Epigrams 5 part 4/8

but in that very book, from which the learned man transferred those words to his own purpose, the same Hilary again praises the Antiochene, Philippopolitan, and Sirmian faith; for he says: "You condemn also the very name of 'substance,' by which both in the Sardican Synod and in the Sirmian you falsely pretended to the Westerns that you were pious—a name which nevertheless, received on prophetic authority, contained the understanding of the faith." But if Hilary in that same place seemed otherwise not wholly to approve those very formulas, he intimates that he does so because there was no need of them after the Nicene faith;

for although he acknowledges no fault in them, yet the cause of a 'religious,' as he says, 'will' was lacking, since the changing of good things is the contemplation of evil, and an unnecessary emendation is the occasion of perversity. But whether for that cause alone Hilary could rightly call Liberius an apostate and a prevaricator, and curse him with dire imprecations, no one, I think, will readily concede. Indeed, to say openly what I feel, I do not see why so great account should be taken of Hilary's authority (let it be said without offense) in this passage in which he so expresses himself. No one assuredly would deny that, by transmitting those fragments to posterity, he preserved a great treasure of the Church, and that for that reason immense thanks are due to him.

But since, in arranging them, no order either of time or of subject was preserved—since the things that ought to have been put in the first place occupy the last, and those that should be last occupy the earlier place—they obtain from learned men the name of a hodgepodge heaped together by chance rather than of a properly ordered work. Who, then, will make us certain whether the book On the Synods is earlier in time than that fragment in which the lapse of Liberius is discussed, or rather later—so that from this we may be able to judge whether, when he was writing that book, he departed (the matter being better and more diligently known) from that headlong judgment against Liberius, or not? Then, too, the heap of matters is confused, and monstrous is the appearance of that work, as I have already forewarned.

This Nicolas Le Fèvre by no means denies, who first brought it to light; and the whole preface of the learned man Pierre Coustant is occupied in polishing this work and in concealing it, as it were, under a certain applied coloring. Finally, there are many things in them which, hastily written out, seem to want the finishing hand and critical judgment. These things, therefore, easily lead me to believe that the fragments which we now possess Hilary held among the rejected items, and as things disapproved by himself; and that this, moreover, is the one reason why we now read those imprecations—which he would doubtless have erased, and would have written quite otherwise, had he thought it would come to pass that they could someday pass through men's hands and become public:

for I see no other way by which we could otherwise defend him, seeing that concerning that pontiff—who both before his lapse and afterward had with great spirit asserted the faith, and could be seen not at all to have deserted it even by the lapse itself—he left these unworthy things written. But what of Jerome, whose testimonies too are wont to be adduced against Liberius? Indeed, in the Vatican Codex of the Hieronymian Chronicle belonging to the Queen of Sweden—which Holstenius calls of admirable antiquity, and which learned men think was written in the sixth or seventh century—the illustrious Father admonishes us that not even a trace of the lapse of Liberius exists,

namely Fr. Thomas Mamachi, the Casanatense theologian; and hence he conjectures that the things which pertain to this same matter were added in the more recent copies. And that these too are suspect to me is brought about, moreover, by another passage of Jerome, contradictory to this one, from the book On Ecclesiastical Writers. For if Liberius, going into exile for the faith, was broken by Fortunatianus and compelled to the subscription of heresy, how could Jerome assert in the earlier account that the same man—not now as one setting out for exile, but as one overcome by the weariness of exile—had subscribed to heretical depravity?

Hence at least it can rightly be gathered that Jerome himself wrote these things not from matters ascertained by himself, but rather from a false rumor once spread abroad; which uncertain report, since Rufinus judged that he could not safely follow it, he—by a most excellent counsel—abstained from putting forth a definite opinion. There would still be one passage, which is wont to be adduced against Liberius, from the writer of the proem to the petition of Marcellinus and Faustinus. But I pass it over, both because it is uncertain what that writer understood by the word 'perfidy,' and because, moreover, his falsehood is manifest: for if Constantius came to Rome at the beginning of May, if he held Felix—intruded by himself—for bishop, if to him as bishop he addressed law 14 of the Code,

under the title 'On Bishops,' inscribing it at the close of that year 357—then, if Liberius at that time had neither given his hand to perfidy nor even thought of laying aside his constancy, how can it be that that emperor answered the people demanding back their bishop: 'You have Liberius, who will return a better man'? § IX.—The return of Liberius to the City is described, and the things that followed him are narrated. The anonymous annotator to the Defense of the Propositions of the Gallican clergy is brought forward and rejected: the Acts of Eusebius the presbyter and the martyrdom are fabricated: under that name lies hidden not Eusebius the presbyter, but Eusebius the pope.

