THE FIRST ECUMENICAL COUNCIL OF NICAEA.

 A.D. 325.

PRELIMINARY.

 

The Doctrine of the Logos prior to Arianism.

 

FROM the beginning, two points concerning the Logos and His relation to the Father have stood as divinely revealed in the consciousness of the Church. On the one hand: His real divinity and equality with the Father; on the other, His personal distinction from the Father. But before the Council of Nicaea this sure doctrine of the faith had not been set forth in a sufficiently definite or positive manner. Whilst some of the ancient Fathers, in expounding the faith of the Church, had, without thoroughly mastering the formula of Nicaea, perfectly understood and taught its meaning, others selected less happy expressions, and sometimes erroneous ones — such as would, in their consequences, even lead to heresy. These same Fathers have, in different portions of their writings, expressed themselves sometimes with theological accuracy, sometimes with less accuracy. Thus, for example, S. Irenaeus, Clement of Alexandria, S. Gregory Thaumaturgus of Neocaesarea, and Methodius, did not always choose their expressions carefully, but in substance they incontestably maintained the true doctrine. It is the same with Justin, Athenagoras, and Theophilus, who expressed themselves irreproachably on the chief dogmatic points, but differ in some of their inferences from the rule of the Church. The Apologists, above all others, to make themselves more acceptable and intelligible to the heathen who were accustomed to the Platonic philosophy, made a less clear and exact declaration of the doctrine of the Logos. In this endeavour they have too often brought the Christian idea of the Logos near to that of Plato and Philo, and so have too often degraded the Son in His dignity and power, attributed a beginning to His existence, and consequently have not recognised His equality with the Father (thus, among the orthodox Fathers, Athenagoras and Theophilus; among the more heterodox, Tatian, Tertullian, and especially Origen), and have emphasized too much the personal distinction between the Father and the Son.

On the other hand, they also tried to establish the second point of the traditional doctrine, the true divinity of the Son, and His equality with the Father, by declaring that the Logos was not a creature, and by saying that He came from the substance of the Father, and not from nothing, as the creatures do. They sometimes deny that the Logos was subsequent to the Father in His existence, which they affirm in other places. Attaching themselves to the distinction established by Philo, several of the ancient Fathers, philosophizing on the Son of God in the sense of the Logos as He is personally distinct from the Father, speak of this Logos as of a being subordinate, and having an existence subsequent in time to that of the Father. In other places, on the contrary, they seem to and include the Logos completely in the divine substance. These last passages correct all that is exaggerated in the others, and positively support the ancient Fathers on the solid basis of the Church.

In certain cases, the two principal points of the doctrine of the Logos — the unity of the Son with the Father, and the distinction between the Father and the Son — have been regarded as contradictory propositions; and instead of preserving each in its theological entirety and relation to the other, they have thought to annihilate the one by the other. Out of this arose Sabellianism. This heresy, while maintaining the proper God-head of the Son, in order the better to establish His equality with the Father, destroyed the personal distinction between the Father and the Son. But as one extreme leads to another, Sabellianism necessarily produced Subordinationism as its natural reaction; i.e. the theory which, in endeavouring to preserve the personal distinction between the Father and the Son, like Emanationism, subordinates in glory and in dignity Him who is begotten — that is to say, the Son — to Him who is unbegotten, and thus approximates Him more or less to the creatures. The celebrated Dionysius the Great, Bishop of Alexandria, is the most remarkable in this contest. About the year 260, in his dogmatic letter to Ammonius and Euphranor, as is well known, he expressed himself very indefinitely; and in order to mark more forcibly the distinction between the Father and the Son, he added, “that the Son in substance is alien from the Father, as the vine plant and the vine-dresser are distinct one from the other in substance”; and “as He could not have been before He was made”. Thus in words, though not by intention, Dionysius had placed the Son on a par with the creatures. His excuse is found in the uncertain and vacillating language of his time, even apart from his well-intended opposition to Sabellianism, since other orthodox writers also describe the derivation of the Son from the Father promiscuously by such expressions as condere, and generare.

Pope Dionysius and his Synod were more clearsighted than these theologians. When several African bishops complained to him of the errors of Dionysius of Alexandria, the Pope held a Synod about the year 260; and after having deliberated with the members of the Synod on the dogma in question, he addressed to his colleague in Alexandria, and probably at the same time to other bishops of Egypt and Libya, a letter very remarkable in the history of the true faith, the greater part of which has been preserved for us by S. Athanasius. In it he protests against three errors : first, against the tritheistic, “which, diametrically opposed to Sabellius, divides the divine monarchy into three separate powers or hypostases, and plainly teaches that there are three Gods”. Baur supposed that the accusers of Dionysius of Alexandria had supported the doctrine of tritheism. Dorner, on the other hand, believes that tritheism was the result of a mixture of Sabellianism and Marcionitism; but he has not proved that this amalgamation existed during that period. Secondly, the Pope condemned, briefly and casually, Sabellianism; and, thirdly and lastly, he spoke at some length against those who called the Son a creature, when Holy Scripture declares that He was begotten. “Had He been created”, said he, “there would have been a period when He did not exist. Now the Son has always existed!”. The Pope then explains critically those passages in the Bible which seemingly speak of a creation of the Son; and against these he brings forward those which speak of His generation and of His eternity. He closes with these words : “The admirable and holy unity (of God) cannot in consequence be divided into three Godheads; and the dignity and incomparable greatness of the Lord ought not to be lowered by the expression creature being applied to Him. It is necessary to believe in God the Father Almighty, and in Jesus Christ His Son, and in the Holy Ghost, and that the Logos is united to the God of the universe”. The Bishop of Rome here clearly professes the doctrine of Nicaea; and that Dionysius the Great of Alexandria also professed it, is proved by two letters which he then sent to Rome to justify himself, and which S. Athanasius quoted in order to prove that the Arians had done wrong in numbering Dionysius as one of their party. Dionysius says, in his letters, that his accusers had falsely enlarged him with denying the equality of the substance of the Father and the Son; and if he had said that nowhere in the Bible the word omousios could be found, the argument of which he made use, and which his adversaries had passed over in silence, was in complete agreement with that expres-sion. He had, indeed, compared the relation between God the Father and God the Son with those between parents and children, as children are of the same substance as their parents. He had also employed other analogous arguments, e.g. the example of the plant and its root or its seed, between which there was an evident identity of substance. To the same effect was his comparison of the river and its source. He says, in another part of his letter of justification : “There has never been a moment when God was not the Father; and the Son is eternal; but He has His being, not of Himself, but of the Father”. Also in a third place he declares “he does not believe the Logos is a creature, and that he has not called God Creator, but Father, to express the relation that He has to the Son. If, however, in the course of his speech (and without intending it) he has once called the Father : Creator, to express His relation to the Son, he may be excused, seeing that the learned Greeks call themselves also ‘creators’, as being fathers of their works, and that the Bible itself does not always employ the word in the sense of creator, but sometimes also in the sense of originator : for instance, when it says we are the creators of the movements of our hearts”.

After Dionysius the Great, the most illustrious doctors of the Church of Alexandria, Theognostus, Pierius, and Bishop Peter, professed also the orthodox doctrine of the Logos. The first of these, who was chief of the catechetical school of this town from 270 to about 280, states explicitly, in a fragment preserved by S. Athanasius : “The substance of the Son came not from without, neither was it produced from nothing : it proceeds from the substance of the Father, as brilliancy proceeds from light, vapour from water”. If in a fragment of Theognostus, preserved by Photius, the Son is called a creature, Photius presumes this expression comes from a questioner; as the work from which it is taken is a dialogue : anyhow, the formal declaration quoted above proves that he could not have used the word ‘creature’ in an Arian sense. His successor, the priest Pierius, professes the same doctrine of the Logos. Photius says of him : “It is true he called the Father and the Son two substances (ousias) instead of persons or hypostases; but, however, he spoke in an orthodox manner”. And this testimony of Photius is the more convincing to us, from the decided manner in which he blames Pierius in another passage on account of his doctrine of the Holy Ghost : if his teaching on the Logos had not been orthodox, Photius would have blamed him for this too.

The third great Alexandrian of that time was Bishop Peter; and although the fragment attributed to him in the Chronicon Paschale is probably not genuine, two other fragments prove that he attributed to the Son the same nature and Godhead as to the Father. It was different at Antioch, where the efforts to uphold the unity of God degenerated into the doctrine of Paul of Samosata, who considered the Logos as impersonal, and not distinct from the Father, and saw in Christ only a man in whom the divine Logos had dwelt and operated. A fellow-countryman of Paul’s, who shared his sentiments, Lucian, priest of Antioch, defended for some time this heretical doctrine of the Trinity, and for that reason was excommunicated for a time. Later, however, he acquired great distinction, by the publication of a corrected copy of the Septuagint, and by the firmness with which he suffered martyrdom under Maximin. The restoration of Lucian to the Church proves that eventually he renounced the doctrine of Paul of Samosata : but being still convinced that the Church did not maintain with sufficient firmness the dogma of the unity of God, he imagined another hypothesis of the Trinity, which is not perfectly known to us for lack of sufficient information, but which, according to Alexander Bishop of Alexandria, came out in the heresy of the Exucontians, and more particularly in that of his disciple Arius. Arius himself traced his doctrine to the school of Lucian, in greeting his friend Eusebius of Nicomedia, who shared his opinion, with the name of fellow-Lucianist. This being the case, it is of little importance to decide whether Arius was personally a disciple of Lucian at Antioch, or whether his opinion was formed from his writings only. In the letter from Arius to Eusebius of Nicomedia, just quoted, one sees that the principles of Lucian were widely spread in Asia; for Arius not only speaks of Eusebius as sharing his opinions, but also of a great many other bishops of Asia, who had all proclaimed that the Son was not eternal equally with the Father. The denial of the co-eternity of the Father and the Son seems therefore to have been a fundamental point in the doctrine of Lucian.

Besides, S. Epiphanius says : “Lucian and his followers all denied that the Son of God had taken a human soul, attributing to Him only a human body, for the sake of endowing the Logos with human feelings, such as sorrow, joy, and the like; and they also declared Him a being inferior to God — a creature, in fact”. Arius and his partisans made great use of this only a human body, and thereby again revealed their affinity with the school of Lucian. We know also that Lucian was looked upon as the author of the creed that the Eusebians (that is, the friends of Arius) submitted to the Synod of Antioch in 341, in which, as we shall see, the teaching was not positively heretical, but in which all sharp precision of dogma is intentionally avoided.

 

Arius.

 

The Subordinationist theology of Antioch was transplanted to Alexandria by Arius, the oft-named disciple of the school of Lucian; and on this new ground it gained strength and importance. The mind of Arius was disposed to this purely rationalistic theology; and from his point of view of mere natural intelligence, it became impossible for him to reconcile theoretically these two apparently contradictory dogmas of the equality of the Logos with the Father, and of His distinction from Him. “Arius”, says Dorner with justice, “takes part with pleasure and skill in the relative sphere : he handles the lower categories of logic with dialectic skill; but he never rises above it : he applies it to everything. He is quite incapable of rising to speculative science, properly so called”. But he would certainly not have created so much disturbance in the minds of the people, had he not found in Alexandria a field well prepared to receive this theory of subordination, even so far back as the time of Origen. A certain hostility had been created against the theology of equality (the doctrine of the equality of the Son with the Father), which was taught by Theognostus, Pierius, and Bishop Peter, and now anew by Bishop Alexander. The representatives of the old Alexandrian tendency naturally linked themselves with pleasure to Arius; and thus it was that in later times the Arians earnestly appealed to the authority of Origen, and protected themselves under his name, and pretended to proceed directly from him. Athanasius carefully refuted this. Besides, the Church of Alexandria was a specially prepared soil for this new growth : she had been for more than a century the philosophizing Church of Christianity. She readily threw herself into all philosophical and theological controversies. Being in close proximity to the native country of Sabellianism, she felt constantly called upon to combat it, and so was led imperceptibly into the other extreme. Arius himself was Libyan by birth, consequently a compatriot of Sabellius; thus he might have considered himself specially called on to combat the Sabellian theory, which annihilated all distinction between the Father and the Son. Philonism, of which Alexandria was the hot-bed, seems also to have exercised some influence over the development of Arianism; and as the following details will prove, Arius built on the base of this philosophy. Thus,

(a.) Like Philo, he exaggerated the distinction between the world and God, and considered the supreme God much too sublime to enter into direct relation with the world, and the world much too low to bear any direct action of God. Now Athanasius proves that Arius, and his friends Eusebius and Asterius, had appropriated to themselves this fundamental proposition of Philo’s philosophy.

(b.) Like Philo, Arius admitted an intermediate being, who being less than God, was the divine organ of the creation of the world (like the created gods of Plato) : this intermediate being was the Logos. Thus the Arian Logos resembled that of Philo : they are each declared inferior to the Father.

(c.) Now the intermediate and inferior being could not be equal in substance and equal in eternity (consubstantial and co-eternal) with the supreme and only true God. It may thus be seen how all the other Subordinationist predicates of the Logos arise of themselves from the fundamental propositions of Philo.

Arius completely failed to perceive the contradiction which springs from the adoption of an intermediate being. According to his view, the supreme God could not create anything imperfect; yet He makes the Son imperfect. If God can create only perfect beings, it becomes necessary that the plenitude of perfection, and consequently of divinity, be found in the Son; if not, the supreme God could create imperfect beings : thus He could equally have created the world.

The analogy between the intermediate being of the Arians and the Gnostic Demiurge is evident, but the difference which existed between the two must not be overlooked. They resemble each other, inasmuch as neither can produce perfect beings. But whilst the Gnostic Demiurge only presides over a period of the world’s existence, the Arian Logos does not cease to act as long as the world exists.

The age of the Emperor Constantine was undeniably very favourable for the rise and rapid propagation of the doctrine of Subordination; for after the conversion of the Emperor, many learned heathens entered the Church without a real vocation, and there spread on all sides religious theories much more favourable to half-pagan Subordinationism than to the profoundly Christian doctrine of the equality of the Father and of the Son.

We know but little of the life of Arius before he set forth his errors, and what is known of him is not very certain. He embraced at Alexandria the side of the Meletians at first, but afterwards abandoned it, and was ordained deacon by Peter Bishop of Alexandria. At a later period, having taken the side of the Meletians, he was excommunicated by Bishop Peter; but his successor Achillas (a.d. 312) reconciled him to the Church, and ordained him priest. Soon after, Arius was put at the head of a Church called Baucalis, as the large number of Christians in Alexandria had rendered necessary the division of the town into districts, corresponding with what are now called parishes.

Arius was tall and thin; a learned man and a clever logician; of austere appearance and serious bearing, and yet of very fascinating manners; at the same time proud, ambitious, insincere, and cunning. Epiphanius calls him a perfidious serpent. Bishop Alexander reproaches him with his avarice, and speaks of his following composed of women, in such a way that later historians believed —wrongfully, no doubt— that disgraceful inferences might be drawn against his private life. Two statements by Theodoret, on the ambition and arrogance of Arius, have led to the belief that, after the death of Achillas (towards the end of 312), Arius strove for the Episcopal dignity; but seeing his old colleague Alexander preferred to him, he conceived a deep hatred against him. The Arian historian Philostorgius, on the contrary, asserts that Arius himself made over to Alexander the votes which were offered to himself. Neither of these assertions seems to have been true. Theodoret is nearer the truth when he says, that in the beginning Alexander highly esteemed Arius. Chronology confirms this statement; for the discussion between Arius and his bishop did not, as it would seem, take place until 318 or 320, when Alexander had been Bishop of Alexandria for more than six years, and until then apparently the most profound good feeling had existed between Arius and him.

But whilst admitting that a certain antipathy existed between them, it must not therefore be concluded that it gave rise to the doctrinal controversy : this was simply the result of different theological convictions. Socrates thus relates the manner in which this difference first arose : “Bishop Alexander of Alexandria one day spoke, in presence of his priests and clergy, of the mystery of the Trinity, and insisted especially on the Unity in the Trinity, philosophizing on this grave subject, and thinking he was gaining honour by his argument. But Arius, who was eager for dispute, professed to discover Sabellianism in the bishop's doctrine. He opposed it vehemently, and asserted that if the Father had begotten the Son, he who was begotten had a beginning of his being, and consequently there was a time when he could not have been; that it also followed that the Son had his beginning from nothing”.

All history posterior to Arianism proves that Arius was unjust in accusing his bishop of Sabellianism; but that which chiefly proves it is the conduct of Alexander at the Council of Nicaea, and likewise his letters and those of Arius, which we shall soon have occasion to examine. Arius admitted, with the orthodox Fathers, that the term “begotten” was the palladium which could alone save the doctrine of the personal existence of the Son against Sabellianism. He therefore took the idea of “begotten” as the groundwork of his argument; but he transferred the idea of time, which rules every human generation, to the divine generation, and drew from that, as he thought, with logical necessity, the proposition that the Son could not be co-eternal with the Father. He did not, however, wish to speak of a priority in time, properly so called, but only of priority similar to a priority in time, of the Father to the Son; for, according to Arius, time began with the creation, and thus the Son, by whom all things were created, and who, consequently, was before the creation, was born also before all time.

Other theologians had, before Arius, already developed this argument; but he afterwards went beyond it, and thought that the distinction he had established between the Father and the Son would fade away if he admitted that the Son is begotten of the substance of the Father. This fear has apparently been justified by the history of the word “consubstantial”; for this word, as we have already seen, was rejected by the Synod of Antioch, held in 269. But Arius not only avoided this definite expression, but all others similar to it used by the holy Fathers to show that the Son emanated from the substance of the Father. He not only rejected the expression, but went further than anyone else among the ancients. He positively made the Logos a ‘creature’ in the special sense of the word.

Arius had another motive for not admitting that the Son was begotten of the substance of the Father. He believed that by so doing the divine substance would be divided, whilst God is essentially indivisible; and, in point of fact, the Arians constantly reproached their adversaries with considering the divine substance as something corporeal, and dividing it. They believed that their doctrine of the Logos alone maintained, not only the indivisibility and immateriality of God, but likewise His immutability. The creation of temporal things would, according to them, have wrought a change in the Creator; for if the supreme God had made the world. He would have lost His immutability, which is contrary to the idea we have of God. On the contrary, there was no danger in denying the immutability of the Son, as being declared to be a creature who took part in the creation of the world. They said, then, “By nature the Son is not unchangeable, but only by His own will”.

Arius first appeared on the scene with these opinions between 318 and 320. This date, though uncertain, has every appearance of probability. Sozomen, Theodoret, and Epiphanius relate, as did Socrates, with slight differences of detail only, the beginning of the Arian controversy. Socrates does not say that Bishop Alexander gave rise to the discussion by a sermon; according to him, it was Arius who began of himself to spread his errors. The bishop was blamed for tolerating the beginning of it. He did not, however, wish to use his authority against Arius : he preferred to call together his clergy, and made them argue in his presence with Arius; and they proclaimed the Son consubstantial and co-eternal with the Father. In the beginning of the discussion Alexander did not take either side; but towards the end he approved of those who had defended the consubstantiality and co-eternity of the Son, and commanded Arius to retract his error. Epiphanius maintains, but it is difficult to admit the assertion, that the chief adversary and opposer of Arius was Bishop Meletius, the chief of the schismatics, of whom we have already spoken. Arius was little disposed to submit to the orders of his bishop; on the contrary, he sent to several bishops a written confession of faith, and begged them, if they approved of it, to send him their adhesion, and to intercede with Bishop Alexander in his favour. In a short time he made many friends, especially the celebrated Eusebius of Nicomedia, who, being then bishop in the household of Constantine and his sister Constantia, exercised great influence over them, and over many of the other bishops. He interested himself actively with them on behalf of Arius, and sent him his adhesion in writing. He, like Arius, was a disciple of Lucian, and accepted in general the propositions of Arianism.

“One only”, he thought, “the Father, is unbegotten; the other (the Son) is truly (that is to say, in the full sense of the word) created, and not of the substance of the Father. The Son does not participate in the substance (ousia) of the unbegotten; He differs from Him in nature and in power, although He was created in perfect resemblance to the nature and power of His Creator. No one can express in words His beginning, or even understand it in thought”. The letter to Bishop Paulinus of Tyre, in which Eusebius expresses these opinions, is at the same time a proof of the zeal he displayed in favour of Arius and his cause; for he reproaches this bishop with not having declared in favour of Arius, although at heart he shared his opinions. He exhorts him to repair his fault, and above all to write (as he no doubt had already done himself) to Bishop Alexander, and set forth the true doctrine, namely, that of Subordination. He proposed Eusebius of Caesarea to him as a model, the celebrated church historian, who, without being a decided Arian, was visibly in favour of this party. Besides these two, Eusebius and Paulinus of Tyre, there were the bishops, Theodotus of Laodicea, Athanasius of Anazarbus, Gregory of Berytus, and Aetius of Lydda (or Diospolis), who interested themselves in favour of Arius. Very shortly others showed themselves on the same side : among the most remarkable were the two Africans, Secundus Bishop of Ptolemais in Libya, and Theonas of Marmarica, both of whom belonged to the province of Alexandria, and openly took part with Arius. Besides, from the Alexandrian and Mareotic clergy, there were added to the heretical party the two priests Chares and Pistus, and the thirteen following deacons, — Achillas, Euzoius, Aithalas, Lucius, Sarmates, Julius, Menas, Helladius, Serapion, Paramnon, Zosimus, Irenaeus, and a second Arius. Among them also are named Carponas and Eusebius, without mention of the order to which they belonged. These names are given by Bishop Alexander himself in three lists, made at different times, for which reason they do not all agree. Epiphanius, on the contrary, speaks of seven priests, twelve deacons, and seven hundred virgins consecrated to God (Egypt had a great many such) who took part with Arius. It is probable that, in so grave a matter, Alexander early consulted with other bishops; at least this may be concluded from some passages contained in a letter which he wrote later, and which is found in Theodoret. But it is also certain that at the beginning Alexander endeavoured to keep the matter as quiet and peaceable as possible; and that, in connection with his clergy, he addressed remonstrances not only by word, but in writing, to Arius and his partisans.

 

The Synod of Alexandria in 320, and its Consequences.

 

Bishop Alexander, seeing the uselessness of his efforts, in 320 or 321, convoked a large ecclesiastical assembly in Alexandria, at which were present nearly a hundred Egyptian and Libyan bishops. The matter of their deliberations has not reached us; we only know that Arius and his partisans were anathematized. His partisans, said Alexander in two letters, were the two bishops Theonas and Secundus, and the majority of the deacons recently named. Arius wished to prove that Eusebius of Caesarea, Theodotus of Laodicea, Paulinus of Tyre, and, in one word, the greater number of the bishops in Asia, were condemned with him by the Synod of Alexandria; but that was a false inference. It is likely that the Synod, after having excommunicated by name the African Arians, and especially those of Alexandria, pronounced a general anathema against the partisans of this heresy; and from this Arius drew the conclusions which suited him.

Although excommunicated, Arius continued to hold congregations for divine service; and Bishop Alexander speaks of several churches (which he designates as dens of thieves) where the Arians habitually met, and offered night and day outrages against Christ, and against the bishop. He mentions, in the same letter, how they sought in different towns to attract adherents by their lectures and writings, and especially sought to deceive women by their flatteries and falsehoods. They went so far, says he, that they stirred up against the orthodox the populace and the civil authorities (still principally heathen, for Egypt depended on Licinius), and endeavoured, when all was peace, to excite a new persecution. Alexander saw himself obliged, by the insolence and constant machinations of the Arians, as well as by the open partisanship of Eusebius of Mcomedia, to inform all the bishops of the position of affairs in elaborate letters. For the same purpose he convoked a new assembly of the Alexandrian and Mareotic clergy, and asked all the united clergy (among them Athanasius, then a deacon) to sign his Epistola encyclica. After a very fine introduction on the unity of the Church, Alexander especially complained of Eusebius of Nicomedia, who had undertaken to protect the heresy, and who recommended Arius and his partisans everywhere by his writings and letters. This conduct obliged him to speak openly. He afterwards enumerated the names of the apostates, and exposed their chief errors, which were the following : —

1. God was not always Father; there was a time when He was not Father.

2. The Logos of God has not always been; He was created from nothing; God, the self-existent, created from nothing Him who is not self-existent.

3. Consequently there was a time when He was not.

4. The Son is a creature.

5. He is not of the same substance as the Father; He is not truly and according to His nature the Word and the Wisdom of God; but one of the works, and of the creatures of God, He is only by an abuse called the Logos; He was created by the true Logos, and by the inner Wisdom of God. It is by this inner Wisdom that God created Him and all things.

