Church History

Contents

Reading pages: 1.0–1.2 · 1.3 · 1.4–1.8 · 1.9–1.14 · 1.15–1.23 · 1.24–2.5 · 2.6–2.8 · 2.9–2.14 · 2.15–2.21 · 2.22–2.28 · 3.1–3.12 · 3.13–4.4 · 4.5–4.14 · 4.15–4.18 · 4.19–4.25 · 4.26–5.8 · 5.9–5.16 · 5.17–5.23 · 5.24–5.37 · 5.38–5.39

1. 1.0Theodoret explains that history preserves memory better than painting and that he will continue the Church History of Eusebius from where it ends.
2. 1.1After the fall of the persecuting emperors and Constantine's favour to the church, the devil stirs up Arius, an Alexandrian presbyter jealous of Bishop Alexander, who teaches that the Son is a creature, and Alexander removes him from the clergy.
3. 1.2Theodoret lists the bishops of Rome, Antioch, Jerusalem, and Constantinople at the time and announces that he will quote Alexander's letter against Arius and the related documents.
4. 1.3Alexander of Alexandria's letter to his namesake denounces Arius and Achillas, refutes their claim that the Son came from nothing and is changeable, sets out his own creed, and asks that the excommunicated men not be received; Theodoret then notes Alexander's other letters and introduces Arius's reply.
5. 1.4Arius writes to Eusebius of Nicomedia complaining that Bishop Alexander persecutes him for teaching that the Son has a beginning and is out of nothing; Theodoret identifies the bishops Arius names and introduces Eusebius's letter to Paulinus.
6. 1.5Eusebius of Nicomedia urges Paulinus of Tyre to write in support of the view that the Son is not from the Father's essence but was created by his will; Theodoret describes the strife the controversy caused in every city.
7. 1.6Constantine, after a failed attempt at mediation, convenes the Council of Nicaea; Theodoret describes the confessors present, the emperor's entry and appeal for concord, the rejection of a creed proposed by Arius's supporters, and the signing of the faith.
8. 1.7Theodoret shows that the Arian sympathizers signed at Nicaea insincerely, quoting Eustathius of Antioch on the tearing up of Eusebius's document and Athanasius's account of why the council chose the phrases “from the essence” and “of the same essence”; Theonas and Secundus are excommunicated and twenty canons are written.
9. 1.8Theodoret explains the Melitian schism and quotes the synodal letter of Nicaea to the church of Alexandria, which reports the condemnation of Arius, the terms for receiving Melitius and his clergy, and the agreement on the date of Pascha.
10. 1.9Theodoret quotes Constantine's letter to the churches announcing the Council of Nicaea's decision that all should keep Pascha on one day and not follow the Jewish reckoning.
11. 1.10Constantine feasts the bishops, kisses the wounds of the confessors, grants grain allowances to virgins, widows, and clergy, and burns unread the written accusations bishops had brought against one another.
12. 1.11To refute the Arians who claimed Eusebius of Caesarea as their own, Theodoret quotes Eusebius's letter to his church explaining how he presented his own creed at Nicaea, why he accepted the council's creed with “from the essence” and “of the same essence” as explained there, and why he accepted its anathemas.
13. 1.12Theodoret adds Eusebius's testimony from the Life of Constantine that the bishops at Nicaea reached unanimous agreement under the emperor's guidance, and urges the Arians to heed their own authority and the death of Arius.
14. 1.13Arius, returning to Constantinople with Eusebius of Nicomedia's help, swears to the emperor that he is orthodox; Theodoret quotes Athanasius's account of how Bishop Alexander of Constantinople prayed and Arius died suddenly in a privy before he could be received; Theodoret then turns to Constantine's church building.
15. 1.14Theodoret quotes Constantine's circular letter to Eusebius urging the bishops to repair, enlarge, or build churches at public expense now that persecution has ended.
16. 1.15Constantine orders Eusebius to have fifty copies of the Scriptures made for the churches of Constantinople; Theodoret then introduces the emperor's work at the tomb of Christ in Jerusalem.
17. 1.16Constantine writes to Macarius of Jerusalem about the rediscovery of the tomb of Christ and orders the building of a basilica there that will surpass every other building, asking for his advice on columns, marbles, and the ceiling.
18. 1.17Helena, the emperor's mother, goes to Jerusalem, has the pagan temple over the tomb removed, and identifies the cross of Christ through a healing worked by Macarius; she sends nails to her son, leaves part of the cross in Jerusalem, builds churches, and serves a meal to consecrated virgins before her death.