These are the things I had to write concerning the deeds of Liberius in exile, received either from the undoubted monuments of the ancients or from probable conjectures. But I think that those things which followed his return to the City are by no means to be separated from them; for these are, as it were, a certain part and appendage of the same exile: and this I do the more willingly, because some abuse them in order to prove that that pontiff was not only a heretic but even a most bitter persecutor of the Catholics; so great is the pleasure that is in them of disparaging the Roman pontiffs.

Liberius, therefore, returned to the City—by the testimony of Anastasius—on the fourth day before the Kalends of August in the year 358, that is, in the third year from when he had been an exile, as the more common opinion of the chronologists also establishes, and as is clear from the series of events which we have narrated. Socrates and Sozomen, as we have seen, say that seditions then arose in the city, but they record nothing in particular. Jerome's Chronicle writes that Liberius entered Rome as it were a victor, and that the clergy of the City who stood for Felix were cast out together with Felix, who had been substituted for him. Yet the author of the preface to the petition of Marcellinus and Faustinus presents some picture of the matter then transacted, writing thus: "In the third year Liberius returns, and the Roman people went forth to meet him with joy."

"Felix, censured by the senate and the people, is driven from the City; and after a little time, by the urging of the clergy who had perjured themselves, he bursts into the City, and presumes to hold station in the Basilica of Julius across the Tiber, whom the whole multitude of the faithful and the nobles cast out of the City again with great disgrace." The reason, then, why Liberius was received into the arms of the Romans when he returned, and Felix was expelled, was the deep love of the flock for their shepherd; of which, besides the Christian writers, there exists an outstanding proof in Ammianus, adduced by me in another place. This testimony is of the graver weight because the author of that same preface asserts that Liberius at last gave his hand to perfidy:

for from this you understand that the slanderous man had no other cause for reviling that pontiff. But if you listen to Anastasius and certain others, the appearance of things is altogether different. For he did not dare to enter the City when he had returned from exile, but dwelt in the monastery of Saint Agnes, near the sister of Constantius, so that, as it were through her intervention or entreaty, he might return into the city.

But when the same Constantius had learned this, he takes counsel with Ursacius and Valens, with certain Roman presbyters, and with other Arians; on their advice he recalls Liberius from the cemetery of Saint Agnes; the emperor enters Rome together with the pontiff, again at that very hour consults those Arians, and casts Felix, who was a catholic, out of the episcopate. And from that day there was a persecution in the city of Rome against the clergy, so that within the church presbyters and clerics were slain.

Among these, the Acts—edited first by Mombritius and then more fully by Baluze—number Eusebius the presbyter, whom they declare to have been interrogated by Constantius and Liberius, to have confessed the faith with great courage, and finally, by the order of both, to have been shut in a tiny chamber and to have died for that same faith. But should you say that the emperor, occupied with the war through Illyricum and with the disputations of the Arians at Sirmium, could not have been present when Liberius entered the city and these things were being done at Rome, hear by what reasoning those who defend those Acts would take from you every doubt.

They say, therefore, that these things are not to be understood as if Constantius were present at Rome, but that, in his stead, mandates given by him and brought by couriers ought to be understood by you. For unless you do so, the credit both of Anastasius and of the Acts—which reveal that Liberius openly professed heresy and, moreover, raged most fiercely against the Catholics—will perish. For it will avail nothing if you then say that the Acts which Orosius, the kinsman, companion, and eyewitness of Eusebius, had written are not those very ones which we now read in Mombritius and Baluze, but came down to us interpolated in later ages and altered. For indeed, if anyone deny this—as he rightly and deservedly may—by what argument, by what judgment will you prove the contrary?

I am ashamed to linger longer in refuting these trifles: but from this it may be seen how great is the force of a preconceived opinion, that it obtrudes as true things that are openly false, and that, rotten fictions being held in esteem, the gravest calumnies are heaped upon holy and undeserving men.

Since, therefore, there is deep silence concerning that persecution among all the writers, both contemporary and nearest to this age, and since you may see that that fiction arose in later ages, you will nevertheless marvel that there could lately have been those who, in order to accomplish what they wished, gathered up those filthy tales, and, that they might procure some value for them, harassed approved authors and strove to twist them unwilling into that opinion, and seemed to themselves to have detected traces of this persecution in those words of Sozomen and of Jerome's Chronicle which we have reported; hear the anonymous annotator to the Defense of the Propositions of the Gallican clergy:

"As regards the persecution—besides the fact that open testimonies to it are borne in the pontifical records of Felix and Liberius—Sozomen too writes that Liberius's people were so devoted to him that for his sake they stirred up a most grievous sedition and broke out even into slaughter: but most clearly of all, Jerome records that the clergy were cast out together with Felix for this reason, that Liberius, overcome by the weariness of exile and subscribing to heretical depravity, entered Rome as it were a victor:"