6. Thus it is that by nature He is subject to change, that is to say, by nature liable to sin.

7. He is a stranger to the divine ousia (susbtance, nature of God), and differs from it . He does not know God perfectly; He does not even know His own nature perfectly.

8. He was created for us, so that God might create us by Him as His instrument; and He would not have existed, had He not been called into existence by God through love for us.

Bishop Alexander afterwards refutes these Arian doctrines by texts from the Holy Scriptures; and at the end he implores the bishops not to admit the Arians into the communion of the Church, and to have no confidence in Eusebius and others like him.

Theodoret has preserved a second letter of Alexander’s (and of his Synod), addressed, according to the title given by Theodoret, to Alexander Bishop of Constantinople. But not only is this title wanting in three ancient manuscripts; but besides, at the time the letter was written, the name Constantinople did not exist. Moreover, this letter was not addressed to one, but to several bishops, as the contents prove. It is said in the letter, that Arius and his friend Achillas went further than Colluthus had done, who had previously founded a sect in Alexandria. Even Colluthus at this time blamed the conduct of the Arians, who did not submit to the Church, who held meetings in their dens of robbers, denied the God-head of our Saviour, misinterpreted those texts of Scripture for their own purpose which speak of the humiliation of Christ, which was for our salvation, and endeavoured to stir the people up against the orthodox, and to excite persecutions against them by calumnious pamphlets written by disorderly women. After having been for these several causes excluded from the Church, the Arians endeavoured by falsehoods, and by concealing their errors, to bring other bishops over to their side, and many of them had succeeded in being admitted into the communion of the Church. Consequently it became necessary to unveil without delay their errors, which consisted in maintaining :

"That there was a period when the Son of God did not exist;

"That, not existing at first. He was later called into existence;

"That He was created out of nothing, like everything else, reasonable or unreasonable, and consequently was by nature liable to change, capable of goodness and of sin;

"But that God, knowing that He (the Son) would not deny Him, chose Him above all created beings, although by nature He had no higher claim than the other sons of God, that is, than other virtuous men. If Peter and Paul had sought to reach the same perfection as Christ, their relation to God would have been absolutely the same as that in which Christ stood."

Then Bishop Alexander again refuted the Arians by texts of Scripture : he compared them to the Ebionites, to Artemas and Paul of Samosata; he called them Exucontians, a title which in later times was frequently employed; he complained that three Syrian bishops urged the Arians to still grayer excesses; then returned afresh to biblical proof against the Arians, and developed the orthodox faith, saying that the Son was not subject to any change, and is in all things like the Father, perfect as He is perfect, and in one point only subordinate to the Father — in not being unbegotten. In other respects the Son is the exact image of the Father. He is from all eternity; but from this it must not be concluded, as the Arians have wrongfully done, and as they falsely accuse those who are orthodox of doing, that the Son was not begotten : for those two terms, "Being from all eternity”, and “not begotten”, are not identical; there is a difference between them. The Son, being in all things the image of the Father, should be worshipped as God. The Christian recognises also, with the Father and the Son, the Holy Ghost, who worked in the holy men of the Old Testament, and on the holy teachers of the New.

Bishop Alexander continued to set forth the other articles of the faith, and employed the term which became celebrated later in Christian controversy, the “Mother of God”. In conclusion, he exhorted the bishops to admit no Arian into the communion of the Church, and to act as did the bishops of Egypt, Libya, Asia, Syria, etc., who had sent him written declarations against Arianism, and signed his tómos, that is to say, his treatise (perhaps the encyclical letter of which we have already spoken). He hopes they will send him similar declarations, as perhaps the number of the bishops might convert the Arians. He adds in the appendix the names of the ecclesiastics of Alexandria who were excommunicated along with Arius.

 

Arius obliged to leave Alexandria; his Letters and his Thalia.

 

Driven from Alexandria by his bishop, Arius went first to Palestine, and from thence addressed a letter to his powerful protector, Eusebius of Nicomedia. In it he complains of the persecution which he had to suffer at the hands of Alexander, particularly of being driven from the town; and accuses Alexander of maintaining “that the Father and the Son co-existed always together, that the Son was not begotten, that He was begotten from all eternity, that He was unbegotten Begotten, that the Father was not one moment anterior to the Son, and that He is of God Himself”. (It may be seen how Arius misrepresents some of the doctrinal propositions of Alexander, as we have already found, because he could not reconcile the eternity of the Son with His divine generation). Further, Arius asserts that Eusebius of Caesarea, Theodotus of Laodicea, Paulinus of Tyre, etc., and all the Eastern bishops, were anathematized by Alexander because they taught that the Father existed before the Son. Only three Eastern bishops were not excommunicated, he adds : these are Philogonius, Hellanicus, and Macarius, because they have in an impious manner called the Son, the one an eructation of the Father, the other a projection, the third co-begotten. Arius could not, he said, admit such impiety, even if the heretics threatened him a thousand times with death. As to the Arians, he says, they teach “that the Son is not unbegotten, and that He is not a part of the Unbegotten (with reference to the sense in which omouúsios was rejected at Antioch); that He was not created of anything which existed before Him; but that He was called into being by the will and according to the plan (of God), before time and before the world (that is to say. He was before the world was made, but that He was not eternal), and as full God, only-begotten, and unchangeable. Before being begotten, or created, or determined, or founded. He was not; for He is not unbegotten”. He concludes by being remembered to Eusebius, who, like himself, belonged to the school of Lucian.

The exposition Arius here makes of his doctrine agrees perfectly, one point excepted, with that which was given a little further back by the Bishop of Alexandria. Alexander, in fact, says in his two letters, that Arius made of the Son “a being who, according to His nature, was capable of virtue or of sin”. Arius seems to say the contrary in that which precedes this; but this difference is only in appearance. Arius, to be consistent, should have said : “The Son being a creature, and not of the substance of the Father, is by nature subject to change, as are all the creatures”. But he might also, and he did actually, affirm that “de facto the Son was immutable, but that His immutability was the effect of volition, and not by nature”. Arius, in like manner, states that the cannot and will not say that the Son is by nature equal in glory to the Father; he says that He is perfect God only by the will of the Father, that is to say, that the Father has made Him partaker of His divine glory”.

A careful analysis of the principal work of Arius, called the Thalia, will show, besides, how well-founded was the accusation made by Bishop Alexander, that Arius had here concealed his real sentiments.

Invited, in consequence of this letter, by Eusebius, Arius went a short time after to Nicomedia, and wrote from thence, perhaps at the instigation of Eusebius, a polite letter to his former bishop Alexander, in order to be on as good terms as possible with him. First, he sets forth in his letter a kind of creed which should explain the faith, as Arius and his friends had received it from their predecessors, and even from the Bishop Alexander himself, as follows : —

1. There is only one true God, alone uncreate, alone eternal, alone without beginning, alone wise, good, and powerful; one only Judge and King, and alone unchangeable.

2. Before all time He begot His only Son, and by Him created the world and all things.

3. He did not only beget Him in appearance (Arius believed in the eternal generation as being only in appearance, and imputed all real generation to time), but He actually called Him into existence by His own will, as an unchangeable and immutable being.

4. The Son is a perfect creature of God, but yet distinct from all other creatures; He is begotten, yet again He differs from all that is begotten.

5. He is not, as is asserted by Valentinus, a projection , nor yet, as the Manichaeans assert, a substantial part of the Father; nor, as the Sabellians wish, the Son-Father; nor, as is said by Hieracas, light of light, or one torch emanating from another; nor had He a previous existence, and was afterwards begotten and made the Son,  a thing which Bishop Alexander himself had often publicly controverted, and with reason.

6. He was created by the will of God before time, and before all worlds. He has received His life and His being from the Father, who also has communicated His glory to Him; and without taking from Himself, has given Him the heritage of all things.

7. There are three persons : God, who is the cause of all things, who is unique, and without beginning; the Son, who is begotten of the Father before all things, created and established before the worlds. He was not until He was begotten; but He was begotten before all time, before all things, and He alone was called by the Father (immediately) into being. He is not, however, eternal or unbegotten, like the Father. He had not His being at the same time as the Father, as some say, who thus introduce two unbegotten principles; but as God is the monad and the beginning, or the principle of all things, He is therefore before all things, and consequently also before the Son, as Bishop Alexander himself has declared in the Church.

8. The Son having received His being from God, who gave Him glory, life, and all things, so God must be His principle, and must rule Him as His God, and as being before Him.

9. In conclusion, it is attempted to show that the biblical expressions, the Son is of the Father, ex utero, etc., do not refer to similarity of substance.

During his stay in Nicomedia, Arius wrote his principal work, called Thalia, that is, The Banquet. Only fragments of it remain. They are preserved in the works of S. Athanasius. The book, it appears, was partly in prose and partly in verse. The ancients compared it to the songs of the Egyptian poet Sotades, and pronounced it highly effeminate and overwrought. According to Athanasius, there were some of these Thalias already among the heathen, which were read at their banquets for the promotion of gaiety. Arius selected this light form, it seems, to familiarize the masses with the doctrine taught in his book. With the same intention he afterwards wrote songs for sailors, carpenters, and travellers. Athanasius says the Thalia was held in great honour by the friends of Arius, and that they venerated it as a second Bible. In reality, it contains Arianism in its strongest form, and at the same time shows clearly its Philonian foundation. In one of these fragments Arius boasts of "being very celebrated, having had much to suffer for the glory of God (that is, because he gave the Father the glory due to Him, as opposed to the Son); and he goes on : “God has not always been Father; there was a moment when He was alone, and was not yet Father : later He became so. The Son is not from eternity; He came from nothing, etc. When God wished to create us. He first created a being which He called the Logos, Sophia, and Son, who should create us as an instrument. There are two Sophias : one is in God, by which even the Son was made. It is only by sharing the nature of this inner Sophia of God that the Son was also called Wisdom. So also, besides the Son, there is another Logos — he who is in God; and as the Son participates in this Logos, He also is by grace called Logos and Son”.

In the second fragment, the Thalia sets forth that with which, as we have seen, Bishop Alexander had reproached Arius, — namely, "that the Logos did not perfectly know the Father; that he could not even entirely understand his own nature; that the substances (ousiai) of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost are entirely different the one from the other. These three persons are, in their essence and glory (doxa), thoroughly and infinitely dissimilar.

In the third fragment Arius says, after the Philonian manner, from the beginning : “God is ineffable, and nothing (therefore not even the Son) is equal to or like Him, or of the same glory. This eternal God made the Son before all creatures, and adopted Him for His Son.... The Son has nothing in his own nature akin to God, and is not like to Him in essence. The invisible God is also invisible to the Son, and the Son can see Him only so far as is permitted by the will of the Father. The Three Persons of the Trinity are not equal in glory, the Hypostases (Persons) are not confounded, and one is infinitely more glorious than the other. God could create a being like unto the Son, but He cannot create a being more glorious or more great. That which the Son is, He is through the Father and the mighty God. He (the Son) adores Him who is more glorious than Himself”.

 

Synod in Bithynia — Intervention of the Emperor Constantine.

 

Sozomen speaks of a Synod in Bithynia which supported the Arians by an encyclical addressed to all the bishops, asking them to receive the Arians into the communion of the Church. This Synod was held by the partisans of Arius, probably during his stay in Nicomedia, and perhaps even in that town. The part espoused by so many bishops did not bring about peace in the Church : the struggle, on the contrary, became more intense; and there arose so much division among Christians, and such grievous schisms in all towns, and even in the villages, that the heathens everywhere turned it into ridicule on the stage.

S. Athanasius shows us how much occasion the Arians gave to the heathens for such derision, by describing their proselytism, which was as improper as it was ridiculous : for example, how they gained women to their side by asking sophistical questions, such as, “Hast thou had a son before thou didst bear?” in order to win them over to their opinion of the later origin of the Son. The political events which then arose undoubtedly increased the trouble in Egypt and in the East, the seat of Arianism.

The Emperor Licinius, to whom Egypt and Asia belonged, after being vanquished by Constantine in 315, had concluded a definite peace with him; and in consequence of this treaty he lived several years on the best terms with his father-in-law and the Christians. But towards the end of 322 Licinius took advantage of Constantine's crossing the frontiers of his empire, in pursuit of the Sarmatians, to break with him; and in 323 entered into a war, which towards the autumn of the year ended in the total defeat of Licinius by sea and land. This war accounts for the increase of the confusion and divisions in the Church, as well as for the lack of all authentic history of Arianism during this period (322-323).

Another circumstance which may thus be explained is the boldness of Arius in returning to Alexandria. In his struggle against Constantine, Licinius became the champion of heathenism, and oppressed the Church, particularly the bishops. Arius had no further cause to fear Alexander, and the principal obstacle to his return was thus removed. The actual return of Arius to Alexandria is proved by Sozomen, and still better by a letter from the Emperor Constantine, of which we shall shortly speak. Sozomen says that “Arius sent messages to the Bishops Paulinus of Tyre, Eusebius of Caesarea, and Patrophilus of Scythopolis, asking permission to officiate as formerly, and to do so even in Alexandria. As is understood from the tenor of the letter, these bishops summoned their colleagues to a council, and allowed Arius and his adherents to hold, as formerly, private religious assemblies, without, however, withdrawing themselves from the submission due to Bishop Alexander, and on the condition of asking for peace and communion”.

Constantine, now master of the whole empire, consequently also of Egypt and the other provinces disturbed by Arianism, considered it his duty to re-establish religious as well as civil peace, and took the necessary measures as soon as he had returned to Nicomedia. He sent first a long letter to Arius and Bishop Alexander the purport of which Eusebius has preserved entire, but which Socrates only gives in fragments. He says in this letter, that “he has learnt with great sorrow that sharper controversies than those of Africa (the Donatist disputes) have arisen at Alexandria, although it appears to him that they are questions respecting things of no importance and of no use, which Alexander ought not to have excited, and about which Arius ought to have kept his different views to himself. They were questions which the human mind was too weak to solve correctly; and therefore both Arius and Alexander should forgive each other, and do that which he, their fellow-servant, advised them. He thought that they could easily be reconciled, as they did not disagree on any main point of the law, nor on any innovation in divine service, and were therefore substantially at one; that philosophers of the same school had often differed in accessories : we should be able to bear such differences, but bring them as little as possible before the people. That was vulgar, puerile, and unworthy of priests. That, therefore, they ought to agree, and free him from so great a cause of anxiety”.

It is evident that the Emperor was not at that time aware of the importance of the Arian controversy, and that his letter does not merit the great praise it received from Eusebius and others. Constantine sent this letter, in the contents of which Eusebius of Nicomedia perhaps had a hand, to Alexandria, by the celebrated Bishop Hosius of Cordova. This venerable man, whom the Emperor usually consulted, was sixty-seven years of age. He had been a confessor during the persecution of Diocletian; and the Emperor hoped that his presence would bring about a reconciliation. It is uncertain what Hosius did at Alexandria : it is only known that he opposed Sabellianism there, proving the Christian doctrine of the nature and persons of the Holy Trinity, probably to make clear the difference between the Sabellian and the orthodox doctrine. It is not known if he was present at the Synod of Alexandria, which deposed Colluthus. Perhaps this Council was held later. Unhappily Hosius did not succeed in his mission to Alexandria. Philostorgius relates that later he met the Bishop of Alexandria at a synod at Nicomedia, where he approved of the term omouúsios, and excommunicated Arius. The statement is not probable.

However, the Emperor's letter and Hosius’ mission remaining alike without result, and the Paschal controversy continuing to disturb many eastern provinces (the custom of the Quartodecimans existed still in Syria, Cilicia, and Mesopotamia), the Emperor, perhaps advised by Hosius, thought there could be no better means to re-establish the peace of the Church than the calling of an ecumenical council.

 

THE DISCUSSIONS AT NICAEA.

 

The Synodal Acts.

 

THE first and principal source from which we draw our information respecting the deliberations at Nicaea, must of course be the acts of the Synod. Unhappily we possess only three portions of them — the Creed, the twenty Canons, and the Synodal Decree; and the question arises, whether this is all which ever existed; in other words, whether the separate discussions and debates at Nicaea were committed to writing, and subsequently lost, or whether they neglected to take minutes of the proceedings. Vague rumours of later times have reported that minutes were taken; and it is asserted in the preface to the Arabic edition of the Canons, that the acts of the Nicene Synod fill no fewer than forty volumes, and have been distributed throughout the whole world. To a similar effect is that which the pseudo-Isidore writes, in the preface to his well-known collection. “He had learnt”, he says, “from the Orientals, that the acts of Nicaea were more voluminous than the four Gospels”. At the Synod of Florence, in the fifteenth century, one of the Latin speakers asserted that Athanasius had asked and obtained a genuine copy of the acts of Nicaea from the Roman bishop Julius, because the Oriental copies had been corrupted by the Arians. Some went so far as even to indicate several collections of archives in which the complete acts of Nicaea were preserved. Possevin, for instance, professed to know that a copy was in the archiepiscopal library at Ravenna. As a matter of fact, this library had only a manuscript of the Nicene Creed, which was written in purple and gold letters. At an earlier period, Pope Gregory X had written to the King and to the Catholicus of the Armenians, to ask for a copy of the acts, which were said to exist in Armenia, but in vain. Others professed to know, or offered as a conjecture, that the documents in request were at Constantinople or Alexandria, or rather in Arabia. In fact, they discovered, in the sixteenth century, in old Arabic MSS., besides the twenty Canons of Nicaea already mentioned, which were well known before, a great number of other ecclesiastical ordinances, constitutions, and canons, in an Arabic translation, which all, it was said, belonged to the Nicene Council. We shall demonstrate beyond a doubt, at sec. 41, the later origin of these documents.

The same must be said of an alleged collection of minutes of a disputation held at Nicaea between some heathen philosophers and Christian bishops, which S. Gelasius of Cyzicus, in the fifth century, inserted in his History of the Council of Nicaea, of which we shall presently have something more to say. They are also spurious, and as apocryphal as the pretended minutes of a disputation between Athanasius and Arius. Those who know this history of S. Gelasius only by hearsay, have taken it for an additional and more complete collection of the Synodal Acts of Nicaea, and thereby have strengthened the vague rumour of the existence of such. As a matter of fact, however, there is no evidence of any one ever having seen or used those acts. An appeal cannot be made to Balsamon on this point; for when this celebrated Greek scholar of the twelfth century refers, in his explanation of the first canon of Antioch, to the Nicene acts, he is evidently thinking simply of the Synodal Decree of Nicaea.

We believe we can also show, that from the first no more acts of Nicaea were known than the three documents already named — the Creed, the twenty Canons, and the Synodal Decree. This is indicated by Eusebius, when he says, in his Life of Constantine :”That which was unanimously adopted was taken down in writing, and signed by all”. So early as the year 350, Athanasius could give no other answer to a friend who wished to learn what passed at Nicaea. If a complete copy of the acts had existed, Athanasius would certainly have known of it, and would have directed his friend to that. Baronius maintains that Athanasius himself speaks of the complete acts of Nicaea, in his work de Synodis Arim. et Seleuc. c. 6; but the Cardinal was led into error by an incorrect Latin translation of the passage which he quoted, for the Greek text does not speak of acts properly so called : it says only, that “if we wish to know the true faith, there is no need for another council, seeing we possess the decisions of the Nicene Fathers, who did not neglect this point, but set forth the faith so well, that all who sincerely follow their grammata may there find the scriptural doctrine concerning Christ”. To see in these words a proof of the existence of detailed acts of the Council, is certainly to give much too wide a meaning to the text, as Valesius has remarked, and Pagi also: it is most likely that Athanasius, when writing this passage, had in view only the Creed, the Canons, and the Synodal Decree of Nicaea.

In default of these acts of the Council of Nicaea, which do not exist, and which never have existed, besides the three authentic documents already quoted, we may consider as historical the accounts of the ancient Church historians, Eusebius, Socrates, Sozomen, Theodoret, and Rufinus, as well as some writings and sayings of S. Athanasius, especially in his book de Decretis synodi Nicaenae, and in his Epistola ad Afros. A less ancient work is that by Gelasius Bishop of Cyzicus in the Propontis, who wrote in Greek, in the fifth century, a History of the Council of Nicaea, which is to be found in all the larger collections of the councils. In the composition of this work Gelasius made use of the works mentioned above, and had also other ancient documents at his disposal, which had been carefully collected by his predecessor, Bishop Dalmasius. We shall see hereafter that he admitted things which were improbable, and evidently false. Gelasius, however, has in Dorscheus a defender against the too violent attacks to which he has been subjected.

The work of Gelasius is divided into three books, the first of which is only the life of the Emperor Constantine the Great, and contains absolutely nothing relative to the Council of Nicaea. The whole of the second book, on the contrary, is devoted to the history of that assembly. The third is wholly composed of three letters of Constantine's; but we may presume that it was formerly larger, and contained particularly the account of Constantine's baptism, which Photius borrowed from Gelasius, but which was subsequently mutilated, in order that the honour of having been the place where the great Emperor received baptism might not be taken from the city of Rome. However, no sort of proof is given in support of this suspicion.

An anonymous Copt undertook a similar work to that of Gelasius. This writer probably lived a short time after the Council of Nicaea, and composed a sort of history of this Synod (Liber synodicus de concilio Nicaene) in the Coptic language. Four fragments of this work, which was lost, were discovered more than fifty years ago by the learned archseologist George Zoega (Danish consul at Rome, a convert to Roman Catholicism, and interpreter at the Propaganda, who died in 1809), and were published in the Catalogus codicum Copticorum mamiscriptorum musei Borgiani. Unfortunately the proof sheets of this work were almost all lost, in consequence of the death of Zoega and of his Maecenas happening immediately after its completion, and from a lawsuit entered into by the heirs. The learned French Benedictine Cardinal Pitra has just published these four fragments afresh, with a Latin version and notes, in the first volume of his Spicilegium Solesmense (Paris 1852).

1. The first and largest of these fragments contains the Nicene Creed, with the anathemas pronounced against Arius. Only the first lines are wanting. Then come some additions by the author of the Liber Synodicus. The first runs thus : “This is the faith proclaimed by our fathers against Arius and other heretics, especially against Sabellius, Photinus (?who lived long after Nicaea), and Paul of Samosata; and we ana- thematize those adversaries of the Catholic Church who were rejected by the 318 bishops of Nicaea. The names of the bishops are carefully preserved, that is to say, of the Eastern ones; for those of the West had no cause for anxiety on account of this heresy”.

This addition had been for a long time in Hardouin’s collection in Latin, and in Mansi's, and it was generally attributed to Dionysius the Less. The second addition is a more detailed exposition of the Catholic faith, also proceeding from the pen of the author of the Liber Synodicus. It says : “We adore not only one divine person, like Sabellius; but we acknowledge, according to the confession of the Council of Nicaea, one Father, one Son, one Holy Ghost. We anathematize those who, like Paul of Samosata, teach that the Son of God did not exist before the Virgin Mary — not before He was born in the flesh, etc. We anathematize also those who hold that there are three Gods, and those who deny that the Logos is the Son of God (Marcellus of Ancyra and Photinus of Sirmium)”. The author puts next to these two additions a document which has been handed down to us, the first half of the list of bishops present at Nicaea, containing one hundred and sixty-one names.

2. The second and shortest of the fragments contains the second part of the Nicene Creed, not quite accurately repeated by one or more later believers. To the words Spiritus sanctus are already added Qui procedit a Patre, an interpolation which could not have been added till after the second Ecumenical Council. Then comes a further Expositio fidei, which endeavours to work out the consequences of the Nicene Creed, and is especially directed against Sabellius and Photinus.

3. The third fragment gives us next the end of this Expositio fidei. It is followed by two additions, attributed to an Archbishop Rufinus, otherwise unknown. The first expresses the joy which the orthodox doctrine gives to the author; the second tells us that each time the bishops rose at Nicaea they were three hundred and nineteen in number, and that they were only three hundred and eighteen when they took their seats. They could never discover who the three hundred and nineteenth was, for he was sometimes like one, sometimes like another; at last it was manifest that it was the Holy Spirit. Rufinus then writes a certain number of Sententiae synodi sanctae; but some of these judgments are on points which were not brought before the Nicene Council, especially on man’s free-will. They are undoubtedly somewhat similar to the Expositio fidei ortliodoxae, which is contained in the second and third fragments.

4. The fourth fragment contains the Coptic translation of the second, third, fourth, fifth, and sixth canons of Nicaea. It is more or less according to the original Greek text, without the principal meaning ever being altered.

