Petition to the Emperors 1–14

In the times of the emperor Constantius, son of Constantine, a harsher persecution of Christians arose from the impious Arian heretics, with Constantius consenting, who also persecuted bishop Athanasius, who resisted the heretics, and ordered that he be condemned by all the bishops. This too all the bishops everywhere, out of fear of the prince, attempted to do, condemning an innocent man unheard. But Liberius, bishop of Rome, and Eusebius of Vercelli, Lucifer of Cagliari and Hilary of Poitiers refused to give the sentence. These, then, were sent into exile for keeping the faith. Damasus, his deacon, pretended to set out with Liberius; fleeing from the journey, he went back to Rome, corrupted by ambition. But on the day when Liberius was setting out into exile, all the clergy, that is, the presbyters and the archdeacon Felix, and Damasus himself, the deacon, and all the officers of the church, all alike, in the presence of the Roman people, confirmed under oath that while Liberius lived they would by no means have another bishop. But the clergy, against right, most unfittingly, with the supreme crime of perjury, accepted the archdeacon Felix, ordained in Liberius's place. This deed displeased the whole people, and they held aloof from his processions. After two years Constantius came to Rome; the people petitioned him for Liberius; he, soon assenting, said: "You have Liberius, who will return better than he was when he left you." By this he indicated Liberius's consent, by which he had given his hands to faithlessness. In the third year Liberius returned, and the Roman people went out with joy to meet him. Felix, censured by the senate and people, was driven from the City; and after a little time, at the urging of the clergy who had perjured themselves, he burst into the City and presumed to hold a service in the basilica of Julius across the Tiber; and the whole multitude of the faithful and the nobles threw him out of the City again with great disgrace.

Eight years later, in the consulship of Valentinian and Valens, on the tenth day before the Kalends of December, Felix died. Liberius showed mercy to the clergy who had perjured themselves and received them in their own places. Likewise, on the eighth day before the Kalends of October, in the consulship of Gratian and Dagalaifus, Liberius departed from human affairs. Then the presbyters and deacons Ursinus, Amantius and Lupus, with the holy people who had kept faith with Liberius when he was placed in exile, began to assemble in the basilica of Julius, and demanded that the deacon Ursinus be ordained bishop for them in Liberius's place. But the perjurers, in the Lucinae, demanded Damasus as their bishop in Felix's place. Paul, bishop of Tibur, blessed Ursinus. When Damasus, who had always coveted the episcopate, learned this, he stirred up with money all the charioteers and the ignorant multitude, and, armed with clubs, burst into the basilica of Julius and raged with great slaughter of the faithful for three days. After seven days, with all the perjurers and the arena-fighters whom he bribed with a huge price, he took the Lateran basilica, and there he was ordained bishop; and by buying the judge of the City, Viventius, and the prefect of the grain supply, Julianus, he brought it about that Ursinus, a venerable man who had been ordained bishop first, was sent into exile with the deacons Amantius and Lupus. When this was done, Damasus began to press the Roman people who would not join his processions with clubs and various slaughter. He also tried, through the officials, to drive from the City seven presbyters who had been arrested. But the faithful people ran up, rescued those presbyters, and without delay brought them to the basilica of Liberius.

Then Damasus, with the faithless, called up arena-fighters, charioteers and grave-diggers, and all the clergy, with axes, swords and clubs, and besieged the basilica at the second hour of the day, on the seventh day before the Kalends of November, in the consulship of Gratian and Dagalaifus, and stirred up a heavy battle. For, having broken the doors and set fire beneath them, he sought an entrance by which to burst in. Some of his household too, tearing down the roof of the basilica, killed the faithful people with tiles. Then all the Damasians, bursting into the basilica, killed a hundred and sixty of the people, men as well as women, and wounded very many as well, of whom many died; but of Damasus's party no one died. After three days the holy people, gathering together, began to recite against him the commands of the Lord, saying: "Do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul." They also sang psalms in praise and said: "They have given the dead bodies of your servants as food to the birds of heaven, the flesh of your saints to the beasts of the earth. They have poured out their blood like water around Jerusalem, and there was no one to bury them." So often this same people, assembled in the basilica of Liberius, cried out, saying: "Christian emperor, nothing escapes you. Let all the bishops come to Rome; let the case be heard. Damasus has now made his fifth war: murderers out of the see of Peter!" And the people of God begged the bishops with many entreaties to come together, so that by a just sentence they might drive out the man named, stained with such impiety, whom the matrons loved so much that he was called "the matrons' ear-tickler."

