism
wMch kept no terms with the less pronounced forms of non-
Catholic theology, and wMch even rebaptized converts who
abandoned the Homoion for the Anomoion. Eunomius had many
strange vicissitudes to remember: his early life at his father's
farm M Cappadocia, his employment as shorthand writer to Aetius,
Ms sojourn with Mm in Alexandria, Ms ordination as deacon at
Antioch, his temporary concealment of Ms opinions as bishop of
Cyzicus, his unwariness when craftily approached by anti- Arians
who conspired to entrap him, his quarrel with Eudoxius M behalf
of Aetius, Ms controversy with Basil, his quiet life on Ms estate
at Chalcedon, " close to the sea-wall," his narrow escape, by aid of

458 The Age of the Fathers. [Chap.
Valens of Mursa, from African exile : what might now be reserved
for him, when, after having been prevented from seeMg the
Emperor Valens, and agaM, by the devout Empress Flacilla, from
havMg an interview with Theodosius, he was summoned to the
imperial presence as one of the great rival theologians of the
time? He had followers, as he knew, throughout Asia MMor,
" from Mount Taurus to the Hellespont : " his voluminous writings
were widely dispersed, he had won many mmds over by his fluent
logic, and by his wholesale denial of all mysteriousness in religion :
might he hope at last for a more brilliant victory ? He gave in
Ms paper, Ms " Exposition ; " which, alone of the papers presented
on that memorable occasion, is still extant. It begMs by assignmg
to CMist the name of God and Saviour, wMle quoting His com
mand to confess Him before men ; it then affirms One only God,
the Father, personally alone in Deity, with no sharer M His glory
or His KMgsMp; it proceeds to speak of the Son as true and
" Only-begotten God," but as not uncreate, and not associated M
the Father's glory; it acknowledges Him to be like the Father as
a son is like a father, as the image of the Father's action, the
seal of His words and counsels. It sets forth the proper Arian
conception of the Holy Spirit as made by, and inferior to the
Son, as the highest of all His works. The formula asserts, in
most absolute terms, a resurrection of bodies, a judgment extend
ing to the slightest acts, words, thoughts, feelings of this life, an
endless punishment of those who are " finally wicked ; " and
concludes by disclaimer of all " unhallowed " opMions such as
calumny imputed to the writer. It must be admitted that
Eunomius, although he repeatedly ascribed " divMity " to the Son,
was most explicit in regard to the sense M which he did so : no
one could possibly gather from Ms statement that he believed the
Son to be Mcluded witMn the divMe essence ; there was rather
an elaborate and, in the circumstances, a manly and outspoken
distinctness of expression as to the pure and simple " UMtarianism "
Mtended to be set forth. How were all these papers treated ?
We are told by Socrates — but this detail M Ms story is at least
suspicious, and may indeed be set aside as mconsistent with
Theodosius's character — that the Emperor shut himself up alone
and prayed for Divine guidance. Of this Sozomen tells us notMng,
but merely says that Theodosius pronounced in favour of the
statement which embodied Nicene orthodoxy. The opponents of
that faith were thrown into despondency, and had the mortification

xxil.] The "Second General Council!' 459
of seeing some of their adherents embrace the Homoousion.
Theodosius, accordMg to a famous story, was impressed, about tMs
time, by the sigMficant familiarity, or want of due observance,
with which AmphilocMus treated his little son Arcadius, who in
the January of this year had been nominally associated with him
in the empire. " If you, 0 Emperor, cannot brook my want of
respect to your son, what, think you, will God do to those who
insult His ? " The inference intended, and understood, was that
the sovereign power should be employed more stringently against
Arians. This was done. Eunomius was banished Mto Moesia:
some of the court chamberlaMs, who had imbibed Ms opiMons,
were expelled from the palace; and Theodosius promulgated, on
July 25, 383, a new law against heretics — Eunomians, Arians,
and Macedonians being named first, and then Manicheans, and
Encratites, and others, whose names give proof of the popMarity
of various forms of fanatical asceticism. All these persons are
forbidden to "collect any crowds, draw any people after them,
or use private houses for their religious meetMgs, or do anythMg
in public or private which may give offence to Catholic sanctity."
If any of them break tMs law, they may be expelled from cities
by the co-operation of those who " take pleasure in the beauty of
the true religion." Another law followed this on September 3,
amplifying the former prohibitions, and adding the ApollMarians
to the list of heretics : all gatherings for heretical worsMp are
forbidden in the most absolute and emphatic terms ; in town and
m country alike, heretics are not to assemble, nor " perform the
solemMties of their unholy fellowship," nor to ordain bishops ;
any houses in which they have held meetings are to be con
fiscated, and their clergy are to be sent back to their native
districts, and there detained.
So vain were the Emperor's hopes of a peaceful settlement of
controversies ; and so easily was he swayed into the adoption of
a severely repressive policy in the supposed interests of the Church
— although, in Sozomen's opinion, his laws against heretics were
intended rather to intimidate than to oppress, and were sometimes
allowed to remain "bruta fulmina." Allowance must be made
for a monarch inheriting the traditions of the heathen empire as
to the treasonable character of overt religious dissidence ; it was
only too natural to carry them over into the area of his CMistian
sovereignty, without asking whether they would harmoMze with
the Christian spirit — to assume, in fact, that they provided him

460 The Age of the Fathers. [Chap.
with an expression of Christian duty — only too natural Mdeed,
when ecclesiastics urged it on Mm. And while the vexatious
question of " noncoMormity " was thus exercisMg his patience,
he learned in another direction the obstinate vitality of feuds
within the Church. The Antiochene difficMty, wMch had been
perpetuated by the self-willed partisansMp of the majority at the
first Council of ConstantMople, was a legacy of disturbance
bequeathed by it to the third. Two years after the death of
Meletius, and the unhappy resolution to appoint a new bishop,
and not PaulMus, as Ms successor, we learn from Socrates that
the bishops at the Council of 383 were divided about the claims of
Flavian and of PaulMus. If the former was supported by Syria,
Phoenicia, Palestine, and clearly Asia MMor also, the latter, lately
strengthened by the decided expression of Western sympathy in
the Roman Council, was the true bishop of Antioch in the eyes of
the Egyptian, Arabian, and Cypriot bishops, who loudly demanded
that Flavian should be expelled from Antioch — a demand impossible
to be granted, but ominous of protracted strife, and of further
distress, as Socrates phrases it, to those who held the faith of the
Homoousion. Such were the signs of the times in the Eastern Church, when
the summer of 383 was passing away. And at that very moment
a tragedy was workMg itself out in the West, which was probably
not known to Theodosius and his subjects, until it attained its
consummation, but which to men like Ambrose M Italy was
matter of profound and poignant regret. The Emperor Gratian,
by his frivolity and want of thought, had alienated the Western
legions ; the troops in BritaM prevailed on Clemens Maximus,
" the countryman and fellow-soldier of Theodosius," who in the
precedMg year had repelled the inroads of the Picts and the Scots,
to " accept the dangerous present of the imperial purple." Gratian
was at Paris when Maximus invaded Gaul. It seems that as soon
as he heard of the rebellion, Ms Christian sensitiveness of conscience,
stinuilated by fear, led him to renounce the heathen title of
Pontifex Maximus, wMch he had hitherto retaMed after con
fiscating, or otherwise appropriating to better uses, the revenues of
the pagan temples of Rome, removing the altar of Victory from
the Senate-house, and dismissing, unheard, the senators who came
to ask for its restoration. He fled to Lyons, and was there detaMed
by the treacherous governor of the province, until the arrival of a
cavalry officer of Maximus, who put him to death by a base

xxi L] The "Second General Council!' 461
stratagem on August 25, 383. Jerome, thirteen years later,
apostrophizes Lyons, " Thy palace walls bear traces of a bloody
hand." It was a sad end, and a premature one, of the life that had
begun so hopefully. Gratian was faulty and weak, but the Western
Church had cause to love Mm well : the innocent, pure-hearted
prince who had asked Ambrose to write a manual of doctrine for
Ms benefit — who, after sequestratMg a basilica, had voluntarily
restored it to the Church — who in Ms last hours of supreme peril
had longed for Ambrose as a deliverer, and called upon his name
with piteous earnestness — might well be mourned by him, even
when nine years had elapsed since that terrible night at Lyons, M
the tender words which recall the lamentation over Jonathan:
" Doleo in te, fili Gratiane, suavis mihi valde."

CHAPTER XXIII.
THE WEST IN THE LAST YEARS OF DAMASUS.
The sudden success of Maximus and the tragical death of Gratian
must have filled the mMds of Western churchmen, in the early
autumn of 383, with consternation and anxiety. Justina trembled,
as well she might, for the safety of her boy, on whom had thus
descended the undivided burden of legitimate sovereignty at a
moment which seemed fraught with peril to the whole imperial'
house. Valentinian II. was twelve years old when he lost Ms
elder brother. The Empress-mother — who had formerly pre
judiced ValentMian I. against MartM, had set herself to thwart
Ambrose, when about three years previously he resolved on secur
ing a Catholic bishop for the see of Sirmium, and after failing in
this attempt had laid " numberless plots " against him — felt that,
M tMs crisis, all dislike for the archbishop of Milan must yield
to the imperious necessity of procuring Ms support for her son's
cause. She led the young Emperor into his presence, and pre
sented him to be embraced by Ambrose, who, writing eleven years
later, thus apostropMzes Valentinian : " I clasped thee M my
arms, when thy mother Justina's hands presented thee to me."
At Justina's request, he undertook a journey to Treves, in order
to negotiate something like a treaty between the victorious usurper
of the Northern sovereignty and the endangered Italian court.
The wMter was coming on, but he did not hesitate ; he repaired to
the headquarters of Maximus, and was there detained until early
in 384, in order that Maximus might learn, before dismissMg Mm,
what terms had been made by Count Victor, whom he had sent to
Milan before the arrival of Ambrose and who met Ambrose near
Mentz. Those terms were not all that Maximus had expected;
the young Emperor would not, said Victor, come to visit Maximus,
but would make peace with him on condition of being left

Chap, xxi ii.] The West in the Last Years of Damasus. 463
undisturbed in the dominion of Italy, Africa, and Western Illyricum,
wMle Maximus should be acknowledged as sovereign of Gaul,
Spain, and Britain. Thus the court of Milan was saved ; the firm
tone taken by Ambrose contributed, doubtless, to this result, by
inducmg Maximus to accept a compromise which kept him out of
Italy ; and he would be impressed by the austere refusal of the
bishop of Milan to communicate with him in those days of Ms
early triumph. In Mm Ambrose could not but see the virtual
destroyer of Gratian ; and it must have cost Theodosius much to
treat with Maximus on terms which recognised his Transalpine
sovereignty. The usurper thus legitimatised in the eyes of all subjects of
the empire found himself called upon, very early in his reign, to
take cognisance of the PriscilliaMst controversy. We may
remember that Gratian had been induced by his home miMster
MacedoMus to rescind Ms edict against Priscillian and Instantius,
and to permit their return to SpaM. " They then," says Sulpicius,
" without any contest resumed possession of their churches." And
they procured the powerful support of the proconsul Volventius ;
in reliance on which, they thought it a good opportunity for aveng
ing themselves on Ithacius, and accused him of " disturbing the
churches : " he was actually condemned to death, but contrived to
escape to Gaul, and invoked the aid of the praetorian prefect
Gregory, who thereupon ordered the arrest of Priscillian and laid
the case before Gratian. But Macedonius, it is said, received a
large sum of money from Priscillian and Ms friends, and in con
sideration of it obtained an imperial order, removing the judicial
cognisance of the business from the prefect, and placing it in the-
hands of the vice-prefect, or "vicar," who had lately superseded
the proconsul in Spain. This magistrate's name was Marinianus.
Further, Macedonius sent officials to arrest Ithacius, who was-
then staying at Treves. But the bishop, although, in Sulpicius's
opinion, a shallow, foolish, and inconsistent person, succeeded in
bafflMg this attempt, and afterwards found a protector in Brito or
Britannius, who then held the see of Treves, and had sat in the
Roman Council of the precedMg year 382. While he was M tMs
critical position, the capital of the Gallic prefecture was startled
by the tidings of the revolt of Maximus. He had been declared
Emperor M Britain ; he would come over speedily Mto Gaul ; it
was evident that Gratian's troops would desert him ; there was a
near prospect of a new reign, and Maximus might choose to reverse

464 The Age of the Fathers. [Chap.
the ecclesiastical policy of Gratian. As soon, then, as Maximus
established hMiself in Treves, Ithacius came boldly forward, and
urgently petitioned him agaMst the Priscillianists. The new
Emperor listened, and at once gave orders to the prefect of Gaul
and to the " vicar " of Spain to send all who were " tainted " with
Priscillianism for trial before a Council at Bordeaux.
This Council met accordingly, M 384 or 385. Instantius was
tried first. We can easily imagine the accusations which would
be poured forth against the new heretics. " They are unfit to be
treated as Christians, not to say as bishops. They do indeed
speak of the Trinity, but it is in the sense of Sabellianism ; of
CMist, but theirs is the Christ of Photinus, who is said to have
had no existence before He was born of the Virgin — nay, rather,
altogether a Docetic CMist, for they do not believe in the reality
of His bodily existence, and that explains their obstinate fasting
on the anniversary of the Lord's birth and on the weekly comme
moration of His resurrection. Penetrate further into their odious
mysteries, and you find that they derive the soul of man from the
very essence of God; they have adopted from Manicheans the
dream of an evil principle arisMg out of darkness, and of emana
tions from the kingdom of light, which, being in fact so many souls,
have vowed in God's presence to combat the dark powers, and
descending to earth have been enclosed by those powers in bodies,
the several parts of wMch are under the control of the signs of the
zodiac, or ' stars of destiny.' It is for the deliverance of these
souls that the CMist is imagined to have come ; they will, accord
ing to the sect, be delivered in the end, by His help, from all dark
influences : this is the Priscillianist salvation ! These men will
tell us that they believe all the Canonical Scriptures. Yes, but
they explam them away by perverse allegorizings ; and they rely
also on some contemptible apocrypha, which seem to be of Mani-
chean origM. They may put on the semblance of grave austerity ;
but their hostility to marriage goes the whole length of trying to
separate what God has jomed, and there are suspicions, or more
than suspicions, of impure practices among them — there was, M
this very region of AqMtania, a scandal against Priscillian's con
duct when he passed through it on Ms way to Rome. They add
magic to their other offences ; and then, to sum up, you cannot
trust their disclaimers ; they will abjure anything, dissemble any-
tiring ; their principle is contaMed in one vile verse —
' Jura, perjura; seoretum prodere noli ! '

xxi 1 1.] The West in the Last Years of Damasus. 465
Let the Council do justice to the Church, and confirm the judg
ment of the Council of Saragossa : these men are not ordMary
heretics, they are positively antichristian, and pestilent to morality
and public order ; and Bishop DelpMnus, by his conduct in repel
ling them from tMs city three years back, has shown his sense of
their guilt and set this synod a good example." Such would be
somethMg like the charge. The imputation of magic was idle, and
that of dissolute conduct, as Neander says, is, " to say the least, not
sufficiently authenticated ; " but the rest of the allegations were
true, and Instantius made but a poor defence, which was followed
by sentence of his deposition from the episcopate. Priscillian
woMd not plead at all : " to avoid being heard by the bishops, he
appealed " — using doubtless the old technical word " provoco " —
to the Emperor. The Council allowed Ms appeal : Sulpicius
severely blames their weakness, and says that they should " either
have proceeded to pass sentence, or, if they suspected, i.e. mis
trusted, themselves, should have reserved the hearMg for other
bishops, and not permitted guilt so manifest to be brought by
appeal before the Emperor." The opinion of the historian is in
conformity with the twelfth canon of the Dedication Council of 341,
which, says Bingham, was " conformable to the received discipline
of the ancient Church." Priscillian was followMg the precedent
of those African scMsmatics who had appealed from the Council of
Aries to Constantine — an appeal wMch Constantine himself called
shameless, although it related to facts, which, it would be said,
had been wrongly represented, and although, to leave them with
out excuse, he consented to hear the cause. The appeal of Atha
nasius from the Council of Tyre to Constantine presupposed the
gross and patent injustice which had deprived that assembly of all
its moral weight, and also referred to the fact that the so-called
Council at Tyre had been from the outset not purely an ecclesias
tical synod, having been presided over by a Count under orders
from the Emperor. Probably the Spanish bishop would say, in his
appeal, that he coMd expect no justice at Bordeaux.
Thus the PriscilliaMsts were brought — fatally for themselves —
to Treves ; and Ithacius and Idacius followed them. It is at this
pomt of the story that Sulpicius gives signal proof of Ms honesty
and fair-mMdedness : " To state my own opinion, I like the
accusers as little as the accused. Certamly I am positive that
Ithacius had nothing like a real interest in the matter, no real
conscientiousness ; " and then, after sketching his character as
vol. 1. 2 H

466 The Age of the Fathers. [Chap.
talkative, audacious, impudent, fond of expense, excessively self-
Mdulgent, he tells us that this MqMsitor mto heretical pravity was
so foolish and headlong in his judgments of character as to set
down all studious or strict-living persons, or all who were diligent
M fasting, as so many PriscilliaMsts. The " audacity " of Ithacius
M this direction was exhibited agaMst Sulpicius's special hero ;
and it is not without the deepest Mterest that we can read of the
relations between the prosecutors M tMs great appeal-case and
St. Martin. He had occasion to visit Treves, m order to solicit the clemency
of Maximus for some persons who, apparently, had mcurred peril
by the revolution, as beMg adherents of Gratian. But, in contrast
with the servility of some bishops who came to present like
requests, the bishop of Tours spoke as " commanding rather than
petitioMng." TMs demeanour, which Tillemont calls " holy pride,"
was impressive ; and Maximus frequently invited MartM to his
table. He declined, out of respect for Gratian's memory ; he could
not sit at the table of one who had caused his prince's death.
Maximus condescended to explain. The sovereignty had been forced
on Mm : God appeared to have declared on his behalf by an un
expected victory ; and none of his adversaries had been slaM, by
his command, save M open fight. At last the bishop departed from
the rigorous position wMch he had at first taken up as to
Maximus's conduct, and consented to come to the imperial table :
he was seated on a small chair, close to Maximus, while his atten
dant presbyter was ranked with the prefect Evodius, and with two
powerful " counts," the Emperor's brother and uncle. Halfway
tMough the feast, a bowl of wine was, as usual, handed to
Maximus ; he ordered it to be passed on first to MartM, expecting,
says Sulpicius, that it would be returned to him by the bishop
with his own hand. But Martin, after drinkMg, quietly and as a
matter of course passed it to " his presbyter," as being of higher
dignity than any secular prince. Maximus, who had a good deal
of religious sentiment, was not only astonished, but pleased, or, at
any rate, thought fit to appear pleased, at this extremely downright
expression of the ecclesiastical conception of society, even M the
presence of the power of this world : an expression wMch no other
bishop had ventured on even at the tables of ordMary judges. He
often sent for Martin in order to hear Mm talk ; and the Saint
spoke of nothing but religion, duty, heavenly blessedness, while
the Empress hung on his words, and at last insisted on waiting on

xxiii.] The West in the Last Years of Damasus. 467
Mm at a meal, arrangMg the chair and table, bringing water for his
hands, settMg on food wMch she herself had cooked, standMg beside
Mm M motionless observance, mMglMg and presenting his drink,
and collecting the very fragments of bread from Ms plate at the
conclusion of the supper, as if such relics were preferable to an
imperial banquet. It was clear, then, to all at Treves that MartM
was, by the pure foree of Ms majestic character, a power in the court.
What view would he take of the Priscillianist case ? The answer
was soon given. He could not but regard such a champion of
orthodoxy as Ithacius with indignation, even with disgust. " His
strong spiritual instinct," it has been said, " led Mm at once to
take a definite line in favour of moderation." He rebuked the
accuser for his merciless zeal ; and Ithacius repaid the Mterference
by publicly branding the bishop of Tours as infected with the
heresy. Martin betook himself to Maximus, and begged Mm " not
to shed the blood of those unhappy men. It is more than enough
that they have been expelled from their churches, as heretics, by
a sentence of bishops. It would be a new and unheard of scandal
that a secular judge should decide a Church cause." Thus he pro
cured an adjournment of the case ; and when he had to leave Treves,
he obtained a promise from Maximus that the accused should not
be put to death. The promise was soon represented, by very
different advisers, as not bindMg. " Matters," says Newman, " went
on as if MartM had never been at Treves." Two bishops, Magnus
and Rufus, persuaded the Emperor to commit the case, at once, to
the hearMg of the upright but rigorous praetorian prefect Evodius.
Priscillian was examined, and it was doubtless under torture that
confessions of magical practices, and of gross impurities, were
wrung from the heresiarch, as from Knights Templar under Philip
the Fair. Evodius pronounced Mm guilty, and remanded him
until the Emperor's " pleasure should be known." The report of
the trial was carried to the palace, and Maximus made up Ms
mind that Priscillian ought to die, as a sorcerer and a corrupter
of morals : but he resolved to hold a final inquiry, from which
Ithacius, now that his wicked scheme had proved successful,
thought it prudent to absent Mmself; and Patricius, a " solicitor "
for the imperial treasury, was appointed accuser on this occasion.
Priscillian, who had Mmself averred that " magicians ought to be
cut off by the sword," was condemned and beheaded at Treves, and
with Mm suffered two clerics who had recently gone over to Ms
.side, an accomplished layman, and a lady named EucMocia, who

