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THE conversion of the Roman Emperor to Christianity in 312, an event of
such proportions that the Christians themselves were staggered thereby
for a generation and more, proved in the end to be as important a
turning point in the history of the Church's own development as in that
of her relations with the State. The century which saw, as an immediate
effect of the conversion, the steady de-Paganising of the Roman power,
saw also a much more violent sequel to it -- the struggle to determine
the role of the Christian Emperor within the Christian Church. That the
autocrat of the Roman world, master of all men's lives, and of the
destinies and fortunes of every institution within the world-state,
whom millions gladly worshipped as a god, and whom, by formal
etiquette, all men treated as semi-divine, that this personification of
human might would be, in the Church of Christ, no more than the equal
of his subjects, acknowledging there an authority within his State
which he did not control, was a consequence of the conversion that the
emperor did not realise by any sudden intuition. Nor did the Church as
a whole; and before the ecclesiastical mind [ ] had come to the clarity
of the formulae in which St. Ambrose fixed the matter for all time, the
Church had to pass through fifty years of a fight which, more than
once, seemed to threaten the death of the traditional faith. Caesar is
no sooner converted than, as the protector of the things that are
God's, he threatens to overshadow the hierarchy and its traditional
chief. More than any bishop, more than all the bishops, more than the
Bishop of Rome himself, Caesar in his role of Faith's defender will
determine the course of the Faith's development. When the first
Christian rulers appear, of the State in which the Church is born, the
Church meets, for the first time, the problem of Caesaro-Papism that
has never since ceased to vex her, of the Catholic prince who wills, in
effect, to be pope; the danger that princely benevolence threatens to
transform the mystical body of Christ into a department of State.
The occasion of the struggle is the renewal of a dispute about a point
of doctrine. The point, once again, is fundamental; how far is the
Church's founder divine, and therefore how far divine His work in the
Church. The disputes spread widely; they are conducted with spirit,
with energy and bitterness; and into the arena the whole social life of
the time is drawn: not scholars merely and bishops, but the whole lay
world, down to the charioteers and market-women. The mobs of the great
cities are passionately interested, and play their violent part. The
emperor intervenes. There is a council, a decision. The defeated party
bides its time; then, through the avenues by which at courts these
things are managed, it gradually turns the emperor round. The decision
of the council is left intact, but the emperor is worked upon to act
against the council’s promoters and defenders. There follows a
desperate endeavour on the part of the emperor to pacify the State by
forcibly imposing the heresy. In the end the heresy disappears, but not
even then is the Church's view of Caesar's role wholly victorious. For
if, in the East, heresy disappears, it is because an emperor succeeds
who is a Catholic. There it is by now a tradition that Caesar
interferes in matters of religion, and that he is a lawful court of
appeal. Whence, succeeding the struggle of the Church against Caesar
patronising heresy, a new struggle against the Catholic Caesar, now
fettering the Church with his insistent patronage. The second struggle
is not determined for centuries. It only ends with Caesar's victory and
the disappearance of the Church from his State.
Arianism, as a theological doctrine, was the outcome of yet another
effort of the Greek mind to reconcile rationally the truths that there
is but one God, that the Logos incarnate in Jesus Christ is God, and
that the Logos is yet admittedly distinct from the Father. If the
Father is God, and if God is one only, and if the Logos is not the
Father, how is the Logos God? The Gnostics of the second century had
proposed their solution, and a succession of other theories had
continued to trouble the peace of believers through all the next
hundred years. All in their turn had been condemned; for, whatever the
merit of these ingenious systems, none had produced a satisfactory
explanation which yet preserved the traditional faith in its integrity.
Praxeas, Noetus, and Sabellius ended by identifying Father and Logos.
Theodotus, on the other hand, and the more famous Paul of Samosata,
denied that the Logos is truly divine. Of Paul’s spectacular disgrace
we already know something. With him there fell, too, his friend the
priest Lucian, so notorious as heretical in this matter that he lay
excommunicated through the reigns of Paul’s three successors Later,
under what circumstances we do not know, Lucian made his peace and, in
the persecution of Galerius, gave his life for the Faith, 312. The
memory of his martyrdom was still fresh, and his tomb at Nicomedia, the
eastern capital, a centre of pilgrimage when, ten years later,
Constantine came to rule the East, and the new Emperor's mother, St.
Helen, adopted Lucian as her patron saint. Arius was the pupil of
Lucian, and Lucian the real father of Arianism. [ ]
The theory of Arianism is that "God is One, Eternal, Unbegotten. All
other beings are His creatures, the Logos the first of them. Like other
creatures the Logos was created from nothing and not from the divine
substance (ousia in the Greek). There was a time when the Logos did not
exist. His creation was not necessary, but due to the will of the
Father. The Logos, God's creature, is in turn the creator of all other
creatures and his relationship to them is a kind of justification of
his being called God. God adopted him as Son foreseeing his merits, for
the Logos is free, subject to change and determined to good by his own
will. From this adoptive sonship there does not result any real share
in the divine nature, any true likeness to it. There cannot be anything
like to God. The Holy Spirit is the first of the creatures created by
the Logos. He is even less God than the Logos. The Logos became flesh
in this sense that in Jesus Christ he took the place of the soul. "
Arius, at the time of Constantine's conversion, was a priest in
Alexandria known for his ascetic life, with a great following, among
the clergy and, especially, the consecrated virgins whom he directed in
the higher way. He was also a preacher of talent, and he began a few
years later to fill his church with a popular exposition of Lucian's
theory (318). The novelty had all a novelty's success until it was
officially brought to the notice of the Bishop of Alexandria. There
followed the usual procedure of enquiry and consultation, and it was
decided that Arius' explanation was not in accord with the traditional
belief. Arius was called upon to abandon it. He refused, and thereupon,
with his adherents, he was excommunicated. So far the dispute was on
the smallest possible scale -- an obscure priest and his bishop. But
the priest had travelled, had made friends, and some of these were
powerful. The most powerful of them was an old classfellow of the days
when, at Antioch, Arius had followed the lectures of Lucian. This was
Eusebius, now a bishop -- bishop indeed of the imperial city Nicomedia,
and related to the new imperial family. When, after his condemnation,
Arius set himself to write "to all the bishops," in writing to Eusebius
of Nicomedia he was writing to an assured ally. The Bishop of
Alexandria, too, wrote to the other bishops -- more than seventy
letters in all, among them one to the pope -- an official notification
of the heresy and the condemnation, to ensure that Arius, who by this
time had fled, should find himself condemned wherever he halted.
Arius, however, found a welcome among his friends at Nicomedia, and set
himself to organise a body of supporters. Letters, pamphlets, and
popular songs embodying his doctrine, poured from his pen. His bishop
replied, the other bishops took sides, and soon all the East was ablaze
with the controversy -- Egypt condemning Arius, the bishops of Asia,
led by Eusebius, supporting him. The dispute was still unsettled when,
in the September of 324, Constantine defeated the Eastern Emperor
Licinius and became, at last, sole master of the Roman world. To him
the disputants turned.
His first action was to send to Alexandria the bishop who most
possessed his confidence, Hosius of Cordova. It was possibly from this
meeting of Hosius and Alexander of Alexandria that there came the idea
of submitting the matter to a council that would not be local merely,
as all councils up to now had been, but would gather in all the bishops
of the Church. Whatever the origin of the plan, Constantine made it his
own. It was in his name that the bishops were invited; he provided the
travelling facilities which alone made its meeting possible; and he
chose the place where it should assemble, Nicea, a city of Bithynia,
close to his capital. The council opened in the June of 325. Estimates
differ as to the number of bishops present. Traditionally they were
318, but the creed bears the signatures of 220 only. They were almost
all from the eastern half of the Empire, fourteen only from Europe and
of these fourteen eleven were from European Greece. [ ] The Bishop of
Rome was absent; his age forbade his making the journey, but two of his
priests represented him. Hosius presided.