19. 1.18After the death of Alexander of Byzantium, Eusebius of Nicomedia seizes the see of Constantinople against the canon on translation of bishops; Theodoret recalls his earlier move from Berytus and his exile after Nicaea, and introduces Constantine's letter to the Nicomedians.
20. 1.19Theodoret quotes the end of Constantine's letter to the Nicomedians, which accuses Eusebius of Nicomedia of having supported the tyrant Licinius and of sheltering condemned Arians with Theognis, and announces their banishment; Theodoret adds that they were replaced but later regained power.
21. 1.20Eusebius of Nicomedia and his allies travel to Jerusalem and Antioch, where at a council they use a bribed woman's oath to condemn Eustathius of Antioch for adultery without witnesses, and persuade Constantine to exile him.
22. 1.21After Eustathius's exile a series of Arian-minded bishops are installed at Antioch, the faithful who separate are called Eustathians, and the woman who accused Eustathius later confesses, during an illness, that she had been bribed and that the father was a coppersmith of the same name.
23. 1.22Frumentius and Aedesius, Tyrian youths captured by “Indians” and raised to positions of trust at court, encourage Christian worship there; Frumentius later reports to Athanasius in Alexandria, is consecrated bishop, and returns to evangelize that nation with miracles.
24. 1.23A captive Christian woman heals a child and the queen of the Iberians by prayer; the king, struck blind while hunting and healed when he calls on her God, builds a church to her plan and asks Constantine for a bishop; Constantine also writes to the king of Persia on behalf of the Christians there.
25. 1.24Theodoret quotes Constantine's letter to the king of Persia, which confesses the Christian God, rejects pagan sacrifice, recalls the fate of persecuting emperors, and commends the Christians of Persia to the king's protection; he then turns to the Arian party's plots against another champion of orthodoxy.
26. 1.25Athanasius, who had served Alexander as chief deacon at Nicaea, succeeds him as bishop of Alexandria; the Arian party uses Melitians to accuse him of financing a usurper, but Constantine clears him and writes to the Alexandrians in his favour.
27. 1.26Eusebius of Nicomedia, Theognis, and Theodore of Perinthus accuse Athanasius of crimes and have a synod called at Caesarea; when he refuses to attend, they charge him with arrogance, and Constantine orders a synod at Tyre instead.
28. 1.27Theodoret quotes Constantine's letter summoning the synod of Tyre to restore peace, announcing that the former consul Dionysius will oversee it and that anyone who refuses to attend will be compelled; the bishops, Asclepas of Gaza, and Athanasius assemble.
29. 1.28At the synod of Tyre Athanasius's opponents bring a woman who falsely accuses him of rape, and display a severed hand claimed to be that of the Melitian bishop Arsenius; both charges collapse when the woman fails to recognize him and Arsenius is produced alive with both hands, and Athanasius escapes by ship while his enemies send a commission to the Mareotes.
30. 1.29The bishops move from Tyre to Jerusalem (Aelia) to dedicate Constantine's churches; when Athanasius appeals to the emperor, his accusers charge him with threatening to stop the grain shipments from Alexandria, and Constantine exiles him to Trier.
31. 1.30Constantine, falling ill at Nicomedia, is baptized, leaves the empire to his three sons, and orders Athanasius's return to Alexandria despite Eusebius's opposition.
32. 1.31Theodoret excuses Constantine's exile of Athanasius and others by the example of David, who was deceived by Ziba about Mephibosheth, and draws the lesson that both sides must be heard.
33. 1.32Constantine's body is carried in a golden coffin to Constantinople amid the army's mourning; Theodoret points to the honours still paid at his tomb as proof that God honours his servants.
34. 2.1Athanasius returns from Trier to Alexandria with a letter from Constantine II explaining that his father had sent Athanasius to Gaul for his safety and intended to restore him; the Arian party again begins to work on the young emperor Constantius.
35. 2.2An Arian presbyter, commended to Constantine by his dying sister Constantia, is entrusted with Constantine's will, gains the confidence of Constantius, and turns him against the term “of the same essence” and against Athanasius, whose return Eusebius's party blames for disorder in the East.
36. 2.3Constantius exiles Athanasius, who appeals to Julius of Rome while his accusers refuse to come; Gregory is installed in Alexandria, and Constans, at Athanasius's plea, persuades his brother to convene a council of East and West at Sardica.
37. 2.4Paul, bishop of Constantinople, accused by the Arian party, is exiled to Cucusus and there strangled by their agents, as Athanasius reports in his Defence of his Flight.
38. 2.5Macedonius succeeds Paul at Constantinople but is later expelled by the Arians for refusing to call the Son a creature; he founds his own party, holding the Son like the Father in all things and the Spirit a creature.
