HISTORY OF THE CHURCH AND THE EMPIRE

FROM CONSTANTINE TO THE DEATH OF THEODOSIUS THE GREAT,

A.D. 313-395

 

CHAPTER I. Constantine—Donatism—Arianism. AD 313-337.

CHAPTER II. The Sons of Constantine. AD 337-361.

CHAPTER III. Julian. AD 361-363.

CHAPTER IV. From the Death of Julian to the End of the Second General Council. AD 363-381.

CHAPTER V. From the End of the Second General Council to the Death of Theodosius. AD 381-395.

CHAPTER VI. Supplementary.

 

CHAPTER I.

CONSTANTINE : DONATISM ARIANISM

A.D. 313-337.

 

The idea that the emperors of Rome might be Christians had been regarded by Tertullian as one which involved in consistency and impossibility; but it was now to be realized.

Constantine had probably been trained in the religion of his father, which appears to have been an eclectic system, founded on the belief in one supreme God. Some years of his youth were spent at the court of Diocletian and Galerius in the character of a hostage, and while thus detained he had opportunities of observing the deceits by which the pagan priesthood endeavored to influence the emperor’s mind; he witnessed the publication of the persecuting edict at Nicomedia and the horrors which followed. When hailed by the legions, AD 306, in Britain as his father’s successor, he continued and extended the toleration which Constantius had bestowed on the Christians : but it would seem that in this he was rather influenced by indifference and by political considerations than by any inclination to embrace their religion. Whatever his secret belief may have been, he continued to share in all the public rites of paganism, and professed to regard Apollo as his especial patron.

The most critical event in Constantine’s religious history took place in the year 312, as he was on his march against Maxentius. Eusebius tells us that, as the tyrant was known to be preparing for the struggle by magical and superstitious rites, Constantine felt the need of supernatural aid in order to cope with him, and therefore considered to what god he should betake himself; that, remembering how his father had always been blessed with prosperity, whereas the persecutors of Christianity had come to miserable ends, he resolved to forsake the service of idols, and prayed to the god of Constantius—the one supreme Being; and that, as he was engaged in such thoughts, he saw in the sky, soon after midday, a luminous cross, with the words “By this conquer”. While perplexed by the vision the emperor fell asleep; when the Savior appeared to him, bearing in his hand the same symbol which had been displayed in the heavens, commanding him to use it as his standard in war, and giving him the assurance of victory. On awaking, Constantine described the ensign which had been shown to him in his dream, and from that time his troops marched under the protection of the labarum—a banner on which the cross was combined with the first let­ters of the Redeemer’s name. The emperor then sought and received from the Christian clergy instruction as to the meaning of the vision which had been vouchsafed to him; and after his victory at the Milvian Bridge he erected at Rome a statue of himself, holding in his right hand a cross, while the inscription attributed his victory to the power of that “saving sign”.

The story of a vision or dream in which the cross was displayed to Constantine, with a charge that he should use it as a device, and with a promise of victory, is also related by other ecclesiastical writers. But it is told with variations which, while they add to the presumption that it had some foundation in truth, increase the difficulties of the account which Eusebius professed to have received, under the sanction of an oath, from the emperor shortly before his death. The literal accuracy of these narratives will now find few defenders. Educated as Constantine had been, and after the experience through which he had passed, it is extremely improbable that he could have been so utterly unacquainted with everything relating to Christianity as the historians here represent him. Perhaps we may fairly suppose that he had been accustomed to regard the Christian God as one of many— as standing on a level with the host of pagan deities; that the circumstances of his opposition to Maxentius may have turned his thoughts towards this God, and that he may have been on the outlook for some omen of the future; that he may have seen a remarkable appearance in the air, which to his excited imagination bore the form of the Christian symbol, while, although his soldiers witnessed the same sight, it had not for them the shape or the meaning with which the emperor’s fancy invested it; that the motto (if not to be explained in the same manner as the cross itself) may possibly have been nothing more than the inference drawn from the phenomenon; that the dream was a continuation of the thoughts in which the mind had before been engaged. And, if it be assumed that Eusebius reported his hero’s relation with perfect accuracy, it is surely not unwarrantable to suppose that the other circumstances may have grown up within the emperor’s mind in the course of years, as his adhesion to the Christian faith became more entire, and as his continued prosperity confirmed him in the belief that he was an especial favorite of Heaven—a belief which is strongly marked throughout his careers

The benefit conferred on the Christians by the edicts of 312 and 313 was toleration, not ascendency over other religions; and if we attempt to discover the progress of Constantine’s own opinions by his acts and legislation, we find that much is doubtful and perplexing in the history of his next years. He spoke of the Divinity in vague and ambiguous terms. He omitted the secular games, which in the ordinary course would have been celebrated in 314, and, to the great indignation of the Romans, he refused to take part in the rites of Jupiter Capitolinus. He favored the Christians in many ways; he bestowed munificent gifts on the community, and built churches; he committed the education of his son Crispus to the celebrated Christian rhetorician Lactantius; he associated much with bishops, frequently making them the companions of his table and of his journeys; he interfered in the settlement of religious disputes. In 313 he exempted the catholic clergy from the decurionate —an office which, from having once been an object of ambition, had come to be generally regarded as an oppressive burden, on account of the expense, the labor, and the unpopular functions connected with it. As it was found that, in consequence of this law, many persons, whose property rendered them eligible as decurions, pressed into the minor orders of the church for the purpose of obtaining an exemption, Constantine afterwards ordered that no person qualified for the decurionate should be admitted to ordination; that the clergy should be chosen from the poorer members of the church; and that only so many should be ordained as were necessary to fill up vacant places. But when some cities attempted to reclaim those who had become clerks with the object of evading civil office, the emperor ordered that such persons as were already ordained should not be molested.

It would appear that in 315 Constantine exempted the lands of ecclesiastics from the ordinary taxes—an exemption which was afterwards withdrawn. In the same year he abolished crucifixion as a punishment, and decreed that any Jews who should attempt to raise a tumult against Christians should be burnt. In 316 he allowed that the emancipation of slaves, which had until then been performed before a magistrate, might also take place in churches; and, in order to give popularity to the new method, it was divested of many troublesome formalities with which the act of emancipation had formerly been encumbered. By two laws of the year 319 he forbade private sacrifices and divination, and ordered that priests or diviners should not enter dwelling-houses for the exercise of their art, under the penalty of being burnt. But by the same laws the public exercise of such rites was still permitted; and two years later, while the practice of magic with any hurtful object was severely denounced, the emperor sanctioned the use of magical means for bodily cures, or for the prevention of storms. In 321 an edict was issued for the general observance of Sunday. Agricultural labors were to be carried on, but in the towns there was to be a cessation from traffic and from judicial business; and even the heathen soldiers were obliged to repeat on that day a prayer to the supreme Deity. In the same year, as a concession to the zeal of the Christians for celibacy, the old laws against unmarried and childless persons were abolished; and by another edict the church was allowed to receive legacies—a privilege which, in the event, had an important effect on its temporal condition.

But as to all these enactments and proceedings it is questionable in how far they may be regarded as evidence of the emperor’s personal disposition towards Christianity. The omission of the secular games, and the slight offered to the Capitoline Jupiter, need not have meant anything beyond a contempt for the popular religion. The laws which conferred privileges and removed disabilities did no more than put the Christian community on a level with the heathens, or even with the Jews. The private divinations condemned by Constantine were not properly a part of the old religion, but rather were a corruption which a reformer in the interest of that religion would have wished to abolish; they were, moreover, objectionable on political grounds, and had therefore been censured by Diocletian, by Tiberius, and even by so ancient an authority as the laws of the twelve tables. Nay, even the law for the observance of Sunday —the festival of the sun, or Apollo, called by its heathen name—while it had its special and sacred meaning for Christians, might have been regarded by the rest of Constantine’s subjects as merely adding to the number of holidays by an exercise of the pontifical authority which belonged to him as emperor.

In seeking to understand Constantine’s policy as to religion, we must distinguish between the sovereign and the man. As emperor he desired that his subjects should live in peace and order, and that the framework of the constitution should be preserved; in this capacity, therefore, it was his interest to avoid offending the prejudices of his people, to extend to all an equal protection, to allow in religion a freedom of thought limited only by the necessities of civil government. In his private opinions, which were probably at first vaguely monotheistic, he received a determination in favor of Christianity about the time of his march against Maxentius, and thenceforth advanced by degrees until at length he openly avowed the faith of the gospel. By thus considering separately his official and his personal character, we may perhaps best understand much that at first sight appears inconsistent; how he retained throughout his life the office of Pontifex Maximus, the highest in the pagan hierarchy; how he took part in heathen ceremonies, regarding them as attached to his imperial function; how, in two edicts of the same year, “he enjoined the solemn observance of Sunday, and directed the regular consultation of the aruspices”.

The joint triumph of Constantine and Licinius over Maxentius and Maximin was soon followed by differences which were decided by the defeat of Licinius in the battles of Cibalis and Mardia. By a new partition of the empire all Europe, except Thrace, was assigned to Constantine, but a revival of jealousies produced another war, which ended in the ruin of Licinius. This prince, whom some writers have very improbably supposed to have been once a catechumen, oppressed his Christian subjects, perhaps regarding their religion as a token of inclination to his rival’s interest. He demolished churches, put some bishops to death, and it is said that he was on the point of giving orders for a general persecution when he was diverted by the progress of Constantine. The emperors mustered their hosts under the standards of Christ and of heathenism respectively; each party relied on presages and visions which were supposed to come from heaven; and the triumph of Constantine was especially ascribed to the God of Christians. From that time pagan emblems disappear from his coins, and he declares himself in his edicts to be an instrument of God for spreading the true faith.

Constantine now recalled all Christians who were in exile or in the mines; he ordered that those who had been deprived of public employments on account of their religion should be reinstated, that the property of martyrs should be restored to their heirs, and that, if no heirs could be discovered, it should be given to the church. In an edict addressed to all his subjects, he advised them to embrace the gospel; but at the same time he professed to wish that it should be advanced by means of persuasion only. He endeavored, however, to render it attractive by bestowing employments and honors on proselytes of the higher classes, and by donations to the poor—a course which, as Eusebius himself acknowledges, produced a great amount of hypocrisy and pretended conversion. He ordered that churches should be everywhere built, of a size sufficient to accommodate the whole population. He forbade the erection of images of the gods, and would not allow his own statue to be set up in temples. All state sacrifices were prohibited, and such of the provincial governors and officials as adhered to the old religion were ordered to abstain from rites of this kind; yet other public sacrifices—those which were undertaken by the priests, as distinguished from ceremonies performed in the name of the state—were allowed to continue. There is reason to suppose that in the end of his reign Constantine issued an edict against them; but if so, it was little enforced.

While the emperor exerted himself for the elevation of the Christian community, he refrained from any such attacks on the religion of the majority as would have been likely to excite opposition. His measures were intended to appear as a reform of abuses which had crept into the pagan system—not as directed against that system itself. Commissioners were sent throughout the empire, with instructions to visit the temples and to inquire into the worship which was performed in them; and these commissioners, although unarmed, and unprotected by any military guard, were allowed to do their work without hindrance—a circumstance which shows how little hold the heathen religion retained on the general mind. In consequence of this visitation, many statues were stripped of their precious ornaments, destroyed, or carried away, and many impostures of the priests were exposed. Constantine respected the temples in general, but he shut up and unroofed some which were almost deserted, turned others into churches, and destroyed those which had been the scenes of immoral rites or of pretended miracles.

FOUNDATION OF CONSTANTINOPLE

The change in the position of Rome towards the empire, which had originated in the policy or in the caprice of Diocletian, was carried further by Constantine. He paid only two visits to the city after that which followed his victory over Maxentius; and his reception was not such as to make a favorable impression on his mind. With wonderful speed a new capital, called after the emperor’s name, was raised on the site of Byzantium. Whereas Rome was the chief stronghold of heathenism, Constantinople was to be wholly a Christian city. Churches were erected in every quarter. Statues of gods and illustrious men were removed from the cities and temples of Greece and Asia to decorate the streets and public places, while they served as trophies of victory over the old religion. The chief room of the palace was adorned with representations of sacred subjects, among which was one of the crucifixion. The gladiatorial shows, and other barbarous exhibitions which formed the delight of the Romans, were never allowed at Constantinople, although in the older capital the popular feeling was as yet so strong that the emperor did not venture to interfere with it.

In the outward duties of religion Constantine was very diligent. He caused himself to be represented in the attitude of prayer on coins and medals and in statues; he studied the Scriptures, and regularly attended the services of the church; he kept the paschal vigil with great devotion; he listened, standing, to the longest addresses of his bishops, he even composed religious discourses, and after they had been translated from Latin into Greek, with which he was but imperfectly acquainted, he delivered them before his court. One of these sermons is still extant, having been preserved as a specimen by Eusebius, to whom it is probably indebted for more than its Greek idiom. In this composition the emperor recommends the Christian religion, dwelling on the evidence borne by prophecy, with which he classes the Sibylline verses and the fourth Eclogue of Virgil; and, as was his custom, insisting strongly on the contrast between his own prosperity and the calamities of princes who had persecuted the church. In his journeys he was accompanied by a travelling chapel. Bishops were his chosen associates; and too many of them were dazzled by the splendor of such a position, so that he found them willing to let his faults pass uncensured, and to admit a dangerous amount of interference in spiritual things. Eusebius relates that one of these bishops—probably the historian himself —went so far in flattering the emperor with assurances of salvation as even to draw down a rebuke from him. It has indeed been maintained that Constantine’s Christianity was merely a matter of policy; but the charge is palpably unjust; for although some of his measures as to religion were unquestionably dictated by political interest, —although his understanding of Christian doctrine was very imperfect, and his life was far from being that of a consistent believer, —there is no reasonable ground for doubting that his conviction was sincere, and that he earnestly endeavored to employ his power for the benefit of the church and for the extension of the truth.

The emperor’s mother, Helena, was induced by him to embrace his new religion, and during the remaining years of her life distinguished herself by the fervor of her zeal and devotion. In 326 she visited the Holy Land, with the intention of seeking out the places which had been hallowed by the chief events of Scripture history. The site of the holy sepulcher was to be marked by a church which should exceed all others in splendor. The temple of Venus, with which Hadrian had defiled the place, was demolished; the earth below it was dug up as polluted, when, it is said, three crosses were discovered, and near them the label on which the superscription had been written over the Savior’s head. As, however, there was not enough to distinguish with certainty the cross on which he had suffered, Macarius, bishop of the city, proposed a test. A lady of his flock, who was supposed to be at the point of death, was carried to the spot; prayers were put up that the true cross might be revealed through her cure; and, after two of the three had been applied to her in vain, the third wrought an instantaneous recovery. In addition to the place of the entombment, those of the nativity and the ascension, and the site of the oak or turpentine-tree of Mamre, were covered with churches, in token of Helena’s piety, and of the unrestricted bounty which Constantine enabled her to exercised

The reign of Constantine was marked by the beginning of two great controversies—the Donatistic and the Arian : the former arising in the west, out of a disagreement as to discipline; the latter, of eastern origin, involving the very essence of Christian doctrine. The emperor took part in both, but the goodness of his intentions was not always directed by knowledge and sound judgment. Wielding an absolute power, and imperfectly instructed as to the faith which he professed, he was continually tempted to confound religious with civil considerations. Sometimes the desire to preserve peace among his subjects induced him to view error with indifference; at other times he regarded and punished the proceedings of religious parties as offences against his imperial authority.

THE DONATISTIC SCHISM.

We have repeatedly had occasion to notice the peculiar character which marked the Christianity of northern Africa. In that country Montanism had found a congenial soil, and had acquired its great champion, Tertullian. From Africa, too, it was that the Novatianist sect had in part derived its origin; and there its rigid principles had been received with the greatest enthusiasm. There the strict view as to the nullity of schismatical baptism had been maintained by Cyprian; and in the history of that great bishop we have seen the extravagant honor which the Christians of Africa attached to the outward acts of martyrdom and confessorship.

In the persecution under Diocletian many of the African Christians exhibited the characteristic spirit of their country. They endeavored to provoke martyrdom by violent behavior; in some cases, it is said, they were impelled to this by debts, disrepute, or wretchedness, and by the hope of at once washing away in their blood the sins and crimes of a whole life. To all such courses Mensurius, bishop of Carthage, was strongly opposed. He himself, when asked to give up the sacred books of his church, substituted for them some heretical writings. He forbade his people to visit in prison those who had ostentatiously courted death; he refused to acknowledge such persons as martyrs; and in carrying out this policy his chief instrument was his archdeacon, Caecilian.

In the year 305, a synod of about twelve bishops met at Cirta (now Constantine) to elect a bishop for that city. The president, Secundus, bishop of Tigisis and primate of Numidia, began by inquiring into the conduct of his brethren during the late persecution. Several confessed that they had delivered up the Scriptures; one, Purpurius by name, on being charged with the murder of two of his nephews, told Secundus that he was not to be frightened by such questions; that he had killed, and would kill, all who stood in his way; and he taxed Secundus himself with being a traditor. When the inquiry had proceeded so far as to inculpate the greater part of the bishops who were present, one of them proposed that, for the sake of peace, past offences should be forgotten, and that everyone should make his account to God alone; and the synod, acting on this suggestion, proceeded to elect one who had been a traditor, Silvanus, to the see of Cirta. It is to be noted that the very persons who on this occasion were so lenient towards the crime of traditorship became afterwards the chief leaders of the more rigid party.

Although Mensurius had incurred much enmity by his conduct during the persecution, the spirit which he had provoked did not break out into any considerable manifestation during his lifetime. On his death, which took place in 311, as he was returning from Rome, where he had been summoned to appear before Maxentius, two presbyters, named Botrus and Celesius, aspired to the vacant see, and, for their own purposes, contrived that the election should take place without summoning the Numidian bishops. The choice, however, fell on the archdeacon Caecilian, who was consecrated by Felix, bishop of Aptunga. Before leaving Carthage, Mensurius had in trusted some plate and other property of the church to certain elders of the congregation, and had left an inventory in the hands of a female member of his flock. This document was now delivered to Caecilian, who asked the elders to produce the articles enumerated in it; and these persons, who had supposed themselves secure against inquiry, and had intended to appropriate the deposit, endeavored to avenge themselves by forming a party in opposition to the new bishop. The faction was joined by the disappointed presbyters, and was supported by the influence and wealth of Lucilla, a lady whom Caecilian had formerly offended by reproving her for a practice of kissing the bone of a supposed martyr before partaking of the Eucharist. In consequence of an invitation from the malcontents, a body of Numidian bishops, seventy in number, and headed by their primate, Secundus, appeared at Carthage. They cited Caecilian before them, alleging that he ought not to have been consecrated except in their presence, and by the primate of Numidia; and, moreover, that his consecration was void, inasmuch as Felix of Aptunga was a traditor. Personal charges were also brought against Caecilian. His exertions to check the fanatical spirit during the persecution were exaggerated into monstrous inhumanity; it was said that he had stationed men at the prison-doors, with whips in their hands, to drive away such of the faithful as should carry provisions for the relief of the martyrs; that he himself had beaten some persons who went to the prison on this errand of charity; that he had broken the vessels which they carried, and had scattered the food, so that some of the prisoners had in consequence been starved to death. In answer to the summons of the Numidians, Caecilian refused to appear before them, but professed himself willing to satisfy them if they would go to him; he maintained that his consecration was regular and valid, and offered, if they could prove it otherwise, to submit to a fresh consecration at their hands. On this Purpurius broke out with his usual violence: “Let him come”, he said, “to receive our imposition of hands, and we will break his head by way of penance”. The Numidians excommunicated Caecilian with his adherents, and ordained a rival bishop, Majorinus, who had formerly been a reader under him, but was now a member of Lucilla’s household. By this formation of a decided schism, many persons, who had before stood aloof from Caecilian, were induced to return to his communion.

Constantine, soon after becoming master of the west by his victory over Maxentius, sent a large sum of money for the relief of the African Christians; and as reports which reached him had produced impressions unfavorable to the malcontent party, he ordered that his gifts, with the privileges conferred on Christians by his late edicts, should be limited to those who were in communion with Caecilian, while he used some harsh language as to the “madness” of their opponents. On this the discontented party, through the proconsul Anulinus, presented to the emperor a petition, desiring that their cause might be examined by the bishops of Gaul, from whom it was supposed that impartiality might be expected, as their country had been exempt from the late persecution, so that they had escaped the difficulties and dissensions connected with the question of giving up the Scriptures. Even such an application to the civil power—a request that it would appoint a commission of ecclesiastical judges—was altogether inconsistent with the attitude which the Donatists afterwards assumed towards the state; and their adversaries did not fail in later times to remind them from which party the original appeal to the emperor had proceeded.

Constantine complied with their request by issuing a commission to the bishops of Cologne, Autun and Arles, with whom he joined Melchiades (or Miltiades) of Rome, and another; but this commission was afterwards extended, so that the assembly before which the cause was tried consisted of about twenty bishops, who in October 313 met in the Lateran, then the palace of the empress Fausta. Caecilian attended, with ten bishops of his party; and a like number of accusers appeared, headed by Donatus, bishop of Casae Nigrae, in Numidia. The decision was in favor of Caecilian, and Melchiades proposed a conciliatory expedient—that both parties should reunite in communion, and that, where rival bishops laid claim to a see, the bishop who had the earlier consecration should keep possession. Donatus and his brethren, however, disdained all compromise. They complained that their cause had not been sufficiently examined; they renewed their charges; they accused the judges of corruption; they declared that a synod of only twenty bishops was insufficient to overrule the sentence of the seventy who had condemned Caecilian; and they prayed the emperor to grant them a further hearing.

On this Constantine summoned a council from all parts of the western empire to Arles, whither the judges, the accusers, and the accused were conveyed at the public expense. About two hundred bishops—by far the greatest ecclesiastical assembly that had yet been known (if the number be rightly given),—met on the 1st of August 314, under the presidency of Marinus, bishop of Arles. The bishops of Rome and of Ostia were represented by deputies. The deliberations of the council resulted in a fresh acquittal of Caecilian, and some canons were passed with a view to the African dissensions. It was enacted that clergymen who had given up the Scriptures, the sacred vessels, or the lists of the faithful, should be deposed, if convicted by the evidence of public records, but that mere hearsay testimony was not to be admitted in such cases; that false accusers should be excluded from communion, and should not be readmitted until in prospect of death; that if a person in himself unexceptionable had been ordained by a traditor his ordination should stand valid. And, for the settlement of the old question as to baptism, it was decided that, where a person had received baptism from heretics in the name of the Trinity, he should be admitted into the church by imposition of hands for the conveying of the Holy Spirit; but that, if the proper form of words had not been used, he should be rebaptized.

The defeated party entreated the emperor to take the matter into his own hands—a request which contrasts strangely with the principles which they afterwards maintained as to the independence of the ecclesiastical power. Although offended by their obstinacy, Constantine agreed, and, after some delays, the question was heard before him at Milan, where he gave a sentence to the same effect with those already pronounced by the synods of Rome and Arles. This judgment was followed up by severe edicts against the sectaries. They were deprived of their churches; many of them suffered banishment and confiscation; even the punishment of death was enacted against them, although it does not appear that this law was enforced in any case during the reign of Constantine.

DONATUS THE GREAT.

Majorinus is supposed to have died in 315, or earlier, and was succeeded in the schismatical episcopate by Donatus the Great—so styled by his followers for the sake of distinction from the bishop of Casae Nigrae. It was from this second Donatus that the sect, which had before been known as the party of Majorinus, took the name which it bears in history. He is described as learned, eloquent, a voluminous writer, a man of rigid life, but of excessive pride. He is said to have been desirous that his followers, instead of being styled Christians in common with their opponents, should be called after himself (although at a later time they resented the appellation); to have carried himself loftily towards the other bishops of his communion; to have scorned to receive the Eucharist in public; to have been very intemperate in his language towards all who differed from him. His partisans boasted of his miracles, and of the answers which he had received to prayer, and are charged with paying him honors which trenched on those due to the Deity—with singing hymns to him, and swearing by his grey hairs. The character of the sectaries answered to that of their chief. They displayed an extreme austerity, which was too often a pretext for the neglect of the more unpretending duties of morality and religion. They professed to embody in each individual that holiness which Scripture ascribes to the ideal church of Christ as a whole. They held that the true church existed only in their own communion, which, with the exception of one scanty congregation at Rome and the private chapel of a wealthy female Donatist in Spain, was limited to a corner of Africa. They boasted of miracles and revelations. They rebaptized proselytes, and compelled such professed virgins as joined the party to submit to penance, and to renew their vows.

Constantine soon began to perceive that against such fanaticism force would be as unavailing as reason. In 317 he wrote to the catholic bishops of Africa, exhorting them to treat the schismatics with gentleness; and when, in 321, the Donatists presented to him a memorial, in which they declared that they would have nothing to do with his “scoundrel of a bishop”, he repealed the laws against them, and allowed their exiles to return—expressing a horror of their frenzy and turbulence, but declaring that he left them to the judgment of God. This policy of indulgence was continued throughout the remaining years of the reign, during which the emperor’s attention was drawn away from the African schism by the nearer and more widely-spread Arian controversy. In the meanwhile the Donatists became the stronger party in Africa. A synod of the sect in 330 was attended by two hundred and seventy bishops, and the whole number of their bishops is said to have at one time amounted to four hundred.

THE CIRCUMCELLIONS.