To the bishops who assisted at the magnificent festivities with which
the council opened, the whole affair must have seemed incredible. Most
of them had suffered for the Faith, some very recently indeed, in the
persecution of Licinius. They had seen their colleagues die atrociously
in its defence. Many of them, blind and lamed, still bore in their
bodies eloquent testimony of their own fidelity under trial. Now all
was changed, and the honoured guests of the power which so recently had
worked to destroy them, escorted by that soldiery the sight of whose
arms must still provoke memories at which they shuddered, the Catholic
bishops were come together with all possible pomp to regulate their
differences before the face of the world.
The minutes of the Council of Nicea have long since disappeared.
Apparently the procedure followed by the Roman Senate, and already
traditional in councils, was adopted. Each bishop who wished to speak
stated his opinion, and then followed the general discussion. The
parties soon showed themselves. For Arius there was a tiny fighting
band of seventeen, led by Eusebius. Of the rest, one large party was
against any innovation in the traditional Faith or in the manner of its
exposition, opposed indeed to the idea that any investigation was
necessary. Others were for examining every detail of the tradition
before reaffirming it.
Arius was given his chance. He stated his doctrine in all its bald
simplicity. The bishops agreed to condemn it. It was a more difficult
matter to agree on the form the condemnation should take. A
test-formula was needed which would express the traditional Faith
precisely as it differed from the heresy, and thus bar out the new
doctrine's adherents. Eusebius of Nicomedia had one ready. It was
rejected, because it was so ambiguous that Arians could sign it as
easily as Catholics. His namesake, Eusebius of Cesarea, -- " the Father
of Church History," one chief source for many earlier matters, down to
324, and who, also, from a Lucianist education, favoured Arius --
proposed a better. It was however, even so, too ambiguous to suit the
Council. Something more precise, a phrase which could not possibly be
interpreted in an Arian sense was needed; and finally, to express the
fullness of the Son's divinity in relation to that of the Father, the
term homoousion (i.e. consubstantial, of the same substance) was
proposed. It met the case admirably, and it was accepted. But not
without much discussion, hesitation and, even in the end, reluctance.
Quite apart from the Arianisers, whom such a close definition would
force into the open as innovators and drive out of the Church, there
were Catholics also who disliked this fashion of defining faith in new
terms not to be found in the Scriptures. Again this particular term
had, for Easterns, unhappy heretical associations. Paul of Samosata, it
was remembered, had used it fifty years earlier, not it is true to
express the idea that Father and Son are of the same nature, but with
the meaning that they are identical in person. Sabellius, too, had used
it to convey a like notion. Paul’s theory had been condemned and with
it the term he used, as he used it. On the other hand, with the meaning
now given it, the term had long been in use in the West. It was
Tertullian's consubstantialis translated, and Rome had given this use
an orthodox consecration in the settlement of the disputes about Denis
of Alexandria's orthodoxy now nearly seventy years ago. In favour of
the term homoousion, then, there was the great advantage that it
exactly met the need of the moment as did no other term; and there was
good warrant for its being so used. In this acceptance by Easterns of a
term they disliked but which had Roman use to support its orthodoxy, we
can perhaps discern a trace of Roman influence at the Council; the test
clause of the formulary it adopted was Roman. That formulary is the
famous Creed of Nicea. It deserves to be cited as the council
proclaimed it.
"We believe in one only God, the Father, Almighty, maker of all things
visible and invisible; and in one only Lord, Jesus Christ, the Son of
God, the sole-begotten of the Father, that is to say of the Father's
substance, God of God, Light of Light, true God of true God; begotten
not made, consubstantial with the Father (homoousion to Patri), by whom
all things were made; who for us men and for our salvation came down,
became incarnate, became man, suffered, was raised again on the third
day, ascended back to heaven and will come again to judge the living
and the dead; and in the Holy Spirit. As for those who say 'There was a
time when He did not exist; before He was begotten He did not exist; He
was made from nothing or from another substance or essence; the Son of
God is a created being, changeable, capable of alteration,' to such as
these the Catholic Church says Anathema."
With two exceptions all the bishops signed, whatever their real
beliefs, whatever their doubts as to the prudence of the defining word.
Eusebius of Nicomedia at the solicitation of his patron Constantia,
Constantine's sister, the widow of Licinius, signed with the rest. The
two recalcitrants were promptly exiled, and the Emperor's orders were
sent to Alexandria to secure the acceptance of the council’s decision
and the removal of dissidents.
Here the history of Arianism should have ended. But now, for the first
time in the history of the Church, a heresy was, after its
condemnation, not only to survive, but to survive within the Church, to
be protected there and maintained, and to be a cause of disorders whose
bitter fruits are with us still; and all this was because now, for the
first time, there remained to the condemned heretics the resource of
appealing against the condemnation to that new element in the Church,
the Christian Emperor. A new untraditional procedure is to begin to
function; the new circumstance of Caesar's being a Christian is to be
made to tell. It is the condemned who will attempt it, and their
success will not only create a precedent for future condemned heretics,
but initiate Caesar into the exercise of new unlawful power, create in
him a taste for it, and habituate him to its exercise.
The first attempt to reopen the question ended badly for those who
organised it. Some of the dispossessed Arians from Alexandria came to
court to plead their case. Eusebius and a neighbouring bishop --
Theognis of Nicea -- supported them, but too enthusiastically. The
appellants were dismissed and the two bishops exiled. In exile they
remained for three years.
It is with the return of Eusebius in 330 that the next chapter in the
story begins. Eusebius was no mere theorist concerned only to expound
his unorthodox views, but a cool and capable leader who must, in order
to retain his influence and position, either capitulate to the forces
which had defeated him in 325 and exiled him in 327, or now, in his
turn, drive them out. He realised that a frontal attack on the Council
of Nicea would fail. Constantine was too attached to the council and to
its definition as his own achievement to tolerate, where these were
concerned, any other attitude than obedient submission. It was,
however, another matter to attack the men responsible for the
definition. To force these into exile, and then, with a new personnel
in the highest ranks of the hierarchy substitute an Arian
interpretation of Nicea might be possible. Eusebius could count on
sympathy within the imperial family; he could use against those who
stood by the letter of the homoousion the numerous bishops who, though
they believed what it expressed, disliked the term and suspected those
who imposed it. The council had long ago dispersed: Eusebius remained,
Bishop of the Capital, the emperor's natural adviser in religious
matters, ready and able at every opportunity astutely to suggest what
he was now too wise to propose, and at every turn able to show himself
as the emperor's obedient servant.
Slowly, gradually, after the return of the exiles, the controversy
re-opened, its central point shifted now to the expediency of using the
critical " homoousion ". Was the term really orthodox? Was it not as
heretical as Arius himself? Not of course Arian, but, perhaps,
Sabellian? In the meshes of this subtle dispute Eusebius caught his
first victim the bishop of the second chief city of the East,
Eustathius of Antioch. Eustathius accused the Bishop of Nicomedia of
betraying the faith of Nicea. Eusebius replied that the Bishop of
Antioch was a Sabellian. At Antioch, the city where Lucian had taught,
where Arius and Eusebius had learnt their heresy, there was a strong
pro-Arian faction. Eustathius had done his best to drive them out. Here
was their opportunity. A council was summoned, at which Eusebius played
his part, and Eustathius was deposed, 331. There were riots and, lest
Eustathius should become a perpetual provocation by his presence,
Constantine followed up the council’s sentence by a second sentence of
exile. This henceforth is to be the normal procedure with deposed
bishops.