39. 2.6Theodoret quotes the encyclical letter of the Western bishops at Sardica, which recounts the flight of the Eastern bishops, clears Athanasius, Marcellus, and Asclepas, deposes their opponents, and ends with a statement of faith confessing one hypostasis of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit; Constans then presses Constantius by letter to restore Athanasius.
40. 2.7At Antioch Bishop Stephen's agent Onager smuggles a harlot at night into the lodging of the bishops Euphratas and Vincent, envoys from Sardica, to discredit them; the plot fails, his men are caught, and the general Salianus insists on a judicial investigation in the palace, where the woman tells what happened.
41. 2.8The plot is traced through Onager to Bishop Stephen, who is deposed; Leontius, a secret Arian, succeeds him at Antioch.
42. 2.9Constantius repeatedly invites Athanasius to return and receives him kindly; when the Arian courtiers ask that Athanasius give one church at Alexandria to his opponents, he asks for one church at Antioch for the orthodox, and the Arians drop the request; Athanasius is welcomed back at Alexandria; Constans dies.
43. 2.10After the death of Constans, Constantius, urged by the Arians, orders Athanasius to be killed and sends a general with troops; Theodoret quotes Athanasius's own account of how soldiers surrounded his church at night and how he escaped after the people had left.
44. 2.11George of Cappadocia, installed in place of Athanasius, persecutes the orthodox of Alexandria with the help of the Manichaean general Sebastian; Theodoret quotes Athanasius's account of virgins beaten, men flayed with thorned palm rods, bishops exiled, and the denial of burial to the dead.
45. 2.12With a price on Athanasius's head, Constantius, while campaigning against Magnentius, has a synod at Milan demand the condemnation of Athanasius; the bishops who refuse, including Liberius of Rome and Hosius, are exiled, and Theodoret quotes Athanasius's lists of bishops persecuted by the Arian party, then introduces Liberius's dialogue with the emperor.
46. 2.13Theodoret gives the record of Liberius of Rome's dialogue with Constantius, in which Liberius refuses to condemn Athanasius unheard, asks that the Nicene faith be confirmed and a fair hearing held at Alexandria, refuses the emperor's money, and is exiled to Beroea in Thrace.
47. 2.14Two years after Liberius's exile, the noblewomen of Rome petition Constantius to restore him; when the emperor proposes that Liberius share the see with Felix, the crowd in the hippodrome mocks the decree with the cry “One God, one Christ, one bishop,” and Liberius returns.
48. 2.15At the council of Ariminum the Western bishops reject the Arian proposal to drop “essence” and “of the same essence,” excommunicate Ursacius, Valens, and their allies, and write to Constantius asking that the Nicene faith stand and that they be sent home; when their envoys are kept waiting, they write a second letter asking leave to return before winter.
49. 2.16The bishops of Ariminum are taken to Nike in Thrace and pressured into signing a creed that drops “essence” and “of the same essence” and calls the Son simply “like” the Father; Theodoret quotes it to show that even this rejects the later “unlike” teaching.
50. 2.17Theodoret quotes the letter of Damasus of Rome and a Roman synod to the bishops of Illyricum, which condemns Auxentius of Milan, upholds the Nicene faith in one essence of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, and declares the council of Ariminum without force.
51. 2.18Theodoret quotes Athanasius's Letter to the Africans, which rejects appeals to the council of Ariminum, recalls that the Arian leaders were deposed there and that the majority held to Nicaea until they were coerced in Thrace.
52. 2.19Leontius, a self-made eunuch, becomes bishop of Antioch, hides his Arian views by muttering the doxology, promotes Arians such as Aetius, and is opposed by the ascetics Flavian and Diodore, who introduce antiphonal psalm singing and night vigils at the martyrs' shrines.
53. 2.20Eudoxius of Germanicia seizes the see of Antioch after Leontius's death and openly persecutes the orthodox; Basil of Ancyra and Eustathius of Sebasteia report him to Constantius.
54. 2.21Constantius disowns Eudoxius and orders a synod to judge him at Nicaea; Eudoxius has the place fixed there, but an earthquake destroys the city and the synod disperses, which Theodoret interprets as God preventing a counterfeit “creed of Nicaea.”
55. 2.22Constantius moves the synod to Seleucia; Theodoret explains the quarrel over precedence in which Acacius of Caesarea deposed Cyril of Jerusalem, and how at Seleucia Acacius refused to sit with Cyril, walked out, and went with Eudoxius to Constantinople.
56. 2.23At Constantinople Acacius turns Constantius against the bishops from Seleucia, slandering Cyril of Jerusalem; when Eustathius produces an Anomoean statement, Aetius admits authorship and is banished, Eudoxius is forced to disown it, Silvanus argues that rejecting “out of nothing” implies “of the same essence,” and the protesting bishops are expelled while Eudoxius takes Constantinople and Eunomius Cyzicus.