The appearance of the circumcellions among the Donatists is placed by some writers as early as 317, while others date it a quarter of a century later. These were persons of the poorest class, ignorant of any language but the Punic; their name was derived from the practice of begging around the cells or cottages of the country people, instead of earning a livelihood by regular industry. The accounts of them might be disbelieved, as fictions of their enemies, were it not that later experience forbids us to be hasty in rejecting statements of extravagances and crimes committed under the name of religion. Their zeal was often combined with excesses of drunkenness and lust; and in these the “sacred virgins” of the party shared. Bands of both sexes roamed about the country, keeping the peaceable inhabitants in constant terror. They styled themselves the Lord’s champions; their shout of “Praises to God!” was heard, according to St. Augustine, with greater dread than the roaring of a lion. Supposing that our Lord’s words to St. Peter forbade them the use of swords, they at first carried no other weapon than heavy clubs, called Israels, with which they beat their victims—often to death; but the scriptural scruple was afterwards overcome, and they added to their “Israels” not only slings, but swords, lances, and hatchets. They attacked and plundered the churches and houses of the catholic clergy; they committed violent outrages on their persons; in later days they used to put out their eyes with a mixture of lime and vinegar. Professing to redress the wrongs of society, they interfered between creditors and their debtors, between masters and their slaves; offences which deserved punishment were allowed to pass unnoticed, lest the circumcellions should be called in by the culprits; all property was unsafe in the region infested by these furious fanatics; and the officers of justice were afraid to perform their functions.

The frenzy of the circumcellions was directed against themselves as well as others. Sometimes they courted death by violently disturbing the pagan worship. They stopped travellers on the roads, and, with threats of killing them, demanded death at their hands. In the same way, they compelled judges who were travelling on their circuits to hand them over to the executioners. Many drowned themselves, rushed into fire, or threw themselves from precipices; but hanging was a death which they eschewed, because they would have nothing in common with the traditor Judas. The more moderate Donatists disapproved and dreaded the excesses of the circumcellions. Councils of the sect condemned suicide; but the practice continued, and those who perpetrated or procured their own death were popularly honored as martyrs.

DONATISM UNDER CONSTANS. 

Constans, who in 337 succeeded to the western part of his father’s empire, endeavored to conciliate the Donatists by the same system of presents which had been found effectual in winning proselytes from heathenism to the church. It would seem that three such attempts were made; the agents in the last of them were Paul and Macarius, who were sent into Africa in 347. When these commissioners invited all Christians to share in the emperor’s gifts, Donatus repelled the offer with a great show of indignation : “What”, he asked, “has the emperor to do with the church?”—and he forbade the members of his communion to accept anything from traditors. It was reported that the commissioners were charged to set up the emperor’s image in churches for the purpose of adoration. The circumcellions rose in revolt, and a battle was fought, in which the imperial troops were victorious—two Donatist bishops, the chief instigators of the insurrection, being among the slain. Macarius then required the sectaries to return to the church, and sentenced those who refused to banishment. Optatus, the chief controversial opponent of Donatism until the time of Augustine, acknowledges that they were treated with harshness, but assures us that this was against the wishes of the catholic bishops. The Donatists in Augustine’s day used to speak of the “times of Macarius” as those in which their forefathers had been most severely tried; and they affected to call the catholics Macarians, in memory of the persecutor. By the vigorous measures employed against them, the schism appeared to be suppressed for a time, and Donatus died in exile.

ORIGIN OF ARIANISM

The distinctive tenet of Arianism—the denial of the Saviour’s Godhead—had already appeared in the heresies of the Ebionites, of Artemon, and of Theodotus. But now that Christianity had assumed a new position, questions of doctrine produced an amount of agitation before unknown; the Arian controversy, and some which followed it, were not only felt throughout the whole church, but had an important effect on political affairs. And, sad as it undoubtedly is to contemplate the distractions thus occasioned, we must yet remember that by fighting out these differences, instead of attempting to stifle them by compromise, the church gained a fixed and definite form of sound words, which was of the greatest value, and even necessity, for the preservation of her faith through the ages of ignorance which followed.

It may have been, that at the time when he forsook the church he agreed with Paul, and that after his return he fell into errors of a different kind. See Hefele, i. 225.

Although Alexandria was the birthplace of Arianism, the origin of the heresy is rather to be traced to the other great church of the east, over which Paul of Samosata had exerted a powerful and lasting influence. While the Alexandrian tendency was spiritual and mystical, the theologians of Antioch were given to dialectic subtleties, and were more distinguished for acuteness than for largeness or depth of mind and such was the tone which prevailed in the school of Lucian, an eminent teacher of Antioch, whose history has already been noticed. Lucian, induced rather by a sympathy with Paul’s spirit than by any near agreement in his opinions, left the church together with the bishop, or in consequence of his condemnation : and although he afterwards returned, and was honored in the church as a martyr, the effects of his teaching remained for evil. The Arians claimed him as their founder. Among his pupils were Eusebius of Nicomedia, Leontius, and other persons who became prominent as leaders of the party; even Arius himself has been reckoned as one of them, although the connection appears very doubtful.

Arius is supposed to have been, like Sabellius, a native of Libya or Cyrenaica. He is described as a man of strict life, of grave appearance and agreeable manners — with an air of modesty, under which, according to his enemies, he concealed strong feelings of vanity and ambition. After having been ordained deacon by Peter, bishop of Alexandria, about the beginning of the century, he became connected with a party which Meletius, bishop of Lycopolis, the second in rank of the Egyptian sees, had formed on grounds which appear to have resembled those of the Donatistic schism. For this, Arius was excommunicated by Peter; but the next bishop, Achillas, readmitted him to the church, ordained him presbyter, and entrusted him with a parochial cure in the city. On the death of Achillas, AD 311, after an episcopate of a few months, Arius is said by some writers to have aspired to the bishopric; Philostorgius, a member of his party, even states that he had a majority 0f votes, and that he voluntarily gave way to Alexander, who was elected. But there is no good evidence for the story of his having been a candidate at all.

Amidst contradictory reports as to the beginning of the controversy, it seems to be certain that on some public occasion, when Alexander was discoursing on the unity of the Divine Trinity, Arius charged his doctrine with Sabellianism. Alexander at first endeavored to convince him of his error by friendly expostulations; but, finding that they were ineffectual, that he himself was blamed for tolerating Arius, and that a presbyter named Colluthus even made this the pretext for a schism, the bishop appointed a conference, at which, after having heard the arguments on both sides with judicial impartiality, he decided against Arius. The condemnation was ratified by a synod of Egyptian and Libyan bishops; and the heresiarch with his adherents was excommunicated.

Arius found many to sympathize with him —partly from the attractiveness of a doctrine which brought down the mysteries of the Godhead to the sphere of human analogies and conceptions; partly because the multitude is usually ready to take part with anyone who may suffer from the exercise of lawful authority. Among his followers were two bishops, about twelve presbyters and as many deacons, and a great number of virgins. Being unable to remain at Alexandria, he took refuge in Palestine, and a lively correspondence followed—Arius endeavoring to gain friends by veiling his more offensive opinions, while Alexander dispersed warnings against him, and withstood all the intercessions of the historian Eusebius, bishop of Caesarea, and of others who attempted to mediate.

Among these was another Eusebius, who had been associated with Arius as a disciple or admirer of Lucian, and was now bishop of Nicomedia. Eusebius procured from a Bithynian synod an acknowledgment of his friend as orthodox, and received him when he had been dislodged from Palestine through the influence of the Alexandrian bishop. At Nicomedia the heresiarch composed his Thalia —a book chiefly consisting of verses, and described by his opponents as an imitation of a heathen versifier named Sotades, whose writings are said to have been alike disgusting in subject and contemptible in execution. The Thalia was intended to advance the Arian doctrine by introducing it into pieces which might be sung as an accompaniment of meals; and with a like view Arius wrote songs for millers, sailors, and travellers. The character of his mind, as exhibited in his heresy and in the arguments for it, forbids us to suppose that these productions had anything of poetry except the form.

Constantine, on becoming master of the east, found the church distracted by the newly-risen controversy. In the hope of allaying this he wrote a letter to Alexander and Arius jointly—telling them that belief in a Providence was the one essential doctrine of Christianity, while he reproved them for contending about idle questions and imaginary differences, and recommended peace and unity, which, he said, they might learn even from the manner in which the heathen philosophers conducted their disputes. This document has been highly extolled as a model of wisdom and moderation, but would better deserve the praise if the Godhead of the Redeemer were, in a Christian view, that utterly trifling matter which the emperor then supposed it to be. Armed with the imperial letter, Hosius, bishop of Cordova, to whom the settlement of the affair was committed, proceeded to Alexandria, and held a synod; but, although he succeeded in healing the schism of Colluthus, the only result as to the Arian question was to convince him that the Arians were impracticable. The dissensions occasioned by the controversy had by this time become very serious; the disputes of the Christians were ridiculed in the heathen theatres; and in some places the emperor’s statues were treated with indignity.

Constantine now took a new view of the affair. He began to understand that the doctrine at stake was of the highest and most essential importance; and, moreover, the Arians appeared to him as disturbers of the public peace. In order, therefore, to a settlement of the controversy, and of the disputes as to the time of Easter, which had been lately revived, he summoned a general council of the whole church, to be held at Nicaea, in Bithynia. It was the first time that such an assemblage had been possible; for never until now had the east and the west been united under a sovereign professing the Christian faith : and the summons necessarily proceeded from the imperial authority, as being the only authority which was acknowledged by all the Christians of the empire.

OPINIONS OF ARIUS

Something has been said in a former chapter as to the manner in which the Christian doctrines on such subjects as that which was now in question had gradually been defined and exhibited. In the earlier time, down to the age of Irenaeus, the Godhead of Father, Son, and Holy Ghost had been strongly held; so strongly, indeed, that the language of the fathers might have been misconstrued into something like Sabellianism. When heresies of that character had appeared, from the time of Praxeas downwards, they had been met by declarations which tended to establish the distinction of the Divine Persons, with a subordination of the Second and the Third as ministering to the First. The task appointed for the fourth century was to reconcile and to combine the truths which had thus been successively brought into prominence.

The terms by which the relations of the Divine Being had been expressed were intended to be regarded as complementary of each other in conveying such a shadow of the mystery as is within the compass of human thought and language; and, if taken singly, they were liable to be misunderstood. Thus the term Son, while it expressed the sameness of nature and the derivation of “God from God”, was defective, inasmuch as it suggested ideas of posteriority, inferiority, material generation, and too great personal distinctness. On the other hand, the term Word or Reason conveyed the ideas of coeternity, essential indwelling, and mediation, but tended to obscure that of personality—rather suggesting that the Second was to the First as an attribute or a mode of operation. On the incompleteness of such images Arius founded his heresy. His original objection against Alexander was, that, if the Son were begotten, the Father was anterior to him, therefore the Son had a beginning; “once he was not”. He could not (it was argued) have been taken from the Father’s substance; therefore he was made out of nothing. And thus, by a sophism drawn from the title of Son, Arius concluded against the very doctrine which that term was expressly intended to convey—the identity of nature between the Second Person and the First. The Word, he said, was created by the Father, at his own will, before the worlds —before all time. He was the highest of creatures—“a creature, yet not as one of the creatures”—and therefore styled only-begotten. He was framed after the pattern of the indwelling Divine Logos or Wisdom, enlightened by it, and called by its name. But although the Arians exhausted language in expressing the height of the Son’s elevation, they yet, by representing him as a creature, removed him to an infinite distance from the supreme Source of being. They assigned him a part like that of the gnostic demiurge in the work of creation; God (they said) created by him, because the Divinity itself could not come into contact with the finite world. According to them, he was employed in creation as an instrument, whereas in catholic language the Father was said to have wrought by him as by a hand. It was said that the Son was styled God in an inferior sense—as men also are occasionally so styled in Scripture. The texts in which he himself speaks of his unity with the Father were explained as signifying either a mere agreement of will, or an indwelling of God in him after the same manner as in men.

The peculiar weapon of Arius was logic; his mind was incapable of any speculation which rose into a higher region. The details of his system are obscured, partly by the variations to which he resorted as the consequences of his principles were pressed on him; partly by his own recoil from results which he had not foreseen or understood; and partly from his wish to disguise his opinions in such terms as might seem most plausible to the orthodox, and might be most likely to win for him the sympathy of the undiscerning. Among the doctrines which he once held and afterwards retracted was that of the mutability of the Son’s will. He might, it was said, have fallen like Satan; the Father, foreseeing that he would not fall, anticipated the reward of his merits by bestowing on him the titles of Son and Logos, which he was afterwards to earn.

The incarnation, according to Arius, was merely the assumption by the Son of a human body—his nature supplying the place of a soul. Hence scriptural expressions, which really relate to the Savior’s humanity, were applied to his pre-existent nature, and it was argued from them that that nature was inferior to the Divine.

The first general council met at Nicaea in June 325. The number of bishops present was about three hundred, and with them were many of the lower clergy. Even some heathen philosophers were attracted to the place of assembly, and held conferences and disputes with the bishops.

The controversy had not yet begun to agitate the west; and from that portion of the emperor’s dominions there were only Hosius of Cordova, Caecilian of Carthage, and two Roman presbyters, Vito and Vincent, sent as representatives of their bishop, Sylvester, whose age prevented his attendance. One bishop came from Scythia, and one from Persia, while the great body were from the eastern division of the empire. Among those who were thus assembled there was, no doubt, much variety as to their amount of ability and knowledge; but the object of their meeting was not one which required any high intellectual qualifications. For the more subtle arguments and definitions were not introduced into the controversy until a later time, and the fathers who assembled at Nicaea were not called to reason on the grounds of their belief, but to witness to the faith which the church had held on the disputed subjects. It has been supposed by some writers that Eustathius of Antioch was president; by some, that the bishops of Alexandria and Antioch presided by turns; while others have assigned the chief place to Eusebius of Caesarea. The most general opinion, however, is in favor of Hosius, whose name is first among the subscriptions; but there is no ground whatever for the idea that the office belonged to him in the character of a Roman legate, or that he held that character in anyway. The number of bishops favorable to Arius is variously stated at thirteen, seventeen, and twenty-two, and the most eminent among them were the two Eusebiuses, —who, however, did not fully agree in doctrine, as the bishop of Nicomedia carried his views to the whole length of the heresy, while the historian’s opinions appear to have been of the class afterwards styled semi-Arian. In the earlier sessions, which seem to have been held in a church, Arius was repeatedly heard by the fathers in defence of his opinions. He avowed his heresy without disguise, and it is said that the avowal caused all who were present to stop their ears. His chief opponents in argument were Marcellus, bishop of Ancyra, and Athanasius, archdeacon of Alexandria, who was in attendance on his bishop, Alexander.

COUNCIL OF NICAEA.

About a fortnight after the opening of the council, Constantine arrived at Nicaea, and the sittings were transferred to the palace, where the emperor appeared at them, and acted as a moderator. Immediately on his arrival, he found himself beset by bishops who eagerly importuned him to listen to their grievances against each other; and as these quarrels were not only scandalous, but seemed likely to interfere with the proper business of the council, he resolved to put a summary end to them. Having appointed a day for the decision of such matters, he took his seat as judge, and received all the memorials which contained the mutual complaints and recriminations of the bishops. Then, after having shortly exhorted them to unity and concord, he burnt the documents without opening them, “lest the contentions of the priests should become known to anyone”. After this, the council proceeded to the discussion for which it had been assembled. The partisans of Arius, and especially that section of which Eusebius of Nicomedia was the leader, attempted to shelter themselves under ambiguous terms. Eusebius of Caesarea offered for acceptance a creed which he declared to be agreeable to the faith which he had received from his predecessors, which he had learnt as a catechumen, and had always held and taught; but this document, although of orthodox appearance, was so artfully framed as to evade the very questions which it was the business of the council to determine. He censured the terms proposed by the Catholics, as not being scriptural;—a futile objection, inasmuch as the matter in dispute was the sense of those Scriptures which all professed to accept; and somewhat shameless, as coming from a party which had opened the controversy by the introduction of terms unknown to Scripture. In order to meet the evasions of this creed, the word homoousion (i.e. of the same substance or essence) was proposed. Objections were taken to it, as tending to suggest the notion of materiality, as obscuring the personal distinction, as having been connected with some heretical systems, and, in particular, as having been condemned (although in another sense) by the council which deposed Paul of Samosata. Eusebius, however, acknowledged that it had been used by fathers of good repute, and at length he agreed to adopt it. A creed was drawn up, resembling that of Eusebius, and, like it, mainly derived from the older forms of the eastern church, but differing from it by the addition of the necessary safeguards against the Arian errors; and this creed, with a solemn condemnation of Arius, was generally signed by the bishops—among the rest by Eusebius himself, whose adhesion, as explained in a letter to his flock, was more creditable to his ingenuity than to his candor. The learned and courtly historian professed to have accepted the word homoousion as meaning that the Son was like the Father, and unlike all the other creatures; and to have joined in the condemnation of Arius because the censured terms were novel and unscriptural, but without intending either to pronounce the opinions in question false, or to affirm that they were held by the accused.

The paschal question was settled by a decision against the quartodeciman practice. Twenty canons were passed on various subjects connected with the government and discipline of the church; and the deliberations of the council were succeeded by the celebration of Constantine’s Vicennalia, during which he entertained the bishops at a splendid banquet, and, after having exhorted them to cultivate peace among themselves, dismissed them with a request that they would pray for him.

ATHANASIUS.

The emperor followed up the council’s judgment by banishing Arius into Illyria, and including in the sentence two Egyptians, Secundus and Theonas, who were the only bishops that had throughout adhered to the heresiarch. Severe penalties were denounced against Arius and his followers, and it was even made a capital offence to possess his writings. Constantine ordered that the party should be styled Porphyrians,—a name derived from that of the latest noted controversialist who had appeared on the side of heathenism, and intended to brand the Arians as enemies of the Christian faith; and in a letter addressed to the heresiarch, the emperor, not content with vehemently attacking his doctrine, even condescended to pun on his name and to ridicule his personal appearance. Three months after the council, Eusebius of Nicomedia and Theognis of Nicaea, who had subscribed the creed but not the anathema, were condemned by a local synod on some new charge; and the emperor, who had given orders for their trial, sentenced them to banishment.

Within a few months after his return from Nicaea, Alexander, bishop of Alexandria, died. Athanasius, whom he had recommended for his successor in the see, was then absent,—having, it would seem, intentionally prolonged his absence on a mission to the court from a wish to avoid the dangerous and laborious dignity. He was, however, chosen by general acclamation; and although some faint charges of irregularity were afterwards brought against the manner of his appointment, it would seem to have been really beyond exception. From the age of thirty to that of seventy-six Athanasius held the see, devoting himself with all his powers to the assertion of the orthodox doctrine, which for him was no speculative opinion, but was intimately connected with the whole Christian life. To his abilities and constancy is due, under the Divine Providence, the preservation of the eastern church, and perhaps even of the whole church, from the adoption of the Arian heresy, or from a vague and creedless system, which would probably have issued in an utter abandonment of Christianity. He displays in his writings a manly and direct eloquence; a remarkable and unusual combination of subtlety with breadth of mind; extreme acuteness in argument, yet at the same time a superiority to mere contentiousness about words. His unbending steadiness of purpose was united with a rare skill in dealing with men; he knew when to give way, as well as when to make a show of resistance. His activity, his readiness, his foresight, his wonderful escapes and adventures, gave countenance to the stories of magical art which circulated among his enemies,0 and to the belief of his admirers that he possessed the gifts of miracles and prophecy. Throughout all his troubles he was supported by the attachment of his people, and of the hundred bishops who owned allegiance to the see of Alexandria.

The Arian party in no long time began to gain strength in the imperial court. Constantia, the widow of Licinius and sister of Constantine—a princess who had been under the influence of Eusebius of Nicomedia—was persuaded by a presbyter whose name is said by writers of later date to have been Eutocius, that Arius had been misrepresented and unjustly condemned. When on her death-bed, she endeavored to impress her brother with the same belief, and recommended the presbyter to him; and by this man the emperor, whose apprehension of the question had never been independent or discerning, was persuaded to invite Arius to his court. The heresiarch appeared, with Euzoius, a deacon of Alexandria, who had been included in the excommunication. They produced a creed, which although defective in the critical points, was expressed in inoffensive, and for the most part scriptural, terms; and Constantine was satisfied of their orthodoxy. Eusebius and Theognis also soon obtained a recall, protesting that they had no sympathy with the errors imputed to Arius; that their only offence had been that of doubting whether he held these errors—a doubt, they said, which the emperor himself had lately justified.

AD 327-333- MOVEMENTS AGAINST ATHANASIUS.

The Arian or Eusebian party had now full possession of court influence, and they made an unscrupulous use of to eject such catholic bishops as stood in the way. Among these was Eustathius, bishop of Antioch, who had offended them by charging Eusebius of Caesarea with unfaithfulness to the Nicene doctrine. Eusebius retorted by an accusation of Sabellianism—an error which the Arianizers habitually imputed to their orthodox opponents; and at a party synod, held in his own city, the bishop of Antioch was deposed on charges of heresy and adultery, which were alike unfounded. As the attachment of his people to Eustathius, and their indignation at this sentence, appeared to threaten a disturbance of the public peace, the emperor’s jealousy was aroused, and the bishop was sent into exile. After two Arians in succession had held the see for a short time, Eusebius was solicited to accept it; he declined, however, and his refusal was approved by the emperor.

The occupant of the other great eastern see was far more obnoxious, not only on account of his formidable character and talents, but as being the bishop of that church from which Arius had been expelled, and through which it was desired by his partisans that he should be formally readmitted to catholic communion. After Eusebius of Nicomedia had in vain attempted to mediate, the emperor himself was persuaded to write to Athanasius, requiring him to receive Arius with his followers, and threatening deposition and banishment in case of refusal. But the undaunted bishop replied that he could not acknowledge persons who had been condemned by a decree of the whole church; and Constantine desisted from urging the matter.

The Arians now made overtures to the Meletians. The council of Nicaea had endeavored to provide for the healing of the Meletian schism by an arrangement as to the possession of sees which were claimed both by catholic and by Meletian bishops; but Meletius, although for a time he acquiesced in this measure, had afterwards been persuaded to continue the breach by ordaining one John to succeed him as the chief of his community. The Meletians, in their enmity against the Alexandrian primate, were easily induced to lend themselves as tools to his Arian opponents; and, although hitherto free from doctrinal error, they gradually became infected with the heresy of their new allies. In the alleged grievances of the Meletians the Arians found means of besieging the emperor with a multitude of complaints against Athanasius; but the bishop exposed the futility of these complaints so successfully as even for a time to turn Constantine’s indignation against the authors of them.

In 334 Athanasius was summoned to appear before a council at Caesarea, but disregarded the citation on the ground that he could not expect justice at the hands of such a tribunal. In the following year he was cited before another council, to be held at Tyre; and as the order was then enforced by the imperial authority, with threats of personal violence, he thought it well to comply. At this assembly sixty bishops were present, and a lay commissioner of the emperor directed and overawed their proceedings. Athanasius appeared at the head of fifty Egyptian bishops, and was about to take the place to which the dignity of his see entitled him, when he was ordered by the president, Eusebius of Caesarea, to stand, as being a person under accusation. On this one of the Egyptian bishops, Potammon, a man of high repute for sanctity, is said to have addressed Eusebius: “Do you sit, while the innocent Athanasius is tried before you? Remember how you were my fellow-prisoner in the persecution. I lost an eye for the truth : by what compliances was it that you came off unhurt?”. Eusebius found it expedient to evade the question. “Your behavior”, he answered, “gives countenance to the charges against your party; for if you try to play the tyrants here, no doubt you must do so much more at home”. And he broke up the meeting for the day.

Athanasius was arraigned on a variety of charges, some of them arising out of collisions with the remaining adherents of Melelius and Colluthus, in the course of the visitations which he indefatigably performed throughout his vast province. The most serious was, that he had killed a Meletian bishop named Arsenius, had cut off one of his hands, and had used it for magical purposes; and a human hand was exhibited in evidence of these crimes. In answer to all these charges, Athanasius defended himself boldly and triumphantly. The story as to Arsenius was refuted by producing the man himself, alive and unmutilated,—the friends of Athanasius having succeeded in discovering him, notwithstanding the endeavors of the opposite party to keep him concealed. As the case against Athanasius had thus broken down, a commission, chosen from among his bitterest enemies, was sent into the Mareotis to collect fresh evidence against him. He protested against the unfair composition of this body; and, without waiting for the result of its inquiries, he embarked for Constantinople, threw himself in the emperor’s way as he was riding near the city, and, reminding him of the judgment at which they must both one day appear, extorted from him a promise of a new investigation in the imperial presence. Constantine was so far moved by this appeal that he wrote in a tone of reproof to the council, which had already decreed the deposition and excommunication of Athanasius, and, having removed to Jerusalem for the purpose of dedicating the magnificent church which the emperor had lately erected over the holy sepulcher, had there admitted Arius and Euzoius to communion.

The leaders of the Arian faction persuaded the other bishops to return to their homes, and themselves repaired to Constantinople. Dropping the charges on which they had condemned Athanasius in the council, they asserted that he had threatened to stop the sailing of the Egyptian fleet, on which the new capital depended for its supplies of corn. The accusation was well devised with a view to rouse Constantine’s jealousy; for on a similar suspicion he had a few years before put to death a philosopher named Sopater, who had long enjoyed his intimacy; and the artifice of the Arians was successful. Whether from belief of the charge, from a wish to remove so influential a man from a scene where he might be dangerous, or with a view of withdrawing him for a time from exposure to the malice of his enemies, the emperor banished Athanasius to Treves, where the champion of orthodoxy found an honorable reception at the court of the younger Constantine.

AD 335-6. ARIUS AND ALEXANDER.