468 The Age of the Fathers. [Chap.
had been Priscillian's hostess during Ms former stay in Gaul, and
whose daughter he was accused of havMg led astray. Instantius
was more gently dealt with, being baMshed, with another adherent
named Tiberianus, to the Scilly Islands. Further legal processes
produced various punishments : a tumultuary outbreak of fury,
at Bordeaux, ended in the stonMg of a female PriscilliaMst ; and
thus the work of Ithacius was achieved. Thus, says SMpicius,
"were men unworthy to live put to death, or puMshed with
exile, pessimo exemplo."
In looking at this most tragical case, one cannot but see that
although it is commonly called the first precedent for the inflic
tion of death on heretics, it was not so much for their heterodox
speculations as for their alleged immoralities and sorceries, that
Priscillian and his companions suffered the last penalty. Some
thing must be allowed for the horror and paMc wMch, some
twelve years before, had been excited by the supposed discovery
of widespread magic even in the Mghest classes of society. But,
all deductions being made, on the ground that Maximus may have
supposed, as he afterwards wrote to Pope Siricius, that he was
called upon to crush out a conspiracy against public morals and
therein against society, as proved by judicial confessions, the event
of the Priscillianists' execution in 385 is one of the most deplor
able in the fourth century ; and Sulpicius is emphatic in affirming
that, so far from arrestMg, it tended to stimulate the progress of
the sect. The bodies of the "martyrs" were brought to Spain,
and buried with pompous rites : the oaths taken " by- the name of
Priscillian," the spread of Priscillianist books, the intense feud
lasting at least fifteen years between Priscillianists and Catholics,
showed how the blood shed at Treves was, as it were, the " seed "
of pertinacious heretical strength in the native land of the heresy ;
and we find Leo the Great, nearly sixty years after the death of
Priscillian, occupying a long letter with what he considered to be
an opportune and elaborate exposure of Priscillianist errors, by
way of meeting, as he expresses it, a fresh outbreak of unsound
teacMng "from the relics of an ancient pestilence." What was
even worse, the episcopal order was compromised by the partisanship
of some of its members ; and even the best men in the Christian
body were involved M the obloquy thus excited against the Church.
Martin had striven to save the lives of these unhappy men.
He had ere long, in 386, an opportunity of showmg what he
thought of those who had hunted them to death. He had occasion

xxiii.] The West in the Last Years of Damasus. 469
to revisit Treves on an errand like Ms first, i.e. to, plead for the
lives of two Counts, Narses and Leucadius, who had been loyal to
Gratian ; and there he found a number of bishops assembled for
the consecration of Felix to the see, in the place of Brito. All
these prelates, except one, Theognostus (who openly censured
their line), daily communicated with Ithacius. They had per
suaded Maximus that he ought to send Mto Spain a commission
©f tribunes, with full power for searcMng out heretics, and pumsh-
ing them with death and confiscation of property — a course, says
Sulpicius, which would imperil many excellent persons, in that a
pale face, or a peculiar dress, would be taken as a proof of heresy.
SuddeMy the news that Martin was coming shook their nerves :
" they began to mutter and to tremble," lest MartM should refuse
to commuMcate with them, and by Ms example should draw away
others from their fellowship. They induced Maximus to send
" officials " to meet Martin, and forbid him to proceed unless he
would profess that he was at peace with the bishops assembled in
the city. "I will come," answered MartM readily, "at peace
with Christ." He entered Treves by night, came to the church
for prayer, and then went to the palace to ask pardon for the
persons in whom he was interested ; but his maM desire was to
stop the sending of the inquisitorial commission. Maximus, who
had shaken off the impressions formerly received, put off seeing
Mm for one day; then for another; the bishops hastened to
the Emperor, saying, " It is all over with us, if Martin backs up
Theognostus ! He ought never to have been allowed to enter the
city ; he comes as the avenger of the heretics, whom before he tried
to defend ; if he succeeds, Priscillian's death has been useless ! "
Maximus, it is said, was nearly persuaded to treat MartM as a
PriscilliaMst ; but he was overawed by the consciousness of the
bishop's pre-emment sanctity. He tried the effect of persuasive
words ; Ms former courtesies, he thought, had not been without
fniit. " The heretics were put to death by form of civil law, not
M consequence of any persecution by bishops. Theognostus is the
only one of the bishops who holds aloof from his brethren, and he
is acting from mere personal spleen ; a few days ago, Ithacius was
formally, in synod, pronounced guiltless : what ground can you allege
for declinmg to commuMcate with him ? " MartM was unmoved ;
Maximus angrily turned away, and presently ordered the execution
of those prisoners for whom the bishop had come to plead. Eager
to save their lives, MartM rushed to the palace, and promised to

470 The Age of the Fathers. [Chap.
communicate with the bishops if the bloody order were cancelled,
and if the MqMsitors were recalled from their southward journey.
MaxMius mstantly and gladly assented; and on the next day,
when Felix was to be consecrated, the bishop of Tours communi
cated with the other prelates, but refused to " coMirm that com
muMon by Ms signature." One does not see any logical ground
for tMs refusal. Probably he already regretted what he had done,
and tried to " draw a line " by refusing to sign any paper. He
then hastily quitted Treves, with sore compunction for havMg,
" even for an hour," entered into fellowship with the " Ithacians ; "
and while travelling through a vast and lonely wood, he sat down
to thMk over the trouble, wMle Ms mMd " by turns was accusmg
and defending him," and he imagMed — probably M a dream — that
an angel reassured him as to the amount of blame due to Ms con
cession. " Thou dost well to be grieved, but thou couldst not have
got away on other terms : recover thy firmness, lest thou risk thy
salvation." His biographer quotes MartM as sayMg that he felt,
thenceforward, " some loss of wonder-workMg power ; " and that,
avoiding all further communion with the Ithacians, he never again
durMg the sixteen remaMing years of his life attended a meetMg of
bishops. Like Gregory Nazianzen, he had had painful experience
of the spirit which sometimes reigned in such an assembly. What
ever may be thought of this latter extreme of caution, Ms noble
protest against persecution — a protest in wMch, as we shall see, he
was imitated by St. Ambrose — is on the whole a true representation
of the patristic mind of the fourth century.
We must now return to the year 384, which was marked by
the second, and far the most interesting and significant, of the
four attempts made by the pagan senators of Rome to recover the
altar of Victory which had been recently removed from their place
of meeting, the Curia Julia, which stood on the north side of the
Via Sacra, looking across the Comitium into the Forum. In it
Augustus had placed an altar with a small image of the goddess of
Victory represented as a winged maiden — " pennigeram puellam,"
says Prudentius — with smooth hair and bare feet, bedecked with rare
jewels, and holdmg out a laurel wreath. " For centuries," as a great
Roman antiquary expresses it, tMs statue " had been considered as
the personification of the power and destMies of imperial Rome."
It had been brought from Tarentum, and had kept its place in the
senate-house until Constantius, or more probably Constans, was
moved by CMistian zeal to take it away. Naturally Julian had

xxill.] The West in the Last Years of Damasus. 471
restored it, and it had not been disturbed by the masterful but
tolerant Valentinian I. Senators, on entering their hall, used to
greet it with an offerMg of incense ; and the pagan majority in the
Curia, led by Aurelius Symmachus, Virius Flavianus, afterwards
" the soul of a brief pagan restoration," and Vettius Praetextatus,
whom Professor Dill calls " probably the best and most devout
pagan of the age," would find M its presence a compensation for
the annoyance caused by the inroad of CMistian faith into the
highest ranks of Roman society. The foreign "superstition"
might have its stately churches, reared over the grave of its cruci
fied apostle, or connected with the old home of the LateraM ; its
Mgh priest might be a personage, bearing Mmself well-nigh like a
prince, and enriched by the offerings of wealthy ladies ; patricians
of ancient name, Anicii, Acilii, Cornelii, might have apostatized
from " the Father Best and Greatest " to the worship of a crucified
Jew ; but the principal scenes of that ignoble cult were at least
far removed from the centre of Rome's corporate life, beyond the
Tiber or near a south-eastern gate ; and the traditions which had
made Rome were still represented not only by more than four
hundred temples, and by innumerable images in baths and por
ticoes and streets, but here M the home of the Conscript Fathers.
But Gratian, who declined to be inaugurated as Pontifex Maximus,
had also deprived them of tMs satisfaction ; altar and image had
been banished at his command, and their vacant place was a
grievance which he had refused to abate in 382 ; the deputation
sent to him had been counter-worked by Ambrose, and had not
even obtaMed an audience. However, Gratian was gone, and a boy
of fourteen reigned in Ms stead. The court of Milan, conscious
of the difficulties wMch beset it, might now be more amenable to
pressure — might tMnk it a part of political common sense to con
ciliate the pagan aristocracy of Rome ; and the man for the occa
sion was easily found in Symmachus as prefect of the city. He
was M many respects a noble specimen of the pagan gentleman
and official, a scholarly man, an accomplished orator, modest M
bearing, public-spirited, and, with some drawbacks, amiable in
disposition ; his ideal was in the majestic past of Rome, and he
clung to all that belonged to it. He had indeed failed on the
former occasion ; but now, in Ms capacity as chief magistrate, he
was officially bound to report to the Emperor on the state of public
affairs M Rome, and he turned this duty to account M the Mterest
of a cause to wMch, as Gibbon puts it, he was devoted with " the

472 The Age of the Fathers. [Chap.
warmest zeal." It was not a zeal that would waste time M
passionate declamation ; it spoke in the tones of a digMfied con
servatism. " We request to have again that state of religious rites
wMch was so long serviceable to the republic." It appealed to
the Imperial obligations as not allowing ancestral usage to. be vio
lated : but ere long all appearance of peremptoriness is eschewed ;
" at least " let the connivance of recent emperors be a precedent ;
" at least " let the name, if not the deity, of Victory be kept in
honour ; " at least " let the senate-house have its ornaments un
impaired. The mam topic of the plea is the argument from
custom : Rome herself is introduced as asking leave to retain the
rites amid which she has grown old. She is too old to change her
mind ; if she is to enjoy liberty, let her live in her own way. A
connexion of cause and effect is assumed to exist between the
ancient worship and the old-world repMses of the Gauls and of
Hannibal. A remarkable argument followed, Mdicating a deep
background of scepticism : various ceremoMes have been assigned
by " the deity " to various nations (here, like Ammianus, Sym
machus adopts monotheistic phraseology) ; if reason is in the dark,
the best thing to do is to adhere to traditionary observance. The
" great secret of the universe " has to be reached, if at all, by
various paths ; Rome's path is not, he grants, the only one, but it
is hers, — let that, in her case, be sufficient. Symmachus pro
ceeded to plead for the restoration of the confiscated income of the
Vestal Virgins: the treasury could not be really a gaMer by
annullMg bequests, and seizing on the legal property of Mdividuals ;
and to this argument from right was added the popular assump
tion wMch Symmachus probably i employed without personally
assimilating it — that a recent famine had its cause m a spoliation
wMch was in fact sacrilegious. Further, the argument from a
Christian prince's personal conscience was met by representing
that he could have no responsibility in the matter, for it was not
open to him to Mvade rights guaranteed by law — an important
limitation of autocracy. His best course would be to cancel the
act done in the misused name of Ms late half-brother. So spoke
the accomplished representative of that aristocratic paganism of
" the City," which Finlay reckons as a maM cause of the break-up
of the empire in the West. In truth, the pagan majority m the
senate was the very concentration of that old Roman spirit, with
its local gods and its Caesar-worship, wMch encountered so power
ful a solvent in CMistianity.

xxill.] The West in the Last Years of Damasus. 473
Ambrose, on hearing of the prefectorial official report, could
not wait until he obtaMed a sight of it ; he must needs write at
once to the young Emperor ValentMian by way of suggestMg the
topics of a reply. TMs seems to us rather hasty work, but we
must remember his old instincts as a barrister, together with his
passionate alarm at the very notion of a concession to " idolatry."
How, he asks, can a CMistian Emperor replace a pagan altar,
wMch had been removed by his elder brother's deliberate man
date ? Would not such an act on his part be anti-Christian ? No
pagan, however illustrious, however deserving of respect, has a
right to direct his conduct ; let the pagans be content with their
legal liberties — no one compels them to join in Christian worsMp.
(He avoids the question of " toleration all round.") They would
respect straightforwardness of policy M a CMistian government —
woMd admit that " every one ought to maintain and stand by Ms
own convictions" (a far-reachMg proposition this). Then Am
brose, by an assumption which we cannot suppose Mm to have
verified, affirmed that Christians already formed a majority M the
senate, and that their feelings ought to be considered ; only two
years before, many CMistian senators had invoked Ms aid agaMst
the concession then asked for ! But just here he is conscious that
it might be asked, " Why then did not these CMistian senators
vote agaMst the petition M its favour ? " and gives a singularly
feeble answer : " Their absence spoke their mMds." If the
Emperor hesitates — perhaps under the influence of weak-kneed
Christian advisers — let him consult Theodosius, as he does in all
affairs of moment ; if, unhappily, he were to yield, Ambrose, as
bishop, would be bound to refuse his offerings in church, and to
say, " CMist's altar spurns the gift of one who has made an altar
to images " (another specimen of unfair rhetoric). The letter
concludes with a reference to the just claim of Gratian's memory,
and with the suggestion that their father's inaction in regard to
the altar was sufficiently mtelligible ; no one had ever complaMed
to Mm on the subject, and perhaps he had never even heard of
the altar's existence.
HavMg thus written, Ambrose asked for and obtaMed a copy of
the " report " of Symmachus. He then wrote what he describes as
a " second libellus " to the Emperor, begMMng with an assurance
of confidence m Valentinian's piety, and an exhortation not to be
misled by the brilliant oratory of the pagan pleader, " gold outside,
brass or iron withM — just like pagan religion." As to the argument

474 The Age of the Fathers. [Chap.
from Rome's past experience and present wishes : how about her
misfortunes ? were her gods to be blamed for them, as they
were, it was urged, to be thanked for her successes ? A naturalistic
line is taken, which can oMy be pronounced Mcautious, as giving
some advantage to secularism : Rome owed her greatness not to
her religion or its rites, but to her own intrinsic courage and energy.
The argument from her age might be retorted : why might she not,
in maturity of thought, go with the times and be converted ? As
for the "great secret," it was no secret at all to Christians; it had
been cleared up for them by Him whom pagans mocked at as a
" God who had been crucified," wMle they themselves were deifymg
blocks of wood ! As for Vestals, what a contrast between those
poor seven amid all their splendid privileges, and the vast con
cilium virginitatis which had been formed by Christian faith !
As for the withdrawal of public maintenance from the ministers of
pagaMsm, no one complaMed of laws disqualifyMg the clergy from
mheriting by wills ; they were under special restrictions as members
of a local municipal body, for if they wanted to avoid the heavy
burden of "curial" duties, they must first resign their own
patrimony. CoMd paganism show such charities maMtained by
the lands of temples as by the Church that spent her property on
the poor ? Then returMng to the purely conservative argument,
Ambrose again employs a weapon which might afterwards with
some plausibility have been turned against the Church — the argu
ment from advance, progress, improvement in course of time. One
might almost imagMe that he was an evolutiomst : the world
gradually grew into shape; growth and development are a law
of nature, illustrated by the daily expansion of sunlight, the due
interval between seedtime and harvest, and the experience of every
adMt who has laid aside mutati in annos ingenii rudimenta. The
age wMch has appreciated the faith of CMist is that wMch truly
deserves to be called venerable : paganism represents the world's
cMldhood ; it is now, by intelligent preference of Christian truth to
pagan error, that the human mMd is becoming adult. One sees
here the Christian advocate as a " progressive," the pagan as an
"obstructive." Ambrose goes on to repeat what he had before
said about the consideration due to CMistian members of the
Senate ; and then once more borrows an argument from rationalism
by treating the early death of Gratian as merely an instance of the
vicissitudes of fortune, a turn of " the wheel " of human affairs.
He did not consider that this might be construed into a denial of

xxiii.] The West in the Last Years of Damasus. 475
belief in a moral Providence ; and indeed the negative or destructive
form thus given ;o Ms anti-pagan polemic may help us to under
stand why religious pagans were apt to associate Christianity with
irreligion. " Both my papers," said Ambrose some years later, "were
read in the Emperor's consistory," or privy council (the functions
of wMch were properly judicial), " M presence of the Count Bauto,
and of another high military officer, who had been a pagan from
Ms cMldhood. ValentiMan listened to my advice, and took no
other step than the principles of our faith required." The opMion
that the Emperor on this occasion decided agaMst the counsel of all
present appears from another passage to be erroneous ; this, in fact,
occurred on a later occasion,! when for the fourth time the pagans
renewed their request. Oni the occasion now before us, the second
of the four, Ambrose gMde J the Emperor's mind, and the efforts of
Symmachus were unavailing.
TMs was doubtless a glreat relief to the aged pope Damasus.
He had had a long and troubled episcopate, and in 383, it seems,
had vaMly applied to Basraus, then prefect, for the aid of the civil
power agaMst Ephesius, who, as Marcellmus and Faustinus, the
Luciferians, express it, haMJbeen " ordained bishop for the uncon-
taminated people of Rome.!' But though Bassus would not interfere,
Ephesius appeal^, to havep voluntarily quitted Rome, in order to
visit Palestine and^gypti. The Roman Churchmen had sympa
thized in the vexatiojK off their prelate, to whom they were M-
debted for much that hadi increased their Church's outward majesty,
and M particular for the 1 foundation of a church of St. Laurence
withm the city, afterwards called by Ms own name, and retaMMg
at the time of Pope Hadrian I. the paintings which he had given
to it ; also, probably, for not a little of that splendour of gold and
marble for which, the Luciferian memorialists tell us, the Roman
basilicas were already remarkable; but most especially for Ms
labours in regard to tlie catacombs, in the recesses of which he
had searched for the graves of the martyrs, removed the earth,
widened the galleries, constructed flights of stairs to the more illus
trious shrMes, adorned the chambers with marble, admitted more
air and light, supported the friable walls in some places with
arches, and composed metrical inscriptions wMch were engraved
on marble slabs by a sculptor named Dionysius Filocalus, in a
peculiar character kno-v m as Damasine. There is a fine specimen
in the " papal crypt " elf the catacomb of St. Callistus M which,
after describing a turba ; piorum there buried, Damasus " confessed "

476 The Age of the Fathers. ' rCHAP,

that he would fain have marked out among th/ srave for
Mmself, but " feared to disturb their holy ash(' „ m, greater
accessibility of the cemeteries, owing to these wc^' of Ms led gome
of the Roman Churchpeople to use them again ag placeg ^ burkl
but this was not with the Pope's approval. . Damagug vag not onl
an encourager of Christian art in respect jg ^ catacombs> but alg0
wrote several poems, though of no great ^ Qn other ^.^ Qne
being a curious list of the titles of (^ another ai invocat
hymn on St. Andrew, another on virgin another & pfayer to Qur
Lord m which He was besought tc > "c|erish the Augustus . » and

having collected the waters of the Vatic j^ wMch had da d
« the graves of the Saints, he turned^ ^ fonts> and wrQte
two inscriptions over them, one of wMy contained the verge_
" Una Petri sedes, unum vermsl , .
taue lavacrum.
The old prelate had we should infer, a L gtirri ^^ ag weU
as a firm will. After Jeromes second riyal ftt Eom6; he wag
employed by Damasus as his secretary ; A d ^ p congulted him
on Scripture difficulties In one letter Ij^ Jeromethat he had
read commentaries, Greek and Latin, on & G h> ^ ^^ nQt
satisfy himself as to the sense of the watf„ Hoganni/>' In another
he expresses the eager interest with whic.^ he ^^ Jerome,g letterg
criticizes the wearisome verbosity of 'lactaD/tiug . gtg that
their correspondence shall turn on passag^ of ^ ^ agkg
what is meant by the sevenfold vengeanc.j tQ be taken for Qain ?
If God created all things good, why <Ml ^ h ^
and unclean beasts ? How to reconcile a ^ &
as to the fourth or fifth generation at fi Exodug ? How wag
Abraham's circumcision a sign of his faith m wag h, Tgaac
deceived by -Jacob? How do you understl d ^ Me of ^
prodigal and Ms brother ? To all which q Lieg Jerome retumed
elaborate answers.
It was also under the auspices of Dai agug ^ he b ftt
this time the great series of his works oiLhe ^ of Soiiptnie_
Damasus set him a heavy task-" to sit I ^^ between the
various Latin versions of the New Testame^ and decMe wMch rf
them agree with the Greek original." He L„„„„,„ +!,„<. ,v v„ j; j
, . , ° , . . , , „ ? foresaw that if he did
this, he should be accused of nreverence, irh of sacriiegious
falsification; but even hostile censors wouldC^ that theorigMal
must be supreme over varying translations r^ emenig,tionSi
or carelessness of copyists. He accordmgly1^^^ ^ exigti

xxi 1 1.] The West in the Last Years of Damasus. 477
Latin version of the Gospels, altering only what seemed to spoil
the sense of the Greek, and added to them the ten " canons " or
tables of Eusebius wMch would show what passages belonged
properly to tMs or that Gospel. He also revised the Latin Psalter,
correcting it for the most part, although " cursorily," by the
SeptuagMt, and so producing what is called the Roman Psalter, still
used in St. Peter's. And he compared Aquila's version of the Old
Testament with Hebrew MSS., in order to see, as he expressed it,
whether " the synagogue, in its enmity agaMst Christ," had misre
presented the original. At the Pope's request he translated two
homilies of Origen on the Song of Solomon ; and at this time he
spoke of Origen with a respect which was afterwards used agamst
"Ms own consistency." He wrote also a tract against Helvidius, a
rustic and illiterate author who had denied the perpetual virgimty
of the Lord's Mother.
The general opinion of Roman Churchpeople was at this time
distinctly favourable to Jerome ; he was spoken of as holy, humble,
learned, and was generally considered the fittest person for the
bishopric when it should next be vacated. He had much happy
intercourse with congeMal souls, some of whom appear in his cor
respondence, and the most remarkable of Ms friendships were with
devout ladies whom his absolutism of tone would not affront.
Among these were Lea, who became " the head of a monastery and
a mother of virgMs," and died M 384 ; Marcella, who had talked
to Athanasius, whose noble birth was no hindrance, after the close of
a six months' married life, to the most thorough-going devotedness,
who amid her asceticism continued to be " sweeter than all sweet
ness," and who made her family mansion on the Aventine the
home of a female circle absorbed in religious interests, wMle she
manifested an " incredible ardour " for Scriptural knowledge, and
repeatedly consulted Jerome on such points as the meaning of the
DivMe names, the Hebrew letters distributed throughout Ps. cxix.,
or a hard phrase M Ps. cxxvi. ; Asella, who at fifty retained vigorous
health after a long course of strict asceticism, who worked with
her hands, and seldom appeared in public ; and the famous Paula,.
a widow of four years' standing whom Marcella had fired with an
enthusiasm of ascetic self-dedication, in the glow of which she put
aside the silk dress, the gold head-gear, the pearls and jewels, with
wMch Roman ladies bedizened themselves, distributed her wealth
among her children, spent all her time in devotion, and wept for her
sins until her eyes were dim. The sudden rush from luxurious

478 The Age of the Fathers. [Chap.
self-indulgence to extremities of self-renunciation is observable in
her daughters as in herself. Blaesilla had been married, and, like
other rich ladies, spent hours at her toilet, and thought a feather
bed hardly soft enough for her repose ; like Marcella, she lost her
husband very soon after her marriage, and a long illness was
followed by a determination to lead an ascetic life. Jerome, by
way of consobug Paula, represented this change as a " sort of second
baptism " whereby Blaesilla had become the " daughter of CMist ; "
anythMg like moderation of judgment in such a case was for him
out of the question, and he exults in her adoption of a plain brown
garb, and her perseverance M prayer until failing knees and eyes
demanded sleep : the results were only too soon manifest. Her
younger sister EustocMum was the first nobly born Roman girl to
devote herself to religious celibacy, and ignored all the remon
strances of her pagan aunt Praetextata; and Jerome warns her
against ostentation in devout habits, — " When you fast, keep your
face cheerful," — and mercilessly exposes the shams of affected piety.
For some time he was happy enough as a student and a religious
director ; Ms letters exhibit a daily routine of work, devotion, and
pious friendsMp. We see him beginning to dictate a reply to a
letter from Damasus, when a Jew comes in laden with manuscripts
borrowed from the synagogue : " Here is what you asked for." He
had already, durMg Ms sojourn in Syria, begun the study of Hebrew,
and he now plunges eagerly into comparison of the Hebrew text of
the Old Testament with the several Greek versions : he reads a
commentary on " the Song " by Rheticius of Autun, and does not
tMnk much of it. Friends call at his " hospitiolum ; " he cannot
refuse to see them, and so he has to shorten a letter : once at 10 p.m.,
after a hard day's work, a pain in the chest makes him pray for
a little sleep. Or we find Mm in his lighter manner playfully
returning the Pope's jests about his "laziness," offering to translate
a work by Didymus of Alexandria on the Holy Spirit, telling
Marcella that he knows she would like to stop his mouth when he
grumbles at unreasonable critics, or thankMg EustocMum for a
present of pigeons and a basketful of cherries, wMch she has sent
to mend Ms fare on St. Peter's Day. A quiet, laborious, enjoyable
life, but destined to speedy and final interruption.
Damasus died, aged nearly eighty, on December 11, 384;
and was speedily succeeded by Siricius, one of the priests of the
city, elected, as an imperial letter asserts, by general acclamation —
one of the first actions of whose pontificate was to reply to a letter

xxiii.] The West in the Last Years of Damasus. 479
in which the bishop of Tarragona, Himerius by name, had con
sulted Damasus on certain poMts of disciplMe. Siricius, in true
papal fasMon, takes advantage of this reference to "the apostolic
rock " to give not advice but authoritative orders, and directs con
verts from Arianism, like other converts from heresy, to be
received without re-baptism ; fixes Eastertide as the one ordinary
time for baptism; excludes relapsed apostates from communion
until their last hour; prescribes a gradual and orderly pro
motion to the priesthood and episcopate; and — which is the
most important ruLMg in his letter — declares that Christian
priests and deacons, if married, are bound (for the sake of
their daily ministrations) to live with their wives as though they
had none. The austerity of this rule, wMch was just what the
venerable Paphnutius had prevented the Nicene Council from
enacting, and which never commended itself to the Eastern
Church, marks a poMt m the history of clerical celibacy ; just as
this earliest of the genuMe " Decretals," itself professedly a deter-
mMation of points proposed by the Spanish prelate (who is care
fully informed that Rome is the head of his church), exMbits an
important development in the theory of the powers and duties of
the Roman see.
The accession of a new occupant of that see made a great
change m the position of his predecessor's secretary and adviser.
Jerome's popularity had begun to wane ; people were tired of
hearMg Mm praised, and offended by Ms brusque uncourtly speech.
He had not concealed his disgust at the luxury and arrogance of
fine ladies professedly CMistian, but rouged and overdressed — one
of whom he had seen giving a blow to a poor old woman who
approached her at St. Peter's M hopes of an aMis. He could not
but be Mdignant at the laxity and inconsistency of some of the
Church virgins, and could as little refrain from contrasting such
" widows Mdeed " as Paula and Marcella with others who made
their independence an occasion of extravagant self-indulgence ; he
had advised EustocMum to shun their degradMg society, and be
deaf to the counsel, " My kitten, live your own Life ! " Nor had
he spared the " worldly-mMded clergymen " whom he saw repeating
the mean and vulgar flattery of rich matrons which had made
ValentMian I.'s restrictive law inevitable — spendMg the day in
calls at grand houses, admiring a cushion or a handkerchief by way
of obtaMMg it as a present, walking abroad with hair aesthetically
arranged and rMgs glittering on their fingers, and hardly venturing