57. 2.24Theodoret quotes the letter of the synod of Constantinople (360) to George of Alexandria, reporting the deposition of the deacon Aetius and the six-month suspension of the bishops who refused to sign it.
58. 2.25Eunomius, made bishop of Cyzicus, at first hides his views on Eudoxius's advice, but reveals them when orthodox members of his flock feign agreement; they denounce him to Constantius, Eudoxius warns him to flee, and Eunomius breaks with Eudoxius and founds his own sect.
59. 2.26During a Persian siege of Nisibis, Shapur breaches the walls by unleashing a dammed river, but Bishop James by prayer has them rebuilt overnight; a vision of an emperor on the walls dismays Shapur, and at Ephrem's urging James calls down swarms of gnats that rout the Persian elephants and horses.
60. 2.27After the Persian war Constantius holds a synod at Antioch; Meletius, believed by the Arians to share their views, is chosen bishop by both parties, but when he expounds Prov 8:22 in an orthodox sense and sums up the faith by showing three fingers and then one, he is exiled and replaced by Euzoius, and the orthodox separate and meet in the Old Town.
61. 2.28Eusebius of Samosata refuses to surrender the decree concerning Meletius's election even when Constantius threatens to cut off his hand, offering both hands instead; Constantius, marching against Julian, dies in Cilicia lamenting that he had abandoned his father's faith.
62. 3.1Julian, raised as a Christian and even a reader, turns to paganism while seeking omens of power; at a pagan initiation the demons flee at his sign of the cross, but he is still initiated; as emperor he hides his apostasy for fear of the Christian soldiers, whose faith Constantine and Constantius had strengthened, Constantius even urging all his soldiers to be baptized before battle.
63. 3.2Julian recalls the exiled bishops; Meletius returns to Antioch and Athanasius to Alexandria; Lucifer of Cagliari, sent to reconcile the two orthodox parties at Antioch, instead ordains Paulinus bishop of the Eustathians, prolonging a schism that lasted eighty-five years until Bishop Alexander healed it.
64. 3.3Under Julian pagans attack Christians across the empire: clergy and virgins are disembowelled at Ascalon and Gaza, John the Baptist's bones burned at Sebaste, the deacon Cyril killed at Heliopolis, a church given to Dionysus at Emesa, Aemilian burned at Dorostolum, and Bishop Mark of Arethusa tortured for refusing to rebuild a temple, until his endurance wins over his tormentors.
65. 3.4Julian forbids Christians, whom he calls Galileans, to study and teach classical literature and philosophy, and expels them from the army.
66. 3.5At the pagans' petition Julian orders Athanasius to be killed; Athanasius, saying the storm is a passing cloud, flees by boat up the Nile, then turns back toward his pursuers, tells them Athanasius is near, and hides in Alexandria until Julian's death.
67. 3.6When the oracle of Apollo at Daphne refuses to speak while the bones of the martyr Babylas lie nearby, Julian has the Christians remove the relics, and they carry them in procession singing a psalm against idol worshippers.
68. 3.7Julian orders the arrest of the Christians who led the procession; the prefect Sallustius has a young man, Theodore, tortured all day, but Theodore later says an unseen figure comforted him; then lightning burns Apollo's temple at Daphne and its statue, and even under torture the temple wardens say the fire came from heaven.
69. 3.8Julian closes the great church of Antioch and confiscates its vessels; his uncle Julian desecrates the altar and strikes Bishop Euzoius, and the treasurer Felix mocks the costly vessels used for the son of Mary.
70. 3.9Julian's uncle dies of a loathsome disease after begging in vain that the church be restored, and the treasurer Felix dies vomiting blood, as punishment for their sacrilege.
71. 3.10The son of a pagan priest, taught by a deaconess, flees to Meletius; his father finds him, tortures him with hot spits and locks him up, but the door's bolts fall away at his prayer, and disguised as a woman he escapes to Cyril of Jerusalem; later he converts his father, and Theodoret heard the story from him in old age.
72. 3.11Julian pollutes the springs and market food of Antioch with sacrificial water; Christians eat it according to Paul's rule; two guardsmen, Juventinus and Maximinus, who lament the defilement in Daniel's words, are tortured and executed on a charge of insulting the emperor, and Antioch honours them as martyrs.
73. 3.12Valentinian, a guards officer, strikes a temple attendant who sprinkled him and is exiled, later receiving the empire; Julian tricks soldiers into offering incense at an altar set beside him when they receive their donative.