These four Coptic fragments certainly possess interest to the historian of the Nicene Council, who is anxious to know all the sources of information; but they have not so much value and importance as Zoega and Pitra have attributed to them. We shall again speak of each of these fragments in their proper place in the history of the Council of Nicaea.

An anonymous author, several manuscripts of which are in existence, pretends to be a contemporary of the Nicene Council. This small treatise, published by Combefis, and of which Photius has given extracts, contains palpable errors, — for instance, that the Nicene Council lasted three years and six months. It is generally of small importance.

We may say the same of the lógos of a priest of Caesarea, named Gregory, upon the three hundred and eighteen Fathers of Nicaea. Combefis, who has also published this document, supposes that the author probably lived in the seventh century. He, however, calls the book opus egregium; but, with the exception of some biographical accounts of one of the bishops present at Nicaea, Gregory gives only well-known details, and improbable accounts of miracles. Although the value of these latter small treatises is not great, Hardouin and Mansi, coming after Combefis, ought to have inserted them in their collections of the Councils. These Collections contain all the other known documents relative to the history of the Council of Nicaea, and they form the basis of the account which we have to give of it. We shall hereafter speak of the numerous canons attributed to the Council of Nicaea, and of another pretended creed directed against Paul of Samosata.

 

The Convocation by the Emperor.

 

The letters of invitation sent by the Emperor Constantine the Great to the bishops, to ask them to repair to Nicaea, do not unfortunately now exist, and we must content ourselves with what Eusebius says on the subject. “By very respectful letters the Emperor begged the bishops of every country to go as quickly as possible to Nicaea”. Rufinus says that the Emperor also asked Arius. It is not known whether invitations were sent to foreign bishops (not belonging to the Roman Empire). Eusebius says that the Emperor assembled an ecumenical council; but it is not at all easy to determine the value of the word ecumeni. However it may be, Eusebius and Gelasius affirm that some foreign bishops took part in this great Council. The former says : “A bishop even from Persia was present at the Council, and Scythia itself was represented among the bishops”. Gelasius does not mention a Scythian bishop — that is to say, a Goth; but he begins his work with these words : “Not only bishops from every province of the Roman Empire were present at the Council, but even some from Persia”. The signatures of the members of the Council which still remain (it is true they are not of incontestable authenticity) agree with Eusebius and Gelasius; for we there find one John Bishop of Persia, and Theophilus the Gothic metropolitan. Socrates also mentions the latter, who, he says, was the predecessor of Ulphilas.

It is impossible to determine whether the Emperor Constantine acted only in his own name, or in concert with the Pope, in assembling the bishops. Eusebius and the most ancient documents speak only of the Emperor's part in the Council, without, however, a positive denial of the participation of the Pope. The sixth Ecumenical Synod, which took place in 680, says, on the contrary : “Arius arose as an adversary to the doctrine of the Trinity, and Constantine and Silvester immediately assembled the great Synod at Nicaea”. The Pontifical of Damasus affirms the same fact. From that time, the opinion that the Emperor and the Pope had agreed together to assemble the Council became more and more general; and with whatever vivacity certain Protestant authors may have arrayed themselves against this supposition, it certainly seems probable that in such an important measure the Emperor would have thought it necessary not to act without the consent and co-operation of him who was recognised as the first bishop of Christendom. Let us add that Rufinus had already expressly said that the Emperor assembled the Synod ex sacerdotum sententia. If he consulted several bishops upon the measure which he had in view, he certainly would have taken the advice of the first among them; and the part of the latter in the convocation of the Council must certainly have been more considerable than that of the other bishops, or the sixth Council would doubtless have expressed itself in another way. The testimony of this Council is here of real importance. If it had been held in the West, or even at Rome, what it says might appear suspicious to some critics; but it took place at Constantinople, at a period when the bishops of this city were beginning to be rivals to those of Rome. The Greeks formed greatly the majority of the members of the Council, and consequently their testimony in favour of Rome, more especially in favour of the co-operation of Silvester, is very important.

In order to make the journey to Nicaea possible to some, and at least easier to others, the Emperor placed the public conveyances and the beasts of burden belonging to the Government at the disposal of the bishops; and while the Council lasted, he provided abundantly for the entertainment of its members. The choice of the town of Nicaea was also very favourable for a large concourse of bishops. Situated upon one of the rivers flowing into the Propontis on the borders of Lake Ascanius, Nicaea was very easy to reach by water for the bishops of almost all the provinces, especially for those of Asia, Syria, Palestine, Egypt, Greece, and Thrace : it was a much frequented commercial city, in relation with every country, not far distant from the imperial residence in Nicomedia, and after the latter the most considerable city in Bithynia. After the lapse of so many centuries, and under the oppressive Turkish rule, it is so fallen from its ancient splendour, that under the name of Isnik it numbers now scarcely 1500 inhabitants. This is fewer than the number of guests it contained at the time when our Synod was held.

 

Number of the Members of the Council.

 

Eusebius says that there were more than two hundred and fifty bishops present at the Council of Nicaea; and he adds that the multitude of priests, deacons, and acolytes who accompanied them was almost innumerable. Some later Arabian documents speak of more than two thousand bishops; but it is probable that the inferior orders of the clergy were reckoned with them, and perhaps all together they reached that number. Besides, there must have been more bishops at Nicaea than Eusebius mentions; for S. Athanasius, who was an eye-witness, and a member of the Council, often speaks of about three hundred bishops, and in his letter ad Afros he speaks expressly of three hundred and eighteen. This number was almost universally adopted; and Socrates himself, who always follows Eusebius in his details respecting the commencement of the Nicene Synod, and copies him often word for word, nevertheless adopts the number three hundred and eighteen; also Theodoret, Epiphanius, Ambrose, Gelasius, Rufinus, the Council of Chalcedon, and Sozomen, who speaks of about three hundred bishops. In fact, the number of bishops present varied according to the months : there were perhaps fewer at the beginning; so that we may reconcile the testimonies of the two eye-witnesses Eusebius and Athanasius, if we suppose that they did not make their lists at the same time. The number of three hundred and eighteen being admitted, it is natural that we should compare it with the three hundred and eighteen servants of Abraham. S, Ambrose, and several others after him, notice this parallel. Most of these three hundred and eighteen bishops were Greeks : among the Latins we find only Hosius of Cordova, Cecilian of Carthage, Marcus of Calabria, Nicasius of Dijon, Domnus of Stridon (in Pannonia), the two Roman priests Victor and Vincent, representatives of Pope Silvester. With Hosius of Cordova, the most eminent members of the Council were those of the apostolic sees, Alexander of Alexandria, Eustathius of Antioch, and Macarius of Jerusalem: then came the two bishops of the same name, Eusebius of Nicomedia and of Caesarea; Potamon of Heraclea in Egypt, who had lost one eye in the last persecution; Paphnutius of the higher Thebais, and Spiridion of Cyprus, both celebrated for their miracles. Paphnutius had one eye bored out and his legs cut off during Maximin's persecution. Another bishop, Paul of Neocaesarea, had had his hands burnt by the red-hot irons that Licinius had commanded to be applied to them. James of Nisibis was honoured as a worker of miracles : it was said that he had raised the dead. There was also seen among the foremost, Leontius of Caesarea, a man endowed with the gift of prophecy, who during the journey to Nicaea had baptized the father of S. Gregory of Nazianzus; besides Hypatius of Gangra, and S. Nicolas of Myra in Asia Minor, so well known for his generosity, that Eusebius could say with truth : “Some were celebrated for their wisdom, others for the austerity of their lives and for their patience, others for their modesty; some were very old, some full of the freshness of youth”. Theodoret adds : “Many shone from apostolic gifts, and many bore in their bodies the marks of Christ”.

It is no wonder if, considering their circumstances, there were some unlearned among so large a number of bishops; but Bishop Sabinus of Heraclea in Thrace, a partisan of Macedonius, was quite wrong when, shortly afterwards, he laughed at the general ignorance of the members of the Council of Nicaea. After having given vent to his hatred as a heretic, he did not hesitate to copy one of these Nicene Fathers, Eusebius, the father of ecclesiastical history. Socrates has shown that the same Sabinus fell into other contradictions.

Among the auxiliaries of the bishops of Nicaea, he who became by far the most celebrated was Athanasius, then a young deacon of Alexandria, who accompanied his bishop Alexander. He was born about the year 300, at Alexandria, and had been consecrated to the service of the Church in a very peculiar manner. Rufinus relates the fact in the following manner : — According, he says, to what he heard at Alexandria from those who knew Athanasius, Alexander Bishop of Alexandria one day saw on the sea-shore several children imitating the ceremonies of the Church. They did not do it at all as children generally do in play; but the bishop remarked that they followed every ecclesiastical rite very exactly, and especially that Athanasius, who represented the bishop, baptized several catechumens from among the children. Alexander questioned them, and what he heard convinced him, and also his clergy, that Athanasius had really administered the sacrament of baptism to his little play-fellows, and that it only required the confirmation of the Church. Probably the young officiant had not intended to play, but to do well quod fieri vult ecclesia. According to the bishop's advice, all these children were consecrated to the work of the ministry; and Alexander soon took the young Athanasius to be with him, ordained him deacon in 319, and placed so much confidence in him that he raised him above all the other clergy, and made him an archdeacon, although scarcely twenty years of age.

It is probable that Athanasius took part in the Arian controversy from the commencement; at least Eusebius of Nicomedia, or other adversaries of his, attribute Alexander’s persevering refusal of reconciliation with Arius to his influence. “At Nicaea”, says Socrates, “Athanasius was the most vehement opponent of the Arians”. He was at the same time the man of highest intelligence in the Synod, and an able logician. This aptness for controversy was particularly valuable in the conflict with such sophists as the Arians. The bishops had even brought learned laymen and accomplished logicians with them, who, like Athanasius and others who were present, not being bishops, took a very active part in the discussions which preceded the deliberations and decisions properly so called.

 

Date of the Synod of Nicaea.

 

All the ancients agree in saying that the Synod took place under the consulship of Anicius Paulinus and Anicius Julianus, 636 years after Alexander the Great, consequently 325 A.D. They are not equally unanimous about the day and the month of the opening of the Council. Socrates says: “We find from the minutes that the time of the Synod (probably of its commencement) was the 20th May”. The acts of the fourth Ecumenical Council give another date. In the second session of that assembly, Bishop Eunomius of Nicomedia read the Nicene Creed; and at the commencement of his copy were these words : “Under the consulship of Paulinus and Julianus, on the 9th of the Greek month Dasius, that is, the 13th before the Kalends of July, at Nicaea, the metropolis of Bithynia”. The Chronicle of Alexandria gives the same date, XIII Cal. Jul, and consequently indicates the 19th June. In order to reconcile the data of Socrates with those of the Council of Chalcedon, we may perhaps say that the Council opened on the 20th May, and that the Creed was drawn up on the 19th June. But Athanasius expressly says that the Fathers of Nicaea put no date at the commencement of their Creed; and he blames the Arian bishops Ursacius and Valens, because their Creed was preceded by a fixed date. Consequently the words placed at the top of the copy of the Nicene Creed read at Chalcedon must have proceeded, not from the Synod of Nicaea, but from some later copyist. But neither can we establish, as Tillemont and some other historians have tried to do, that this date signifies, not the day when the Creed was drawn up, but that of the opening of the Synod. Even if the Synod had affixed no date to its Creed, we may well suppose that this date was placed there at a later period, and continue to believe that the Council opened on the 20th of May 325, and that it published the Creed on the 19th of June. Baronius found a third chronological datum in an ancient manuscript, attributed to Atticus Bishop of Constantinople, according to which the Synod lasted from the 14th June to the 25th August. But we may reconcile this date with the other two, on the theory that the Synod was called together for the 20th of May. The Emperor being absent at that time, they held only less solemn discussions and deliberations until the 14th June, when the session properly so called began, after the arrival of the Emperor; that on the 19th the Creed was drawn up; and that the other business, such as the Easter controversy, was then continued, and the session terminated on the 2oth August.

Valesius and Tillemont think otherwise. The former rejects the date given by Socrates, and thinks that the Council could not have assembled so early as the 20th May 325. He calculates that, after the victory of Constantine over Licinius and the Emperor's return, the mission of Hosius to Alexandria, his sojourn there, then the preparations for the Synod, and finally the journeys of the bishops to Nicaea, must have taken a longer time; and he regards it as more probable that the Synod commenced on the 19th June. But Valesius erroneously supposes that the great battle of Chalcedon (or Chrysopolis), in which Constantine defeated Licinius, took place on the 7th September 324; whilst we have more foundation for believing that it was a year previously, in 323. But if we admit that Constantine conquered Licinius in September 324, and that the next day, as Valesius says, he reached Nicomedia, there would remain from that day, up to the 20th May 325, more than eight months; and this would be long enough for so energetic and powerful a prince as Constantine was, to take many measures, especially as the re-establishment of peace in religion appeared to him a matter of extreme importance. Besides, in giving the 19th June as the commencement of the Synod, Valesius gains very little time : a month longer would not be sufficient to overcome all the difficulties which he enumerates.

Tillemont raises another objection against the chronology which we adopt. According to him, Constantine did not arrive at Nicaea till the 3d July, whilst we fix the 14th June for the opening of the solemn sessions of the Council in the presence of the Emperor. Tillemont appeals to Socrates, who relates that, “after the termination of the feast celebrated in honour of his victory over Licinius, he left for Nicaea”. This feast, according to Tillemont, could have been held only on the anniversary of the victory gained near Adrianopolis the 3d July 323. But first, it is difficult to suppose that two special feasts should be celebrated for two victories so near together as those of Adrianopolis and of Chalcedon: then Socrates does not speak of an anniversary feast, but of a triumphal feast, properly so called; and if we examine what this historian relates of the last attempts of Licinius at insurrection, we are authorized in believing that Constantine celebrated no great triumphal feast till after he had repressed all these attempts, and even after the death of Licinius. Eusebius expressly says that this feast did not take place till after the death of Licinius. We need not examine whether the reports spread abroad respecting the last insurrections of Licinius were true or not; for if Constantine caused false reports to be spread about the projects of Licinius, it is natural that he should wish to confirm them afterwards by giving a public feast. It is true we do not know the exact date of the execution of Licinius; but it was probably towards the middle of 324, according to others not until 325 : and therefore the triumphal feast of which we are speaking could easily have been celebrated a short time before the Council of Nicaea.

 

The Disputations.

 

In the interval which separated the opening of the Synod (20th May) and the first solemn session in the presence of the Emperor, the conferences and discussions took place between the Catholics, the Arians, and the philosophers, which are mentioned by Socrates and Sozomen. Socrates says expressly, that these conferences preceded the solemn opening of the Synod by the Emperor; and by comparing his account with those of Sozomen and Gelasius, we see that Arius was invited by the bishops to take part in them, and that he had full liberty there to explain his doctrine. We find, too, that many of his friends spoke in his favour, and that he reckoned as many as seventeen bishops among his partisans, particularly Eusebius of Mcomedia, Theognis of Nicaea, Maris of Chalcedon, Theodorus of Heraclea in Thrace, Menophantus of Ephesus, Patrophilus of Scythopolis, Narcissus of Cilicia, Theonas of Marmarica, Secundus of Ptolemais in Egypt, and up to a certain point Eusebius of Caesarea. Besides, a good many priests, and even laymen, took his side; for, as Socrates says, many learned laymen and distinguished dialecticians were present at these conferences, and took part, some for Arius, others against him. On the orthodox side it was chiefly Athanasius and the priest Alexander of Constantinople, vested with power by his old bishop, who did battle against the Arians.

Sozomen also mentions these conferences, in which some wished to reject every innovation in matters of faith; and others maintained that the opinion of the ancients must not be admitted without examination. He adds, that the most able dialecticians made themselves renowned, and were remarked even by the Emperor; and that from this time Athanasius was considered to be the most distinguished member of the assembly, though only a deacon. Theodoret praises Athanasius equally, who, he says, “won the approbation of all the orthodox at the Council of Niaea by his defence of apostolic doctrine, and drew upon himself the hatred of the enemies of the truth”. Rufinus says : “By his controversial ability he discovered the subterfuges and sophisms of the heretics".

Rufinus, and Sozomen, who generally follows him, mention some heathen philosophers as being present at the Synod and at these conferences, either in order to become better acquainted with Christianity, or to try their controversial skill against it. What Gelasius relates is not very probable : he affirms that Arius took these heathen philosophers with him, that they might help him in his disputations. He gives an account, at a disproportionate length, of the pretended debates between the heathen philosopher Phaedo, holding Arian opinions, and Eustathius Bishop of Antioch, Hosius of Cordova, Eusebius of Caesarea, etc., the result of which, he says, was the conversion of the philosopher. According to Valesius, this account is entirely false, and what Rufinus relates about the philosophers is, to say the least, singular. One of these philosophers, he says, could not be overcome by the most able among the Christians, and always escaped like a serpent from every proof which was given him of the error of his doctrines. At last a confessor, an unlearned and ignorant man, rose and said : “In the name of Jesus Christ, listen, philosopher, to the truth. There is one God, who created heaven and earth, who formed man of clay, and gave him a soul. He created everything visible and invisible by His Word : this Word, whom we call the Son, took pity on human sinfulness, was born of a virgin, delivered us from death by His sufferings and death, and gave us the assurance of eternal life by His resurrection. We expect Him now to be the Judge of all our actions. Dost thou believe what I say, philosopher?”. The philosopher, wonderfully moved, could no longer hold out, and said : “Yes; surely it is so, and nothing is true but what thou hast said”. The old man replied : “If thou believest thus, rise, follow me to the Lord, and receive the seal of His faith”. The philosopher turned towards his disciples and hearers, exhorted them to embrace the faith of Christ, followed the old man, and became a member of the holy Church. Sozomen and Gelasius repeat the account of Rufinus. Socrates also relates the principal part of the story; but he does not say that the philosophers who took part in these conferences were heathens : his words seem rather to refer to Christian controversialists who took the side of Arius.

 

Arrived of the Emperor — Solemn Opening of the Council — Presidency.

 

During these preparatory conferences the Emperor arrived; and if Socrates is correct, the Synod was solemnly opened the very day following the discussion with the philosopher. From the account given by Sozomen at the beginning of the nineteenth chapter of his first book, one might conclude that the solemn session in the presence of the Emperor, which we are now to describe, did not take place till after all the discussions with Arius; but Sozomen, who certainly made use of the narrative of Eusebius, tells us that the Synod was inaugurated by this solemnity. Eusebius thus describes it : “When all the bishops had entered the place appointed for their session, the sides of which were filled by a great number of seats, each took his place, and awaited in silence the arrival of the Emperor. Ere long the functionaries of the court entered, but only those who were Christians; and when the arrival of the Emperor was announced, all those present rose. He appeared as a messenger from God, covered with gold and precious stones, — a magnificent figure, tall and slender, and full of grace and majesty. To this majesty he united great modesty and devout humility, so that he kept his eyes reverently bent upon this ground, and only sat down upon the golden seat which had been prepared for him when the bishops gave him the signal to do so. As soon as he had taken his place, all the bishops took theirs. Then the bishop who was immediately to the right of the Emperor arose, and addressed a short speech to him, in which he thanked God for having given them such an Emperor. After he had resumed his seat, the Emperor, in a gentle voice, spoke thus : ‘My greatest desire, my friends, was to see you assembled. I thank God, that to all the favours He has granted me. He has added the greatest, that of seeing you all here, animated with the same feeling. May no mischievous enemy come now to deprive us of this happiness! And after we have conquered the enemies of Christ, may not the evil spirit attempt to injure the law of God by new blasphemies! I consider disunion in the Church an evil more terrible and more grievous than any kind of war. After having, by the grace of God, conquered my enemies, I thought I had no more to do than to thank Him joyfully with those whom I had delivered. When I was told of the division that had arisen amongst you, I was convinced that I ought not to attend to any business before this; and it is from the desire of being useful to you that I have convened you without delay. But I shall not believe my end to be attained until I have united the minds of all—until I see that peace and that union reign amongst you which you are commissioned, as the anointed of the Lord, to preach to others. Do not hesitate, my friends— do not hesitate, ye servants of God; banish all causes of dissension—solve controversial difficulties according to the laws of peace, so as to accomplish the work which shall be most agreeable to God, and cause me, your fellow-servant, an infinite joy’.”

Constantine spoke in Latin. An assistant placed at his side translated his discourse into Greek, and then the Emperor gave place to the presidents of the Council. The Emperor had opened the Council as a kind of honorary president, and he continued to be present at it; but the direction of the theological discussions, properly speaking, was naturally the business of the ecclesiastical leaders of the Council, and was left to them. We thus arrive at the question of the presidency; but as we have already spoken of it in detail in the Introduction, we may be satisfied with recalling here the conclusion then arrived at, that Hosius of Cordova presided at the assembly as Papal legate, in union with the two Roman priests Vito (Vitus) and Vincentius.

 

Mutual Complaints of the Bishops.

 

When the Emperor had yielded the direction of the assembly to the presidents, Eusebius tells us that the disputations and mutual complaints began. By this he means that the Arians were accused of heresy by the orthodox, and these in their turn by the Arians. Other authors add, that for several days divers memorials were sent to the Emperor by the bishops accusing one another, and by the laity criminating the bishops; that on the day fixed to decide these quarrels the Emperor brought to the Synod all the denunciations which had been sent to him, sealed with his signet, and, with the assurance that he had not read them, threw them into the fire. He then said to the bishops: “You cannot be judged by men, and God alone can decide your controversies”. According to Socrates, he added : “Christ has commanded man to forgive his brother, if he would obtain pardon for himself”.

It is possible that all this account, drawn from more recent sources, may be only an amplification of what Eusebius relates of the complaints and grievances which were brought forward; and this suggestion has the greater probability when we consider that Eusebius, who tries on every occasion to extol his hero the Emperor, would certainly not have passed this act over in silence. However, it is impossible absolutely to throw aside the account by Rufinus and his successors, which contains nothing intrinsically improbable.

 

Manner of Deliberation.

 

We possess but few sources of information respecting the manner of deliberation which was adopted, from the solemn opening of the Synod by the Emperor up to the promulgation of the creed. Eusebius, after having mentioned the grievances brought by the bishops against one another, merely continues thus : “Grievances were numerous on both sides, and there were at the beginning many controversies, accusations, and replies. The Emperor listened to both sides with much patience and attention. He assisted both sides, and pacified those who were too violent. He spoke in Greek, in an extremely gentle voice, answered some with arguments, praised others who had spoken well, and led all to a mutual understanding; so that, in spite of their previous differences, they ended by being of the same mind”.

Socrates describes the discussions almost in the same words as Eusebius, so also Sozomen; fand we may conclude from their testimony, and still more from the account by Rufinus that the discussions between the Arians and the orthodox, which had commenced before the first solemn session of the Council, continued in the Emperor's presence. As to the time during which these debates lasted, Gelasius tells us that “the Emperor sat with the bishops for several months”; but it is evident that he confuses the discussions which took place before the solemn opening of the Synod by the Emperor with the deliberations which followed (he speaks of the philosophers for the first time after the opening), and he imagines that the Emperor was present not only at the later, but also at the preliminary deliberations.

Rufinus maintains further, “that they then held daily sessions, and that they would not decide lightly or prematurely upon so grave a subject; that Arius was often called into the midst of the assembly; that they seriously discussed his opinions; that they attentively considered what there was to oppose to them; that the majority rejected the impious system of Arius; and that the confessors especially declared themselves energetically against the heresy”. It is nowhere said whether those who were not bishops were admitted to these later debates and disputations, as they had been to the first. Sozomen speaks only of the bishops who had discussed; Eusebius says nothing of such a limitation; and it is probable that men like Athanasius, and the priest Alexander of Constantinople, might speak again upon so important a question. Amongst the bishops, Marcellus of Ancyra signalized himself as an opponent of the Arians.

The analogy which we may suppose to have existed between the Nicene and later Synods has caused the admission that at Nicaea the members of the Synod were divided into commissions or private congregations, which prepared the materials for the general sessions. But we find no trace of this fact in the ancient documents; and the accounts of Eusebius and others leave us rather to suppose that there were no such commissions, but only general sessions of the bishops.

Our information respecting these sessions is unfortunately very slight and defective; and except the short intimations that we have already seen in Eusebius and his successors, few details have reached us. Gelasius himself, elsewhere so prolix, says no more than Eusebius and Rufinus; for what he relates of the discussions of the heathen philosophers can only have occurred at the commencement of the Council, if it happened at all. We should have been very much indebted to him, if, instead of the long, dry, and improbable discussions of the heathen philosopher Phaedo, he had transmitted to us something of the discussions of the theologians.