480 The Age of the Fathers. [Chap.
to put their delicate feet on a wet spot of ground. Still more-
unsparing was Ms criticism of self-seeking monks who wormed
their way into favour with the rich, and pretended to fast while
they repaid themselves by nightly revelry. Such men, and those
whose tone was corrupted by their example, were sure to feel " the
rough side " of Jerome's tongue, and to resent it. They took their
revenge M sneers at his outward man and calumnies against his
inward. " That look of his, that artificial smile, that measured
walk, are all got up for a purpose ; he has his own ends to serve :
that sanctified demeanour covers — who knows what vice ? " And
then, as the venomous talk flowed on, suggestion became affirmation:
" He is an impostor, a hypocrite ; he takes Ms pleasure on the sly
when he can do it without detection." Jerome Mmself tells us
that tMs was said by some who had known Mm for three years-,
and who still to his face kept up the forms of respect. But
an event ere long took place which gave the freest scope to vitu
peration. Blaesilla, exhausted by austerities wMch she had com
bined with Greek and Hebrew studies, died at twenty, after only a
few weeks' illness, exMbiting the fanaticism of a youthful ascetic
by asking her relatives around her bed to pray that Christ would
pardon her for not fulfilling her purpose of monastic self-devotion,
since time had not been allowed her. There could be no doubt of
the cause of this early death : asceticism m her case, as in so many
others, had passed from self-training into self-paining, and that
with an abruptness wMch took no account of physical condition.
At the funeral her mother was carried away fainting ; forthwith a
growl, or roar, of indignation amid the spectators : " Isn't this just
what we said ? she grieves now, too late, after her daughter has
killed herself with fasting. It's the doMg of that hateful set of
monks ! Drive them out of the city, stone them, fling them into
Tiber ! " Jerome, as the typical monk, became the mark for con
centrated public aversion ; he was the true author of all this misery
that had come on a noble Roman house ; he was tMs, he was that —
not merely a morose censor of his neighbours, and a gloomy tor
mentor of himself and his dupes, but — and the word would come
with a hiss of intensest hatred — a maleficus, a wizard, one of the
dreaded and detested class which had been hunted down under
ValentMian I. Some of the clergy, whom Jerome tersely labels as
a " senate of Pharisees," joined m the outcry, and had the baseness to
impute evil to Ms friendship with Paula, " whose song," as he says,
" was a psalm, whose talk was of the Gospel, whose life was a fast."

XXlll.] The West in the Last Years of Damasus. 481
Under this combination of enmities Rome became too hot to
hold him : he writes that he ought not to have expected to be
able to sing the Lord's song in so strange a land. In August
385 he abruptly parted from his Roman friends and left Italy
for the East, making a short stay at Jerusalem in the early part
of 386, remaMing for some four weeks at Alexandria in order to
confer with the famous blind scholar Didymus, and then settling
himself at Bethlehem, amid scenes long hallowed to every
Christian heart and visited by pilgrims from every part of CMis-
tendom — pilgrims whose tender devotion to the Son of Mary made
" His own village " a quiet sanctuary of prayer and peace, where
men sang " Alleluia " as they held the plough, and reapers and vine
dressers cheered their toil with psalmody, and foreigners from as far
as BritaM won esteem by their charity and unselfishness. Here,
then, the most learned and studious, yet the most sensitive and
polemical, mind of that age devoted itself to work and meditation,
to prayer and penitential exercises, M a cell lying (as we find from
his work on " Hebrew Places ") a little way off the public road,
not far from what was shown as the tomb of Archelaus. Thither
Paula, accompaMed by EustocMum, soon followed Mm, disre-
gardMg the grief of her little son Toxotius, who lived to marry
Laeta, the pious daughter of a learned and kindly old pagan aris
tocrat named Albinus, of whose conversion Jerome professed to
entertain some hope. Paula founded a " double monastery " for
men and for women, the prototype of several in England and
France, such as those at Whitby, BarMng, Brie, and Autun.
Jerome, delighting in Paula's society and sympathy, to which
he attempted unsuccessfully to add Marcella's, was the more
inspirited to carry on his theological studies, receiving further
instructions in Hebrew from a Jew named BaraMna — Rufinus
nicknames Mm Barabbas — who, for a high fee, was induced to
come to him by night.
Bethlehem belonged to the diocese of Jerusalem ; and Cyril, now
approachMg the close of his long episcopate, and rulmg his Church
with undisputed authority, was probably able by this time to
correct some of the moral and social disorders which five years
before had drawn from Gregory Nyssen a tract dissuasive of
pilgrimages to Palestine, and also to overcome a scMsmatic and
heterodox faction wMch had anticipated the Nestorian severance
between the Christ and the eternal Son. In the later days, then,
of the great Catechist bishop, there was peace M the Church of the
vol. 1. 2 1

482 The Age of the Fathers. [Chap.xxiii.
Holy Places ; and yet there could hardly be much cordiality
between the recluse of Bethlelem, the austere theologian ordained
by PaulMus, and the prelate of orthodox faith but Semi-Arian
antecedents, who regarded Flavian as the rightful bishop of
Antioch, and of whom Jerome M his CMonicle tells a story at once
scandalous and unsupported. However, Cyril had little time for
controversial feeling ; he was drawing near Ms end : and that end
came, as it seems, in the year 386 — the year after Jerome's arrival
in the East — and perhaps as early as March. He was succeeded
M the see of Jerusalem by John, who became remarkable, some
ten years later, for his controversy with Jerome on the interminable
question about Origen, and subsequently for his unfortunate
connexion with Pelagius.

CHAPTER XXIV.
ST. AMBROSE AND JUSTINA.
We must now turn our attention to some of the most vivid and
dramatic scenes M the Church history of the fourth century — to
events which are, perhaps, of central and signal Mterest, even in
the fruitful and majestic episcopate of St. Ambrose. JustMa, as
we have seen, had found it needful to stifle her dislike of the
Catholic archbishop, and to lean on his loyalty M the crisis which
followed the murder of Gratian. Nor had she interfered with the
influence which that high and princely spirit exercised over her
son's counsels in the dispute between pagan and Christian about
the altar of Victory. But she was only biding her time. She had,
of course, a circle of Arian courtiers and attendants, many of
them Goths, of whom Ambrose sarcastically observes that just as
"waggons" had been the homes of their nomad forefathers, so
now a " waggon " — the chariot of their imperial mistress — was
their church. Early in 385, she began to devise a scheme for
appropriating to their use, at the coming Easter, one of the
basilicas of Milan — those churches in which the Nicene faith
was now confessed by a community wMch was, Mdeed, the great
mass of the Milanese population. The scheme was matured,
and Ambrose was summoned to the palace; there, in presence
of the officials who formed the imperial " consistory," he was
ordered to make over to the Emperor, for the use of the Arian
Court, the Portian basilica, which stood outside of the city,
beyond the western wall, and is represented by St. Victor's,
west of the Porta Sant' Ambrogio. He refused with the " firmness
that became a bishop." Almost while he gave the answer, a violent
disturbance at the palace gates interrupted the interview. The
people had heard of his enforced visit to the palace ; they rose in
menacing strength, and a military count was sent out with light

484 The Age of the Fathers. [Chap.
troops to disperse them. They stood firm, protesting that they were
ready to die for the faith of CMist : the court dignitaries, in per
plexity, begged Ambrose, as a favour, to go out and assure them
" that no one would invade a basilica belonging to the church."
He complied, and Mduced them to return home ; and thus, for the
time, the attempt of the Empress was baffled, although Ambrose
was deemed answerable for the popular disturbance.
Ambrose must have known that the scheme would not be aban
doned ; and, in fact, on Friday in the fifth week of Lent, April 4,
after the excitement had somewhat abated, a new and more auda
cious demand was made. Some counts who had seats in the con
sistory required the archbishop, in the Emperor's name, to give up,
not the Portian, but a large new basilica within the city, cruciform
in shape, recently dedicated to the Apostles, and sometMies called
" the Roman," because near the Roman Gate. He refused as before,
saying as of course, that " God's temple could not be surrendered
by a bishop ; " and on Saturday, at the service (which at Milan,
as in the East, was of a festal character), he announced this new
demand and his refusal: the people, by acclamations, applauded
the line which he had taken ; the praetorian prefect Mmself appeared
at the church, and dropping the imperious tone which had proved
so fruitless, fell back, on behalf of the Empress, on a request that
they would at least not insist on withholding the Portian basilica,
which, not being intramural, might be asked for with less offence.
The people would not hear of it. " Then," said the prefect, " I
must inform the Emperor." The next day was Palm Sunday :
the archbishop officiated, apparently, in the " new " or " greater "
church ; the lessons were read, the sermon preached, the ordinary
catechumens dismissed ; and some who were at the very end of
their catechumenate, being " competents," or candidates for baptism
on the following Holy Saturday, went as usual mto the baptistery,
where Ambrose began the ceremony called the " Delivery of the
Creed," always performed on that day in the Church of Milan, as
in Spain and Gaul. He recited the Creed, and explained it in
detail, with a view to then learning it by heart and repeating it
intelligently before their baptism. While he was thus engaged,
the startlMg news came that officers called " decani," a kind of
lictors, were actually in the Portian basilica setting up those hang
ings or curtains which, as being adjuncts of the imperial state,
indicated that a place or buildMg was imperial property. " Some
of the people are on their way thither," added the messenger:

xxiv.] St. Ambrose and Justina. 485
" there will be a disturbance." " But," writes Ambrose with a
grand simplicity, " I continued at my duty, and began to perform
Mass," — the solemn liturgy of the faithful, called missa because it
succeeded the dismissal of the catechumens. That this is the sense
of the word here is shown by what follows : " While I was maMng
the oblation, I heard that the people had seized one Castulus, whom
the Arians called a presbyter : while passing along " (i.e. towards the
Portian basilica), " they had met him in the street. I began to weep
most bitterly, and in the very act of oblation to pray to God, that
He would give His help, so that no one's blood might be shed in
the Church's quarrel — or at least that mine might be poured out,
not oMy for the safety of the people, but also for the impious them
selves." He sent out some priests and deacons who were assisting
him at the Celebration, " and so rescued the man from ill-treatment."
So far as we can infer, notMng more was done on that Sunday as
to the occupation of the Portian church ; but on the next day, and
the day followMg, the Catholic body in Milan were severely
punished, as for a new " seditious " tumult in wMch a chaplaM, so
to speak, of the Empress had Mcurred serious peril. By orders
from the court, " the whole body of merchants " or tradespeople
were arrested, imprisoned, heavily fined : so that " the sacred days
of that last week, in which it was usual to release debtors," were
spent by these poor citizens M the utmost distress and discomfort ;
they were commanded to pay to the Emperor, in tMee days,
two hundred pounds' weight of gold, and bravely answered,
" That, or double of that, and welcome, so that we keep our faith ! "
Even the clerks in the Government offices, the messengers called
" agents M the Emperor's affairs " (who were really official spies),
the subordMates of magistrates, received orders to keep witMn doors,
" lest they should be mixed up with any tumult ; " the higher
officials, or men of civil dignity, were threatened with severe penal
ties M case they did not promote the surrender of the church.
It was apparently on Tuesday that the archbishop had another
interview with " counts and tribunes," who ordered him to make
over the Portian church without more delay. An argument followed.
Ambrose, apparently, repeated Ms ground of refusal : " The churches
cannot be alienated or surrendered." "Yes, they can — to the
Emperor ; he has absolute rights, and he is but claiming them :
everything belongs to Mm," — the unmitigated Caesarean principle
of the time. " Not so," said the great Christian champion of a
principle which was destined to put Caesarism to rebuke ; " he is

486 Ttie Age of the Fathers. [Chap.
not the master of everythMg ; let him ask me to give him what is
my own to give, be it money or land, and although he has no
right to claim it, I will not refuse it ; let him take all : but not
what belongs to God, such as churches, which are held by the
bishop in trust for Him." The officials lowered their tone : " Surely
the Emperor has a right to have one church in which he can con
scientiously worship." " No, for such a church would become
adulterous as not lawfully espoused to CMist " (a curious and not
very edifying transfer of the spiritual character to the material
fabric) : " if I am even sentenced to death, I will not fence myself
in with a crowd, nor clasp the altar as a refuge " — alluding, of
course, to the sanctuary-privilege which had become attached to
churches, and had hardly as yet become an abuse. He was sMcerely
afraid of causing a collision between the imperial troops and the
people : he would have done anything to avert such a calamity,
which woMd have been the ruin of Milan. " It is your duty," he
was told, " to keep the people qMet." His answer was prompt :
" It is my duty not to excite them ; to quiet them is in God's power,
not mine. If you tMnk I have stirred them up, let me be sent
into exile." The officials withdrew, and Ambrose spent the rest of
the day in what he calls the " old basilica," by which he probably
means a church within the walls, of older foundation than the
" Apostles' " or " Roman " church, and thence he went home for
the night, his dwelling being probably adjacent to the latter or
" new " church. On Wednesday morning, before daylight, as he
crossed the threshold to perform service in tMs church, he found it
beset with soldiers. He therefore went to the " old " church, where
the service included Psalm lxxix., Deus venerunt (the first words
of which were sung "with expression"), and the lessons were
being read when Ambrose learned that the new church also was
fuller of people than had been usual before these troubles, and that
the congregation wanted a reader for the accustomed Holy Week
lessons from Job. The very soldiers began to mingle with the
congregation in the old church, reassuring them with the words,
" We are come to pray, and not to fight ; " and it was reported
that they had already let the Emperor know that their sympathies
were with the Catholics and Ambrose. Thus relieved of immediate
alarm, the people showed considerable moderation for a sensitive
and deeply moved crowd of Italians. Apostrophizing the Emperor,
they exclaimed, " We do not mean to fight, 0 Augustus ; we are
not afraid of you, but we petition you." Then they turned to their

xxiv.] St. Ambrose and Justina. 487
bishop, and deliberately asked Mm to transfer the whole assembly
to the larger or " new " church, where Ms presence was earnestly
desired. His answer was mdirect, but it seemed to Mtimate that
if he were to go to the new church, the government might be pro
voked to take extreme measures, which would end in a tragical
conflict ; but by way of doMg sometMng to occupy the people, he
began to preach on what had been read from the book of Job, and
so glided naturally from the general subject of patience Mto a
narrative of recent trials. WMle he was speakMg, joyful news
arrived: "The imperial hangMgs in the new church are beMg
taken down and folded up; the mMtitude there assembled are
calling out for you!" He pursued Ms discourse in a strain of
thanksgiving, but still, as a matter of caution, declMed to visit the
new church ; however, he sent thither two priests, and was presently
informed that an imperial secretary wanted to see Mm. Ambrose
went aside with the visitor, who said bluntly in the Emperor's name,
" I want to know whether you are a usurper " (that is, " whether
you are plotting against my sovereign authority ") : " why have you
sent presbyters to the church ? " "I sent them," answered Ambrose,
" instead of going myself, and said I trusted that the Emperor him
self would now be on our side. We bishops are not supposed to
envy emperors, it is rather emperors who have wished to be bishops :
my sovereignty is in my weakness " (alludMg to 2 Cor. xii. 10) ; and
he added that Maximus well knew how he, Ambrose, had protected
ValentMian from Ms attack. He spent the day M the same church
and said the psalms with Ms " bretMen " in what he calls its
" smaller basilica " — perhaps its baptistery chapel.
Maundy Thursday came : the book of Jonah was read as usual :
Ambrose applied it to the existing situation ; and then came the end
of present difficulties. " The Emperor has ordered the soldiers to
withdraw from the basilica, and the fines exacted from the mer
chants to be repaid." The church rang with joyous applause and
fervid thanksgivings appropriate to the day on wMch Church
penances were solemnly " relaxed." The soldiers vied with each
other in assuring the people of the good news, M rushMg up to
the altar, and kissing it M token of peace. Ambrose knew too
well that this was likely to be but a lull M the storm. The
Emperor, he was told, spoke angrily of him as " a usurper and
worse ; " and when some counts begged their master to " come out
from Ms palace and visit the church, in compliance with the
soldiers' desire," the boy answered, " If Ambrose gave you the

488 The Age of the Fathers. [Chap.
order, you would give me over to him as a prisoner " — an outbreak
of temper which excited much alarm. " But," writes the bishop,
" he has those who are ready to stimulate his anger " — among
whom was Ms chamberlaM Calligonus, who had the Msolence to
send tMs message to Ambrose : " Do you despise Valentinian while
I am alive ? I will take off your head ! " " May God permit you,"
replied Ambrose, "to do what you threaten : I am ready to suffer
as a bishop ! "
The rest of the year passed away quietly enough. But in the
beginning of 386 we find JustMa and her son renewMg their
attempts agaMst Ambrose — or rather, perhaps, one should excuse
Valentinian from more blame than could be attached to a youth
for acqMescing in Ms mother's policy. She had now at hand a
confidant in the person of Mercurinus, an Arian, who was repre
sented as a bishop. He was, according to Ambrose, of ScytMan
extraction, and had thought fit at once to veil some scandals in
his past life, and to attract the regard of the few Arians in Northern
Italy, by assumMg the name of that astute and ready-witted pre
decessor of Ambrose whose abilities Athanasius had perhaps
underrated, since his advocacy of " Homoean " Arianism had been
successful enough to provoke Hilary to denounce him as an Anti
christ. The little Arian court-circle had now, therefore, an
Auxentius II. as their Ghosen prelate ; and he imitated his so-called
namesake by exalting the authority of the Council of Ariminum,
while exceechng Mm, as it seems, by rebaptizMg renegade Catholics.
It was he, we are assured, who devised a new edict, granting liberty
of worsMp to all who held the doctrines of that Council, and adding
a significant menace to those " who think that they alone have
had liberty of assemblMg granted to them : " such persons should
know that if they attempted to make any disturbance in contraven
tion of the present edict, they would be put to death, not only
as troublers of the Church's peace, but as traitors ; and a like
puMshment would await those who even ventured to petition
privately against the new law. It was the duty of the secretary
of state, Benevolus, to draw out laws resolved on by the Emperor.
But Benevolus, although only a catechumen, was ardently attached
to the Catholic faith. He refused to act on tMs occasion. Offers
of Mgh promotion were made in vain : " Rather," he cried, " take
away my present office ; " and, so saying, he flung the belt, which
is referred to in the Nicene canons as the badge of the imperial
service, at the feet of JustMa, and retired into privacy at Brescia,

xxiv.] St. Ambrose and Justina. 489
where, having received baptism, he adorned by a consistent piety the
faith for which he had sacrificed his worldly prospects. It would
appear that the hand which actually penned the edict, after Bene
volus had thus declMed the task, was that of its real author, bishop
" Auxentius." It was duly published on the 23rd of January, 386.
And now began a worse trouble than that of the precedMg
year : it was not now a question of appropriating a single church for
Arian services ; the prospect before the Western Church, wherever
the power of ValentMian was recognised, might be called by
excitable mMds the first scene of a new persecution. Ambrose
encouraged this excitement by exaggeratMg the actual effect of
the law, when he calls it " blood-stained," and says that it would
involve the expulsion of bishops and capital punishment of those
who resisted it, and the proscription of " curiales " or municipal
office-bearers who might fail to carry it out. In itself it did not
affect the position of " Nicene " Churchmen : but he viewed it in
its most threatenMg light, and saw in it all that it might lead to ;
on all sides he heard Churchmen expressMg their anguish and
alarm at the mere notion of a re-establishment of the authority of
" the Ariminian creed," and of a doom of death against all who
should " resist " or even " deprecate " the enforcement of the law.
Justina began her direct attack upon Ambrose by sending a
tribune named Dalmatius to summon Mm before the imperial
consistory, there to dispute or plead against Auxentius on the
great doctrinal issue between them. " You are to choose umpires,
as Auxentius has done : " — the persons named by Auxentius were,
Ambrose surmised, four or five unbelievers, but their names were
not mentioned by Dalmatius. He added that the pleadings would
be before Valentinian as chief arbiter ; and that, if Ambrose did
not choose to appear, he might leave Milan, and those who wished
might follow Mm. The archbishop consulted some bishops who
were at hand as to the answer which he should give ; and then
wrote Ms famous letter to Valentinian, in wMch he intimated with
dignity and decision that he could accept neither alternative. He
could not plead, in a cause of faith, before a secular tribunal ; he
referred to an express rescript of Valentinian I. (given after . the
dispute as to the Papal election, see p. 364) to the effect that in
cases where the faith, or ecclesiastics as such, were concerned,
" the judge ought to be one who is neither unequal in office nor
dissimilar in right " — in other words, that questions purely ecclesi
astical should be tried by bishops, not by the Emperor. "When,"