74. 3.13Soldiers who had unwittingly offered incense repent at a banquet, proclaim themselves Christians in the streets, and demand to be burned; Julian orders their beheading but reprieves them at the last moment, to the regret of the youngest, Romanus, and banishes them instead.
75. 3.14Julian has Artemius, former military commander in Egypt, executed for destroying idols; Publia, a widow leading a choir of virgins in Antioch, sings psalms against idols as he passes, and when beaten on his orders continues her singing.
76. 3.15Julian incites the Jews to rebuild the temple in Jerusalem to disprove Christ's prophecy; earthquakes, winds, fire from the foundations, a collapsing portico, and crosses in the sky and on their clothes stop the work, but Julian, like Pharaoh, is unmoved.
77. 3.16Before his Persian campaign Julian consults the oracles, which promise victory; Theodoret quotes one in which Ares promises trophies at the Tigris, mocks it, and remarks that Julian's calling Christians “Galileans” cannot harm them, since names do not change character.
78. 3.17At Beroea a leading councillor who had disowned his son for turning pagan answers Julian, at a banquet, by calling his son a God-hated wretch; Julian, feigning mildness, takes the son under his own care.
79. 3.18When the sophist Libanius mockingly asks a Christian schoolboys' attendant what “the carpenter's son” is doing, the man answers that he is making a coffin, and a few days later Julian's death is announced.
80. 3.19The Syrian ascetic Julian Saba, praying far from the front, perceives at the very hour of Julian's death that the persecutor has been slain, and his companions later confirm the day and hour.
81. 3.20Julian, having burned his boats after crossing into Persia and led his starving army through the desert, is killed by an unknown hand; Theodoret mocks the failed promises of Ares, Apollo, and Zeus and reports that Julian, dying, threw his blood into the air crying, “You have conquered, Galilean.”
82. 3.21After Julian's death a temple he had sealed at Carrhae is opened and found to contain a woman whose body he had cut open to divine victory from her liver.
83. 3.22Remains of victims are reported found in Julian's palace at Antioch; the city celebrates his death in churches, shrines, and theatres, mocking the philosopher Maximus's oracles; Theodoret recalls Julian's satire Misopogon against the Antiochenes and ends the book.
84. 4.1After Julian's death the army acclaims Jovian emperor; he refuses to rule an army trained in paganism, and the soldiers answer that they are Christians taught under Constantine and Constantius and that Julian's brief reign had not corrupted them.
85. 4.2Jovian makes a thirty-year peace with Persia, which supplies his army; he recalls the exiled bishops, restores the churches to the Nicene party, and asks Athanasius for an exact statement of the faith.
86. 4.3Theodoret quotes Athanasius's letter to Jovian, which presents the creed of Nicaea as the faith of nearly all the churches, rejects both the Arians and those who reinterpret “of the same essence” or call the Holy Spirit a creature, and affirms one divinity of the Trinity.
87. 4.4Jovian restores a third of Constantine's grain allowance to the churches, promising the whole after the famine, but dies at Dadastana on his way to Constantinople; Theodoret sees his early death as God's rebuke of human unworthiness.
88. 4.5After Jovian's death the army proclaims Valentinian emperor; he refuses to let the soldiers choose his colleague, makes his brother Valens emperor of the East, and, when Auxentius of Milan dies, charges the bishops to choose a bishop whose life matches his teaching, to whose rebukes the emperor too will submit.
89. 4.6The bishops leave the choice of Milan's bishop to the people, who are divided until the governor Ambrose, coming to keep order, is acclaimed by both sides; Valentinian has him baptized and ordained at once, thanks God for the choice, and later invites Ambrose's rebukes.
90. 4.7Valentinian has a synod held in Illyricum, which upholds the Nicene faith, and sends its decrees with an imperial letter (in the names of Valentinian, Valens, and Gratian) to the bishops of Asia and Phrygia, urging them to stop persecuting the orthodox; the synod's summary confesses one essence of Father, Son, and Spirit in three hypostases.
91. 4.8Theodoret quotes the synodal letter of the bishops of Illyricum to the bishops of Asia and Phrygia, sending the presbyter Elpidius, condemning those who separate the Holy Spirit from the Father and Son, prescribing that clergy be chosen from the clergy, and naming deposed Arians.
92. 4.9Audaeus, a Syrian, teaches that God has a human form and, borrowing from Mani, that God did not create fire and darkness; his followers separate from the church, claiming that it tolerates usurers and men living with women outside marriage, which Theodoret compares to the Pharisees' complaint against Christ.
