Church History 1 part 18/18

And Alexander shepherded the church of the Antiochenes, having a manner of life in keeping with his high priesthood.

For having spent the time before his episcopate in the arena of asceticism and having trained himself extensively there, he showed himself a noble contender, both instructing by word and confirming that word by his life.

He succeeded Porphyry, who, having taken up that helm after Flavian, left behind many monuments of benevolence.

He, then, was distinguished for the acuteness of his mind, while the divine Alexander excelled in asceticism and philosophy and a life without possessions and fluency of speech and countless other gifts of grace.

This man also, by using persuasion and exhortation, joined to the rest of the body the faction of the great Eustathius, which Paulinus had long before refused to let be reunited, and after him Evagrius; and he improvised a festival the like of which no one had ever seen.

For taking with him all who shared the faith, both the clergy and the multitude, he went to their assembly.

And taking them up singing, and weaving one harmony of hymnody, he filled the whole marketplace with people, from the little gate facing west as far as the greatest temple, and displayed a rational river imitating the river that flows beside the city.

Seeing these things, both the Jews and those who had received the corruption of Arius and the very small remnant of the Greeks groaned and lamented, beholding the other rivers pouring into the sea of the church.

He was the first to enter the name of the great John into the ecclesiastical diptychs.

Later in time, however, they also transferred the very relics of the teacher to the imperial city.

And again the faithful crowd, using the ferries as though the sea were dry land, covered with torches the mouth of the Bosporus that faces the Propontis.

This treasure the emperor now reigning brought to that city, he who obtained both the name of his grandfather and preserved his grandfather's piety undefiled.

He, laying both his eyes and his forehead upon the coffin, offered a supplication on behalf of those who had begotten him, entreating that pardon be granted to those who had done wrong out of ignorance.

For his parents had died long before, leaving him quite young in orphanhood.

But the God of the fathers and forefathers did not allow him to experience the trial of orphanhood;

for He provided that he should receive a pious upbringing, and He kept the empire free from sedition, and He curbed tyrannical designs.

Mindful of these benefits, he continually honors his Benefactor with hymns;

and he has as companions in this hymnody his sisters, who practice virginity throughout their life and count the study of the divine oracles their greatest delight, and who regard the needs of those in want as an inviolable treasure.

As for the emperor himself, many other things adorn him, but not least of all his benevolence and gentleness, and a calm of soul that admits no storm, and a faith both pure and approved;

and of this I shall give a clear proof.

A certain man, embracing an ascetic life but of a rather bold disposition, approached the emperor with a request about something.

And when, having done this many times, he did not obtain what he asked, he barred him from ecclesiastical communion, and having imposed this bond, withdrew.

But the most faithful emperor, having come to the palace, and though the occasion called for a banquet and his table-companions were present, said that he would not partake of food until the bond had been loosed for him;

and for this reason he sent one of his closest attendants to the bishop, urging him to permit the one who had bound him to loose the bond.

But the bishop said that the bond ought not to be accepted as loosed from just anyone, and though he declared that it had already been loosed, the emperor did not accept this loosing, until the one who had bound him, being sought out with much trouble, himself restored communion;

so firmly has he trusted in the divine laws.

For this reason he also commanded that the remains of the idolatrous shrines be torn up from their foundations, so that those who come after us should not see even a trace of the former deception;

concerning these matters he has enacted a law.

And from these good seeds he continually reaps the fruits;

for he has the Master of all things watching over him with providence.

For indeed, when Rhoilas, leader of the nomadic Scythians, crossed the Ister with as great an army as possible, and ravaged and plundered Thrace, and threatened to besiege the imperial city and take it by storm and lay it utterly waste, God, striking from above with thunderbolts and lightning, both consumed him with fire and destroyed his entire army.

He did something of the same kind also in the Persian War.

For when the Persians, having learned of the Romans' preoccupation elsewhere, marched against their neighbors, having transgressed the treaty concerning peace, and no one came to the aid of those under attack (for the emperor, confident in the peace, had sent both generals and soldiers off to other wars), God, striking with a most violent rain and the greatest hail, hindered their forward march and shackled the running of their horses;

and in twenty days they were not able to accomplish an equal number of stades, until the generals arrived and gathered the soldiers together.

And in the earlier war too, He made these same men, while besieging the city named after the emperor, an object of ridicule.

For when Gororanes, with his whole force, had surrounded the aforesaid city for more than thirty days, and had brought up many siege-engines, and employed countless machines, and raised high towers outside in response, the divine bishop alone withstood him (his name was Eunomius) and broke the force of the engines brought against the city.

And when our generals had given up the fight against the enemy and did not dare to relieve those under siege, he, arraying himself against them, kept the city unconquered.