But the spirit of its bishop continued to animate the Alexandrian church. The attempts of Arius to obtain re-admission were steadily repelled; and at length reports of disturbances occasioned by his proceedings induced the emperor to summon him to Constantinople. A council which was sitting there condemned Marcellus of Ancyra, one of Athanasius’ most conspicuous partisans, on a charge of Sabellianism, to which he had at least given countenance by the use of incautious language; and it is said that the same council ordered the admission of Arius to communion. The heresiarch appeared before the emperor, and without hesitation subscribed a profession of orthodoxy, declaring that he had never held any other doctrine. With this compliance Constantine was satisfied, and sending for the bishop, Alexander, he told him that Arius must be received into communion on the following day, which was Sunday. Alexander, who had occupied the see of Byzantium while it was as yet an undistinguished city, and had now almost completed his hundredth year, had already been threatened by Eusebius of Nicomedia with deposition in case of a refusal, and had been for weeks engaged with his flock in solemn deprecation of the intended evil. On leaving the emperor’s presence, he entered the church of Peace, prostrated himself under the holy table, and prayed that, rather than he should witness such a profanation, either he himself or the heresiarch might be taken from the world. On the evening of the same day, Arius was parading the streets of the city on horseback amidst a large party of his adherents, talking lightly and in a triumphant tone of the ceremonies appointed for the morrow, when the pressure of a natural necessity compelled him to dismount and withdraw. He was soon after found dead, and his end is related with circumstances which are intended by the narrators to recall to mind that of the traitor Judas.

Notwithstanding the part which Constantine had taken in the affairs of the church, he had not yet been received as a member of it by baptism, when, in his sixty-fourth year, he was seized with a dangerous sickness, at a palace near Nicomedia. Feeling the approach of death, he sent for some bishops, to whom he declared that he had deferred his baptism from a wish to receive it in the waters of Jordan, but that, as the opportunity of doing so was denied to him, he begged them to administer the sacrament. After having been admitted by imposition of hands to the highest class of catechumens, he was baptized by the bishop of the neighboring city, Eusebius, and during the remaining days of his life he retained the white robe of baptism, refusing to wear the imperial purple. On Whitsunday at noon, in the year 337, he expired.

 

CHAPTER II.

THE SONS OF CONSTANTINE.

A.D. 337-361.

 

The first Christian emperor was succeeded by his three sons, Constantine, Constantius, and Constans. The eldest, who held the sovereignty of Gaul, Spain, and Britain, was killed in 340, in an invasion of Italy, which was part of the territory of Constans; and Constans took possession of all that belonged to his deceased brother. In 350 Constans himself was put to death by Magnentius; and on the defeat of that usurper, in 353, the whole empire was reunited under Constantius, who had until then been sovereign of the east.

Constantine, it is said, entrusted his testament to the same Arian presbyter who had exerted so important an influence on the religious policy of his last years; and by him it was delivered to Constantius, who happened to be nearer than either of his brothers to the place of their father’s death. By this service Eutocius (if that was his name) obtained free entrance to the palace; and in no long time the Arian doctrine had been embraced by the emperor, the empress, the ladies of her court, and the eunuchs —a class of persons which Constantine had confined to inferior offices, but which in this reign became so important as to justify the sarcasm of a heathen historian, who described the emperor’s relation to them by saying that he had considerable interest with their chief. Constantius is characterized as chaste, temperate, and of strict life, but vain and weak, a slave to restless suspicion, and unrelenting in his enmity to those whom he suspected. His interference in the affairs of the church was alike injudicious and unfortunate. Although, like his father, he remained unbaptized until shortly before his death, he pretended to the character of a theologian : his vanity and his ignorance laid him open to the arts in which the leaders of Arianism were skilled; and throughout his reign the empire was incessantly agitated by religious controversy. The highest questions of Christian doctrine became subjects of common talk, and excited the ignorant zeal of multitudes very imperfectly influenced by Christian principle. The synods were so frequent, that the public posting establishment is said to have been ruined by the continual journeyings of the bishops, to whom the emperor gave the privilege of free conveyance to these assemblies.

Constantine had steadily resisted both the importunity of the Arians, who wished that the see of Alexandria should be filled by one of their own party, and the entreaties of the Alexandrians for the restoration of the rightful bishop, although these were supported by the authority of the famous hermit Antony, whom the emperor admitted to a free correspondence with him. It is said, however, that on his death-bed he gave orders for the recall of Athanasius and other banished bishops. His successors, at a conference in Pannonia, agreed to restore the exiles; and Athanasius, after an absence of about two years and four months, returned to Alexandria, bearing with him a letter, in which the younger Constantine assured the Alexandrian laity that the restoration was agreeable to the late emperor’s intention. The bishop was received with a joyful welcome by his flock; but the Arian (or Eusebian party) soon renewed its attempts against him. One Pistus, who had been associated with Arius, was set up as a rival bishop. It was represented to Constantius that Athanasius had caused disturbances of the peace; that he had sold the allowance of corn which the emperor had bestowed on the Alexandrian church, and had misappropriated the price; and, further, he was charged with irregularity in resuming his see by the warrant of secular authority alone, whereas he had been deposed by a council of bishops. The same charges, and the old report of the inquiry instituted by his enemies in the Mareotis, were carried to Rome by a deputation of Eusebian clergy, but were there met by some emissaries of Athanasius, who were provided with a synodical letter from nearly a hundred Egyptian bishops, attesting his merits and his innocence.

In the end of 340, or in the beginning of the following year, a council met at Antioch for the dedication of a splendid church which had been founded by Constantine. The number of bishops is said to have been ninety-seven, of whom forty were Eusebians. They passed a number of canons, which have been generally received in the church; one of these, in itself unexceptionable, but framed with a special design that it should become a weapon against Athanasius, enacted that, if any bishop, after having been deposed by a council, should appeal to the temporal power, instead of seeking redress from a higher council, he should forfeit all hope of restoration. It would seem that after a time the Eusebians became dominant in the assembly, either through the retirement of the orthodox bishops, or through reliance on the support of Constantius, who was present. They renewed the charges against Athanasius, condemned him under the canon just mentioned, and, after the bishopric of Alexandria had been refused by Eusebius (afterwards bishop of Emesa), consecrated to it a Cappadocian named Gregory, a man of coarse and violent character. Gregory immediately proceeded to take possession of his see, accompanied by a military escort, under the command of Philagrius, prefect of Egypt, who was an apostate from the faith. The heretical bishop entered the city in the beginning of Lent. Churches were attacked by the soldiers, with a mob of Arians, Jews, and heathens; and horrible outrages and profanations were committed, which reached their height on the solemn days of the Passion and the Resurrection. The Catholics were not only ejected from the churches, but were prevented from holding their worship in private houses. Having thus settled matters in the capital, Gregory set forth on a visitation of his province. A party of soldiers attended on him, and by his orders many bishops, monks, and virgins were beaten—among them the aged Potammon, who was treated with such severity that he died in consequence.

ATHANASIUS AT ROME.

On the arrival of Gregory at Alexandria, Athanasius withdrew to a retreat in the neighbourhood, and after having issued an address to all bishops, desiring them to join in condemnation of the intruder, he betook himself to Rome, where a synod of fifty bishops pronounced him innocent, and confirmed to him the communion of the church. Other expelled bishops also appeared before the same council; among them was Marcellus of Ancyra, who had resumed his see on the death of Constantine, and had been again dispossessed of it, but was now able to satisfy Julius of Rome and his brethren that the charges of heresy on which he had been deprived were founded on misapprehension. A correspondence followed between Julius and the eastern bishops, but without any satisfactory result, as the Eusebians, who had before proposed that the case of Athanasius should be referred to a council, evaded the execution of their own proposal when they found that the Alexandrian bishop had himself appeared at Rome.

The council of Antioch produced four creeds. As the death of Arius had released his partisans from the difficulties which arose out of their personal regard for him, they now endeavored to give plausibility to their cause by approaching as nearly as possible to the orthodox statements, in the hope that by new formularies the Nicene creed might gradually be obscured. In their attacks on Athanasius during the reign of Constantine, they had been careful to advance charges which did not relate to doctrines, but to practical matters; and the same policy of avoiding the open statement of differences as to doctrine was now continued. The creeds of Antioch were therefore so composed that in ordinary circumstances they would have been received as satisfactory. The more offensive positions of Arianism were distinctly condemned, and the council repudiated the name of Arians,—“for how”, it was asked, “should we, who are bishops, follow a presbyter?”. The dignity of the Savior was set forth in the highest terms; the studious omission of the word homoiousios (co-essential) was all that could excite suspicion as to the orthodoxy of the framers. Of these formularies, the second (which claimed an older author, the martyr Lucian) was that which afterwards became distinguished as the “Creed of the Dedication”.”

In the meantime Constantinople had been the scene of repeated disturbances. Bishop Alexander, on his death-bed, being consulted by some of his clergy as to a successor, replied that, if they wished for a man “apt to teach”, and of holy life, they ought to choose Paul; if they wanted a man of business and address, with an appearance of piety, they should choose Macedonius, who was a presbyter of long standing. Paul was elected, but was soon deprived by the Arians on various charges of irregularity in his life and in the manner of his appointment. After the death of Constantine he returned to his see, but was compelled to make way for Eusebius, who was translated from Nicomedia; and on his death, in 342, the ejected bishop and Macedonius were set up by the opposite parties. The city was thrown into violent commotion, and Constantius sent a military force to suppress the disorder; whereupon the populace set fire to the lodgings of the commander, Hermogenes, dragged him about the streets, and murdered him. The emperor, in great indignation, hastened to Constantinople, drove out Paul, and deprived the citizens of half their allowance of corn; but, regarding Macedonius as a sharer in the cause of the tumult, and being also displeased with him for having allowed himself to be consecrated without seeking the imperial permission, he did not establish him as bishop. Paul soon after returned, but, having allowed himself to be decoyed into an interview by Philip, the praetorian prefect, he was seized and privately sent away by sea, while the prefect proceeded to install Macedonius. The populace flocked together in excitement, and upwards of three thousand perished, either through the pressure of the crowd, or by the weapons of the soldiery. From 342 to 380, with the exception of two years, the bishopric of the eastern capital was in the hands of the Arians.

COUNCIL OF SARDICA. 

Alarmed by the scenes which had taken place at Constantinople, and by similar tumults in other places, Constantius agreed with Constans, who steadily adhered to the cause of Athanasius, that a general council should be summoned. The place appointed for its meeting was Sardica (now Sophia), in Illyria, a city which stood on the borders of east and west, but within the western division of the empire. Athanasius was desired by Constans to wait on him at Milan, and, through the emperor’s arrangement, proceeded to Sardica in company with Hosius. About the same time a deputation of oriental bishops appeared at Milan —bearing with them a new creed which had lately been drawn up by a council at Antioch. This document, which from its length was styled macrostiche, was in form rather an argument than a definition; and like other late creeds of the same party, it was sound in itself, but provoked suspicion by avoiding the term co-essential. The western bishops were dissatisfied with it, partly because their ignorance of Greek made them distrustful, and partly from a wish to adhere to the Nicene creed as sufficient. At Sardica seventy-six eastern and about a hundred western bishops attended, and Hosius presided over the assembly—not as legate of the Roman see, but in right of his age, character, and influence.

The orientals at the outset protested against the admission of Athanasius, Marcellus, and other deposed bishops as members of the council. It was answered that these bishops were not to be regarded as deposed, since the latest decisions were in their favor; that they were ready to meet all charges; and that the council might reopen the whole question from the beginning. But the orientals adhered to their objection, and, finding that it was firmly resisted, they withdrew across the border of the empires to Philippopolis, in Thrace, where they held a separate synod under the presidency of Stephen, bishop of Antioch. Two eastern bishops remained at Sardica, while Ursacius of Singidunum (Belgrade), Valens of Mursa (Essek), and three other Arians of the west, took part in the council of Philippopolis. The western council declared the Nicene creed to be sufficient, the orientals drew up a fresh creed, more Arian than those of Antioch; and each assembly passed a sentence of deposition against the most conspicuous members of the other, while Julius of Rome was included amongst those with whom the orientals forbade all communion. The western bishops also enacted a number of canons, and again pronounced Athanasius and Marcellus innocent but their judgment was not of itself enough to reinstate Athanasius in his see, and he retired to Naissus, in Dacia.

SECOND RETURN OF ATHANASIUS.

The party which enjoyed the favor of Constantius continued to occupy the sees of the east, and to exercise fresh violences against the orthodox. After a time, however, the emperor changed his policy—partly in consequence of a threat of war from Constans, who required the restoration of Athanasius, partly through disgust at the detection of an infamous plot which had been laid by Stephen, bishop of Antioch, against some envoys of the western church; and he wrote thrice to Athanasius, inviting him to resume his see. Athanasius complied with this invitation, and on his way visited Antioch, where he had an interview with Constantius. The emperor begged him, as a favor, to allow one church at Alexandria to those who were not of his communion, and the bishop expressed his willingness to do so, on condition that the members of his communion should receive a like indulgence at Antioch. But Constantius, on conferring with the Arians who had suggested his proposal, found that they were not disposed to make the exchange, as at Antioch orthodoxy was dangerously strong among the laity, whereas at Alexandria both the temper of the people and the abilities of the bishop forbade them to expect any great success.

Athanasius was admitted to communion by a council at Jerusalem, and was recommended to his flock by an imperial letter, which ordered that the former proceedings against him should be cancelled. The intruder Gregory had died, or had been killed, a short time before; and Athanasius, on his return to Alexandria, was received with universal rejoicing. The thankfulness of his people was shown in bountiful works of charity, and many persons of both sexes embraced a monastic or ascetic life on the occasion.

His enemies felt that their power was at an end. Ursacius and Valens, the most noted supporters of Arianism in the west, went to Rome, and, with a profession of regret for the part which they had been induced to take against the bishop of Alexandria, entreated a council to receive them into communion. But the hopes of the Arians were speedily revived by the murder of Constans, although Constantius wrote to assure Athanasius that he should find from him the same support as from his brother; and they renewed their machinations against the Alexandrian bishop by attacking his adherents in other quarters. This policy was favored by the circumstance that some of their opponents had lately run into serious errors. Marcellus of Ancyra was again deposed— having, it would seem, developed his heterodoxy more distinctly His pupil Photinus, bishop of Sirmium, went so far as to teach palpable Sabellianism : that there was no personal distinction in the Godhead; that the Logos was nothing else than the Divine attribute of wisdom, which at length was manifested in Jesus, whom he regarded as a mere man, although supernaturally born; and that the Holy Ghost was only an influence. For these tenets Photinus was repeatedly condemned, and in 351 he was deposed by a synod held in his own city.0 About the same time many orthodox bishops were also ejected from their sees. Paul of Constantinople, who had recovered his bishopric before or soon after the council of Sardica, was again driven out, and was carried off to Cucusus, a savage place in the lesser Armenia, where, after having been for some time deprived of food, he was strangled. Macedonius was intruded into the see, and behaved with such violence—branding, fining, banishing, and even putting to death, those who were opposed to him, both in Constantinople and in other places to which his power extended,—that the emperor himself found it necessary to remonstrate with him. The Novatianists, who had retained their orthodoxy as to the doctrines impugned by Arius, were exposed to the same persecution with the catholics; and when these were deprived of their own churches, they resorted to the three which the Novatianists possessed within the city. But, although a temporary connection was thus established by the community of suffering, the principles of the sect prevented its permanent reconciliation with the church.

NTRIGUES AGAINST ATHANASIUS.

On the 8th of September 351 a great battle was fought between the troops of Constantius and Magnentius near Mursa (now Essek), the episcopal city of Valens. During the engagement, Constantius was praying in a church, with the bishop at his side; and it is said that Valens, having learnt the defeat of the enemy by means of a chain of scouts, announced it as having been revealed to him by an angel. By this artifice, or by some other means, Valens gained an influence over the emperor’s mind, and he diligently used it for the furtherance of the opinions which he had for a time pretended to disown. Constantius was assailed with a multitude of charges against Athanasius. He was persuaded that the bishop was proceeding tyrannically in Egypt and Libya against all who would not submit to him. Much was made of the fact that on his way to Alexandria, after his late exile, he had conferred ordination in dioceses where the bishops were opposed to his opinions. It was said that he had caused the death of the younger Constantine; that he had exasperated Constans against Constantius; and —a charge which he repelled with especial horror and indignation— that he had corresponded with the murderer of Constans, the usurper Magnentius.

Liberius, who in April 352 succeeded Julius as bishop of Rome, was immediately beset by complaints of the orientals against Athanasius; but a letter from an Egyptian synod determined him to disregard them as unfounded. In the following year, however, the power of the Alexandrian bishop’s enemies was increased by the final defeat of Magnentius, in consequence of which Constantius came into undisputed possession of the west. Their object now was to procure a condemnation of him from the western bishops, who, although sound in faith, were for the most part liable to be imposed on through their ignorance of the Greek theological subtleties, and through fear of their new sovereign, by whom the matter was studiously represented as a personal question between himself and a refractory  bishop. A synod was held at Arles, where Liberius was represented by Vincent, bishop of Capua (perhaps the same who, as a presbyter, had been one of the Roman legates at Nicaea), and by another Campanian bishop.

The emperor insisted on the condemnation of Athanasius, and Vincent, on proposing, by way of compromise, that the opinions of Arius should at the same time be anathematized, was told that these were not then in question. The legate at length yielded and subscribed. Liberius, in deep distress on account of his representative's compliance, requested the emperor to call a free council for the investigation of the case; and the Eusebians, although with very different objects, also pressed for the assembling of a council. The petition thus urged from different quarters was granted, and in 355 about three hundred western bishops, with a few from the east, met at Milan. The sessions of the council were held in the palace, and its deliberations were overawed by Constantius and his soldiers. An edict of Arian purport was read, the substance of which the emperor professed to have received by revelation; and he dwelt on the success of his arms as a proof that the Divine blessing rested on his opinions. The attempts of some orthodox bishops to obtain an inquiry into the question of faith was met by Ursacius and Valens with a peremptory demand that they should join in the condemnation of Athanasius and should communicate with the dominant party; and the sentence was signed by all but three bishops, Eusebius of Vercelli, Lucifer of Cagliari, and Dionysius of Milan. To the objection that the acts required of the orthodox were unwarranted by the rules of the church, the emperor replied, “Whatever I will, let that be esteemed a canon; for the bishops of Syria allow me to speak so”. The three recusants were banished, many other bishops were sent into exile, and their places were filled with intruders, whose heterodoxy was their only qualification for the episcopate. A general persecution was carried on for the purpose of enforcing conformity to the emperor’s will, while the orthodox cried out that the days of Nero and of Decius had returned.

There were still two important persons in the west to be gained by the victorious party—Liberius, conspicuous for his position, and Hosius, the “father of the bishops”, who had been a confessor under Maximin, had sat in the council of Illiberis half a century before, and had been president of the council of Sardica,—perhaps even of the great council of Nicaea. After some fruitless overtures had been made to Liberius, the influential chief of the eunuchs, Eusebius, was sent to Rome, for the purpose of tempting him by offers and by threats; and, as the bishop refused to wait on Constantius, he was forcibly carried off from his city in the middle of the night. On his arrival at Milan, he was admitted to several interviews with the emperor, of whom he demanded that a council unrestrained by the imperial influence should be summoned to investigate the case of Athanasius. Constantius reproached him as being the only bishop who still adhered to the Egyptian primate, whose removal the emperor professed to regard as more important to himself than the victories which he had gained over Magnentius and other pretenders to the throne. Liberius was firm; he refused the offer of three days for consideration; and, on receiving sentence of banishment to Beroea, in Thrace, he indignantly rejected large sums of money which were sent to him by the emperor, the empress, and the chief of the eunuchs, as contributions towards the expenses of his journey. Hosius also withstood all attempts to shake his constancy, and, after having been kept under restraint a year, was banished to Sirmium. In the room of Liberius, the archdeacon Felix (who, however, is said by some authorities to have been orthodox in faith) allowed himself to be consecrated by three foreign bishops, the chief of whom was Acacius of Caesarea, in Palestine.

The Arians now thought themselves strong enough to proceed to the ejection of Athanasius. Several attempts were made to draw him away from his see by the use of the emperor’s name; but he refused to attend to anything short of a warrant as express as that which had authorized his restoration, or as the assurance of protection which Constantius had voluntarily given him after the death of Constans. As the emperor was reluctant to grant such a warrant (apparently out of fear that it might provoke an insurrection of the Alexandrians and a stoppage of the corn supplies on which Constantinople depended), another course of proceeding was adopted. Syrian, general of Egypt, who was charged to effect the removal of the bishop, lulled him and his flock into security by promising to write to the emperor for distinct instructions, and about three weeks later proceeded to execute his purpose. In the night of the 9th of February, 356, as Athanasius with many of the Alexandrians was preparing for a celebration of the Eucharist by keeping vigil in the church of St. Theonas, the general, with 5000 soldiers and a mob of Arians, surrounded the building. The bishop, hearing the noise without, calmly seated himself on his throne, and desired that the 136th Psalm should be sung—the whole congregation joining in the response “For his mercy endureth for ever”. The soldiers forced the doors, and a fearful confusion ensued. Many persons were trodden under foot, crushed to death, or pierced with javelins; the consecrated virgins were stripped and beaten; the soldiers pressed onwards to the choir, and Athanasius was urged to save himself by flight. But he declared that he would not depart until his people were safe, and, rising, desired them to join in prayer, and to withdraw as quickly as possible. The bishop himself was determined to remain to the last; but as the danger became more urgent, the clergy, when the greater part of the congregation had escaped, closed round him, and carried him away, exhausted and in a swoon. The soldiery and the mob continued their outrages, and the ornaments of the church were plundered or defaced. The Catholics of Alexandria addressed the emperor in a protest against the violence which had been committed; but he replied by justifying Syrian, and ordering them to discover and give up Athanasius.

SUBMISSION OF HOSIUS AND LIBERIUS

In the beginning of Lent, a new Arian bishop, named George, a Cappadocian, like his Arian predecessor Gregory, arrived at Alexandria. This intruder, although he was recommended in extravagant terms by imperial letters, is described by the catholic writers as a man who had behaved discreditably in low secular employments; rude, illiterate, and disdaining even to put on an outward show of piety. The reproach of gross ignorance is hardly consistent with the fact of his possessing a library so rich both in Christian and in heathen literature, that after his death it excited the interest of the emperor Julian; but the other charges are confirmed by the testimony of the pagan Ammianus Marcellinus; indeed George, by his exactions, became no less odious to the pagans than he was to the orthodox. Supported by the civil power, he raged against the catholics of every class—bishops, clergy, monks, virgins, and laity—plundering, scourging, mutilating, banishing, and committing to the mines. Some bishops died in consequence of the cruelties which were inflicted on them. One renegade, who joined the usurper’s party, submitted to re-ordination. After a time George was driven out by his people, and took refuge with the emperor; but he returned with ampler powers, and made himself more detested than ever.

The aged Hosius, worn out by exile, imprisonment, privation, and even torture, at length gave way, and in 357 subscribed at Sirmium a heterodox creed, of which it was even pretended that he was the author; but he did not, apparently, sign the condemnation of Athanasius. By this submission he recovered his see; and he died shortly after at the age of a hundred or upwards. Athanasius, who speaks of him with tenderness and pity, states that on his death-bed he protested against the violence to which he had been subjected, and abjured the errors to which he had yielded a forced assent.

The fall of Hosius was speedily followed by that of Liberius. In April 357, Constantius visited Rome, where no emperor had been seen since 326. A number of ladies of rank, after having in vain endeavored to persuade their husbands to undertake the office of intercession, waited on him with a petition for the recall of Liberius. Constantius answered that the bishop might return if he could agree with his brethren of the court party, and proposed that he and Felix should jointly govern the church. This compromise, on being announced in the circus, was received with a derisive cry, that it would suit well with the factions into which the frequenters of that place were divided—that each of the colors might have a bishop for its head; and the whole assembly burst into a shout, “One God, one Christ, one bishop”. But in the following winter Liberius, weary of his Thracian exile, entreated in abject terms that he might be recalled. He professed to concur heartily with Ursacius, Valens, and their oriental partisans; he appeared even greedy of humiliation in disavowing his former opinions; and, after subscribing an Arian or Semiarian creed, he was allowed to return to Rome. Felix was expelled, not without bloodshed between the parties of the rival bishops, according to some accounts; and the remaining eight years of his life were spent in peaceful obscurity.

Arianism appeared to be everywhere triumphant; but in this time of triumph internal differences, which had hitherto been concealed, began to show themselves openly.

SEMI-ARIANISM

It had been the policy of the Arians or Eusebians to veil their heresy by abstaining from any distinct declaration on the most critical points, and putting forth professions which in themselves were sound, although short of the full catholic belief. And now an unexpected result of this system appeared: the formulas which had been intended speciously to cover the heterodoxy of their framers had in the course of years trained up a party which honestly held them, without the errors which the more advanced Arians had been careful to keep in reserve. The Semiarians or homoiousians  (as they are styled) believed that the Son was “like in all things” to the Father; that his essence was like that of the Father —differing from it only in not being identical with it; that he was truly a Son, begotten beyond time and before all worlds. Eusebius of Caesarea was the precursor of Semiarianism; but its appearance as the distinctive doctrine of a party did not take place until long after his death. There was much of personal respectability and of piety among the Semiarians. Athanasius and Hilary speak of them as brethren—being willing to believe that they were not really heterodox, but only scrupled at the use of the word “coessential”, as apparently savouring of Sabellianism, and as having been condemned in Paul of Samosata. To this party—of which Basil of Ancyra and George of Laodicea were the leaders—the majority of the eastern bishops now belonged.

THE ANOMCEANS. 

On the other hand, Arianism for the first time came forth without disguise in the doctrines of Aetius and his pupil Eunomius. The former, a man of very low origin, who in early life had been a goldsmith, was ordained deacon by Leontius of Antioch, and was afterwards deposed by him. Aetius is described as notorious for his disputatious character. His early education had been scanty; but at a later time he acquired from a philosopher of Alexandria a knowledge of geometry and dialectics, and, without having any proper acquaintance with ecclesiastical learning, he insisted on applying the rules of these sciences as the measure of religious truth.