 

Paphnutius and Spiridion

 

Some further details furnished by Rufinus give no more information respecting the doctrinal discussions with the Arians, but have reference to two remarkable bishops who were present at Nicaea. The first was Paphnutius from Egypt, who, he says, was deprived of his right eye, and had his knees cut off, during the persecution by the Emperor Maximin. He had worked several miracles, cast out evil spirits, healed the sick by his prayers, restored sight to the blind, and the power of their limbs to the lame. The Emperor Constantino esteemed him so highly, that he frequently invited him to go to his palace, and devoutly kissed the socket of the eye which he had lost.

The second was Spiridion of Cyprus, who from a shepherd became a bishop, continued to tend his flocks, and made himself famous by his miracles and prophecies. One night, when robbers entered his fold, they were detained there by invisible bonds, and not till the next morning did the aged shepherd perceive the men who had been miraculously made prisoners. He set them free by his prayer, and presented them with a ram, in order that they might not have had useless trouble. Another time he compelled his daughter Irene, after she was buried, to speak to him from her tomb, and tell him where she had placed a deposit which a merchant had entrusted to him; and she gave, in fact, the required information. Such is the account given by Rufinus, who is followed by Socrates and Gelasius.

 

Debates with the Eusebians. The omouúsios.

 

Athanasius gives us some details respecting the intervention of a third party, known under the name of Eusebians. It was composed, at the time of the Council, of about twelve or fifteen bishops, the chief of whom was Eusebius of Nicomedia, who gave them his name. Theodoret says of them: “They attempted to conceal their impiety, and only secretly favoured the blasphemies of Arius”. Eusebius of Caesarea often sided with them, although he was rather more adverse to Arianism than the Eusebians, and stood nearer to the orthodox doctrine. If we wished to employ expressions in use in reference to modern parties and assemblies, we should say :At Nicaea the orthodox bishops formed, with Athanasius and his friends, the right; Arius and some of his friends the left; whilst the left centre was occupied by the Eusebians, and the right centre by Eusebius of Caesarea.

Athanasius tells us that “the Eusebian intermediate party was very plainly invited by the Nicene Fathers to explain their opinions, and to give religious reasons for them. But hardly had they commenced speaking when the bishops were convinced of their heterodoxy”, so strongly was their tendency to Arianism manifested. Theodoret probably alludes to this fact when he quotes from a pamphlet by Eustathius of Antioch, that the Arians, who were expressly called Eusebians in the eighth chapter, laid before the Synod a Creed compiled by Eusebius, but that this Creed was rejected with great marks of dissatisfaction, as tainted with heresy. We know that Valesius, in his notes upon Theodoret, advances the opinion that the Creed in question was compiled, not by Eusebius of Nicomedia, but by Eusebius of Caesarea; but we shall see further on, that the historian submitted to the Council quite another Creed, which has been highly commended, and which would certainly neither have merited nor provoked such strong dissatisfaction from the bishops. Moreover, S. Ambrose says expressly, that Eusebius of Nicomedia submitted a heterodox writing to the Council.

When the Eusebians saw that the Synod were determined to reject the principal expressions invented by the Arians, — viz. : the Son is a creature; that He is susceptible of change, — they tried to bring it about that in their place biblical expressions should be selected to define the doctrine of the Church, in the hope that these expressions would be sufficiently vague and general to allow another interpretation which might be favourable to their doctrine. Athanasius, who relates this fact, does not say precisely that the Eusebians proposed these biblical expressions, but that they would have rejoiced in them. However, if we consider their habitual conduct, and their continual and oft-repeated complaint that an unbiblical expression had been selected at Nicaea, we can hardly be wrong in supposing that they actually suggested the use of expressions drawn from the Bible. The Fathers showed themselves disposed to accept such, and to say, "The Logos is from God, (instead of “out of nothing”, as the Arians wanted it); the Eusebians consulted together, and said, “We are willing to accept the formula; for all is from God, we and all creatures, as says the apostle”. When the bishops found out this falseness and ambiguity, they wished to explain more exactly the words “of God”, and added (in their Creed), “The Son is of the substance of God”; and they could no longer pretend to misunderstand this. The bishops went on, and said further, “The Logos is the virtue of God, the eternal image of the Father, perfectly like to the rather, immutable and true God”; but they remarked that the Eusebians exchanged signs amongst themselves, to notify that they agreed with these expressions : for in the Bible man is also called an image of God, the “image and glory of God”; even the locusts are called a “power of God”. The term immutable applies alike to man; for S. Paul says, “Nothing can separate us from the love of Christ”; and even the attribute of eternal may be applied to man, as we see it in S. Paul.

In order to exclude this dishonest exegesis, and to express themselves more clearly, the bishops chose, instead of the biblical expressions, the term omouúsios; (that is, of the same substance, or consubstantial). By this expression they meant, “that the Son is not only like to the Father, but that, as His image. He is the same as the Father; that He is of the Father; and that the resemblance of the Son to the Father, and His immutability, are different from ours : for in us they are something acquired, and arise from our fulfilling the divine commands. Moreover, they wished to indicate by this, that His generation is different from that of human nature; that the Son is not only like to the Father, but inseparable from the substance of the Father; that He and the Father are one and the same, as the Son Himself said : “The Logos is always in the Father, and the Father always in the Logos, as the sun and its splendour are inseparable”.

Athanasius speaks also of the internal divisions of the Eusebians, and of the discussions which arose in the midst of them, in consequence of which some completely kept silence, thereby confessing that they were ashamed of their errors. As they began more clearly to foresee that Arianism would be condemned, the Eusebians grew colder in its defence; and the fear of losing their offices and dignities so influenced them, that they ended by nearly all subscribing to the omouúsios and the entire Nicene formula. Eusebius of Nicomedia, in particular, proved himself very feeble and destitute of character; so much so, that even the Emperor, before and afterwards his protector, publicly reproached him for his cowardice, in a letter which we still possess, and related how Eusebius had personally and through others entreated him to forgive him, and allow him to remain in his office.

 

The Creed of Eusebius of Caesarea.

 

Eusebius of Caesarea made a last attempt to weaken the strong expression omouúsius, and the force of the stringently defined doctrine of the Logos. He laid before the Council the sketch of a Creed compiled by himself, which was read in the presence of the Emperor, and proposed for adoption by the assembly. After a short introduction, the Creed was conceived in these words : “We believe in one only God, Father Almighty, Creator of things visible and invisible; and in the Lord Jesus Christ, for He is the Logos of God, God of God, Light of Light, life of life. His only Son, the first-born of all creatures, begotten of the Father before all time, by whom also everything was created, who became flesh for our redemption, who lived and suffered amongst men, rose again the third day, returned to the Father, and will come again one day in His glory to judge the living and the dead. We believe also in the Holy Ghost. We believe that each of these three is and subsists : the Father truly as Father, the Son truly as Son, the Holy Ghost truly as Holy Ghost; as our Lord also said, when He sent His disciples to preach : Go and teach all nations, and baptize them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost”.

Eusebius added, that this was his true belief; that he always had believed thus; that he always would believe it, and anathematize every heresy. He relates, that after the reading of this formula nobody arose to contradict him; that, on the contrary, the Emperor praised it very highly, declared that he thus believed, exhorted everybody to accept the Creed and to sign it, only adding to it the word omouúsios. The Emperor, he adds, himself explained this word omouúsios more exactly : he said it did not signify that there was in God a corporeal substance, nor that the divine substance was divided (between the Father and the Son), and rent between several persons; for material relations cannot be attributed to a purely spiritual being.

After these words of the Emperor, says Eusebius, the bishops might have added the word omouúsios, and given to the Creed that form in which it might be universally adopted, to the exclusion of every other.

It is possible, indeed, that the Council may have taken the formula of Eusebius as the basis of its own; at least the comparison of the two Creeds speaks in favour of that hypothesis; but even if this were so, it is not the less true that they differ considerably and essentially : the word omouúsios is the principal point, and moreover it is not correct to say that the Nicene Fathers added no more than this word to the Eusebian formula. The Arians would perhaps have been able to admit this Creed, whilst that of Nicaea left them no subterfuge. It is besides evident that in his account of the matter Eusebius has not spoken the whole truth, and his account itself explains why he has not done so. In fact, when they presented the Nicene Creed to him to sign, he begged a moment for reflection, and then signed it; and then feared, as having hitherto been a protector of Arianism, that he would be blamed for having given his signature. It was in order to explain this conduct that he addressed a circular letter to his Church, in which he related what we have just borrowed from him, — namely, the Creed he had proposed, its acceptation by the Emperor, etc. After having transcribed the Nicene Creed in extenso, with the anathemas which are attached to it, he continues, in order to excuse himself : "When the bishops proposed this formula to me, I did not wish to consent to it before having minutely examined in what sense they had taken the expressions of the same nature and substance. After several questions and answers, they declared that the words from the Father did not imply that the Son was a part of the Father; and that appeared to me to correspond with the true doctrine, which proclaims that the Son is of the Father, but not a part of His substance. For the sake of peace, and in order not to depart from the right doctrine, I would not resist the word omouúsios. It is for the same reason that I admitted the formula, ‘He is begotten, and not created’, after they had explained to me that the word created designates in general all other things created by the Son, and with which the Son has nothing in common. He is not a creature, He is not similar to things created by Himself; but He is of a better substance than all creatures : His substance is, according to the teaching of the Scriptures, begotten of the Father; but the nature of this generation is inexplicable and incomprehensible to the creature".

“As to the word omouúsios” Eusebius continues, it is supposed that the Son is omouúsios with the Father, not after the manner of bodies and mortal beings, nor in such a way that the substance and power of the Father are divided and rent, or transformed in any way; for all that is impossible with a nature not begotten of the Father. The word omouúsios expresses that the Son has no resemblance with the creatures, but is like in all things to the Father who has begotten Him, and that He is of no other hypostasis or substance than that of the Father. I have agreed to this explanation, as I know that some ancient bishops and celebrated writers have also made use of the word omouúsios. After these explanations as to the meaning of the Nicene formula, which were supplied in the presence of the Emperor, we have all given our assent, and we have found nothing unacceptable in the anathema attached to the Creed, seeing that it prohibits expressions which are not found in Holy Scripture. In particular, it has seemed to me quite right to anathematize the expression, ‘He was not before He was begotten’; for, according to the universal doctrine, the Son of God was before His corporeal birth, as the Emperor himself affirmed : by His divine birth He is before all eternity; and before being begotten de facto by the Holy Ghost of Mary, He was in the Father”.

These last words certainly do no honour to the character of Eusebius. He must have known that the Arians did not hold what he attributed to them,—namely, that the Son was not before His appearance in the flesh (by Mary); for the Arian expression : He was not before He was begotten, refers evidently to the generation of the Son by the Father—a generation anterior to time — and not to His generation in time by the Holy Ghost in the womb of the Virgin Mary, as Eusebius sophistically suggests. He had recourse, however, to a dishonest artifice, giving another meaning to words perfectly clear in the Arian system, and attributing a gross folly to the old friends he had forsaken.

S. Athanasius has already remarked upon this; and it is astonishing, after that (not to speak of other writers), that even Mohler has overlooked the fact. But on the other side Mohler has with justice pointed out with what partiality Eusebius everywhere puts forward the Emperor’s intervention, as if the Nicene Creed had been his work, and not the bishops. According to his account, one should imagine that the Emperor hindered free discussion by his presence, whilst S. Ambrose and S. Athanasius both assure us of the contrary. The latter particularly asserts : “All the Nicene bishops condemned this heresy; . . . and they were not constrained to this by anybody, but they quite voluntarily vindicated the truth as they ought”.

The zeal displayed by the Emperor Constantino for the omouúsios, and of which he gave proofs by the deposition of the Arians, contrasts strongly with the manner in which he regards the controversy at the beginning, and which he expressed before the Synod in his letter to Alexander Bishop of Alexandria, and to Arius. Constantine had been at that time, according to all appearance, under the influence of the bishop of his residence, Eusebius of Nicomedia, so much the more as he was only a layman, and in fact only a catechumen himself. But during the Council Hosius doubtless helped him to understand the question more thoroughly, and the subterfuges of the Arians certainly also contributed to give the Emperor a strong aversion to a cause which was defended by such evil means.

 

 The Nicene Creed.

 

Tillemont, relying upon a passage of S. Athanasins, has thought he might venture to attribute to Bishop Hosius the greatest influence in the drawing up of the Nicene Creed. But the assertion of St. Athanasius applies only to the part taken by Hosius in the development of the faith of Nicaea : he does not speak in any way of a special authorship in the compilation of the formula of Nicaea. It is the same with the expression of S. Hilary : Hujus igitur intimandae cunctis fidei, Athanasius in Nicaene synodo diaconus, vehemens auctor exstiterat. Here also only the great influence which S. Athanasius had in the deliberations of the Nicene Council is spoken of; but it is not said that he gave the idea of the Creed. We know, in fine, from S. Basil, that Hermogenes, then a deacon, subsequently Bishop of Caesarea in Cappadocia, acted as secretary to the Synod, and that he wrote and read the Creed. This Creed, the result of long deliberations, many struggles, and scrupulous examination, as the Emperor himself said, has been preserved to us, with the anathema which was affixed to it, by Eusebius, in a letter which he wrote to his Church, and which we have mentioned above : also by Socrates, Gelasius, and others. It is as follows :

“We believe in one God, the Father Almighty, Creator of all things visible and invisible; and in one Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, only-begotten of the Father, that is, of the substance of the Father, God of God, light of light, very God of very God, begotten, not made, being of the same substance with the Father, by whom all things were made in heaven and in earth, who for us men and for our salvation came down from heaven, was incarnate, was made man, suffered, rose again the third day, ascended into the heavens, and He will come to judge the living and the dead. And in the Holy Ghost. Those who say. There was a time when He was not, and He was not before He was begotten, and He was made of nothing (He was created), or who say that He is of another hypostasis, or of another substance (than the Father), or that the Son of God is created, that He is mutable, or subject to change, the Catholic Church anathematizes”.

All the bishops, with the exception of five, declared themselves ready immediately to subscribe to this Creed, under the conviction that the formula contained the ancient faith of the apostolic Church. This was so clear, that even the Novatian bishop Acesius, although separated from the Church on points of discipline, gave witness to its dogmatic truth, and adopted the Creed unconditionally, saying, “The Council has introduced nothing new in this act, Emperor; this has been the universal belief since apostolic times”.

The five bishops who at first refused to sign were : Eusebius of Nicomedia, Theognis of Nicaea, Maris of Chalcedon, Theonas of Marmarica, and Secundus of Ptolemais. They even ridiculed the term omouúsios; which could only refer, they said, to substances emanating from other substances, or which came into existence by division, separation, and the like. In the end, however, all signed except Theonas and Secundus, who were anathematized together with Arius and his writings. They were also excommunicated. But a writer on their own side, Philostorgius, says that these three bishops did not act honestly in their subscription; for he relates that, by the advice of the Emperor, they wrote, instead of omouúsios, the word omoioúsos (similar in substance, instead of one in substance), which has almost the same sound and orthography. We see, indeed, from the beginning that the signatures of these three bishops were not considered sincere; for Bishop Secundus, when he was exiled, said to Eusebius of Nicomedia : “Thou hast subscribed in order not to be banished; but I hope the year will not pass away before thou shalt have the same lot”.

 

Measures taken by the Emperor against the Arians.

 

When the formula of the Synod was laid before the Emperor, he looked upon it as inspired by God, as a revelation from the Holy Spirit dwelling in men so holy, and he threatened to banish anyone who would not sign it. We have already seen the effect produced by these threats. But the Emperor fulfilled them without delay, and exiled to Illyria Arius and the two bishops Secundus and Theonas, who had refused to subscribe, as well as the priests who were attached to them. At the same time he ordered the books of Arius and his friends to be burned, and he threatened all who concealed them with pain of death. He even wished to annihilate the name of Arians, and ordered them in future to be called Porphyrians, because Arius had imitated Porphyry in his enmity to Christianity. Subsequently Eusebius of Nicomedia and Theognis of Nicaea were also deposed and banished, because, while admitting the Creed, they would not recognise the deposition of Arius, and had admitted Arians amongst them. At the same time, the churches of Nicaea and Nicomedia were required by the Emperor to elect orthodox bishops in their place. The Emperor particularly blamed Eusebius of Nicomedia, not only for having taught error, but for having taken part in Licinius’ persecution of the Christians, as well as plotted intrigues against Constantine himself, and deceived him

 

Decision of the Easter Question.

 

The second object of the Nicene Council was the removal of the difficulties, which had existed up to that time, as to the celebration of the festival of Easter. The old controversy respecting Easter was great and violent; but almost greater and more violent still is that which has been raised among learned men of later times on the Paschal controversy, and on purely accessory questions belonging to it — for example, whether the Primate had gained or lost in this controversy — so that the true point of the controversy has been almost lost from sight.

The first who went most thoroughly into this question was the learned French Jesuit, Gabriel Daniel, in 1724. A German professor, Christopher Augustus Heumann, presented independently, almost at the same time, the result of his studies upon the Easter controversy. Mosheim examined the whole of this question anew, yet only with reference to the work of Daniel (he had not been able to lay his hand on Heumann’s dissertation); and the greater number of his successors accepted his conclusions, particularly Walch, in the first volume of his Ketzerhistorie.

The same question has been debated with a new interest in modern times, because of its relation to the criticism of the Gospels; and particularly by the Tubingen school, in the interest of its peculiar theories. But the best work published on this subject is that of Dean Weitzel, at the time a deacon at Kircheim, under the title of The Christian Paschal Controversy of the Three First Centuries. He has cleared up several points which had remained obscure through want of complete original information.

By the use of these preparatory works, amongst which we must mention the Dissertation of Rettberg, published in Ilgen's Gazette of Historical Theology, and by personally investigating anew the existing sources of original information, we have arrived at the followi’g results : — As the Old Testament is the figure of the New, Christians in all times have recognised in the paschal lamb of the Jews the prototype of Christ, and His great expiatory sacrifice upon the cross. The Messianic passages in the Bible had already compared Christ to a lamb, and in the New Testament S. John the Baptist had explicitly called Him the Lamb of God; besides which, the slaying of the Lamb upon the cross corresponded fully with the slaying of the Jemsh paschal lamb. The typical character of the Jewish paschal lamb was so evident in the eyes of the ancient Christians, that the Apostle Paul called our Lord Jesus Christ ‘our Passover!’.

All parties unanimously agreed, in the controversy which rose later about the celebration of Easter, that the festival itself had been instituted by the apostles. But the existence of this controversy proves that, if the apostles prescribed the celebration of the festival of Easter, they did not determine how it was to be celebrated, so that different practices arose in different countries.

It is commonly supposed that there were only two separate ways of celebrating Easter — that of Asia Minor, and that of the West; but the most modern researches have established beyond doubt that there were three parties in these divisions, of which two were in the Church herself, and a third belonged to an heretical Ebionite sect.

If we would characterize these three in a general manner, we might say : The latter held, with the continuance of the obligation of the ancient law in general, the validity of the old legal Passover : their festival then, properly speaking, was not Christian; it was rather Jewish. The two other parties, both looking from a Christian point of view, believed in the abrogation of the ancient law, and their festival was purely Christian. In their opinion, the prototype — that is to say, the Jewish Easter — had ceased, after having received its accomplishment in Christ; whilst the Ebionites, or the third party, wished still to preserve the type and the typical feast.

But the two parties who regarded the matter equally from a Christian point of view, differed on two points : (a) as to the time of the Easter festival, and (b) as to the fast.

To the one, as to the other, Easter was the great festival of Redemption by Christ. But the great drama of Redemption had two particularly remarkable moments — the death and the resurrection of the Lord; and as the Jewish feast lasted for several days, Christians also prolonged their Easter for several days, so as to comprehend the two great moments of the work of redemption. Thus both sides celebrated (a) the day of death, and (y b) the day of resurrection. They were also agreed as to the time of the celebration of the festival, in so far as the two parties were agreed, to the greatest possible extent, as to the date of the death of Christ, and chose, as the first decisive point in deciding the festival, the 14th of Nisan, not because they regarded the Jewish law as binding upon that point, but because Christ's Passion had actually commenced on that date; and thus they formed their conclusions, not on legal, but on historical grounds.

However, even with this common basis, divergences were possible, in that some insisted upon the day of the week, and wished specially to preserve the remembrance of that upon which Christ had died, and also that upon which He had risen again. These — and they were principally the Westerns — consequently always celebrated the anniversary of the death of Christ upon a Friday, and the day of resurrection upon a Sunday, considering this custom as the truer order, in opposition to the Jewish ordinance. The others, on the contrary, belonging chiefly to Asia Minor, insisted upon the day of the year and of the month, and wished above all to celebrate the remembrance of the Lord's death exactly upon the day of the month on which it happened, which, according to them, was the 14th Nisan. They believed, as we shall see hereafter — and the Westerns held the same opinion — that Christ had not partaken of the paschal lamb with His disciples in the last year of His life, but that on the 14th of the month Nisan, before the feast of the Passover. He had been crucified; consequently they wished to celebrate the Saviour’s death on the 14th Nisan, whatever day of the week it fell upon, even were it not a Friday.

Thus the first difference as to the time consisted in this, that the one considered above everything the day of the week upon which Christ died, whilst the others attached the most importance to the day of the month or of the year. But the former did not neglect either the day of the month or of the year : with them also the 14th Nisan was decisive; that is to say, they too regulated their festival according to the 14. When the 14th Nisan fell upon a Friday, the two parties were agreed about the time of the festival, because the day of the week and of the month coincided. But if, for example, the 14 fell upon a Tuesday, the Asiatics celebrated the death of Christ upon the Tuesday, and the Westerns on the following Friday; and if the 14 fell upon a Saturday, the Asiatics celebrated the death festival upon that Saturday, whilst the Westerns kept it still on the Friday following.

All this it is needless to discuss; but one point is not certain, — namely, whether, when the 14 (and consequently their commemoration of the death) did not fall upon a Friday, but, for instance, on a Wednesday, the Asiatics celebrated the feast of the resurrection the third day after the commemoration of the death — in this case on the Friday — or kept it on the Sunday. Weitzel holds the latter opinion; but he has not been able to bring sufficient proofs in support of his decision. All depends here upon the sense given to the words of Eusebius : “The majority of bishops had (in the second century) decreed that the mystery of the resurrection could be celebrated only on a Sunday”. This demonstrates that the feast of the resurrection had until then been celebrated upon other days. To escape this argument, Weitzel takes mystery in the sense of sacrament, that is to say, the reception of the holy communion; and according to him, these bishops ordained the communion of the resurrection to be received only on Sunday; whilst previously the Asiatics had been satisfied to celebrate the feast of the resurrection on Sunday, but had been accustomed to communicate on the day upon which the 14th Nisan fell. We should rather hold the opinion that it was the feast of the resurrection which previously had not been celebrated on Sunday. This question of the communion leads us to the second point of difference between the Asiatics and the Occidentals, that is to say, the fast.

This divergency arose from the different way of conceiving of the day of the death of Christ. The Westerns considered it exclusively as a day of mourning : they looked upon it, so to speak, from the historical side, and were in the same state of mind as the disciples upon the day of the death of Christ, that is, in deepest sorrow. The Orientals, on the contrary, rather considered this day, from its dogmatic or doctrinal side, as the day of redemption; and for this reason it was to them, not a day of mourning, but of joy, dating from the moment when Christ died, and had thus accomplished the work of redemption. Yet the hours of the day preceding the moment of death were spent by them in mourning, in memory of the Passion of Christ. They completed the fast at the moment of the death of Christ — three o'clock in the afternoon — and then they celebrated the feast of the communion, that is to say, the sacred rite of the feast, with the solemn Agape (love-feast) and the Supper of the Lord. The Occidentals, on the contrary, considering the whole day as consecrated to mourning, continued the fast, a sign of mourning, and did not end it until the joyful morning of the resurrection. It was upon this day that they celebrated the Easter communion, and not upon the Saturday, as Mosheim has supposed.

It is a secondary question, whether the Eastern Church ended their fast upon the 14th Nisan after the Easter communion, or recommenced it once more, and continued it to the day of the resurrection. The words of Eusebius, impartially considered, are favourable to the first opinion. In spite of this, Mosheim has attempted to demonstrate, from a passage of S. Epiphanius, that the Audians, a degenerate branch of the Quartodecimans, of Asia Minor, fasted again after their Easter feast. But even if the Audians did in fact follow this custom, it cannot from this be concluded that it was an universal Eastern custom. In the second place, Mosheim was the first to see in this passage what he wished to demonstrate; and he misunderstood it, as we shall see hereafter when speaking of the sect of the Audians.