490 The Age of the Fathers. [Chap.
asks Ambrose, " did you ever hear, most gracious Emperor, that in
a cause of faith laymen judged about a bishop ? ... if a bishop is to
be taught by a layman, what will follow ? that the layman should
dispute upon theology, and the bishop listen." After this reductio ad
absurdum, he goes on to tell the lad of fifteen whom he is address
ing, that some day he will be older, and then he will know what
to think of a bishop who by accepting tMs claim could lay the
episcopal authority under the feet of laymen. Then came a home-
thrust : " Is your Grace to claim jurisdiction as to a doctrinal
controversy, when you, beMg still unbaptized, are a stranger to
the sacraments of faith ? " He challenged Auxentius to let Ms
"judges" or umpires come with Mm to church, and there let the
people of Milan decide between their own bishop and the pre
tender — thus attributing to the Church laity a certain responsibility
for the maMtenance of true doctrine — without insisting on the
unanimous opmion which long ago they expressed about Ambrose
Mmself, or on Valentinian I.'s promise that, if Ambrose would
accept the bishopric, he should occupy it undisturbed. He pro
ceeded very ingeniously to show that by ordering this dispute in
the Consistory, the Emperor had rescinded, in part, the recent law
which he was specially bound to uphold : for if it were to be
strictly construed, any layman who took the Catholic side, and
objected to the legalisation of Arian profession under the new law,
might be held to have forfeited his life ; and how could Ambrose
ask any one to incur that peril by acting as Ms umpire ? (The ex-
barrister and ex-magistrate must have felt some complacency in
giving this unexpected turn to the discussion.) Nor again could
he, in the opinion of his brother prelates, or consistently with his
own sense of duty, appear before judges who might possibly not
be Christians, nor discuss the faith save in a church and before a
synod. There he would willingly meet Auxentius — there, but not
elsewhere. Then as to the second alternative : his bretMen agreed
with Mm in thMking that he could not voluntarily abandon Ms
flock, and thus " betray the altar of Christ and surrender the heri
tage of the Lord." It had been in the power of the government
to arrest him; — as he afterwards said, there were daily oppor
tunities of domg so, while he went about his pastoral work or
traversed a road in the vicinity of the palace ; and if his exile were
desired, he should have been sent away by force, not bidden to take
himself off and so accept an intolerable responsibility. He con
cluded by saying that he would place Mmself, even now, at the

xxiv.] St. Ambrose and Justina. 491
Emperor's disposal, if only he could be assured that the Church of
Milan would not be given over to Arians. With an affectation of
inexperience, half concealing an ironical reproach, he declared that
he knew not how to behave in an imperial consistory — except for
the purpose of pleading before a Maximus on behalf of a ValentMian ;
and that he could hold no controversy within a palace, for he
neither understood nor wished to understand the mysteries of its
atmosphere. To this memorial, which showed that his hand had
not lost its former cunnMg, he appended his signature ; " I Ambrose,
Bishop, present this libellus to the most gracious Emperor and
Augustus, Valentinian."
It would seem that the court, on receivMg the memorial,
renewed its attempt to make him give up at least the Portian
church and its sacred vessels. He answered as before, that he
would make no difficulty about giving up anything that was per
sonally his own, but that the church was " the inheritance of Ms
fathers " (1 KMgs xxi. 3) and predecessors, or rather of Christ Him
self : of it he was not the owner, but the trustee ; and to betray such
a trust would be to incur guilt for himself, and to do the Emperor
no real service. Baffled on tMs point, the court — that is, Justina as
its leading spirit — recurred to a proposal wMch he had already dealt
with. "Let him go away, — whither he pleases, if he will only
leave Milan." It illustrates the woridng of Caesarism to learn that
he had expected a capital sentence ; but he answered as before, " I
cannot go by my own act ; " and he took steps for keepMg himself
safe from a forcible expulsion by removing into the precMcts of
the " new " church. Externally, it was forthwith guarded by
soldiers : but the people thronged its interior, kept watch there for
several Mghts and days, and did their best to secure its doors from
being forced, although, in spite of all such care, some folding doors
and a passage were ere long found to be open — a blind man, it
was said, had left them open, when he went home. The distress
and excitement of the people during these self-imposed vigils M
circumstances of hourly anxiety and alarm, appeared in the change
of mood which would be natural to men of impMsive Southern
temperament. " Let Auxentius take Mmself off with that law of
his ! " and again, " Will the bishop himself leave us ? " or, " There's a
carriage got ready to carry him off, and he will be seized before our
eyes ! " He knew that the one thing to do was to calm their
agitation, to give them a new subject of interest ; and he did much
more than he understood for Western Christendom when he taught

492 The Age of the Fathers. [Chap.
them to chant the psalms antiphonally, after the custom of Eastern
churches. To this he added some hymns of his own, composed,
perhaps, in part, for the occasion — among them that one which
for simplicity, serenity, and tenderness may match the evenMg
hymn of our own Bishop Ken, and which soothed Augustine's
dumb grief on the night after Ms mother's burial, Deus Creator
omnium. One can well imagine how, as the soft lights of the
March sunset gleamed and faded along the columns of the
great church, there rose up and resounded through its aisles the
pathetic thanksgiving for the gift of nightly repose, wMch might
" prepare the body for the morrow's labours, relieve the over
burdened mind, and relax the pressure of sorrowful anxiety,"
followed up, as it was, by a prayer for the protection of the Trinity
" as Almighty and as One : " how kMdling and Mvigorating at
daybreak would be the Splendor Faternse glorise, with its entreaty
that " the true Sun, the Light issuing from Light, woMd shed over
souls a perpetual radiance," and how exultantly, at the close of that
hymn, these fervent Trinitarians would proclaim the coinherence of
" the whole Son in the Father, and the whole Father in the Word."
And here it is impossible not to pause and think of the effect
of these stirring scenes on one who seems to have been present in
the church, although as yet only an inquirer who did not clearly
see his way. For it is at this poMt that a great name, a greater
even than that of Ambrose, comes before us ; it is now that
Augustine sets his foot on the stage of Church history. He was
a rhetoric professor, by governmental appoMtment, in the public
schools of Milan, and as such lectured to youths who had already
gone through the extensive curriculum then summarised as
" grammar." He was in his thirty-second year ; and if, with the
help of his inestimable autobiography, we look back from tMs
standing-ground to landmarks in his earlier life, we see Mm first
as a clever and sensitive boy, born in 354 to Patricius, a careless
father in the lower middle class, and Monnica, one of the pattern
mothers of history, goMg to a day school at Ms native Numidian
town of Thagaste, enjoyMg Virgil lessons, but disliking Greek — a
dislike wMch had important results on his after-career as a theo
logian. He is removed to a Mgher school at Madaura, in order to
carry on grammar studies more fully, and to begin rhetoric with
a view to practice at the bar. He returns home, a lad of sixteen,
technically a catechumen, but unbaptized, and falls M with idle and
miscMevous comrades who successfully dare Mm to join in robbing

xxiv.] St. Ambrose and Justina. 493
a neighbour's pear tree, although, as he frankly says, he could get
better fruit at home. Then, by the generous help of a rich fellow-
townsman named Romanianus, he is "sent up to the University "
of Carthage, and soon distinguishes himself among the students ;
he holds aloof from the wild doings of a " fast set," but intellectual
interests do not suffice Mm without sensual excitement ; he catches
the malaria of CarthagMian vice, and takes pleasure in defying
moral restraMts, as one who " hated a path free of snares." It is
the case of a nature that insists on buying its own experience:
with a deep restlessness that wanted something, he knew not what,
wMch could satisfy his cravings and bring order into his turbid
life, he tried this and that, — "foul wells" or purer waters, — the
emotionalism of the theatre, the attraction of lawless love, the
literary charm of "books of eloquence." Out of these last came
help of a kMd ; the downward course was checked in Ms nineteenth
year by the reading of Cicero's Hortcnsius, which made Mm long
after " wisdom ; " but when he took up the Scriptures on the chance
of finding it there, he was repelled by the homelmess of their style,
which affronted Ms academic taste. In his tMrst for knowledge,
and for a "rational" account of things divine, he is allured by the
sonorous promises of MaMcheism, and infects some of his fellows
with his own susceptibility to the pretensions of that fantastic
theory of the universe, decked out m CMistian phrases which
thinly veiled its antichristian character, but without which Ms
recollections of Ms mother's teaching would have made Mm put it
aside at once. He returns home after some four years, and there
teaches rhetoric. Monnica grieves over his alienation from
Christianity, and is soothed by a bishop's assurance that " the
son of such tears could never be lost." The death of a dear friend
makes Thagaste dreary, and he accepts a professorship at- Carthage
in 378. The internal incoherence still pursues him ; " the whole
of his nature," as Dr. Bigg puts it, is still " at war ; " yet he is
brilliantly successful as a teacher, writes on " the Fair and the
Fitting," begins to see difficulties (especially connected with
physical facts) in the MaMchean dogmatism, is told that when
Faustus, a leading Manichean, next pays a visit to Carthage,
he will clear up everything. Faustus comes, but Augustine
finds him superficial : and tMs discovery in 383 checks Ms
interest in MaMcheism ; he adopts a " waiting " attitude, and in
clines towards " Academic " suspense of opMion. Then comes the
offer of a professorsMp at Rome, which would obviously be an

494 The Age of the Fathers. [Chap.
advance in the career on which he had entered : he resolves to
accept it, conceals his purpose from MonMca, and sails for Rome ;
but he finds that the Roman students, although not so insolent and
unraly as some of those at Carthage, were otherwise unsatisfactory,
for they would not pay him his due fees. His internal state was that
of one who had gone through a long series of disUlusionments : if
MaMcheism as a whole had lost its hold over his mind, he clung
to parts of it which seemed to deaden the sense of responsibility,
and he still regarded the Christianity of the Church as superstitious
and anthropomorphic ; it is this which gives to his case such a
modern character. Weary of Rome, he accepts a professorship at
Milan : tMther Monnica follows Mm ; and there he lives with her
and his friends Alypius and Nebridius. He goes to church, hears
Ambrose preach, thMks his sermons graceful but quite uncon
vincing ; however, by degrees he comes to find that this and that
objection to Christian faith will not hold water. The upward move
ment has begun, but has much to check it : as he himself learned
to think, he was being led through strange ways, and with not a few
pauses, as by a Hand that could bide its own time. Passion and
ambition disturb his search after truth : if he sees, though dimly,
that the Catholic idea of God is not unworthy, if he takes the hint
that Old Testament difficulties may be modified by a so-called
spiritual Mterpretation, if he perceives that truth is not an irrational
principle, that Catholic ChristiaMty has a good deal to say for
itself, and that he has no time to lose if he means to form some
definite convictions, — still " the world is too much with him," the
prospect of a brilliant marriage dazzles him, the awful problem of
the origM of evil presses him down. As before, he is driven this
way and that, and finds no rest : again, as at Carthage, philosophy
comes to his aid ; he sees what is true in Platonism, and wherein
it falls short ; it cannot " meet the demands of Ms conscience." At
last, all the intellectual or speculative objections to Christianity
drop off one after another : but tMs does not of itself secure his
conversion ; although the idea of a divine presence, the awe of a
future judgment, are permanent in his thoughts, old habits and old
cravings persistently assert themselves. Such is his position in
that spring of 386 : he has begun to ask whether Ambrose's
teaching may not be as true as it is eloquent ; and with this
growing interest in it, as not, after all, suggesting a low idea of
the divine nature, and as likely, after all, to supply a clue to the
maze of life, he would stand amid the throng that listened to the

xxiv] St. Ambrose and Justina. 495
bishop on that Palm Sunday — the second of two memorable Palm
Sundays — and would surely learn something of that pastoral love
for the flock of which his own episcopate was to be so rich and so
complete an illustration.
The sermon of Ambrose is entitled " Against Auxentius." " I
see," he begins, " that you are unusually excited." In fact, they were
earnestly watching his every movement, as if in fear that he would
leave them. He explained the reasons which he had given to the
court for declining either to argue the doctrinal question in the
palace, or to accept permission, or even obey a subsequent order,
to depart. They need not fear, he says, that he would abandon
them. They knew him to be accustomed to show all due deference
to sovereigns, but not to give way to them ; he would remaM at
his post ; but if such a trial as his enforced separation from them
were imminent, not all their affectionate solicitude to keep him safe
within the basilica could avert what Christ would in that case have
willed. He, Jesus, was in their belief Almighty ; therefore what
ever He commanded would assuredly take place ; and by a quaint
application of the message given as to the ass's colt, he added that
the Lord might have need of him ; anyway, Christ's servant was
in Christ's own hands. Examples in sacred history would prove
the efficacy of angelic protection and of the Church's intercession ;
and then came the beautiful story of Domine, quo vadis ? of which
even such a historical critic as Bishop Lightfoot could ask in Ms
" Ordination Addresses," " Why should we not believe it true ? is it
not far beyond the reach of Mvention ? " Ambrose went on to urge
the duty of quiet trustfulness : if they heard that his safety was
menaced, let them not lose heart ; and here he adverted to passages
of Scripture wMch had been read— the 50th Psalm, the story of
Naboth, and the Triumphal Entry — as to which he was irresistibly
tempted to make the money-changers symbolic of the intrusive
Arian bishop who would fain " sell the simple minds of the faithful."
After noticing the imputation of " disrespect to the sovereign,"
and commenting (in a rather far-fetched way) on the passage in the
Gospels about tribute money, he observed that there was no ques
tion of denying to the State its lawful tribute from Church lands ;
he condescended to remark on the paltry attempts to make him
obnoxious on account of the money bestowed by the Church on
" Christ's own poor," and to represent him as havMg, just lately,
abused the people's sensibility by the " rehgious excitement " of
Ms Trinitarian hymns. One other momentous sentence, uttered

496 The Age of the Fathers. [Chap.
with all Ms energy, must have thrilled through that crowd m the
basilica with the significance wMch belongs to a terse formula
condensMg a great thought : " The Emperor is withm the Church,
not above the Church." It was, says De Broglie, "the concise
expression of a revolution accomplished : Church power had now
raised its head above the imperial majesty " — but only within the
religious area itself.
The immediate alarm passed by ; the bishop and Ms people were
able to return to their ordMary employments, and even to proceed in
the middle of June to the dedication of a newly fiMshed church,
the " Ambrosian." They asked him to let the service be exactly
like that which had been performed at the dedication of the
" Roman Church," otherwise called " the New Basilica." " It shall
be so," said Ambrose, " if I can find any relics of martyrs to place
in the church ; " a saying which unfortunately illustrates the growth
of a " cultus " destined to be fruitful M gross frauds, and Mghly
unfavourable to spiritual religion. Then, he says, he felt a presen
timent that some would be found in front of the chancel-screen
of a church dedicated to SS. Felix and Nabor, two Milanese
martyrs ; and, on digging there, two skeletons of unusualsize were
found with heads separated from the bodies, and " traces," as De
Broglie expresses it, " of a bloody execution." For two days crowds
visited the spot : the remaMs, carefully arranged, and covered with
linen, were carried on the second evening to the basilica of Fausta,
where vigils were kept all Mght, and some supposed demoniacs
received imposition of hands from Ambrose. Next day, the relics,
identified, on the authority of some old men's memories, with the
bodies of two martyrs traditionally known as Gervasius and Protasius,
were carried M procession to the Ambrosian church, the dedication
of which was thus signalised by their discovery. Ambrose assures
us that many sick persons who pressed near to touch the wrappings
of the dead martyrs felt immediate relief ; and especially that a
blind man, named Severus, who had been a butcher before he lost
Ms eyesight, recovered it after thus coming Mto contact with " the
sacred remains," — a statement amplified by Augustine's recollec
tion of those days into a somewhat fuller story, wMch substitutes
uncorrupt bodies for skeletons. A third witness to tMs Mcident is
a brief statement in the Life of Ambrose, written either in 412 or
413 by PaulMus ; he adds that at the time of his writing Severus
was still alive, " serving religiously in the Ambrosian chinch, as it
was called — the same to which the martyrs' bodies were transferred."

xxiv] St. Ambrose and Justina. 497
Ambrose, at the moment when the procession arrived at the
Ambrosian basilica, felt too much overpowered to preach; but
when the series of lessons began to be read, including Psalms
xix. and cxiii, and the account of Elisha at Dothan, thoughts
appropriate for a sermon at such a time came into his mind, and
were expressed in a fervid address, concluding with a proposal to
bury the remains below the altar, in the place wMch he had pre
viously intended for himself. The people wished to have this
burial, or " deposition," deferred until the next Sunday ; but
Ambrose persuaded them to let it be done on the following day.
That day, accordingly, saw the Ambrosian church again crowded :
but m the interval, as Ambrose frankly told the people, the
Arians had denied that the remains were those of martyrs, or that
any persons had been relieved of demoniacal possession, or that
Severus had really been blind before he touched the fringe of the
pall. In answer to this, Ambrose protested that he had heard those
on whom his hands had been laid, declaring that no one could be
saved who did not own the Trinity ; and that Severus could prove,
if need were, his previous blindness by the evidence of those on
whose help, in Ms dependent state, he had relied. Of course, the
case of the man born blind, who said, " Whereas I was blind, now
I see," was adduced as just in point. The Arians continued in
credulous ; and, if Paulinus can be trusted, a man who cried out
agaMst AriaMsm was seized by them and drowned in a fish-pond ;
but a vehement Arian declared that he had seen an angel whisper
ing in the ear of Ambrose wMle he preached, and was thereupon
converted to the faith thus guaranteed. It is much easier to suppose
that Ambrose was himself too easy of belief as to statements wMch
fell M with Ms own strong wishes, than to think that a "miracle" was
wrought in support of a growing superstition. But the circum
stances, altogether, were unfavourable to JustMa and Auxentius ; and
still more, perhaps, was the step taken by the Emperor Maximus,
who wrote in a style of grave admonition to his youthful brother-
monarch. " If," he said, " I were not honestly your friend, I might
serve my own interests out of the disturbance of Catholics which
is said to go on in the dominions of your Tranquillity. But I am
closely connected with your most serene youth by ties of friendship,
and I must warn you to consider, as in God's presence, -what it is
to treat Catholic churches with violence, to besiege bishops in their
basilicas, to decree fines and death-penalties, and overturn the
most holy Law " (i.e. the Catholic religion) " under the name of
vol. 1. 2 K

498 The Age of the Fathers. [Chap.
I know not whom." He proceeded to claim as on the side of
Catholicism " all Italy, Africa, Gaul, Aquitania, Spain, and vener
able Rome herself," pre-eminent for orthodoxy as for all besides.
Whatever might be the effect on the public mind in Milan of
the marvels alleged to have witnessed in behalf of that faith, and
of the prelate who " had defended it against heretics at the peril of
Ms life," he had ere long the satisfaction of learnmg that a work of
grace had been wrought on the African inquirer whose mental
struggles he had anxiously watched, and whom he had treated with
" true episcopal beMgMty," — a work, indeed, the vast fruitfuMess
of wMch could not be appreciated, could not be so much as guessed
at, by any one of that time. Augustine had found many of his
Scripture difficulties vanish under a recent study of the great
Apostolic convert: he had conferred with the venerable priest
Simplicianus, who had told him the apposite story, so beautiful
and inspiring, of the famous rhetoric-professor Victorinus, who in
advanced years, and after cherishing CMistian convictions in secret,
had openly given in his name for baptism, and recited the Creed
in full church, under the reign of the apostate Julian, sacrificing
thereby, in virtue of Julian's vexatious law, Ms professorship and
Ms brilliant position. Augustine's heart had " glowed " at the
recital : his speculative difficulties were now mainly at an end, but
" the two wills " were wrestlMg witMn Mm ; he could not make up
his mind to a life of Christian strictness, or enlist unreservedly
" under the banner" of the Crucified. But then, just at the need
ful moment, came a visit from Pontitianus, who held some Mgh
place in ValentMian's court : he was struck by finding St. Paul's
Epistles on Augustine's table, and, with a smiling glance at
Augustine, led the conversation to the life of St. Antony, and told
how two of Ms companions at Treves had found Athanasius's record
of that life in a cell or cottage of monks. While Pontitianus
spoke, Augustine felt himself, as he says, forced to look into Mm
self, and utterly ashamed at the consciousness of Ms own tMaldom
under the lower nature. Pontitianus departed, little thMking of
the effect which he had produced. Augustine and Ms friend
Alypius went into the garden of the house which they were
occupying ; for a time they sat together, Augustine absorbed in a
struggle for resolution to give Mmself thoroughly to God. The
violent convulsive emotion drew forth a storm of tears ; he rose
and quitted his wondering friend, and threw Mmself down under
a fig-tree, saying amid his sobs, " How long shall I say, ' To-

xxiv.] St. Ambrose and Justina. 499
morrow, and to-morrow ' ? Why not now at once ? " At once,
from the next house, sounded in a kMd of chant as from a cMld's
voice, " Take up and read ; " and Augustine, remembering how the
casual hearMg of a text from the Gospel had been the turMng-
poMt with Antony, returned to Alypius, took up the volume of St.
Paul wMch they had taken with them Mto the garden, and open
ing it at hazard, lighted on the text, " Not in rioting," etc. (Rom.
xiii. 13, 14), which, as we may well bear in mind, concludes our
Epistle for Advent Sunday. " No farther did I choose to read, nor
needed I." All darkness, all inward conflict, were at an end ; he
marked the passage in order to know it agaM, closed the volume,
and turned on Alypius a look of calm happiness. The two friends,
united M a common purpose, went into the house to tell Monnica,
who, mMdful of the words spoken to her by a bishop years before,
and already quoted, "exulted and triumphed, and praised God,
who could do more than men could ask or think."
It was withM three weeks of the Vintage-vacation of Milanese
scholars — towards the end of August, 386 — and Augustine (who
explained Ms resignation of his professorship by urging that he had
felt during the summer a weakness of lungs and a pain in the chest)
continued to lecture until the end of the term, to avoid all sem
blance of ostentation, and then retired. His friend Verecundus, a
citizen and grammar-teacher of Milan, but not as yet a Christian,
lent Mm his country-house at Cassisiacum, whither he repaired with
his mother, Ms son Adeodatus — a lad of remarkable promise, — Ms
brother Navigius, two of his cousins, Ms friend Alypius, and his
pupils Trygetius and Licentius, the latter being the son of Augus
tine's old patron Romanianus. He found this " green retreat " a
place of rest " from the fevers of the world," and afterwards ex
pressed Ms confidence that its kindly owner would be rewarded
with the " eternal freshness " of the paradise of God. He wrote to
Ambrose to Mform him of what had happened, and to ask his
counsel. Ambrose advised him to read Isaiah ; but he found great
difficulties in the first part of the prophecy, and laid it aside,
devoting most of his time to the composition of books " Against
the Academics," " On a Happy Life " (wMch recorded a con
versation held on Ms birthday, November 13, while he and Ms
friends were seated at midday in the baths), also on " Order," and
two books of "SoliloqMes." For they discussed all manner of
subjects, philosophical as well as religious, the scepticism of the
New Academy, the nature of happiness, the indications of a plan