In place of the deposed Eustathius there was elected one of the few
bishops who, at Nicea, had gone so far as expressly to defend Arius --
Paulinus of Tyre. He died, however, in a matter of months, and in the
election of his successor the emperor took a hand. He congratulated the
Antiocheans on their expulsion of Eustathius -- "they had cleared the
ship of its bilge" -- and he recommended as their new bishop either of
two candidates for the orthodoxy of whose faith he pledged his word.
Inevitably one of the imperially nominated was chosen, Euphronios. For
the first time in history the civil power has interfered in the
election of a bishop; the novelty is the work of a faction; they will
make over to the civil power one prerogative after another, if only
they can thereby destroy that orthodoxy by whose existence they stand
condemned.
The events at Antioch were a pattern for subsequent Eusebian procedure.
One city after another saw them repeated, and bishop after bishop who
had fought Eusebius was deposed, exiled, and provided with a Eusebian
successor. The machinery of this ecclesiastical revolution was
consistently the same -- orders and directions from the emperor
himself.
The next stage was to install a Eusebian in the greatest of all the
Eastern sees, Alexandria. The bishop who, years ago now, had condemned
Arius and assisted at Nicea's ratification of that condemnation, was
dead. In his place there had been elected one of his principal
advisers, his companion at Nicea, the deacon Athanasius. With him there
enters into the story its greatest figure. He was able, he was learned,
he was orthodox. His life was irreproachable. He was to his people a
model bishop, and for tenacity of purpose, the inflexibility bred of a
clear grasp of principle, no hero of Church History has ever surpassed
him. Eusebius attacked, in a letter inviting Athanasius to open his
church to the friends of Arius. The Bishop of Alexandria explained that
since they all lay under the anathema of Nicea the thing was
impossible. Whereupon there came to him a further letter, this time
from the emperor, "You know my will. Whosoever wishes to re-enter the
Church is to be given all facilities. If I hear that you have forbidden
to enter anyone who wishes to return, I shall speedily send someone
with power to depose you by my order." Athanasius, undismayed,
protested ever more clearly that "there can be no communion between the
Catholic Church and a heresy which fights against Christ."
Athanasius had on his hands, at this time, a more domestic anxiety --
the Meletian schism. Three of the schismatics went to the capital to
lay complaints of a civil nature against him. Eusebius welcomed them,
advised them, and Constantine, though he was not sufficiently convinced
to have the affair formally dealt with, summoned Athanasius to reply in
person. He cleared himself without difficulty and, apparently, quite
won over the emperor. But, twelve months later (334), the trouble began
again. New accusations of the same nature, with this in addition that
he had murdered a bishop, were made and this time it was before the
emperor's brother, residing at Antioch, that Athanasius had to clear
himself. Again, without difficulty, he was successful, producing the
supposedly dead bishop as convincing answer to the charge ! But this
time Eusebius had been certain that his opponent was finished. So
certain indeed that with other bishops of his party he was already en
route for the East, to a council to be held at Cesarea, which would
make an end of Athanasius, when the emperor ordered him home. To
Athanasius Constantine wrote once more, expressing his confidence in
him.
Constantine had twice turned from Eusebius to his calumniated opponent.
But when Eusebius, a third time regained it, his hold on the imperial
mind was to be permanent. The council forbidden at Cesarea in 334, was
allowed to meet in 335. The place chosen was Tyre. With Athanasius came
forty-nine bishops from Egypt. They were refused admission. The jury
was already carefully packed, Arians to a man, Eusebius at their head;
and behind this Eusebian conspiracy lay the prestige and power of the
Court. An imperial official was the Council’s president. "How can
anyone dare to give the name of synod to this assembly over which a
count presided? It was the count who spoke, the members of the synod
were silent, or rather they took the count's orders. He gave his orders
and the soldiery put us out. In reality it was Eusebius and his friends
who gave the orders. The count was there to carry them out. What kind
of a synod was it, which, if such were the prince's good pleasure,
might end with a sentence of exile or death?" So the Egyptian bishops
protested in later days. It was indeed a new kind of council, the first
of its kind, but destined to be the pattern of imperially organised
councils under the Casaro-papist emperors. The old accusations once
more made their appearance, and along with them new ones of the same
type. Athanasius, yet again, cleared himself of the first, and as to
the newer charges the council named a carefully chosen deputation to
investigate them on the spot. That they made the investigation so
carefully as never to examine the principal witnesses, and with such
discretion that they never officially knew even of their existence,
surprised no one. Not truth was their aim but a report which would help
on the work of the council. Athanasius understood -- none better -- and
he left the council to lay his case in person before the emperor.
In his absence the Eusebians carried out the appointed programme only
the more easily. They condemned him, deposed him, forbade him to return
to his episcopal city. They had not yet separated when from
Constantinople came letters from the emperor. Athanasius and his
sovereign had met -- casually, in a street of the capital, as the court
returned from its hunting. Constantine would have ignored him but the
bishop held firm, coldly stating his one simple desire -- to meet his
enemies face to face in the emperor's presence. Constantine agreed and
the bishops, fresh from sentencing Athanasius, were ordered to the
capital to justify their proceedings. The heretics had called in Caesar
to redress the balance of the orthodoxy so heavily weighed against
them. Now Athanasius had made a like appeal -- none too wisely. It was
his first -- and last -- reliance on the princes of this world. The
provincial council was arranged. It was very brief, for Eusebius had
found a new charge, that the Bishop of Alexandria had schemed to hold
up the capital’s corn supply. The mere accusation drove Constantine
into one of those fits of fury to which he was liable. Without further
ado Athanasius was exiled, banished to the very end of the world, to
Treves and the distant Moselle (335).
Eusebius might rest content. The last out-and-out leader of the
homoousion party, the most uncompromising of the survivors of Nicea,
was driven out at last. The victor returned t o the East to Jerusalem,
whither the bishops from Tyre had gone to celebrate the consecration of
the new basilica built by the magnificent imperial generosity over the
site of Our Lord's tomb. Thence, in a synodal letter, he proclaimed his
victory to the Christian world. Arius and his associates have now given
pledges of their orthodoxy to the emperor. He exhorts us peaceably to
receive them back into the Church whence unseemly envy has lately
expelled them. He stands guarantee for their good faith. The formula
the Arians were to sign as the condition of their restoration, and
which Eusebius and his bishops at Jerusalem accepted as proof of their
orthodoxy, follows the imperial letter as an appendix. It is the creed
of Nicea with the critical phrases carefully omitted. The term
homoousion does not appear at all, and instead of the affirmation that
Jesus is the Son "begotten of the Father," it is merely stated that as
God the Logos He existed from all time. The Nicean definition is not
explicitly repudiated, it is simply ignored. In its place is an
equivocal compromise, which Arians can subscribe as well as Catholics,
and which Arian ingenuity has devised to obscure the distinction
between Nicea and the theories there condemned. In ten years, Arius,
thanks to the astute pertinacity of his "fellow-Lucianist" Eusebius,
and despite Nicea, is back in the Church. The bishops at Jerusalem have
sanctioned the new practice of finding substitutes for definitions of
faith in order to rally dissidents. This, too, is a precedent that
henceforward every condemned heretic will most carefully strive to
follow.