This difference respecting the fast was not the only one. Not merely was the day of the end of the fast not the same with the Eastern and Western Churches, but there was no perfect uniformity in the manner of fasting, and this difference went back to the remotest times. S. Irenaeus indicates this in the fragment of his letter to Pope Victor, which Eusebius has preserved : “Some”, says he, “fast only one day; others two; others, again, several days”. Then come these obscure words, if we place a comma after forty : “Others fast forty hours, reckoning the hours of the day and night”; that is to say, they fast equally by day and night. Massuet has understood the passage in this way. But if we place no comma after fourty, the sense is : “Others fast in all forty hours by day and night (perhaps the twenty-four hours of Good Friday and sixteen hours on Saturday)”. Valesius and Bohmer defend this interpretation. Gieseler gives a third explanation. He proposes to read : “Others reckon forty hours in all with their day”; that is, they fast upon the day they consider as the passover, or the day of the death of Christ, and begin with the death-hour (three hours after noon) a new fast of forty hours until the resurrection. We do not think that such a modification of the text, wanting in all critical authority, can be justified; but we cannot absolutely decide between Massuet and Valesius, which is happily unnecessary for our principal purpose. S. Irenaeus clearly says that the differences in the manner of celebrating Easter were then of no recent date — that they had also existed in the primitive Church. After Valesius’ translation, S. Irenaeus concludes that this difference was the result of the negligence of the rulers of the Church; but Massuet has proved that this translation was incorrect, and demonstrated that the expression does not here mean to rule, but to maintain (a custom), and that S. Irenaeus intended to say, “who (our ancestors), it appears, have not sufficiently maintained the matter, and thus have bequeathed to their descendants a custom which arose in all simplicity, and from ignorance”.

What we have just said plainly proves, that the two parties of whom we speak, the Asiatic and Western Churches, were both perfectly established upon a Christian and ecclesiastical basis; for Easter was a festival equally important and sacred to both, and their difference had regard, not to the kernel of the matter, but to the shell. It was otherwise, as we have already indicated, with the third party, which, for the sake of brevity, we call the Ebionite or Judaic sect. It had this in common with the Asiatic party, that it determined the celebration of Easter according to the day of the month or of the year (the 14), without regard to the day of the week. Consequently there were two parties of Quartodecimans, if we take this expression in its more extended sense; that is to say, two parties who celebrated their Easter festival upon the 14th Nisan, who were thus agreed in this external and chronological point, but who differed toto coelo in regard to the essence of the matter.

In fact, the Ebionite party started from the proposition, that the prescription of Easter in the Old Testament was not abolished for Christians, and therefore that these ought, like the Jews, and in the same manner, to eat a paschal lamb in a solemn feast on the 14th Nisan. This Jewish paschal banquet was to them the principal thing. But the other Quartodecimans, regarding the subject in a Christian light, maintained that the ancient paschal feast was abolished — that the type existed no longer — that what it had prefigured, namely, the death of the Lamb upon the cross, had been realized, — and that therefore the Christian should celebrate, not the banquet, but the death of his Lord.

The difference between these two parties therefore depends upon the question as to the perpetual obligatory force of the Mosaic law. The Ebionite Quartodecimans accepted, while the orthodox denied this perpetuity; and consequently the latter celebrated not the Jewish Passover, but the day of the death of Christ. Both parties appealed to the Bible. The Ebionites said : Christ Himself celebrated the Passover on the 14th Nisan; Christians, then, ought to celebrate it on that day, and in the same way. The orthodox Quartodecimans maintained, on the contrary, that Christ had not eaten the Passover in the last year of His earthly life, but that He was crucified on the 14th Nisan, before the time of the paschal feast commenced; and that thus the 14th Nisan is the anniversary, not of the feast of the passover, but of the death of Christ.

Eusebius asserts that Asia was the home of the Quartodeciman party. But it is not quite clear what he means by Asia; since the word signifies sometimes a quarter of the world, sometimes Asia Minor, sometimes only a portion of the latter Asia Proconsularis, of which Ephesus was the capital. Eusebius has not here taken the word Asia in any of these three acceptations : for (a) the Quartodeciman party had not its home either in the whole of Asia Minor or the whole of Asia, since, as Eusebius himself says, Pontus (in Asia Minor), Palestine, and Osrhoene followed another practice; and, on the other side, (b) it was not confined to proconsular Asia, for we find it also in Cilicia, Mesopotamia, and Syria, as S. Athanasius testifies. S. Chrysostom says even, that formerly it prevailed also at Antioch.

But Eusebius points out his meaning more clearly in the following chapter, where he classes among the Quartodecimans the Churches of Asia (proconsular), and the neighboring provinces. We shall see later, that there were amongst these Quartodecimans in Asia Minor, not only orthodox, but Ebionites, particularly at Laodicea. If the Quartodecimans in general formed a minority among Christians, the Ebionites, as it appears, formed but a small group in this minority.

The great majority of Christians regulated the festival of Easter according to the day of the week, so that the resurrection might always be celebrated on a Sunday, and the death of Christ always on a Friday. According to Eusebius, this mode of celebration of the Easter festival “was observed by all other Churches throughout the whole world, with the exception of Asia”; and he particularly mentions Palestine, Rome, Pontus, France, Osrhoene, Corinth, Phoenicia, and Alexandria. The Emperor Constantine the Great affirms that “all the Churches of the West, the South, and the North, had adopted this practice, particularly Rome, the whole of Italy, Africa, Egypt, Spain, Gaul, Britain, Libya, Achaia (Greece); it had even been adopted in the dioceses of Asia, Pontus, and Cilicia”. This can be only partially true of Cilicia and Asia Minor; for the latter was quite the seat of the Quartodecimans, and S. Athanasius distinctly classes Cilicia amongst the Quartodeciman provinces.

It follows from what has been said, that it is not quite correct to call the practice of those who regulated Easter according to the day of the week the Western practice; for a great number of the Eastern provinces also adopted this plan. It might rather be called the common or predominant use : whilst the Quartodeciman custom, which was based on a Jewish theory, should be called the Ebionite; and the second Quartodeciman custom, which rested upon a Christian basis, may be called the Johannean. The orthodox Quartodecimans, indeed, specially appealed to S. John the evangelist, and partly to the Apostle S. Philip, as we see from the letter of their head, Polycrates of Ephesus; and they affirmed that these two great authorities had always celebrated Easter on the 14th Nisan. But the Western or ordinary usage was also based upon the apostolical authority of the prince-apostles SS. Peter and Paul, who, according to them, had introduced this custom.

Besides, all parties preserved the expression of the feast of the Passover given in the Old Testament, although it only recalled particularly the passing of the destroying angel over the dwellings of the Israelites; and in this sense it might have been employed figuratively by Christians, as their feast of deliverance from Egypt.

Sometimes by the word Pascha was signified the whole week of the Passion, sometimes the days which they celebrated during that week, or even a particular day in it, especially that of our Lord's death. Tertullian, for instance, in his book de Jejunio, calls the whole week Pascha, but in his work de Oratione only Good Friday. Constantine the Great, in the same way, speaks sometimes of one day, sometimes of several days, in Easter week. He seems also particularly to signify by the word Easter the day of the death of Christ; nevertheless he calls the day of the resurrection not only Resurrection Day, but also Pascha, as may be seen from the whole tenor of the passage in Eusebius, and from several others quoted by Suicer. Basil the Great, for instance, in his Exhortatio ad Baptismum identifies the Pasqha with the day of commemoration. Subsequently, from what period is uncertain, in order to make a distinction, they call the day of the death “passover of crucifixion”, and the day of the resurrection “passover of resurrection”.

It is clear from a passage in Tertullian, that the universal custom of the ancient Church was to celebrate Easter for a whole week. S. Epiphanius says still more plainly, “The Catholic Church celebrates not only the 14th Nisan, but the whole week”; and as he certainly emphasized this in opposition to the Quartodecimans, we may presume that the Ebionite Quartodecimans celebrated only the 14th of Nisan as the feast of the Passover; that at least the other days were thrown into the shade relatively to this principal feast, which was quite in accordance with their Jewish tendency. The observance of the Mosaic prescription respecting the paschal feast seemed to them far more important than the celebration of the days of the death and resurrection of our Lord.

Although there was a notable difference in the three ways of keeping Easter, the antagonism between the Johannean and the ordinary custom was first noticed; but the higher unity in the spirit and in the essence of the subject made the chronological difference seem less striking and more tolerable. S. Irenaeus gives a proof of this when he distinctly says, in a fragment of the synodical letter which he wrote in the name of the Gallican bishops, “that the Roman bishops before Soter, namely Anicetus, Pius, Hyginus, Telesphorus, and Xystus (the latter was living at the beginning of the second century), did not follow the Asiatic custom, nor did they tolerate it amongst their people, but that nevertheless they lived amicably with those who came to Rome from countries where a contrary practice prevailed; and they even sent the holy Eucharist, in token of unity, to the Quartodeciman bishops of those Churches”.

The first known debate respecting this difference, and the first attempt made at the same time to put an end to it, took place when S. Polycarp went to Rome to see Pope Anicetus, towards the middle of the second century. We cannot determine exactly in what year this took place. Baronius declares, but with insufficient reason, for the fifth year of Marcus Aurelius, 167 years after Christ. But Polycarp was so advanced in years at this time, that it is difficult to believe he could have undertaken so long a journey; besides, Anicetus had then been in the see of Rome for ten years, and consequently Polycarp might well have visited him before. However, Polycarp went to Rome, and not about the Easter business, as Baronius concludes from an incorrect translation of Eusebius, but about some other slight differences which he wished to compose in concert with Anicetus. He was certainly the most worthy representative of the Johannean or Asiatic opinions, being recognised as the most distinguished bishop of Asia Minor, and certainly the only disciple of S. John then living. We may suppose that he followed the Johannean practice with regard to the celebration of Easter, not only from the fact that he was Bishop of Smyrna in Asia Minor, but also from this, that Polycrates of Ephesus, the ardent defender of the Johannean custom, particularly appealed to Polycarp in his struggle with Pope Victor. Polycarp and Anicetus received each other with the kiss of peace, and held a conference on the subject of Easter, which did not however last long, Anicetus being unable to induce Polycarp to abandon a practice which the latter “had observed in communion with the Evangelist S. John”. Neither would Anicetus abandon the custom pursued by his predecessors in the episcopate. In spite of this difference they lived in communion, and Anicetus conferred what was then a very special mark of distinction upon his host, allowing him to celebrate the holy Eucharist in his church and in his presence. After that they separated in peace, and the same feeling continued between the two parties whom they represented.

Some years after Polycarp's journey we meet with the first known movements of the Ebionite Quartodecimans. Melito Bishop of Sardes relates, in a fragment of his work, that “when Servilius Paulus was Proconsul of Asia, and Sagaris Bishop of Laodicea had suffered martyrdom, a warm controversy arose at Laodicea on the subject of Easter”. The time in which Melito flourished was probably about the year 170. This fragment does not specify the particular point upon which the controversy turned, but we learn that from another source. Apollinaris of Hierapolis, a contemporary, a friend, and a compatriot of Melito, whose opinions also he held, likewise wrote a work upon Easter; and the two fragments which have been preserved in the Chronicon Paschale assert — (1) “Those are mistaken who hold that our Lord ate the paschal lamb with His disciples upon the 14th Nisan, and that He died upon the great day of unleavened bread (the 15th Nisan). They pretend that S. Matthew affirms it; but such an opinion is not accordant with the (ancient) law, and the ‘Gospels (especially those of S. Matthew and S. John) would thus be contradictory”. The second fragment says: “The 14th Nisan is the true passover of our Lord, the great Sacrifice; instead of the lamb, we have here the Lamb of God”, etc.

By these fragments we see that Apollinaris belonged to those Christians who held that our Lord did not partake of the Passover the last year of His life, but that He was crucified upon the 14th Nisan. Thus the immolation of the lamb, the type, was realized by the death of the Lamb upon the cross upon the same 14th of Nisan, in the week of the Passion. The type was then abolished, and the commemoration of the death of Christ replaced the Jewish (14) feast. He holds that by admitting this theory the evangelists can be harmonized, and that an exact parallelism was established between the facts of the New and the types of the Old Testament. According to the opposite opinion, however, (1) the evangelists are not agreed; and (2) that opinion does not agree with the ancient law. It is not said why, but we may conclude from his words that the following was implied : “If Christ had eaten the paschal lamb upon the 14th Nisan, His death should have taken place upon the 15th Nisan, whilst the type of this death was only upon the 14th; and consequently the resurrection falls upon the 17th Nisan, whilst the type occurs upon the 16^th”.

The proximity of Hierapolis and of Laodicea, and the fact that Melito and Apollinaris lived at the same time, sanction the presumption that the party attacked by the latter was identical with that of Laodicea, and which Melito attacked; and as Apollinaris and Melito were associated as apologists and lights of their time, they were also certainly associated in the Easter controversy. Apollinaris was, as his fragments prove, a Johannean Quartodeciman; and Melito was the same, for Polycrates expressly appeals to him. But against whom did Apollinaris write, and what was the character of the party against whom he and Melito contended? Apollinaris does not enter into detail upon this point: he simply indicates, in the first extract, that his opponents celebrated the paschal feast upon the 14th Nisan. They were therefore Quartodecimans; but as he was of that class himself, we must seek elsewhere for the special character of his adversaries; and as in the second extract he strongly insists upon the 14th Nisan “being the true Passover of the Lord, the great sacrifice wherein the Son of God was immolated instead of the Jewish lamb”, we may conclude naturally enough that his adversaries were Ebionite Quartodecimans, who also celebrated, it is true, the 14th Nisan, but in a Jewish manner, with the feast of the passover. This is made still more evident by an extract from Hippolytus, of which we shall have to speak hereafter. Moreover, the work of Melito determined Clement of Alexandria to write a Word about Pascha, not indeed to refute it, but to complete Melito’s work. Of this work of Clement’s we have only fragments preserved in the Chronicon Paschale, and the first of these fragments says : “Christ always ate the paschal lamb with His disciples in His earlier years, but not in the last year of His life, in which He was Himself the Lamb immolated upon the cross”. The second fragment has the words: “Christ died on the 14th of Nisan; and after His death, on the evening of the same day, the Jews celebrated their passover feast”.

Clement here quite agrees with Apollinaris, and his work proves that the same party which Apollinaris opposed still existed after the lapse of many years.

After some time, S. Hippolytus, attacked them in two fragments, both preserved in the Chronicon Paschale. He distinctly says : “The controversy still lasts, for some erroneously maintain that Christ ate the Passover before His death, and that consequently we ought to do so also. But Christ, when He suffered, no longer ate the legal Passover; for He was Himself the Passover, previously announced, which was on that day fulfilled in Him”. This fragment by Hippolytus is taken from his work against the heresies and consequently from that time the Ebionite Quartodecimans were rightly considered as heretics. He says again, in the second fragment of his work upon Easter : “Christ did not partake of the Passover before His death; He would not have had time for it”.

We need not wonder that an Italian bishop like Hippolytus should have thought it necessary to oppose the Ebionite party; for it was not restricted to Phrygia (Laodicea) and the other countries of Asia Minor, but it had found defenders even at Rome, and Hippolytus was a priest of the Roman Church — he was even for some time a schismatical Bishop of Rome. Eusebius indeed says : “Several sects arose in Rome in the time of the Montanists, of which one had for its chief the priest Florinus, another Blastus”. He does not tell us their doctrine, but says that Florinus was deposed, and that both of them had seduced many of the faithful. He adds : “Irenaeus wrote against Florinus a book called de Monarchia, and against Blastus another, de Schismale; but again he does not mention the doctrine taught by Blastus. We have no more account of it than is contained in the apocryphal supplement to Tertullian’s book de Prescriptione, where according to this text, Blastus was a Judaizer, having tendencies analogous to those of the Ebionite Quartodecimans of Asia Minor (especially of Laodicea). If Blastus, towards 180, tried to introduce the Ebionite Quartodecimanism into Italy, and even into Rome, the aversion of Pope Victor towards the Quartodecimans in general can be easily explained, and his earnestness in his controversy with Polycrates and the Asiatics.

We thus reach the second period of the Paschal controversy. In the first, we have seen the two customs of the Church—the Johannean custom, and the usual one—existing side by side, each of these opposing only the Ebionite party. Now, on the contrary, the two purely Christian opinions are to be found in violent conflict. It was probably Pope Victor who was the cause of the struggle : the intrigues of Blastus doubtless resulted in setting him against the Quartodecimans, and leading him to forbid the celebration of the feast on the 14th Nisan. In 196, S. Jerome’s Chronicle says that he wrote to the most eminent bishops of every country, asking them to assemble synods in their provinces, and by their means to introduce the Western mode of celebrating Easter. These letters—for example, those to Polycrates of Ephesus—also contained threats in case of resistance. Numerous synods therefore assembled, as we learn from Eusebius; and all, with the exception of those of Asia Minor, unanimously declared “that it was a rule of the Church to celebrate the mystery of the resurrection only on a Sunday”. They acquainted all the faithful with this declaration by synodical letters. Eusebius saw several of these synodical letters, especially those from the Synods of Palestine, presided over by Theophilus Bishop of Csesarea and Narcissus of Jerusalem; also those from the bishops of Pontus, under Palma; from the bishops of Gaul, under Irenaeus; from the bishops of Osrhoene; and, finally, the private letter from Bacchylus Bishop of Corinth. They unanimously pronounced in favour of Victor’s opinion, except Polycrates Bishop of Ephesus. The latter had also been president of a synod composed of a great number of the bishops of his province. He said that all approved of the remarkable letter which he proposed to send to Pope Victor, which Eusebius has preserved. In this letter he says, “We celebrate the true day, without adding or subtracting anything”; and he appeals, in justification of his practice, as we have before seen, to the Apostle Philip, who died at Hierapolis, to S. John the Evangelist, to Polycarp, and others, who all kept Easter on the fourteenth day after the new moon. Seven of his own relations had been bishops of Ephesus before him, and had observed the same custom. “As he had attained the age of sixty-five years, Polycrates no longer feared any threatening, he said, for he knew that we ought to obey God rather than men”.

Thereupon, says Eusebius, continuing his account, Pope Victor tried to excommunicate the Churches of Asia and of the neighbouring provinces; and he addressed an encyclical letter to this effect to all the Christians of those countries. The words of Eusebius might also be understood to mean that Victor really launched a sentence of excommunication against these Churches, and they have been taken in this sense by the later Church historian Socrates; but it is more correct to say, as Valesius has shown, that the Pope thought of excommunicating the Asiatics, and that he was kept from carrying out the sentence especially by S. Irenaeus. Eusebius says, indeed, “He tried to excommunicate them”. He adds : “This disposition of Victor did not please other bishops, who exhorted him rather to seek after peace. The letters in which they blame him are still extant”. However, Eusebius gives only the letter of S. Irenaeus, who, although born in Asia Minor, declared that the resurrection of the Saviour ought to be celebrated on a Sunday; but also exhorted Victor not to cut off from communion a whole group of Churches which only observed an ancient custom. He reminds him that his predecessors had judged this difference with much more leniency, and that, in particular, Pope Anicetus had discussed it amicably with Polycarp Bishop of Smyrna.

Eusebius here remarks, that Irenaeus, as his name indicates, had become peacefyer, and that he addressed letters on this occasion, not only to Victor, but to other bishops.

Thus this debate did not bring about the uniformity which Victor desired. However, as a consequence of these explanations and negotiations, some Churches of Asia, it appears, renounced their custom, and adopted that of the West, as Massuet and Valesius have concluded from the letter published by Constantine after the close of the Synod of Nicaea, in which he says : “Asia” (doubtless meaning some of its Churches), “Pontus, and Cilicia have adopted the universal custom”. This can apply only to a part of Cilicia, seeing that, according to the testimony of S. Athanasius, the custom of the Quartodecimans prevailed there. Thus up to this time the controversy bore only upon these two points : 1st.Was the festival to be held according to the day of the week, or that of the month? 2nd, When was the fast to cease?

But in the third century, which we have now reached, a fresh difficulty arose to complicate the debate, which we may call briefly the astronomical difficulty.

We have seen that with the Asiatics, as with the Westerns, Easter was determined by the 14th Nisan, with this difference only, that the Asiatics always celebrated Easter on this day, whilst the Westerns kept it on the Sunday following (with them the Sunday of the resurrection was their greatest festival). But then this question arose : On what precise day of the year does the 14th Nisan fall? or how can the lunar date of the 14th Nisan be reconciled with the solar year? The Jews' ecclesiastical year, the first month of which is called Nisan, commences in the spring. At the beginning of spring, and particularly towards the equinox, barley is ripe in Palestine. For this reason the month Nisan is also called the month of sheaves; and the great festival of the month Nisan, the Passover, is at the same time the feast of harvest, in which the first sheaf of barley is offered to God as first-fruits. According to this, the 14th Nisan comes almost at the same time with the full moon after the vernal equinox; and although the lunar year of the Jews is shorter than the solar year, they made up the difference by an intercalary month, so that the 14th Nisan always occurred at the same period. It was also partly determined by the ripeness of the barley.

Many Fathers of the Church relied especially on the fact that the Passover had always been kept by the ancient Hebrews, and by the contemporaries of our Saviour, after the equinox, and so ordered that the festival should continue to be celebrated after the commencement of the spring. They remarked that the Jews had always determined the 14 in this way until the fall of Jerusalem. The defective practice of not fixing the 14 according to the equinox was not introduced among them until after that event.

We may see clearly what resulted from this rule. Whoever observed it, could no longer regulate his Easter according to the 14th Nisan of the Jews, inasmuch as this day occurred after the equinox. If the 14th fell before the equinox with the Jews, the Christians ought to have said : “The Jews this year celebrate the 14th Nisan at a wrong date, a month too soon : it is not the full moon before, but the full moon after the equinox, which is the true full moon of Nisan”. We say full moon, for the 14th Nisan was always necessarily at the full moon, since each month among the Jews began with the new moon. In this case the Christians kept their Easter a month later than the Jews, and determined it according to the full moon after the vernal equinox. Hence it resulted —

1. That if a Johannean Quartodeciman acted according to the equinox, he always celebrated his Easter exactly on the day of the full moon after the equinox, without minding on what day of the week it fell, or whether it coincided with the Jewish 14th of Nisan or not.

2. That if a Western acted also according to the equinox, he always celebrated his Easter on the Sunday after the full moon which followed the vernal equinox. If the full moon fell on a Sunday, he kept the festival not on that Sunday, but on the following one, and that because the day of the resurrection (consequently his Easter) ought to be observed not on the very day of the 14 (being the day of Christ's death), but after the 14.

We shall presently see that the latter manner of computation for regulating the celebration of the Easter festival was adopted by many, if not all, in the West; but we cannot determine whether many of the Asiatics did the same. The seventh (eighth) of the so-called Apostolic Canons, besides, ordered Easter to be celebrated universally after the vernal equinox.

When abandoning the way of Jewish computation, the Christians had naturally much more difficulty in determining the period of their Easter. It was necessary to make special calculations in order to know when Easter would fall; and the most ancient known calculation on this point is that of Hippolytus, a disciple of S. Irenaeus, who was erroneously called Bishop of Pontus, but who was in fact a Roman priest at the commencement of the third century, and was opposition Bishop of Rome about the year 220 to 235. Eusebius says of him, that in his book upon Easter he makes a computation, and bases it upon a canon of sixteen years. Nothing more was known of this calculation or canon until in 1551, on the way to Tivoli, not far from the Church of S. Lawrence, there was discovered a marble statue of a bishop seated on his throne. It is at present in the Vatican Museum. It was recognised as the statue of Hippolytus, because a catalogue of the works of the bishop represented was inscribed upon the back of the throne. Upon the right side of the throne is a table of the Easter full moons, calculated for a period of a hundred and twelve years (from 222 to 333 after Christ). Upon the left side is a table of the Easter Sundays for the same period, and the calculation for both tables is based upon the cycle of sixteen years mentioned by Eusebius : so that, according to this calculation, after sixteen years, the Easter full moon falls on the same day of the month, and not of the week; and after a hundred and twelve years it falls regularly on the same day of the month, and of the week also. Ideler justly remarks that Hippolytus might have abridged his calculation one half, since according to it the full moon fell every eight years on the same day of the month, and that every fifty-six years it fell again on the same day of the month and of the week also.