93. 4.10The Messalians (Euchites or Enthusiasts) reject work, treat dreams as prophecy, and hold that baptism and the Eucharist are of no effect and only prayer expels the demon each person inherits; bishops Letoius and Amphilochius suppress them, and Flavian of Antioch draws a confession from their leader Adelphius by feigned sympathy.
94. 4.11Valens, at first orthodox, decides to be baptized before marching against the Goths, but, like Adam, is persuaded by his Arian wife and is baptized by Eudoxius of Constantinople.
95. 4.12At his baptism Valens swears to Eudoxius to maintain Arianism and to expel its opponents; he exiles Meletius to Armenia, Eusebius of Samosata to Thrace, and Pelagius of Laodicea, who had persuaded his bride to live with him in continence, to Arabia; Eusebius had travelled in disguise ordaining clergy for the churches.
96. 4.13Eusebius of Samosata, ordered into exile in Thrace, leaves secretly by night and, overtaken by his grieving people, urges them to submit to authority but hold the faith; the people of Samosata shun the Arian bishop Eunomius, even pouring away his bathwater, and treat Lucius with contempt, while Lucius exiles Eusebius's clergy, including his nephew Antiochus, who later refused ordination at the hands of a bishop who had communicated with the Arians.
97. 4.14Barses, bishop of Edessa, famous for healing, is exiled by Valens first to Aradus, then to Oxyrhynchus, and finally to a remote frontier fort, while his bed on Aradus continues to heal the sick.
98. 4.15At Edessa the prefect Modestus, moved by a woman hurrying with her infant to share the expected martyrdom, persuades Valens not to massacre the orthodox, but eighty clergy led by Eulogius are exiled; at Antinoë Eulogius prays while Protogenes teaches pagan boys, heals the sick on condition of baptism, and brings converts to Eulogius, and both later become bishops of Edessa and Carrhae.
99. 4.16At Caesarea Basil refuses the prefect's offers and threats; after Valens's son falls ill and dies when baptized by Arians against Basil's condition, Valens attends Basil's church, endows his hospital for lepers, and later, trying to sign Basil's exile, breaks three pens and tears up the decree.
100. 4.17On Athanasius's death (373) his companion Peter, whom Athanasius had nominated, is chosen bishop of Alexandria with the support of clergy, officials, people, neighbouring bishops, and monks.
101. 4.18The pagan governor of Egypt drives Peter of Alexandria into exile in Rome, and the Arian Lucius, installed by Euzoius, persecutes the orthodox; when he banishes the monks Macarius, the other Macarius, and Isidore to a pagan island, a demon flees from them and the islanders are baptized, and the Alexandrians force Lucius to let the monks return.
102. 4.19Theodoret quotes the middle of Peter of Alexandria's letter describing the pagan governor Palladius's assault on the church of Theonas, the stripping and killing of virgins, obscene performances on the altar, the installation of Lucius with Euzoius and the count Magnus, the torture and deportation of nineteen clergy to Heliopolis, the punishment of mourners, the deacon of Damasus sent to the mines, and the exile of eleven Egyptian bishops to Diocaesarea.
103. 4.20Mavia, queen of the Arab tribes, makes peace with Rome on condition that the hermit Moses be her people's bishop; Moses refuses ordination from the Arian Lucius, denouncing his persecutions, and is ordained by orthodox bishops of his choosing.
104. 4.21In Constantinople Arians set fire to a boat full of orthodox presbyters at sea; at Antioch Valens tolerates pagans, Jews, and heretics but drives the orthodox from the churches and even from their open-air assemblies.
105. 4.22At Antioch Flavian and Diodore lead the orthodox in exile from the churches, moving their assemblies from the mountainside to the riverbank to the parade ground, Diodore preaching and Flavian supplying arguments, and the ascetic Aphrahat leaves his cell to help them.
106. 4.23Valens, seeing the old ascetic Aphrahat on his way to the orthodox assembly, tells him to pray at home; Aphrahat answers that a girl must leave her room when her father's house is on fire, and a chamberlain who threatened him dies scalded in the emperor's bath, but Valens does not change.
107. 4.24At the request of Flavian, Diodore, and Aphrahat, sent through Acacius (later bishop of Beroea), the ascetic Julian Saba comes to Antioch to refute the Arians' claim that he was one of them, as Antony had once come to Alexandria to support Athanasius.
108. 4.25Theodoret lists the ascetics of the Syrian deserts and of the mountain near Antioch in Valens's time, whose lives he recorded in the Religious History.
109. 4.26Ephrem the Syrian, untrained in Greek learning, counters the hymns of Harmonius son of Bardaisan with orthodox hymns still sung at martyrs' festivals, and Didymus the Blind masters the liberal arts and Scripture by ear.