To complete the triumph, it only remained for Arius to be received back
into the Church with all the apparatus of public ceremonial. But
Alexandria would have none of him. Its bishop might be in exile, but
the people stood loyally by him. The riots were so violent, so
continuous, that the scheme was abandoned, and Arius was summoned to
Constantinople, charged with the responsibility of the disorder. There,
too, his arrival divided the city into] hostile factions. The bishop,
no Arian but perplexed, hesitated. The prelates of the Council of
Jerusalem were by this time, most of them, in the capital, enthusiastic
to see their decisions imposed as law. Constantine lent his aid. The
Catholics of the city stormed heaven with supplications that the
catastrophe might be averted. In vain, apparently, for the day was
fixed and the church chosen. But on the very eve Arius himself suddenly
died (336). A few months later Constantine, too, was dead (May 22,
337). The Eusebians had lost, in the very moment when their triumph
seemed complete.
The figure of the historical Constantine later ages overlaid with
legend. Under this softening influence he becomes the model of Catholic
princes, a first pattern St. Louis for all succeeding ages. The truth
is very different [ ] In his manners he remained, to the end, very much
the Pagan of his early life. His furious tempers, the cruelty which,
once aroused, spared not the lives even of his wife and son, are not
only disproof of the legend but an unpleasing witness to the
imperfection of his conversion. That conversion was indeed sincere. The
emperor certainly I believed that Christ Our Lord had appeared to him,
had promised him victory. Victory had in fact followed and
thenceforward Constantine's faith had been proof against all doubt. He
gave himself to Christ, and broke from the official polytheism
incompatible with his new allegiance. But there he halted. He was not
received into the Church, even as a catechumen, until the very end.
Nor, possibly, did his knowledge of his new religion ever advance
beyond this simple belief that Christ is the One and Only God.
Uninstructed, a politician concerned to safeguard at the same time the
welfare of the Church of Christ and the public order, expediency
inevitably determined his decisions; and in the oligarchy of court
prelates such as Eusebius of Nicomedia this disposition found every
encouragement. Constantine was the greatest military leader the Empire
had known for nearly a century, and as an administrative reformer he
was only surpassed by Diocletian. That such a man should be indifferent
to the internal life of the Church, to its controversies and the
intense movement born of them would have been impossible. His
intervention was inevitable, and it had its limits. It was, in his own
conception, as the servant of Christ's religion that he intervened, to
protect the faith defined -- but never himself to define it. It was his
misfortune, rather than his fault, that Christ's religion was to him
the religion of Eusebius and his associates. To their influence was due
the most serious flaw in all his ecclesiastical policy -- his practical
neglect of the Roman primacy, which he treated as non-existent. Later
legend told how the Emperor, struck with leprosy, visited the pope, and
how, St. Sylvester baptizing him in the Lateran, the leprosy was healed
as the baptismal water cleansed his soul. The truth is far other. "The
Roman Church -- Constantine's generous presents apart, and the presence
of two of its priests at Nicea -- has no history between the council of
313 under Pope Miltiades and that of 340 under Julius I. The Papacy,
one may say, seems with Sylvester to pass through a quarter of a
century's retirement." In place of the traditional court of last
appeal, Constantine was guided by the oligarchy whose head was the
bishop of his capital city. This novelty was to show all its
mischievous consequences in the reign of his son Constantius II
(337-361). Not only would the emperor then "protect the faith, but he
would himself decide what faith merited his protection. And if, with
all his advantages, the son did not succeed, his failure would be owing
very largely to the fact that the Bishop of Rome, carefully excluded
from effective power in the East, continued in his traditional
authority in the West, and binding the West in a firm resistance,
rallied what remained of orthodox Catholicism even in the carefully
disciplined eastern hierarchy.
These things, in 337, no man could foresee, neither the aggression of
Constantius II nor the amazing sudden re-appearance of the Papacy,
fully armed, with St. Julius I (338-352). The great emperor was dead,
and he had died as a Christian should, sorrowing for his sins and
begging God's mercy, pledging himself most solemnly as he received the
white robe of the newly-baptized to live what rest of life God granted
him in more seemly accord with the Faith he professed. It was, however,
no Catholic who thus initiated him with the sacraments but an Arian, no
less an Arian in fact than Eusebius himself.
Constantine did not lack for relatives to inherit his Empire. He had
three surviving sons, he had brothers, he had nephews. His death was
the signal for a family massacre in which, to the profit of his sons,
his brothers and some of the nephews perished. There were left as
almost the only survivors of the descendants of Constantius Chlorus,
the three sons of Constantine, Constantine II, Constantius II and
Constans. The vast heritage was once more divided. To Constantine II
went the dioceses of Spain, Gaul and Britain; to Constantius II those
of Thrace, Asia, Pontus, Egypt and the East; to Constans Africa, Italy,
Rome, Dacia and Macedonia. Three years later, in a civil war with
Constans, Constantine II met his death and, his heritage passing to the
victor, of the two surviving brothers Constans was master easily of the
greater part of the Roman world, and the predominant partner. The fact
played an important part in ecclesiastical affairs, for, while
Constantius II in the East was a decided Eusebian, though not even a
catechumen, Constans was a Catholic, and was even baptized. His health
unfortunately was poor, and with this continual debility went a
disinclination for action. Nevertheless, he was strong enough, so long
as he lived -- he died in 350 -- to make any Arian aggression in the
West impossible, and to exercise some restraint upon anti-Catholic
violence in the East.
Two events marked the beginning of the new regime after the death of
Constantine the Great (337). St. Athanasius was allowed to return to
Alexandria, and Eusebius succeeded, in defiance of Church law, in
capturing for himself the see of Constantinople. A renewal of the
conflict in the East was already in sight.
It began with an attempt to install at Alexandria an Arian rival to
Athanasius. The Eusebians revived the memory of the sentence passed on
him long since at Tyre (335) but never confirmed. Each of the three
emperors was approached, and an embassy sent with a like mission to
Rome. The Western Emperors dismissed the envoys; Constantius II
welcomed them, and promised support. Rome acted with the traditional
formality, observance of the canons which governed appeals. The pope --
Julius I -- knew the men with whom he was dealing. They had already
planned to trap him into an implicit disavowal of Nicea when they
sought confirmation for the Arian competitor of St. Athanasius,
suppressing the fact that, excommunicated himself, he was ordained by
an excommunicated bishop. Now, presented with the minutes of the
Council of Tyre, the Pope wrote to St. Athanasius, enclosing the
accusing documents, bidding him summon a synod before which he should
clear himself and to report its decision. The synod was held. The
Bishop of Alexandria, once more going through all the ancient charges
once more cleared himself, and the council sent its decision to Rome.
Meanwhile, the Eusebians had written again to Rome. This time they
asked the pope to judge between them and St. Athanasius. The emperors
held aloof. After all these years of imperial protection the normal
procedure was once more to have its chance-the Bishop of Rome deciding
an appeal of one bishop against another. But before the appeal was
heard, the situation at Alexandria suddenly changed. Constantius sent
orders that St. Athanasius was to be expelled, and in his place another
enthroned as bishop -- Gregory of Cappadocia, a notorious Arian, a
lieutenant admittedly of Eusebius. This was indeed imperial
confirmation of the sentence manufactured at Tyre. It revealed
Constantius as an Arian, and that Eusebius was able to play in the new
reign the part he had played in the old.
St. Athanasius, expelled but not a whit thereby dismayed, blazed out in
an encyclical of protest, to which the pope replied by summoning him to
the council shortly to be held at Rome, the council for which the
Eusebians had asked, where all should be reviewed. To this council
there came in, from all parts of the East, bishops who had been the
victims of the Eusebian treachery, expelled by his manoeuvres, hailing
the unhoped for boon of an ecclesiastical council free from imperial
influence. But the Eusebians now would have no share in it. To the
pope's notification -- since they had chosen him as judge, he now
informed them when the council would meet and that should they not
appear they would be judged accordingly -- they replied in a manifesto
full of threats and sarcasms, refusing to accept his jurisdiction in
the matter. Unless the pope will recognise the sentences of Tyre and
the other depositions they have decreed, they will not, for the future,
hold communion with him. The manifesto was the product of a council
held at Antioch, and it bears the signatures of a variety of bishops.