The voices of the people were therefore brought to the emperor Valentinian, who, moved by kindness, granted the exiles their return. Then Ursinus, with the deacons Amantius and Lupus, returned to the City on the seventeenth day before the Kalends of October, in the consulship of Lupicinus and Jovinus; and the holy people gladly went to meet him. But Damasus, conscious of so many crimes, shaken by no small fear, bought the whole palace, so that his deeds should not be laid open to the prince. The emperor, not knowing what Damasus had done, issued an edict that, Ursinus being banished into exile, no further unspeakable contention should set the peoples at odds. Then bishop Ursinus, a holy man and without crime, taking thought for the people, gave himself into the hands of the wicked, and on the sixteenth day before the Kalends of December, at the emperor's order, hastened of his own accord into exile. But the people, fearing God and worn out by no persecutions, feared neither the emperor nor the judge nor Damasus himself, the author of the crimes and a murderer, but held services in the cemeteries of the martyrs without clergy. Hence, when many of the faithful had gathered at Saint Agnes, Damasus burst in armed with his attendants and struck down very many in the slaughter of his devastation. This most cruel deed greatly displeased the bishops of Italy. When he had solemnly invited them to his anniversary and some of them had come, he worked on them with entreaties and money to pronounce a sentence against holy Ursinus. They answered: "We have come together for the anniversary, not to condemn a man unheard." So his wicked intention lacked the effect it strove for. From then on the presbyters, afflicted in various ways, were scattered through exiles and foreign places. Among them the presbyters Marcellinus and Faustinus offered to the princes Valentinian, Theodosius and Arcadius petitions concerning the confession of the true faith, the display of holy communion, and the persecution by the opponents of the truth, as follows.

We entreat your gentleness, most pious emperors, Valentinian, Theodosius and Arcadius, that you deign to read these things tirelessly, in contemplation of Christ the Son of God, who aids your empire. Your lofty reign rises to still loftier heights by the help of God the almighty Father and of Christ his only-begotten Son, when you neither despise truth in lowly men nor strengthen falsehood in many or powerful ones. For this is most just and most salutary in a reign of justice, that persons be approved by the merit of truth, not truth presumed from the power of persons. Indeed the law of the world was written for this reason, that power or multitude should not prevail against what is true and just, even if it is upheld by the lowly. But if such great care must be kept by the provision of your tranquility even in matters of state, that the right of truth should hold even in the least, against every force or power, so that the state entrusted to your empire by God's will may flourish, how is the truth of the holy faith, in divine affairs, obscured and crushed by a band of the impious and their most fraudulent circumventions? Especially since you, princes of the Roman empire, uphold the devout faith and purity of the Christian religion by so many of your constitutions. All of it indeed, because, as worshipers of Christ the Son of God, you decree for the Catholic faith and with every effort write by the authority of your empire against heretics and the faithless, not as if attempting anything new of your own opinion, as some earlier princes tried to their own and others' ruin, but to show that your judgments and your faith agree with the sacred judgments of the divine Scriptures and with devout confessions.