110. 4.27Theodoret names the bishops who defended orthodoxy under Valens: Gregory of Nazianzus, Gregory of Nyssa, and Peter of Sebaste in Cappadocia, Optimus and Amphilochius, Damasus of Rome, Ambrose of Milan, and the exiles who wrote to their flocks.
111. 4.28When the Goths attack, Valens asks his brother for troops, but receives the reply that one should not help a man fighting against God.
112. 4.29The victorious general Terentius asks Valens, as his reward, only for a church for the orthodox; when Valens tears up the petition, Terentius gathers the pieces and says God will judge the intention.
113. 4.30The general Trajan, defeated by the Goths, tells Valens that the emperor's war on God has given the victory to the barbarians, and the generals Arintheus and Victor agree.
114. 4.31The monk Isaac warns Valens that he will not return from his war against the Goths unless he restores the orthodox bishops, and Vetranio, bishop of Scythia, also rebukes him.
115. 4.32At Adrianople (378) the Roman army is routed by the Goths, and Valens, hiding in a village, is burned to death when the Goths set it on fire.
116. 4.33Theodoret explains that the Goths, formerly orthodox, were brought into communion with the Arians when Eudoxius won over their bishop Ulfilas with flattery and money, persuading him that the dispute was about ambition, not doctrine.
117. 5.1Theodoret draws the lesson of Valens's fate and records that Gratian, already emperor in the West, succeeded to the whole empire.
118. 5.2Gratian recalls the exiled bishops and orders the churches given to those in communion with Damasus of Rome, sending the general Sapor to enforce it; at Antioch a dispute follows.
119. 5.3At Antioch, when Sapor arrives, Paulinus and Apolinarius both claim communion with Damasus; Theodoret describes Apolinarius's teaching that Christ had no human mind, Flavian exposes both claimants, Meletius proposes that he and Paulinus share the flock with the Gospel on the throne between them, and Sapor gives the churches to Meletius.
120. 5.4Apolinarius openly heads his own sect and ordains Vitalius at Antioch; Meletius and Eusebius of Samosata appoint orthodox bishops in Syria and Cilicia, and Eusebius is killed by a tile thrown by an Arian woman at Doliche, forgiving her as he dies; Gratian moves to Pannonia against the Goths.
121. 5.5Gratian summons Theodosius from Spain as general; he routs the Goths in Thrace and reports the victory himself, and when envious courtiers disbelieve him, Gratian sends men to verify it.
122. 5.6Theodosius dreams that Meletius crowns him; when his victory is confirmed, Gratian makes him emperor of the East, and Theodosius summons the eastern bishops to Constantinople, since only the East had been infected by Arianism.
123. 5.7Theodoret lists the eastern bishops who spread Arianism; at the council of Constantinople (381) Theodosius recognizes Meletius from his dream among the hundred and fifty bishops and embraces him.
124. 5.8Meletius confirms Gregory of Nazianzus as bishop of Constantinople and then dies; after Timothy of Alexandria ordains the Cynic Maximus, Gregory resigns for the sake of peace, the council elects Nectarius, deposes Maximus, issues canons, and confirms the Nicene faith; the next summer the bishops decline an invitation to Rome and write a letter.
125. 5.9Theodoret quotes the letter of the bishops at Constantinople (382) to Damasus and the western bishops, declining to come to Rome, recounting their sufferings, professing one essence in three perfect hypostases and Christ's complete humanity, and defending the elections of Nectarius, Flavian, and Cyril.
126. 5.10Theodoret quotes Damasus's letter to the eastern bishops confirming the deposition of Apolinarius and his disciple Timothy and urging them to hold to the Nicene faith and to Christ's complete humanity and divinity.
127. 5.11Theodoret gives the anathemas of the Roman synod under Damasus (the “Tome of Damasus”) against Sabellians, Arians, Macedonians, Photinians, Apolinarians, and others, affirming the full divinity and equality of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, Christ's complete human soul, and baptism into the one God, Father, Son, and Spirit.
128. 5.12After Gratian's assassination (383) the usurper Maximus seizes the West, despising the youth of Gratian's brother Valentinian II.
129. 5.13Justina, Valentinian II's mother, draws her son to Arianism; when Ambrose refuses to hand over a church, Valentinian surrounds it with soldiers and orders him out, and Ambrose answers that he will not betray the flock and is ready to die inside.
130. 5.14The usurper Maximus, citing Valentinian II's attacks on Ambrose, threatens war and marches on Milan, and Valentinian flees to Illyricum.
131. 5.15Theodosius writes to Valentinian II that his flight is the result of abandoning true religion, receives him, restores him to orthodoxy, defeats and kills Maximus (388), and returns the West to him.