It strikes a new note in the history of the relation between Rome and
the other sees. It is the first open denial of her primacy, the first
occasion when the Bishop of Rome has been threatened with rebellion to
coerce his jurisdiction (341).
For the moment the pope ignored the letter. The council held its
sessions. The deposed and exiled bishops stated their cases. The case
of the Bishop of Alexandria was given especial consideration. The
council thereupon decided that all had been unjustly condemned, and the
pope summed up the decision in a letter to the Easterns. As one reads
this letter one understands the reluctance of the Eusebians to appeal
to Rome, the long years during which they kept Rome out of the quarrel,
and the instinct which prompted them to refuse her jurisdiction once
they realised it had begun to operate. It is not merely that the letter
has all the easy Roman serenity, that the charity which inspires it is
itself such a condemnation of their own misdeeds. But there is present,
throughout, that Roman consciousness of universal authority, which,
informing the precedents that St. Julius quotes against the incipient
schismatics, makes the letter the most notable of papal contributions
to the century's long debate. The pope is astonished that his own
charitable letter has provoked such a bitter and scornful reply. He
would have preferred not to publish it, had in fact held it back until
the last, hoping against hope that the arrival of the Easterns,
returned to a better frame of mind, would cancel what they had written.
"That he whom you chose to write it thought it an occasion to make a
show of eloquence moves us not at all, for in ecclesiastical matters
the important thing is not to parade one's eloquence but to observe the
apostolic canons, and carefully to avoid whatever may give scandal."
The Easterns now deny that the decision of a council (i.e. Tyre in 335)
can be revised by a second council. They are reminded that they
themselves petitioned for the second council, and " even had your
envoys not themselves demanded that council, had it been myself who
sought it as a means whereby the appeal of those complaining of
injustice might be heard, my intervention would have been just and
praiseworthy because in accord with ecclesiastical practice and
agreeable to God." Nicea itself had passed judgment in matters where
previous councils had already judged, and in so doing Nicea itself had
merely followed ancient precedent. "Your claim is then unjustifiable,
for a custom once established in the Church, and confirmed by councils,
is not to be abolished by a chance group of individuals." As for the
intruded Gregory of Cappadocia, whom this faction asserts to be the
lawful Bishop of Alexandria, " what ecclesiastical canon, what
apostolic tradition empowered them, at a time when there was peace in
the Church and when Athanasius was so generally recognised, to send
this Gregory, ordained by them at Antioch and escorted thence to
Alexandria, not by priests and deacons of his church, but by soldiery?"
The church of Alexandria and the bishops of the province alone had the
right to decide the matter. Supposing there had been some real ground
of complaint against all these bishops -- Athanasius, Marcellus of
Ancyra and the many others who had come to Rome to make appeal-the
ecclesiastical rule should have been observed. "Your duty was to write
to all of us so that in rendering justice we might all of us have
shared. For it was a question of bishops and churches more than usually
important since they had, in times past, had the Apostles themselves
for rulers. Are you ignorant that the usual thing is to write first to
us, and that thus justice may be rendered from here? Those then who,
far from this, have acted without reference to us, in this arbitrary
fashion, would then like us now to signify approval in a case where we
have no knowledge? This is not according as Paul commanded, nor as the
tradition of the Fathers. This is a procedure wholly foreign and new. I
beseech you, allow me to say it thus. I write what I write in the
common interest, and what I write to you is what we have received from
the blessed apostle Peter."
The protest fell on deaf ears. The emperor who mattered-the emperor of
the East, Constantius II -- ignored it, and St. Athanasius with the
rest could only resign himself to the exile. Constantius was one with
the arianising Easterns, and the bishops of the court faction, later
that same year (341), assembled at Antioch with others to the number of
a hundred for the dedication of the basilica, picked up the challenge
of the letter of Pope Julius and replied with an implicit denial of his
claims. They confirmed Gregory of Cappadocia as bishop of St.
Athanasius' see; they denied that they were Arians although they
acknowledged that they had received Arius once more into the Church. As
an exposition of Catholic teaching in the matter of the divinity of the
Logos they preferred to the Nicean creed a creed attributed to Lucian;
it expressed the same truth but, they explained, in more suitable
language. More truly the new creed sacrificed that truth because it
sacrificed the one term which unmistakably expressed the precise
deviation of the heresy Nicea had condemned. The new equivocal
phraseology was a deliberate confusing of issues clarified these
fifteen years, and the new confusion was introduced in the interests of
the heresy. This council, In Encaeniis, of 341 inaugurates the new
strategy of finding synonyms for the technical terms used in conciliar
definitions, synonyms designed to betray the truth already decreed and
to ensure the condemned heretics their place within the Church. The
precedent now set will be followed faithfully in every crisis of heresy
for the next two hundred years. It will, almost always, gain the
emperor -- for it is the high water mark of ecclesiastical expediency
in matters doctrinal. It will often rally to a lowering of the
standards of orthodoxy that orthodoxy's recent defenders, for it
promises to gain the heretic while maintaining truth. It will always
find in the last resource a resolute opponent in the Bishop of Rome, if
nowhere else. His opposition will reject such compromise, at the cost
of no matter what measure of peace, ecclesiastical or civil.
It was in the emperor's presence that this council met, Eastern
bishops, heretics all, banded with their emperor against Rome. So will
it be, again and yet again, until with their emperor they work
themselves free of the Bishop of Rome and the Church of Christ.
The council of 341 has another interest, for it marks a change of
tactics on the part of the bishops who led the movement. They are
anxious to dissociate themselves from Arius, dead now this five years,
and from his radically exposed ideas which only a few extremists
defend. To be a self-acknowledged Arian was no recommendation anywhere
outside that narrow circle. Hence, with a last salute to the memory of
the dead heresiarch, they put out a series of formulae of calculated
vagueness to indicate the difference between their own orthodoxy and
the universally reprobated heresy. It was not Arius, nor was it Nicea:
it was Lucian. Its present defenders claimed it as the traditional
Catholic faith; the Catholics signed it because there were defenders of
the homoousion who were Sabellian; and the Council went on to condemn,
yet once again, the heretics who failed to make the proper distinction
between the Father and the Son: Sabellius, that is to say, Paul of
Samosata, and Marcellus of Ancyra. The first two were dead long since.
The third, however, was not only alive but, driven from his see like
Athanasius for opposition to the Eusebians, at this very moment in
Rome. More, the famous letter of St. Julius had expressly mentioned his
case, had publicly proclaimed him as a protege of the Roman See so
that, as has been said, that letter marks an alliance between Julius,
Athanasius, and Marcellus of Ancyra. Now, unhappily, Marcellus was
looked upon with suspicion throughout the East. He was a true opponent
of Arianism, and perhaps his intentions were orthodox. But his language
was certainly tricky, and there was only too much justification, in the
terms he used, for the charge of Sabellianism made against him. When
the council of 341 made the charge, and condemned him, it promised to
do more harm to the Romanled defence of Nicea than any frontal attack
could have done, for it not only condemned this apparent heretic, but
also "all those in communion with him." The council proclaimed the
chief defenders of Nicea as themselves suspect of heresy in the eyes of
the Catholics in the East who still held out against Eusebius.