Aetius unflinchingly carried out the principles of Arianism to their conclusions, so as to offend and annoy the more cautious of its professors, who spoke of him as “the godless”. He maintained that the Son, as being a creature, was necessarily unlike the Father, not only in substance but in will; and from this tenet his party got the name of anomoeans. Eunomius, who attained to the bishopric of Cyzicum, went still further in the same direction. Although he professed to refer to Scripture, his system was not founded on it, but was merely a work of reasoning. It was purely intellectual, excluding all reference to the affections. He discarded the idea of mystery in religion; he held that God knows no more of his own nature than man may know of it; that the Son resembles the Father in nothing but his working; that the Holy Spirit was created by the Son. He denied all sacramental influences, and—unlike Arius, who was him­self a man of rigid life—he opposed everything like asceticism.

ACACIANS

Between the Anomoeans and the Semiarians stood the crafty, secular, and unscrupulous party which was now called after Acacius, the successor of Eusebius in the see of Caesarea. Agreeing in principles with the anomoeans, they by turns favored them when it was safe, and disavowed them when it would have been inconvenient to show them countenance; and for a time they endeavored to conceal the difference between themselves and the Semiarians as to the essence of the Son by proscribing the term as unscriptural, and as having been the source of trouble to the church. The emperor’s own opinions were Semiarian; but the policy of Acacius and the personal influence of Valens counter­balanced his doctrinal convictions.

Leontius, who had been appointed bishop of Antioch on the deprivation of Stephen in 349, and had endeavored to preserve peace in his church by an equivocating policy, died in the end of 357. On being informed of his death, Eudoxius, bishop of Germanicia, who was in attendance on the emperor in the west, requested leave to go into Syria under false pretenses, and got possession of the vacant see. The favor which the new bishop openly showed to Aetius provoked the Semiarians to hold a council at Ancyra, where they condemned the anomoean doctrine and the second creed of Sirmium; and their decisions were ratified by the emperor, who, at their desire, resolved to summon a general council for the final settlement of the questions which had so long distracted the church. On this the Acacians took the alarm, and, fearing that both Catholics and Semiarians might unite to condemn them, they fell on the expedient of dividing the council, in the hope that they might be able to manage its separate portions. Their arguments as to the difficulties and the expense of bringing bishops from all parts of his dominions to one place were successful with Constantius. It was resolved that the western branch of the church should be cited to Rimini, and the eastern to Nicaea; and that ten deputies from each division should afterwards meet in the presence of the emperor.

About four hundred and fifty bishops assembled at Rimini in May 359, under the presidency (as is supposed) of Restitutus, bishop of Carthage. A creed, drawn up by some Acacians and Semiarians at a previous meeting, and known as the Third Creed of Sirmium, was offered to the council by Valens and Ursacius. It proscribed the term essence as unscriptural and liable to misapprehension, and declared the Son to be “like the Father in all things, as the Holy Scriptures say and teach”. The Acacians hoped that the Catholics would be drawn to subscribe by taking these words according to their most obvious sense, while for themselves they interpreted them as meaning like in all things to which Scripture extends the likeness; but the bishops, although for the most part unskilled in theological subtleties, were animated by a strong distrust of the party, and declared that the Nicene creed was sufficient. Ursacius, Valens, and four others were excommunicated for refusing to sign it; and deputies of each party were sent off to the emperor, with a request that no innovation on the faith might be attempted, and that the members of the council might be allowed to return to their homes. Constantius, who was on the point of setting out for the seat of the Persian war, deferred seeing the envoys until his return, on the ground that his mind was so occupied by political business as to be unfit for the due consideration of Divine things. During his absence, the representatives of the council, who were detained at Nice in Thrace, were practiced on by his courtiers; and thus after a time they were drawn into signing the same creed which had been offered for acceptance at Rimini, but rendered more objectionable by the omission of the words “in all things”. In the meantime, their brethren who had remained at Rimini were sedulously plied with arguments from the emperor's character and intentions, from the desirableness of peace, the inexpediency of contending about (as was said) a mere question of words, the hopelessness of bringing the orientals to adopt the term co-essential. Valens, by way of dissipating their suspicions, uttered anathemas which seemed to be altogether irreconcilable with Arianism; and at length, pressed by solicitations, desirous to return to their homes before winter, and deluded as to the meaning of their act, they also subscribed the formula which was presented to them. “The whole world”, says St. Jerome, “groaned, and was astonished to find itself Arian”. On returning to their dioceses, the bishops began to understand the import of their submission. Many of them then repudiated the creed which they had signed, and wrote letters of sympathy to Athanasius.

 COUNCIL OF SELEUCIA. 

The place of the eastern council’s meeting had been transferred from Nicaea to Nicomedia; but in consequence of an earthquake, by which that city was reduced to ruins, a further change became necessary, and Seleucia, the capital of Isauria, was eventually fixed on. The whole number of bishops who attended was about a hundred and sixty, of whom a hundred and five were Semiarians, thirty-five Acacians, and the rest orthodox. The last of these parties was composed of Egyptians, together with Hilary, bishop of Poitiers, one of the most powerful champions of the catholic faith, who had been banished into Phrygia in the year 356, and was now summoned to take part in the deliberations of his eastern brethren. The Acacians, finding themselves outnumbered, attempted under various pretenses to break up the assembly; and the dissensions which arose were so violent that the imperial commissary, Leonas, found himself obliged to dissolve it. The majority signed the creed of the dedication the Acacians condemned both homoousion (of the same essence) and homoiousion (of like essence) as inexpedient, and anathematized the term anomoim (unlike). Both Semi-arians and Acacians sent off deputies to the court; and, although Constantius agreed in opinion with the Semi-arians, and the council had been convened for the purpose of establishing their ascendency, the Acacians, by contriving to be the first to reach him, succeeded in winning his ear. A council was held at Constantinople in the emperor’s presence, where each party preferred charges against its opponents. Aetius was deposed from the diaconate, being given up by the Acacians as a scapegoat, while, on the other hand, Basil of Ancyra and other Semi-arians were deposed and banished as insubordinate. It was ordered that the creed of Rimini should be signed everywhere, and all who refused compliance were treated with severity.

359-360. MACEDONIUS DEPRIVED.

Macedonius, bishop of Constantinople, had rendered himself obnoxious to the Acacian party by showing an inclination towards the Semiarians. It was therefore resolved to get rid of him; and in order to his removal, advantage was taken of the emperor’s displeasure, which had been justly excited by the bishop’s violent proceedings, and was now swelled by a fresh offence. As the church in which the body of the great Constantine had been deposited—hastily and unsubstantially erected, like the buildings of the new capital in general—was already likely to fall, Macedonius removed the coffin to another church; and Constantius was irritated, both by his presuming to take such a step without the imperial permission, and because the factions of Constantinople had made the removal the occasion for a serious disturbance. The bishop was therefore deposed on various charges of misconduct for the Acacians, out of fear lest the emperor’s sympathy should be excited, were careful to avoid the question of doctrine in their proceedings against the Semiarians; and Eudoxius of Antioch was appointed his successor, while the bishopric of Antioch was bestowed by a council on Meletius, formerly bishop of Sebaste, a man of high reputation, who had until then been reckoned among the Arian party. Meletius, it is said, on taking possession of his new see, at first confined his preaching to practical subjects; but when he had thus gained some hold on his flock, he began openly to teach the Nicene doctrine. For this the council, which was still sitting, deposed and banished him within thirty days after his installation, and in his room appointed Euzoius, formerly a deacon of Alexandria, who had been the associate of Arius in the early stages of the heresy. Ever since the deprivation of Eustathius, an orthodox party had been kept up within the church of Antioch, notwithstanding the Arianism of the bishops. This party now formed a separate communion, which regarded Meletius as its head; but the old Eustathians, who had throughout stood aloof, refused to communicate with them, on the ground that Meletius had received his appointment from Arians, and that his followers had been baptized into heresy.

The reign of Constantius was now near its end. The Caesar Julian had been proclaimed Augustus by his troops in Gaul, and had advanced far towards the eastern capital. Constantius set out to meet him, but was arrested by illness at Mopsucrenae, in Cilicia, where he died on the 3rd of November 361, at the age of forty-four, and in the twenty-fifth year of his reign. A short time before his death, but whether at Antioch or at Mopsucrenae is uncertain, he was baptized by the Arian bishop of Antioch.

 

CHAPTER III.

JULIAN

AD 361-363.

 

Immediately after the death of the great Constantine, the soldiery at Constantinople committed a massacre among the princes of his house. With the exception of his three sons—of whom two were at a distance, while Constantius was even supposed to have instigated the murderers—the only survivors of the imperial family were two children of the late emperor’s half-brother, Julius Constantius, who himself had been one of the victims. Gallus was spared because his sickly constitution seemed to preclude the apprehension of future danger from him; his half-brother Julian, who was only six years of age, is said to have been saved and concealed in a church by Mark, bishop of Arethusa.

The early education of these brothers was superintended by Eusebius of Nicomedia, who was distantly related to the younger prince’s mother. When Julian had reached the age of fifteen, they were remove to Macellae, near Caesarea, in Cappadocia. They lived in the palace of the old Cappadocian kings, and were treated in a manner suitable to their rank, yet were kept in a seclusion which had the nature of imprisonment. They were trained in a strict routine of religious observances; they were even admitted into the order of readers, and officiated in the service of the church. After five years had been thus spent by the young princes, the attention of Constantius was especially directed to them by the circumstance that the murder of Constans had left them the only male heirs of the imperial family. Gallus was appointed Caesar, was married to a widowed daughter of the great Constantine, and was established at Antioch, while his brother was allowed to study at Constantinople. But as the popularity which Julian gained there excited the emperor’s jealousy, he was soon ordered to Nicomedia, where he endeavored to disarm the suspicions of Constantius by shaving his head and living like a monk. In the end of the year 354, Gallus, who had displayed both violence and incapacity in his new elevation, was removed from his government, and was put to death by order of Constantius. At the same time Julian was summoned from Ionia to the court at Milan, where he was detained in a state of suspense for seven months; but at length, through the influence of the empress Eusebia, who steadily befriended him, he obtained leave to attend the schools of Athens.

The Persians on the east, and the barbarian nations on the north, obliged Constantine to seek for assistance in the government of the empire. Julian was therefore declared Caesar in November 355. He received in marriage the hand of the emperor’s sister Helena, and at the suggestion of Eusebia, who represented him as a harmless, studious youth, who would either bring credit to the emperor by success, or would deliver him from uneasiness by meeting with death, he was sent to undertake the government of Gaul. Although his life had hitherto been that of a student, he soon distinguished himself by his ability both in war and in civil administration. But his relations with Constantius were of no friendly kind : the emperor openly decried and ridiculed him, thwarted and crippled him in his administration, and assumed the credit of his victories. The army murmured because its commander was not furnished with the means of bestowing the usual donatives; and this discontent was at length swollen to a height by an order which Julian received when in winter-quarters at Paris, in April 360. On being informed that their general was required to dispatch the strength of his troops to the Persian frontier, the soldiers rose in mutiny; and, notwithstanding a show of resistance to their wishes, which was perhaps not wholly sincere, the Caesar was hailed as Augustus, was raised aloft on a buckler, and was crowned with a circlet formed of the chain by which the standard-bearers of the legions were distinguished. Eusebia and Helena, whose mediation might have prevented a breach between the imperial kinsmen, were both lately dead. Julian’s proposals for a division of the empire were scornfully rejected; and, after some fruitless negotiation, he resolved to march against Constantius. Carrying out a brilliant conception with an energy which triumphed over all difficulties, he penetrated through the Black Forest to the Danube, embarked his army on the great river, and landed at a point within a few miles of Sirmium. He had already become master of almost all the west, when the death of Constantius saved the empire from the miseries of a civil war.

AD 337-361. PAGANISM UNDER CONSTANTIUS.

The policy of Constantius towards paganism had been, on the whole, a continuation of his father’s. Laws are found which forbid sacrifice and idolatry even on pain of death; and under Julian the pagan orators complained of severities exercised against their religion in the late reign. It is, however, certain that the more rigorous laws, even if they were actually published at the time, were not generally acted on. Paganism was still largely cherished, especially among the aristocracy of the older capital, among the philosophical and literary class, and among the peasantry. Its rites appear to have been freely practiced, even by persons in authority. The first Christian emperor was, like his predecessors, enrolled among the gods. Constantius retained the style of Pontifex Maximus; on his visit to Rome in 357, he showed respect to the old religion, and even made appointments to priestly offices; and although he was unremitting in his hostility to the arts of astrology and divination, it was on account of their dangerous political characters. Some temples were given up for Christian purposes, or were bestowed on favorites of the court; but there were enactments against destroying temples and defacing heathen monuments. The doctrinal controversies of the time diverted the attention of the Christians from paganism, while they also rendered each party unwilling to provoke the multitude which was without the church. It was in vain that some of the more intemperate Christian writers among whom Firmicus Maternus is the most noted, attempted to urge the government to more vigorous measures for the suppression of idolatry.

Before setting out on his expedition, Julian, although he still kept up the outward appearance of Christianity, placed himself under the guardianship of the “Immortal Gods”, and propitiated them with copious sacrifices. Even after having advanced as far as Vienne, he celebrated the festival of the Epiphany; but before reaching Thrace, he threw off all disguise, and openly professed himself a pagan. It is not difficult to understand the motives of this defection, on account of which the epithet apostate has become the usual accompaniment of his name. His Christian training, with its formal and constrained devotion, had been so conducted that it could hardly have failed to alienate a mind like his—quick, curious, restless, and vain. His desire of knowledge had been thwarted in its direction; in his earlier years he had been forbidden to seek instruction from those heathens who were most celebrated as professors of rhetoric and the prohibition had lent a charm to their opinions. Filled with an enthusiastic admiration for the heroes and sages of heathenism, he was unable to understand the dignity of Christian meekness and endurance; and, moreover, he had come to estimate the system in which he had been educated by the imperfections of those around him, while heathenism appeared to him in ideal brightness, as embodied in the lives of its worthies—as connected with literature, philosophy, and art. The eyes of the pagans had early been fixed on him as the hope of their religion. He was courted by philosophers and rhetoricians, and in all his changes of residence he was handed over by one of them to another. These teachers not only entangled his mind in their speculations, but practiced on it by the proscribed arts of theurgy and divination, flattering him with the idea of one day becoming master of the empire. At Ephesus, in his twentieth year, he was formally initiated into paganism by Maximus, a philosopher who had gained a powerful influence over him  and during his stay at Athens he was admitted to the Eleusinian mysteries. But the secret of his apostasy was carefully kept until his assumption of the imperial title rendered a longer hypocrisy needless.

Julian arrived at Constantinople on the 11th of December 361, and left it in the middle of the following May. He reached Antioch in the end of June 362, and remained there until March 5, 363, when he set out on his fatal expedition into Persia. Thus the greater part of his short reign was spent in two cities especially unfavorable to his religion; for Constantinople had never until this time been polluted by public sacrifice, and at Antioch—although the inhabitants were too commonly licentious, luxurious, and passionately fond of frivolous diversions—Christianity was generally professed, so that there were only a few aged people who looked back with regret to the days when paganism had been the national creed. The utter decay of the old religion in the Syrian capital may in some measure be estimated from a story which is told by the emperor himself—that when, after having restored the temple of Daphne, near the city, he repaired to it on the day of a great local festival, he found, instead of the splendid ceremonial and the crowd of worshippers which he had expected, that only a single old priest was in attendance, with no better sacrifice than a goose, which the poor man had been obliged to provide at his own cost.

Julian’s paganism was very unlike the old political religion of Rome; it was eclectic, philosophical, enthusiastic, and more akin to Gnosticism than even to the theology of the ancient Greeks. He believed in one supreme God, whom he identified with the Mithra or sun-god of oriental worship. Under this deity he acknowledged others— the tutelaries of nations, sciences, and the like. He believed the world to be eternal, and from the diversity of national character he argued against the common origin of mankind. The worship of images was defended by him on philosophical grounds, very remote from the popular belief. The convert’s zeal for the old religion far outstripped that of its hereditary professors. A pagan historian of the time describes him as rather superstitious than properly religious; and his heathen subjects in general looked with surprise and disrespect on the profusion of his costly sacrifices, and on the share which he himself took in them—performing even the coarsest and most repulsive functions. In other respects, too, his vanity displayed itself in an ostentatious disregard of the form and dignity which are usually associated with sovereign power. In his appearance and habits he affected a cynical roughness, which drew on him the satire of the wits of Antioch; and he condescended to reply to their jests and ballads by a book in defence of his beard. He reformed the luxury of the court with an unwise and precipitate severity; he disbanded the host of eunuchs and parasites who had been attached to it during the late reign, and replaced them by philosophers and professors of divination, many of whom proved un­able to bear with equanimity the honors and employments which were bestowed on them.

The religious policy of the last two reigns was now reversed. The immunities and endowments which had been bestowed on the clergy were transferred to the heathen priesthood; but whereas Constantine, in restoring church- property to the rightful owners after the persecution, had indemnified the existing holders at the expense of the state,  Julian ordered that Christians who had been concerned in the destruction of temples should rebuild them at their own cost, and that money received from property which had formerly belonged to the pagan religious establishment should be refunded. Even if the means of such restitution had been in their hands, the restora­tion of temples (which would in many cases have involved the demolition of churches erected on their sites) was intolerable to the consciences of the Christians; and in consequence of the edict many of the clergy were subjected to tortures, imprisonment, and death. The case of Mark, bishop of Arethusa, is especially noted. “The magistrates”, says Gibbon, “required the full value of a temple which had been destroyed; but as they were satisfied of his poverty, they desired only to bend his inflexible spirit to the promise of the slightest compensation. They apprehended the aged prelate, they inhumanly scourged him, they tore his beard; and his naked body, anointed with honey, was suspended in a net between heaven and earth, and exposed to the stings of insects and the rays of a Syrian sun. From this lofty station Mark still persisted to glory in his crime, and to insult the impotent rage of his persecutors. He was at length rescued from their hands; Julian spared his life; but if the bishop of Arethusa had saved the infancy of Julian, posterity will condemn the ingratitude, instead of praising the clemency of the emperor”.

Julian knew from the experience of former times that the employment of force against Christianity, far from suppressing it, had tended to its advancement. He was unwilling to excite the zeal of the Christians by the opportunity of martyrdom; he was unwilling to sully his own reputation by harsh measures; he wished to gain credit by a display of toleration which might contrast with the persecutions of Constantius. The stories of martyrdoms which are referred to this reign are probably for the most part fabulous; and although much of oppression and outrage was committed against the Christians, it does not appear that the emperor was directly concerned in such acts. It is, too, very evident that the Christians sometimes provoked the ruling party by needlessly offensive conduct, and that their complaints are not always free from exaggeration. But although Julian declared that argument and persuasion were the only means to be employed for the furtherance of his opinions, he allowed proceedings of a very different kind. He refused justice to the Christians with a shameless partiality, and made the refusal offensive by sarcasm. Thus when the Arian bishop George was murdered by the pagans of Alexandria, he took no further notice of the deed than by very slightly reproving them. In consequence of a disturbance between the orthodox and the Valentinians of Edessa, he seized on the property of the Edessan church, and distributed it among his soldiers—telling the Christians that their wealth would no longer be a hindrance to their attaining the kingdom of heaven. When Christians appealed to him against the illegal violence of governors or of mobs, he reminded them that their religion enjoined on them the duty of patience under wrong. He deprived them of civil and military employments, and excluded them from the courts of law; and he alleged as his reason that the gospel forbids worldly ambition, bloodshed, and litigation. Although he professed to consider the devotion of the heart essential in religion, he used artifices to entrap his Christian subjects into outward, and even unconscious, acts of homage to the gods; thus he surrounded his own picture with heathen figures and emblems, so that the usual obeisance to it should involve an appearance of idolatry. In like manner, on the occasion of a donative, he required his soldiers to cast a few grains of incense into the fire— representing this as merely an ancient custom, without any explanation of the import which he attached to it as an act of worship

By a strange exercise of tyranny, Julian issued an edict that no Galilean—for thus he required by law that the Christians should be styled—should become a teacher of classical literature. By way of giving a reason for this order, he declared that the Greek language belonged to his own party, and denounced the immorality and covetousness of persons who taught a system which they themselves did not believe; but, as it seems incredible that the emperor could have seriously confounded the religion with the literature of Greece, other motives have been conjectured—such as jealousy of the eminence which some Christian rhetoricians had acquired, and a wish to deprive the Christians of the controversial advantages which they might derive from an acquaintance with the absurdities of the pagan mythology. It has been said that he went so far as to prohibit Galileans even to attend the public schools, or to study the classical writers—overlooking the Divine element of the gospel, ascribing its success to human culture, and thinking to defeat it by reducing its professors to the condition of an illiterate sect. This, however, appears to be a mistake, except in so far as the law against teaching must also have operated as a bar to learning; for many of those who in other times would have resorted to pagan masters for instruction in secular studies, must have felt themselves excluded from their schools, now that an attack was made on the Christian teachers, and that classical learning was to be used as a temptation to apostasy. But in order that the benefits of classical study should not be wholly lost to Christian youth, Apollinarius of Laodicea and others are said to have provided an ingenious substitute for the forbidden text­books by clothing the Scripture history in the forms of Greek composition—such as epic poetry, drama, and Platonic dialogue.

While the emperor thus in many ways exerted himself against the gospel, he yet paid it the remarkable tribute of attempting to reform paganism by borrowing from Christian institutions. He pointed to the Christians as distinguished by their obedience to the rules of their religion. He admonished the heathen priests to adopt a stricter life than that which had been usual among their class—charging them to abstain from secular business and amusements; to be charitable to the poor; to take care that their wives and families should not be Christians; to be diligent in study, and to abstain from the perusal of unedifying books. He attempted to imitate the system of episcopal superintendence and that of commendatory letters, the monastic orders, the penitential discipline, the arrangement of churches, the liturgy, the hours of prayer, the expositions of religious doctrine by preaching, the care of the poor and distressed, of the sick and of the dead.

ATTEMPT TO REBUILD THE TEMPLE OF JERUSALEM.

The edict of Hadrian, which forbade the Jews to approach their holy city, was still in force; and the legislation of Constantine and his son had pressed severely upon them. Julian was favorably disposed towards their religion; he respected it as an ancient national faith, although he considered it to be wrong in representing its God as the only deity; and the Mosaic sacrifices accorded with his ideas as to outward worship. It is said that he summoned some of the most eminent Jews into his presence, and asked why they did not offer sacrifices according to their lawgiver’s command. On their answering that it was not lawful to sacrifice except in the temple of Jerusalem, of which they had been long deprived, the emperor gave them leave to rebuild the temple, and appointed one of his own officers to superintend the work. The dispersed Jews assembled from all quarters, in eagerness to forward the undertaking by their labor and their hoarded wealth. Women gave their ornaments towards the cost, and themselves carried burdens of earth in their silken dresses; even tools of silver are said to have been used in the work. The long-depressed people were loud in proclaiming their expectations of a triumphant restoration, when the attempt was terribly defeated. The newly-laid foundations were overthrown by an earthquake; balls of fire burst forth from the ground, scorching and killing many of the workmen; their tools were melted by lightning; and it is added by some writers that the figure of a cross surrounded by a circle appeared in the sky, and that garments and bodies were marked with crosses, which it was impossible to efface. The truth of some of these phenomena is attested by the heathen Ammianus Marcellinus, as well as by Christian writers, and the story, in its essential parts, is broadly distinguishable in character from the tales of contemporary miracles in general. As the rebuilding was avowedly undertaken in defiance of the Christian religion—as its success would have falsified the evidence borne to the gospel by those words of Scripture which had declared that Judaism was passed away, and that the temple should be desolate—we may reverently believe that the occasion was one on which some special exertion of the Divine power might probably be put forth. It will, however, remain a question how much of the story ought to be regarded as fabulous embellishment; how far the occurrences which produced the impression of miracle may have been the result of ordinary physical causes, and how far there was a mixture of that which is more properly to be styled miraculous.

Julian spent the long winter evenings of 362-3 in composing an elaborate attack on Christianity, which he continued and finished after setting out on his expedition into Persia. He had intended, on his return, to resume the building of the Jewish temple. What his policy might have been in other respects, if his life had been prolonged, can only be conjectured; but, as his enmity against the Christians had evidently increased, it is probable that the course which he had hitherto pursued with so little success would have been exchanged for a system of undisguised persecution. His death, in consequence of a wound received in a nocturnal skirmish, was hailed by the Christians with joy. Prophecies and visions of his end had before been current among them. By some it was supposed that he had received his death-wound from an angel. Sozomen, in reporting the groundless insinuation of Libanius, that it was inflicted not by a Persian but by a Christian, so far forgets his own Christianity as to argue that such an act may be laudably done for the cause of God and religion.

ATHANASIUS REINNSTATED

We now turn to the internal history of the church. Julian on his accession recalled all who had been banished on account of religion. In this measure his object was twofold—to gain the praise of liberality, and at the same time to damage the Christian cause by giving free scope to the dissensions of the various parties. But in the latter hope he was disappointed. The Arians, when deprived of the imperial support, lost all spirit and vigor; and the common danger from the ascendency of paganism moderated the controversies which had raged so long and so fiercely.

Athanasius, when expelled from Alexandria in 356, had withdrawn into the deserts of Egypt. Among his faithful partisans, the monks, he found a refuge which enabled him to defy the enmity of Constantius, who attempted to arrest him, and exerted himself to prevent his reception in Ethiopia if he should flee into that newly-converted country. During an exile of six years, the bishop kept a watchful eye on all the fortunes of the church, and by seasonable writings combated the heresy which had driven him from his see. On receiving the tidings that Constantius was dead, the heathen populace of Alexandria murdered the intrusive bishop, George, who had made himself even more hateful to them than to the Catholics. Athanasius, on returning to resume his see, was received with triumphal pomp and festivity. The churches were at once surrendered to him, so that the Arians, who had set up one Lucius as their bishop, could only meet in private houses. Athanasius proceeded to assemble a council, which Lucifer of Cagliari and Eusebius of Vercelli, who had been released from banishment in the Thebaid, were invited to attend. Eusebius appeared, and the Sardinian bishop was represented by two of his deacons, while he himself repaired to Antioch, with a view of attempting to suppress the schism by which the church of that city had long been distracted.

