Church History 2.25–2.32

Again the plots of his opponents stirred up trouble for Athanasius, created hatred against him with the emperor, and raised up a multitude of accusers. Troubled by them, the emperor ordered a synod to be held at Caesarea in Palestine. Athanasius was summoned to it but did not obey, fearing the scheming of Eusebius, bishop there, and of the bishop of Nicomedia and their party. At that time, though compelled to attend, he put it off for about thirty months. Afterward, being pressed more strongly, he came to Tyre. There many of the bishops of the East had gathered, and they ordered him to answer the charges. He was accused by Callinicus, a bishop of John's party, and by one Ischyrion, of having broken a mystic chalice and overthrown a bishop's throne; of having often imprisoned this Ischyrion, though he was a presbyter, and of having caused him to be put in prison by falsely accusing him before Hyginus, the prefect of Egypt, of throwing stones at the imperial statues; of having deposed Callinicus, who was bishop of the catholic church in Pelusium and had been in communion with Alexander, because, he said, Callinicus refused to communicate with him unless he was satisfied about the mystic chalice he was suspected of having broken; of having entrusted the church of Pelusium to one Mark, who had been deprived of the presbyterate; and of having made Callinicus himself suffer military custody, ill-treatment and lawsuits. Euplus, Pachomius, Isaac, Achillas and Hermaeon, bishops of John's party, accused him of beatings. All together accused him of having come into the episcopate through the perjury of certain men, when all had agreed to ordain no one until they had resolved the charges among themselves; and of having, when they were deceived and for this reason withdrew from communion with him, not thought fit to persuade them but used force and thrown them into prison. Besides this, the affair of Arsenius was stirred up again. And as usually happens in zealously pursued plots, unexpected accusers sprang up even from among those thought to be friends. A document of popular outcries was read, to the effect that the people of Alexandria would not attend church because of him. Athanasius, ordered to defend himself, came often before the court; he cleared himself of some of the charges, and for others asked for a postponement for inquiry. He was greatly at a loss, seeing that the accusers were in favour with the judges, that many witnesses against him had been made ready from among those who held the views of Arius and Melitius, and that the false accusers were pardoned on the charges in which he prevailed: especially in the charge about Arsenius, whose arm he was accused of cutting off for sorcery, and that about a woman, to whom he was charged with having given gifts for lewdness and with having violated her at night against her will. Each charge was found ridiculous and full of falsehood. For when the woman was making these accusations before the assembled bishops, Timothy, a presbyter of Alexandria, who was standing by Athanasius, by secret agreement with him took up the word and said to the woman: “Woman, was it I who violated you?” She answered, “Was it not you?”, naming the time and place where she had supposedly been violated. He also brought Arsenius into the midst, showed the judges both his hands whole, and asked them to make the accusers answer for the arm they had produced. For this Arsenius, either driven by God or, as is said, hidden by those plotting against Athanasius, when someone told him that the bishop was in danger on his account, had run away by night and come down to Tyre the day before the trial. When both charges had been disposed of in this way, so that no defence was needed, the first, as I think, on the pretext that so shameful and ridiculous a matter ought not to be recorded at a synod, is not included in the acts. On the second, it sufficed the accusers by way of defence to say that a certain Plusianus, a bishop under Athanasius, had at his command burned the house of Arsenius, tied him to a pillar, scourged him with thongs, and shut him up in a small room; that he had escaped through a window; and that since he was being sought, he had hidden for a time, and when he did not appear was naturally thought to be dead; and that the bishops of John's party had sought him, as a distinguished man and a confessor, by going to the magistrates. Reflecting on all this, Athanasius was greatly afraid; at the same time he suspected that those plotting against him would find an opportunity and kill him secretly. After many sessions, when the assembly was filled with uproar and confusion, and the accusers and the crowd about the court were shouting that he must be put out of the way by every means as a sorcerer, a man of violence, and unworthy of the priesthood, those who had been ordered by the emperor to attend the synod for the sake of good order feared that the crowd would rush on him in a riot and lay hands on him, and they secretly led him out of the court. Reckoning that it was neither without danger for him to stay in Tyre nor safe to stand trial against a multitude of accusers before hostile judges, he fled to Constantinople. The synod condemned him in his absence, deposed him from the episcopate, and voted that he should no longer live in Alexandria, lest, as they said, by his presence he should cause tumults and disturbances. They received John and all those with him into communion, as having suffered unjustly, and restored to each his rank in the clergy. They reported what had been done to the emperor, and wrote to the bishops everywhere not to give him communion, nor to write to him, nor to receive letters from him, as one convicted in the charges they had heard, and condemned by his flight in those not contested. In the letter they declared that they had been led to such a vote: first, because they were angry that when the emperor had ordered the bishops of the East