Eusebius himself died this same year, 341, the fruitful result of his
sixteen years of episcopacy a divided Church, East and West drawn up
the one against the other. It was a lamentable state of things indeed,
and before it should harden into permanency the pope turned to a last
effort of reconciliation. Through his own emperor, the Catholic
Constans, he approached the sovereign of the East. After one or two
failures the negotiations succeeded thus far that the two emperors
agreed to call a council of bishops of the two empires. It was to meet
at Sardica, the modem Sofia, a city of the Western Empire but close to
the frontier of the East.
At Sardica then the council met in the autumn of 342 or 343
(authorities dispute the date). There were, in all, a hundred and
seventy bishops, seventy-six of them from the States of Constantius II.
Hosius of Cordova once more presided and the pope was represented by
two priests of the Roman Church. The Easterns arrived with their minds
made up. The council’s task would be the simple one of registering what
they had already decided. Before they would consent to take their
places in the council, the council must ratify the condemnation of St.
Athanasius and Marcellus -- accept, that is, without discussion, the
Eastern view on two of the points to discuss which the council had been
called. Hosius, of course, rejected their ultimatum, and the Easterns
thereupon, that same night, left Sardica, leaving behind a lengthy
protestation. In this they renewed their condemnation of St. Athanasius
and Marcellus, denied the right of the West to revise the decision of
an Eastern council, and, laying upon the West the blame for this new
breakdown, they excommunicated Hosius and the pope with him. They ended
with a statement of belief characteristically ambiguous. Meanwhile at
Sardica, the council proceeded with its work -- the stale
re-examination of the ancient often-exploded charges against St.
Athanasius and those against Marcellus too. St. Athanasius once more
they cleared. As to Marcellus he, too, was cleared, the council
accepting an explanation that what had provoked criticism in his
exposition of faith had been, in his intention, theory merely and
hypothesis. The bishops unlawfully intruded by the emperor into the
different sees of the East were excommunicated and, with them, the
leaders of the recent schism from the council. It was suggested, too,
that the council might issue a new statement of belief, but, thanks to
St. Athanasius, the wiser course was followed of reissuing the
adequate, unmistakable creed of Nicea.
The Council of Sardica, failing to unite the divided episcopate, served
only to stabilise the division. But although it failed completely in
the purpose for which it had been summoned, it left behind it a
memorable series of disciplinary canons in which, seeing how the root
of the trouble lay in the civil power's usurpation of ecclesiastical
jurisdiction, it proposed, by strengthening previous legislation
regarding the relative rights of bishops, to set a barrier against the
new aggression. These canons recall and re-enact the old law that a
bishop consecrated for one see is not, on any pretext, to pass
therefrom to any other see. Bishops are not to receive clergy
excommunicated by their own bishop, nor are they to invade the sees of
a neighbouring (civil) province unless duly invited. Bishops whom a
necessity of private affairs calls outside their sees are reminded of
the rule that no bishop is to be absent from his see for more than
three Sundays, and that outside their own sees they are to respect the
rights and liturgical prerogatives of the bishop in whose see they find
themselves. Useful legislation, this, to check the episcopal
vagabondage which had so assisted the Eusebian faction's growth. The
clergy's right of appeal from their own bishop to the bishops of the
province is recognised, and where the bishop himself is accused, the
old law is still maintained that he is not to be judged by his own
subjects. Such cases the council of the bishop's province must decide.
From the provincial council such a bishop, should he be condemned, can
appeal and the appeal is to the Bishop of Rome. The Bishop of Rome may
himself decide the case or order a new trial, and at this the judges
are to be the bishops of a neighbouring province. The Eusebian Council
of Antioch (In Encaeniis) of 341 had decided that sentences passed on a
bishop by the unanimity of a provincial council were irrevocable; and
that where the provincial council was divided, the metropolitan should
associate with his own bishops those of a neighbouring province and,
whatever the new decision, it should be final. This attempted
destruction of a bishop's right of appeal to Rome had been the Eusebian
reply to Pope Julius I's council in Rome and its rehabilitation of St.
Athanasius. The canons of Sardica were a riposte to the Eusebian
innovations. They re-affirm and implement what St. Julius had affirmed
in his letter to the Easterns, namely that a case could be rejudged,
and that the usage is that Rome is consulted first so that "judgment
may be done from here." But Sardica did more than merely re-affirm
existing rights. In its turn it innovated, when it prescribed the
course of action which the Bishop of Rome judging an appeal should
follow. This innovation the papacy ignored. The appeal-procedure does
not appear ever to have functioned in the detail prescribed by Sardica,
nor does Rome's over-riding of the council in this respect appear to
have provoked any protest.
Finally the council reported to the pope in a formal synodal letter
"since it seems right and truly most suitable that in what concerns
each and everyone of the Lord's provinces bishops should act with
reference to the head, that is to the see of Peter the Apostle."
Constantius II's reply to the letter of the Council of Sardica was of
the practical order. He forbade the bishops it had rehabilitated, under
pain of death, to return to their sees, and the two bishops of his
Empire who had gone with the Council were sent into exile. None the
less, new efforts were again made to heal the breach, and as a result
delegates met at Milan in 345. But since the Catholics continued to
demand a repudiation of Arius and his teaching, while the Arians
refused to accept the definition of Nicea, the negotiations were
without result. The Arians clung, also, to their demand that Marcellus
should be condemned, and although the Catholics were willing to condemn
the undeniably heretical opinions of his disciple Photinus, Bishop of
Sirmium, they still refused to accept the Arian view of Marcellus. St.
Athanasius, however, increasingly suspicious of Marcellus the better he
came to know him, now definitely broke with him. Also, in 346, thanks
to a sudden change in court favour, St. Athanasius was allowed to
return to Alexandria. His second exile had lasted seven years.
So, in a kind of deadlock, the next few years went by; St. Athanasius
at Alexandria but isolated from the Easterns (Palestine, Syria, Asia
Minor and Thrace); the Easterns cut off from Rome and the West; while
Photinus, whom all condemned, still reigned at Sirmium since no emperor
had concerned himself to execute the sentence passed upon him. The
assassination of Constans on January 18, 350 brought the deadlock to an
end, for his heir was his one surviving brother, Constantius II, who
now became sole emperor of the whole Roman world. His Arian sympathies
no one could doubt, nor his willingness to act on them, and though the
circumstances of his brother's death involved him in three years of
civil war, the heirs of Eusebius immediately began their preparations
for another attempt to capture Alexandria for Arianism by driving out
St. Athanasius, and, also, to end the scandal of Photinus' hold on
Sirmium.
For the moment they were powerless against St. Athanasius, for
Constantius held firmly to his promises of protection. But the next
year, 351, found Constantius in residence at Sirmium and at a council
called there by him, and held in his palace, Photinus was deposed. This
council followed a curiously novel procedure which made very evident
the extent to which the new emperor was prepared to stretch his assumed
ecclesiastical prerogative. By his orders a theological debate was
arranged in which Photinus was allowed to expose and defend his
theories. As opponent there was assigned to him the successor of his
old master Marcellus, the new Bishop of Ancyra, Basil. The debate was
conducted in approved scholastic fashion, official stenographers took
notes for the emperor's benefit, and as judges Constantius nominated
eight high officials of the Court. To complete its work the assembly at
Sirmium added yet another to the series of indeterminate creeds which,
by suggestion, repudiated Nicea, while Photinus -- condemned as
Sabellian -- was given a successor of proved Arian orthodoxy.