132. 5.16Amphilochius of Iconium persuades Theodosius to forbid Arian assemblies by pointedly refusing to greet his son Arcadius; Theodoret then introduces the emperor's own fault through anger.
133. 5.17After Theodosius's anger leads to the massacre of seven thousand at Thessalonica (390), Ambrose bars him from the church; eight months later, at Christmas, Theodosius seeks reconciliation, accepts Ambrose's demand for a law delaying capital sentences thirty days, performs public penance, and learns to stay outside the sanctuary, later praising Ambrose as the only true bishop.
134. 5.18The empress Flacilla (Placilla), Theodosius's wife, personally nurses the sick and maimed in the church hospitals and constantly reminds her husband to remember God's gifts; she dies before him.
135. 5.19When Antioch riots over a new tax and drags the empress Placilla's statue through the streets (387), Theodosius threatens to destroy the city, but the delay required by Ambrose's law and the plea of the hermit Macedonius to the imperial commissioners, that God's living images are worth more than bronze ones, move him to clemency.
136. 5.20Theodosius orders the destruction of pagan temples, completing what Constantine (who closed them) and his sons, Jovian, and Valentinian had begun, and ending the open pagan rites tolerated under Valens.
137. 5.21Marcellus of Apamea destroys the great temple of Zeus with the help of a labourer who undermines its columns, after a demon that kept the props from burning is put to flight by water blessed by the bishop; Marcellus later dies a martyr.
138. 5.22Theophilus of Alexandria exposes the priests' talking statues and has the great statue of Serapis smashed, from which mice run out, to the mockery of its former worshippers.
139. 5.23Flavian succeeds Meletius at Antioch; Rome and Alexandria back Paulinus and his irregularly ordained successor Evagrius, but Flavian offers Theodosius to step down if the dispute is only about the see, Theodosius defends him before the western bishops, and an embassy led by Acacius of Beroea finally reconciles Antioch with Rome and Alexandria after seventeen years.
140. 5.24Before the battle against the usurper Eugenius (394), Theodosius consults the Egyptian monk John, refuses to retreat before the image of Hercules, prays all night, and sees John the evangelist and Philip the apostle promising help; a soldier sees the same vision, a wind blows the enemy's missiles back, Eugenius's men surrender, and Eugenius is captured and executed.
141. 5.25Theodosius, dying, divides the empire between his sons and charges them to keep true religion, the source of peace and victory.
142. 5.26The monk Telemachus is stoned for trying to stop a gladiatorial fight in Rome; Honorius honours him as a martyr and abolishes the games.
143. 5.27On Nectarius's death Arcadius has John (Chrysostom) of Antioch made bishop of Constantinople; Theodoret lists the leading bishops of the time.
144. 5.28John reforms the clergy of Constantinople and extends his discipline over Thrace, Asia, and Pontus.
145. 5.29John sends monks armed with imperial laws to destroy the remaining pagan temples of Phoenicia, paid for by wealthy Christian women.
146. 5.30John wins Arian Goths in Constantinople by giving them a church with clergy who speak their language, and preaches to them through an interpreter.
147. 5.31John sends missionaries to the Goths on the Danube and urges the bishop of Theodoret's own region to suppress Marcionism.
148. 5.32John refuses the Arian general Gainas a church in Constantinople and silences him before the emperor; Gainas later revolts and ravages Thrace.
149. 5.33John goes as envoy to Gainas, who receives him with reverence; but envy soon deprives the city of John.
150. 5.34Theodoret recounts, without naming the bishops responsible, John Chrysostom's deposition, brief recall after an earthquake, second exile to Cucusus, death at Comana, and the West's refusal of communion until his name was restored.
151. 5.35Theodoret lists the bishops of Alexandria, Jerusalem, and Antioch; Alexander of Antioch reunites the Eustathians with the church in a great procession and restores John's name to the diptychs.
152. 5.36Theodosius II brings John Chrysostom's relics to Constantinople and prays for his parents; Theodoret praises his piety, his submission to an excommunication, his laws against pagan shrines, and God's help against the Huns and the Persians.
153. 5.37Theodoret records the succession of bishops at Rome, Jerusalem, and Antioch, and Theodotus of Antioch's reception of the Apolinarians.
154. 5.38Bishop Abdas's destruction of a fire-temple provokes a Persian persecution lasting thirty years; Theodoret describes its tortures and the confessions of Hormisdas, Saenes, and the deacon Benjamin, and explains why God permits persecution.
155. 5.39Theodoret records the death of Theodore of Mopsuestia, closes his history (covering 105 years from Arius), and lists the bishops of Rome, Antioch, Alexandria, Jerusalem, and Constantinople since the persecution.