This point being settled, Hippolytus lays down the following principles:

1. The fast should not cease till the Sunday. This is expressly said in the inscription on the first table (engraven on the right side of the throne).

2. It is thence established that it is the Sunday which gives the rule, that the communion feast must then be celebrated, and the day of Christ's death on the Friday.

3. As Hippolytus always places the 14 after the 18th March, doubtless he considered the 18th March as the equinox, and this day formed the basis of his Easter calculations.

4. If the 14 fell on a Friday, he would keep Good Friday on that day. If the 14 fell on a Saturday, he would not keep Easter on the following day, but put it off for a week (as occurred in the year 222). In the same way, if the 14 fell on a Sunday, it was not that day, but the following Sunday, which was his Easter day (for example, in 227).

As Hippolytus was a disciple of S. Irenaeus, and one of the principal doctors of the Church of Rome, we may consider his Easter calculation as exactly expressing the opinion of the Westerns, and especially of the Church of Rome, on the subject.

The Church of Alexandria also did not celebrate Easter until after the equinox. The great Bishop Dionysius expressly says so in an Easter letter, now lost, which is mentioned by Eusebius. According to him, Dionysius must also have published an Easter canon for eight years. At Alexandria, the city of astronomers, it would, besides, have been easy for Bishop Dionysius to make a more exact computation than that of Hippolytus, who had settled the question satisfactorily for only a certain number of years.

But Dionysius was in his turn surpassed by another Alexandrian — Anatolius Bishop of Laodicea in Syria since 270, who wrote a work upon the feast of Easter, a fragment of which has been preserved by Eusebius. He discovered the Easter cycle of nineteen years, and began it with the year 277, probably because in that year his calculation was established.

1. Anatolius proceeds upon the principle that the ancient Jews did not celebrate the Passover until after the equinox, and that consequently the Christian’s Easter ought never to be kept until after the vernal equinox.

2. He considers the 19th March as the equinox.

3. He says nothing about the old question relating to the fast, and the time when it should close; but evidently, as he was an Alexandrian, he followed the usual custom (and not that of Asia).

This cycle of nineteen years was soon subjected to different modifications, after which it was generally adopted in Alexandria from the time of Diocletian. The chief modification was, that the Alexandrians placed the equinox not on the 19th, but on the 21st March, which was tolerably exact for that period. Besides, when the 14 fell on a Saturday, they departed from the systems of Anatolius and Hippolytus, and celebrated Easter on the following day, as we do now. The completion of this cycle of nineteen years is attributed to Eusebius of Caesarea

Such was the state of the question at the commencement of the fourth century. It shows us that the differences in the time for the celebration of Easter were at that time greater than ever.

The introduction of the question about the equinox had added fresh differences to the three former ones. Not only did some of the Asiatics continue the Jewish calculation then in use, so that their Easter might fall before the equinox; but some of the Westerns, not consulting the last astronomical calculations, also celebrated their Easter before the equinox.

Like the Asiatics, the Western Quartodecimans, who did not consider the equinox at all, often celebrated Easter earlier than the rest of Christendom, and therefore called themselves Protopaschites. But also among the Equinoctialists themselves there existed some difference : for the Alexandrians calculated Easter according to the cycle of nineteen years, and took the 21st March as the date of the equinox; whilst the Romans, as they followed Hippolytus, observed the cycle of sixteen years (subsequently that of eighty-four years), and placed the equinox on the 18th March. When the full moon occurred on the 19th March, it was considered by the Latins the Easter full moon, and they celebrated their festival on the following Sunday; whilst with the Alexandrians this full moon was before the equinox, and consequently they waited for another full moon, and celebrated their Easter a month after the day considered right by the Latins.

These serious and numerous differences were indeed very lamentable, and were the cause of many disputes and frequent troubles in countries where these different modes simultaneously existed. They often made the Christians an object of the most bitter ridicule on the part of the heathen. Indeed, the Council of Arles perfectly responded to the exigencies of the times, when in 314 it endeavoured to establish unanimity upon this question. This Synod commanded in its very first canon, that henceforth Easter should be celebrated uno die et uno tempore per omnem orbem, and that, according to custom, the Pope should send letters everywhere on this subject. The Synod therefore wished to make the Roman mode predominant, and to suppress every other, even the Alexandrian (supposing that the difference between the Alexandrian and the Roman calculation was known to the bishops at Arles).

But the ordinances of Arles were not accepted everywhere, and they failed to establish uniformity in the Church. The decision of an ecumenical council became necessary; and, in fact, the first Ecumenical Council of Nicaea was occupied with this business. We are ignorant of the detailed debates on this subject, knowing only the result as we find it in the encyclical letter of the Council and in the Emperor’s circular.

In the former document, the Council thus addresses the Church of Alexandria, and its well-beloved brethren in Egypt, Libya, and Pentapolis : “We give you good news of the unity which has been established respecting the holy Passover. In fact, according to your desire, we have happily elucidated this business. All the brethren in the East who formerly celebrated Easter with the Jews, will henceforth keep it at the same time as the Romans, with us, and with all those who from ancient times have celebrated the feast at the same time with us”.

The Emperor Constantine made the following announcement in his letter to all who were not present at the Council :

“When the question relative to the sacred festival of Easter arose, it was universally thought that it would be convenient that all should keep the feast on one day; for what could be more beautiful and more desirable, than to see this festival, through which we receive the hope of immortality, celebrated by all with one accord, and in the same manner? It was declared to be particularly unworthy for this, the holiest of all festivals, to follow the custom (the calculation) of the Jews, who had soiled their hands with the most fearful of crimes, and whose minds were blinded. In rejecting their custom, we may transmit to our descendants the legitimate mode of celebrating Easter, which we have observed from the time of the Saviour's Passion to the present day (according to the day of the week). We ought not therefore to have anything in common with the Jews, for the Saviour has shown us another way : our worship follows a more legitimate and more convenient course (the order of the days of the week); and consequently, in unanimously adopting this mode, we desire, dearest brethren, to separate ourselves from the detestable company of the Jews, for it is truly shameful for us to hear them boast that without their direction we could not keep this feast. How can they be in the right, — they who, after the death of the Saviour, have no longer been led by reason, but by wild violence, as their delusion may urge them? They do not possess the truth in this Easter question; for, in their blindness and repugnance to all improvements, they frequently celebrate two passovers in the same year. We could not imitate those who are openly in error. How, then, could we follow these Jews, who are most certainly blinded by error? for to celebrate the passover twice in one year is totally inadmissible. But even if this were not so, it would still be your duty not to tarnish your soul by communications with such wicked people (the Jews). Besides, consider well, that in such an important matter, and on a subject of such great solemnity, there ought not to be any division. Our Saviour has left us only one, festal day of our redemption, that is to say, of His holy passion, and He desired (to establish) only one Catholic Church. Think, then, how unseemly it is, that on the same day some should be fasting, whilst others are seated at a banquet; and that after Easter, some should be rejoicing at feasts, whilst others are still observing a strict fast. For this reason. Divine Providence wills that this custom should be rectified and regulated in a uniform way; and every one, I hope, will agree upon this point. As, on the one hand, it is our duty not to have anything in common with the murderers of our Lord, and as, on the other, the custom now followed by the Churches of the West, of the South, and of the North, and by some of those of the East, is the most acceptable, it has appeared good to all, and I have been guarantee for your consent, that you would accept it with joy, as it is followed at Rome, in Africa, in all Italy, Egypt, Spain, Gaul, Britain, Libya, in all Achaia, and in the dioceses of Asia, of Pontus, and Cilicia. You should consider not only that the number of churches in these provinces make a majority, but also that it is right to demand what our reason approves, and that we should have nothing in common with the Jews. To sum up in few words : by the unanimous judgment of all, it has been decided that the most holy festival of Easter should be everywhere celebrated on one and the same day, and it is not seemly that in so holy a thing there should be any division. As this is the state of the case, accept joyfully the divine favour, and this truly divine command; for all which takes place in assemblies of the bishops ought to be regarded as proceeding from the will of God. Make known to your brethren what has been decreed, keep this most holy day according to the prescribed mode; we can thus celebrate this holy Easter day at the same time, if it is granted me, as I desire, to unite myself with you; we can rejoice together, seeing that the divine power has made use of our instrumentality for destroying the evil designs of the devil, and thus causing faith, peace, and unity to flourish amongst us. May God graciously protect you, my beloved brethren”.

We find no further details in the acts. But it is easy to understand that the Fathers of the Council took as the basis of their decision the computation which was most generally admitted among orthodox Christians, that is, the one which regulated the 14 according to the equinox, and Easter Sunday according to the 14. We have a letter of Constantine's upon this point, which clearly shows the mind of the Council; for, according to this letter, the Synod requires, 1st, that Easter day should always be a Sunday (and therefore decides against the Quartodecimans); and 2d, that it should never be celebrated at the same time as the feast of the Jews. It results from this second decision, that according to the Synod, if the 14 should fall on a Sunday, Easter was not to be celebrated on that Sunday, but a week later. And this for two reasons :

(1) Because the 14 indicates the day of the Saviour’s death, and that the festival of the resurrection ought to follow that day, and not to coincide with it;

(2) because in those years when the 14 should fall on a Sunday, Christians would be celebrating their Easter at the same time as the Jews, which was what the Synod wished to avoid. The third decision made at Nicaea was

(3) to forbid Christians to celebrate Easter twice in one year; that is to say, that the equinox should be considered in all calculations about Easter.

In my opinion, there is no doubt that Constantine, in his letter, which has every appearance of being a synodical letter, mentioned only the decisions really arrived at by the Council. This indubitable fact being once admitted, it must certainly be acknowledged also that the Synod was right in giving rules for determining Easter day. Perhaps it did not explain expressly the principles which formed the basis of the three decisions given above, but undoubtedly all these decisions showed them sufficiently. When Ideler maintains "that the rule clearly enunciated in S. Epiphanius had not been expressly prescribed by the Council of Nicaea", this opinion has no foundation, unless Ideler plays upon the word expressly; for Epiphanius gives, as the basis of his computation, the same three rules already laid down by the Nicene Council and in the letter of Constantine, — the observation of the Equinox, placing the 14 after the equinox, and placing the Sunday after the 14. Ideler appears to me to have too easily accepted the theories in the second book of Christian Walch's Decreti Nicaeni de Paschale explicatio, which are opposed to our opinions.

It may be asked whether the Council intended to give the preference to the Roman computation, against the Alexandrian. Both rested upon the three rules accepted by the Council; but the Romans considered the 18th March, and the Alexandrians the 21st March, as the terminus a quo of the Easter full moon. According to Ideler, our Synod did not take much notice of this difference, and seemed indeed to entirely ignore it. The acts of the Council, in fact, do not show that it knew of this difference. The tenor of Constantine's letter seems to authorize the opinion expressed by Ideler. The syndical letter indeed says : “In future, all shall celebrate Easter with the Romans, with us, and with all”, etc. ; and Constantine supposes that the manner of celebrating Easter among the Romans and the Egyptians, and consequently among the Alexandrians, is identical. However, the great importance of the Easter question, and the particular value which it had at the time of the Nicene Council, hardly allow it to be supposed that the differences between the Roman and Alexandrian computations should not have been known in such a large assemblage of learned men, among whom were Romans and Alexandrians. It is much more rational to admit that these differences were well known, but that they were passed over without much discussion. To act thus was indeed an absolute necessity, if they wished to arrive at complete uniformity upon the Easter question; and what we are now saying is not a pure hypothesis, for Cyril of Alexandria says : “The General Synod has unanimously decreed that, since the Church of Alexandria is experienced in such sciences, she should announce by letter every year to the Roman Church the day on which Easter should be celebrated, so that the whole Church might then learn the time for the festival through apostolical authority” (i.e. of the Bishop of Rome).

Pope Leo I expresses himself in the same way in his letter to the Emperor Marcian. If Pope Leo is in the right, this text teaches us two things : (1) That the Synod of Nicaea gave the preference to the Alexandrian computation over the Roman, whilst the contrary had been decreed at Arles; (2) That the Synod found a very good way of smoothing difficulties, by ordaining that the Alexandrian Church should announce the day for Easter to the Church of Rome, and that Rome should make it known to the whole Church.

Another account taken from S. Ambrose agrees very well with what S. Leo says. S. Ambrose tells us, indeed, that according to the advice of several mathematicians, the Synod of Nicaea adopted the cycle of nineteen years. Now this is the Alexandrian cycle; and in fact, in charging the Church of Alexandria to tell the day for Easter every year to the Church of Rome, it adopted the Alexandrian cycle.

Dupin therefore took useless trouble when he tried to prove that the Fathers of Nicaea had simply given occasion for the adoption of this canon. The Benedictine editions of the works of S. Ambrose have also weakened the meaning of the words of S. Ambrose, by making him say that the Nicene Fathers had indeed mentioned this cycle, but that they had not positively ordered it to be used.

It is rather remarkable that the Synod should not have placed its decision as to the celebration of the festival of Easter among its canons. None of the canons of the Council, not even those of doubtful authenticity, treat of this subject. Perhaps the Synod wished to conciliate those who were not ready to give up immediately the customs of the Quartodecimans. It refused to anathematize a practice which had been handed down from apostolic times in several orthodox Churches.

The differences in the way of fixing the period of Easter did not indeed disappear after the Council of Nicaea. Alexandria and Rome could not agree, either because one of the two Churches neglected to make the calculation for Easter, or because the other considered it inaccurate. It is a fact, proved by the ancient Easter table of the Roman Church, that the cycle of eighty-four years continued to be used at Rome as before. Now this cycle differed in many ways from the Alexandrian, and did not always agree with it about the period for Easter. In fact, (a) the Romans used quite another method from the Alexandrians : they calculated from the epact, and began from the feria prima of January. (b) The Romans were mistaken in placing the full moon a little too soon; whilst the Alexandrians placed it a little too late. (c) At Rome the equinox was supposed to fall on the 18th March; whilst the Alexandrians placed it on the 21st March. (d) Finally, the Romans differed in this from the Greeks also : they did not celebrate Easter the next day when the full moon fell on the Saturday.

Even the year following the Council of Nicaea — that is, in 326 — as well as in the years 330, 333, 340, 341, 343, the Latins celebrated Easter on a different day from the Alexandrians. In order to put an end to this misunderstanding, the Synod of Sardica in 343, as we learn from the newly-discovered festival letters of S. Athanasius, took up again the question of Easter, and brought the two parties (Alexandrians and Romans) to regulate, by means of mutual concessions, a common day for Easter for the next fifty years. This compromise, after a few years, was not observed. The troubles excited by the Arian heresy, and the division which it caused between the East and the West, prevented the decree of Sardica from being put into execution; therefore the Emperor Theodosius the Great, after the re-establishment of peace in the Church, found himself obliged to take fresh steps for obtaining a complete uniformity in the manner of celebrating Easter. In 387, the Romans having kept Easter on the 21st March, the Alexandrians did not do so for five weeks later — that is to say, till the 25th April — because with the Alexandrians the equinox was not till the 21st March. The Emperor Theodosius the Great then asked Theophilus Bishop of Alexandria for an explanation of the difference. The bishop responded to the Emperor's desire, and drew up a chronological table of the Easter festivals, based upon the principles acknowledged by the Church of Alexandria. Unfortunately, we now possess only the prologue of his work.

Upon an invitation from Rome, S. Ambrose also mentioned the period of this same Easter in 387, in his letter to the bishops of Emilia, and he sides with the Alexandrian computation. Cyril of Alexandria abridged the paschal table of his uncle Theophilus, and fixed the time for the ninety-five following Easters, that is, from 436 to 531 after Christ. Besides this, Cyril showed, in a letter to the Pope, what was defective in the Latin calculation; and this demonstration was taken up again, some time after, by order of the Emperor, by Paschasinus Bishop of Lilybaeum and Proterius of Alexandria, in a letter written by them to Pope Leo I. In consequence of these communications Pope Leo often gave the preference to the Alexandrian computation, instead of that of the Church of Rome. At the same time also was generally established, the opinion so little entertained by the ancient authorities of the Church — one might even say, so strongly in contradiction to their teaching — that Christ partook of the Passover on the 14th Nisan, that He died on the 15th (not on the 14th, as the ancients considered), that He lay in the grave on the 16th, and rose again on the 17th. In the letter we have just mentioned, Proterius of Alexandria openly admitted all these different points.

Some years afterwards, in 457, Victor of Aquitaine, by order of the Roman Archdeacon Hilary, endeavoured to make the Roman and the Alexandrian calculations agree together. It has been conjectured that subsequently Hilary, when Pope, brought Victor’s calculation into use, in 456, that is, at the time when the cycle of eighty-four years came to an end. In the latter cycle the new moons were marked more accurately, and the chief differences existing between the Latin and Greek calculations disappeared; so that the Easter of the Latins generally coincided with that of Alexandria, or was only a very little removed from it. In cases when the 14 fell on a Saturday, Victor did not wish to decide whether Easter should be celebrated the next day, as the Alexandrians did, or should be postponed for a week. He indicates both dates in his table, and leaves the Pope to decide what was to be done in each separate case. Even after Victor's calculations, there still remained great differences in the manner of fixing the celebration of Easter; and it was Dionysius the Less who first completely overcame them, by giving to the Latins a paschal table having as its basis the cycle of nineteen years. This cycle perfectly corresponded to that of Alexandria, and thus established that harmony which had been so long sought in vain. He showed the advantages of his calculation so strongly, that it was admitted by Rome and by the whole of Italy; whilst almost the whole of Gaul remained faithful to Victor's canon, and Great Britain still held the cycle of eighty-four years, a little improved by Sulpicius Severus. When the Heptarchy was evangelized by the Roman missionaries, the new converts accepted the calculation of Dionysius, whilst the ancient Churches of Wales held fast their old tradition. From this arose the well-known British dissensions about the celebration of Easter, which were transplanted by Columban into Gaul. In 729, the majority of the ancient British Churches accepted the cycle of nineteen years. It had before been introduced into Spain, immediately after the conversion of Reccared. Finally, under Charles the Great, the cycle of nineteen years triumphed over all opposition; and thus the whole of Christendom was united, for the Quartodecimans had gradually disappeared.

Before returning to the Quartodecimans, we will here add some details for the completion of what has been said on the Easter question. In ancient times, the entire duration of a year was calculated erroneously. Thus it happened by degrees, that the equinox, instead of falling on the 21st March as announced by the calendar, really fell on the 11th March of the calendar then in use. The calculations upon the lunar months also contained many errors. For this reason, in 1582, Pope Gregory XIII introduced a calendar improved by Alois Lilius of Calabria, by the Jesuit Clavius, and others. The improvements of this calendar were : 1st, That the morrow of the 4th October 1582 was counted as the 15th October, and the calendar was thus made to agree with astronomical calculations; 2d, The Easter full moon was calculated much more accurately than before, and rules were established for the future prevention of the difficulties which had been previously experienced. Every fourth year was to be leap year, with the exception of the secular year (i.e. the year at the end of the century); yet even in this case, in four secular years, one was to be leap year. Thus the years 1600 and 2000 are leap years, whilst the years 1700 and 1800 and 1900 are not so.

The Gregorian Calendar from this time came into use in all Catholic countries. The Greek Church would not admit it. Protestants accepted it in 1775, after long hesitation and much dissension. In the time of Gregory XIII. the difference between the calendar and the real astronomical year was ten days; if this calendar had not been changed, it would have been eleven days in 1700, and twelve in 1800 : for this reason the Russians with their Julian Calendar are now twelve days behind us. But even the Gregorian Calendar itself is not quite exact; for, according to the calculations of Lalande, which are now generally admitted, the duration of a tropical year is shorter by 24 seconds than the Gregorian Calendar, so that after 3600 years it would differ by one day from the astronomical year. Besides this, the Gregorian Calendar has not fixed the months with perfect accuracy. A somewhat defective cycle was selected on account of its greater simplicity; so that, astronomically speaking, the Easter full moon may rise two hours after the time calculated by the calendar : thus, it might be at one o'clock on the Sunday morning, whilst announced by the calendar for eleven o'clock on Saturday night. In this case Easter would be celebrated on that same Sunday, when it ought to be on the following Sunday.

We remark, finally, that the Gregorian Calendar occasionally makes our Christian Easter coincide with the Jewish Passover, as for instance in 1825. This coincidence is entirely contrary to the spirit of the Nicene Council; but it is impossible to avoid it, without violating the rule for finding Easter which is now universally adopted.

 

 The later Quartodecimans.

 

The Council of Nicaea was to find more difficulty in the East than in the West in establishing complete uniformity in the celebration of Easter. Without regard to the synodical decisions, many Quartodecimans continued to celebrate Easter according to their old custom. The Synod of Antioch in 341 was even obliged to threaten them with ecclesiastical penalties if they did not adopt the common rules. It did so in these words, in its first canon : “All those who do not observe the decision respecting the holy festival of Easter made by the holy and great Synod of Nicaea, assembled in the presence of the most pious Emperor Constantine, are to be excommunicated and cut off from the Church if they continue obstinate in rejecting the legal rule”. The preceding refers to the laity. But if a pastor of the Church, a bishop, priest, or deacon, acted contrary to this decree, and ventured, to the great scandal of the people, and at the risk of troubling the Church, to Judaize, and to celebrate Easter with the Jews, the Synod considered him as no longer forming part of the Church, seeing that he not only bore the weight of his own sin, but that he was also guilty of the fall of several others. This clergyman is by the very fact itself deposed; and not he alone, but also all those who continue to go to him after his deposition. Such as are deposed have no longer any right to any of the outward honour given them by the sacred office with which they were invested.

These threatenings were not entirely successful. On the contrary, we learn from S. Epiphanius that in his time, about the year 400 after Christ, there were still many Quartodecimans, and that they were even disagreed among themselves. As to their faith, they are orthodox, said S. Epiphanius, but they hold too much to Jewish fables, i.e. they observe the Jewish Easter, and build upon the passage : “Cursed is he who does not celebrate his Passover on the 14th Nisan”. All that we know respecting these Quartodecimans may be summed up as follows : —

a. They celebrate 0ne day only, whilst the Catholic Easter lasts for a whole week.

b. On that day, the day of the 14, they fast, and they communicate : they fast till three o'clock, consequently not a whole day; which S. Epiphanius disapproves.

c. One party among them (in Cappadocia) always celebrated Easter on the 25th March, on whatever day of the week it might fall, according to the (apocryphal) Acta Pilati, which says that Jesus Christ died on the 25th March.

d. Others did not for that reason abandon the 14th Nisan, but hoped to make the two dates agree, by celebrating their Easter on the day of the full moon immediately following the 25th March.

According to this, the Quartodecimans of S. Epiphanius fall into three classes, one of which abandons the 14, and consequently separates itself considerably from the Jews. It is impossible to determine whether the other classes followed the ancient or the new method of the Jews in their calculation for Easter; but the praise which S. Epiphanius gives them for their orthodoxy proves that they were not Ebionites, but that they were attached to the Johannean tradition which was for a long time prevalent in Asia Minor.

 

The Audians.

 

The Audians, or Odians, are a remarkable branch of the Quartodecimans : they lived in cloisters, and followed the rules of the monastic life. Their foundation was derived from a certain Audius of Mesopotamia, about the time of the Synod of Nicaea. Audius had become celebrated by the severity of his asceticism; and Epiphanius, who mentions him in his History of Heretics, treats him with all possible favour, so much so that the ascetic with whom he sympathizes makes him almost forget the schismatic. Audius, he says, had censured the abuses which had been introduced into the Church, particularly the luxury and avarice of several of the bishops and clergy, and had therefore brought upon himself much hatred and persecution. He had borne all with patience, when finally the blows and unworthy treatment of which he was the object, forced him, so to speak, to excommunicate himself, and together with a few partisans, among whom were found some bishops and priests, to form a particular sect.

As for the rest, adds Epiphanius, he had certainly not fallen from the true faith : at most, he could be accused only of having expressed and maintained a singular opinion upon a point of small importance. Like several ancient doctors, e.g. Melito, Audius anthropomorphically considered the resemblance of man to God to be in the body, — an opinion which S. Epiphanius has refuted in a rather long dissertation. Before beginning the refutation of Audius, Epiphanius relates that this ascetic was consecrated bishop after he left the Church, by a bishop who had left the Church with him. He adds that the Audians lived by the work of their hands, and that their whole life was truly praiseworthy.

According to Epiphanius, the second difference between the Audians and the Church was about the celebration of the festival of Easter. From the ninth chapter S. Epiphanius seeks to express very explicitly what he understands by this difference, but his exposition is not clear.