500 The Age of the Fathers. [Chap.
in nature, and the anomalies which seemed to exclude it. We find
them walkMg out on a fine morning, until Monnica "pushes them
in to breakfast." The young poet Licentius (who in after-years was
but an unsteady CMistian) reads Virgil to the party before supper,
leaves Ms meal to compose verses, and sometimes, with Trygetius
(" a little man but a great eater "), incurs a gentle reproof for want
of seriousness. " If," says Augustine, " you like to call me your
master, pay me my fee by beMg good fellows."
The winter passed away pleasantly, and the group of friends
left Cassisiacum at the begMMng of the Lent of 387 ; then Augus
tine, Alypius, and Adeodatus gave in their names at Milan as
postulants for baptism. Augustine wrote or planned some other
tracts, all bearing upon the subjects of the professorship which
he had resigned ; and the baptism to which he had so earnestly
looked forward was administered by Ambrose on Easter-eve,
wMch fell that year as late as April 24. After all the rites had
been performed — the touching of the ears, the renunciations
pronounced with face westward, the adhesion to Christ promised
with face eastward, the benediction of the font, the lessons begM
Mng with the Creation and ending with the miracle of Bethesda,
the triple confession of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, followed
severally by an immersion, the unction on the head, the wasMng
of the feet, the white garments, the ConMmation, described as the
reception of the " seal " of the Spirit, the approach to the dMy-
arrayed altar, and the first Communion — the great convert was,
as he himself says, at once set free from " anxiety as to the sins of
his past life ; " it doubtless lay mapped out before Mm with its
enigmas explained by Ms new faith. He saw how he had been
led on, step after step, M the long and repeatedly interrupted
process whereby the coil of sin and moral weakness was unwound,
and the series of far-reaching, discriminating providences con
summated in the qmet Milanese garden by the final grace of a
victorious resolution. It was an experience truly unique, over
which, we may well believe, that vivid forceful mind ranged M
retrospect, and then rested in the assurance of forgiveness and the
hope of a sustaMing guidance to the end. After this memorable'
Easter, he and his friends spent some time in a common abode, and
then proceeded to Ostia in order to sail for Africa. But MonMca
was expectMg her own speedy departure, now that her one motive
for desiring to live longer was removed by her son's conversion.
Augustine relates how he and Ms mother talked alone one day,

xxiv.] St. Ambrose and Justina. 501
as they leaned out of a window that looked into the garden of the
house at Ostia, about the nature of eternal happiness, conceiving
of it as a communion with the " Very Self " of God, all transient
media of His revelations being superseded by an Mtimate spiritual
Presence. Five days after, or thereabouts, she was smitten with
fever, and died M her fifty-sixth year, and her son's thirty-third.
He, for some reason now unknown, returned from Ostia to Rome,
and did not arrive M Africa until the autumn of 388.
It was after his baptism that Ambrose, now again taken into
confidence by the court of Milan, consented to go on a second
embassy to Maximus, in order to ask for the body of the murdered
Gratian, and to obtain the settlement of a lasting peace. He was
not, as he says, at all easy as to the safety of the tMone of
Valentinian ; and he could not but long to give his brother an
honoured grave. After arriving at Treves, Ambrose went the next
day to the palace, entering doubtless the same room where MartM,
the year before, had promised, in Ms distress about the sentence
recorded agaMst his own clients, to communicate with the perse
cutors of Priscillian. The chamberlain, a Gaul, came to receive
him, and told him that he could only be heard in the Consistory.
Ambrose demurred, but at last consented. Maximus, on Ms en
trance, rose up, expecting the kiss of peace ; but Ambrose stood
stiffly among the " Consistorians," and made some remarks on the
unseemliness of not granting him a private audience. The Emperor
made a surly answer, and taxed Ambrose with having, on the
former occasion, cajoled him so as to prevent him from Mvading
Italy. Ambrose, after denying this charge at great length, asked
to have Gratian's corpse given up for burial. Maximus evaded
the request on political grounds : " the sight of Gratian's corpse
would renew the feeling of his troops in Ms favour." Emperor
and bishop parted for a time, Maximus promising to consider what
he could do. But the " Ithacian " bishops were still at Treves.
Ambrose felt with Martin as to their conduct, and would not, he says,
communicate with bishops who " communicated with Maximus,"
the slayer of Gratian, or " who persecuted to death some persons,
erring though they were from the faith " — a disapproval of such
proceedMgs wMch he again expresses, when he censures those
prelates who had accused men guilty of heMous crimes before the
public tribunals, or had pressed their case to the extremities of
capital punishment, or had approved such Mnd of accusations and
" bloody triumphs of bishops." The party could not, of course,

502 The Age of the Fathers. [Chap. xxiv.
refraM from avenging themselves on the archbishop of Milan for
thus condemning their deed. They procured from Maximus a
peremptory command that Ambrose should leave Treves without
delay. He obeyed willMgly, save that his tender heart was moved
by the sad condition of a poor old bishop named Hyginus, who for
some reason was beMg " led into exile, when he seemed all but at
Ms last gasp." When Ambrose went to ask the Counts of the
palace " not to let the old man be thrust out without a cloak and
a down-pillow," he was " thrust out Mmself." His unsuccessful
embassy was followed by another attempt, on ValentMian's part,
to conciliate Maximus, who beguiled the credMous envoy DomM-
nus, and after dismissing him made a rapid descent into Italy.
ValentMian and Justina fled, in September, 387, to seek pro
tection from Theodosius, who, though he took occasion to admonish
them as to the consequences of oppressMg the Catholic Church,
received them with all kindness M his dominions and fixed their
abode at ThessaloMca.

CHAPTER XXV.
ST. AMBROSE AND THEODOSIUS.
Theodosius had inherited the task of terminating that Gothic war
wMch had proved the destruction of Valens. He never, says
Gibbon, "revenged the battle of Hadrianople by any signal or
decisive victory ; " but by a gradual process, " the work of prudence
rather than of valour," yet eminently statesmanlike and vigorous,
he restored the confidence of the Roman troops, and " governed,
by dividMg," the forces of the barbarian foe. The Gothic king
Athanaric— who in 372 had flung St. Sabas into the waters of a
Wallachian stream for refusing to taste idol-meats — was Mduced
to treat with Theodosius, and died while visiting Constantinople in
January, 381 : his words of admiration at the splendour of the city
— " Doubtless the Emperor is a god upon earth " — might seem to
be translated into action when the whole Visigoth host " enlisted
under the standard of the empire." This happened in 382 : a
great body of Ostrogoths, invading the empire in 386, were com
pelled to ask for favourable terms ; and numbers of both tribes
were settled in TMace and Asia Minor, while GotMc soldiers were
maintained, as " allied troops," for the defence of the Eastern
throne. But these arrangements were costly, and fresh taxation
was the inevitable result. We know how bitter was the lot of
Roman provincials under this burden ; how oppressive the re
sponsibilities, in regard to the collection of public taxes, which
weighed on the unfortunate " curiales " who had to admMister the
affairs of their towns. The word " concussio," of wMch St. Luke
gives us a Greek rendering, had a terribly distinct meanMg for
those who might be scared by a taxgatherer Mto exorbitant pay
ments ; and even the legal demands were often beyond the power
of the inhabitants to meet, except with the consequence of ex
hausting the resources of a district, or even of reducMg its fair
fields to desolation.

504 The Age of the Fathers. [Chap.
Antioch, "the Queen of the Orient," with a population esti
mated about this period at two hundred thousand, was called upon
to make an extraordinary subsidy : the reqMsition — as LibaMus
puts it tersely, " there came the letters about gold " — was a signal
for sullen displeasure, wMch gave tokens of a fiercer mood to follow.
It was the 26th of February, 387. Men said to each other,
" Our life is not worth having : the city will be ruined." A
concourse of angry men gathered in the streets. Every moment
added to its menacing aspect ; the hall of justice was invaded, and
stones were flung at the pictures of the imperial family which were
placed above the tribunal. Their statues of bronze were next
attacked; the equestrian figure of the Emperor's ill-fated father,
the likeness of Ms deceased wife Flaccilla — a model of piety, tender
charity, and humility upon a tMone — and his own imperial image,
were struck at, tMown to the ground, or dragged about the
streets. It was, said LibaMus, " the act of a city gone mad ; " and
although he tried to tlrrow the whole blame on a few wild youths,
he afterwards spoke as if it had a more serious origM. The riot
was soon suppressed ; but what would be its penalty ? Couriers
were sent on the same day to inform the Emperor. The maxim
which was cited about the same time by Ambrose, " Whosoever
contemns the Emperor's statue is deemed to have injured the
Emperor Mmself," was too likely to be carried out in some act of
signal relentless vengeance by a monarch who, with all Ms virtues,
had, as Ambrose expresses it, a natural impetuosity wMch coMd
easily be kindled into a fiery wrath, and then was with difficulty
brought under.
Libanius's description of the manifold charms of Antioch
enables us to realise the distress of the inhabitants. The state
liness of the colonnades which lined the principal street, ex
tending for four miles between the " cities " of Seleucus I. and of
Antiochus Epiphanes (both distinct from the insular " new city "
of Seleucus II. and Antiochus the Great), the sparkling and
plashing of the fountains which were a special delight to the
inhabitants, the magnificence of such public buildings as the
basilica of Caesar, the towering triple-roofed mansions of the rich,
the appliances of luxury as well as of business wMch abounded
alike M the city itself and in the suburb named after Agrippa,
the gardens which spread beauty and fragrance along the banks of
the Orontes, — Christians would add, the glittering splendour of the
Golden Church, — these fair and familiar sights would but intensify

XXV] St. Ambrose and Theodosius. 505
by contrast the anxiety, soon deepening into terror, wMch took
possession of the volatile and wayward popMation. Many fled
from their homes ; others shut themselves up within doors ; free
and slave alike sat in gloomy seclusion, wondering how far the
imperial punishment would extend, and listenMg as if for a
thunder-clap, or tremblmg as at an earthquake. The questions of
each day were, " Who has been arrested ? " " Will Antioch itself
be burned, and its very site ploughed up ? " The magistrates had
begun to take some penal notice of the outrage, perhaps hoping
that by doing something they might prevent much. Would any
potent voice be raised to plead for mercy ? Bishop Flavian offered
to do his best. He may have gaMed the see by a breach of faith,
but he had greatly endeared himself to Ms flock : as Chrysostom,
whom he had ordained priest the year before, expressed it, he
seemed like Meletius risen from the dead. His generous hospita
lity to strangers exiled for then faith, his ripeness of mind and
moderation even in self-discipline, his pastoral love, Ms persuasive
preachmg, the pleasure and refreshment caused by the mere sight
of that " fatherly countenance " and that shining white hair, as he
ascended to his throne in the Cathedral and blessed the congrega
tion with the accustomed prayer for peace, — all this Chrysostom
pictures with a fervent and loyal affection which, M its estimate of
the bishop's character, took account of all his previous exertion
and endurance M the cause of religion, and of his resistance, m yet
earlier life, to the temptations of a noble and wealthy home. His
age was now far advanced ; but he did not hesitate (although he
had a sister apparently dyMg) to undertake a journey to Con
stantMople in order to plead for the clemency of Theodosius to the
city wMch he loved. He set out a few days after the sedition and
shortly before Lent ; on his way, he met Hellebichus and Caesarius,
sent to inquire into the facts, and armed with powers to chastise
the guilty. In his absence, CMysostom, now forty years old and
the leadMg presbyter of the city, delivered a series of discourses
" To the People of Antioch " — popularly known as " On the
Statues " — intended to console them M their distress and fear, and
also to reprove them for their prevalent vices : the fourth of these
sermons was preached on the first day of Lent. He denounced the
sin of " vain and rash " swearing, sometimes on the altar and by
the holy Gospels, about the most trivial matters (" that one will
beat another, that a slave shall be flogged, that the apprentice
shall not eat until his task is done "), and the habit of bitter abuse

506 The Age of the Fathers. [Chap.
and detraction wMch was traditional in a population notorious for
its jibMg sarcastic humour. Other faults were adverted to, and
all pams taken to turn this affliction to moral and religious advan
tage. The people crowded to church, deserting the forum ; there
was a great increase of devotion, and of watchfulness against
various forms of sin.
The two imperial commissioners arrived in the first week of
Lent. One held the rank of Master-General of the Army ; the
other was Master of the Offices, or chief magistrate of the palace.
They were both estimable men; but they were charged with a
hard task, a mission of great severity. When they entered the
forum, there were but two or three persons to be seen walking
across it, so great was the terror inspired by their arrival; the
lively stir of traffic, the mirth of weddMgs and private parties, the
lectures and studies in the public schools, were suspended by
the general calamity ; the " metropolis of Asia," which could be
traversed only in a long walk, seemed death-stricken. The first
step taken by the commissioners was to disfrancMse the city, and
to close the various public baths, with the hippodrome and the
theatre. Then came a rigorous inquiry, with closed and guarded
doors, as to the authors of the sedition ; and the unhappy mothers
or sisters of the accused, crouching on the pavement outside, were
tortured by hearing stern voices of menace, then the clash of the
scourge, and the cries of pain from sufferers whose evidence was
thus cruelly extorted and might be fatal to a brother or a son.
CMysostom, gazing at this misery, was led to thMk — in anticipation,
one may say, of a stanza of the Dies Irce — " If now no relative,
however innocent, can rescue the prisoner from a human tribunal,
who will stand by us when we are arraigned before the judgment-
seat of CMist ? " Evening came, and forth from the hall of
justice issued, in chains, men who had held Mgh office and ex
hibited public shows, now condemned at least to imprisonment,
while in some cases capital punishment was inflicted. But next
day, when rich and influential friends dared not speak for the
prisoners, when pagan philosophers who had bragged of their
contempt for worldly Mterests were MdMg in caves outside the
city, the monks of the hill-country flocked into Antioch, and
showed what could be done at such a crisis by generous and resolute
men. It is the one case of monastic Mterference in civil affairs
wMch can be recorded with simple approval. They forced their
way, by the sanctity of their class-character, into the commissioners'

xxv] St. Ambrose and Theodosius. 507
presence, and protested that they would not depart until either the
city were spared or they themselves sent with the prisoners to
Constantinople. " Our sovereign is a religious man ; we shall be
sure to propitiate him." One hermit named Macedonius, who had
no learning whatever, and did nothing but pray on a mountain-top,
is said by Theodoret to have met the two commissioners in the
city, and bidden them to dismount, addMg (after they had done
so, out of respect for his holy life) that they should go and tell
the Emperor that a lifeless image might be replaced, but God's
image in man, if destroyed, was past recovery. But tMs is probably
an amplified version of a remonstrance uttered witMn the court.
The commissioners promised that if the monks would let their
request be taken down, they themselves would return to the court
and intercede with the Emperor; this bargain was made and
carried out, Caesarius returning to Theodosius wMle Hellebichus
remained at Antioch.
Meantime Flavian had had Ms interview with the Emperor
at Constantinople ; had heard his complaint about the Antiochenes'
ungrateful insolence as extending even to "the dead who had
never done them any wrong ; " had reminded him of his own
noble wish that at Easter he could raise dead men to life ; had
finally prevailed by reminding him of the condition attached by
the Lord of all to His forgiveness, and exhorting Mm to secure
mercy by first showing it. Theodosius, it is said, himself alluded
to the prayer of Christ for His crucifiers, and then bade Flavian
hasten home with the assurance of pardon. Flavian sent onwards
messengers bearing the Emperor's grant, wMch reached Antioch
between April 16 and April 25, or Easter Day. Never had the
" Day of Splendour " been observed in the " CMistian " city with
more rapturous delight ; and Flavian had the special relief of
finding Ms sister alive, while Chrysostom characteristically con
cluded Ms " Homilies on the Statues " by narrating Flavian's
mission and its result, and by bidding his hearers thank God " not
only for delivering them from this trouble, but for allowmg it to
come to pass." TMs thought of divine mercy overruling all for
good went with " the Golden-mouthed " to the end of Ms life, and
was one secret of Ms power. It is curious to find LibaMus
assuring Theodosius that those who cannot pay tribute will
gratefully invoke Ares and Athena in his behalf, and that " prayer
from many lips is sure to avail."
After some hesitation, and, according to the unfriendly Zosimus,

508 The Age of the Fathers. [Chap.
with the prospect of obtaMMg the hand of Galla, the sister of
ValentMian, Theodosius resolved on attacking Maximus, whom he
defeated and pursued to Aquileia, where the " prostrate " usurper
was put to death, in July or August, 388. TMs event was
followed by a somewhat lengthy sojourn of Theodosius in the West.
He came to Milan immediately after Ms victory : and while stayMg
there he was persuaded by the importunate and peremptory re
monstrances of Ambrose — first in writing, then in personal con
ference — to revoke an order for the rebuilding, at the expense of
the bishop of Callinicus in Osrhoene, of a Jewish synagogue, burnt,
it was said, at his Mstigation, and for the punishment of certain
monks who had been provoked by an interruption of their procession
mto burnMg a rudely bMlt " ValentMian " village chapel. It
must be owned that Ambrose tMew into this business an amount
of passionate zeal which would have been better spent upon a
matter of spiritual life and death. He writes in a tone which
approaches, considering the subject, to fanaticism. Although an
ex-governor, he does not enter into the point of view of a magistrate
interested in the upholding of social order, and divMely authorised
as " a minister of God." He intimates that if the bishop of Calli
nicus were to refuse obedience, and suffer death for refusal, he
would be a martyr (which is certaMly a serious misappropriation
of that sacred name) ; and, on the other hand, that obedience to the
order would be equivalent to betrayal of faith. He justifies such
an action as the destruction, by individual zeal, of a place where
Christ was denied. He will assume for himself the full responsi
bility. He protests against the rebuilding of the synagogue under
any circumstances, or at any one's cost — in the case that, not the
bishop, but other Christians are frightened into rebMlding it.
Public order or " discipline " must yield to religious Mterests (it
being sMiply assumed that religious Mterests forbade the rebuilding).
He refers to other cases in which arson had not been punished ;
he assumes that the attempt of Julian to rebuild the Temple is a
parallel case ; and argues, with strange short-sightedness, from
the culpable indifference of Julian's government as to the wrongs
endured by Christians in Ms time. As for the ValentMian place
of worsMp, he treats it as no better than a pagan temple. He
pronounces with perfect confidence that Maximus's order in 387
for the rebuilding of a synagogue burnt at Rome was divMely
avenged by a judicial infatuation which delivered him Mto the
hands of his conqueror. He protests that a triumph given to Jews

xxv.] St. Ambrose and Theodosius. 509
would be hailed by them as a new Exodus. He does not shrink
from telling Theodosius what Christ will say to him if he carries
out his order ; he is positive that he will be hazarding his faith
and risking his salvation for the sake of Jews. Then, as if con
scious that Theodosius might not be swayed by Ms personal un
supported Mfluence, he asks that other bishops may be consulted ;
and intimates that the hierarchy is already discontented at the
existMg limitation of clerical immunity from " curial " burdens —
i.e. at the requirement that " curiales " who wished to become clerics
must first give up their property. TMs letter not being successful
(at which one cannot marvel), Ambrose " preached at " Theodosius
M one of the Milanese churches, when the Emperor came thither
for service. After a very tedious, verbose prologue, full of strange
" conceits," he abandoned the Mgh tone of Ms letter, and simply
begged the Emperor to pardon the offence of the monks for the
sake of Him whose servants they were. Then, when he came
down from the pulpit, Theodosius gently, almost playfully, observed,
" You have been preaching about me ; " and added that he had
recalled the order for the restoration of the burnt synagogue, but
that the monks were really in the habit of committMg many
offences — " many wicked acts " (scelera) in Ambrose's report of his
language. After Timasius, master of the soldiery, had tried to
put in a word here against the monks, Ambrose rebuked him,
then stood still for a few moments, then said, " Set my mind at
ease — let me offer for you without anxiety." Theodosius, who
was seated, made some sign of assent. Ambrose still remaMed
motionless. " Well," said the Emperor, " I will amend the rescript."
" Cancel the whole proceeding." " Well, I will." " Now I trust
you, I trust you." "Yes, trust me." Then, and not till then,
the pertinacious bishop proceeded with the service. By sheer
importunity he had prevailed ; but the whole affair is not among
the most honourable acts of his life, and Mdicates too much of
unbalanced zeal impairing his sense of the claims of justice and
social order, or, in modern phrase, too much of an untempered
" ecclesiasticism." It was about this tMie, apparently, that he also
o-ave notice to the Emperor that he must not stand witMn the
sanctuary, after having brought his offering for the altar. At
Constantinople he was wont to stand there ; but at Milan Ambrose
forbade it, and assigned Mm a special place, nearest to the chancel
screen. Theodosius afterwards said that Ambrose alone had thus
taught him " the difference between an emperor and a bishop."

510 The Age of the Fathers. [Chap.
Ambrose had also again to withstand the efforts of the pagan
senators M behalf of their " altar of Victory." It was their third
application that was made to Theodosius M the close of 388. He
was disappointed, at first, by findMg the Emperor not very respon
sive to Ms arguments. He therefore kept aloof from Mm for several
days ; but Theodosius did, in fact, repulse Symmachus with great
decision. The pagan hopes were again blighted, and were more
than ever crushed by the result of the Emperor's visit to the
capital in the June of 389.
The presence of Theodosius at Rome naturally assisted the
Mflux of converts into the Church with which he was in com
muMon. Yet Siricius was not without anxieties, in spite of such
additions to his flock. The Roman Luciferians, Marcellinus and
Faustinus, had by their memorial, some four years earlier, persuaded
Theodosius that the Spanish bishop Gregory, and the Egyptian
bishop Heraclidas, representatives of their sect, had been deeply
wronged, and ought to be respected as Catholic confessors: but
Claudian, the Donatist bishop, had been banished by Gratian ; and
Leontius, the Novatian, who was held in esteem, says Socrates,
by the Emperor, was not perhaps very obnoxious to the Church,
There was, however, a more alarming peril, a more distressing
scandal, M the strength of the Manichean body at Rome.
We must here pause to observe that MaMcheism is one of the
most extraordinary phenomena in " the history of human error."
Its wonderful force, versatility, and vitality are evidenced by its
holdMg sway for some years over such a mMd as Augustine's, by
its active self -propagation not only in the East, but M such a region
as North Africa, and by its reappearance in the PauliciaMsm of the
seventh century and the Albigensianism of the twelfth. This may
be confidently said about it — that it was not properly a heresy, an
erroneous superstructure on an Evangelical basis, but rather that
the New Testament pMases and ideas wMch it appropriated and
utilised were simply the decoration of a system radically heathenish,
which Augustine tersely characterizes as " a most false and most
fallacious Persian fable." Thus it could present to unwary
Christians a certain amount of religious attractiveness, wMle, in
fact, it was contributing a vast force to the maMfold elements of
AnticMistian reaction ; it was, M truth, not so much a religion as
a physical theory of the uMverse, with appropriate deductions
for the regulation of human life. It appealed to minds of very
various types ; it spoke in familiar language to those who cherished

xxv.] St. Ambrose and Theodosius. 5 1 1
Docetic, Gnostic, Emanatist notions; it offered a solution, on
strictly Dualistic principles, of the mystery of the origM of evil —
a solution which shoMd supersede faith, and therefore detMone
ecclesiastical authority by enrichMg mankMd with rational certain
ties and knowledge complete at every turn. Thus it contrived to
gratify, at once, the mystical and the rationalising tempers ; it fed
human self-importance by a pantheistic account of the relations
between God and the soul ; it relieved the conscience from a sense
of responsibility ; it provided the imagMation with a gorgeous and
complex symbolism ; it sanctioned the deep-seated Oriental feeling
as to the essential evil of matter ; it professed to ensMine the
" spiritual " truth which popular CMistianity, as it affirmed, had
overlaid with a mass of Judaism ; it called CMistians the " simple
folk," as Gnosticism had called them the " psychical " or un-
spiritual ; it encouraged an extremely " free handling " of the
CMistian Scriptures, while it denounced as immoral and degradMg
the severities and the " economic " language of the Old Testament ;
it held up a standard of strict purity, " a seal set on mouth, on
hands, on bosom ; " it had its own teachMg, its own exhortations,
as to the combat between Light and Darkness, which every good
man, by the help of Ms better soul, was to take Ms part in main-
taiMng ; it had a ritual of rigorous " simplicity," a Merarchy of
five or six degrees, but without " sacerdotalism ; " and Mstead of
the Catholic scheme of catechumens and faithful, it had the two
great classes of the ascetic " Elect " and the " Auditors " bound by
a milder rule. And an intelligent Roman, for instance, who took
his place among the Auditors, with a view of ultimately becoming
an Elect, would be instructed out of such books as the " Epistle of
Manes " and the " Treasure ; " he would learn to tMnk of Manes
as the true Paraclete, the reformer and truest exponent of CMis
tianity, who had completed the work which the Apostles began.
When he became an Elect, he would receive the full esoteric teach
ing. " Light and Darkness," it would be said to him, " are in
eternal antithesis ; and they form two irreconcilable powers. Over
the kingdom of Light reigns from all eternity, in His majesty and
sanctity, the all-good ' Father,' with a multitude of aeons sharing
His essence ; in contrast to tMs Light-kMgdom lies the co-eternal
kingdom of Darkness, the world of matter, and therefore of evil,
with its regions of earthy gloom, of turbid waters, of wild wMds, of
fire, and of smoke, in wMch last the Prince of evil dwells. To
«uard His frontier against the evil kingdom, the Father sent down