And when one of the kings subject to the barbarians dared the customary blasphemy, and uttered the words of Rabshakeh and Sennacherib, and madly threatened to burn down the divine temple, that divine man, unable to bear the madness, ordered the stone-throwing engine — which bore the name of the apostle Thomas — to be set beside the battlement, and having directed a great stone to be placed upon it, commanded it to be released in the name of Him who had been blasphemed.

And the stone, borne straight down upon that impious king and coming close to his loathsome mouth, both destroyed his face and crushed his entire head and scattered his brains upon the ground.

Seeing this, the man who had gathered the army and hoped to capture the city departed, acknowledging his defeat by the facts themselves, and out of fear made peace.

Thus the King of all cares for the most faithful emperor.

For indeed he too confesses his servitude and offers the service befitting his Master.

This emperor restored the relics of the great luminary of the world to the city that had longed for them;

but these things happened later.

That excellent Innocent, bishop of Rome, was succeeded by Boniface, Boniface by Zosimus, and Zosimus by Celestine.

In Jerusalem, after the admirable John, Praylius was entrusted with the guardianship of the church, a man truly worthy of his name.

In Antioch, after the divine Alexander, Theodotus, the pearl of temperance, took up the presidency of the church, distinguished by gentleness and adorned by the strictness of his life.

This man, having been earnestly entreated to unite them with the flock, mingled the faction of Apollinarius with the rest of the sheep;

but many of them remained, plainly bearing their former disfigurement.

At this time Yazdegerd, king of the Persians, stirred up war against the churches, taking his pretext from the following occasion.

There was a certain bishop named Abdas, adorned with many forms of virtue;

this man, employing his zeal at an inopportune time, destroyed a fire-temple.

They call the temples of fire "pyreia";

for they suppose fire to be a god.

Learning of this from the magi, the king sent for Abdas.

At first he gently reproached him for what he had done and ordered him to rebuild the fire-temple;

but when Abdas refused and declared that he would by no means do this, the king threatened to destroy all the churches, and indeed carried his threats into effect.

For he first ordered that divine man to be put to death, and then commanded that the churches be destroyed.

For my part, I say that the destruction of the fire-temple was not done at the proper time;

for not even the divine apostle, when he came to Athens and saw the city full of idols, destroyed any of the altars honored by them, but by argument both refuted their ignorance and demonstrated the truth.

But that he did not rebuild the temple he had destroyed, but chose slaughter rather than do so, I altogether admire, and I honor him with crowns of glory;

for it seems to me equivalent to worshiping the fire, to build a shrine for it.

From this the storm, taking its beginning, stirred up utterly harsh and savage waves against the nurslings of piety.

And after thirty years had passed, the tempest still remained, fanned by the magi as though by certain gales.

(The Persians give the name "magi" to those who deify the elements;

we have set forth their mythology in another treatise, in which we also offered a refutation of their doctrines.) And Gororanes, son of Yazdegerd, after his father's death, inherited along with the kingdom the war against piety as well, and at his death he left both of these, yoked together, to his own son.

It is not easy to describe the kinds of tortures and the ingenious devices of punishment which they inflicted on the pious.

For from some they flayed the hands, from others the backs;

and from the heads of others, beginning at the forehead and proceeding as far as the back of the head, they stripped the skin entirely.

Some they covered with split reeds, fitting the cut edges against the body, then binding them fast with bonds from head to foot, and violently pulled out each of the reeds one by one, so that by tearing away the adjacent skin they might produce bitter pains.

And digging pits and coating them thoroughly, they shut up in them herds of large rats and offered the champions of piety to them as food, binding their hands and feet so that they would be unable to drive the beasts away from themselves.

And the rats, driven by hunger, gradually consumed the flesh of the saints, inflicting on them a prolonged and agonizing torment.

And they devised still other torments more grievous than these, having as their instructor the avenging enemy of nature and adversary of truth.

But they did not disprove the courage of the champions;

for they ran forward of their own accord, longing to obtain death as the procurer of imperishable life.

I shall mention two or three, so that through them I may also display the courage of the rest.

There was a certain Hormisdas, one of the exceedingly distinguished men among the Persians, an Achaemenid by descent, whose father had been a provincial governor.

Learning that this man was a Christian, the king had him brought and commanded him to deny the God who had saved him.

But he said that the king had commanded neither just nor advantageous things.

For indeed, one who is taught to despise the God of all things and to deny him with ease would all the more readily despise the king as well;

for this one is but a man, having received a mortal nature.

But if one who denies your scepter, O king, deserves the ultimate punishment, then one who denies the Maker of the universe deserves punishments many times over.

The king, though he ought to have admired the wisdom of what was said, instead stripped that most noble champion of both his wealth and his honors, and commanded him, naked and wearing only a loincloth, to lead the camels of the army.

After many days had passed, he peered out from the vaulted chamber and saw that excellent man scorched by the sun's rays and covered with dust.

And, remembering the distinction of his father, he had him brought and ordered him to put on a small tunic made of linen.