But this, which after the most atrocious persecutions of an earlier time ought rather to have helped the holy church, afflicts it more, since those same distinguished bishops who formerly persecuted it while asserting or assenting to heresy now persecute it under the authority of the Catholic name; and the more fraudulently they now do this under a false profession of the devout faith, the more destructively they rage, and the more painfully truth seethes, that even under you, emperors who defend the devout faith, it is not yet allowed to breathe. But lest we seem to bring this up to stir up odium without proof of the matter, we set out the case as best we can. We ask as suppliants that you lend your royal ears to us, the least of men, while we show that we are not heretics and yet are severely afflicted as if heretics; though neither those who severely afflict us nor their associates can now say or prove that we are heretics. Nor indeed can they deny of themselves that in an earlier time they either most fiercely upheld heresy, with intolerable punishment of the faithful, or certainly gave their hands to it, condemning the Catholic faith they had asserted before, because they feared to suffer exile for Christ the Son of God, for whom even a faithful lay person must undergo any most atrocious death; because, as the Apostle says, it has been granted to us for Christ's sake not only to believe in him but also to suffer for him. For such a death or suffering is an occasion of immortality.

It is not hidden from your gentleness and your religion devoted to God how impious and how pestilential the Arian heresy is, against which a declaration was written with special vigor by our fathers at Nicaea, so that the devout confession of the apostolic faith might be preserved and confirmed by the perpetual condemnation of that heresy, so that no one in after times could be deceived. But Arius, like Pharaoh's heart, not believing that the divine sentence had then been given against him, crept in, somehow or other, with Constantine, hoping that, the sentence of the special priests rescinded by his support, he could be received into the church. In short, Constantine himself had ordered that the holy bishop Alexander, of blessed memory, should communicate with him: not that Alexander who was bishop of the divine faith at Alexandria, who, full of wisdom and fervent in the Holy Spirit, first both uncovered Arius and expelled him and condemned him for ever; but this Alexander who was in the city of Constantinople, himself an admirable bishop. When he saw that Arius was relying on the king of this world, he cried out from the deepest grief of his heart, standing in the place of the sanctuary, to Christ, the true and eternal King and Lord of all kings, that he should not allow that stain to enter the church. How constant, how faithful his prayer was is proved by this, that Arius, before he entered the church, paid new and very grievous penalties, even to a shameful death. For on the day before the impious man thought he would enter the holy church with the emperor's help, though he suffered no illness, no pain in his body, but, what is graver, was insatiably sick with a disease of the mind alone, he went, as human custom is, to the privy; and as he sat there, suddenly tormented by a very grievous pain, he poured out all his bowels, and the very heart that was the treasury of his impiety, into the excrement; and so, wonderful to say, with all his inward parts emptied out, he was reduced, and in a moment was so dissolved, as if by the decay of a livid body, that he slipped wholly through the narrow opening of the seat. This is a punishment worthy of the impious, this a shameful death worthy of a pestilential heretic, and this a burial worthy of the most fetid members of the devil's spirit. For he had to be tormented and to perish by a new example, who had devised new impieties against the only-begotten Son of God, saying that he was not truly born of the Father, and that there was a time when he was not, and that he was put in place out of nothing, so that he should not be believed to be of the same substance and divinity and eternity and omnipotence as the Father.

We have related this to your august gentleness so that your prudence, attentive to the truth, may observe how venerable is the faith written at Nicaea against Arius, to which God bore witness not only through the authority of the divine Scriptures but also through the most sacred prayer of holy Alexander; and how execrable is the impious doctrine of Arius, which the divine sentence condemned in Arius himself by a new kind of punishment, not waiting for the day of judgment in his case, so that the rest, terrified by the example of his punishment, might be on their guard. By this example there should be no doubt that those too are condemned before God who believed that the impious doctrine of Arius should be renewed or received. For how will perpetual punishment separate those whom impious doctrine does not separate? Under your laws too, one prison shuts in those equally guilty, and one sentence strikes them. And this too cannot be doubted, that those are truly Catholics who, through exiles, through kinds of punishment, through the atrocity of death, uphold without deceit that faith which was written at Nicaea on the gospel and apostolic principle, which God most plainly approved by the punishment of Arius who attacked it. But if these things are true with you which are confirmed as true by the divine Scriptures, consider, most pious and most religious emperors, in what they are guilty who, under these divine rules and professions, have consecrated their faith and devotion to Christ God, setting no fear before the fear of God. But although Arius was buried in excrement, he left some heirs of his impiety. In short, there were not lacking worms to be born from his putrid corpse. What the devil, the craftsman of error, did through them would take long to set out, even if we could set it out; for they are infinite and incredible, yet not false.