The case of the clergy who had conformed to Arianism in the late reign was decided with that wise consideration for persons which in Athanasius always accompanied his zeal for the truth. It was enacted that those who had erred through simplicity or ignorance should be allowed to retain their positions on subscribing the Nicene creed; and that such, as had taken a more active part on the Arian side should, on repentance, be admitted to communion, but should be deprived of ecclesiastical office.

Another question which engaged the attention of the council, related to the use of certain theological terms. The words ousia and hypostasis had in the beginning of the controversy been used by the orientals as equivalent; both had been translated in Latin by substantia, and had been understood by the Latins as signifying the nature of God. But in course of time a distinction had been introduced in the east, so that, while ousia continued to denote nature, hypostasis was used in the sense which we are accustomed to express by the term person; and this distinction was especially characteristic of such theologians as had come out of the Arian connection to embrace the Nicene faith. The Latins, then, hearing that three hypostases were maintained by some of the orientals, took alarm, as if the words signified three different grades of nature; while the other party insisted on the necessity of using the term hypostasis in the new sense—considering that the use of the Greek prosopon, which answered to the Latin persona, savoured of Sabellianism, as expressing rather three manifestations of the one Godhead than that distinction which is asserted in the catholic doctrine. The council, under the guidance of Athanasius, who during his residence in the west had become acquainted with the meaning of Latin theological language, endeavored to settle this dispute by ascertaining and explaining that the difference as to one or three hypostases was merely verbal; and by recommending that the Nicene creed should be adhered to, and that the terms in question should be avoided, except when opposition to particular heresies might render it necessary to use them.

Eusebius and others proceeded from Alexandria to Antioch with a commission to mediate in the healing of the schism. But in the meantime Lucifer had rashly taken a step which tended to exasperate and prolong it, by consecrating Paulinus, a presbyter of the Eustathian party, in opposition to Meletius, who had just returned from exile. Thus Antioch had three rival bishops—the Arian Euzoius, with the orthodox Meletius and Paulinus; and to these a fourth, of the Apollinarian sect, was soon after added. In such circumstances it was impossible to enforce any ecclesiastical discipline, since offenders, if threatened with censure in one communion, found the others ready to welcome them as proselytes; and in the meanwhile the wide patriarchal jurisdiction of Antioch, with the authority which belonged to the third of Christian sees in the general affairs of the church, was in abeyance.

Eusebius mildly expressed his regret at the ordination of Paulinus, and forthwith quitted Antioch. But the vehement Lucifer disavowed the act of his representatives who had signed the Alexandrian decrees; he broke off communion with all bishops who should accept those decrees, and, after returning to his own diocese in Sardinia, he founded a schism, on the principle that no one who had subscribed the creed of Rimini should be admitted to reconciliation. This sect, which is not charged with any heretical doctrines, found a considerable number of adherents in Italy and Spain. It even set up a bishop at Rome; but Luciferianism became extinct in the beginning of the following century, if not earlier.

The schism of Antioch continued. Meletius was supported by the eastern orthodox; Paulinus by Egypt and the west; and, notwithstanding the exertions of the Alexandrian council, the difference of usage as to the term hypostasis continued to be a badge of the parties respectively.

Peace was established in the western church chiefly through the labors of Eusebius and of Hilary of Poitiers, who had been allowed to resume his bishopric soon after the councils of Rimini and Seleucia, as the court partly thought it desirable even on such terms to remove so formidable an opponent to a distance from the principal scene of action. The two bishops indefatigably exerted themselves for the re-establishment of orthodoxy on the terms of the Alexandrian synod, in which they obtained the concurrence of councils at Rome and elsewhere.

FOURTH EXILE OF ATHANASIUS.

The effects of Athanasius’ labours after his return to Alexandria soon drew on him the notice of Julian, who knew and dreaded his energetic character; while the representations of “magi, philosophers, aruspices, and augurs”, were not wanting to excite the emperor against him as the most dangerous enemy of paganism. In the end of 362, Julian directed against him a special mandate, stating that Athanasius had lately presumed to baptize some Greek (i.e. heathen) ladies of high rank; and declaring that the edict by which exiles were allowed to return to their country had not been intended to restore them to their ecclesiastical offices—a distinction which appears to have been invented for the occasion, as it was not enforced in any other case. The Christians of Alexandria petitioned in favor of their bishop; but Julian was only the more exasperated. He styled Athanasius an “insignificant manikin”; he told them that they were at liberty to make another bishop, but that so mischievous a person must not remain among them; and, whereas the former sentence had been limited to banishment from the city, it was now extended to all Egypt with an order that it should be immediately executed. On hearing of the rescript, Athanasius said to his friends, “Let us withdraw; this is a little cloud which will soon pass over”. He embarked on the Nile, and sailed up the stream, until, on being told that a vessel was in pursuit, he ordered the steersman of his boat to turn round, met the pursuers, who had not observed his movements, ingeniously baffled their inquiries, and returned in safety to Alexandria. A renewal of the search, however, soon after compelled him to leave his place of concealment there, and he again found an asylum among the monks until he received the tidings of Julian’s death.

 

CHAPTER IV.

FROM THE DEATH OF JULIAN TO THE SECOND GENERAL COUNCIL

A.D. 363-381.

 

The forced ascendency of paganism ended with the life of its patron. On the following day a Christian, was chosen emperor. The army declared itself Christian; the labarum, which had been disused during the reign of Julian, was again displayed at its head; the philosophers and soothsayers, who had basked in the favor of the late emperor, retired into obscurity. Jovian, however, allowed full toleration to his pagan subjects; and with respect to the divisions among Christians, he declared that he would molest no one on account of religion, but would love all who should study the church’s peace.

On his arrival at Antioch, after an ignominious, though necessary, accommodation with the Persians, and a disastrous retreat, the new emperor was beset by representatives of the various Christian parties, each hoping to gain him to its side. His mind was, however, already decided in favor of the Nicene faith; he wrote to Athanasius, requesting instruction and advice, and inviting him to visit the court. The bishop complied, and by personal intercourse he gained an influence over Jovian which his enemies in vain attempted to disturb. The Acacians, with their usual suppleness, resolved to conform to the spirit of the time. They attended a synod held by Meletius at Antioch, and signed the Nicene creed, evasively explaining co-essential as meaning “begotten of the Father’s essence, and like the Father in essence”.

The reign of Jovian lasted somewhat less than eight months; he was found dead in his bed at Dadastana, in Bithynia, on February 17, 364. On February 26 Valentinian was elected by the army as his successor, and a month later the new emperor associated with him his brother Valens, to whom he assigned the eastern division of the empire. Valentinian was possessed of many great qualities. He vigorously and successfully defended the northern frontiers against the barbarians who were pressing on the empire; he was the author of wise and important regulations for its internal government. But the justice on which he prided himself was relentlessly severe; the manner of its execution was often inhuman, and he was subject to violent fits of passion, by one of which his death was occasioned.

Valens, until elevated by his brother’s favor, had been a person of little note. His capacity was inferior to that of Valentinian; he is described by Gibbon as “rude without vigor, and feeble without mildness”.

It is said that both the brothers had exposed themselves to danger by the profession of Christianity in the reign of Julian. Valentinian, when raised to the throne, adhered to the Nicene faith; but, warned by the ill-success of Constantius in enforcing conformity, he adopted a policy of general toleration, to which a severe law against the Manichaeans is not to be regarded as an exception, since it was rather directed against the magical practices of which they were suspected, than against their erroneous opinions. He invariably declined all interference in questions of doctrine, which he professed to leave to those who had been trained for the consideration of them. He allowed Auxentius, an Arian, to retain the important see of Milan—whether deceived by the bishop’s specious professions, which might have been enough to satisfy an uncritical and somewhat indifferent soldier, or swayed by the influence of the empress Justina, who was a zealous Arian. But with this exception the western sees were, during Valentinian’s reign, in the possession of orthodox bishops.

In the east it was otherwise. Valens is said to have been originally a catholic, and appears to have been alike ignorant and careless of religion; but he was won over to Arianism by his wife, who in 367, as he was about to set out for the Gothic war, persuaded him to receive baptism from Eudoxius of Constantinople. It is said that the bishop exacted of him an oath to persecute the Catholics, and it is certain that the hostility which he had always shown towards them became from that time more bitter and more active.

COUNCIL OF LAMPSACUS.

Macedonius, on his ejection from the see of Constantinople by the Acacians, had connected himself with the Semiarians, and, although he himself died soon after, the party thenceforth took its name from him. The Macedonians had requested Jovian either to establish the “creed of the dedication”, agreeably to the original and unbiassed decision of the council of Seleucia; or, reverting to the condition in which things had stood before the meetings at Seleucia and Rimini, to summon a general synod, which should be free from all secular control. They now obtained leave from Valens to hold a council at Lampsacus—the emperor supposing that they would agree with Eudoxius and the Acacians, who had by this time retracted their subscriptions to the Nicene creed. The bishops who met at Lampsacus, however, took up the same position with the majority of the council of Seleucia. They signed the creed of the dedication, with the word homoiousios, which they declared to be necessary for preserving the personal distinction of the Godhead; they cited Eudoxius and his party before them, and on their non-appearance sentenced them to deposition. But on applying to Valens for a confirmation of their proceedings, they found that the Acacians had preoccupied his mind, and that they were themselves condemned to deprivation and banishment unless they would subscribe an Arian creed.

The zeal which Valens soon after manifested in favor of Arianism induced the Macedonians to look towards the west for sympathy and support, and deputies were sent into Italy with letters for Valentinian and Liberius. The letters addressed to the emperor were not delivered; for the bearers, finding that he was in Gaul, follow him into that country. Liberius was at first distrustful of them; but on their anathematizing all heresies, and signing the homoousion (which they interpreted as equivalent to homoiousion, he acknow­ledged them as being in communion with him, and wrote to the bishops by whom they had been commissioned. A like recognition was obtained from other western bishops; and thus the Semiarians, with the exception of a few who disavowed the late proceedings, were reunited with the orthodox.

In 367 Valens issued an order that such bishops as had been banished by Constantius, and had returned to their sees under Julian, should again be ejected. At Antioch, where he established his residence, he drove out Meletius, although he allowed Paulinus to remain. It was attempted under the same law to expel Athanasius, and he is said to have been driven to take refuge for a time in his father’s tomb : but his people represented to the emperor that his case did not fall under the letter of the edict, and made such demonstrations of their attachment to the bishop in other ways, that Valens thought it well to permit his return. And thus, while the cause to which his life had been devoted was oppressed in all other parts of the eastern empire, the great champion of orthodoxy was allowed to spend his last years in undisturbed possession of his see.

DAMASUS AND URSINUS.

The elder actors in the Arian controversy were now passing away. Liberius died in 366, and the succession to the see of Rome was disputed between Damasus and Ursinus, or Ursicinus. This contest, which arose out of the old rivalry between Liberius and Felix, and did not involve any question of doctrine, occasioned violent tumults, and even great slaughter. On one occasion a hundred and sixty partisans of Ursinus, men and women, were killed in the church which bore the name of Liberius (now St. Mary Major). At the end of three years Ursinus was banished to Gaul; but he repeatedly revived his claim to the bishopric of Rome, both during the lifetime of Damasus and at his death. Acacius died in 366; Hilary, in 367 or 368. The last mention of Ursacius and Valens as living is in the condemnation pronounced on them by synods at Rome and elsewhere about 369. Eudoxius of Constantinople died in 370; Lucifer of Cagliari, in 371; Euzoius of Antioch, in 376.

On the death of Eudoxius, Evagrius was set up as his successor by the Catholics of Constantinople, and Demophilus by the Arians; but Evagrius was soon driven out, and his adherents were subjected to a variety of outrages. A complaint of this usage was presented to Valens at Nicomedia by eighty presbyters of the orthodox party; but, instead of obtaining redress, they were compelled to embark on board a ship, which the crew (it is said, by command of one of the emperor’s officers) set on fire and deserted; and the whole company of ecclesiastics perished. Other barbarities are related of Valens—as that at Antioch he ordered many of the orthodox to be drowned in the Orontes. The monks of Egypt and Pontus were especially obnoxious to him—partly because the monastic profession afforded to many an excuse for indolence, and withdrew them from their duties to the state, and partly on account of their steady adherence to the Nicene faith and the exertion of their powerful influence in its behalf. The emperor in 373 ordered that monks should be dragged from their retreats, and should be compelled to perform their service as citizens, under the penalty of being beaten to death. The Egyptian deserts were invaded by soldiers commissioned to enforce the edict, and many of the monks suffered death in consequence.

Athanasius is supposed by the best authorities to have died in May, 373. He had designated as his successor one of his presbyters named Peter. The Arian Lucius, who had been set up as bishop after the murder of George, and had held possession of the see during the exile of Athanasius under Julian, was now brought back by his party, and Peter was driven out with circumstances of outrage and profanation similar to those which accompanied the expulsion of his great predecessor by Gregory and George. Peter took refuge at Rome, and after a time returned with letters of recommendation from the bishop, Damasus; whereupon, as Valens was then at a distance—having been diverted from theological controversies by the Gothic war—the people rose against Lucius and reinstated the orthodox bishop.

Valentinian was succeeded in 375 by his son Gratian, who had already for eight years held the dignity of Augustus. The new emperor, whose own age was only sixteen, admitted as a nominal colleague his half-brother, the younger Valentinian, a child four years old. By the death of Valens, at the disastrous battle of Adrianople, Gratian became in 378 master of the whole empire; but he hastened to relieve himself of a part of his cares by bestowing the sovereignty of the east on Theodosius, son of a general of the same name whose distinguished services in Britain and in Africa had been requited by his execution at Carthage three years before. The younger Theodosius had since lived in retirement on his estates in Spain, until he was summoned to share the empire, in the hope that his abilities might avert the dangers with which it was threatened by the Gothic invaders.

Gratian, on succeeding to the dominions of Valens, proclaimed liberty of religion to all except Manichaeans, Eunomians, and Photinians, and recalled the vanished bishops of the east. The Semi­arians, on being thus freed from the oppression of Valens, broke off the connection which they had so eagerly formed with the orthodox; but many refused to join in this movement, and remained united to the catholic body.

MACEDONIANISM.

It would seem to have been about this time that a denial of the Divinity of the Holy Ghost became the chief characteristic of the party. Heterodox opinions on that subject had been implied in all the varieties of Arianism; but as the nature of the Third Person in the Trinity had not been brought into discussion while the Godhead of the Son was in question, nothing had been defined respecting it in the Nicene creed. Athanasius, however, with his characteristic perception of consequences, had always strenuously asserted the equal and co-essential Godhead of the Spirit, as well as that of the Son, and, in a treatise written from the desert during his exile under Constantius, had confuted the error of the Pneumatomachi (or adversaries of the Spirit), which was then acquiring distinctness. Although the name of Macedonianism, which was afterwards attached to this heresy, would naturally convey the idea that it was invented by Macedonius, it was really nothing more than a remnant of Arianism retained by a party which had shaken off the other errors of that system; for the Semi-arians now acknowledged the Godhead of the Son, while they maintained that the Spirit was as a servant—as one of the angels. Nor do we even know what opinion Macedonius himself held on the question; for it was not until some years after his death that his name was connected with the heretical tenet, through the circumstance that the Semi-arians happened to be called after him at the time when this tenet became the prominent mark of their party.

In the meanwhile the Nicene faith had made progress. The consistency of its supporters stood in advantageous contrast with the continual variations of their opponents. The monks lent to it the great and growing authority of their reputation for sanctity; and, as has been mentioned, a large portion of the Semiarians adhered to the orthodox connection into which they had been driven by the tyranny of Valens. Throughout all the long controversy the belief of the great mass of Christians had been very little affected. In their pastoral teaching, as in their creeds, the Arian bishops and clergy had usually studied to observe orthodoxy of statement and language, so that their doctrine, although incomplete, was not untrue. Thus their flocks received the words in the sound meaning which was apparent on the surface, so that, according to a celebrated expression of St. Hilary, “The ears of the people were holier than the hearts of the priests”.' And now, although Athanasius was gone, the great weight of ability and learning among the Christians was on the side of orthodoxy, which had lately gained a very important accession in the east. A class of theologians had arisen, who, born and educated in countries where Semiarianism prevailed, had in their earlier years been connected with that system—trained up according to its sound though imperfect creeds, in such a manner that one of them, when he had become an eminent champion of the Nicene doctrine, could yet speak of his opinions as having undergone no other change than a development like that of the plant from the seed. The members of this school maintained the identity of homoousion with homoiousion;  they brought with them into the orthodox communion many of their old associations; and through their influence it was that several Semiarians came to be acknowledged by the church as saints, and that the canons of the Semiarian councils of Antioch (AD 341) and Laodicea (AD 372?) gained a reception in the east, which was eventually extended to the west. The most distinguished of the “later Nicene” teachers were three Cappadocians—Basil, his brother Gregory of Nyssa, and his friend Gregory of Nazianzus or Nazianzum. Of these eminent men the first and the last must be here more particularly noticed.

BASIL.—GREGORY OF NAZIANZUM. 

Basil and the Nazianzen Gregory were born about the same time—probably in the year 329. Basil was of a noble Christian family. The father of Gregory had belonged to a sect known by the name of hypsistarians, whose creed was a strange medley of Jewish and Persian notions he had been converted by his wife Nonna, a woman of remarkable piety, and had been appointed to the bishopric of Nazianzum, a poor diocese, which had fallen into great disorder in consequence of long vacancy and neglect. An acquaintance formed between the youths at the schools of Caesarea, in their native province, ripened into the closest intimacy at Athens, where they spent several years. They were distinguished in all the studies of that city, and withstood the influences by which many who, like themselves had been trained in the Christian faith, were there drawn away to heathenism. During a part of the time Julian was their fellow-student; and Gregory professes to have already observed in the future emperor indications of the evil which was manifested in his later career. Both Basil and Gregory resolved to renounce the hopes of secular eminence, and to embrace a religious life. Each was baptized after leaving Athens, and Gregory promised at the font to devote all his gifts and powers to the service of God. Basil, after having travelled in Egypt and elsewhere, returned to his native country, and became one of the clergy of Caesarea. He withdrew for five years into the desert of Pontus, where he founded a monastic establishments, monachism having been lately introduced into that country by Eustathius, bishop of Sebaste. The system which Basil adopted was the coenobitic (or that of living in communities) as being in his judgment more conducive to the exercise of graces than the solitary life, which in Egypt had been regarded as the higher of the two. “God”, he said, “has made us—even like the bodily members—to need one another’s help. For what discipline of humility, of pity, or of patience can there be, if there be no one towards whom these virtues can be practiced? Whose feet wilt thou wash, whom wilt thou serve, how canst thou be the last of all—if thou art alone?” In his rule practical industry was combined with religious exercises, and by the labors of his monks a barren tract was brought into cultivation and fertility. Basil returned to Caesarea in 362, and was ordained presbyter; but after a short time he again retired into the desert for three years, in consequence of some unexplained jealousy on the part of his bishop, Eusebius. In each of his retreats he was accompanied for a time by Gregory, who, however, was on both occasions called away by disagreements between his father and the monks of Nazianzum, originating in the circumstance that the aged bishop had been induced to sign the creed of Rimini. Gregory by his ascetic life had gained a powerful influence over the monks; he convinced them that his father had been deceived through ignorance of controversial subtleties, and had acted without any heretical intention; and he twice succeeded in establishing peace. He also reconciled Basil with Eusebius; and on that bishop’s death he effected the promotion of his friend to the see of Caesarea, to which was attached the primacy of the greater part of Asia Minor.

The indefatigable labors of Basil, his controversies, his endeavors to unite the orthodox among themselves, to gain over sectaries to the church, and to establish peace between the east and the west, must be passed over with a mere allusion. During the short time between his elevation and the death of Athanasius he enjoyed the confidence of that great prelate; and he succeeded the Alexandrian bishop as leader of the eastern orthodox. Like Athanasius, he was able to preserve his church from the Arianism which was triumphant throughout the east during the reign of Valens. While a presbyter under Eusebius, he had baffled the theologians of the emperor’s train in disputation; but soon after his advancement to the episcopate a fresh attempt was made on him. Valens, determined that Caesarea alone should not continue to resist him, sent Modestus, prefect of Cappadocia, with a commission to expel Basil if he should refuse to conform to the dominant religion, and Modestus summoned the archbishop to appear before him. To his threats Basil replied that he did not fear them; confiscation, he said, could not touch a man who had no property except a single suit of ragged clothes and a few books; as for banishment, he denied that such a thing was possible— go where he might, he could find a home, or rather he regarded the whole earth as God’s, and himself as a stranger everywhere; his feeble body could bear no tortures beyond the first stroke; and death would be a favor, since it would conduct him to God. The prefect, who had opened the conference in a very peremptory tone, was subdued by the archbishop’s firmness, and reported the result to his master, who soon after arrived at Caesarea. Valens himself was awed by the presence of Basil and the solemnity of the catholic worship, which he witnessed on the feast of the Epiphany, but without being admitted to communicate. The impression thus made is said to have been heightened by miracles; and not only was Basil left unmolested in his see, but the emperor bestowed a valuable estate on a large hospital which the archbishop’s charity had founded.

CONSECRATION OF GREGORY.

Soon after this Valens divided Cappadocia into two provinces; whereupon Anthimus, bishop of Tyana, which became the capital of the second division, asserted that the ecclesiastical government ought to follow the arrangements of the civil, and claimed for himself the rights of a metropolitan. Finding that the claim revived some jealousies which had been felt at his election to Caesarea, Basil resolved to strengthen himself by erecting new bishoprics; and one of the places chosen for this purpose was Sasima, an outpost on the border of his opponent’s province—the meeting-place of three great roads, a posting station and the seat of a frontier custom-house; a wretched little town, dry, dusty, and continually disquieted by the brawls of wagoners, travellers, and revenue officers. Here Basil, with that disregard for the character and feelings of others which is not uncommon in persons of a strongly practical nature, determined to place Gregory, who had some years before been forcibly ordained a presbyter by his own father. Gregory made no secret of his repugnance to the execution of this scheme; he said that the archbishop’s elevation had caused him to forget what was due to their ancient and equal friendship; he resisted until he was overpowered by the united urgency of his father and Basil; and he afterwards traced all the troubles of his later life to the consent which was at length extorted from him. After his consecration he felt himself oppressed by his high views of the episcopal responsibility, by his love for a life of contemplation, and by the sense of his unfitness to dispute his position with Anthimus. He refused to proceed to Sasima, and was then persuaded by his father to assist him in the care of Nazianzum. After the old man’s death, which took place in 374, Gregory continued for some time to administer the diocese, while he endeavored to obtain the appointment of a regular bishop; but, finding his exertions for this purpose vain, he withdrew to Seleucia, where he spent three or four years in retirement.

THEODOSIUS

Theodosius, as a Spaniard, belonged to the Nicene party, but at the time of his elevation to the empire was only a catechumen. In the beginning of 380 he fell dangerously sick at Thessalonica; when he sent for the bishop of the place, and, after having ascertained his orthodoxy, received baptism at his hands. His admission to the church was followed by an edict, which was at first limited to Constantinople, but in the following year was extended to all his dominions — that those only should be acknowledged as catholic Christians who adhered to the faith of the co-essential Trinity, as it had been taught by St. Peter to the Romans, and was then held by Damasus of Rome and Peter of Alexandria; that all who denied this doctrine should be reputed as heretics and discouraged. Gratian also—at the instigation (it is supposed) of Ambrose, bishop of Milan— limited by later edicts the toleration which he had announced in 378.

In November 380, Theodosius arrived at Constantinople. About two years before, when the death of Valens appeared to open a new prospect to the orthodox, Gregory of Nazianzum had been induced by Basil and other leaders of the party to undertake a mission to that capital. He entered on the enterprise with much distrust of his qualifications. Arianism was in great strength at Constantinople, where the see had for nearly forty years been filled by its partisans. The Novatianists had some churches; the Apollinarians were gaining a footing in the city; but the orthodox were very few, and even these were divided among themselves by sympathy with the opposite parties in the schism of Antioch. Gregory was obliged at first to officiate in the house of a relation—which, from the resurrection (anastasis) of the true faith, acquired the name of Anastasia, and was afterwards enlarged into a splendid church. At the outset he had to encounter much prejudice. His austere, simple, and recluse life appeared in unpopular contrast with the free and secular habits of the Arian clergy. His doctrine was regarded as polytheistic. He was repeatedly assaulted by the populace, and by the staff of the Arian establishment—monks, virgins, and beggars; he was stoned, he was carried before magistrates as a disturber of the peace, his church was invaded by night and profaned. But he persevered in his mission, and, although the object of it was controversial, he earnestly endeavored to counteract in his hearers the prevailing habit of familiarly discussing the highest mysteries of religion—exhorting them not to make a sport of the things of God, as if they were matters of the theatre or the race-course. b By degrees, his eloquence, the practical and religious tone of his doctrinal teaching, and the influence of his mild and serious character, began to tell, so that the little Anastasia became unable to contain the crowds which resorted to it. The progress of this success had, indeed, been slightly interrupted by one Maximus, an Egyptian, who had formerly been a cynic philosopher. This man, after having insinuated himself into Gregory’s confidence, was ordained bishop in a disorderly manner by some emissaries of Peter of Alexandria, although Peter had before approved of Gregory’s mission. But the pretender was rejected by the people, and in vain endeavored to find support from the emperor and from the bishop of Rome.

