SYNODS OF AQUILEIA AND ROME.

AD 380-383.

About the end of 377 or the beginning of 378, Gratian, when on the eve of going eastwards to assist Valens in his troubles, had requested Ambrose to furnish him with some written instruction on the subject of the Nicene faith, which his stepmother, his uncle, and his uncle’s Gothic enemies agreed in rejecting. Ambrose replied by sending him two books “On the Faith”.

The emperor returned the work, and was so pleased with it, that, after the load of government had been lightened by the elevation of Theodosius, he wrote a letter with his own hand to Ambrose, begging him to send him the volume again, and also to visit him, and afford him more instruction.

The teaching of Macedonius had rendered it needful that the Deity of God the Holy Ghost should be explained and proved, and Gratian was anxious to be enlightened on this point as well as on the special doctrine of the Council of Nicaea. Ambrose sent the two books “on the Faith” as requested, and subsequently added to them three more books, supplementing the two he had already produced on the coequal Deity of the eternal Son. To the emperor’s letter he replied in the first—or at least the first to which a definite date can he assigned—which we have of a long series extending to within a few months of his decease.

The tone and diction of the bishop’s letter are peculiar, and scarcely what we should expect from what we know of his character. They savour more of the courtly consular of Liguria than of the stern ascetic prelate of Milan. He excuses himself for not immediately resorting to the imperial presence, and asks to be permitted to defer the writing of the desired work, promising to set about it in process of time (we know that he had the three books “on the Faith” in hand); and ends with a flourish about glory and peace which would sound almost like a sarcasm were it not coupled with a benediction. The promise was fulfilled in less than two years. Early in 381 Gratian received the three books “on the Holy Ghost”.

The results at once of this teaching and of the election of an orthodox bishop of Sirmium were speedily seen. Two Illyrian bishops, Palladius and Secundianus, were known to be of the party which declined to accept the Nicene creed; and their new metropolitan lost no time in bringing them to trial. A synod of bishops, from Illyricum, Gaul, and Italy, was summoned; and it is worthy of remark that it was convoked by the emperor’s authority, his rescript, addressed apparently to the vicarius of each of the diocceses, or civil departments, from which the members of the synod came, being formally read by a deacon at the opening of the synodical proceedings. By the advice of Ambrose, this document states, who thought it unnecessary to bring together a large number, the aged and infirm bishops, and those who were not in good circumstances, were excused from attendance. The synod met at Aquileia on the 3rd September, 381. This city appears to have been chosen in preference to Milan, not only as being more central, but because there was less fear of such a tumult there as might easily have been excited in the metropolis of northern Italy. Thirty-three bishops took their seats, three of them, the bishops of Marseilles, Orange, and Lyons, being commissioners from Gaul, and two, Felix and Numidius, from Africa : two presbyters also took part in the council. The chair was taken (to use our own familiar expression) by Valerian, bishop of Aquileia; but the proceedings were conducted almost exclusively by the bishop of Milan.

Palladius demurred to the authority of the synod, and complained of the absence of the bishops of the East, who, he thought, would have taken his part; appealing to a full council, before which he professed himself ready to plead. But Ambrose disregarded all his excuses, and simply put to him the question, “Will you. or will you not, repudiate Arius and his errors?” To this question Palladius refused an answer. He entered, however, into a verbal contest with Ambrose, and one or two of the other bishops, in which he admitted that Christ is the Son of God, and spoke of His “divinity”, but declined to admit Him to be true God, or to speak of Him as equal to the Father. His companion Secundianus tried a little skirmish, but in vain. After a sitting which lasted from early morning till 1 p.m., both were, as we might expect, condemned by a unanimous vote, together with a presbyter named Attalus, who, after signing at Nicaea, had fallen away from the faith.

The decision of the synod was announced in a short letter to the churches of Gaul, and in a longer one to the three emperors (Gratian, Valentinian, and Theodosius), in which the members of the synod thank them for convening it, and beg them to earn-out its decrees. They also request that the Photinians in Sirmium may be prevented from holding meetings.

COUNCIL OF CONSTANTINOPLE.       

We are struck with the unqualified manner in which this letter to Valentinian (now ten years old) denounces the religion which his mother was teaching him. This synodical was followed by a second, denouncing Ursinus, the old opponent of Damasus, now Bishop of Rome; and a third, requesting that a council might be held at Alexandria to put down the Arians.

The Aquileian synod was not the only one that met in the year 381. Theodosius, immediately after his baptism in 380 by the hand of Ambrose’s dear friend Ascholius, bishop of Thessalonica, began to take steps to check the progress of Arianism. He banished the principal adherents of that heresy, with Demophilus, the Arian bishop of Constantinople, at their head; and with the approval of a number of bishops invited the great Gregory of Nazianzus to fill the vacant post. For some reason or other, this eminent man had been first appointed by his metropolitan St. Basil to the obscure see of Sasima, and then placed in his father’s almost equally obscure see of Nazianzus : his translation to the primacy of the East was objected to on the ground of its being contrary to an ancient canon that a bishop should be removed from one diocese to another. In the year 380, how­ever, Gregory was Archbishop and Patriarch of Con­stantinople, though he shortly afterwards retired to Nazianzus. In May of the year 381 Theodosius summoned the Eastern bishops to meet at the capital, and deal with the Arian and other Church questions; especially the heresy of Macedonius, the deposed predecessor of Demophilus, who denied the personal Deity of the Holy Ghost. This synod is reckoned as the second of the Ecumenical Councils, its determinations having been accepted and endorsed by the whole Church, although the 150 prelates who composed it belonged to the eastern portion of the empire.