We now set out what bears on the present case: that those who made the emperor Constantius a partaker of the Arian impiety by fraudulent disputation would have paid the penalty at once, if it were not necessary, according to the Apostle's saying, that there be heresies too, so that those who are approved may be made manifest. These, then, whom we have called the worms of Arius, having the royal power assenting to them, first contend one by one, for the Arian impiety, for the overthrow of the Catholic faith and the destruction of sacred religion, so that those who resisted they either attacked with slanders or tormented and killed with punishments or exile. When they had raged so much the more through their madness and made themselves feared everywhere, no longer content to go after individuals, they finally compel the bishops from everywhere to come together into one, and a place is given for a synod: for the Easterners, Seleucia in Isauria; for the Westerners, the city of Ariminum. And there at first the bishops, coming for the holy faith, confirm the exposition written at Nicaea, so that nothing should be taken from it which set out the gospel faith in impregnable words and condemned the impious doctrine of Arius by divine authority. Then at last the written formula of faith offered by Ursacius, Valens, Germinius and Gaius, of a kind that both rejected the Catholic faith and absolved Arius, indeed brought in his pestilential doctrine, they curse, and they condemn so impious a faith of theirs. They also condemned the men themselves, judging it an inexpiable crime if they should violate the venerable faith of the fathers, if the church should tolerate men so impious and their impious formula. They also send ten envoys to the emperor Constantius, writing what had been done and at the same time urging that he too should keep inviolate the decrees of the fathers for the venerable faith against the heretics. The heretics too send envoys, whom Constantius then received most intimately, as his own. The true envoys, who had come for the Catholic faith against the heretics, he rejects; and through his people he now invites them with favor, now terrifies them with threats, and meanwhile torments them by delay alone, so that in the end, since they fear the king's anger, since they do not deign to suffer exile for Christ the Son of God, since they take delight in their own sees and the most pernicious possessions of the churches, they rescind what they had devoutly upheld and accept what they had condemned as impious.

Let it be permitted, before you religious emperors, in the cause of God, to groan more grievously at this: the bishops feared the anger of an earthly king more than Christ, the true God and eternal King. They believed temporal exile more grievous than the perpetual punishment, according to Isaiah, of the sleepless worm and the unquenchable fire. They held their own homes and possessions sweeter than a blessed and perpetual dwelling in the kingdom of Christ. But Constantius, not content with the ruin and fall of the ten envoys, sends to Ariminum so that all the bishops there might likewise be turned. They too, by that bad example of their envoys, reject the devout faith of the fathers which they had upheld, subscribing to that faith of the Arians which they had condemned with whole and free judgment. Your wisdom notes that the synod of Ariminum, most devoutly begun, was most impiously ended. The same impiety was committed by the bishops at Seleucia in Isauria too. Judge, most pious and most religious emperors, in what they are guilty and for what they deserve to be afflicted who will not join with such bishops: who, though at first they upheld the whole faith and rejected the impious faith, afterward, when they fear exile, when they take delight in their goods and sees, turn their opinions, condemning at the nod of a heretical emperor that apostolic faith which they had upheld, or accepting that impiety of Arius which they had rejected.