On his arrival at Constantinople, Theodosius summoned before him the Arian bishop, Demophilus, and required him to subscribe the Nicene creed, on pain of deprivation. Demophilus assembled his flock, and reminded them of the Saviour’s charge “when persecuted in one city to flee to another”. The Arians were forthwith turned out of all the churches, and began to hold their meetings without the walls of the capital. A few days after this, Theodosius formally put Gregory into possession of the principal church of Constantinople. The morning was gloomy, Gregory was suffering from illness, and, as the procession passed through streets lined with troops, he was dismayed by the thought that a bishop should need such a protection against his own flock. But at the moment of his entrance into the choir, a sudden burst of sunshine lighted up the building, and the people, catching enthusiasm from the change, cried out that the emperor should place him on the episcopal throne. Gregory, however, declined to take his seat, and feeling himself, from agitation and bodily weakness, unable to address the congregation, he employed the voice of another to speak for him—“Now it is time to acknowledge the benefits which the blessed Trinity has bestowed on us; but of the throne we will consider here­after”.  Such was the exasperation of the Arians that attempts were made to assassinate him.

AD 380-1. SECOND GENERAL COUNCIL. 

Theodosius proceeded to assemble a council, which met at Constantinople on May 2, 381. It was composed of oriental bishops only; but its decrees were afterwards gradually received throughout the west, and it is consequently acknowledged as the second general council. A hundred and fifty orthodox prelates attended. Among them were Meletius, Gregory of Nyssa (whose brother Basil had died in the preceding year), and Cyril of Jerusalem, who had formerly been connected with the Semi-arian party. The Macedonians had been invited, in the hope that they might renew the union which they had formed with the Catholics in the reign of Valens; but, although thirty-six of them appeared in answer to the summons, it was found that they would not submit to a reconciliation.

The earlier sessions were held under the presidency of Meletius, to whom the see of Antioch had lately been adjudged by an imperial commissary; and by him, after an examination of the pretensions of Maximus, Gregory was solemnly enthroned as bishop of Constantinople. But Meletius died while the council was sitting, and deplorable dissensions followed. With a view to healing the schisms which had so long afflicted the church of Antioch, six of its clergy, who were regarded as the most likely to be raised to the episcopate, had lately entered into an engagement, which is said to have been even ratified by an oath, that on the death of either Paulinus or Meletius, they would acknowledge the survivor as rightful bishop; but a jealousy which had arisen between the Asiatic bishops and those of Egypt and the west now interfered with the execution of this arrangement. The Asiatics objected to Paulinus as having been ordained by a Latin, Lucifer, and as being connected with the Latin party; and, notwithstanding the earnest remonstrances of Gregory, now president of the council, whose natural inclination towards the Meletian party was overpowered by his desire of peace and by his sense of the impropriety of the proceeding—they consecrated Flavian, one of the six who are represented as having bound themselves to renounce their pretensions to the see.

Timothy, who had just succeeded his brother Peter at Alexandria, soon after arrived, with a train of bishops. The Egyptians were offended at not having been earlier summoned to the council, and were greatly exasperated by the late proceedings. They resolved once more to set up their countryman Maximus, and to depose Gregory, under the pretext that his appointment to Constantinople was in breach of a Nicene canon, which forbade the translation of bishops. The malice and unfairness of this objection were palpable; for the canon had often been disregarded in practice, and Gregory’s acceptance of the see hardly came even within its letter, inasmuch as he had neither acted in the diocese of Sasima, nor been appointed to that of Nazianzum; much less did it violate the intention of the canon, which was to check the ambition of bishops. But he was not disposed to contest the question. He was sick both in body and in spirit, and even before the opening of the council had attempted to withdraw from his stormy position of eminence to the quiet life of contemplation which he best loved; he had accepted the bishopric only in the hope that he might be able to mediate between the eastern party and that which was formed by the junction of the western with the Egyptian bishops. Both now turned against him —the Asiatics, because he had opposed them in the matter of Antioch; the bishops of Egypt and Macedonia, because, although opposed to the election of Flavian, he had presided over the council by whose members it was determined. Gregory entreated that no one would attempt to maintain his rights, and declared that he would gladly become a Jonah to appease the furious waves of party strife. His resignation was accepted— reluctantly by the emperor, but with an indecent eagerness by the majority of the bishops, and he took leave of the council in an eloquent and pathetic discourse— stating his orthodox faith, recounting his labors at Constantinople, and strongly denouncing the luxury and secularity, the jealousies and corruptions, which disgraced the church and her rulers. A list of persons qualified to succeed to the bishopric was drawn up, and from it the emperor selected Nectarius, a man of senatorial rank, who, being as yet only a catechumen, was forthwith baptized, and within a few days was consecrated—wearing the episcopal robes over the white dress of a neophyte. Gregory, after leaving Constantinople, again assumed the charge of Nazianzum, until he succeeded in obtaining the appointment of a regular bishop. He spent his last years in retirement, soothing himself with the composition of poetry, and died in 389 or 39o.

The council of Constantinople, by additions to the article on the Holy Ghost (which were in substance taken from a work of Epiphanius, written some years before), brought the Nicene creed to its present form, except that the procession of the Holy Spirit from the Son was not mentioned. Among its canons was one which assigned to the bishop of Constantinople a precedence next after the bishop of Rome—“forasmuch as it is a new Rome”. Of the heresies condemned by the council, the only one which has not been already noticed is the Apollinarian. The founder of this, Apollinarius or Apollinaris, was son of an Alexandrian rhetorician of the same name, who settled at Laodicea in Syria. Both father and son were distinguished as writers; they were the chief authors of the ingenious substitutes for the classics by which the Christians endeavored to baffle Julian’s intention of excluding them from the cultivation of literature; and the younger Apollinarius especially had gained a high reputation by his controversial works against various forms of heresy. He was honored with the friendship of St. Athanasius, and in 362 was appointed to the bishopric of Laodicea.

APOLLINARIANISM

An opinion condemned by the Alexandrian council of 362 has been wrongly identified with the error of Apollinarius, which was not put forth until later. It was, however, current during the last years of Athanasius, who wrote in refutation of it, although—probably from considerations of old friendship, and of the services which Apollinarius had formerly rendered to the orthodox cause—he abstained from mentioning his name.

While the Arians altogether denied the existence of a human soul in Christ, and employed the texts which relate to his humanity as proofs of the imperfection of his higher nature, Apollinarius followed the Platonic school in dividing the nature of man into body, animal or vital soul and intellectual or rational soul. From the variableness and sinfulness of man’s rational soul he argued that, if the Savior had had such a soul, he must together with it have had its freedom of will, and therefore a tendency to sin; consequently (he proceeded to say), that part of man’s nature was not assumed by the Savior, but the Divine Logos supplied its place, controlling the evil impulses of the animal soul, of which the body is the passive instruments. Some of the followers of Apollinarius, if not he himself, maintained that the flesh of Christ existed before his appearance in the world, and was not taken by him of the substance of the blessed Virgin, but was brought down from heaven—a notion for which they professed to find authority in some texts of Scripture.

After the death of Athanasius, Apollinarius published his opinions more openly. He did not suppose himself to be opposed to the catholic faith, but rather to have discovered the true grounds on which it was to be maintained. Finding however that this view of the matter was not generally accepted, he formed a sect of his own, setting up bishops at Antioch and elsewhere; and, like Bardesanes and Arius, he procured currency for his doctrines by embodying  them in hymns and popular songs. Notwithstanding the anathemas pronounced against Apollinarianism by many synods, and at last by the general council of Constantinople, its founder retained his bishopric until his death, which took place before the year 392. The sect appears to have run into further errors, but did not long survive him.

 

CHAPTER V.

FROM THE END OF THE SECOND GENERAL COUNCIL TO THE DEATH OF THEODOSIUS—ST. AMBROSE.

AS 381-395.

 

It has been mentioned that the Arian Auxentius was allowed by Valentinian to retain the important see of Milan. On his death, in 374, the emperor was requested to nominate an archbishop, but, agreeably to his principle of avoiding interference in spiritual affairs, he referred the choice to the people. An eager contest ensued between the Catholics and the Arians. While both parties were assembled in the principal church, and it seemed likely that their excitement would break out into deeds of violence, the governor of Liguria, Ambrose, appeared, and made a speech exhorting them to peace. When he ceased, a little child, it is said, was heard to utter the words, “Ambrose, bishop!” and immediately the cry was caught up by the whole assemblage. The governor, who, although of Christian parentage, was as yet only a catechumen, wished to avoid an office so alien from his former thoughts and studies. He attempted by various devices to convince the Milanese that his character was unsuitable; he fled more than once from the city; but he was brought back, and, as Valentinian approved of the election, was consecrated within a week after his baptism.

Ambrose, the son of a praetorian prefect of Gaul, had been educated as an advocate, and at the time of his election to the archbishopric was thirty-four years of age. He forthwith set himself to make up by assiduous study for his previous neglect of theological learning. It would seem that, on his sudden elevation, he yielded himself without suspicion or reserve to the tendencies of that fashion of religion which he found prevailing; and from the combination of this with his naturally lofty and energetic character resulted a mixture of qualities which might almost seem incompatible,—of manliness, commanding dignity, and strong practical sense, with a fanciful mysticism and a zealous readiness to encourage and forward the growing superstitions of the age.  “The Old and New Testament”, it has been well said, “met in the person of Ambrose—the implacable hostility to idolatry, the abhorrence of every deviation from the established form of belief; the wise and courageous benevolence, the generous and unselfish devotion to the great interests of humanity”.

After the death of Valentinian, Ambrose acquired a strong influence over the mind of Gratian, for whose especial instruction he wrote some treatises. But in Justina, the widow of the late emperor, and mother of the younger Valentinian (whose chief residence was at Milan), he found a bitter and persevering enemy. This princess was devoted to the Arian creed, and her first disagreement with Ambrose appears to have been in 379, when he defeated her in an attempt to procure the appointment of a heretical bishop to Sirmium. But notwithstanding this collision, when tidings reached Milan in 383 that Gratian had been murdered at Lyons by the partisans of the rebel Maximus, Justina placed her young son in the archbishop’s arms, and entreated him to become his protector. Ambrose accepted the charge, proceeded to Treves, where Maximus had fixed his court, and obtained his consent to a partition of the west—Maximus taking for himself Britain, Gaul, and Spain, while the other countries were left to Valentinian.

Two years later, however, a fresh contest with the empress-mother arose. Ambrose had succeeded in extinguishing Arianism among the citizens of Milan, so that its only adherents in the place were a portion of the court and some Gothic soldiers. To these the archbishop was required, on the approach of Easter, to give up, first, the Portian basilica, (a church without the walls,) and afterwards the largest church within the city, which had just been erected on the site now occupied by that which bears his name. He was twice summoned before the council, who told him that he must yield to the imperial power. He replied that he was ready to part with anything that was his own—even his life; but that he was not at liberty to surrender what was sacred : “Palaces”, he said, “are for the emperor; churches are for God’s priests”. The populace of the city were greatly excited. They tore down the hangings which had been put up by way of preparing the churches for the reception of the emperor; they seized an Arian presbyter in the streets, and would probably have killed him, if Ambrose had not interposed to rescue him; they surrounded the palace while the archbishop was in attendance on the council. The imperial ministers in alarm entreated him to restrain his partisans; Ambrose answered that it was in his power to refrain from exciting them, but that it was in God’s hand only to appease them; that, if he were suspected of having instigated the tumult, he ought to be punished by banishment or otherwise. Even the soldiery showed a disposition to take part with the Catholics, and some of them, who had been sent to occupy the new church, declared that they were come, not to fight, but to join in the archbishop’s prayers. The empress at length yielded, and a heavy fine which had been laid on the traders of Milan as a punishment for the first demonstration in favor of Ambrose was remitted.

In the beginning of the following year an edict was issued, allowing entire freedom of religion to those who should profess the creed of Rimini, and denouncing death against all who should molest them. Soon after its publication Ambrose was required, under pain of deprivation, to argue his cause with the bishop of the Arian party, a Goth who had assumed the name of the former Arian bishop, Auxentius, in the presence of the emperor and some lay judges; but he boldly refused, on the ground that matters of faith ought not to be submitted to such a tribunal. When Easter was again at hand, a fresh demand was made for the church with an allusion to the story of Naboth, Ambrose replied that he would not give up the inheritance of his fathers, the holy and orthodox bishops who had filled the see before him. On being ordered to leave the city, he refused to yield except to force, and his flock, in fear lest he should either withdraw or be carried off, anxiously guarded him—passing several nights in the church and the adjoining buildings, while the outlets were watched by the imperial soldiers. During these vigils Ambrose introduced, for the first time in the west, a mode of singing which had lately originated in somewhat similar circumstances at Antiochs— that, instead of leaving the psalmody to the choristers, the whole congregation should divide itself into two choirs, by which the chant was to be taken up alternately.

SS. GERVASIUS AND PROTASIUS.

The matter was still undecided, when Ambrose, on proceeding to complete the consecration of the church which had been the object of so much contention, was requested by his people to use the same ceremonies as on a certain former occasion. He answered that he would do so if relics of saints should be found, and gave orders to dig up the pavement near the altar-rails in the church of St. Felix and St. Nabor; when two skeletons were discovered, of extraordinary size, such as the olden time produced, with the heads separated from the bodies, and with a large quantity of fresh blood. These relics, after having been exposed for two days, were deposited in the new church. Demoniacs who were brought near to them showed signs of great disturbance; some of the possessed declared that the bones were those of martyrs, and proclaimed their names, Gervasius and Protasius—names which had been utterly forgotten, but which old men were at length able to remember that they had heard in former days; in other cases the demons cried out that all who refused to confess the true doctrine of the Trinity, as it was taught by Ambrose, would be tormented even as they themselves then were. Other miracles are related as having been wrought by the touch of the cloth which covered the relics, and even by their shadow as they were carried along. The most noted was, that a butcher, well known in Milan, who had lost his sight, recovered it on touching the hem of the pall; and, as a witness to the cure, he became for the rest of his days sacristan of the church in which they were preserved. The general excitement was now such, that, although the Arians questioned and ridiculed the miracles, Justina no longer ventured to press her claims against the bishop, who was supposed to have been distinguished by a Divine interposition in his behalf. An apprehension of renewed danger from Maximus may perhaps have contributed to this result.

AMBROSE AND THEODOSIUS. 

In the following year Ambrose was again sent to the court of Treves, with a commission to treat for the delivery of Gratian’s body. He asserted in a remarkable manner the dignity of the episcopal character, but returned without effecting his object; and soon after Maximus, in violation of his engagements, invaded the territories of Valentinian. The young emperor and his mother fled for protection to Theodosius, who in the summer of 388 marched westwards, defeated the usurper, who was given up by his own adherents, and was put to death; and for a time the victor fixed his residence at Milan.

The power which Ambrose had exerted over the younger princes was no less felt by the Great Theodosius. Soon after his arrival at Milan the emperor was about to seat himself within that part of the cathedral which was appropriated to the clergy, when the archbishop desired him to withdraw to a position at the head of the laity. Theodosius expressed thanks for the admonition, excused himself on the ground that at Constantinople the imperial seat was within the railings of the choir, and on his return to the east, astonished the more courtly clergy of his capital by introducing the practice of Milan.

AD 387-8. AFFAIR OF CALLINICUM. 

The zeal of Theodosius for unity of faith and worship among his subjects was encouraged and directed by Ambrose, who assumed a right of moral control over the emperor’s proceedings. On one occasion, at least, this influence appears to have been pushed beyond the bounds of equity. The Christians of Callinicum, in Mesopotamia, had destroyed a Jewish synagogue, and, in revenge for an insult offered to some monks, as they were on their way to keep a festival, had also burnt a Valentinian place of worship. Theodosius ordered that the bishop of the town, who had encouraged these proceedings, should restore the buildings, or pay the price of them. On hearing of the order, Ambrose wrote to the emperor by way of remonstrance, and, as his letter had no effect, he followed it up by a personal appeal in a sermon, maintaining that it was inconsistent with the duty of a Christian prince to sanction the employment of Christian funds for such purposes. Theodosius yielded, and recalled his sentence. We may be inclined to wonder that Ambrose, if he failed to see the injustice of the position which he advanced, and its inconsistency with any sound principles of civil government, was yet not led to suspect its truth by the consideration that it would have warranted the oppression of a Christian minority by heathens, or of an orthodox minority by heretics. But so far was he from feeling any misgiving on this account, that he even ventured to cite the destruction of churches under Julian, and the recent burning of the episcopal house at Constantinople by the Arians, as if these acts were sufficient precedents for a justification of the Mesopotamian outrages.

AFFAIR OF THESSALONICA.

An interposition of a more creditable nature followed. The most prominent defect in the noble and amiable character of Theodosius was a proneness to violent anger. That he could be merciful after great provocation was remarkably shown in his forgiveness of the people of Antioch, who in 387 rose in sedition on account of a tax, burnt some houses, and threw down the statues of the emperor, of his deceased wife, to whom he had been tenderly attached, and of other members of his family. But in 390 his passion became the occasion of a fearful tragedy at Thessalonica. The populace of that city, on the occasion of a chariot-race, demanded the release of a favorite charioteer, whom Botheric, commander-in-chief of the district, had imprisoned for attempting an abominable crime; and on Botheric’s refusal, they broke out into tumult, and murdered him with many of his soldiery and others. The emperor, although greatly exasperated by the report of the insurrection, promised, at the intercession of Ambrose, to pardon the Thessalonians; but his secular advisers, who regarded with great jealousy the influence of the bishop over his mind, were afterwards able, by insisting on the heinous character of the offence, to procure from him an order which was carefully kept secret from Ambrose. The people of Thessalonica were invited to a performance of games in the circus, and, while there assembled, were attacked by an overwhelming force of soldiers. Neither age nor sex was regarded; no distinction was made between guilty and innocent, citizen and stranger. For three hours an indiscriminate butchery was carried on, and at least seven thousand victims perished.

The report of this massacre affected Ambrose with the deepest horror. Theodosius was then absent from Milan, and before his return the archbishop retired into the country, whence he wrote a letter, exhorting him to repent, and declaring that, until due penance should be performed, he had been forbidden by God to offer the Eucharistic sacrifice in the emperor’s presence. The letter had its effect in convincing Theodosius of the guilt which he had incurred by allowing treacherous barbarity to take the place of justice. But this was not enough for Ambrose. As Theodosius was about to enter the Portian church, the archbishop met him in the porch; laying hold of his robe, he desired him to withdraw, as a man polluted with innocent blood; and when the emperor spoke of his contrition, Ambrose told him that private regrets were insufficient to expiate so grievous a wrong. Theodosius submitted and retired. For eight months he remained in penitential seclusion, laying aside all his imperial ornaments, until at the Christmas season he presented himself before the archbishop, and humbly entreated readmission into the church. Ambrose required, as a condition of his granting this, that some practical fruit of repentance should be shown; and the emperor consented to issue a law by which, in order to guard against the effects of sudden anger, the execution of all capital punishments was to be deferred until thirty days after the sentence. Having thus gained the privilege of readmission into the communion of the faithful, Theodosius, on being allowed to enter the church, prostrated himself on the pavement with every demonstration of the deepest grief and humiliation; and Ambrose, in his funeral oration over the emperor, assures us that from that time he never passed a day without recalling to mind the crime into which he had been betrayed by his passion.

The behavior of Theodosius in this remarkable affair was evidently not the result of weakness or pusillanimity, but of a real feeling of his guilt—a sincere acknowledgment of a higher Power to which all worldly greatness is subject. In order to judge rightly of Ambrose’s conduct, we must dismiss from our minds some recollections of later times, which may be very likely to intrude themselves. The archbishop appears to have been actuated by no other motive than a solemn sense of his duty. He felt the dignity with which his office invested him; he held himself bound, by interposing it in behalf of justice and humanity, to control the excesses of earthly power. His sternness towards the emperor has nothing in common with the assumptions of those who, in after ages, used the names of God and his church to cover their own pride and love of domination.

In the autumn of 391 Theodosius returned to the east, leaving Valentinian in possession, not only of his original dominions, but of those which had been ceded to Maximus after the murder of Gratian. Justina had died in 388, and from that time the young emperor was entirely under the guidance of Ambrose. In 392 he wrote from Vienne, urgently desiring the archbishop to visit him—partly in order to establish a better relation with the Frankish general Arbogast, who had been placed with him by Theodosius as a protector, but had begun to show symptoms of a dangerous ambition; and partly to administer the sacrament of baptism, which Valentinian, according to the custom of the time, had hitherto delayed to receive. Ambrose set out in obedience to the summons; but before his arrival, Valentinian had been murdered by the Frank. Once more Theodosius moved into the west, to put down the rhetorician Eugenius, whom Arbogast had raised to a nominal sovereignty. But within four months after his victory he died at Milan—the last emperor who fully maintained the dignity of the Roman name. Ambrose survived him a little more than two years, and died on Easter eve, 397.

AD 390-7. STATE OF PAGANISM. 

Although paganism lost the ascendency which it had possessed during the brief reign of Julian, it yet for a time enjoyed full toleration. While barbarians threatened the empire, its rulers felt the inexpediency of irritating that large portion of their subjects which adhered to the old religion. Valentinian and his brother, indeed, carried on a searching inquiry after the practice of magical arts, and punished those concerned in it severely—in many cases with death. But the edicts on this subject were only renewals of earlier laws; and the motive of them was not religious but political, inasmuch as the practices of divination and theurgy were connected with speculations and intrigues as to matters of state. These practices were carried on, not by the ignorant vulgar alone, but by members of the old Roman aristocracy, and by the high philosophic party which had been powerful under Julian; and many persons both of the aristocratic and of the philosophical classes were among the victims of Valentinian’s laws. The consultation of the aruspices for innocent purposes was, however, still allowed. Guards of soldiers were allowed to protect the temples, although Christians were exempt from this service. Valentinian even endowed the priesthood with privileges exceeding those which they had received from his heathen predecessors, and in some respects greater than those which the Christians enjoyed; and the orthodox subjects of Valens complained that, while they themselves were subjected to banishment and disabilities on account of their faith, the heathens were freely allowed to practice all the rites of their idolatry—even the impure and frantic worship of Bacchus. In 364 Valentinian forbade nocturnal sacrifices; but on receiving a representation that the Greeks would consider life intolerable if they were deprived of their mysteries, he exempted these from the operation of his law. At a later period, Valentinian and Valens were induced by political causes to prohibit all animal sacrifices; yet the other rites of heathen worship were still permitted, and at Rome and Alexandria, where paganism was strong, the edict was not enforced.

DESTRUCTION OF TEMPLES.

Under Theodosius and the contemporary emperors of the west there was a more decided movement for the suppression of paganism. In 381, and again in 385, Theodosius renewed the laws against sacrifices. In 386 he sent Cynegius, the prefect of the east, into Egypt, with a commission to shut up the temples. But while the law spared the buildings themselves, the zeal of Christians very often exceeded it. So long as the temples were standing, they alarmed one party with the apprehension, and flattered the other with the hope, that a second Julian might arise. In order to remove the occasion of such feelings, many temples were destroyed, and in some cases it was alleged by way of pretext (whether truly or otherwise) that sacrifice had been illegally offered in them. The work of demolition was chiefly incited or executed by monks; in countries where these did not abound—such as Greece—the splendid monuments of heathen architecture were allowed to remain, whether disused, employed as churches, or converted to secular purposes. The celebrated sophist Libanius composed a plea for the temples, which has the form of a speech addressed to the emperor, although it was probably neither delivered before him, nor even presented to him in writing. The orator complains of black-garbed men, more voracious than elephants, and insatiably thirsty, although veiling their sensuality under an artificial paleness; that, although the law forbade no part of paganism except bloody sacrifices, these monks went about committing acts of outrage and plunder; that they treated the priests with violence; that they even seized lands under the pretense that they had been connected with illegal rites; and that, if appeal were made to “the shepherds in the cities” (i.e. the bishops), the complainants, instead of obtaining any redress, were told that they had been only too gently treated. He traces all the calamities of the time to the change of religion. He appeals to the New Testament precepts in proof that the forcible measures of the Christians were contrary to the spirit which their own faith inculcated. He endeavors to alarm the superstition of his readers, by saying that the service of the ancient deities was still kept up in Egypt, because the Christians themselves feared to risk the fertility of the country by suppressing it.

In no long time this last assertion was put to the test. Theophilus, bishop of Alexandria, a violent man, whose name will be often mentioned hereafter, obtained from the emperor a grant of a temple of Bacchus, and intended t0 build a church on the site of it. In the course of digging for the foundation of the new building, some indecent symbols used in the worship of Bacchus were found, and these were publicly paraded in mockery of the religion to which they belonged. The pagans, exasperated by this insult to their faith, rose in insurrection, killed a number of Christians, and shut themselves up in the temple of Serapis, which with its precincts formed a vast pile of building, towering over the city, and was regarded as one of the wonders of the world They made sallies from time to time, slew some Christians, and carried off many prisoners, whom they either compelled to sacrifice, or, in case of refusal, subjected to cruel tortures; some of the prisoners were even put to death by crucifixion. On receiving a report of the matter from the governor of Alexandria, the emperor answered that, as the Christians who had been slain were martyrs, those who had been concerned in their death were not to be punished, but rather, if possible, were to be attracted to the true faith by clemency; but he ordered that the temples of Alexandria should be destroyed. The Serapeum was deserted by its defenders, who had been induced by the governor to attend the public reading of the imperial rescript, and on hearing the sentence against the temples had fled in consternation. The idol of Serapis, the tutelary deity of the city, was of enormous size, and was adorned with jewels and with plates of gold and silver. There was a popular belief that, if it were injured, heaven and earth would go to wreck; and even Christians looked on with anxiety when a soldier, mounting a ladder, raised his axe against the figure. But when it was seen that with impunity he first struck off a cheek, and then cleft one of the knees, the spell was at an end. The head of the god was thrown down, and a swarm of rats rushed forth from it, exciting the disgust and derision of the crowd. The idol was soon broken into pieces, which were dragged into the amphitheater and burnt. On examining the temple, a discovery was made of infamies by which it had been polluted, and of tricks by which the priests had imposed on the credulity of the worshippers and in consequence of this exposure many persons were converted to the church. The pagan party, however, began to exult when it was found that the rising of the Nile was that year delayed beyond its usual time. The emperor was consulted : “Better”, he answered, “that it should not rise at all, than we should buy the fertility of Egypt by idolatry”. At length the river swelled to a more than ordinary height, and the pagans began to hope that Serapis would avenge himself by an inundation; but they soon had the mortification of seeing the waters subside to their proper level. The temple of the god was demolished, and a church was built on its site, while the other buildings of the Serapeum were preserved. In obedience to the emperor’s command, the temples were destroyed at Alexandria and throughout Egypt. The statues were burnt or melted down, with the exception of one, which, we are told, Theophilus preserved as an evidence against paganism, lest the adherents of that system should afterwards deny that they had worshipped objects so contemptible.