512 The Age of the Fathers. [Chap.
an aeon, the 'Mother of life.' She made the 'First Man,' who
fought with the dark powers ; they absorbed into themselves part
of his essence ; that part, thus imprisoned in the bondage of Matter,
was ' Jesus Patibilis : ' the rest of the First Man, restored by the
' Living Spirit ' to the Light-kingdom, dwelt, as a pure, unsullied
being, in the sun. Here, then, see the turning-point of the world's
history ! The Evil One desired to retain in bondage the particles
of light ; the Father desired to deliver and regaM them. The evil
powers combined to give up to their cMef all these particles of
heavenly Essence : he formed them Mto Adam, who thus became
a compound of good and evil, of spirit and matter. The Father
commanded His livMg Spirit to form an earth for Adam ; the dark
powers tried to baffle His purpose, by forbidding Adam to taste of
the tree of knowledge ; but the pure Being dwelling in the sun
persuaded him to do so, and thus to apprehend his position. The
dark powers were more successful in causing Adam to become the
parent of a race, and thus to perpetuate the thraldom of the ' Jesus
Patibilis,' till at length the pure counterpart of tMs ' Jesus ' came
on earth in a phantom-body, conciliating Jewish prejudices by
calling Himself ' CMist,' representing in a mere unreal semblance
of anguish and death the long sufferings of the imprisoned Light-
essence, and illuminating the ignorance of blinded soMs, in pre
paration for the full light which was to beam forth in our great
Master. See, then, this central fact in all mundane events, the
persistent effort of the particles of light to break their bonds : it is
the duty of all who would ultimately belong to light, in the fullest
sense of the phrase, to facilitate this effort in every case ; the Elect
must hold even vegetable life divine and sacred, and the Auditors
must bring herbs and fruits (never to a hungry man as such, but)
to the Elect, who, by eating them, will liberate those particles
which they contain. And you must strive to overcome the evil
soul, which you inherit from Adam as formed by the Prince of
Darkness, and by progressive purgation to live wholly in and by
the good soul, the Light-essence ; this purgation will continue after
death, but the end is absorption into glory."
The proselyte who heard tMs teachMg would find Mmself in
the midst of an orgaMzed body of persons possessed, in great
measure, by an enthusiasm for propagating it, but also aware of
the great need of caution M doMg so. He would, perhaps, be
encouraged, if he had been CMistian, to keep up appearances of
Christian or Church membership, short of receiving the Eucharistic

xxv.] St. Ambrose and Theodosius. 513
chalice; to visit St. Peter's for the early celebration, but M
ascending to its portals (at the east end) to turn round and bow
to the rising sun, the symbol of the Manichean Christ. This, at
least, was the habit of the Roman Manicheans M the fifth century.
WitMn the penetralia of the Manichean brotherhood, the proselyte
would be reqMred to fast on Sundays ; he would observe that the
Christian Easter was hardly noticed, and would learn that, the
Nativity, Passion, Resurrection of " CMist " beMg simply im
pressions produced, not facts or events, it was inconsistent with
enlightened convictions to celebrate them with vigil, or festival,
or fast, as did the " Judaical half-CMistians." But there was a
solemnity worth observing, the anniversary of that " real Passion,"
the cruel martyrdom of Manes under the king of Persia. On that
day, in March, the Manichean commumty assembled m front of a
" tribunal " or pulpit (hence the feast was called " Bema "), with
five steps leading up to it, and precious cloths spread over it ; and
before it all the votaries of Manes bowed down in reverent homage.
The moral and social state of the society, a few years before, had
not been M a good condition, as far as Rome was concerned ; and
the efforts of an Auditor named Constantius to improve it by Mtro-
ducMg a commuMty-life among the Elect, were frustrated by the
Mdifference or hostility of their " bishops," and by the ungovern
able wilfuMess of the Elect themselves. Theodosius, on this
occasion of his visitMg Rome, was at once, it seems, importuned by
pope Siricius to do something against the Manicheans. Four days
had not elapsed since Ms arrival when he put forth a brief edict,
expellmg the Manicheans from Rome, and depriving them (as he
had done before in the East, by a law of 382) of the power of
bequeathing property by will.
Another trouble that beset the Roman Church at tMs time was
caused by the teacMng of JoviMan, formerly an ascetic, who, in
Jerome's coarse language, used to walk " barefoot with rough coat
and black shirt, with a pale face and a hand horny tMough
toil ; " but who had left his cell, put on a white dress, and begun
to disseminate opMions very unpleasMg to the rulers and repre
sentative men of the Church. These opMions were : (1) That
virgins, widows, and married persons, if baptized, and equally
earnest in conduct, had the same merit and should be held m the
same honour. (2) That abstinence from meats was not better
than partaking of them with thanksgivMg. (3) That those who
" with full faith '' had been born again in baptism could not be
vol. 1. 2 l

514 The Age of the Fathers. [Chap.
overtMown by the devil, and that baptized persons who had fallen
under a temptation were ipso facto " proved to have been baptized
with water oMy, not with the Spirit." (4) That all who had " kept
their baptism " would have the same reward in the kMgdom of
heaven ; and to tMs, apparently, was added a parallel statement as
to the precise equality of the condition of all the lost. Of these
the third is particularly interesting, for it proceeded on that same
Mterpretation of certaM words in St. John's First Epistle (e.g. M. 9)
wMch M modern times has been cited for the Mdefectibility of
grace ; and was, of course, to be met by the balancMg considera
tion of other passages, which imply the possibility of its forfeiture,
and assert, M fact, that the regenerate can become the fallen.
Beside tMs point, there is the quasi-Stoical conception of the strict
equality between virtues or vices, wMch, proceeding on a line of
hard logic, declines to recognise facts of character. It is to be noted
that JoviMan, M more than one case, appears to have thought that
his opMions were the needful protest against a Manichean ten
dency ; and thus his line as a speculator illustrates the formidable
spread of that erroneous system, as well as the over-statements in
regard to fasting and celibacy agaMst which he felt stirred up to
contend. " A memorial of an alarming kind " was presented to Siricius-
agaMst the tenets of Jovinian; he assembled Ms presbytery
— the deacons and other clerics beMg present — and they unani
mously advised the excommunication of JoviMan with eight others.
This sentence was pronounced by Siricius, and commuMcated to
the Church of Milan, because JovMian had repaired thither. In
tMs document the pope is careful not to seem to disparage matri
mony, for, he says, " we assist at weddings by blessMg the nuptial
veil ; " he only insists that in the New Testament a virgin life, when
undertaken from devotional motives, is honoured above a married
life. The bishops of Northern Italy appear to have assembled
about the close of 389 or the begMMng of 390 ; and Ambrose
wrote in their name to Siricius, cordially applauding his vigorous
action M the matter. Assuredly the bishops of Rome and Milan vied
with each other M vehemence against " the adversary of modesty,
the teacher of licentiousness," " the howling beast, who would con
found all distinctions of desert," the "dogs that barked against
the mysteries of the Church," the voluptuaries who " regretted
that they ever reduced themselves by fasting." It was not charac
teristic of Siricius, or even of Ambrose, to appreciate the point of

xxv.] St. Ambrose and Theodosius. 515
view of an opponent who came across the line of cherished feel
ings ; to distinguish between what in Ms mind and opMions was
false or extravagant, and what was the expression of, or the effort
to express, a sound idea. For us it is a duty to say that Jovinian
had got hold of one or two great truths, and did not know how to
manage and apply them. He was justly afraid of a mechanical
religiousness, of artificial classifications which might lower the
moral aim, of the revival of a corrupt and unspiritual asceticism ;
and in his impetuosity he not only ignored the reality of special
calls to exceptional self-devotion, but was swept on by his logic to
conclude that the one salvation could not possibly co-exist with
degrees of blessedness ; to dwell exclusively on such texts as that
of the single " denarius " M the parable ; to explain away the
received sense of the "many mansions," and of the words "if thou
wilt be perfect ; " and to infer that " once regenerate " was " always
regenerate," and therefore that to fall into deadly sin was to prove
oneself not to have been regenerated, but to have received baptism
ineffectively. There is the haste, the onesidedness, the readiness
to embrace extremes, which mark the fanatic — there is not the con-
siderateness and moderation of a thoughtful divine — about this
writer, who has been called " the Protestant of his age." But he
was not, as far as we can see, dealt with as the Church should have
treated such a mMd. Its confusions, its assumptions, its incon
clusive ways of reasoning, were not quietly pointed out ; the
superficial view of the relation of grace to free will — the love of
short cuts, so to speak, and rough-and-ready decisions — the re
actionary passion which virtually makes abuse condemn use, might
have been, should have been, corrected " in a spirit of meekness ; "
but the onslaught on celibacy and fasting, even more than the
momentous inference about " a baptism not of the Spirit," provoked
the high ecclesiastics of Italy beyond patience, and Jovinian was
treated as a pestilent blasphemer.
The same prelates who subscribed the letter in reply to
Siricius were apparently reassembled in the spring of 390, on
account of the arrival at Milan of some bishops from Gaul, who
were most probably bearers of a communication from their bretMen
respecting the case of Ithacius — a fact wMch Duchesne mentions
as illustrating the general Western disposition to " consider the
bishop of Milan as an authority of the first rank." Ithacius had
been excommunicated and sent into exile ; and Felix, bishop of
Treves, who had been appointed by his party, was regarded as,

5 1 6 The Age of the Fathers. [Chap.
like him, deservMg of the censure of the Church. As far as we
can make out, Ambrose approved the excommuMcation of Ithacius ;
and both he and Siricius wrote letters, disclaimMg all fellowsMp
with Felix. But while the North-Italian Church was occupied
with these measures against persons who were implicated in the
" Ithacian " policy — particularly against Ithacius himself — and
was thus condemMng the cruelty of which the Priscillianists
had been the victims, tidings came from across the Hadriatic
which concentrated public attention and grief on a more whole
sale and more appallMg case of cruelty, which, together with
the events wMch followed it, has left a most conspicuous mark
on the history of the time. Those who know little else about
that history, and about the life and character of the great Saint
of Milan, have at any rate heard something of the penance of
Theodosius. The Emperor had returned from Rome to Milan shortly before
JovMian, condemned at Rome, had endeavoured to make his posi
tion good in Northern Italy. He doubtless sanctioned, or approved,
the severe IMe taken at Milan respecting that mnovator ; and he
continued to make Milan Ms residence, and to live on terms of
entire confidence with Ambrose. It was M April, 390, that he
heard of a disgraceful outrage perpetrated at ThessaloMca : the
mob, disappointed at the imprisonment, for a heinous crime, of a
charioteer who was to have contributed to their amusement at some
races in their hippodrome, rose up against Botheric, the commander
of the forces, who had fomly refused to release the offender, and
who now paid for his righteous strictness by being murdered m the
Msurrection. Other officials were similarly slaM ; and the Emperor,
justly mcensed, had meditated a general vengeance on the whole
city of ThessaloMca. Such a purpose illustrates the long survival
of that " defective sense of individuality " which, as Mozley has
shown at length, suggested the inclusion of a criminal's family and
dependants, near or remote, in a sentence wMch he himself had
incurred — as if only M tMs way could justice " get the whole of
him." Ambrose and other bishops interposed, and, as Augustine
tells us, obtained from Theodosius a promise to spare the city.
But certain counts of Ms court, and especially his "odious
favourite " Rufinus, whose function as Master of the Offices has
been compared to that of a state-secretary for all departments at
once, represented to him what in their view was the weakness of
being swayed by priests into a leMty which could but encourage

xxv.] St. Ambrose and Theodosius. 517
rebellion. This counsel conspired with the straM of ferocity under
provocation wMch marred the Emperor's nobleness, and also with
Ms indolent reliance on trusted advisers, to defeat his " second
thoughts ; " and orders were issued for a general slaughter of the
Thessalonian people, which Rufinus, of course, would describe as the
execution of a commuMty responsible, as such, for the murder of
an imperial officer. Such deeds, as we have seen, would not have
shocked the conscience of primitive times ; but how, one asks, could
a Christian prince thMk them lawful ? Caesarism, by concentrating
all judicial power in the Caesar, made them possible ; and the
possibility might arouse " the wild beast in the man," as it did
oftener, though to less tragical effect, in Valentinian I. We are
told that Theodosius again returned to a better mind, and sent off
a mandate, wMch came too late, recalling Ms sangMnary order. An
Mdiscrimmate massacre continued for tMee hours, and seven
thousand persons perished without the slightest form of trial,
including several strangers who had recently come up for com
mercial reasons to the great MacedoMan capital, which now, in
Sozomen's expression, was " deluged with innocent blood." By one
account the people were attacked while assembled in the circus ;
but this detail may have been due to the agents employed, rather
than to any imperial Mstructions. When the dreadful news
reached Milan, Theodosius was absent ; but he was soon to return,
and Ambrose, takMg advantage of an illness which, though real,
would not M other circumstances have kept him out of his
sovereign's presence, retired Mto the country, chiefly M order to
give Theodosius time to reflect. He wrote with his own hand a
letter of earnest remonstrance. After referrmg at the outset to
the Emperor's long-standing friendliness, he dwelt on the fact that
Theodosius had often been annoyed by his having heard of resolu
tions taken M the Consistory. But what he had heard, he could
not help hearMg : and could he now be silent ? Quoting Ezekiel's
words as to the duty of "warning" a sinner, he adverted to the
fiery temper which was the besetting fault of the monarch,
although he could often exMbit a generous clemency ; he spoke of
the " unparalleled deed " which had been done at Thessalonica, and
of wMch the prelates then met in Milan had heard " with groans,
not one of them viewing it indulgently ; " and urged the Emperor
to imitate the contrition wMch David showed on the two occasions
on which he had been rebuked. " If you choose to attend the
service, I dare not offer the sacrifice : " nor could Theodosius expect

518 The Age of the Fathers. [Chap.
to have any offering of his accepted. It was the part of a true
Christian not to excuse, but to condemn, Ms own sM. He con
cluded with expressions of loyal and cordial regard.
Theodosius found this letter awaiting Mm on Ms return to
Milan ; at first he treated it with a strange Mdifference, and, relying
on his imperial position, was comMg to church as if nothing had
happened. Ambrose, who had also returned, confronted Mm in the
"atrium" outside the church — the entrance court now represented
for visitors to Sant' Ambrogio by a spacious and stately enclosure
attributed to a ninth-century archbishop — and, as PaulMus puts it
briefly, " refused him permission to enter : " Sozomen adds that
he publicly took hold of the Emperor's purple robe. Whatever
might be the Emperor's surprise, Ms frank and noble nature mastered
irritation, and although we can hardly suppose that he pleaded
that David, after all, had done worse than he (indeed, it is Mghly
probable that Paulinus made a confusion between the bishop's own
reference to David's case and words spoken on this occasion by the
Emperor), he submitted to the official announcement that he must
do penance for a definite period. Eight months passed away, and
Christmas came to gladden the faitMul of Milan with the hymn in
which their bishop invoked the "Redeemer of the nations, the
Virgin-born, the Incarnate God, from whose manger-cradle beamed
forth, to the eyes of faith, the ever-fresh brightness of a day that
knew no close." The churches were crowded as usual with wor
shippers of every class. But one Christian and Churchman re
mained within Ms apartments as if not venturing to welcome the
great Birthday. It was believed in the next century that Theodo
sius, who had laid aside, during those sad months, the imperial
ornaments, was found by his evil counsellor Rufinus sitting alone
and bathed in tears. The Greek Mstorian's narrative is too
rhetorical to be trustworthy in detail. Words are put mto the
Emperor's mouth wMch Theodoret considered proper for such ex
ceptional circumstances ; he is said to have accepted Rufinus's pro
posal to intercede with Ambrose — a proposal naturally meffectual —
and then, on receivMg a discouraging message from the bishop
while he was passing through the forum on his way to the basilica,
to have obtained admission to the episcopal guest-chamber adjoin
ing the church. There Ambrose, we are told, consented to readmit
him to Church fellowship if he would do his best to prevent such
consequences of imperial wrath by enacting that, in every case, an
interval of thirty days should elapse between a capital sentence and

xxv] St. Ambrose and Theodosius. 519
its execution. The Emperor then found himself free to enter the
church. But his profound contrition was expressed by his humble
demeanour ; he did not stand, nor even kneel, but, m the attitude
of the third class of the penitents, prostrated himself on the pave
ment, repeating, we are told, the words, " My soM cleaveth to the
dust ! " smiting his forehead and tearing Ms hair, and watering the
ground with Ms tears. To this scene Ambrose alludes when he
says that Theodosius, "having stripped off Ms insignia," publicly,
in the church, wept for his sM, into which he had been betrayed
by the deceitful influence of others. " With groans and tears he
entreated pardon, nor was there a day of his after life on which
he did not bewail that error."
Such was the memorable triumph, " the culminating point," as
Milman calls it, " of pure Christian influence," when " Christianity
appeared before the world as the champion and vindicator of out
raged humanity." Theodosius, at tMs Christmas festival of 390,
endured the " shame that is glory and grace," and called out, as
Augustine tells us, the sympathy and admiration of his people by
a humiliation wMch was, in truth, the ennobling of Christian
monarchy, because it was not the mere assertion of ecclesiastical
power over civil within the sphere of Church life (although it
might afterwards be perverted into a precedent for ecclesiastical
encroachments), but the recogMtion by the civil power, on genuMely
Christian and moral grounds, of its subjection to an authority wMch
knew no respect of persons, when enforcing as a condition of
Christian privileges the necessity of repentance for a crime against
humanity and agamst God.

CHAPTER XXVI.
THE LAST YEARS OE THEODOSIUS.
The state of the Eastern Church, at the time of the Penance of
Theodosius, was not very satisfactory. For several years, M spite
of the Councils of Constantinople, her different branches had been
sufferMg, partly from the spread of heresy, partly from faction and
division. Gregory Nazianzen had just died, after undergoing, sMce
Ms retirement from ConstantMople, a series of anxieties and dis
tresses under which, at one time, Ms faith M the providential
government of the Church well-Mgh gave way. " It seems,"
he wrote to Nectarius, " as if the care of God, wMch M our
fathers' times had always watched over the Churches, had now
entirely abandoned the present life. My soM is so immersed M a
depth of calamities, that I hardly reckon my own personal troubles
— intolerable as they woMd otherwise seem — among evils, and look
only at the general affliction of the Church." He describes the
Arians — that is, those who were called Eudoxians — as audaciously
assuming a right to orgaMze Churches. The Macedonians boasted
of having bishops ordained by their cMef Eleusius. The Apolli-
narians, however, constituted, in Ms opMion, the most painful
of all the Church's trials. They claimed the same liberty to
assemble as that which belonged to Churchmen. Gregory had
seen a book by ApollMaris, wMch exceeded every other specimen
of heresy ; it distinctly affirmed that the Lord Jesus, " the Second
Man from Heaven," had brought His flesh with Him from above,
and that He, the " Only-begotten God," the Lifegiver, the destroyer
of death, had suffered death in His Divimty. Toleration of such
teachMg appeared to Gregory a virtual " condemnation of the
doctrine of the Church."
ApollMaris Mmself died, probably before the year 390, at a
very advanced age, retaining his heresy to the last, and leaving

Chap, xxvl] The Last Years of Theodosius. 521
behind him a multitude of writings, in verse as well as in
prose. His followers were proud to bear his name, or that of his
disciple, bishop Vitalis ; but they were divided into two parties —
the more extreme represented by Polemon and Timotheus, who
mamtained that the Divinity and the flesh of Christ were " consub-
stantiated " or formed into one nature ; and the more moderate, led
by Valentinus, who declared this notion to be alike untenable and
impious. Among the sects which were most directly opposed to
the Apollinarian, the Eudoxians kept up their episcopal succession
by placMg MarMus M the seat of Demophilus, and then super-
sedMg him by Dorotheus, whom they summoned from Antioch.
Hence arose a schism and a controversy. Dorotheus maintained
(logically from the Arian standpoint) that " God was not Father "
before the " generation " of the Son, wMle Marinus and Ms adherents
— who were Mcknamed Psathyrians or " Cakemen," because one of
their leaders was a cake-seller — held that He was " Father " even
while the Son existed not ; and Selenas, or Selinus, the successor
of Ulfilas, a man of " bilingual " ability, professed tMs opinion.
Moreover, in the little Psathyrian sect a quarrel arose between
Marinus and Agapius, whom MarMus had ordaMed as bishop for
Ephesus. The feud between the Psathyrians and the rest of the
Eudoxians lasted thirty-five years. Of the Anomceans, also, a
similar story has to be told : Eunomius had died at his native
village M Cappadocia; and his disciple Theophronius, who, like
him, was a keen dialectician and Aristotelian, and had written a book
" On TraMing of the Mind," was cast off by the other Eunomians
for asserting that the divine knowledge was of a different kind in
regard to past, present, and future. Eutychius, another Eunomian,
declared that the Son had received from the Father full knowledge
of the time of the Last Judgment ; he too, before Eunomius's death,
had been driven out of the communion of the Eunomian bishops ;
but it is remarkable that his view was sanctioned by Eunomius,
who admitted Eutychius to prayers, although he did not come
fortified by letters of commendation. The Macedonians were dis
tracted between the partisans of Carterius aud Eutropius. The
contagion, so to speak, of dissension reached even the tranquil
Novatians, among whom Quartodecimanism had revived in the
reign of Valens, and was again advocated by a Jewish convert
named Sabbatius, who had been admitted to priest's orders ; but
the Novatian bishops, assembled in Council at a Bithynian town
named Angarum or Sangarum, passed a canon which "left the