Ought they not to have held it welcome, if indeed they believed that God's judgment was coming, to suffer every evil rather than be traitors of the venerable faith, whose truth had been approved both by the prayers of holy Alexander and by the punishment of Arius? Especially since there had gone before also the example of a glorious passion, though of very few bishops, who, so as not to violate the gospel and apostolic faith, so as not to acquiesce to the impious, refused neither exile nor punishment nor any atrocity of death. In short, before the synod of Ariminum, Paulinus of Trier, a most constant bishop, was sent into exile, upholding the devout faith and cursing the fellowship of the Arians. And the apostolic man Lucifer of Sardinia, bishop of the city of Cagliari, because he was well known for contempt of the world, for zeal for the sacred writings, for purity of life, for constancy of faith, for divine grace, was sent by the Roman church as envoy to Constantius; and because he upheld the venerable faith, because he uncovered and refuted the heretics, he was led into exile with every atrocity of injuries. Likewise Eusebius of Vercelli, and also Dionysius of Milan, at first an intimate of King Constantius while he did not yet know that he was a patron of the heretics, after it became known and proved to him that he upheld the heretics, rejected the king's impious intimacy, preferring exile, so as not to lose the friendship of Christ God, so as not to be without the fellowship of the saints. And Rhodanius too was sent into exile, and also Hilary, who also published writings against the heretics and the prevaricators, although afterward indeed he broke off, favoring the prevaricators, not to say meanwhile that ... [he favored] even the heretics, against whom he had pleaded with the strength of his eloquence. Maximus too of Naples in Campania, because he had a weak stomach and was rather delicate in body, was at first long afflicted with injuries so that he might fall; then, when through constancy of mind and strength of faith he was not overcome by the weakness of the flesh, he was led into exile, and there, a martyr, he rested in the peace of the Lord. And Rufinianus too, of wonderful simplicity but more admirable in defending the faith, by the shedding of his blood forestalled exile. In short, when he persisted for the integrity of the faith, Epictetus, that savage and dreadful bishop of Centumcellae, compelled him to run before his carriage; and when he had run a long time, his vitals burst, and pouring out blood on the road, he died. The people of Naples in Campania know this, where the relics of his blood torment the demons in possessed bodies, surely by the grace of that faith for which he shed his blood. There were also other bishops of Egypt, though very few, of whom some were put to flight, and others sent into exile, because they would not join with the impious and cruel bishops.

How salutary it would have been, how fine and how glorious, if all those bishops, with equal virtue and like agreement, had kept to the end the faith they had always rightly upheld, fearing neither exiles nor punishments, so as to gain the perpetual blessedness to come in the kingdom of Christ God! And we pass over that perhaps they would also have made it understood that this faith is of great price, for which none of the bishops would refuse exile, proscriptions, torments and death. But, slightly terrified, so great a number of bishops gave their hands in throngs to impiety, and impiety inclined to still greater madness through so easy a slaughter of the multitude. This is no less a sacrilege, no less an impiety, than if sacrifice had been made to an idol under a pagan persecutor; since to subscribe to a heresy out of terror is also to sacrifice to demons. For, as the divine Scriptures teach, heresy, like idolatry, is the teaching of demons. Meanwhile, since with some the multitude is preferred to the truth, because it has few followers, and we are afflicted for this, that in few we follow the inviolable faith and avoid the many because of impious heresies and the sacrilegious subscriptions of the prevaricators: what do you judge in this case, O most just emperors and champions of the Catholic faith? To which of these two parties do you give your vote? One is the party in which there are many bishops. But where there are many, there the sacred faith of Christ, always defended before, has been violated by prevarication; there, through fear of the king, the impiety of Arius, always condemned before, has been accepted. But where there are very few, there the faith of Christ is upheld through exiles, through tortures, through the shedding of blood, through death itself, and the impiety of Arius and every heresy are execrated as the supreme evil. But though there is no doubt that the few bishops are precious by the merit of confession and inviolable faith, and the many are made of no account by the merit of heresy or prevarication, since in the cause of truth, above all in the cause of the religion of the sacred faith, number is not to be compared with number, but that pure apostolic faith, proved by exiles, proved by tortures, even of one, is to be preferred to the infidelities of many; still it is necessary to bring forward also a present divine proof of the condemnation of prevarication. And just as, in Arius, his impious sect, punished by the divine punishment, prejudges also concerning his followers that the same punishment awaits them by which Arius too is tormented, so concerning the prevaricators it has been determined by divine judgment through present punishments.