The Audians set out from this fundamental principle : Easter must be celebrated at the same time (but not in the same manner) as with the Jews. This practice had been that of the primitive Church; and it was only from consideration for the Emperor Constantine, and in order to celebrate his birthday, that it had been abolished at Moesia. Epiphanius refutes this last accusation of the Audians, by showing that, according to the rules of Nicaea, Easter could not always fall on the same day of the month : therefore it could not always fall on the Emperor's birthday.

To support their manner of celebrating Easter, Epiphanius says, that the Audians quoted a sacred book, Apostolic Constitutions. This book, we see, bears the same title as our so-called Apostolic Constitutions; but the fragments of it given by S. Epiphanius are not to be found in our text of the Apostolic Constitutions, and especially upon the Easter question they disagree with the contents of these Constitutions. S. Epiphanius spares no praise of the orthodoxy of these Constitutions : he even finds that as to discipline it is quite conformed to the custom of the Church. Only the Audians interpret it erroneously in what concerns the celebration of the Easter festival. The apostles in these Constitutions give the following rule : “You (that is, you Gentile Christians) ought to celebrate Easter at the same time as your brethren who have been Jews”. The apostles meant : You ought to act like the rest of the faithful; whilst the Audians interpreted their words thus : You ought to celebrate Easter with the Jews. If, however, the apostolic rule meant, in a general way, that they ought to celebrate Easter with other Christians, Epiphanius concludes with reason that the Audians ought now to bow to the commands of the Council of Nicaea; for in speaking thus, the Constitutions had in view the unity and uniformity of the Church. S. Epiphanius proves that the Constitutions really only desired unity, and that they gave no directory of their own for the keeping of the festival. He quotes the following passage in support of his sentiments : “Even if those whose manner of celebrating Easter you have adopted should be mistaken in their views, you ought not to regard it”. The Constitutions did not therefore intend to prescribe the best and most correct practice, but to induce the minority to follow the majority; and as Christians who had been Jews formed this majority, they recommended Jewish practice for the establishment of unity.

Up to this S. Epiphanius is clear and intelligible; but what follows is full of difficulties, many of which are perhaps insoluble. Here is all that we can say with any certainty about these riddles of Edipus, as Petavius calls them in his notes upon Epiphanius.

To prove to the Audians that they should follow the sense and not the letter of the Constitutions, he seeks to show that, taken in a literal sense, the text contains contradictions. In proof, he gives the following passage in the eleventh chapter : “Whilst the Jews have their festival of joy (the Passover), you should weep and fast on their account, because it was on the day of this feast that they nailed the Saviour to the cross. And when they weep and eat unleavened bread with bitter herbs, you should celebrate your festival of joy”. Now, as the Jews held this festival on a Sunday, it would follow, according to the Constitutions, that Christians should weep and fast on the Sunday. But this is forbidden, and the Constitutions themselves say, “Cursed be he who fasts on the Sunday”. Here there is a manifest contradiction; and, looked at closely, there is even a double contradiction : for, 1st, It is commanded to fast, and yet not to fast on the Sunday; and 2cl, This precept is in opposition to the other, which the Audians pretend to draw from the Constitutions, namely, that they ought to celebrate Easter with the Jews. Thus, says Epiphanius, the Constitutions, according to the opinion of the Audians on the one side, require Easter to be kept with the Jews; and on the other, they require Christians to do the contrary of what the Jews do. S. Epiphanius then tries to smooth this difficulty about the literal sense, and does it in the following way : “When the Jews celebrate their feast after the equinox, you may do so at the same time as they; but if, according to their new and wrong reckoning, they celebrate it before the equinox, you should not imitate them : for in that case there would be two celebrations of Easter in the same year”.

S. Epiphanius having this solution in mind, had already made allusion to it at the beginning of the eleventh chapter, by remarking that Easter was calculated according to the sun, the equinox, and the moon, whilst the Jews paid no attention to the equinox. By this remark he interrupts his demonstration of the contradictions contained in the Constitutions. He had said, indeed, at the end of the tenth chapter : “Even the terms (the terms of the Constitutions) contain a contradiction, for they contain the command to observe the fast of the vigil during the time of the feast of unleavened bread. Now, according to ecclesiastical calculation, that is not possible every year”. With Petavius, I think that Epiphanius here simply says the same as in the eleventh chapter : “When the Jews feast, we should fast; but the repast of the Jews often takes place on the Sabbath, during which day it is forbidden to fast”. The meaning, then, of the words quoted above is this : “They demand that we should fast on the day of the feast of unleavened bread, that is, on the day of the 14 (during the time of unleavened bread). But, according to the Church calendar, that is not always possible, because sometimes the 14 falls on a Sunday”. I regard, then, the last words of the tenth chapter as merely announcing the contradiction which is afterwards shown in the eleventh chapter. Weitzel gives another meaning to these words : “The vigil of Easter (before the festival of the resurrection) should always fall in the middle of the week of unleavened bread, which is not always possible, according to the ecclesiastical calculation”. It is quite true that this coincidence could not always take place according to the calculation of Nicaea; but it would have been of no use for Epiphanius to appeal to the Council of Nicaea, as it was no authority to the Audians. With them, on the contrary, the eve of the festival of the resurrection always fell about the middle of the week of unleavened bread, that is to say, at the end of the second day. Besides, the connection between the tenth and eleventh chapters, and the line of argument of S. Epiphanius, render necessary the explanation which we have given of this passage.

In bringing forward these contradictions of the Constitutions, S. Epiphanius simply wished to refute the exaggerated Quarto-decimanism of the Audians; but he does not mean to say that these same Audians followed all these principles of the Constitutions. He does not say, “You celebrate Easter with the Jews, and you fast when they are eating the Passover”. On the contrary, it appears that they were ignorant of these further requirements of the Constitutions; for Epiphanius does not in the least reproach them with acting in this way. He does not suppose in any way that they so hold it, but he shows them that that is what the Constitutions teach. All that we know of the way of celebrating Easter in use among the Audians is therefore reduced to this : —

a. They always celebrated Easter with the Jews, consequently on the day of the 14.

b. They did not separate themselves from the Jews, even when the latter kept their Passover before the equinox. This twofold practice is entirely in harmony with what we know of the origin and character of the Audians. Before separating from the Church, they shared the sentiments of many Asiatic Christians; that is to say, they were Johannean Quartodecimans, who celebrated their Easter, communicated, and ended their fast on the day of the 14. The orthodoxy of the Church which they left (the Catholic Church of Asia Minor), and the praises of S. Epiphanius of their faith, do not allow us to suppose that they could have been Ebionite Quartodecimans. Epiphanius does not say that they celebrate Easter in the same manner as the Jews, but only that they celebrate it at the same time as the Jews. Neither must we conclude that they were Ebionites because they sometimes kept Easter with the Jews before the equinox. That only proves that they followed the 14 closely, simply, and literally, without troubling themselves with astronomical calculations. When the Jews celebrated the 14, they kept their Christian feast.

We have seen that they appealed to an apocryphal book. We do not know if they followed the rules of this book on other points. The analysis which Epiphanius makes of all the passages of the Constitutions shows us that the Audians did not follow entirely the rules given in this work about the celebration of Easter. It is not easy to determine the exact meaning of these rules. As Epiphanius understands them, they set forth the following requirements : — “When the Jews keep their Passover after the equinox, you may celebrate Easter at the same time; but if, according to their new and erroneous reckoning, they keep it before the equinox, you ought not to imitate them”. Weitzel gives another meaning to this passage : “When the Jews eat”, etc. He believes that the Constitutions wish to establish a middle course between the Western and Eastern practices—that Quartodecimanism is their basis; to which they add the two following directions : —

a. On the day of the 14, when the Jews keep their Passover, you should fast and weep, because it is the day of Christ's death.

b. But when the Jews are mourning on the days following the Passover, or more exactly, on the Mazot days, you should feast, that is to say, you should celebrate your Easter festival on the day of the resurrection.

They therefore preserved on one side the Asiatic practice, which required that Easter should be regulated according to the day of the month; and on the other, they admitted the Roman custom, which was to fast on the day of Christ's death, and to celebrate the festival on the day of His resurrection.

Epiphanius gives the following information upon the after history of the Audians, and the duration of this sect of the Quartodecimans. As Audius was continually trying to spread his doctrine further, and as he had already gained both men and women to his side, the bishops complained of him to the Emperor, who banished him to Scythia. S. Epiphanius does not say how long he lived there; but he relates that he spread Christianity among the Goths in the neighbourhood (probably those on the borders of the Black Sea); that he founded monasteries among them, which became celebrated for the austerity of their rules and the chastity of their monks; but that he continued to celebrate Easter according to his method, and to maintain his opinion about our likeness to God. The Audians showed the same obstinacy in refusing to communicate with other Christians, or to live even with the most virtuous among them. What appears intolerable to S. Epiphanius is, that they would not content themselves with the general name of Christians, and that they united to it the name of a man in calling themselves Audians. After the death of Audius, Uranius was their principal bishop in Mesopotamia; but they had several bishops in the land of the Goths, among whom Epiphanius mentions Sylvanus. After the death of Uranius and Sylvanus, the sect became very small. With the other Christians, they were driven from the country of the Goths by the pagan king Athanarich (372). “They have also left our country”, adds S. Epiphanius, “and their convent on Mount Taurus (in the south of Asia Minor), as well as those in Palestine and Arabia, have been abandoned”. S. Epiphanius concludes his notice with the remark, that the number of members of this party and of their monasteries was very small at the time when he wrote, that is, about the year 400 after Christ; and they then had only two resorts, one in Chalcis, and the other in Mesopotamia. It is hardly probable that the anthropomorphic monks of Egypt could have had any connection with the Audians : the laws of the Emperors Theodosius II and Valentinian III prove that the latter still existed in the fifth century, for they were then reckoned among the heretics; but in the sixth century they altogether disappear.

 Decision on the subject of the Meletian Schism

The third chief business of the Synod of Nicaea was to put an end to the Meletian schism, which had broken out some time before in Egypt, and must not be confused with another Meletian schism which agitated Antioch half a century later. The imperfect connection, or rather the contradiction, which exists in the information furnished by the original documents, hardly allows us to determine what was the true origin of the Meletian schism of Egypt. These documents may be divided into four classes, as chief of which, on account of their importance, we must mention those discovered more than a century ago by Scipio Maffei, in a. MS. belonging to the chapter of Verona, and printed in the third volume of his Ohservazioni letterarie. Routh afterwards reprinted them in his Reliquiae sacrae.

These documents are all in Latin, but they are evidently translated from the Greek; and in order to be understood, must often be retranslated into Greek. But that is not always sufficient; in many places the text is so corrupt as to be perfectly unintelligible. The authenticity of these documents, which are three in number, has been doubted by no one, and their importance has been universally acknowledged. The most important, the largest, and the most ancient of these pieces, is a letter written from their dungeon by the four Egyptian bishops, Hesychius, Pachomius, Theodorus, and Phileas, to Meletius himself. Eusebius relates that these four bishops were seized and martyred under Diocletian. Maffei presumes that Phileas Bishop of Thmuis, in Upper Egypt, was the composer of this common letter, because this bishop is known elsewhere as a writer, and is quoted by Eusebius and S. Jerome as a learned man. What adds to the probability of this hypothesis, is the fact that in the letter in question Phileas is mentioned the last, whilst Eusebius and the Acts of the Martyrs, translated into Latin, mention him first, and represent him as one of the most important men in Egypt. Besides, this letter by Phileas, etc., was evidently written at the commencement of the schism of Meletius, and before he had been formally separated from the Church; for the bishops gave him the name of dilectus comminister in Domino.

“They have”, they say, “for some time heard vague rumours on the subject of Meletius. He was accused of troubling the divine order and ecclesiastical rules”. Quite recently these reports had been confirmed by a great number of witnesses, so that they had been obliged to write this letter. It was impossible for them to describe the general sadness and profound emotion occasioned by the ordinations that Meletius had held in strange
dioceses. He was, however, acquainted with the law, so ancient and so entirely in conformity with divine and human right, which forbids a bishop to hold an ordination in a strange diocese. But without respect to this law, or to the great bishop and father Peter (Archbishop of Alexandria), or for those who were in prison, he had brought everything into a state of confusion. Perhaps he would say in self-justification, that necessity had obliged him to act thus, because the parishes were without pastors. But this allegation was false; and in case of these being negligent, he should have brought the matter before the imprisoned bishops. In case they should have told him that these bishops were already executed, he could easily have discovered if it were so; and even supposing that the news of their death had been verified, his duty was still to ask of the chief Father (Peter Archbishop of Alexandria) permission to hold ordinations". Finally, the bishops recommended him to observe the holy rules of the Church for the future.

The second document is a short notice added by an ancient anonymous writer to the preceding letter. It is thus worded : “Meletius having received and read this letter, made no answer to it, nor did he go either to the imprisoned bishops or to Peter of Alexandria. After the death of these bishops as martyrs, he went immediately to Alexandria, where he made partisans of two intriguers, Isidore and Arius, who wished to become priests, and were full of jealousy against their archbishop. They pointed out to him the two visitors appointed by Archbishop Peter : Meletius excommunicated them, and appointed two others in their place. When Archbishop Peter was told of what was passing, he addressed the following letter to the people of Alexandria”.

This letter is the third important document, and is thus worded : “Having learned that Meletius had no respect for the letter of the blessed bishops and martyrs (we perceive that Phileas and his companions had been already executed), but that he has introduced himself into my diocese—that he has deposed those to whom I had given authority, and consecrated others—I request you to avoid all communion with him, until it is possible for me to meet him with some wise men, and to examine into this business”.

We will thus sum up what results from the analysis of these three documents :—

1st. Meletius, an Egyptian bishop (the other bishops call him comminister) of Lycopolis in the Thebais (S. Athanasius gives us this latter information in his Apologia contra Arianos, No. 71), made use of the time when a great number of bishops were in prison on account of their faith, in despite of all the rules of the Church, to hold ordinations in foreign dioceses, probably in those of the four bishops, Phileas, Hesychius, Theodorus, and Pachomius.

2d. Nothing necessitated these ordinations; and if they had been really necessary, Meletius ought to have asked permission to hold them from the imprisoned bishops, or, in case of their death, from Peter Archbishop of Alexandria.

3d. None of these three documents tell where Archbishop Peter was at that time, but the second and third prove that he was not at Alexandria. They show also that he was not imprisoned like his four colleagues, Phileas and the rest. Indeed, it was because Peter could not live at Alexandria that he had authorized commissaries to represent him, but Meletius took advantage of his absence to bring trouble into this city also.

Again, we may conclude that Peter was not imprisoned :

(a.) Even from the letter which he wrote, saying, “He would go himself to Alexandria”.

(b) From the first as well as the second document putting a difference between his situation and that of the imprisoned bishops.

(c) Finally, from these words of Socrates : “During Peter’s flight, on account of the persecution then raging, Meletius allowed himself to hold ordinations”. We will admit, in passing, the fact that Archbishop Peter, like Dionysius the Great and S. Cyprian, had fled during the persecution, and was absent from Alexandria, because it is of great importance in judging of the value of other information from the same sources.

4th. According to the second document, Meletius despised the exhortations of the four imprisoned bishops, and would not enter into relation either with them or with Archbishop Peter; and after the death of these bishops he went himself to Alexandria, where he united with Arius and Isidore, excommunicated the episcopal visitors appointed by Peter, and ordained two others.

5th. Archbishop Peter, being informed of all these things, recommended from his retreat all the faithful not to communicate with Meletius.

The offence of Meletius, then, consisted in his having introduced himself without any right into other dioceses, and in having given holy orders. It was not so much the necessity of the Church as his own arrogance and ambition which impelled him to this step. Epiphanius and Theodoret tell us that Meletius came next in rank to the Bishop of Alexandria, that he was jealous of his primate, and wished to profit by his absence, in order to make himself master and primate of Egypt.

The second source of information upon the origin of the Meletians is composed of some expressions of S. Athanasius, and of the ecclesiastical historian Socrates. Athanasius, who had had much to do with the Meletians, says—

(a.) In his Apology : “The latter (Peter Archbishop of Alexandria) in a synodical assembly deposed Melitius (Athanasius always writes Melitios), who had been convicted of many offences, and particularly of having offered sacrifice to idols. But Melitius did not appeal to another synod, neither did he try to defend himself; but he raised a schism, and to this day his followers do not call themselves Christians, but Melitians. Shortly afterwards he began to spread invectives against the bishops, particularly against Peter, and subsequently against Achillas and Alexander “(who were Peter’s two immediate successors).

(b.) The same work of S. Athanasius furnishes us also with the following information : “From the times of the bishop and martyr Peter, the Melitians have been schismatics and enemies of the Church : they injured Bishop Peter, maligned his successor Achillas, and denounced Bishop Alexander to the Emperor”.

(c.) S. Athanasius in a third passage says: “The Melitians are impelled by ambition and avarice”. And : “They were declared schismatics fifty-five years ago, and thirty-six years ago the Arians were declared heretics”.

(d.) Finally, in a fourth passage : “The Eusebians knew well how the Melitians had behaved against the blessed martyr Peter, then against the great Achillas, and finally against Alexander of blessed memory”.

Socrates agrees so well in all concerning the Meletians with what Athanasius says, that it might be supposed that Socrates had only copied Athanasius.

Here is an epitome of the facts given by both :

1. They accuse Meletius of having offered sacrifice to the gods during the persecution. The three documents analysed above do not say a word of this apostasy, neither does Sozomen mention it; and S. Epiphanius gives such praises to Meletius, that certainly he did not even suspect him of this apostasy. It may also be said with some reason, that such consideration would not have been shown to Meletius and his followers by the Synod of Nicaea if he had really offered sacrifice to idols.

On the other hand, it cannot be admitted that S. Athanasius should have knowingly accused Meletius of a crime which he had not committed. The whole character of this great man is opposed to such a supposition; and besides, the commonest prudence would have induced him to avoid making an accusation which he knew to be false, in a public work against declared adversaries. It is much more probable that such reports were really circulated about Meletius, as other bishops, e.g. Eusebius of Caesarea, were subjected to the like calumny. What may perhaps have occasioned these rumours about Meletius, is the fact that for some time this bishop was able to traverse Egypt without being arrested, and ordained priests at Alexandria and elsewhere; whilst bishops, priests, and deacons who were firm in the faith were thrown into prison, and shed their blood for their holy faith.

2. Athanasius and Socrates reproach Meletius with having despised, calumniated, and persecuted the Bishops of Alexandria, Peter, Achillas, and Alexander.

3. By comparing the expressions of S. Athanasius with the original documents analysed above, we are able to determine almost positively the period of the birth of the Meletian schism. Athanasius, indeed, agrees with the three original documents, in affirming that it broke out during the episcopate of Peter, who occupied the throne of Alexandria from the year 300 to 311. S. Athanasius gives us a much more exact date when he says that the Meletians had been declared schismatics fifty-five years before. Unfortunately we do not know in what year he wrote the work in which he gives this information. It is true that S. Athanasius adds these words to the text already quoted : “For thirty-six years the Arians have been declared heretics”. If S. Athanasius is alluding to the condemnation of Arianism by the Council of Nicaea, he must have written this work in 361, that is to say, thirty-six years after the year 325, when the Council of Nicaea was held; but others, and particularly the learned Benedictine Montfaucon, reckon these thirty-six years from the year 320, when the heresy of Arius was first condemned by the Synod of Alexandria. According to this calculation, Athanasius must have written his Epistola ad Episcopos Aegypti in 356. These two dates, 356 and 361, give us 301 or 306 as the date of the origin of the schism of Meletius, since it was fifty-five years before 356 or 361, according to S. Athanasius, that the Meletians were condemned. We have therefore to choose between 301 and 306; but we must not forget that, according to the original documents, this schism broke out during a terrible persecution against the Christians. Now, as Diocletian's persecution did not begin to rage in a cruel manner until between the years 303 and 305, we are led to place the origin of this schism about the year 304 or 305.

4. Our second series of original authorities do not say that Meletius ordained priests in other dioceses, but S. Athanasius mentions that “Meletius was convicted of many offences”. We may suppose that he intended an allusion to these ordinations, and consequently it would be untrue to say that Athanasius and the original documents are at variance.

5. Neither can it be objected that S. Athanasius mentions a condemnation of Meletius by a synod of Egyptian bishops, whilst the original documents say nothing about it, for these documents refer only to the first commencement of the Meletian schism. Sozomen, besides, is agreed upon this point with S. Athanasius, in the main at least. He says : “Peter Archbishop of Alexandria excommunicated the Meletians, and would not consider their baptism to be valid; Arius blamed the bishop for this severity”. It must be acknowledged that, according to the right opinion respecting heretical baptism, the archbishop was here too severe; but also it must not be forgotten that the question of the validity of baptism administered by heretics was not raised until later, and received no complete and definite solution till 314, at the Council of Arles.

Up to this point, the documents which we have consulted have nothing which is mutually contradictory; but we cannot say as much of the account given us of the Meletian schism by S. Epiphanius. He says : "In Egypt there exists a party of Meletians, which takes its name from a bishop of the Thebais called Melitios. This man was orthodox, and in what concerns the faith did not at all separate from the Church. . . . He raised a schism, but he did not alter the faith. During the persecution he was imprisoned with Peter, the holy bishop and martyr (of Alexandria), and with others.. . . He had precedence of the other Egyptian bishops, and came immediately after Peter of Alexandria, whose auxiliary he was. . . . Many Christians had fallen during the persecution, had sacrificed to idols, and now entreated the confessors and martyrs to have compassion on their repentance. Some of these penitents were soldiers; others belonged to the clerical order. These were priests, deacons, etc. There was then much hesitation and even confusion among the martyrs : for some said that the lapsi should not be admitted to penitence, because this ready admission might shake the faith of others. The defenders of this opinion had good reasons for them. We must number among these defenders Meletius, Peleus, and other martyrs and confessors : all wished that they should await the conclusion of the persecution before admitting the lapsi to penitence. They also demanded that those clergy who had fallen should no longer exercise the functions of their office, but for the rest of their lives should remain in lay communion". The holy Bishop Peter, merciful as he ever was, then made this request : "Let us receive them if they manifest repentance; we will give them a penance to be able afterwards to reconcile them with the Church. We will not refuse them nor the clergy either, so that shame and the length of time may not impel them to complete perdition". Peter and Meletius not agreeing upon this point, a division arose between them; and when Archbishop Peter perceived that his merciful proposition was formally set aside by Meletius and his party, he hung his mantle in the middle of the dungeon as a sort of curtain, and sent word by a deacon : "Whoever is of my opinion, let him come her ; and let whoso holds that of Meletius go to the other side". Most passed over to the side of Meletius, and only a few to Peter. Trom this time the two parties were separate in their prayers, their offerings, and their ceremonies. Peter afterwards suffered martyrdom, and the Archbishop Alexander was his successor. Meletius was arrested with other confessors, and condemned to work in the mines of Palestine. On his way to exile Meletius did what he had before done in prison,—ordained bishops, priests, and deacons, and founded churches of his own, because his party and that of Peter would not have communion with each other. The successors of Peter called theirs the Catholic Church, whilst the Meletians named theirs the Church of the Martyrs. Meletius went to Eleutheropolis, to Gaza, and to Aelia (Jerusalem), and everywhere ordained clergy. He must have remained a long time in the mines; and there also his followers and those of Peter would not communicate together, and assembled in different places for prayer. At last they were all delivered. Meletius still lived a long time, and was in friendly relations with Alexander, the successor of Bishop Peter. He occupied himself much with the preservation of the faith. Meletius lived at Alexandria, where he had a church of his own. It was he who first denounced the heresy of Arius to Bishop Alexander.

We see that Epiphanius gives the history of the Meletian schism in quite a different way from S. Athanasius and the original documents. According to him, the origin of this schism was the disagreement between Meletius and Peter on the subject of the admission of the lapsi, and particularly about the clergy who had fallen. In this business Meletius had not been so severe as the Novatians, but more so than his archbishop, who had shown too much mercy,—so much so that the right appeared to be undoubtedly on his side. In order to explain this contrast, it has often been supposed that Epiphanius took a notice composed by a Meletian as the foundation of his own account, and that he was thus led to treat Meletius much too favourably. But it seems to me that it may be explained more satisfactorily. S. Epiphanius relates, that on his way to the mines, Meletius founded a Church for his party at Eleutheropolis. Now Eleutheropolis was the native country of S. Epiphanius, consequently he must have known many of the Meletians personally in his youth. These fellow-countrymen of S. Epiphanius would doubtless make him acquainted with the origin of their party, placing it in the most favourable light; and subsequently S. Epiphanius would give too favourable an account of them in his work.