to meet at Caesarea in the previous year on his account, he did not come, though he saw the synod kept waiting for a long time, and despised the ruler's commands; and that when more of them met at Tyre, he came with a crowd and caused disturbances and tumults in the synod, at times rejecting the defences, at times insulting each of the bishops, at other times not answering when called, and sometimes refusing to be tried. They announced that he had been clearly convicted of breaking the mystic chalice, citing as witnesses to this Theognis, bishop of Nicaea, Maris of Chalcedon, Theodore of Heraclea, Valens, Ursacius and Macedonius, whom they had sent to Egypt to go to the village where the chalice was said to have been broken and find out the truth. Such was what they wrote, touching each charge in a lawyer's manner and eager, as if by some art, to construct an accusation. That this judgment was not sound appeared to many of the priests present as well. It is said that Paphnutius the confessor, who was present at this synod, took Maximus, bishop of Jerusalem, by the hand and made him rise, saying that it was not right for them, being confessors who had had their eyes put out and their knees maimed for piety, to take part in an assembly of wicked men.

Meanwhile, about the thirtieth year of Constantine's reign, when the church in Jerusalem at the place of the Skull, which is called the great Martyrium, had been completed, Marianus, a man of rank and an imperial secretary, came to Tyre and delivered to the synod a letter of the emperor bidding them go quickly to Jerusalem and consecrate the church. He had planned this before, but thought it necessary that the bishops should first meet at Tyre and settle their differences with one another, and so, cleansed of dissension and grief, proceed to the dedication of the church; for the concord of the priests was fitting for such a festival. They came to Jerusalem and consecrated the church, together with the treasures and offerings sent by the emperor, which are still kept in this holy house and cause great wonder to those who see them because of their costliness and size. From that time the church of Jerusalem has kept this as a yearly feast with great splendour, so that initiations are performed at it and assemblies held for eight days in succession; and many come together from almost every land under the sun, who run together from everywhere at the time of this festival to visit the holy places.

At that time the bishops who held the views of Arius seized the opportunity and worked to have a synod held at Jerusalem and to give communion to Arius and Euzoius. They took courage to do this on the following pretext. There was a presbyter on familiar terms with the emperor's sister, who approved of the doctrines of Arius. At first it was not known that he held these views. But when, over a long time, he had made himself more intimate with Constantia, for that was the name of Constantine's sister, he took the liberty of speaking freely to her and complained that Arius was unjustly exiled from his country and expelled from the church, having been cast out by Alexander, who governed the church of the Alexandrians, through envy and personal enmity. “For seeing him esteemed by the people,” he said, “he was jealous of him.” Constantia was persuaded that this was true, but while she lived she made no attempt to alter what had been decided at Nicaea. When she fell ill and was suspected to be dying, she asked her brother, who had come to her, to grant her a last favour, whatever she might ask. She asked that he keep this presbyter as one of his household and trust him as one who held right views about the Divine. For herself, she said, she was departing and had no further care for life here; but she feared for him, lest he suffer something through divine wrath, either faring ill himself or shamefully losing his rule, since, she said, he had been unjustly persuaded by some to punish just and good men with perpetual exile. From then on the emperor became very intimate with this presbyter, gave him freedom of speech, and, sharing with him what his sister had charged, he thought he ought to examine the case of Arius again, naturally suspecting that the accusations against him might be slanders, or else wishing to please his sister. Not long after, he recalled Arius from exile and ordered him to give a written statement of what he believed about God. Arius, avoiding the novelty of the terms he had earlier devised, wove another exposition, using simple expressions known from the sacred books, and swore an oath that he truly believed so, held these views in his mind, and thought nothing other than these. It reads as follows: “To our most pious and God-beloved lord Constantine, Arius and Euzoius, presbyters. As your God-beloved Piety commanded, lord emperor, we set out our own faith in writing, and we confess before God that we and all who are with us believe as is written below. We believe in one God, the Father almighty, and in the Lord Jesus Christ his Son, begotten from him before all ages, God the Word, through whom all things came into being, both in heaven and on earth; who came and took flesh, suffered, rose again, ascended into heaven, and is coming again to judge the living and the dead. And in the Holy Spirit, and in the resurrection of the flesh, and in the life of the age to come, and in the kingdom of heaven, and in one catholic church of God, from one end of the earth to the other. This faith we have received from the holy Gospels, the Lord saying to his disciples: ‘Go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.’ If we do not believe these things so and truly accept the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, as the whole catholic church and the holy Scriptures teach, as we believe in all respects, God is our judge both now and in the coming day. Therefore we entreat your Piety, our most God-beloved emperor, that we, who are churchmen and hold the faith and mind of the church and of the holy Scriptures, may be united through your peacemaking and godly Piety to our mother, the church, the questions and the superfluous arguments arising from the questions being removed, so that we and the church, at peace with one another, may all together offer the customary prayers for your peaceful and pious reign and for your whole family.” Some said that this statement of faith had been composed artfully, differing in appearance from Arius's doctrines in its expressions but agreeing with them even so in the sense of the terms, which allowed one to equivocate and take them in either meaning. The emperor, supposing that Arius and Euzoius held views like those of the bishops who had met at Nicaea, was pleased with the matter. Yet he did not take it upon himself to receive them into communion before the judgment and examination of those who had authority in this, according to the law of the church. He sent them to the bishops then gathered at Jerusalem, writing that their exposition of faith should be examined, and that the synod should give a humane verdict on them, whether they were found to hold right views and to have been plotted against out of envy, or whether, having nothing to object to in what had already been decided about them, they had repented. Seizing the opportunity, having long been eager for this, they received them into communion on the pretext of the emperor's letter. When they had done this, they wrote to the emperor himself, to the church of Alexandria, and to the bishops and clergy throughout Egypt, the Thebaid and Libya, urging them to receive them readily, since the emperor had borne witness that their faith, which they had set down in their own letter, was right, and the synod had confirmed the emperor's judgment. Such were the efforts made at Jerusalem.

Athanasius, fleeing from Tyre, came to Constantinople; and approaching the emperor Constantine, he lamented what he had suffered, in the presence of the bishops who had condemned him, and asked that the decisions made at Tyre be examined before the emperor himself. Constantine, judging the request reasonable, wrote as follows to the bishops who had met at Tyre: “I do not know what was decided by your synod amid tumult and storm. But it seems that the truth has somehow been perverted by some disorderly confusion, because of your contentiousness toward your neighbours, which you wish to be unconquerable, while you do not see what is pleasing to God. But it will be the work of divine providence both to scatter the evils of this rivalry, plainly exposed, and to show us clearly whether, when you met there, you took any thought for the truth, and whether you judged what you judged without favour or enmity. Therefore I wish all of you to come with haste to my Piety, so that you may present the exact account of what you did in our own presence as well. Why I have thought it right to write this to you, and summon you to me by letter, you will learn from what follows. As I was entering our namesake and most happy city of Constantinople, and was riding on horseback at the time, suddenly Athanasius the bishop, with some others whom he had with him, came up to me in the middle of the road so unexpectedly as to give cause for astonishment. For God, who oversees all, is my witness that I did not recognize who he was at first sight, until some of our people, when we asked, told us, as was natural, both who he was and the injustice he had suffered. At that time I neither conversed with him nor shared in any talk. When he kept asking, and I refused and was almost ordering him to be driven away, he asked of us with greater boldness nothing else than that your coming should be granted, so that he might in your presence lament what he had suffered under compulsion. Since this seemed reasonable and fitting to the times, I gladly ordered this letter to be written to you, so that all of you who made up the synod held at Tyre may hasten without delay to the court of our Clemency, to show by the deeds themselves the purity and integrity of your judgment before me, whom you would not deny to be a true servant of God. For through my service to God everything everywhere is at peace, and the very barbarians, who until now did not know the truth, truly bless the name of God. Plainly, one who does not know the truth does not know God either. Yet, as has been said, even the barbarians have now come to know God through me, the true servant of God, and have learned to reverence him, whom they have perceived by the deeds themselves to shield me and care for me everywhere. Hence, above all, they know God, whom they reverence out of fear of us. But we, who are thought to set forth (I would not say guard) the mysteries of his kindness, we, I say, do nothing but what tends to dissension and hatred, and, to put it simply, what leads to the destruction of the human race. Hasten, then, as has been said, come to us all of you with all speed, persuaded that I shall try with all my strength to ensure that the things in the law of God are preserved especially without fault, to which neither blame nor any false opinion can attach, when the enemies of the law, who under some pretence of the holy name put forward various and manifold blasphemies, have been scattered, utterly crushed and entirely destroyed.” When the emperor had written this, the others were afraid and went home; but Eusebius, bishop of Nicomedia, and his party came to the emperor and insisted that the synod at Tyre had voted justly concerning Athanasius. Bringing forward as witnesses Theognis, Maris, Theodore, Valens and Ursacius, they convinced him that Athanasius had broken a mystic chalice; and with many other abuses they prevailed by their slanders. The emperor, either believing these things true, or supposing that the bishops would at last be of one mind if Athanasius were out of the way, ordered him to live at Trier among the western Gauls; and he was taken away.