The civil war came to a close with the victory of Constantius, on
August 10, 353, over the usurper who had murdered his brother. Its
vicissitudes had suggested to the Arians a new pretext by which to
revive in Constantius his old opinions of St. Athanasius. The Bishop of
Alexandria, they urged, had had his share in the attempt of the Western
usurper on the peace of the empire. Day by day more bishops were
rallying to him. He considered the Arians heretics, enemies to be rid
of as soon as possible. Could he be really loyal to the emperor who was
their patron? Moreover, there was a new pope. Julius I had died in the
previous April (352). He had been the staunch champion of Athanasius.
With his successor, Liberius, Arian intrigue might be more successful.
The new pope suggested to Constantius the convocation of yet another
council, at Aquileia, to take up the work unfinished at Sardica ten
years before. Constantius was at the moment at Arles. Instead of the
council asked for, he summoned one to Arles, to which the bishops of
Gaul were convoked. Assembled (353) they first of all desired to
express their belief in the definition of Nicea. But the emperor would
not allow this, nor indeed any discussion on the faith. Instead, he
presented the assembly with an edict condemning to exile whoever would
not condemn Athanasius. It was the West's first experience of the
policy which had made the Eastern Church Caesar's, and it succumbed.
Paulinus of Treves stood firm and was exiled. The rest, to a man,
signed -- and with them the legates of Liberius.
The effect upon the pope of this betrayal by his legates should be
carefully noted, for of all the popes Liberius is the one in whose case
contemporary calumny has had most lasting effect. Discouraged truly,
but by no means despairing, Liberius replied to this new tactic of
breaking St. Athanasius by isolating him from the West as well as from
the East, with a new request for a council. Constantius, whose violent
language in his regard had certainly reached Liberius, made a show of
entering into the plan. The pope chose new legates and in 355 the
suggested council met, this time at Milan. At Arles, the bishops,
incredibly ignorant of the history of the previous twenty years in the
East -- it was the first time some of them had even heard of Nicea [ ]
-- had acted in fitting deference to requests from "the most Christian
emperor." Their acquiescence had been a victory for the emperor's
prestige as the son of the great Constantine. At Milan there was, from
the beginning, no attempt to cloak the violence under such formalities.
Arian bishops dragged the pen from the hand of the Bishop of Milan as
he prepared to sign the creed of Nicea in token of orthodoxy. The
council became a riot. The mob invaded the church to defend its bishop,
and the council’s next meeting took place in the palace. In this more
favourable locale the imperial will had its way more easily. Once more,
as at Arles, the bishops signed -- all save a handful among whom, alas,
were not the papal legates. The little band who resisted, Paulinus of
Treves, Lucifer of Cagliari, Eusebius of Vercelli and Denis of Milan,
were summoned to a special audience. " The emperor, " it is St.
Athanasius who describes the scene, "having summoned the bishops,
ordered them to sign the condemnation of Athanasius and to receive the
heretics into communion. They protested against this innovation in
Church discipline, crying out that such is not the ecclesiastical rule.
Whereupon the emperor broke in 'My will is canon law ! Bishops in Syria
make no such objections when I address them. Obey me or. . . exile.'
The bishops, astounded at such language, lifting their hands to heaven,
with great boldness opposed to the emperor that his kingly power was
not his own, that it was in fact God's gift to him, and that he should
fear God Who could, and suddenly, strip him of it. They reminded him of
the last day and its judgment. They advised him not to throw church
affairs into utter confusion, not to confuse the civil power with the
Church's constitution and not to open the Church of God to the Arian
heresy." Constantius, undersized and bandy in the legs, a poseur who
flattered himself that his very gaze struck terror where it fell, who
cultivated a deep voice and an oracular manner, listened patiently
enough. Then, brandishing his sword, he ordered the bishops to instant
execution, only to countermand his sentence immediately and substitute
one of exile.
There were, of course, many bishops in the West who had been unable to
make the journey to Milan. To reach these absentees, couriers were now
sent to one town after another, and by the means used at Milan yet more
signatures were obtained to the condemnation of Athanasius. Once again
Liberius had been duped. This time something more was required of him.
He too must sign. One of the emperor's confidential eunuchs was
despatched to ask his assent. He made show of the valuable presents
Constantius sent. Liberius replied fittingly. The eunuch next deposited
them at the shrine of the Apostle. Liberius, learning of it, had them
thrown into the street. "If the emperor is really anxious for the peace
of the Church let us have a truly ecclesiastical council, away from the
palace, where the emperor will not appear, nor any of his counts, nor
judges to threaten; for the fear of God is sufficient, and the teaching
of the Apostles, to enable the Council to secure the Church's faith
such as it was defined by the Fathers of Nicea." There, for the moment,
the matter of Liberius' signature was allowed to rest.
The Arians turned their attention to Alexandria. Plots were laid to
entice the bishop, quietly, away from the city; but he knew his enemies
too well to be so easily taken in. Finally they resorted to force. On
February 8, 356 the imperial troops broke into the church where St.
Athanasius was presiding at the night office. Their arrows flew right
and left -- more than one of the congregation was slain -- and with
drawn swords they made for the bishop. Despite his efforts to meet
death, as centuries later St. Thomas of Canterbury, his attendants
managed to get him away. From that moment the city knew its bishop no
more. He simply disappeared from view, while the imperial troops hunted
for him from one end of Egypt to the other. In Alexandria itself the
churches were seized and handed over to the Arians -- the Catholics
always resisting to the end -- and Constantius, fresh from legislating
terrible penalties against the Pagans, now called in the Pagans
themselves to assist in the forcible enthronement of yet another
successor to Athanasius. It was once more a Cappadocian, and, like his
predecessor, ordained at Antioch for his new post, a certain George
whose chief claim to notoriety hitherto had been his skilful
mismanagement of the imperial finances. Under George of Cappadocia the
Catholics of Egypt were to suffer for the next few years as half a
century before Catholics had suffered under Diocletian and Galerius.
Once more the mines were filled with Catholic convicts, bishops,
priests and laity alike, condemned for their loyalty to St. Athanasius.
The most outspoken defender of Nicea was now, and finally it seemed,
driven out; and with him disappeared orthodoxy's last spokesman. For by
this time Hosius was a prisoner and Liberius, also, far away from his
see in exile.
Liberius, indeed, the emperor had not dared to silence in his own city;
and, fearing riots, should he attempt openly to arrest the pope, he at
last had him kidnapped by night. He was carried to the imperial court
(357), and between him and his captors there took place an interview
whose detailed record, preserved by Theodoret, is one of the golden
pages of the history of the Roman See. With hardy courage Liberius
recalled to the emperor himself the facts of the case, that the
so-called trials of St. Athanasius by the different imperial councils
had been so many mockeries, and that before pursuing further the Bishop
of Alexandria, Constantius should proclaim his own belief in the creed
of Nicea and recall the exiled bishops to their sees. The emperor, for
a reply, could do no more than revile St. Athanasius as his personal
enemy and demand that the pope should join in the " universal"
condemnation. It was on this note that the scene came to an end. The
emperor: "There is only one thing to discuss. . . choose the side of
peace, sign and you will return to Rome." Liberius: "I have said
farewell to my brethren in Rome. Ecclesiastical law is more important
than living in Rome." The emperor: "You have three days to decide.
Should you choose to sign you will return to Rome, if not think over to
what place you would prefer to be exiled." Liberius: " Three days will
not alter my decision. As for exile, send me where you will." Two days
later the place was notified to him -- Beroea in Thrace. Before he
left, the emperor offered him money for his expenses, the empress also.
Liberius refused. The eunuch Eusebius -- the same who had two years
before proffered bribes in Rome, and who had played a sycophant's part
in the famous interview -- came forward also, offering a bribe. To whom
Liberius suggested that before attempting to tip the pope it would be
as well first to become a Christian !