A large assembly of western bishops met at Rome in the next year (382) in a synod, which was attended, among others, by the celebrated St. Jerome, and formally proposed that a council should be held at Rome. This scheme had already been pressed, in a less formal way, on Theodosius in two letters from the Italian bishops; and it appears that Ambrose was the leading spirit among them. In the earlier of the two documents the Italians show themselves to be laboring under a strange misconception of the state of Church politics at Constantinople. They are ready to give up Gregory Nazianzen, and incline to take the part of Maximus, the Apollinarian heretic, against the orthodox Nectarius, who had been chosen to fill the high post from which the gentle and peace-loving Gregory had determined to retire. They fancy the consecration of Nectarius to have been irregular. As he was elected and consecrated much in the same manner as Ambrose himself, being chosen by the popular voice while holding the office of praetor, the Western bishops could not with any fairness complain. In their second letter they still ask for the Council, but apologize for their errors.

The prelates of Constantinople replied to the proposal by a synodical letter, showing the great difficulty of carrying out the scheme; and called upon their brethren in the West to acquiesce in their statement of the Christian faith, and especially of the doctrine of the Holy Trinity as enunciated at Nicaea. The epistle is addressed “To the noble lords and pious brethren and fellow-ministers, Damasus, Ambrose, Brito, Valerian, Ascholius, Anemius, Basil, and the other holy bishops assembled in the great city of Rome”. The name of the bishop of Milan, we see, stands second in the list, next after that of the bishop of Rome.

During this stay in the city where his youth had been spent, Ambrose had not only the great pleasure of meeting his friend Ascholius, and of visiting his sister Marcellina, but also the satisfaction of witnessing the removal of one of the last relics of paganism.

REMOVAL OF ALTAR OF VICTORY.    

The altar of victory which used to stand in the Senate-house had been, some thirty years before, removed by the order of the Emperor Constantius, who, though persuaded to take the part of the Arians, had no fondness for heathenism; Theodoret, indeed, thinks that he was a Catholic at heart. Julian had, naturally enough, ordered it to be replaced, and there it had remained till this year (382), when Gratian, who, we may remember, was under the guidance, sought by himself, of the Bishop of Milan, commanded that it should be taken away. The non-Christian or neutral senators, we understand, disapproved of this, as we might expect; but we gather from a letter of Ambrose to Valentinian in the next year that a petition for its removal had been drawn up by the Christian senators, sent to Damasus, Bishop of Rome, and by him entrusted to Ambrose, probably as being most in communication with the imperial court.

This was the last work that the pious emperor was permitted to do for Christianity. His zeal for the orthodox faith had brought upon him the hatred of those who still adhered to the paganism of Augustus, Diocletian, and Julian, and of the half-Christian followers of Arius and his disciples. We almost seem to trace in the accusations brought against him the secret influence of Justina, who hated her stepson with a stepmother's hatred, and Ambrose, his trusted adviser, as one by whom her intrigues at Sirmium had been foiled, and whose retention of the episcopal throne at Milan was a continued and unpleasing proof of her own weakness, and the popularity of himself and his faith.

Gratian’s youthful spirits (he was not five-and-twenty) led him to indulge freely, perhaps too freely, in the pleasures of the chase. He was interested in the strange customs and dress of the Alani, whom the Gothic victory at Adrianople in 378 had brought under his observation. With the heedlessness of youth, he took a body of these barbarians into his service as yeomen of the guard, and was unwise enough to appear from time to time arrayed for sport in the Scythic hunting-dress. These errors in judgment, or failures in good taste, venial in a private nobleman, were exaggerated into criminality in an emperor. And Gratian was too mild and gentle to hold firmly the government of an empire composed of discordant elements, and ready to fall to pieces from its own unwieldiness. Discontent, once suggested, flew rapidly from west to farther west; and the soldiery of Britain and Gaul were soon roused to revolt.

They were headed by Maximus, a Spaniard, a disappointed rival of his countryman Theodosius. He was in command in Britain; but to rule in our islands was not then the glorious office which God’s providence and fifteen centuries have since made it, and he longed for a higher title and wider power. With little difficulty he induced his soldiers to compel him to assume the imperial purple, and forthwith invaded Gaul.

Gratian went to meet him; but, deserted by his troops, fled to Lyons, where he was led to believe that he would find himself in safety. The promises he relied on were untrustworthy. Andragathias, one of the officers of Maximus, gained access to him by an unworthy stratagem. Enclosing himself in a carriage drawn by mules, such as ladies were accustomed to travel in, and giving out that it contained the wife of the Emperor, he met Gratian just as he was about to cross the Rhone and enter the city. The guards were deceived, and permitted him to approach, an opportunity of which he instantly availed himself by putting the Emperor to death : the victim in his last moments called on his beloved Ambrose. This tragic event happened on the 25th August, 383. One feels almost glad to know that the assassin perished by his own act about five years after.