Then, supposing that his resolve had been softened both by his former suffering and by the kindness now shown him,

"Now then," he said, "having been rid of that former contention, deny the carpenter's son."

But he, filled with divine zeal, tore the tunic and flung it away, saying:

"If you think that because of this I shall turn aside from piety, keep your gift along with your impiety."

Seeing this courage of his, the king drove him out of the kingdom, naked as he was.

And as for Saenes, master of a thousand household servants, who had spoken against the king and would not consent to deny the Maker, the king asked which of his servants was the most wicked, handed over to that one the mastery of the rest, and ordered the master himself to serve him as a slave.

He also joined to that man the mistress, the master's own wife, supposing that by this means he would persuade the champion of the truth to change his mind.

But he was disappointed in his expectation;

for Saenes had built his house upon the rock.

And having seized a certain deacon named Benjamin, he imprisoned him.

When two years had passed, an envoy of the Romans arrived, negotiating concerning certain other matters;

and then, learning of this, he requested of the king the release of the deacon.

The king commanded that Benjamin promise that he would present the Christian teaching to none of the magi.

And the envoy promised that Benjamin would keep what had been commanded.

But Benjamin, having heard the envoy's exhortations, said:

"It is impossible," he said, "for me not to share the light of which I myself have partaken."

For how great a punishment the hiding of the talent deserves, the narrative of the holy Gospels teaches.

But the king, knowing nothing of this at that time, ordered him to be released from his bonds.

But he continued to do his accustomed work, capturing alive those held fast by the darkness of ignorance and leading them to the light of the mind.

When a year had passed, what he was doing was reported to the king, and having had him brought, the king commanded him to deny the one whom he worshiped;

but he asked the king with what a man is rightly requited who abandons his own kingdom and chooses another instead.

And when the king said, "With death and the ultimate punishment," the most wise man said:

"What, then, might a man not justly suffer, who abandons his Maker and Creator and Nourisher and Savior, and deifies one of his fellow servants, offering to this one the reverence owed to that One?" The king, then, enraged at such words, sharpened twenty reeds and drove them under the nails of his hands and feet.

But when he saw that he regarded the torment as mere sport, the king again sharpened yet another reed and thrust it into his generative member, and by continually drawing it out and thrusting it in again, produced unspeakable pains.

After this punishment, the impious and savage man ordered a thick rod, full of knots on every side, to be thrust in through his fundament.

Thus the noble contender gave up his spirit.

And countless other such deeds were dared by those impious men.

One should not marvel that the Ruler of all things endures their savagery and impiety.

For indeed, before the reign of Constantine the Great, as many as became emperors of the Romans raged madly against the devotees of the truth.

But after nine years had passed, they flourished and received a many-fold increase in both greatness and beauty, while he was extinguished together with his impiety.

And the Master foretold both these wars and the invincibility of the Church.

The very facts themselves also teach us that war provides us with greater benefit than peace.

For the one makes us soft, slack, and cowardly, whereas war sharpens our resolve and prepares us to despise present things as things that flow away.

But these things I have often said also in other works.

At that time, during which the divine Theodotus was guiding the church of the Antiochenes, Theodore, bishop of Mopsuestia and teacher of the whole Church, who had excelled in valor against every heretical battle-line, reached the end of his life.

He spent thirty years in the episcopal office, drawing up his forces against the battle-line of Arius and Eunomius, warring down the brigand company of Apollinarius, and offering the finest pasture to the divine sheep.

And his brother Polychronius shepherded the church of the Apameans most excellently, drawing upon both the grace of his eloquence and the brilliance of his life.

But I, having here brought my composition to a close, entreat those who shall read it to repay my labor with their prayers.

This history, however, embraces a period of one hundred and five years, having begun from the madness of Arius and having received its close in the death of those praiseworthy men, Theodore and Theodotus.

I shall also list in order those who, after the persecution, presided over the great cities.

Vitalius, Philogonius, Eustathius;

after these came heretics who were, so to speak, in communion with the orthodox;

Eulalius, Euphronius, Flacillus, Stephen, Leontius, Eudoxius —

Meletius, Flavian, Porphyry, Alexander, Theodotus;

and joined together with these were Paulinus and Evagrius.

Achillas, Alexander, Athanasius, then Gregory the heretic, then Athanasius again, George the heretic, then Athanasius again, after him Peter, then Lucius the heretic, then the same Peter again, Timothy, Theophilus, Cyril.

Macarius, Maximus, Cyril, John, Praylius, Juvenal.

Alexander, then Eusebius, transferred from Nicomedia, a heretic; after him Paul, orthodox and martyr; after him Macedonius, the heresiarch who fought against the Spirit;

having thrust him aside, the impious Eudoxius took possession of the church;

then Gregory, [previously bishop] of Nazianzus, who afterward became [bishop of this see]; after him Nectarius, John, Arsacius, Atticus, Sisinnius.