The Arian triumph was complete in this, at least, that the Catholics
were all completely muzzled and gagged. Not a single bishop was left in
possession of his see who dared refuse to condemn Athanasius. But there
the triumph ended. The cowed episcopate was very far from being in its
heart anti-Nicene, and if no one dared openly defend the homoousion and
its champion, no Arian on the other hand dared openly disavow it. The
triumph would only be complete when the bishops who had been forced to
renounce Athanasius were brought to renounce Nicea too. To this, then,
the Arian energy next turned itself.
The old theological discussions were renewed and presently (357), there
appeared a new statement of belief drawn up by the bishops in residence
at the court at Sirmium. This is the so-called Second Formulary of
Sirmium. Its teaching is Arian, and its manner of expression the most
radically Arian so far. Not only does it not declare the Son to be of
the same substance as the Father -- the Catholic teaching -- but it
states definitely that the Son is unlike the Father. The plan of those
who drew it up was that it should be sent round the episcopate to be
signed by each individual bishop. But its first effect -- when the
collection of signatures began -- was to turn the divergent tendencies
among the heretics into so many hostile sects. From the beginning the
really radical Arians, in the theological sense, had been very few.
More numerous, but still a minority, had been the political Arians,
ambitious place seekers, who saw in the trouble a chance for their own
advancement, and who had "managed" the party since Nicea. The vast
majority of the Arian bishops were what the majority of a new party so
often is, enthusiastic, and confused in their enthusiasm, driven as
much by the hope of avoiding what they feared as by zeal for anything
positive: their only definite characteristics their suspicion of the
homoousion and their docility to the ruling emperor. From this section
had come the support for that succession of vague, ambiguous creeds
which gradually deprived the faith of all definite meaning for those
who adopted them.
The publication of the Second Formula of Sirmium, suddenly reviving the
most radical kind of Arianism -- patent anti- Niceanism -- as the creed
of the party, forced into joint action the vague and hitherto
fluctuating body of middle opinion which, although suspicious of the
homoousion as a definition of the traditional belief, was yet Catholic
in mind and willing to express the relation between Father and Son as
one of likeness of substance (homoiousion). St. Cyril, Bishop of
Jerusalem, was one of the chiefs of this section, but its real leader
was Basil of Ancyra. The split between radical Arians (Anomoeans), and
these so-called Semi-Arians (homoiousion party), bred in the group of
Politicals a new subtlety. In their endeavour to keep the party
together they grew ever more carefully vague, proffering finally as a
basis of agreement the formula that the Son is like to the Father
(homoios -- whence the name of Homoean sometimes given them). It is
round the manoeuvres of these three sections to capture the favour and
interest of the Court that the history of the next three years turns
(357-360).
The Anomoean formula provoked criticism throughout the scarcely tamed
West. It also, in their hour of victory, split the Arians. Immediately
the prestige of the Anomoeans fell, and Basil of Ancyra became in
Constantius' mind the all-important bishop of the day. The Second
Formula was withdrawn. In its place Basil proposed one of his own
fashioning -- the Third Formula of Sirmium -- a provisional statement
designed to gain the support of the Nicene West, to be the basis of an
alliance between the Westerns and those Easterns who, if they differed
from the West as to the wisdom of the term homoousion and as to its
suitability to express their common belief, agreed in that belief none
the less. The moderate Arians in the East whom the sudden revelation of
Anomoean aims and strength was driving slowly back towards Nicea would,
it was hoped, come in too. Before such an alliance -- and with the
imperial favour which Basil enjoyed -- Arianism would be ended for
ever.
The new formulary was sent round and signatures began to come in. Its
crucial point was its use of the word homoiousion where Nicea had used
homoousion. To say the Son is of like substance with the Father as a
way of denying that He is of the same substance, is of course to deny
Nicea. But to make the assertion in opposition to the Anomoean teaching
-- that the Son is not like to the Father -- is to use homoiousion in
an orthodox sense. It was, so those who presented the formulary for
Catholic signatures explained, as against the Anomoeans that the new
term was used, and to avoid the misunderstandings which the Nicene term
had bred.
For the complete success of Basil of Ancyra's scheme the signature of
Liberius was essential. The formulary was presented to him and, in the
sense in which it was offered, he signed it, adding to his signature a
kind of appendix in which he made clear the meaning of his signature by
condemning all those who say that "the Son is not like to the Father in
substance and in all things." This appendix Basil accepted and he
himself also signed it. The rout of the Anomoeans was complete. The
real Arians were defeated now, in 358, as they had been defeated at
Nicea thirty years before. A general council would fittingly sum up the
whole affair and celebrate the new reunion, and where more fittingly
could it meet than once again at Nicea?
At this moment, however, Basil fell out of favour with Constantius II;
the Anomoeans and the Politicals came back. The council Basil had asked
for was not abandoned. It would meet -- but a dual council, one section
for the West at Rimini, the other for the East at Seleucia in Isauria
-- and under Arian auspices; its work would be the imposition, not of
the Third Formulary of Sirmium but of yet another of the vague Arian
creeds that were a betrayal of Nicea. In the formulary proposed there
was no mention at all of " substance," only the simple ambiguous
declaration, "We declare that the Son is like the Father in all things
as the Holy Scriptures say and teach." Under the circumstances this
equivocal creed was an indirect denial of Nicea.
To Rimini (359) there came four hundred and more bishops, eighty of
them professedly Arian, the remainder Catholic. The pope was not
present, nor did he send a representative. The bishops voted against
the proposed betrayal, but the imperial commissioner had instructions
from Constantius that they were to be kept at Rimini until they signed
one and all. The weary business dragged on then all through the year,
negotiations, promises, threats, until, with what mental reservations
to accommodate the contradiction between their thoughts and their
actions we know not, all the bishops signed. At Seleucia there were
fewer bishops -- 150 only, of whom only a mere handful were
enthusiastic for the Nicene formula -- and the emperor's difficulties
were less. The majority -- 105 -- readopted the Eusebian creed of
Antioch (341). Thirty-two of the remainder signed a creed vaguer still.
It was like to that adopted at Rimini, and it was this which was
destined to triumph.
Delegates from both councils met at Constantinople. Those from Rimini
made common cause with the Arian minority of Seleucia. Pressure on the
delegates of the Seleucia majority did the rest. A joint council, at
Constantinople, in the first week of January 360 published to the world
their lamentable unanimity. Not the homoiousion of Basil of Ancyra had
triumphed, in whatever sense one took it, nor the radical Arianism of
the Anomoeans whom he had ousted. The victory had gone, once again, to
the Politicals, to the section which opposed all attempts at precision
in the hope of stabilising a happy permanent confusion where all
parties, even the most contradictory, should find their place in the
Church. Of their victory, and the surrender of the bishops, St. Jerome
commented in words which have become famous, " The whole world groaned
to find itself Arian." Liberius judged more truly of the surrender's
value, writing of the Western bishops' action as a simple surrender to
external pressure.
Whatever the next development which the Politicals had planned, it
never matured for, within a few months, the power on which the party
depended had vanished. The joint Council at Constantinople was held in
the January of 360. In the May following, Constantius' cousin Julian,
hitherto ruling Gaul as Caesar, was, at Paris, proclaimed Emperor. The
West at any rate was delivered from Constantius and the Politicals.
Eighteen months later (November 3, 361) Constantius himself was dead,
and Julian sole emperor of the Roman world. In the new emperor's
councils, bishops, no matter how "political’ would count for little. As
in 337, an unexpected change of ruler had delivered the Catholics, in
the very moment when their cause seemed utterly and for ever lost.
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