After the synod at Jerusalem, Arius came to Egypt. When the church of Alexandria would not communicate with him, he came again to Constantinople. Those who held the same views and those who followed Eusebius, bishop of Nicomedia, purposely gathered there by themselves and were preparing to hold a synod; Alexander, who then governed the see of Constantinople, perceived their aim and tried to break up the synod. When this did not succeed, he openly refused to make peace with Arius, saying that it was neither lawful nor ecclesiastical to annul their own vote and that of those who had met with them at Nicaea from almost every land under the sun. When Eusebius's party could not persuade Alexander by words at first, they behaved insolently toward him and declared with threats that if he did not receive Arius by a set day, he himself would be expelled from the church and live in exile, and his successor would communicate with Arius. On these terms they then parted: they waiting for the appointed day to carry out their threats, and Alexander praying that the words of Eusebius would not come to pass. The emperor made him most afraid, since he had in some way been persuaded to give way. On the day before the appointed day Alexander went in under the altar and lay all night face down, begging God that the accomplishment of what had been plotted against him might be prevented. On that day, toward late evening, Arius was going somewhere when his bowels were suddenly moved; under pressure of need he came to a public place set apart for such use. When he did not come out for a long time, some of those waiting for him outside went in and found him lying dead on the seat. When this became known, not everyone held the same view about his death. Some thought that he had been seized by a sudden disease of the heart, or had suffered a stroke from joy at things turning out as he wished, and had died on the spot; others, that he had paid the penalty for impiety. Those who held his views spread the story that the man had been killed by sorcery. It is not out of place to bring forward what Athanasius, bishop of Alexandria, said about him. It reads as follows.

“For Arius himself, the leader of the heresy and Eusebius's associate, was summoned at that time, at the urging of Eusebius's party, by the blessed Constantine Augustus, and, being required to state his faith in writing, the crafty man wrote, hiding the shameless expressions of his impiety, and, like the devil, pretending to use the words of the Scriptures simply, as they are written. Then, when the blessed Constantine said, ‘If you have nothing else in your mind besides these, take the truth as witness; for the Lord himself will avenge you if you swear falsely,’ the wretch swore that he neither held nor thought anything besides what was now written, although things had once been said by him. But immediately on going out, as if paying the penalty, he fell, and falling headlong he burst open in the middle. Death is the common end of life for all people, and one must not trample on anyone, even if the one who has died is an enemy, since it is uncertain whether the same will not overtake oneself before evening. But since the end of Arius did not happen in an ordinary way, for this reason it is worth relating. When Eusebius's party were threatening to bring him into the church, Alexander, bishop of Constantinople, opposed it; but Arius was confident in the violence and threats of Eusebius. For it was Saturday, and he expected to be received into the assembly the next day. There was a great contest, they threatening, Alexander praying. But the Lord, becoming judge, gave his award against those who did wrong. For the sun had not yet set, and need having drawn him to a place, he fell there, and was at once deprived of both, communion and life. The blessed Constantine, hearing of it, was amazed, knowing that he had been convicted of perjury. And it then became plain to all that the threats of Eusebius's party had failed and the hope of Arius had become vain. It was shown again that the Arian madness had been excluded from communion by the Saviour, both here and in the church of the firstborn. Who then would not marvel, seeing these men contending to justify one whom the Lord condemned, and seeing them championing the heresy which the Lord has proved excluded from communion, not allowing its leader to come into the church?” This is how we have received that Arius died. It is said that for a long time no one used the seat on which he died. Since people crowd into a public place because of need, as happens in a multitude, and those who went in warned one another to avoid the seat, the place was shunned by those who came later, as Arius had paid the penalty for impiety there. Some time later, one of those who held his views, a man of wealth and power, made efforts to buy this place from the public authority and built a house there, demolishing the former structure, so that the people would forget, and Arius's death would not be mocked by the handing on of such a memory.