522 The Age of the Fathers. [Chap.
question open," allowing every one to follow whatever Paschal
reckoMng pleased Mm best — a settlement unsatisfactory to
Sabbatius, whose pertinacity leads Socrates to make some very
"liberal" remarks on the uselessness of rigorous attempts at
uniformity M face of such varieties of observance as were to be
found in different churches, and to argue from the Acts and
Epistles that the apostles never imposed on their converts a " yoke "
of ceremoMal " servitude." Sabbatius afterwards seceded from the
Novatian body on tMs Paschal question, inserted M his text of St.
Luke — perhaps by way of gloss — a curse on " all who should keep
Pasch outside the days of unleavened bread," and, in violation of
a promise imposed upon Mm, accepted the episcopate among Ms
own little set of partisans.
Other heresies of newer growth were becoming matters of
anxiety. A sect of fanatics who called themselves Messalians or
EucMtes (as " men of prayer "), and also " Spiritual men," reduced
all religious acts to the one act of prayer, wMch was with them
a protracted contemplative ecstasy. They denied the efficacy
of ordMances, and denounced manual labour " for meat that
perisheth," as prohibited by the words of the Lord. They
never fasted. They held that baptism did Mdeed, as it were
" with a razor," cut off all former sMs, but left the roots of sin to
be extirpated, and the haunting presence of a fiend to be got rid
of, by, constant "prayer." They regarded the Holy Communion
as "neither helpful nor hurtful." Their Quietism — to use a
modern pMase — dispensing, as it thus did, with sacramental
media of intercourse with God, and concentrating the whole
attention on individual efforts after the realisation of His in
terior presence, naturally betrayed its votaries into the wildest
mystical dreamings, as of a sensible perception of the Holy Trinity
— such as the early enthusiam of Ignatius Loyola supposed itself
to have enjoyed on the doorsteps of a church. And by stimulating
to excess the self-consciousness of the soul, thus absorbed in its
own solitary action, or rather inaction, Messalianism encouraged
that contempt for all extraneous communities or sects which
impelled, in so many cases (as in that of the Priscillianists), the
sectarian mystic or heretic to conceal his convictions when ques
tioned about them — even to deny, or on occasion to anathematize,
what he Mwardly held — on the principle that the profane world
outside the pale was not worthy to know the truth and had no
right to be answered ingenuously. They were condemned by the

xxvi.] The Last Years of Theodosius. 523
Council of Side in Pamphylia in 383. It was very little to the
credit of the aged Flavian that he lured an old Messalian from
Edessa, named Adelphius, into a friendly conversation, and having
thus obtained a frank statement, suddenly turned on his informant
as self-convicted, and thereupon procured the expulsion of the
Messalians from Syria.
The Churchmen of the East were also scandalized by the con
tinued existence of two or three sects wMch M some respects suggest
recollections of modern controversy. There were the followers of
Helvidius, whom EpiphaMus labels " Adversaries of Mary," and
whom he attacks M an elaborate letter ; there were in the opposite
direction the Collyridians, so called because they, or more especially
their women, exhibited " Marianism " in an extravagant form by
spreading a linen cloth over a square seat, and offering a loaf or
roll of coarse bread, called a collyris, " either to Mary or for her,"
said EpiphaMus, who scornfully describes this sample of morbid
femMine sentiment (which grew up in Thrace and ScytMa) as " silly
and devoid of reason," and adds emphatically, " Mary is to be
honoured, but not to the poMt of worship ; let the Father, Son,
and Holy Spirit be worshipped ; let no one worship Mary." The
Audians were named after a Mesopotamian of austere virtue and
intense zeal for discipline ; worldly-mindedness and carelessness in
bishops and priests had found in him an unsparing censor, and
they had repaid Ms criticisms by a hostility which was too much
for his patience. He persuaded himself that he had no longer any
portion in the Church, and that he must needs secede from her
communion; various followers joined him, and from one, a bishop,
he obtaMed episcopal consecration. Strictness of conduct was a
characteristic of the Audians ; their monasteries among the Goths
were models of religious disciplMe ; but they were bitter agaMst
all Churchmen as such, and took up a crude literalism, like that of
certain Egyptian monks, in regard to the anthropomorphic language
of the Old Scriptures, and M their aversion to Catholic rites went
back to a Judaical reckoMng of Easter. When Epiphanius wrote,
they were reduced to a few inhabitants in two villages beyond
Damascus ; but they kept up their succession, and probably gamed
some reMforcements, for Theodoret M the next century describes
them as explaining their separation, like the Novatians, by the de
fect of disciplMe in the Church with regard to unlawfM marriages
and the takMg of " usury." They are said to have observed strict
secrecy in regard to their anthropomorphic ideas and to a strange

524 The Age of the Fathers. [Chap.
bit of Oriental fantasy as to the uncreatedness of light, fire, and
darkness. They had a penitential system, and gave absolution to
those who, havmg coMessed their sMs, passed between two rows
of sacred books — perhaps an imitation of the rite alluded to
in Jer. xxxiv. 18. The Aerians are cMefiy known by their
" presbyteriaMsm." Aerius, at first the friend, then the bitter
enemy, of that EustatMus of Sebaste who became the tormentor of
Basil's episcopal life, held the essential equality of presbyters to
bishops; and with this he combined three other opMions — that
prayer for the dead was useless, that it was wrong to observe stated
fasts, and that to keep the " Paschal " festival was to Judaize.
For whatever reason, probably as a relief from a growMg authori
tative Msistence on Church observances, Aerianism became popular ;
crowds of men and women went after Aerius; and when ex
cluded from churches or villages, Aerians were to be seen covered
with snow, campMg out M woods and under rocks. AccordMg to
a Latin writer, the Aerians were fanatical in the matter of individual
abstinence, so as even to approximate to the Encratism of the
second century, wMch still had numerous adherents in Pisidia, in
other parts of Asia Minor, and even in the vicMity of Antioch.
Of the old Gnostic sects, Marcionism continued to energize in
Cyprus, even as some fifty years later it prevailed M many villages
of North Syria; and the Valentinians, as we have heard, had a
foothold in Osrhoene. In Galatia, the old pagan wildness and
extravagance seemed to reappear M the fantastic rites of the
Ascitae or Ascodrogitae around an inflated bladder. The Artotyritae
substituted cheese for wine in their Eucharist ; the Hydropara-
statae were rigid " teetotallers ; " the Tascodrogitae were a set of
mystics whose religion consisted in a sort of Trappist taciturnity ;
the Saccophori went about like Elijah, in rough haircloth ; the
Apotactitae were communists who forswore all property.
It is needless to go further into tMs luxuriant growth of
fanatical heterodoxy. The Emperor Theodosius, sMce the Council
of 383 and the laws of that year agaMst heretics, had con
tinued to denounce them, ordering the ejection of their so-called
priests and ministers, and specially, to the great satisfaction of
Gregory Nazianzen, commanding that the Apollinarians should be
forbidden to hold any meetMgs or to perpetuate their mMistry.
This latter enactment was early in 388 : on the 14th of June in
that year the rhetorical style of these edicts is agaM employed to
heap obloquy on the various misbelieving sects, who have entered

xxvi.] The Last Years of Theodosius. 525
into " a miserable conspiracy against God, and who must not be
allowed to set up altars for their transgression, to lift up hands in
impious worsMp, to simulate the mysteries of the true religion;"
and two days later, by way of striking at the ordinary modes of
heretical proselytism, the Emperor forbade all public discussions
about religion. On the 8th of August he disowned, as spurious, a
supposed grant of freedom of action, on which some Arians relied ;
m 389 testamentary powers were taken away from the Eunomians
and, as we have seen, from the Manicheans ; and all ministers of
the sects were forbidden to hold meetings even in the suburbs
of cities. It is carefully noted by Socrates that the Novatian
meetMgs and services were excepted from prohibitory laws.
The scMsm of Antioch, which had not been healed by the death
of Meletius M 381, was sMrilarly protracted after the death of
PaulMus, in or about 388 or 389. According to Theodoret, PaulMus
had consecrated, during Ms own lifetime, Ms successor in the
episcopate of the Eustathians; the person whom he chose was
Evagrius, a friend of Jerome, who as far back as 374 spoke warmly
of his tender kindness, and still earlier, of Ms labours in Christ's
cause. As to this consecration, the anomalousness of the circum
stances probably seemed to PaulMus to warrant a departure from
ordMary rule ; for although he was not likely to feel any special
respect for the authority of the Dedication Council, which in its
twenty-third canon had pronounced that the consecration of a suc
cessor by a bishop at the poMt of death should be treated as null
and void, he would, of course, be aware of the requirement of more
prelates than one to perform a consecration according to form and
rule, and also of the canon which ordained that the comprovincial
bishops, or as many of them as could attend, should take part M
the appointment of every prelate. But he knew that in times of
exceptional difficulty such rules had been dispensed with ; and the
case of his own flock at Antioch appeared to him to be paMfully
exceptional. He may have acted wrongly in the matter ; it may
be that his duty was to bid his people acknowledge Flavian ; but
Flavian was to Mm, and to them, not merely the successor of
Meletius, but the violator of a solemn pledge, the perpetuator of a
bitter and factious enmity. He could not bear to leave his congre
gation in such hands ; he therefore committed them to the care of
Evagrius. It is indeed from Theodoret oMy that we learn these
circumstances as to Evagrius's consecration ; from Socrates and
Sozomen it would appear simply a case of election of a successor

526 The Age of the Fathers. [Chap.
after the former bishop's death, though not, of course, in a provincial
synod ; but Theodoret may have possessed some fuller information.
Evagrius was at any rate acknowledged by the Westerns, who had
fraterMsed with Paulinus ; and the dispute between Ms friends and
those of Flavian ^became a new cause of widespread difference.
The Westerns earnestly desired the Emperor to let the question
be decided by a Council. Theodosius, who had returned to Con
stantMople M the autumn of 391 — two or three years after the
death of Paulinus — appears to have directed Flavian to attend a
Council wMch was to meet for this purpose at Capua. Flavian
excused himself for the time on the ground that he could not
stand a voyage in winter, but sent no one M Ms stead. The
Council assembled ; a large number of bishops, McludMg several
from beyond sea, and many who had travelled to Capua at
great MconveMence, might be considered to represent the West.
Flavian's absence, despite Ms excuses, told agaMst him, and he
was regarded as a defaulter; his rival Evagrius had taken care
to be present, and the bishops' opinion inclMed not unnaturally
in his favour, as the representative of the party which had all
along enjoyed Western support. But the Council, feeling itself
imperfectly informed, decided on referring the case for judgment
to Theophilus, the bishop of Alexandria, as likely to be impartial ;
and m another case it showed the same disposition to transfer the
responsibility of decision to persons possessing local knowledge.
Bonosus, bishop of Sardica, whether he had, or had not, adopted
the Photinian Christology, at any rate held the Helvidian opinion,
and was therefore accused as heterodox. The Council thought that
he would be most appropriately tried by the bishops of Macedonia,
under their primate Anysius, bishop of Thessalonica. These prelates
suspended Bonosus, but tried to sMft the case back to their bretMen
of Italy ; the attempt was overruled, and Bonosus was tried and
condemned by Anysius.
In the matter of Antioch and its rival bishops, the Council's
resolution came to nothing. Flavian had recourse to petitions to
the Emperor, and endeavoured to procure rescripts in Ms own
favour ; Theophilus reported tMs to Ambrose, who advised him
to "summon Flavian again," and to confer with Siricius before
coming to a decisive award. According to Theodoret, a conversa
tion took place between Theodosius and Flavian, after the former
had been urged by Siricius " not to suffer the laws of Christ to be
insulted with impunity." Flavian's adroit line had much appearance

xxvi.] The Last Years of Theodosius. 527
of dignity and unselfishness : " If my doctrine or conduct is
impugned, I will appear even before personal enemies as judges.
But if the question is oMy as to my episcopal right, I waive it, and
place the bishopric of Antioch at your disposal." He probably knew
that Theodosius would not take advantage of this offer ; on the
contrary, he was bidden to return to his see, and his difficulties
were soon lessened by the death of Evagrius— after which event
the Eustathian episcopate came to an end, for Flavian prevented
the appointment of a successor. The Eustathian community per
severed, without a bishop, in their separation, for about twenty-two
years afterwards ; but Flavian was, after a shorter period, admitted
to the fellowsMp of Egypt and the West.
Such was the state of matters at Antioch. At Constantinople
Nectarius's admMistration does not seem to have been successful
in a religious sense. The Church's tone became secularised : a
number of bishops, frequently visiting the Miperial city, and form-
Mg a kMd of council round its bishop, imbibed the spirit of in
triguing courtiers ; the dwellMg of Nectarius Mmself, with its rich
furniture, and the silk robes in which he Mmself was ordinarily to
be seen, indicated, as Tillemont expresses it, that the prelate whose
antecedents had been so unecclesiastical " preferred the magnifi
cence of a senator to the poverty of Jesus Christ." Many of the
clergy became mere men of the world, MdulgMg freely in pleasures
of every sort, and disregarding the Church's rules ; monastic disci
pline was tending to become lax ; and a terrible scandal Mduced
Nectarius, by the advice of a presbyter, to abolish the office of the
PeMtentiary priest, who was accustomed — probably ever since the
Novatian scMsm — to receive private confessions, and either to
give directions as to the public penance which might be necessary,
or else assure the penitents that they need not come forward as
such at church, but must go tMough certain penitential exercises
at home. The abolition of this office, says Socrates, left every one
free to consult Ms own conscience as to whether he should receive
the Holy Mysteries ; and both he and Sozomen indicate their dis
approbation of the laxity thus introduced Mto Church life. The
effect of the step taken by Nectarius was, strictly speakMg — as
Valesius says — "neither to prohibit confession nor to abrogate
penance." Before the Penitentiary's office was constituted,
CMistians whose consciences were burdened with sin used either to
confess, privately, to any spiritual physician whom they chose for
the purpose, or to dispense with such confession altogether. While

528 The Age of the Fathers. [Chap.
the office lasted, the desirableness of such confession was brought
more prominently before the people's mind, and it was known that
whoever wished to confess must resort to one appointed functionary.
And after the office was suppressed, it was left free to Christians,
as before, " to open their griefs " to any bishop or presbyter whom
they might prefer ; and if he so directed them, to place themselves
publicly in the ranks of penitents : they might do tMs, or they
might leave it undone : but the absence of any Penitentiary re
moved a great stimulus to confession, threw the whole subject into
the background, and practically led many persons, who would
otherwise have used coMession, to neglect it — not without grave
detriment, as our Church historians tell us, to themselves.
The Church of Alexandria had been governed, sMce the summer
of 385, by a prelate whose career is, on the whole, one of the saddest
examples of the effect of secularising influences upon the priesthood
of the Theodosian age. " A bold, bad man, whose hands were alter
nately polluted with gold and with blood : " such is the pointed
epigrammatic censure of Gibbon, which is, indeed, not much severer
than Neale's assertion of Ms " total want of principle " and of " per
sonal piety," but wMch should not be accepted without qualification
as a full account of the character of a man who had some merits
as well as undoubted abilities, and was probably corrupted by the
great powers of his official position. TheopMlus, whose name is
so unhappily associated with the persecution of St. Chrysostom,
was possessed with a zeal which, indeed, ran into violent excesses,
but was, at the root of it, most probably genuine and religious,
for the destruction of pagan idolatry. The opportunities for carry
ing out tMs design were greater than under any preceding monarch,
and pagaMsm itself, though in many places strong, or even furious
and obstinate, was weaker than it had been under Constantius or
Jovian. The princes of the house of Constantine had mdeed put
forth laws for the " cessation of superstition and of senseless heathen
sacrifices," for the closing of the temples, for the abolition of noc
turnal sacrifices, and, in fact, of all sacrifices ; but their will had
had but partial effect. Theodosius had begun Ms reign with indi
cations of earnest purposes against paganism ; but his first edict, at
the close of 381, had implied that only a certain class of sacrifices,
those wMch were offered in order to " consult " the heathen deities
about the future, were absolutely forbidden. In 382 he had
permitted a temple of great celebrity in Osrhoene to remain and
to be resorted to for oracles, provided that unlawful sacrifices were

xxvi.] The Last Years of Theodosius. 529
not performed therein. Yet it is not unlikely that individual
Christians sometimes took upon themselves, under Ms reign, to
destroy temples in the " Oriental diocese," as Martin had done in
Gaul ; and LibaMus, like a pagan " Spelman," affirms that those
who have built houses out of the stones of ruined temples either
have incurred or will Mcur the punishment of sacrilege. But
Marcellus, bishop of Apamea, appears to have used for tMs work
the authority of an imperial order, addressed to Cynegius, praetorian
prefect of the East, who was commissioned M 389 to cause temples
to be closed. Marcellus procured the destruction of a strongly
built temple in his own city ; but his zeal led him to orgaMze an
attack on a temple guarded by pagans who, making a sally and
finding him alone in the camp, detained by gout from accom
panying the assailants, seized Mm and burnt him to death.
It was in the opening of this same year 389 that Theophilus,
havMg obtained the Emperor's leave to build a church on ground
occupied by a deserted temple of Bacchus or Osiris, proceeded to
clear away the decayMg ruins, and explore the crypts that lay
beneath. In these dark recesses were discovered several emblems
of the abominations of that ritual in which the grossest sensualism
was adopted into religious observances, and the so-called religion
was elaborately brutalised. These symbols Theophilus exposed to
the public scorn and abhorrence. The pagans, enraged, fell fiercely
on the CMistians, and took possession of the great temple of Serapis
as their natural stronghold in such a strife. Serapis was a deity
whose worship was established under the Ptolemies, to represent
the identification of Apis and Osiris — the unity of the principle of
physical life, appearing in the sacred bull, with the many-sided
power revered as the Sun-god, as the fertilising Nile, as Judge and
King in the underworld ; and Julian had quoted an oracular verse,
identifyMg Mrn with Zeus, Pluto, and the Sun. In his honour
was raised the great square mound with its ascent of a hundred
steps, and on its summit an extensive area enclosed by halls and
chambers and encompassing the superb Serapeum proper, the
temple of the god. TMs structure, wMch Ammianus reckons next in
grandeur to the Capitol, was supported by four hundred columns of
costly marble, and in its Mner sanctuary was seated the vast image,
formed of gold, silver, brass, iron, lead, and tin, with gorgeous
inlaid work of sapphires and emeralds ; its colour a dark purple,
its aspect that of an aged man, its huge arms stretched out so as
to touch the wall on either hand ; on its head a basket of bushel-
VOL. 1. 2 m

530 The Age of the Fathers. [Chap.
size, " the emblem of productiveness or plenty." It was a visible
expression of the effort of pagaMsm to concentrate into one object
of worsMp the attributes of the most popular deities — to provide
itself with an idol complete in manifold attractions, and expressMg
all the forms of its idea. Here, then, as M an appropriate fastness,
an embodied defiance to Christianity, the pagans gathered them
selves in force, and made sallies from it on the CMistians, several
of whom they took prisoners, carried them withM the Serapean
precinct, and tortured them savagely in order to make them offer
sacrifices. The " dark places " of that unholy stronghold of
heathenism were now, in the fullest sense, "habitations of cruelty."
Prisoners were crucified, or their legs were broken and, thus dis
abled, they were hurled down into the deep pits constructed for
receiving the blood of the sacrifices. Impunity gave confidence,
day after day, to tMs strange garrison ; at last they appointed as
governor a philosopher named Olympius, who had come from
Cilicia expressly to devote his life to the service of Serapis. He
was inspired with a fierce antichristian fanaticism ; he felt that it
was, for him and his order, a quarrel of life and death. Under Ms
encouragement, the pagans in the Serapeum utterly refused to obey
the summons to surrender which was formally made by messengers
from the city magistrates. They resolved to hold out, and their
distress at the recent destruction of the Dionysiac images was
allayed by their leader's assurance that the powers represented by
those symbols had ascended scatheless into heaven. Instructions
having been asked for from Theodosius, an imperial rescript arrived,
and was solemnly read to a mingled crowd of Christians and
pagans at the foot of the Serapeum Mil. " Let not the magistrates,"
so wrote the Emperor, " impute the blame of recent disturbances
to the CMistians ; the pagans alone, with their superstitious fana
ticism and barbarity, were in fault." As these words were read, a
loud triumphant cheer broke forth from the Christians : the pagans,
terror-struck, tried to escape down the narrow streets or lanes
which permeated that old quarter of the city, or even to seek safety
by mingling among the CMistian groups. The rescript proceeded
to describe the CMistians murdered within the Serapeum as martyrs,
whose glory was not to be tarnished by any judicial vengeance for
their blood : a leniency for which Sozomen accounts by the motive
that it would mduce the pagans to embrace CMistiamty " out of
regard for the kindness shown them." Then came the poMt of the
whole mandate : the Serapeum, and all the Alexandrian temples,

xxvi.] The Last Years of Theodosius. 531
were to be destroyed. There was no further resistance. The
military force ascended the steps, and penetrated Mto the temple.
Its occupants, availing themselves, doubtless, of some secret passages,
had escaped. Olympius, according to the grand story wMch the
Christians believed, and which Sozomen cautiously reports, had
heard, at dead of Mght, the sound of a single voice chanting Alleluia
witMn the closed doors of the inmost sanctuary, and, understanding
that sign, had hurried to the harbour and taken ship for Italy ;
wMle Helladius and Ammonius, two grammarians and priests, of
whom the former had " with his own hand slain," as he afterwards
boasted, " Mne Christians in this conflict," made their way to
ConstantMople, and lived long after to talk of these events to a
young student, the future Church historian Socrates. The image
of Serapis was now, in pursuance of the mandate, to be broken in
pieces. But for a moment or two, the excited crowd that had
invaded its presence stood irresolute, unable to shake off all super
stitious dread, or to forget the oft-repeated prophecy that, if it were
touched by human hand, the sky would fall and earth would sink
into chaos. Then it was that TheopMlus, " looking scornfully,"
says Theodoret, " on the colossal image as a dead helpless tiring,"
tinned to a soldier who had an axe in Ms hand, and bade Mm
strike with a good will. He struck the image on the cheek ; he
struck again, and a third time : the vast form came crasMng down,
and from the shattered head rushed out a swarm of mice ; the head
was dragged along the floor, the basket wMch crowned it broken,
the limbs dissevered and fastened to ropes, to be exposed to public
derision, and the trunk, at last, burned in the amphitheatre. " This
was the end," says Rufinus, " of the ancient imposture of Serapis."
Other temples shared the fate of the Serapeum ; horrible secrets
came to Light in their foul " adyta : " a priest named Tyrannus,
who had infamously abused the credulity of the votaries of Saturn,
was put to the torture, and confessed his gMlt ; and all the Miages
of the gods were melted down into vessels for use in the churches,
with the exception of one, which the archbishop commanded to be
set up entire in a public place, M memorial of what pagan worship
had been : it was the image of an ape.
In many places, it seems, the local bishop thought it more
prudent to leave a temple standing and utilise it as a church.
But at Canopus, where pagan superstition was even more rife than
in Alexandria, the fanes were levelled to the ground ; and on the
platform of the Serapeum, a " Martyrium " and a church confronted

532 The Age of th,e Fathers. [Chap.
each other. In place of the emblems called " breastplates of Serapis,"
the cross was paMted on doors and windows, walls and columns ;
but pagans who saw the change declared that the cross was one
of the " Meratic " symbols of the Egyptian alphabet, and signified
" the Life to come." The Nile-gauge, or " cubit," which had been
kept in the Serapeum, and used, as Shakespeare has it, for " takMg
the flow o' the Nile " in its inundation " by certam scales o' the
pyramid," was transferred — not without many pagan forebodings,
falsified by a very abundant inundation — " to the church of Him
who was Lord of the waters : " and Theodosius, on hearMg of these
proceedings, spread forth Ms hands to heaven, and exclamied,
" Thanks to Thee, 0 CMist, that so ancient a delusion has been
extinguished without ruM to that great city ! "
Such a downfall of the old superstitions produced many con
versions from paganism to the faith ; and Theodosius, as a sincere
Christian, might well exult M the results of his rescript as to the
destruction of the Serapeum. In the June of 391 he addressed a
new order to the " Augustal prefect " of Egypt, Evagrius, and to
the Count Romanus, in the following absolute terms : " Let no
one be allowed to sacrifice ; let no one go round the temples ; let
no one venerate pagan sanctuaries; let all understand that the
access to such unholy places is closed to them by the interposition
of our law." A judge who M the time of Ms admMistration should
abuse Ms position by entering such places was to pay a large fine ;
and Ms staff of officials was to be equally mulcted, unless they had
combined to withstand Mm. TMs law was followed up, on the
8th of November, 392, by the most stringent of all imperial
enactments agaMst pagaMsm. It was a blow at the whole system,
somewhat like the stroke of the soldier's axe at the head of Serapis.
Nullus omnino — the first words of this memorable ordMance
are significant of its tenor. " Let no one of any class or order of
men, or of dignity, or in a place of power, or invested with office,
be he powerful in virtue of birth, or lowly in descent, condition,
or fortune, in any place whatever, in any city, either kill a guilt
less victim in honour of senseless images — or, by a more secret
form of guilt, venerating the Lar with fire, the geMus with wine,
the Penates with fume, kMdle lights, put on incense, or hang up
garlands." Secondly, " if any one shall dare to slay a victim with
Mtent to sacrifice, or consult breathing entrails, let him, as if gmlty
of treason, be delated as a crimMal — the business of accusing
being free to all ; and let him then receive sentence befitting his

xxvi.] The Last Years of Theodosius. 533
crime, even though he has made no inquiries (by occult art)
either contrary to the well-beMg of the Emperor or simply con
cerning it. For it suffices to constitute crime, that a man shall
wish to transgress the laws of nature itself, to pursue uMawful
inquiries, to penetrate secrets, to attempt what is forbidden, to
seek for a termination to another's welfare, to promise hopes of
another's death " (that is, although that other be not the Emperor).
Thirdly, the law enacted that " any one who should honour images
with incense, or by hangmg fillets on trees, or raising altars of turf,
should forfeit the place or possession in which he had practised
such heatheMsh superstitions : for all places in wMch it shall
be proved that incense-fumes have ascended — provided such places
are shown to be the property of the incense-burners — are forfeit
to the imperial treasury." Fourthly, as to cases where the
sacrificer was not the owner of the place, a fine was imposed on
the owner, if proved to be ignorant of the act ; if he conMved at
it, he was to Mcur the like penalty with the sacrificer. Neglect
to enforce this law, on the part of town functionaries, was to be
punished by judicial action; if judges were slack in their duty,
they and their subordinates shoMd be heavily fined.
Such was the great law of 392, the last of the anti-pagan
edicts of Theodosius. It swept away various pretexts under wMch
the pagans who might dread to violate former laws had contrived
to keep up, under the appearance of convivial meetMgs, some of
the milder forms of their old worship. It aimed at closing up all
loopholes of freedom for any rite which belonged to that worship ;
it placed the burning of incense, or the wreathing of a garland,
under the same ban with the offering of bloody sacrifices ; it would
fam crush out the whole of that vast and many-sided mass of
idolatries which, thirty years before, had again secured the en
thusiastic support of an emperor, and had, since those days, been
largely tolerated by sovereigns who did not venture to proscribe
it. The law wMch now went forth was dated from ConstantMople,
and was, properly speaking, a law merely for the East, since
Theodosius, before he qMtted Italy, had restored ValentMian to
the tMone of the Western empire, includmg the territories which
had once owned Ms brother's rMe. But previous to this restitution,
Theodosius had united Valentinian's name with his own in a law
for the Western empire, promMgated in the February of 391,
forbidding any one to " pollute Mmself with sacrifices, to visit
heathen temples, or to reverence images made by human art."