Potamius, bishop of the city of Olisipo, at first upheld the Catholic faith, but afterward, for the reward of an estate of the treasury which he had coveted, betrayed the faith. Ossius of Corduba both uncovered him and rejected him as an impious heretic among the churches of the Spains. But Ossius himself, summoned to King Constantius on Potamius's complaint, and terrified by threats, and fearing that, an old man and rich, he might suffer exile or proscription, gives his hands to impiety, and after so many years betrays the faith, and returns to the Spains with greater authority, having the king's terrible order that if any bishop refused to communicate with him, now that he had become a prevaricator, he should be sent into exile. But a faithful messenger brought the news of Ossius's impious prevarication to holy Gregory, the most constant bishop of the city of Elvira. So, mindful of the sacred faith and of the divine judgment, he did not consent to his wicked communion. But Ossius, who was tormented the more by this, if anyone, when he himself had fallen, stood upholding the whole faith with the firmness of an unfallen footstep, has Gregory, a man of most vigorous mind, brought before him by the public power, hoping that by the same terror by which he himself had yielded, Gregory too could yield. Clementinus was then vicar, who, by agreement with Ossius and by the general order of the king, ordered holy Gregory to be brought to Corduba by his officials.

Meanwhile rumor stirs everyone up to learn of the matter, and it is the frequent talk of the peoples: "Who is that Gregory who dares to resist Ossius?" For very many were still unaware of Ossius's prevarication, and did not yet know well who holy Gregory was. Among those who perhaps knew him he was still a new bishop, though with Christ not a new champion of the faith, by the merit of his holiness. But behold, they came to the vicar, and many of the officials were present, and Ossius sits as judge, indeed even above the judge, relying on the royal command; and holy Gregory, by the example of his Lord, stands by as a defendant, not from a bad conscience but by the condition of the present trial; for the rest, in faith he was free. Great was the expectation of each, to which side the victory would incline. And Ossius relies on the authority of his age, but Gregory relies on the authority of truth; the one on trust in an earthly king, the other on trust in the eternal King. And Ossius relies on the emperor's writing, but Gregory holds the writings of the divine voice. And when Ossius is refuted at every point, so that he was convicted by his own words, which he had written before for faith and truth, he was moved and said to the vicar Clementinus: "It is not the inquiry that has been entrusted to you, but the execution. You see how he resists the royal precepts; carry out, then, what has been commanded; send him into exile." But Clementinus, though he was not a Christian, yet showing reverence for the name of the episcopate, especially in a man whom he saw holding his ground reasonably and faithfully, answered Ossius: "I do not dare," he said, "to send a bishop into exile so long as he remains in the name of bishop. But you first give a sentence, deposing him from the honor of the episcopate, and then at last I will carry out against him, as against a private man, what you wish done by the emperor's precept." When holy Gregory saw that Ossius wished to give a sentence, so that he would seem deposed, he appeals to the true and powerful judge, Christ, crying out with all the strength of his faith: "Christ God, who will come to judge the living and the dead, do not allow a human sentence to be pronounced today against me, your least servant, who, standing as a defendant for the faith of your name, offer a spectacle. But you yourself, I pray, judge today in your own cause; you yourself will deign to pronounce sentence by vengeance. I do not wish this to happen as if fearing exile, since for your name no punishment is not sweet to me; but that many may be set free from the error of prevarication, when they see a present and immediate vengeance." And while he appeals to God with faithful words, with much more indignation and holiness, behold, suddenly Ossius, as he tries to set out his sentence, twists his mouth, distorting his neck too, is thrown from his seat to the ground, and there dies, or, as some will have it, was struck dumb. From there, at any rate, he is carried out as if dead. Then, while all marveled, even that pagan Clementinus was terrified; and though he was the judge, fearing that he too might be judged by a like punishment, he threw himself at the holy man's feet, begging him to spare him, who had sinned against him through ignorance of the divine law, and not so much by his own choice as by the command of the one who ordered it. There was then astonishment in all, and wonder at the divine power: in him was seen the whole spectacle that we know. For he who wished to pronounce a human sentence soon suffered a heavier, divine one; and the judge who had come to judge, now pale and guilty, feared to be judged; and he who had stood as a defendant to be sent into exile was begged by the prostrate judge, as if he were the judge, to spare him. That is why Gregory alone, of the number of those who upheld the whole faith, was neither put to flight nor suffered exile, since everyone feared to take further action against him.