But not even with Arius's death did the inquiry into the doctrines he had devised come to an end, nor did those who held his views cease plotting against those of the opposite opinion. For instance, although the people of Alexandria kept crying out and entreating in litanies for the return of Athanasius, and Antony the great monk often wrote about him and begged the emperor not to believe the Melitians but to regard their accusations as slanders, the emperor was not persuaded. He wrote to the Alexandrians accusing them of folly and disorder, and ordered the clergy and the holy virgins to keep quiet; and he insisted that he would not change his mind or recall Athanasius, as a seditious man condemned by an ecclesiastical judgment. To Antony he replied that he could not disregard the vote of the synod. “For even if a few,” he said, “judged out of enmity or favour, it is surely not credible that so great a number of learned and good bishops came to the same opinion; for Athanasius is insolent and arrogant, and a cause of dissension and strife.” For his opponents slandered him chiefly on these points, since the emperor exceedingly detested such people. At that time, for instance, learning that the church was divided in two, some admiring Athanasius and others John, he was greatly incensed and exiled John himself. This was the man who had succeeded Melitius, and who had been directed by the synod of Tyre to be in communion with the church and, with those of his opinion, to keep the honours of their own clerical ranks. This turned out contrary to the wishes of Athanasius's enemies; but it happened nonetheless, and the decisions of those who had met at Tyre were of no help to John. For the emperor was proof against entreaty and every kind of plea toward anyone suspected of stirring up the Christian people to strife or dissension.

The doctrine of Arius, though it was pursued by many in debates, had not yet been separated into a people of its own or into the name of its founder; all assembled and communicated together, except the Novatians, those called Phrygians, the Valentinians, Marcionites and Paulianists, and any others who made up other heresies already devised. Against all these the emperor enacted a law, ordering that their houses of prayer be taken from them and joined to the churches, and that they should not assemble either in private houses or in public; he recommended that it was better to be in communion with the catholic church and advised them to join it. Through this law, I think, the memory of these heresies has largely disappeared. For under the earlier emperors all who worshipped Christ, even if they differed in their opinions, were regarded by the pagans as the same and suffered ill alike. Because of their common misfortunes they could not busy themselves about one another, and so each group easily met by itself and held assemblies, and by constant intercourse with one another, even if they were few, they were not dissolved. But after this law they could not assemble in public, being forbidden, nor in secret, since the bishops and clergy in each city kept watch. From then on most of them, in fear, joined the catholic church; others, who remained of the same opinion, died without leaving successors to their heresy, since they were neither allowed to meet together nor able to teach those of their opinion freely. Indeed, from the beginning the other heresies had few followers, either because of the perversity of their doctrines or because of the worthlessness of their founders and teachers. But those who held the views of Novatus, having had good leaders and holding the same views about the Divine as the catholic church, were numerous from the beginning and remained so, suffering no great harm from this law. For, as I think, the emperor himself willingly relaxed it, intending only to frighten his subjects, not to ruin them. Acesius too, then bishop of their sect at Constantinople, being in favour with the emperor because of his life, naturally helped the church under him. The Phrygians throughout the rest of the empire suffered like the others, except in Phrygia and the neighbouring peoples, where they had been numerous since the times of Montanus, and still are. About this time the party of Eusebius, bishop of Nicomedia, and Theognis of Nicaea began in writing to innovate on the exposition of those who had met at Nicaea. They did not dare to reject openly that the Son is of the same essence as the Father, for they knew the emperor held this view. But setting out another document, they announced to the bishops of the East that they had accepted the terms of the Nicene doctrine on certain stated interpretations. From this wording and sense the former inquiry, which had seemed to have ceased, fell into debate and was stirred up again.