A.D. 375-395. PAGANISM IN THE WEST

The old religion was more powerful in the west than in the east. Most of the high Roman families clung to it—not, apparently, from any real conviction of its truth, but from a feeling of pride in maintaining the traditions of their ancestors, and from unwillingness to undertake the labor of inquiry. A profession of paganism was no bar to the attainment of high offices in the state; and with these the Roman nobles, like their forefathers, ambitiously sought to combine the dignities of the pagan hierarchy. In the capital a vast number of temples and of smaller religious edifices was still devoted to the ancient worship; while in the rural districts of Italy the system was maintained by the connection of its deities with every incident in the round of agricultural labor. Bishops are found reproaching the Christian landowners with the indifference which, disregarding everything but money, allowed the population of their estates to continue in the undisturbed practice of idolatry. Throughout the western provinces generally, the old barbarian religions prevailed in some places; the worship of the Roman gods in others. From the fact that the foundation of many bishoprics in the west is traced to the period between the years 350 and 380, it has been inferred that an organized attack on paganism was then first attempted in those regions.

Gratian, in his earlier years, maintained the principle of religious equality; but the influence of St. Ambrose afterwards produced an important change in his policy, so that this young emperor inflicted heavier blows on paganism than any which his predecessors had ventured to attempt. There was in the senate-house at Rome an altar of Victory, erected after the battle of Actium, at which the senators took the oath of fidelity to the emperor and the laws, and on which libations and incense were offered at the beginning of every meeting. The removal of this altar was the only considerable act by which Constantius had interfered with the religion of the capital; but it was restored by Julian, and continued to hold its place until in 382 Gratian ordered that it should be again removed. A body of senators, headed by Symmachus, the most eloquent orator of his time—a man of eminent personal character, and distinguished by the highest civil and religious offices,—proceeded to Milan for the purpose of requesting that the altar might be replaced. But the Christian party in the senate had already prepossessed the emperor’s mind by means of Damasus and Ambrose; and he refused to see the envoys. At the same time he deprived the temples of their lands, withdrew from them all public funds, rendered it illegal to bequeath real property to them, and stripped the vestals and heathen priests of the religious and civil privileges which they had enjoyed. Then perhaps it may have been, and with the hope of effectually appealing to his feelings, that a deputation of the priesthood displayed before him the robe of the Pontifex Maximus—a dignity which had been held by all his predecessors, as well since as before the con­version of Constantine. But Gratian rejected it as unbefitting a Christian.

SYMMACHUS AND AMBROSE. 

In 384 a fresh attempt was made on the young Valentinian. Symmachus again appeared at Milan as the chief of a deputation, and delivered to the emperor an eloquent written pleading on behalf of the altar of Victory and of the old religion. He drew a distinction between the emperor’s personal conviction and the duty of his position as ruler of a state which for centuries had worshipped the gods of paganism. He dwelt on the omens connected with the name of Victory, and traced the famines, wars, and other calamities of recent years to the anger of the gods on account of the withholding of their dues. He urged that it was an unworthy act to withdraw the funds by which the pagan worship had been maintained. He personified Rome addressing the emperor as a mother, reminding him of her ancient glories, and professing herself unable to learn any other religion than that by which she had acquired her greatness.

Ambrose, who, on hearing of the application of the pagan party, had written to the emperor, earnestly exhorting him to refuse it, followed up his letter by a formal and elaborate reply to Symmachus. He argued that it was unlawful for a Christian sovereign to countenance a system which he must believe to be hateful to God. It would, he said, be a wrong to the Christian senators if they were compelled to take a part in the sacrifices to Victory; and they must be considered as sharing in the acts of the senate, whether they were personally present at its meetings or not. He met the plea as to the misfortunes of the empire by referring to those of princes who had professed idolatry. The ancient glories of Rome (he said) could not have been derived from the worship of the gods; for her conquered enemies had been of the same religion. Her hoary age would become not less venerable, but more so, by her embracing the truth of the gospel. Christianity had grown under oppression, whereas paganism, according to the statement of its own advocates, depended for its very life on the endowments and emoluments of the priesthood. Heathenism found a difficulty in keeping up the number of its seven vestals, notwithstanding the high privileges attached to the order, whereas multitudes of Christian women had voluntarily chosen a virgin life of poverty and mortification. And what deeds of charity had heathenism to produce against the maintenance of the needy, the redemption of captives, and other such things which were the daily work of Christians?

In reading these rival pleadings, we cannot but be struck by the remarkable contrast in tone between the apologetic diffidence of Symmachus and the triumphant assurance of Ambrose, who in his previous letter had gone so far as to tell the emperor that, if he made the required concession to idolatry, the church would reject him and his offerings. The cause of paganism is rested, not on the truth of doctrine, but on an appeal to historical and patriotic associations. It is evident that, apart from all consideration of the value of their respective arguments, the Christian champion has already in reality gained his cause, and that the petition of Symmachus must be—as it proved to be—unsuccessful.

LAW AGAINST PAGANISM.

The pagan party next applied to Theodosius, when in Italy after the death of Maximus. The emperor was at first inclined to yield, but Ambrose swayed him as he had swayed the younger princes. Once more a pagan deputation was sent to Valentinian in Gaul, when he was at a distance both from his colleague and from the archbishop; but this attempt was also a failure.

In 392, an important law was issued by Theodosius for the whole empire. With an elaborate specification it includes all persons of every rank and in every place. Sacrifice and divination, even although performed without any political object, are to be regarded as treasonable, and to be capitally punished. The use of lights, incense, garlands, or libations, and other such lesser acts of idolatry, are to involve the forfeiture of the houses or lands where they are committed. Heavy fines, graduated according to the position of the offenders, are denounced against those who should enter temples; if magistrates should offend in this respect, and their officers do not attempt to prevent them, the officers are also to be fined.

It is probable that the severity of this enactment may have contributed to swell the party of Eugenius, whom the pagans hailed as a deliverer. Whether he himself apostatized is uncertain; but his master, Arbogast, was avowedly a pagan, and during the short period of the rhetorician-emperor’s power, the altar of Victory was replaced, the rites of the old religion were revived in all their completeness, and the confiscated property of the temples was restored. It has been said that Theodosius, on visiting Rome after the defeat of Eugenius, referred the choice between Christianity and paganism to the vote of the senate, and that the gospel was adopted by a majority; but the story is exceedingly improbable, and is perhaps no more than an exaggeration founded on some discussion which took place at Milan between the emperor and a deputation of the senate.

To speak of the age of Theodosius as having witnessed the “ruin and the total extinction of paganism” is much beyond the truth. The adherents of the old religion, although debarred from the exercise of its rites, were still allowed to enjoy perfect freedom of thought, and the dignities of the state were open to them. The execution of the laws against it was very partial; as they were exceeded where the Christian party was strong, so where that party was weak they were not enforced, and in some cases the very magistrates to whom they were addressed were pagans. At Rome, the emperor himself was complimented, like his predecessors, by being enrolled among the gods at his death. The statues of the gods were not destroyed; that of Victory was still allowed to remain in the senate-house, although the altar which had been the subject of contention was removed. But yet the old system was evidently doomed. Its remaining strength was not in belief but in habit. The withdrawal of public funds told on it to a degree which would have been impossible if there had been any principle of life in it. The priests, when attacked, succumbed in a manner which indicated an utter want of faith and zeal. Although paganism was common among men of letters, no one of these attempted theological controversy; their efforts in behalf of their religion did not reach beyond pleadings for toleration.0 St. Jerome speaks of the temples at Rome about this time as left to neglect, disorder, and decay.

LAWS OF THEODOSIUS 

Among those of his subjects who professed Christianity, Theodosius was resolved to establish unity of religion. Immediately after the conclusion of the general council of Constantinople, he ordered that all churches should be given up to the Catholics, that no meetings of heretics should be held, and that no buildings should be erected for such meetings. In 383 he summoned a conference of bishops of all parties, with the hope of bringing them to an agreement, but the difference of creeds was found irreconcilable, and in the same year the emperor issued fresh edicts against the Arians. During the remaining years of the reign, frequent laws were directed against heresy —a term which was now no longer restricted to the denial of the leading doctrines of the faith, but was applied also to lesser errors of doctrine and to separation from the communion of the church. The especial objects of the emperor’s animosity were Arians, Eunomians, Macedonians, Apollinarians, and Manichaeans. By various enactments, he deprived these sectaries of all right to assemble for worship either in cities or in the country; he confiscated all places in which they should hold meetings; he rendered them incapable of inheriting or bequeathing property, and inflicted other civil disabilities; he forbade them to dispute on religion; he condemned those who should either confer or receive sectarian ordination to pay a penalty of ten pounds weight of gold. Against some classes of heretics he denounced confiscation and banishment; the elect of the Manichaeans were even sentenced to death.

Repulsive as such legislation is to the feelings of those who have learnt to acknowledge the impossibility of enforcing religious belief, the effect in a great measure answered the emperor’s expectations. Neither heathenism nor sectarianism had much inward strength to withstand the pressure of the laws which required conformity to the church. Crowds of proselytes flocked in, and, amidst the satisfaction of receiving these accessions, it was little asked whether in very many cases the apparent conversion were anything better than a mask for hypocrisy or indifference.

It would seem that the severest edicts of Theodosius were intended only to terrify, and were never actually executed. But the example of inflicting death as the punishment of religious error had already been given in that part of the empire which was subject to the usurper Maximus.

PRISCILLIAN.

Priscillian was a Spaniard —well-born, rich, learned, eloquent, and skilled in disputation. His doctrines were partly derived through Elpidius, a rhetorician, and Agape, a lady of rank, from an Egyptian named Mark, who had travelled into Spain. They are described as a compound of various heresies— Manichaeism, Gnosticism, Arianism, Photinianism, and Sabellianism—to which was added the practice of astrology and magic. That Priscillian held a dualistic principle appears certain. He admitted the whole canon of Scripture, but by means of allegory, or by altering the text, overcame the difficulties of such parts as did not agree with his system; and like some of the gnostic parties in an earlier age, he relied mainly on some apocryphal writings. His followers are said to have regarded falsehood as allowable for the purpose of concealing their real tenets; they attended the churches, and received the Eucharistic elements, but did not consume them. Priscillian’s precepts were rigidly ascetic; he prescribed separation for married persons; but, like other heresiarchs, he is charged with secretly teaching sensuality and impurity.

It was about the year 378 that the progress of Priscillianism, especially among the female sex, began to attract notice, and in 380-1 it was condemned by a council of Spanish and Aquitanian bishops at Saragossa. Two bishops, however, Salvian and Instantius, took part with Priscillian, and, being reinforced by Hyginus of Cordova, who had once been a vehement opponent of his views, they consecrated him to the see of Avila. The opposite party appealed to the secular power, and, by order of Gratian, the heresiarch and his consecrators were banished from Spain. With the hope of obtaining a reversal of this sentence, Priscillian set out for Rome in company with Salvian and Instantius. In their progress through Aquitania they gained many proselytes, especially at the episcopal city of Elusa (Eauze). At Bordeaux the bishop prevented their entrance into the town, but they found a welcome in the neighbourhood from Euchrotia, the widow of a distinguished poet and orator named Delphidius, and as they moved onwards they were attended by her, with her daughter Procula, and a numerous train of female converts. On arriving at Rome they were unable to obtain an audience of Damasus, and there Salvian died. His companions returning northward, found themselves opposed at Milan by the influence of Ambrose; but by means of bribes and solicitations to persons in high office, they procured from Gratian an order for their restoration to their sees. The proconsul of Spain was won by similar means, and Ithacius and Idacius, the leaders of the opposite party, were banished from that country as disturbers of the public peace.

During the remainder of Gratian’s reign, Ithacius, a bold and able man, but of sensual and worldly habits, found himself unable to contend against the corruption by which the Priscillianists influenced the court. When, however, his case appeared desperate, fresh hopes were excited by the report that Maximus had been proclaimed in Britain; and, when the usurper was established at Treves, after the murder of Gratian, Ithacius brought the question before him. Maximus referred it to a council, which was held at Bordeaux. By this assembly Instantius was first heard, and was condemned; whereupon Priscillian, when required to defend himself, appealed to the emperor, and the council allowed the appeal.

Priscillian and his accusers repaired to Treves, where Martin, bishop of Tours, the “apostle of the Gauls”, famed for his sanctity, his miracles, and his successful exertions against idolatrye, arrived about the same time. Martin repeatedly implored Ithacius to desist from prosecuting the heretics before a secular tribunal, on which Ithacius told him that he too was a Priscillianite. Martin also represented to the emperor that the trial of an ecclesiastical offence before secular judges was unexampled, and entreated that the matter might be settled in the usual way, by the deposition of the leading heretics from their sees, according to the ecclesiastical condemnation which had been passed on them. His influence was powerful enough to delay the trial while he remained at Treves; and on taking leave of Maximus he obtained a promise that the lives of the accused should be safe. But the usurper was afterwards induced—it is said, by the hope of seizing on Priscillian’s property—to depart from this resolution. The heretics were brought to trial, and by the use of torture were wrought to a confession of impure doctrines and practices. Ithacius, after having urged on the prosecution with great bitterness until the case was virtually decided, devolved the last formal part of the work on a lay advocate—professing that his own episcopal character forbade him to proceed in a cause of blood. Priscillian, Euchrotia, and five of their companions were condemned to death and were beheaded. Instantius was banished to the Scilly islands, and others of the party were sentenced to banishment or confiscation.

ST. MARTIN OF TOURS.

Martin again visited the court of Maximus in order to plead for the lives of some of Gratian’s officers, at a time when a number of bishops were assembled for the consecration of Felix to the see of Treves. These bishops, with only one exception, freely communicated with the instigators of the late proceedings, who, fearing the influence of Martin, attempted, although unsuccessfully, to prevent his entering the city. Maximus endeavored, by elaborate attentions, to draw him into communicating with Ithacius and his party; but the bishop of Tours firmly refused, and they parted in anger. Late at night, Martin was informed that orders had been given for the execution of the officers in whom he was interested, and that two military commissioners were about to be sent into Spain, with orders to extirpate Priscillianism. The information struck him with dismay, not only on account of the peril to Gratian’s adherents, but because, from the manner in which he himself and others had been charged with Priscillianism by Ithacius, he knew that the imputation of heresy would be used as a pretext against orthodox persons of ascetic life; in great anxiety he made his way to the emperor’s presence, where, on condition that Gratian’s officers should be spared, and that the commission against Priscillianism should be revoked, he promised to communicate with the Ithacians. Martin shared, accordingly, in the consecration of Felix next day, but refused to sign the act, and immediately left Treves. It is related that, as he was on his way homewards, thinking sadly on his late compliance, an angel appeared to him, who consoled him, but told him he had acted wrongly. From that time, says his biographer, Martin felt in himself an abatement of the power of miracles; and for the remaining sixteen years of his life he avoided all councils and assemblies of bishops.

The execution of Priscillian and his companions was regarded with general horror, alike by Christians and by pagans. St. Ambrose, when on his second mission to Treves, chose rather to risk and to forfeit his object than to communicate with Maximus and the bishops who had been concerned in the deed of blood. Siricius, bishop of Rome, joined in the condemnation of the party which had acted with Ithacius; and their leader was deposed, and died in exile.

Priscillianism did not at once become extinct. The church of France was long disturbed by dissensions which arose out of it. The heresiarch’s body was carried from Treves into his native country, where it was reverenced by his partisans as that of a martyr; and his name was used by them in oaths. Many members of the sect were reunited to the church after a council held at Toledo in 400, but a remnant of it is mentioned as still existing at the date of the first council of Braga, in 561.

 

CHAPTER VI.

SUPPLEMENTARY.

 

I. Propagation of the Gospel.

While the empire was distracted by the Arian controversy, the gospel penetrated into some countries beyond the bounds of the Roman power.

ETHIOPIANS

Whatever may have been the effect produced in his native country by the conversion of Queen Candace’s treasurer, recorded in the Acts of the Apostles, it would appear to have been transitory; and the Ethiopian or Abyssinian church owes its origin to an expedition made early in the fourth century by Meropius, a philosopher of Tyre, for the purpose of scientific inquiry. On his voyage homewards, he and his companions were attacked at a place where they had landed in search of water, and all were massacred except two youths, Edesius and Frumentius, the relatives and pupils of Meropius. These were carried to the king of the country, who advanced Edesius to be his cupbearer, and Frumentius to be his secretary and treasurer. On the death of the king, who left a boy as his heir, the two strangers, at the request of the widowed queen, acted as regents of the kingdom until the prince came of age. Edesius then returned to Tyre, where he became a presbyter. Frumentius, who, with the help of such Christian traders as visited the country, had already introduced the Christian doctrine and worship into Abyssinia, repaired to Alexandria, related his story to Athanasius, and requested that a bishop might be sent to follow up the work; whereupon Athanasius, considering that no one could be so fit for the office as Frumentius himself, consecrated him to the bishopric of Axum. The church thus founded continues to this day subject to the see of Alexandria— “drinking”, as the Abyssinians themselves express it, “of the patriarch’s well”. Its metropolitan is always an Egyptian monk, chosen and consecrated by the Coptic patriarch.

After the expulsion of Athanasius from his see in 356, Constantius wrote to the princes of Axum, desiring that they would not shelter the fugitive, and also that Frumentius might be sent to Alexandria, to receive instruction in the faith from the Arian bishop, George. Athanasius, however, was safe among the monks of Egypt, and it does not appear that the request as to Frumentius met with any attention.

An Arian missionary, named Theophilus, is celebrated by the historian of his party, Philostorgius, while his labors are not unnaturally overlooked by the orthodox writers. He was a native of the island of Diu, and, having been sent as a hostage to the imperial court, was consecrated as a bishop by Eusebius of Nicomedia, Theophilus preached in southern Arabia, and apparently also in Abyssinia and India, as well as in his native island. In India he is said to have found the remains of an older Christianity, which Philostorgius describes as hetero-ousian, (i.e., holding that the Persons of the Godhead differ in essence) —an assertion which seems to have had no other foundation than the fact that the Indians were unacquainted with the terms which had been introduced into the language of orthodox theology since the rise of the Arian controversy.

IBERIANS

 The conversion of the Iberians or Georgians is referred to the reign of Constantine. Some of these barbarians, on an incursion into the empire, had carried off among their captives a pious Christian woman, whose religious exercises and mortifications were observed with surprise and awe. After a time, a child—one of the king’s children, according to Socrates—fell sick, and, agreeably to the custom of the country, was carried from one woman to another, in the hope that some one of them might be able to cure him. The captive, on being at length consulted, disclaimed all knowledge of physic, but, laying the child on a couch, said, “Christ, who healed many, will heal this child also” ; when, at her prayer, the boy recovered. The queen was soon after cured in like manner; and the captive refused all recompense. Next day the king, while hunting among the mountains, found himself enveloped in a thick mist or darkness. After having called on his gods in vain, he bethought himself of applying to the stranger’s God, and the darkness immediately cleared away. Other miracles are added to the story. The king and queen gave their people the example of conversion, and the Iberians, on application to Constantine, were supplied with a bishop and clergy.

PERSIANS

The Christian communities of Persia have been mentioned as existing in the earlier period. The faith continued to make progress in that country; and Constantine, soon after declaring his own conversion, wrote in favor of the Christians to Sapor II, who was king of Persia from 309 to 381. But the progress of a rival religion was watched with jealousy and alarm by the magi; and on the breaking out of a war between Sapor and Constantius, they represented to the king that the converts were attached to the Roman interest. A persecution was begun by Sapor’s subjecting the Christians to special and oppressive taxes. Their chief, Symeon, bishop of Seleucia and Ctesiphon, was then seized, and was carried into the presence of the king, who required him to conform to the national religion, and, on his refusal, sentenced him to imprisonment. As he was led away, Uthazanes, an old eunuch, who had lately been persuaded to renounce Christianity, saluted him reverentially; but the bishop turned away his face. Uthazanes, deeply affected by the reproach, broke out into lamentation—“If my old and intimate friend thus disowns me, what may I expect from my God whom I have denied?”. For these words he was summoned before the king, and, after having withstood both threats and entreaties, was condemned to death. Uthazanes had brought up Sapor; he now begged a favor for the sake of his old kindness—that it might be proclaimed that he was not guilty of treason, but was executed solely for being a Christian. The king willingly assented, in the hope that the declaration would deter his subjects from Christianity; but an opposite effect followed, as the sight of the courage which could sacrifice even life for the gospel induced many to embrace the Christian faith. Symeon and many others were put to death. In the following year the severity of the persecution was increased; and notices of martyrdoms are found from time to time throughout the remainder of Sapor’s reign.

ULFILAS

 We have already seen that the gospel was introduced among the Goths by captives who were carried off during the reigns of Valerian and Gallienus. Theophilus, bishop of the Goths, was among the members of the Nicene council, and seems to have been the immediate predecessor of Ulfilas, who, notwithstanding his Teutonic name is said to have been descended from Cappadocian captives. Ulfilas was probably born in 318, and was consecrated as a bishop at the age of thirty—perhaps while employed on a legation to the emperor Constantius, in 348. In 355 the persecution of Athanaric, judge or prince of the Ostrogoths, who regarded the profession of Christianity as a token of inclination to the Roman interest, compelled the bishop to lead a large body of Goths across the Danube, and seek a refuge within the empire; and it would seem that this exodus, as well as his labors and influence among his people, contributed to suggest the title which was bestowed on him by Constantius,—“the Moses of the Goths”. About fifteen years later the persecution was renewed, and many of Athanaric’s subjects, who had embraced Christianity, were put to death. In 376 Ulfilas was employed by Fritigern, prince of the Visigoths—the division of the Gothic nation to which he himself belonged, and among which his labors had been chiefly exercised—to negotiate with Valens for permission to settle within the imperial territories; and on the revolt of the nation against their new protectors, he was sent on an unsuccessful mission to the emperor immediately before the battle of Adrianople. The death of Ulfilas took place in 388, at Constantinople, where he was endeavoring to mediate with Theodosius in behalf of his Arian subjects.

Ulfilas employed civilization as the handmaid of religion. To him his countrymen were indebted for the invention of an alphabet, and for a translation of the Scriptures—from which, it is said, the books of Samuel and Kings were excluded, lest their warlike contents should be found too congenial to the ferocity of the barbarians. The Goths received their bishop’s words as law; and through his influence they were unhappily drawn away from the orthodox faith, which they had at first professed. The date and the circumstances of this change are subjects of much disputed Ulfilas, indeed, appears to have been more distinguished for practical efficiency than for theological knowledge, and to have imperfectly apprehended the importance of the question between Arianism and Nicene orthodoxy. He is known to have been associated with Acacius and Eudoxius at Constantinople in 360, and to have signed the creed of Rimini; but it would seem that he nevertheless kept up his connection with the Catholics after that time, and that the distinct profession of Arianism among the Goths did not take place until the reign of Valens, when it became a condition of their admission into the emperor's dominions. When that heresy had been ejected from the church—when it had ceased to be debated in councils and to exercise the learning and the acumen of cultivated theologians—it gained a new importance as being the creed of the barbarian multitudes who overran the empire.

THE SARACENS.

The existence of lately-founded churches among the Saracens on the borders of Arabia is mentioned by Eusebius. The roving bands of this wild people were greatly impressed by the life of the monks who had retired to the deserts, and they visited them with reverence. In the reign of Valens, a Saracen queen, named Mavia, who had been at war with the Romans, stipulated as a condition of peace that Moses, a solitary of renowned sanctity, should be given to her nation as bishop. Moses reluctantly consented to undertake the office, but absolutely refused to receive consecration from Lucius, the Arian bishop of Alexandria; and he was eventually consecrated by some of the orthodox bishops who were in exile.

 

II. RELATIONS OF CHURCH AND STATE.

For nearly three hundred years the church had been providentially left to develop itself as a society unconnected with the powers of this world, and by the time when its faith was adopted by the emperors of Rome, it had attained the condition of a great independent body, with a regular and settled organization. But, although it had thus far appeared as separate, it was not incapable of a connection with the state, in which the religious element should hallow the secular, while, the secular power in turn should lend its influence for the advancement of religion. There was, however, danger lest, in such a connection, one or both of the parties should forget that the church is not a function of the state, but is itself a divinely-instituted spiritual kingdom; and, while it was thus possible that ecclesiastics might rely too much on the secular power, there was also the opposite danger, that they might assume towards it an authority professedly derived from heaven, but really unwarranted by any Christian principle.