It may now be asked, What is the historical value of S. Epiphanius' history? I know that very many Church historians have decided in its favour, and against Athanasius; but since the discovery of original documents, this opinion is no longer tenable, and it must be acknowledged that S. Epiphanius was mistaken on the principal points.

a. According to Epiphanius, Meletius was imprisoned at the same time as Peter, Now the original documents prove that, at the time of the commencement of the schism, neither Peter nor Meletius was in prison.

b. According to S. Epiphanius, Bishop Peter of Alexandria was too merciful towards the lapsi; but the penitential canons of this bishop present him in quite another light, and prove that he knew how to keep a wise middle course, and to proportion the penance to the sin. He who had borne torture for a long time before allowing himself to be conquered by the feebleness of the flesh, was to be less severely punished than he who had only resisted for a very short time. The slave who, by order of his master, and in his stead, had sacrificed to idols, was only punished by a year of ecclesiastical penance, whilst his master was subjected to a penance of three years (canons 6 and 7). The tenth canon particularly forbids that deposed priests should be restored to their cures, and that anything but lay communion should he granted to them. Peter therefore here teaches exactly what S. Epiphanius supposes to be the opinion of Meletius, and what, according to him, Peter refused to admit.

c. S. Epiphanius is mistaken again, when he relates that Peter was martyred in prison, as the original documents, and S. Athanasius, who had the opportunity of knowing the facts, tell us that Peter left his retreat, and excommunicated Meletius in a synod.

d. According to S. Epiphanius, Alexander was the immediate successor of Bishop Peter, whilst in reality it was Achillas who succeeded Peter, and Alexander succeeded him.

e. Finally, according to S. Epiphanius, the schismatic Meletius, although having a separate church at Alexandria, was on the best terms with Archbishop Alexander, and denounced the heresy of Arius to him; but the whole conduct of Meletius towards the Archbishop of Alexandria, and the part taken by the Meletians in the Arian heresy, give much more credibility to the assertion of S. Athanasius. Meletius, according to him, despised and persecuted Bishop Alexander, as he had before done his predecessors on the throne of Alexandria.

We have exhausted the three sources of information already mentioned. Those remaining for us to consult have neither the importance, nor the antiquity, nor the historical value of the three first. Among these documents there are, however, two short accounts by Sozomen and Theodoret, which deserve consideration, and which agree very well with the original documents, and in part with what is said by S. Athanasius. We have already made use of these accounts. As for S. Augustine, he mentions the Meletians only casually, and says nothing as to the origin of the sect; besides, he must have had before him the account of Epiphanius.

The great importance of the Meletian schism decided the Council of Nicaea to notice it, especially as, in the Emperor's mind, the principal object of the Council was to restore peace to the Church. Its decision on this matter has been preserved to us in the synodical letter of the Egyptian bishops, etc., who speak in these terms of the Meletian schism, after having treated of the heresy of Arius : “It has also been necessary to consider the question of Meletius and those ordained by him; and we wish to make known to you, beloved brethren, what the Synod has decided upon this matter. The Synod desired, above all things, to show mercy; and seeing, on carefully considering all things, that Meletius does not deserve consideration, it has been decided that he should remain in his city, but without having any authority there, and without the power of ordination, or of selecting the clergy. He is also forbidden to go into the neighborhood or into any other town for such an object. Only the simple title of bishop should remain to him; and as for the clergy ordained by him, it is necessary to lay hands upon them again, that they may afterwards be admitted to communion with the Church, to give them their work, and to restore to them the honours which are their due; but in all dioceses where these clergy are located, they should always come after the clergy ordained by Alexander. As for those who, by the grace of God and
by their prayers, have been preserved from all participation in the schism, and have remained inviolably attached to the Catholic Church, without giving any cause for dissatisfaction, they shall preserve the right of taking part in all ordinations, of presenting such and such persons for the office of the ministry, and of doing whatever the laws and economy of the Church allow. If one of these clergy should die, his place may be supplied by one newly admitted (that is to say, a Meletian); but on the condition that he should appear worthy, that he should be chosen by the people, and that the Bishop of Alexandria should have given his consent to such election". These stipulations were to be applied to all the Meletians. There was, however, an exception made with Meletius, that is to say, that the rights and prerogatives of a bishop were not retained to him, because they well knew his incorrigible habit of putting everything in disorder, and also his precipitation. Therefore, that he might not continue to do as he had done before, the Council took from him all power and authority.

This is what particularly concerns Egypt and the Church of Alexandria. If any other decree has been made in the presence of our dear brother of Alexandria, he will acquaint you with it when he returns amongst you; for in all that the Synod has done, he has been a guide and a fellow-worker”

It was probably on account of the Meletians, and to cut short the pretensions of Meletius, who desired to withdraw himself from the authority of the Patriarch of Alexandria, and to set himself up as his equal that the Synod of Nicaea made this plain declaration in its sixth canon

“The ancient order of things must be maintained in Egypt, in Libya, and in Pentapolis; that is to say, that the Bishop of Alexandria shall continue to have authority over the other bishops, having the same relation as exists with the Bishop of Rome. The ancient rights of the Churches shall also be protected, whether at Antioch or in the other bishoprics. It is evident, that if one should become a bishop without the consent of his metropolitan, he could not, according to the order of the great Synod, retain this dignity; but if, from a pure spirit of contradiction, two or three should oppose an election which the unanimity of all the others renders possible and legal, in such a case the majority must carry the day”.

The Synod had hoped to gain the Meletians by gentleness; but it succeeded so little, that after the Nicene Synod they became more than ever enemies to the Church, and by uniting with the Arians, did a thousand times more harm than they had done before. Also, in speaking of this admission of the Meletians into the Church, decreed by the Council of Nicaea, S. Athanasius rightly said, “Would to God it had never taken
place!”

In the same passage we learn from S. Athanasius, that in order to execute the decree of the Council of Nicaea, Alexander begged Meletius to give him a list of all the bishops, priests, and deacons who formed his party. Alexander wished to prevent Meletius from hastening to make new ordinations, to sell holy orders for money, and thus to fill the Church with a multitude of unworthy clergy, abusing the mercy of the Council of Nicaea. Meletius remitted, indeed, the desired list to the Archbishop of Alexandria, and subsequently Athanasius inserted it in his Apologia against the Arians. We see from it that the Meletians numbered in Egypt twenty-nine bishops, including Meletius; and at Alexandria, four priests, three deacons, and a military almoner. Meletius himself gave this list to Alexander, who doubtless made these ordinations valid, in obedience to the Council of Nicaea.

According to the ordinance of Nicaea, Meletius remained in his city, Lycopolis; but after the death of Bishop Alexander, through the mediation of Eusebius of Nicomedia, that alliance was entered into between the Meletians and the Arians which was so unfortunate for the Church, and particularly for S. Athanasius, in which Meletius took part. It is not known when he died. He nominated as his successor his friend John, who, after being maintained in his office by the Eusebians at the Council of Tyre in 335, was driven into exile by the Emperor Constantine. The best known of the Meletians are—Bishop Arsenius, who, it is said, had had one hand cut off by S. Athanasius; Bishop Callinicus of Pelusium, who at the Council of Sardica was a decided adversary of S. Athanasius; the hermit Paphnutius, who must not be mistaken for the bishop of the same name who at the Council of Nicaea was the defender of the marriage of priests; and the pretended priest Ischyras, who was among the principal accusers and most bitter enemies of S. Athanasius. We shall afterwards have occasion to speak of the part taken by the Meletians in the troubles excited by the heresy of Arius; suffice it here to say, that this schism existed in Egypt until the middle of the fifth century, as is attested by Socrates and Theodoret, both contemporaries. The latter mentions especially some very superstitious Meletian monks who practised the Jewish ablutions. But after the middle of the fifth century, the Meletians altogetlier disappear from history.

 

Contents of the Nicene Canons.

 

After having determined the number of authentic canons of the Council of Nicaea, we must now consider more closely their contents. The importance of the subject, and the historical value that an original text always possesses, has decided us to give the Greek text of the acts of the Council (according to the editions of Mansi and of Bruns), together with a translation and a commentary intended to explain their meaning.

Can. 1.

“If a man has been mutilated by physicians during sickness, or by barbarians, he may remain among the clergy; but if a man in good health has mutilated himself, he must resign his post after the matter has been proved among the clergy, and in future no one who has thus acted should be ordained. But as it is evident that what has just been said only concerns those who have thus acted with intention, and have dared to mutilate themselves, those who have been made eunuchs by barbarians or by their masters will be allowed, conformably to the canon, to remain among the clergy, if in other respects they are worthy”.

Can. 2.

“Seeing that many things, either from necessity or on account of the pressure of certain persons, have happened contrary to the ecclesiastical canon, so that men who have but just turned from a heathen life to the faith, and who have only been instructed during a very short time, have been brought to the spiritual laver, to baptism, and have even been raised to the office of priest or bishop, it is right that in future this should not take place, for time is required for sound instruction in doctrine, and for further trial after baptism. For the apostolic word is clear, which says: 'Not a novice, lest through pride he fall into condemnation, and into the snare of the devil'. If hereafter a cleric is guilty of a grave offence, proved by two or three witnesses, he must resign his spiritual office. Any one who acts against this ordinance, and ventures to be disobedient to this great Synod, is in danger of being expelled from the clergy”.

Can. 3.

“The great Synod absolutely forbids, and it cannot be permitted to either bishop, priest, or any other cleric, to have in his house a subintroducta, with the exception of his mother, sister, aunt, or such other persons as are free from all suspicion”.

Can. 4.

“The bishop shall be appointed by all (the bishops) of the eparchy (province); if that is not possible on account of pressing necessity, or on account of the length of journeys, three (bishops) at the least shall meet, and proceed to the imposition of hands (consecration) with the permission of those absent in writing. The confirmation of what is done belongs by right, in each eparchy, to the metropolitan”.

 

Can. 5.

“As regards the excommunicated, the sentence passed by the bishops of each province shall have the force of law, in conformity with the canon which says : He who has been excommunicated by some shall not be admitted by others. Care must, however, be taken to see that the bishop has not passed this sentence of excommunication from narrowmindedness, from a love of contradiction, or from some feeling of hatred. In order that such an examination may take place, it has appeared good to order that in each province a synod shall be held twice a year, composed of all the bishops of the province: they will make all necessary inquiries that each may see that the sentence of excommunication has been justly passed on account of some determined disobedience, and until the assembly of bishops may be pleased to pronounce a milder judgment on them. These synods are to be held, the one before Lent, in order that, having put away all low-mindedness, we may present a pure offering to God, and the second in the autumn.”

 

Can. 6.

“The old customs in use in Egypt, in Libya, and in Pentapolis, shall continue to exist, that is, that the bishop of Alexandria shall have jurisdiction over all these (provinces); for there is a similar relation for the Bishop of Rome. The rights which they formerly possessed must also be preserved to the Churches of Antioch and to the other eparchies (provinces). This is thoroughly plain, that if any one has become a bishop without the approval of the metropolitan, the great Synod commands him not to remain a bishop. But when the election has been made by all with discrimination, and in a manner conformable to the rules of the Church, if two or three oppose from pure love of contradiction, the vote of the majority shall prevail”.

 

Can. 7.

“As custom and ancient tradition show that the Bishop of Aelia (Jerusalem)  ought to be honoured (in a special manner), he shall have precedence; without prejudice, however, to the dignity which belongs to the metropolis”.

 

Can. 8.

“With regard to those who call themselves Cathari (Novatians), the holy and great Synod decides, that if they will enter the Catholic and Apostolic Church, they must submit to imposition of hands, and they may then remain among the clergy : they must, above all, promise in writing to conform to and follow the doctrines of the Catholic and Apostolic Church; that is to say, they must communicate with those who have married a second time, and with those who have lapsed under persecution, but who have done penance for their faults. They must then follow in every respect the doctrines of the Catholic Church. Consequently, when in villages or in cities there are found only clergy of their own sect, the oldest of these clerics shall remain among the clergy, and in their position; but if a Catholic priest or bishop be found among them, it is evident that the bishop of the Catholic Church should preserve the episcopal dignity, whilst any one who has received the title of bishop from the so-called Cathari would only have a right to the honours accorded to priests, unless the bishop thinks it right to let him enjoy the honour of the (episcopal) title. If he does not desire to do so, let him give him the place of rural bishop (chorepiscopus) or priest, in order that he may appear to be altogether a part of the clergy, and that there may not be two bishops in one city”.

 

Can. 9.

“If any persons have been admitted to the priesthood without inquiry, or if upon inquiry they have confessed their crimes, and the imposition of hands has nevertheless been conferred upon them in opposition to the canon, such ordination is declared invalid; for the Catholic Church requires men who are blameless”.

Can. 10.

“The lapsi who have been ordained in ignorance of their fall, or in spite of the knowledge which the ordainer had of it, are no exception to the canon of the Church, for they are to be deposed as soon as their unworthiness is known”.

Can. 11.

“As to those who lapsed during the tyranny of Licinius, without being driven to it by necessity, or by the confiscation of their goods, or by any danger whatever, the Synod decides that they ought to be treated with gentleness, although in truth they have shown themselves unworthy of it. Those among them who are truly penitent, and who before their fall were believers, must do penance for three years among the audientes, and seven years among the substrati. For two years following they can take part with the people at divine service, but without themselves participating in the oblation”.

Can. 12.

“Those who, called by grace, have shown the first zeal, and have laid aside their belts, but afterwards have returned like dogs to their vomit, and have gone so far as to give money and presents to be readmitted into military service, shall remain three years among the audiente, and ten years among the substrati. But in the case of these penitents, their intention and the character of their repentance must be tried. In fact, those among them who, by fear and with tears, together with patience and good works, show by deeds that their conversion is real, and not merely in appearance, after having finished the time of their penance among the audientes, may perhaps take part among those who pray; and it is in the power of the bishop to treat them with yet greater lenity. As to those who bear with indifference (their exclusion from the Church), and who think that this exclusion is sufficient to expiate their faults, they must perform the whole period prescribed by the law.”

Can. 13.

“With respect to the dying, the old rule of the Church shall continue to be observed, which forbids that any one who is on the point of death should be deprived of the last and most necessary viaticum. If he does not die after having been absolved and admitted to communion, he must be placed amongst those who take part only in prayer. The bishop shall, however, administer the Eucharist, after necessary inquiry, to any one who on his deathbed asks to receive it”.

Can. 14.

“The holy and great Synod orders that catechumens who have lapsed be audientes for three years; they can afterwards join in prayer with the catechumens”.

Can. 15.

“On account of the numerous troubles and divisions which have taken place, it has been thought good that the custom which has been established in some countries in opposition to the canon should be abolished; namely, that no bishop, priest, or deacon should remove from one city to another. If any one should venture, even after this ordinance of the holy and great Synod, to act contrary to this present rule, and should follow the old custom, the translation shall be null, and he shall return to the church to which he had been ordained bishop or priest”.

Can. 16.

“Priests, deacons, and clerics in general, who have with levity, and without having the fear of God before their eyes, left their church in the face of the ecclesiastical laws, must not on any account be received into another : they must be compelled in all ways to return to their dioceses; and if they refuse to do so, they must be excommunicated. If any one should dare to steal, as it were, a person who belongs to another (bishop), and to ordain him for his own church, without the permission of the bishop from whom he was withdrawn, the ordination shall be null”.

 

Canon. 17.

“As many clerics, filled with avarice and with the spirit of usury, forget the sacred words, 'He that hath not given his money upon usury', and demand usuriously (that is, every month) a rate of interest, the great and holy Synod declares that if any one, after the publication of this law, takes interest, no matter on what grounds, or carries on the business (of usurer), no matter in what way, or if he require half as much again, or if he give himself up to any other sort of scandalous gain, he shall be deposed from his clerical office, and his name struck off the list”.

 

Canon. 18.

“It has come to the knowledge of the holy and great Synod, that in certain places and cities deacons administer the Eucharist to priests, although it is contrary to the canons and to custom to have the body of Christ distributed to those who offer the sacrifice by those who cannot offer it. The Synod has also learned that some deacons receive the Eucharist even before the bishops. This must all now cease : the deacons must remain within the limits of their functions, and remember that they are the assistants of the bishops, and only come after the priests. They must receive the Eucharist in accordance with rule, after the priests—a bishop or a priest administering it to them. The deacons ought no longer to sit among the priests, for this is against rule and order. If any one refuses to obey after these rules have been promulgated, let him lose his diaconate”.

Canon. 19.

“With respect to the Paulianists, who wish to return to the Catholic Church, the rule which orders them to be re-baptized must be observed. If some among them were formerly members of the clergy, they must be re-ordained by the bishop of the Catholic Church after they have been re-baptized, if they have been blameless and not condemned. If, on inquiry, they are found to be unworthy, they must be deposed. The same will be done with respect to the deaconesses; and in general, the present rule will be observed for all those who are on the list of the Church. We remind those deaconesses who are in this position, that as they have not been ordained, they must be classed merely among the laity”.

 

Canon 20.

“As some kneel on the Lord's day and on the days of Pentecost, the holy Synod has decided that, for the observance of a general rule, all shall offer their prayers to God standing”.

 Paphnutius and the projected Law of Celibacy.

 

 

Socrates, Sozomen, and Gelasius affirm 2 that the Synod of Nicaea, as well as that of Elvira (can. 33), desired to pass a law respecting celibacy. This law was to forbid all bishops, priests, and deacons (Sozomen adds subdeacons), who were married at the time of their ordination, to continue to live with their wives. But, say these historians, the law was opposed openly and decidedly by Paphnutius, bishop of a city of the Upper Thebais in Egypt, a man of a high reputation, who had lost an eye during the persecution under Maximian. He was also celebrated for his miracles, and was held in so great respect by the Emperor, that the latter often kissed the empty socket of the lost eye. Paphnutius declared with a loud voice, "that too heavy a yoke ought not to be laid upon the clergy; that marriage and married intercourse are of themselves honourable and undefiled; that the Church ought not to be injured by an extreme severity, for all could not live in absolute continency : in this way (by not prohibiting married intercourse) the virtue of the wife would be much more certainly preserved (viz. the wife of a clergyman, because she might find injury elsewhere, if her husband withdrew from her married intercourse). The intercourse of a man with his lawful wife may also be a chaste intercourse. It would therefore be sufficient, according to the ancient tradition of the Church, if those who had taken holy orders without being married were prohibited from marrying afterwards; but those clergy who had been married only once, as laymen, were not to be separated from their wives (Gelasius adds, or being only a reader or cantor).

This discourse of Paphnutius made so much the more impression, because he had never lived in matrimony himself, and had had no conjugal intercourse. Paphnutius, indeed, had been brought up in a monastery, and his great purity of manners had rendered him especially celebrated. Therefore the Council took the serious words of the Egyptian bishop into consideration, stopped all discussion upon the law, and left to each cleric the responsibility of deciding the point as he would.

If this account be true, we must conclude that a law was proposed to the Council of Nicaea the same as one which had been carried twenty years previously at Elvira, in Spain : this coincidence would lead us to believe that it was the Spaniard Hosius who proposed the law respecting celibacy at Nicaea. The discourse ascribed to Paphnutius, and the consequent decision of the Synod, agree very well with the text of the Apostolic Constitutions, and with the whole practice of the Greek Church in respect to celibacy. The Greek Church as well as the Latin accepted the principle, that whoever had taken holy orders before marriage, ought not to be married afterwards. In the Latin Church, bishops, priests, deacons, and even subdeacons, were considered to be subject to this law, because the latter were at a very early period reckoned among the higher servants of the Church, which was not the case in the Greek Church. The Greek Church went so far as to allow deacons to marry after their ordination, if previously to it they had expressly obtained from their bishop permission to do so. The Council of Ancyra affirms this (c. 10). We see that the Greek Church wished to leave the bishops free to decide the matter; but in reference to priests, it also prohibited them from marrying after their ordination.

Therefore, whilst the Latin Church exacted of those presenting themselves for ordination, even as subdeacons, that they should not continue to live with their wives if they were married, the Greek Church gave no such prohibition; but if the wife of an ordained clergyman died, the Greek Church allowed no second marriage. The Apostolic Constitutions decided this point in the same way. To leave their wives from a pretext of piety was also forbidden to Greek priests; and the Synod of Gangra (c. 4) took up the defence of married priests against the Eustathians. Eustathius, however, was not alone among the Greeks in opposing the marriage of all clerics, and in desiring to introduce into the Greek Church the Latin discipline on this point. S. Epiphanius also inclined towards this side.

The Greek Church did not, however, adopt this rigour in reference to priests, deacons, and subdeacons; but by degrees it came to be required of bishops, and of the higher order of clergy in general, that they should live in celibacy. Yet this was not until after the compilation of the Apostolic Canons (c. 5) and of the Constitutions; for in those documents mention is made of bishops living in wedlock, and Church history shows that there were married bishops, for instance Synesius, in the fifth century. But it is fair to remark, even as to Synesius, that he made it an express condition of his acceptation, on his election to the episcopate, that he might continue to live the married life. Thomassin believes that Synesius did not seriously require this condition, and only spoke thus for the sake of escaping the episcopal office; which would seem to imply that in his time Greek bishops had already begun to live in celibacy. At the Trullan Synod (c. 13) the Greek Church finally settled the question of the marriage of priests.

Baronius, Valesius, and other historians, have considered the account of the part taken by Paphnutius to be apocryphal. Baronius says, that as the Council of Nicaea in its third canon gave a law upon celibacy, it is quite impossible to admit that it would alter such a law on account of Paphnutius. But Baronius is mistaken in seeing a law upon celibacy in that third canon : he thought it to be so, because, when mentioning the women who might live in the clergyman’s house—his mother, sister, etc.—the canon does not say a word about the wife. It had no occasion to mention her; it was referring to the sinesekti, whilst these sinesekti and married women have nothing in common. Natalis Alexander gives this anecdote about Paphnutius in full: he desired to refute Bellarmin, who considered it to be untrue, and an invention of Socrates to please the Novatians. Natalis Alexander often maintains erroneous opinions, and on the present question he deserves no confidence. If, as S. Epiphanius relates, the Novatians maintained that the clergy might be married exactly like the laity, it cannot be said that Socrates shared that opinion, since he says, or rather makes Paphnutius say, that, according to ancient tradition, those not married at the time of ordination should not be so subsequently. Moreover, if it may be said that Socrates had a partial sympathy with the Novatians, he certainly cannot be considered as belonging to them, still less can he be accused of falsifying history in their favour. He may sometimes have propounded erroneous opinions, but there is a difference between that and the invention of a whole story. Valesius especially makes use of the argument ex silentio against Socrates, (a.) Rufinus, he says, gives many particulars about Paphnutius in his History of the Church: he mentions his martyrdom, his miracles, and the Emperor’s reverence for him, but not a single word of the business about celibacy. (b.) The name of Paphnutius is wanting in the list of Egyptian bishops present at the Synod. These two arguments of Valesius are very weak; the second has the authority of Rufinus himself against it, who expressly says that Bishop Paphnutius was present at the Council of Nicaea. If Valesius means by lists only the signatures at the end of the acts of the Council, this proves nothing; for these lists are very imperfect and it is well known that many bishops whose names are not among these signatures were present at Nicaea. This argument ex silentio is evidently insufficient to prove that the anecdote about Paphnutius must be rejected as false, seeing that it is in perfect harmony with the practice of the ancient Church, and especially of the Greek Church, on the subject of clerical marriages.

On the other hand, Thomassin pretends that there was no such practice, and endeavors to prove by quotations from S. Epiphanius, S. Jerome, Eusebius, and S. John Chrysostom, that even in the East priests who were married at the time of their ordination were prohibited from continuing to live with their wives. The texts quoted by Thomassin prove only that the Greeks gave especial honour to priests living in perfect continency, but they do not prove that this continence was a duty incumbent upon all priests; and so much the less, as the fifth and twenty-fifth apostolic canons, the fourth canon of Gangra, and the thirteenth of the Trullan Synod, demonstrate clearly enough what was the universal custom of the Greek Church on this point.

Lupus and Phillips explain the words of Paphnutius in another sense. According to them, the Egyptian bishop was not speaking in a general way : he simply desired that the contemplated law should not include the subdeacons. But this explanation does not agree with the extracts quoted from Socrates, Sozomen, and Gelasius, who believe Paphnutius intended deacons and priests as well.