534 The Age of the Fathers. [Chap.
The effect of Ms prohibitions was greater M the East than in the
West; Ms son Arcadius, indeed, had to renew the order that no
one shoMd visit temples for purposes of sacrifice, to abolish the
privileges previously enjoyed by pagan priests, and to command
that temples in the country should be pulled down "without
crowds or tumult." Theodosius II., in 416, placed pagans under
civil disqualification ; in 423 he Mserted M a law his belief that
no pagans still existed, but in a later law of that same year he
practically recalled tMs statement by inflicting penalties on any
persons detected in pagan worship, and by the last law of the anti-
pagan series, dated November 13, 426, again interdicted all pagan
sacrifices prohibited by former laws, and commanded all pagan
temples, " if any still remained entire," to be " destroyed by order
of the magistracy, and expiated by the erection of the sign of the
venerable CMistian religion."
That pagaMsm, even in Eastern districts, " died hard," may be
taken as certaM ; although few places in the East might in this
respect resemble Charrae, which "preserved its pagan traditions
until deep into the middle ages." But in the West the strength
of paganism was much greater, its tenacious vitality much more
conspicuous. Honorius, while continuing his father's proMbition
of pagan worship, and even of such " banquets " as had a pagan
significance, prefers to uphold some temples as buildMgs, fearing,
doubtless, what might be the effect of pulling them down in the
midst of a fanatical population ; but he does order such temples as
stood on private property to be destroyed by their owners. There
was mdeed tMoughout the West, and especially M Africa, a long
battle to be waged against the rallyings, so to speak, of pagan enthu
siasm ; we shall see how fierce these were M the earlier years of
Augustine's episcopate. At moments of popular excitement, of
terror, or of wrath, Christians might be endangered ; at any rate,
pagan voices woMd often be loudly raised, ascribing the calamities
of the empire to the wrath of the abandoned and insulted gods.
Here and there, again and again, with more or less of secrecy, the
old worsMp was renewed : not only did many Carthaginians pay
secret adoration to the goddess Caelestis, and village populations, by
their persistency in their old superstitions, cause the name " pagani "
to acquire the same force as our own word "heathen," but in
great centres of European life the old idolatry was long repre
sented by customs which had a political importance, and Christians
had to be warned, even by language in their liturgies, against

xxvi.] The Last Years of Theodosms. 535
mingling M idolatrous observances on tMs or that day of the year
or of the week ; and just as Pope Gelasius, a century later, was
faM to argue against the festival of the Lupercalia, so a successor
of Ms, in the eighth century, was admoMshed by St. Boniface to
purge Rome of popular customs essentially heathenish. Such
difficulties would be increased by the strange fasMon of combining
pagan with Christian emblems in the churches of "the City"
itself, of wMch Lanciani gives evidence in Ms " Pagan and Christian
Rome." But we must not pursue tMs subject, profoundly and mourn
fully interesting though it be to survey the protracted resistance of
the heathen spirit, even when banished to desolate moors and
forest recesses, and clinging (as Anglo-Saxon canons show) to the
neighbourhood of particular trees or wells or rocks. Not at the
bidding of any Christian autocrat woMd the evil spirit abandon its
old home : slowly, inch by inch, it retreated, lurking in secret
places when it was driven from public sight, contesting the ground
wherever it dared, insinuating itself into folds and nooks of pro
fessedly Christian life, bringing CMistians back under the bondage
of superstitious terror, and illustrating, through long ages, the
awful significance of the title of " the Prince of this world." AgaMst
some of these old-world usages the Church steadily set her face.
The practice of them was hidden from the clergy ; they were carried
on in remote parts among the peasantry, even as in some districts
of Scotland, witMn the nineteenth century, animals were killed or
buried alive with a vague notion of appeasMg malignant powers.
In other cases it was thought prudent to avoid the risk of alienating
a " converted " population by demanding an absolute surrender of
what had so long been cherished, and a compromise was made by
associating this or that observance with Christian sanctities in the
hope of rendering it harmless : but this sometimes left the pagan
element alive and potent under a thm veneer of ChristiaMty ; so
hard was the task of purgMg out the old leaven. But while one
must not imagMe that heatheMsm was suppressed by any edict,
even of a Theodosius, there is no doubt that his policy did inflict
a deadly wound on " the wild beast," and that, as the Church
historians tell us, many pagans came over to the faith under
impressions produced by such scenes as the taking of the
Serapeum. The year of the great edict had witnessed the closMg tragedy
of the dynasty of Valentinian. The young Western Emperor, just

536 The Age of the Fathers. [Chap.
twenty-one years old, had given of late, in Ms second reign, fair
promise of an excellent future. He was temperate, pure, affec
tionate, impartially just, and sufficiently self-controlled to profit by
reported criticism on Ms own tastes and to show that he was no
self-Mdulgent weakling — as when, to take a curious mstance, he
promptly put to death the wild beasts kept for his amusement, or
when he resolved to avoid the circus-games at the certain risk of
unpopularity. He could rebuke the slanderous accuser of some rich
nobles, and refused to add to that burden of over-taxed provmcials
which made life a misery to the taxpayers of Gaul. He was in
Gaul when the pagan senators made a fourth attempt to recover
their altar of Victory : he needed no prompting from Ambrose,
then at Milan, to refuse the request, and that in the face of advice
given on grounds of policy by Ms Christian privy-councillors. He
had shaken off the Arian influence of his mother, and was avowedly
a Catholic — and yet he was still unbaptized ; the bad old fashion of
postpomng the initiatory sacrament was thus once again exemplified
in an Emperor. He was unfortunate M his Gallic Master of the
Soldiery, Arbogast, a member of the fierce and treacherous Frankish
nation, who succeeded in makMg him practically a prisoner at
Vienne, and almost depriving him of the imperial digMty. Lonely,
helpless, alarmed for his personal safety, and so desirous to receive
baptism from Ambrose — unreasonably, Ambrose thought, yet
amiably — that he would not call in a Gallic bishop to confer it, he
sent one of those guards of his chamber who were called significantly
" Silentiaries," entreating Ambrose to come quickly Mto Gaul. The
messenger started on the eveMng of Thursday, May 13, 392, either
just before or just after a violent altercation between ValentMian
and Arbogast, in which the Emperor said, " I will rather die than
let my friends be harmed." On the Saturday, wMch was Whitsun-
eve, he was strangled, either by agents of Arbogast who came
behind Mm while he was playfully dipping his lips in the Rhone,
or during Ms sleep by chamberlains who had been bribed by a tool
of Arbogast, named EugeMus, a former secretary of state. Murdered
he certaMly was, but even Augustine was not sure of the circum
stances. Ambrose had already started for Vienne, had even crossed
the Alps, when he heard of the catastrophe : he returned home, and
wrote to Theodosius about it ; and when the remains of the murdered
prince were brought to Milan m a beautiful porphyry sarcophagus,
Ambrose pronounced the Consolatio or funeral address, memorable
as formulating the doctrine wMch became a commonplace among

xxvi.] The Last Years of Theodosius. 537
Western theologians, that the desire of baptism, where the sacra
ment itself could not be had, secured its grace, even as an un-
cMistened man dyMg a martyr was " washed in Ms own blood."
The application of tMs doctrine to Valentinian's pious wish Mvolved
an Mdulgent view of the case, because the poor young Emperor
was well withm reach of CMistian mMistry in the city wMch the
martyrs of 177 had made so illustrious.
EugeMus has just come before us as possibly guilty of that
innocent blood. He had been a schoolmaster as well as a state
official ; he was an eloquent rhetorician, doubtless at heart a pagan ;
he now received from Arbogast the ensigns of majesty, and one of
his first acts was to license the re-erection of the Victory-altar. A
courteous letter of his to Ambrose did not remove suspicion, nor
produce a direct reply; but early in 393 both EugeMus and
Arbogast came from Gaul Mto Italy, and Ambrose withdrew from
Milan m order to avoid meetMg them. He wrote, however, to
EugeMus, pointing out the Mconsistency of Ms CMistian professions
with concessions to pagan importuMty ; and he withheld the com
munion of the Milanese Church from both Emperor and Emperor-
maker, whereupon the savage Frank, with Flavian the pagan
prefect, vowed that, when they should come back victorious from
the impending contest with Theodosius, they would turn the great
basilica Mto a stable and compel the clergy to serve in the ranks.
In fact, the revolutionists openly proclaimed themselves chiefs of
a pagan reaction, and the pagan majority M the senate took heart
once more. Temples that had been closed were opened for pagan
worsMp ; various pagan rites, native and foreign, were triumphantly
performed M Rome itself; a huge statue of Jupiter, with golden
thunderbolts in its hand, was set up above the fortifications of the
Julian Alps ; and all alike, pagans or CMistians, must have listened
to tidings of Theodosius's westward march with fear or hope M
their most Mtense form. It would be a day of decision indeed ;
and so it was, that 6th of September, 394, when Theodosius, havMg
reached the neighbourhood of AqMleia, and sustaMed some loss M
a preliminary engagement, determined to risk another battle, and
if possible pierce through the IMe of enemies by wMch he was in
danger of beMg hemmed M. He could not, he said, allow the
standard of the Cross to retreat before the image of HercMes now
borne M front of the pagan army. He ordered a charge, and the
result was a great victory near the river Frigidus. Eugenius was
captured and slain, Arbogast and Flavian fled and slew themselves.

538 The Age of the Fathers. [Chap.
It was felt by CMistians to be a token in favour of CMistiaMty,
and the Christian spirit was actually exMbited' by the conqueror's
kindness to the sons of Eugenius, whom he caused to be brought
up as CMistians and maintained in positions of honour, as well as
by the mercy which he extended to some who had implored the
intercession of Ambrose.
If those Churchmen who saw Theodosius as monarch of the
Roman world at Milan in the autumn of 394, could have looked
round Christendom from that virtually central poMt, what would
have struck them as conspicuous phenomena ?
Siricius was still governing the Roman Church, which was
gaining repeated accessions of converts from the Mghest ranks of
Roman society : though, if Zosimus was rightly informed, when
Theodosius exhorted the senate to abandon the " error " of idolatry
and " adopt the Christian faith, wMch offered deliverance from all
sin and all impiety," he was met by an absolute refusal, on the
ground that the old rites had "kept Rome invmcible for nearly
twelve hundred years." WitMn the CMistian circles Jerome's
unmeasured abuse of JoviMan and vehement depreciation of the
married life had excited much perplexity and displeasure, so that
his learned and pious friend Pammachius, the son-in-law of Paula
and cousM of Marcella, withdrew as many copies of the work
"Against Jovinian" as he could lay hold of; and Jerome, being
Mformed by him of the effect which his passionate words had
produced, wrote what he called a "Defence," explaMing and
softeMng them, and insisting that he had allowed marriage to be
honourable, and to be in fact a divine gift, though Mferior to the
higher portion of celibacy. But it was characteristic of him to
close this paper with the words, " We have to choose whether we
will follow Lazarus or the rich man." His letters, although
obviously tinged with morose exaggeration of Roman luxury and
seK-MdMgence, and often dashed off, as he says, in circumstances
wMch gave him no time to revise them, may show us that there
were dangers to Christian principle and consistency in the wealthy
and refined social life of the ancient capital — dangers from which
several of the Roman clergy had proved themselves to be by no
means exempt.
In northern Italy Chromatius was presiding at AqMleia ;
Gaudentius was govermng the Church of Brescia ; Placentia was
under the care of a friend of Ambrose, bishop Sabinus ; at Trent,
Vigilius had begun an episcopate which was to close in martyrdom.

xxvi.] The Last Years of Theodosius. 539
In Gaul, Martin was approacMng Ms eightieth year ; Victricius,
who was afterwards wronged by harsh judgments as to his
orthodoxy, had begun his active episcopate at Rouen; and,
apparently in 394, twenty-one bishops had met in council at
Nismes, and passed some canons of Church discipline. In Spain
a remarkable abandonment of Mgh secular office for the Christian
priesthood had been seen in the person of Paulinus, the son of a
praetorian prefect, who was 'ere long to become a correspondent of
Augustine, to settle at Nola in CampaMa, and to devote Mmself
with ill-regulated enthusiasm to a "cultus" of the local saMt,
Felix. In Africa, Genethlius of Carthage, after holding a Council
in 390, had been succeeded in 392 by Aurelius, who in 393 had
assembled a plenary Council of African bishops in the basilica of
Peace at Hippo ; and before this assembly Augustine, the recently
ordained priest, delivered a discourse on doctrine. The controversy
with Donatism was still active, but the Donatists themselves were
now involved m a serious schism, for their bishop at Carthage,
Primianus, had made an enemy of his deacon Maximianus, who
orgaMzed a party, and procured a condemnation of Primianus by
more than a hundred Donatist bishops at Cabarsussi or Cebarsussa
in 393. These prelates appointed Maximianus to the bishopric ;
but Primianus, on his side, assembled at Bagaia or Baga, in April,
394, tMee hundred and ten bishops, who excommunicated Maxi
mianus as a schismatic and a rebel, Mcluding twelve adherents of
his in the same censure. Herein appeared, as Augustine fails not
to remind the Donatists, a likeness or repetition, withM their own
circles, of the treatment which their predecessors had dealt out to
the Catholic bishop of Carthage at the begMMng of their move
ment. As Majorinus had been set up against Caecilian, so was
Maximianus against Primianus. If the Council of Bagaia had a
right to condemn Maxmaianus, and to insist on the legitimacy of
the episcopate of Primianus, the Catholic Councils had a right to
condemn the whole Donatist body. The Donatist majority,
in short, had no better ground as agaMst the Donatist minority
than the Church had agaMst them — nor, indeed, so good. They
were but reaping what they had sown — " the engineer was hoist
with his own petard ; " and when they invoked the civil power
against their rivals, in order to deprive them of churches, they
stopped their own mouths as to governmental action in behalf of
Catholics. But the African Church itself, of tMs time, was by no

54° The Age of the Fathers. [Chap.
means free from confusions and abuses; a litigious unbrotherly
spirit and a self-asserting factiousness were rife among bishops, and
the seMor prelate, who as such acted as a metropolitan, was disposed
to assume too lordly a tone ; as bishops sometimes invaded each
other's rights, so presbyters took occasion to overstep the functions
of their own order; there was a carelessness as to the Church
service, a neglect of the rule of fasting communion, an unclerical
laxity of habits within the ecclesiastical body, a want of due
care as to the qualifications for ordination, in some places an
exceeding deficiency of clergy, which made it desirable to admit
conformMg Donatist clergy to serve in the Church, if only they
had not personally rebaptized. And Augustine had to entreat the
bishop of Carthage to forbid the revelries wMch, professedly in
honour of the martyrs, and, in the estimation of the ignorant,
connected with, or contributing to, the " solace of the departed,"
were almost daily beMg held at martyr-sMMes, and witMn the
house of God. TMs scandalous perversion of the ancient Agapae
had been suppressed, where it had existed, m Italy and other
countries; M Africa great caution and gentleness would be
reqMred for its effective abolition.
If we look from Western to Eastern Africa, we shall find
that the Egyptian monks of this period included Arsenius, who
had been tutor to the two sons of Theodosius, Arcadius and
Honorius, and had recently fled from Court, in despair of doing
any good at Ms post, and M a passionate longMg for quiet and
solitude ; he dwelt in the wilderness of Scetis, where were still to
be found some who had listened to St. Antony. John Cassian, who
about this time visited the Egyptian monasteries and hermitages,
found a great multitude of recluses in the Mil country where
Antony had lived : fourteen hundred monks at Tabenne, five
hundred at "the Cells," five thousand M Nitria, about two
thousand near Alexandria — M all above seventy-six thousand,
generally attired alike, in tunic, cape, and sheepskin ; observing a
regular order of prayers, according to which, at nocturns and in
the eveMng, they recited twelve psalms and two lessons, besides
meeting for the Eucharist on Sunday and Saturday, and uniting
the work of making mats with devotion; the more conspicuous
among them often conversing with true spiritual insight, the result
of deep experience ; the average monks greatly tried by various
temptations, often falling, often tenderly and discrimMatingly
treated by their elders or " abbots ; " sometimes exhibiting, amid

xxvi.] The Last Years of Theodosius. 541
their earnestness, no small amount of morbid fanaticism ; sometimes
rising above the hardness and narrowness which monastic life so
often nurtured, and showing a strange power of sympathy and a
truly Christian temper of soul.
In the neighbouring country of Palestine there were many
recluses, but one tMnks mainly of the great student of Bethlehem.
He had completed, before 391, Ms correction of the current Latin
version of the SeptuagMt ; he had then commenced, and for the
most part completed, a new translation from the Hebrew, which,
after a long struggle with the older forms of the Latin Bible,
gradually won its way to universal acceptance as the authoritative
version, or "Vulgate," of the whole Western Church; and he
had had experience of the bitter and narrow-mMded criticism of
those " detractors " who could not appreciate the value of such
work, and who disliked the disturbance of traditions which it
would Mvolve. But his quiet labours had been troubled by a
controversy, which was destined to become at once a scandal and
a sorrow. A certain Aterbius had come in 393 to Jerusalem,
and denounced Rufinus, then living there, as a follower of Origen
in his peculiar speculations, — including Jerome in his vehement
censures. The two friends took this treatment differently : Rufinus
remained shut up in his house without a word ; Jerome disowned
the charge of being an " Origenist," although, he said, he had
admired much m Origen's writings. TMs was the begMMng of a
historic quarrel. In 394, about Easter, Epiphanius came to
Jerusalem, and conversed with John, the bishop, as to the dangers
of Origenistic thought, referring especially to its excessive " Sub-
ordinatiomsm," its Platonism on the pre-existence of souls, its
ultra-allegorism, its supposed thoroughgoing Universalism. He
then visited Jerome, and also Rufinus, to whom he offered the kiss
of peace ; and afterwards he thought himself called upon to preach
in the church of the Resurrection denouncMg " Origenism," and
thus virtually attacking the bishop of Jerusalem, whom he regarded
as to some extent an Origenist. This was naturally resented by
John, who sent Ms archdeacon to desire the foreign prelate to be
silent, and both by glances and words expressed Ms opMion that
Epiphanius was M his dotage. The congregation adjourned to the
Golgotha chapel on the supposed site of the Crucifixion. Epi
phanius was greeted on all sides with enthusiastic reverence, wMch
could not but be irritating to John, who in a violent speech, ac
companied by significant gestures, attacked the coarse materialising

542 The Age of the Fathers. [Chap.
conceptions of God which, as he inthnated, were usually enter-
taMed by uMntellectual denouncers of Origen. EpiphaMus,
with unusual moderation, arose, " greeted the Church with voice
and hand," and said quietly, "All that my brother in office, my
son in age, has said against the AnthropomorpMtes' heresy was
well and faithfully spoken. I also condemn that heresy ; but it
is only fair that we should also condemn the perverse dogmas of
Origen." This ready-witted reply was welcomed with laughter
and applause. Epiphanius retired to Bethlehem, and there, after
one brief visit to Jerusalem, fixed his abode for the rest of the year
394 ; but, while visiting a monastery of Ms own foundation near
Eleutheropolis, he was induced by the urgency of the Bethlehem
monks to ordain Paulinianus, Jerome's brother, first deacon and
then priest, on each occasion causing his mouth to be stopped by a
number of deacons, " lest he should adjure Epiphanius in the name
of Christ to set him free." The motive of this strange proceedMg
was not likely to abate John's natural displeasure at what he of
course regarded as a grave irregularity ; it was to provide the
monks with a priest who could officiate for them — Jerome always,
from a fanatical Mnd of humility, refrained from officiating —
when they were separate, as virtually he thought them now
separate, from the commuMon of John. EpiphaMus had all the
hard, narrow, and arbitrary ways of thinking and acting wMch
would be likely to belong to an old man who imagined Mmself a
privileged person, and had long taken his own line (as he did M a
later controversy) without regard for other considerations ; he acted
for Mmself without any misgivMg, and long controversial habits
had made his zeal for orthodoxy, or for what he thought right as
to Church worship and arrangements, peculiarly rigid and austere.
Thus began a twofold controversy — referring generally to the
question of the theological merits or demerits of Origen's peculiar
spiritualism, and carrying with it a particular and painfully acri-
moMous dispute between Jerome and Epiphanius on the one hand,
and Rufinus and John of Jerusalem on the other.
For the rest, the Church of the Eastern empire was at the end
of this year M the enjoyment of considerable tranquillity ; but it
was about to lose two at least of its chief ornaments, for Gregory
of Nyssa and Amphilochius of Iconium were now passing from the
scene — Gregory, at any rate, does not appear after the Council of
Constantinople of this autumn, and Amphilochius can hardly have
lived much longer. But the departure of any ecclesiastic, however

xxvi.] The Last Years of Theodosius. 543
well known, would seem comparatively an insignificant event in the
presence of that great loss wMch the whole Church, as well as the
whole empire, sustained by the death of Theodosius at Milan, on
the 17th of January, 395. He had sunk, it is said, Mto one of his
moods of indolence ; Ms constitution lost tone, and he succumbed
to dropsy. If ecclesiastical gratitude has praised Mm overmuch,
the reaction which treats Gibbon's " panegyric " as too " ample," and
would compare Mm to a Spanish king of the type of Philip II.,
seems at least as excessive. The great fault of his character was
compatible with a frankness and warm-heartedness which secured
the affection, as well as the loyalty, of one who had " tried the
good and the evil among men." His last moments were saddened
by anxieties for the Church, and cheered by the miMstrations of
Ambrose ; and the event which deprived the Catholic community
of so powerful a protector, and left his realm divided between two
incapable youths, ushered M an epoch which seemed full of gloom
and peril alike to the empire and the Church.

END OF VOL. I.

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