When Constantine became a convert to the gospel, the change found both parties imperfectly prepared for understanding the relations which resulted from it. It was likely that the emperor, who was by office Pontifex Maximus—the highest minister of heathen religion, and knowing no authority in that system more sacred than his own,—would be unwilling to accept, or even unable to conceive, the different position which was assigned to him in his new communion. It was likely that the clergy, unused as they had hitherto been to intercourse with persons of such exalted rank, would be dazzled on finding themselves invited to associate with the sovereign of the Roman world, and would be disposed to allow him an undue control in spiritual affairs. Yet on the other hand, as Constantine became their pupil in religion, the power nominally exercised by the emperor was virtually wielded by those ecclesiastics who for the time held possession of his mind. And although the party which had the ascendency during the last years of his reign, and throughout that of Constantius, lent itself unduly to the assumptions of the emperors, yet this servility was not without some good effect, inasmuch as the imperial interference, however objectionable in itself, was thus veiled under the appearance of regular ecclesiastical proceedings. The deprivations, ejections, and intrusions of bishops were sanctioned by subservient synods; so that, in respect of form, the age of Constantine and Constantius has not left the embarrassing precedents which would have resulted if the temporal power had been arrayed on one side and the church on the other, without the intervention of a secular, unscrupulous, and numerous faction of ecclesiastics. And, lamentable as it is that, almost in the first years of the connection between church and state, the emperor should be seen on the side of heterodoxy, even this also had its advantage. Whereas the patronage and co-operation of the court might have lulled the orthodox into security, and they might thus have silently and unconsciously yielded up their rights, as suspecting no evil from a friend, the disfavor and discountenance which they met with guarded them against such submission; they were forced to declare at the earliest stage that the power of the emperor in spiritual things was not unlimited. And it may be matter of instruction and of comfort in later times, to know that any difficulties which may be experienced in dealing with those earthly powers to which Christians are bound to yield a willing obedience in all lawful things, were not without a parallel in that very age to which the imagination might be disposed to attribute almost an ideal perfection in respect of the relations between the church and the state.

Eusebius speaks of Constantine as a “kind of general bishop”, and elsewhere relates that the emperor once told some of his episcopal guests that, as they were bishops within the church, so he himself was bishop without it. The meaning of these words has been disputed with a zeal which would attribute too much both of precision and of importance to a saying sportively uttered at table; but it is at least certain that Constantine acted as if he believed himself entitled to watch over the church, to determine which of conflicting opinions was orthodox, and to enforce theological decisions by the strength of the secular power. His own appearance in the council of Nicaea while he was yet unbaptized, the presidency of Constantius, while only a catechumen, at the council of Antioch, and his deputation of lay officers to control the synods of Rimini and Seleucia, are instances of the manner in which the imperial superintendence was exerted. And yet (as has been before observed) in all these cases, whatever there may have been of lay control, the formal decision of matters was left to the voice of the bishops. The pains which were taken to draw prelates of high personal or official authority—such as Athanasius, Hosius, and Liberius— into a compliance with the measures of the court, are also a remarkable testimony to the importance which was attached to the episcopal judgments.

The introduction of general councils contributed greatly to increase the imperial influence. These assemblies were necessarily summoned by the emperor, since no spiritual authority possessed the universal jurisdiction which was requisite for the purpose; their decisions were confirmed by him, promulgated with his sanction, and enforced by civil penalties of his appointment.

ECCLESIASTICAL JUDICATURE.

The emperor was regarded as the highest judge in all causes. The bishops of Rome considered it a dis­tinction to be allowed to plead for themselves before his judgment-seat, after the example of St. Paul. But it soon began to be felt that both bishops and presbyters were disposed to carry to the imperial tribunal matters in which the judgment of their brethren had been, or was likely to be, pronounced against them. In order to check this, the council of Antioch, in 341, and that of Sardica, in 347, passed canons, by which it was forbidden to haunt the court under pretext of suits, or to appeal to the emperor except with the consent of the metropolitan and other bishops of the province to which the appellant belonged. In the earlier times, it had been usual for Christians, in order to avoid the scandal of exposing their differences before heathen tribunals, to submit them to the arbitration of the bishops. The influence which the bishops had thus acquired was greatly increased by a law which is usually (though perhaps erroneously) referred to Constantine. It was ordered that, if both parties in a case consented to submit it to the episcopal decision, the sentence should be without appeal; and the secular authorities were charged to carry it out. Many later enactments relate to this subject. In some canons, persons who should decline the bishop’s jurisdiction are censured as showing a want of charity towards the brethren. By this power of arbitration, the bishops were drawn into much secular business, and incurred the risk of enmity and obloquy. To some of them the judicial employment may possibly have been more agreeable than the more spiritual parts of their function; but many, like St. Augustine, felt it as a grievous burden and distraction, and some relieved themselves of the labor by appointing clerical or lay delegates to act for them.

Constantius in 355 enacted that bishops should be tried only by members of their own order—i.e., in synods. But this privilege was limited by Gratian, who in 376 ordered that matters which concerned religion and ecclesiastical discipline should belong to bishops and ecclesiastical, synods, but that criminal jurisdiction should be reserved to the secular courts; and such was the general principle of the age. As, however, crimes are also sins, and the boundaries which separate eccle­siastical from secular questions are not always easy to determine, there arose frequent cases of difficulty between secular punishment and ecclesiastical penance; indeed, the legislation of the early part of the fifth century on this subject is inconsistent with itself—showing at once the weakness of the emperors and the watchfulness of the ecclesiastical authorities. In cases of crime the clerical office was not as yet supposed to carry with it any exemption from the secular jurisdiction.

INFLUENCE OF CHRISTIANITY ON LAW.

The influence of the gospel, which had perhaps begun in some degree to affect the Roman legislation even while paganism was yet the religion of the state, was now more directly and more powerfully exerted in this respect. Moral offences, of which former legislation had taken no notice, were denounced; and at the same time a humaner spirit is found to interpose for the protection of the weak, for the restraint of oppression, and for the mitigation of cruel punishments. The bishops were often charged by law with the duty of befriending various classes of persons who might stand in need of assistance; thus a law of Honorius, in 409, which orders that judges should on every Sunday examine prisoners as to the treatment which they received, imposes on the bishops the duty of superintending its execution. As magistrates became Christian, the church exercised a supervision over them which was of considerable effect; and sometimes the clergy pronounced its censures on local governors who had exercised their power tyrannically. Thus Athanasius excommunicated a governor of Libya and Synesius, bishop of Ptolemais, a generation later, excommunicated Andronicus, governor of Pentapolis.

Intercession for offenders became an acknowledged duty and privilege of the clergy, who often successfully interfered to save the lives of criminals in the hope that penance might enable them to make their peace with heaven. But this right of intercession was liable to abuse and corruption. Some of the clergy sold their  influence for money; monks and others, in the latter part of the century, carried their extravagance so far as forcibly to rescue malefactors on the way to execution; and laws were enacted to check such perverse and disorderly exhibitions of humanity.

The privilege of asylum, which had belonged to some temples, became attached to all churches; and although the earliest laws on the subject date only from the last years of the century, they recognize the privilege as having long before existed on the ground of popular opinion. In the state of society which then was, the institution had many important uses; but corruptions naturally crept in, and against these edicts were issued. Thus Theodosius enacted in 392 that public debtors who took refuge in churches should be delivered up, or else that their debts should be paid by the bishop who sheltered them. The younger Theodosius, in 431-2, while he extended the right of sanctuary to the whole precinct which surrounded churches, found it expedient at the same time to guard the privilege against some misuses; and in the following century further restrictions were imposed by Justinian.

III. THE HIERARCHY. COPIATAE. PARABOLANI.DEACONS

Of the changes among the lower clergy during this period (besides the creation of some new offices which were required by the necessities of the church) may be mentioned the institution of two local fraternities —the copiatae of Constantinople and the parabolani of Alexandria. The copiatae or fossarii (grave-diggers) were employed in burying the dead—especially the Christian poor, whose interment was free of cost; their number was 1100 under Constantine, but was reduced to 950 by a law of the younger Theodosius. It appears that similar guilds were established in other populous cities. The parabolani (so called from the hazardous nature of their duties) were appointed to attend on the sick. In the dissensions of the Alexandrian church they acquired a character for turbulence, so that in 416 the inhabitants of the city preferred a complaint against them to Theodosius the Second. The parabolani were therefore laid under some restraints by the emperor, and their number was reduced to 500; but two years later it was raised to 6oo. Both the copiatae and the parabolani were reckoned as belonging to the clergy, and enrolment among them was sought for the sake of the privileges and exemptions which were attached to it. In many cases the membership appears to have been honorary— persons of wealth paying for admission, enjoying the immunities, and taking no share in the duties. Against this corruption a law of Theodosius II was directed.

The deacons, whose number in some of the greater churches was still limited to seven, acquired an increase of importance in proportion to the greater wealth which was entrusted to their administration. The power of baptizing and of preaching was now occasionally conferred on them, and some of them even took on themselves the priestly function as to the consecration of the Eucharist; but this usurpation was strongly forbidden. In some cases they claimed precedence of the presbyters, and would have regarded it as a degradation to be ordained to the presbyterate, so that canons were even found necessary to check their assumptions. In every considerable church one of the deacons presided over the rest. It is uncertain at what time this office of archdeacon was introduced : at Carthage it would seem to have been towards the end of the third century, as it is not mentioned by St. Cyprian, whereas, about fifty years later, Caecilian is described as archdeacon to Mensurius. The distinction of one deacon above his brethren may perhaps have been originally a matter of personal eminence, and may have afterwards come to be established as official. The archdeacon was appointed by the bishop; he was his chief assistant in the government of the church, and was generally regarded as likely to succeed to the bishopric. In the end of the fourth century a similar presidency over the presbyters was given in some churches to an archpriest (archipresbyter)—to whom the administration of the diocese was entrusted in the absence or incapacity of the bishop.

CHOREPISCOPI.

The position of the chorepiscopi was found to excite the jealousy of the superior bishops. Their functions were therefore more strictly limited by canons, and in some quarters a movement was made for the suppression of the office. The council of Laodicea forbids the appointment of bishops in villages and country places; it orders that, in their stead, presbyters with the title of periodeutae (circuit-visitors)—answering to the archdeacons or rural deans of our own church—should be employed, and that the chorepiscopi already ordained should do nothing without the approbation of the city bishops. In the following century, however, chorepiscopi are mentioned as sitting in the council of Chalcedon, although only as delegates of other bishops; and the title is found much later, both in the east and in the west. Thus, the second council of Nicaea, in 787, speaks of chorepiscopi as ordaining readers by permission of the bishops,—a notice which seems to imply that they then belonged to the order of presbyters, and were much the same with the periodeutae intended by the Laodicean canon. The western chorepiscopi of the eighth and ninth centuries will come under our notice hereafter.

EXARCHS.PATRIARCHS.

The system of distinctions within the order of bishops was now carried out more fully than in the former period. The religious divisions of the Roman world had generally followed the civil divisions, although this rule was not without exceptions; and thus, when Constantine introduced a new partition of the empire into dioceses, each of which embraced several provinces, a nearly corresponding arrangement naturally followed in the church. The bishop of the chief city in each diocese rose to a pre-eminence above the other metropolitans. These bishops usually received in the east the title of exarch, and in the west that of primate; the most eminent of them were afterwards styled patriarchs—a title which had formerly been given to all bishops, and of which the new and restricted sense appears to have been adopted from the Jews. The degree of authority exercised by patriarchs or exarchs was not uniform. It was greatest at Alexandria, where the patriarch had the right of consecrating all the bishops of Egypt and Libya without the intervention of metropolitans. The bishop of Rome had a like power within his narrower jurisdiction, where, as in Egypt, the grade of metropolitans had not yet been introduced; but in other countries it was usual that the chief bishop should consecrate the metropolitans, and that these should consecrate the inferior bishops.

With the introduction of the larger ecclesiastical divisions came that of synods collected from their whole extent. The patriarchs or exarchs presided; and these councils became the highest ordinary authorities in the affairs of the church.

THE THREE CHIEF SEES.

The council of Nicaea recognizes three principal sees—Rome, Alexandria, and Antioch—as presiding over the churches in their respective quarters. Each of these three was at once the church of a great capital, and was reckoned to have the honor of apostolical foundation. From the time when Constantine raised Byzantium to its new dignity, the bishopric of that city, which had previously been subject to the metropolitan of Heraclea, the civil capital of Thrace, necessarily became an important position, insomuch that, even before any formal grant of ecclesiastical privileges or precedence had as yet been conferred on it, Eudoxius was supposed to be promoted by a translation to Constantinople from the great and venerable see of Antioch. The second general council enacted that the bishop of Constantinople should stand next to the bishop of Rome, “forasmuch as it is a new Rome”—a reason which clearly shows that, in the opinion of the assembled bishops, the secular greatness of the old capital was the ground on which its ecclesiastical precedence rested. The honor thus bestowed on Constantinople was not, however, accompanied by any gift of jurisdiction.

The causes which, during the earlier period, had acquired for Rome a pre-eminence over all other churches were, in the fourth century, reinforced by new and important circumstances. Although within his own city the bishop was restrained by the prevalence of heathenism among the nobility, the removal of the court gave him a position of independence and importance beyond what he could have obtained if the imperial splendor had been displayed on the same scene with his own dignity; and the Arian controversies greatly increased his influence in relation to the whole church. In the distractions of the eastern Christians, the alliance of the west was strongly desired by each party. The bishop of Rome, as being the chief pastor in the western church, naturally became the organ of communication with his oriental brethren, to whom he appeared as the representative of the whole west, and almost as wielding its entire authority. Even where one of the oriental parties protested against his interference, the Roman bishop gained by the application of the other party for his aid, or by its consent to his proceedings. Except during the temporary lapse of Liberius, the Roman influence was steadily on the side of orthodoxy, and as Rome thus stood in honorable contrast with the variations of the eastern bishops, its constancy acquired for it strength as well as credit, and the triumph of the cause which it had espoused contributed to the elevation of the see. Moreover, the old civil analogy introduced a practice of referring for advice to Rome from all parts of the west. The earliest extant answer to such an application is the synodical letter of Siricius to Himerius, bishop of Tarragona, AD 385. But by degrees these “decretal epistles” rose more and more from a tone of advice to one of direction and command; and they were no longer written in the name of a synod, but in that of the pope alone.

THE ROMAN SEE.

The records of this time, however, while they show the progress of Rome towards the position which she afterwards attained, are utterly subversive of the presence that that position belonged to her from the beginning, and by virtue of divine appointment. Thus, when the council of Nicaea, with a view to the schism of the Egyptian Meletius, ordained that the bishop of Alexandria should, agreeably to ancient custom, have jurisdic­tion over Egypt, Libya, and the Pentapolis, “forasmuch as this is also customary for the Roman bishop”—and further, that “in Antioch and in other provinces the privileges of churches should be preserved”—it is evident that no other right over his suffragans is ascribed to the bishop of Rome than that which is also acknowledged to belong to the bishop of Alexandria; and that the privileges of these and of other sees are alike referred to ancient usage as their common foundation.

Again, when the council of Sardica enacted that any bishop who should wish to appeal from a synod might, with the consent of his judges, apply to Julius, bishop of Rome, and that, if the bishop of Rome thought fit, a new trial should be granted—it is clear that the power assigned to the Roman bishop is not recognized as one which he before possessed, but was then conferred by the council. The bishop of Rome had no power of evoking the cause from before another tribunal; he had no personal voice in the decision; he could only receive appeals 011 the application of the councils from which they were made—the power of making such appeals being limited to bishops—and commit the trial of them to the bishops bordering on the appellant’s province, with the addition, if he should think fit, of legates representing himself. Moreover, as the council of Sardica was composed of western bishops only, there was no pretext for enforcing this canon on the eastern church; and, as the occasion which led to the enactment was temporary, so the mention of Julius by name, without any reference to his successors, seems to indicate that the power conferred was temporary and personal, and was granted in consideration of the pledges which the Roman bishop had given for his adherence to the orthodox cause. Indeed, it may be said that this power was only such as in ordinary circumstances would have been acknowledged to belong to the emperor, and that it was transferred to Julius, because the exercise of it could not be safely left in the hands of the Arian Constantius. In like manner, when Gratian, in 378, with a view of withdrawing the partisans of Ursicinus from secular tribunals, acceded to the request of a Roman synod that the judgment of them should be committed to Damasus, the temporary and special nature of the grant is inconsistent with any such idea as that the jurisdiction of which it speaks had before belonged to the bishops of Rome, or was an ordinary prerogative of their office.

The old Latin version of the Nicene canons, and Rufinus in his summary of them, define the jurisdiction of the Roman bishop as extending over the “suburbicarian churches”.  The name of suburbicarian was given to the provinces which composed the civil diocese of Rome —the seven provinces of middle and lower Italy, with the Islands of Corsica, Sardinia, and Sicily. To these the patriarchate of Rome was then limited—Milan, Aquileia, and afterwards Ravenna, being independent centers of ecclesiastical government. And since both language and historical facts combine to support this view, it is needless to consider seriously such constructions of the canon as that which would persuade us that by the “suburbicarian churches” were meant all those of the western empire, or even all the churches of the world.

The interference of the Roman bishop was still resisted whenever he attempted to invade the privileges of other churches. The African and the eastern churches acted throughout in entire independence of the Roman authority and frequent canons were made against carrying causes out of the provinces to which they belonged. There was no idea of any divine right of superiority to other churches; for, although it was often said that the bishop of Rome ought to be honored as the successor of St. Peter, that apostle himself was not yet regarded as more than the first among equals, nor were his successors supposed to have inherited any higher distinction above their brethren in the episcopate.

CONDITION OF THE CLERGY.

From the time of Constantine the members of the Christian ministry attained a new social position, with secular advantages which had until then been unknown. The exemption from curial offices, which was granted to them by the first Christian emperor, was, indeed, withdrawn or limited by his successors; but they enjoyed a valuable privilege in their freedom from all “sordid” offices, and from some of the public imposts, although still liable to the land-tax, and to most of the ordinary burdens. The taxes to be paid by ecclesiastics who were engaged in trade were regulated by laws of Constantius, Valentinian, and Gratian; and from the fact that such laws were passed, rather than a prohibition of trading, it may probably be inferred that resources of this kind were still necessary for the support of some among the clergy. The wealth of the body, however, was vastly increased. Constantine, besides munificent occasional gifts, bestowed on them a stated allowance of corn, which was revoked by Julian. Jovian restored a third part of this, and promised to add the rest when the cessation of a famine then raging should enable him to do so; but his reign ended before he could fulfill his intention, and the promise was disregarded by his successors. Tithes were now paid—not, however, by legal compulsion, but as a voluntary offering— so that we need not wonder to find complaints of difficulty and irregularity in the payment; and a very great addition of riches flowed in on the church in consequence of the law of Constantine which allowed it to receive bequests of property.

These changes naturally operated for evil as well as for good. For the sake of the secular benefits connected with the ministry, many unfit persons sought ordination; while the higher dignities of the church became objects of ambition for men whose qualifications were not of a spiritual kind. At the election of a bishop, unworthy arts were employed by candidates; accusations which, whether true or false, give no agreeable idea of the prevailing tone of morals, were very commonly brought by each faction against the favorite of its opponents; and disgraceful tumults often took place.

The intercourse of courts was a trial for the bishops; while in many it naturally produced subserviency, in others it led to a mistaken exaltation of spiritual dignity in opposition to secular rank. Thus, it is told with admiration that St. Martin of Tours, when at the court of Maximus, allowed the empress to wait on him at table; and that, when the emperor had desired him to drink first, and expected to receive the cup back from him, the bishop passed it to his own chaplain, as being higher in honor than any earthly potentate.

Luxury and pride increased among the clergy of the great cities. St. Jerome agrees with Ammianus Marcellinus as to the excessive pomp by which the Roman hierarchy was distinguished, the splendor of their dress and equipages, the sumptuousness of their feasts; while the heathen historian bears a testimony which is above suspicion to the contrast presented by the virtue, simplicity, and self-denial of the provincial bishops and clergy in general. Praetextatus, an eminent pagan magistrate, who was concerned in suppressing the feuds of Damasus and Ursicinus, sarcastically told Damasus that he himself would forthwith turn Christian, if he might have the bishopric of Rome. The emperors found it necessary to restrain by law the practices of monks and clergy for obtaining gifts and legacies. Thus Valentinian, by a law which was addressed to Damasus, and was read in all the churches of the capital, enacted that ecclesiastics and monks should not haunt the houses of widows or of female wards; and that they should not accept anything by donation or will from women who were connected with them by spiritual ties. Jerome, who draws many lively pictures of the base devices by which some of his brethren insinuated themselves into the favor of wealthy and aged persons, says, with reference to this edict, “I do not complain of the law, but I grieve that we should have deserved it”. Other acts followed, annulling all dispositions of property which women on professing a religious life might make to the prejudice of their natural heirs, and guarding against the evasions which might be attempted by means of fictitious trusteeships. Such bequests were, however, discouraged and often refused by the more conscientious bishops, such as St. Ambrose and St. Augustine. And while we note the facts which show how in this age, as in every other, the church but too truly realized those parables which represent it as containing a mixture of evil amidst its good, we must not overlook the noble spirit of munificence and self-denial which animated multitudes of its bishops and clergy, or their exertions in such works of piety and charity as the relief of the poor, the redemption of captives, the erection of hospitals, and the adornment of the divine worship.

(8.) The changes of the fourth century tended to depress the popular element in the church. By the acknowledgment of their religion on the part of the state, by the increase of wealth, by their intercourse with personages of the highest rank, by the frequency of synods collected from large divisions of the church, and limited to their own order, by the importance which accrued to them when questions of theology entered into politics, and agitated the whole empire—the bishops were raised to a greater elevation than before above the other orders of the clergy. The administration of the church was more thrown into their hands; and in the election of bishops the influence of the order became greater, chiefly in consequence of the factions of the people. Thus, when a vacant see was disputed by exasperated parties, it often happened that the prelates whose business it was to ratify the election, suggested a third candidate by way of compromise, and that their nomination was accepted. In some cases the election, instead of being held in the city for which a bishop was to be appointed, was transferred to the metropolis of the province. The privilege of choice, which was often injudiciously used by the multitude, was gradually limited by canons which fixed the qualifications for the episcopate. And, although the right of voting was not yet restricted to persons of superior station, the emperor swayed the elections to the greater sees—especially those of the cities in which he resided—and sometimes directly nominated the bishops.

The orders of the ministry remained as before, but it was not usual to proceed regularly through the lower grades to the higher. Thus we find that very commonly deacons were raised to the episcopate, or readers to the presbyterate, without passing through even a symbolical ordination to the intermediate offices; and we have seen in the instances of Ambrose and Nectarius that even unbaptized persons were chosen for bishops, and, after receiving baptism, were advanced at once to the highest order of the ministry.

The practice of forcible ordinations was a remarkable feature of this age. The only expedient by which a person could protect himself against the designs of a bishop or a congregation who considered him fit for spiritual office, was that of swearing that he would not submit to be ordained; for it was thought that one who had taken an oath of this kind ought not to be compelled to forswear himself. When the custom of such ordinations had been introduced, reluctance to undertake the ministerial function was often feigned for the purpose of gaining importance. Both forced ordinations and the hasty promotion of neophytes were after a time forbidden by canons and by imperial edicts, in some of which a curious distinction was made between the case of bishops who had been ordained without their own consent, and that of presbyters or lower clergy in like circumstances. The latter were allowed to renounce their orders; but this liberty was denied to the bishops, on the ground that none were really worthy of the episcopate but such as were chosen against their will. In the fifth century, ordination began to be employed as a means of disqualifying persons who had been unfortunate in political life for taking any further part in the public affairs of the world. Some of the latest emperors of the west were set aside by this expedient.

CELIBACY

The influence of the monastic spirit tended to advance the practice of celibacy among the clergy, and the opinion of its obligation. At the council of Nicaea, it was proposed that married bishops, presbyters, and deacons should be compelled to abstain from intercourse with their wives; but Paphnutius, an Egyptian bishop, strongly opposed the motion. He dwelt on the holiness of Christian marriage, and represented the inexpediency of imposing on the clergy a yoke which many of them might be unable to bear, and which might therefore become the occasion of sin, and injurious to the church. It was, he said, enough to adhere to the older law, by which marriage after the reception of the higher orders was forbidden. The argument was strengthened by the character of the speaker. He was honored as a confessor, having lost his right eye and had his left thigh hamstrung in the last persecution; he had a high reputation for sanctity, so that he was even supposed to possess miraculous power; his motives were above suspicion, as he himself lived in celibacy and strict asceticism. Under his guidance, therefore, the council rejected the proposal; and the example thus set by the most revered of ecclesiastical assemblies was followed in other quarters. Thus, the council of Gangra, which was held chiefly for the consideration of the errors imputed to Eustathius of Sebaste, condemns, among other extravagances connected with this subject, the refusal to communicate with married priests. And in the eastern churches generally, although the practice of celibacy or of abstinence from conjugal intercourse became usual, it continued to the end of the century to be voluntary.

In the west, an important step towards the establishment of celibacy was taken by Siricius, in his decretal epistle of the year 385, addressed to Himerius, bishop of Tarragona. After stating that some clergymen had had children, and had defended themselves by pleading the Mosaic law, he argues that the cases are unlike, inasmuch as among the Jews the priesthood was hereditary, whereas among Christians it is not so; and further that, as the Jewish priests separated themselves from their wives during the periods of ministering in the temple, so for the Christian clergy, who are always on duty, the separation must be perpetual. He ordered that presbyters and deacons should abstain from their wives; that such as had before violated this rule through ignorance should be allowed to retain their places, but on condition of observing continence, and without the hope of promotion; that if any one attempted to defend the contrary practice, he should be deposed; that no man who had married a widow, or who had been more than once married, should be eligible to the ministry; and that clergy contracting such marriages should be deposed. The frequency of enactments in pursuance of this decretal, and the mitigations of its provisions which some of them contain, indicate that great difficulty was found in enforcing it; and this inference is amply supported by other facts.

In proportion as the marriage of ecclesiastics was discouraged, the practice of entertaining female companions or attendants in their houses increased. The council of Nicaea enacted that no women should be admitted in this capacity, except such as from near relationship or from age might be regarded as beyond suspicion of improper familiarity with the clergy.