|
Such blessings did divine and heavenly grace confer upon us through the
appearance of our Saviour, and such was the abundance of benefits
which prevailed among all men in consequence of the peace which we
enjoyed. And thus were our affairs crowned with rejoicings and
festivities. But malignant envy, and the demon who loves that which
is evil, were not able to bear the sight of these things; and moreover
the events that befell the tyrants whom we have already mentioned were
not sufficient to bring Licinius to sound reason. For the latter,
although his government was prosperous and he was honored with the
second rank after the great Emperor Constantine, and was connected
with him by the closest ties of marriage, abandoned the imitation of
good deeds, and emulated the wickedness of the impious tyrants whose
end he had seen with his own eyes, and chose rather to follow their
principles than to continue in friendly relations with him who was
better than they. Being envious of the common benefactor he waged an
impious and most terrible war against him, paying regard neither to
laws of nature, nor treaties, nor blood, and giving no thought to
covenants. For Constantine, like an all-gracious emperor, giving
him evidences of true favor, did not refuse alliance with him, and did
not refuse him the illustrious marriage with his sister, but honored
him by making him a partaker of the ancestral nobility and the ancient
imperial blood, and granted him the right of sharing in the dominion
over all as a brother-in-law and co-regent, conferring upon him the
government and administration of no less a portion of the Roman
provinces than he himself possessed. But Licinius, on the contrary,
pursued a course directly opposite to this; forming daily all kinds of
plots against his superior, and devising all sorts of mischief, that
he might repay his benefactor with evils. At first he attempted to
conceal his preparations, and pretended to be a friend, and practiced
frequently fraud and deceit, in the hope that he might easily
accomplish the desired end. But God was the friend, protector, and
guardian of Constantine, and bringing the plots which had been formed
in secrecy and darkness to the light, he foiled them. So much virtue
does the great armor of piety possess for the warding off of enemies and
for the preservation of our own safety. Protected by this, our most
divinely favored emperor escaped the multitudinous plots of the
abominable man. But when Licinius perceived that his secret
preparations by no means progressed according to his mind, for God
revealed every plot and wickedness to the God-favored emperor, being
no longer able to conceal himself, he undertook an open war.
And at the same time that he determined to wage war with Constantine,
he also proceeded to join battle with the God of the universe, whom he
knew that Constantine worshiped, and began, gently for a time and
quietly, to attack his pious subjects, who had never done his
government any harm. This he did under the compulsion of his innate
wickedness which drove him into terrible blindness. He did not
therefore keep before his eyes the memory of those who had persecuted
the Christians before him, nor of those whose destroyer and
executioner he had been appointed, on account of the impieties which
they had committed. But departing from sound reason, being seized,
in a word, with insanity, he determined to war against God himself as
the ally of Constantine, instead of against the one who was assisted
by him. And in the first place, he drove from his house every
Christian, thus depriving himself, wretched man, of the prayers
which they offered to God in his behalf, which they are accustomed,
according to the teaching of their fathers, to offer for all men.
Then he commanded that the soldiers in the cities should be cashiered
and stripped of their rank unless they chose to sacrifice to the
demons. And yet these were small matters when compared with the
greater things that followed. Why is it necessary to relate minutely
and in detail all that was done by the hater of God, and to recount
how this most lawless man invented unlawful laws? He passed an
ordinance that no one should exercise humanity toward the sufferers in
prison by giving them food, and that none should show mercy to those
that were perishing of hunger in bonds; that no one should in any way
be kind, or do any good act, even though moved by Nature herself to
sympathize with one's neighbors. And this was indeed an openly
shameful and most cruel law, calculated to expel all natural
kindliness. And in addition to this it was also decreed, as a
punishment, that those who showed compassion should suffer the same
things with those whom they compassionated; and that those who kindly
ministered to the suffering should be thrown into bonds and into
prison, and should endure the same punishment with the sufferers.Such
were the decrees of Licinius.
Why should we recount his innovations in regard to marriage or in
regard to the dying, innovations by which he ventured to annul the
ancient laws of the Romans which had been well and wisely formed, and
to introduce certain barbarous and cruel laws, which were truly
unlawful and lawless? He invented, to the detriment of the provinces
which were subject to him, innumerable prosecutions, and all sorts of
methods of extorting gold and silver. new measurements of land and
injurious exactions from men in the country, who were no longer
living, but long since dead. Why is it necessary to speak at length
of the banishments which, in addition to these things, this enemy of
mankind inflicted upon those who had done no wrong, the expatriations
of men of noble birth and high reputation whose young wives he snatched
from them and consigned to certain baser fellows of his own, to be
shamefully abused by them, and the many married women and virgins upon
whom he gratified his passions, although he was in advanced age, why,
I say, is it necessary to speak at length of these things, when the
excessive wickedness of his last deeds makes the first appear small and
of no account? For, finally, he reached such a pitch of madness that
he attacked the bishops, supposing that they, as servants of the God
over all, would be hostile to his measures. He did not yet proceed
against them openly, on account of his fear of his superior, but as
before, secretly and craftily, employing the treachery of the
governors for the destruction of the most distinguished of them. And
the manner of their murder was strange, and such as had never before
been heard of. The deeds which he performed at Amaseia and in the
other cities of Pontus surpassed every excess of cruelty. Some of the
churches of God were again razed to the ground, others were closed,
so that none of those accustomed to frequent them could enter them and
render the worship due to God.
For his evil conscience led him to suppose that prayers were not
offered in his behalf; but he was persuaded that we did everything in
the interest of the God-beloved emperor, and that we supplicated God
for him. Therefore he hastened to turn his fury against us.
And then those among the governors who wished to flatter him,
perceiving that in doing such things they pleased the impious tyrant,
made some of the bishops suffer the penalties customarily inflicted upon
criminals, and led away and without any pretext punished like murderers
those who had done no wrong. Some now endured a new form of death:
having their bodies cut into many pieces with the sword, and after this
savage and most horrible spectacle, being thrown into the depths of the
sea as food for fishes. Thereupon the worshipers of God again fled,
and fields and deserts, forests and mountains, again received the
servants of Christ. And when the impious tyrant had thus met with
success in these measures, he finally planned to renew the persecution
against all. And he would have succeeded in his design, and there
would have been nothing to hinder him in the work, had not God, the
defender of the lives of his own people, most quickly anticipated that
which was about to happen, and caused a great light to shine forth as
in the midst of a dark and gloomy night, and raised up a deliverer for
leading into those regions with a lofty arm, his servant,
Constantine.
|
|