"in which words there appear both things equally joined together, that is, the denial of the faith—which the subscription to heretical depravity implies—and the victory, assuredly not without some force and struggle with rivals, who through that victory are said to have been cast out. And this (O charming fellow!) is the persecution peculiar to the city of Rome, which the Acts of Eusebius describe.... And that persecution, local indeed and proper to the city of Rome, our Acts will have ceased either after the death of Eusebius, or—what the sequence rather shows—after the synod gathered against Liberius, with Damasus (who afterward was pontiff) as its author, and lasting, if not for a long time, that is, until the close of the Council of Ariminum."

Nor, indeed, is it surprising that Liberius—against whom all resisted with such constancy—understood at length that he was treading a path that would bring his affairs into the greatest hatred and odium: then, too, other causes seem to have intervened, one after another. For now, the first and second Sirmian formulas being set aside—to one of which Liberius had subscribed, and which he had hitherto wished all to subscribe—a third was being prepared in a new Sirmian Synod; on account of the dispute that had arisen, counsels were being agitated about the greater councils to be held at Ariminum in the West and at Seleucia in the East, the expectation of which held the minds of all in suspense; whence, during that interval, while Liberius was uncertain of what was to come, the Church could easily breathe again.

But after the Council of Ariminum, if we believe Socrates and Sozomen, the persecution was renewed, which had scarcely rested for a whole year; and so our Acts agree with the other writers, and do not exaggerate the truth, while they describe either the heresy or the persecution of Liberius. It is truly astonishing that this anonymous writer could, with such confidence, stitch together and publish so many lies. For, to omit the rest, in the first place it is false that that synod—which he pretends put an end to the persecution—was convoked by Damasus, then a presbyter; and that the reader himself may judge this, I give the words of the Acts:

"But when Liberius was dead, Damasus is raised up, who by public voice condemned Liberius together with twenty-eight bishops and twenty-five presbyters, and the persecution ceased—yet not for a long time." The defender of the Gallican propositions, who well knew that Liberius (as he himself says) had long before come to his senses, lest he abandon those Acts which he calls in for the defense of his own opinion, understands them in such a way as to maintain that that synod was convoked by Damasus, then a presbyter. And the annotator too uses this same fallacy: but those who explain them thus do most manifest violence to the words recited. Next, did Damasus the presbyter have the right and the means of convoking so many bishops to a synod?

Thirdly, was this, moreover, convenient and easy while that most grievous persecution—which both writers imagine—was raging? Fourthly and finally, if Liberius had been condemned by Damasus the presbyter and deposed from his see through a synod, why does that same Damasus, now pontiff, reject the Council of Ariminum chiefly for this reason: that the opinion of the Roman bishop had not been sought? Was it permitted, when Liberius was condemned and deposed, to use at that time the right of moderating the decrees of that council? For the rest, from this passage of those Acts I seem to see whence the forger took the material for stitching together this fiction. He had seen the little book of Marcellinus and Faustinus, and had read its preface:

Therefore the things which we know happened at that time, when Felix was driven out of the City and from his see, he so understood them as if they had been perpetrated against Catholics; and out of the schismatics who clung to Felix himself against Liberius he fabricated martyrs — a man utterly crude, falling far below the comprehension of that age. Hence indeed he says that the persecution ceased not long after Damasus was elected, because he had seen that, by the laws and edicts of the emperors, action had often been taken against the Ursinians and other schismatics, whom he likewise reckoned as Catholics. Secondly, it is utterly false that the persecution stirred up by Liberius, when he returned, lay quiet for nearly a whole year before the Council of Rimini; just as it is also false that it was renewed by Liberius after that same council.

For if those Acts are to be trusted, the presbyter Eusebius received his repose seven months after his confinement, on the nineteenth day before the Kalends of September, that is, on the fourteenth of August: we hold therefore the month and the day on which Eusebius died. Now I ask of you, O anonymous annotator, in what year you judge him to have died — whether, namely, in the year 358, or rather in the following year 359. If you say the former, since Liberius entered the City of Bonna in that year on the second day of August, into what space will fall that long prior persecution which you imagine for yourself, into what the confession of your Eusebius, into what the seven-month confinement before his death, and finally into what his martyrdom?

But if you prolong the matter to the month of August of the following year, you will seek that time in vain, along with that nearly whole year during which you say the persecution, formerly stirred up by Liberius, lay quiet on account of the expectation of the imminent Council of Rimini; for if the Acts of Eusebius sing true, you must needs confess that the wrath of Liberius and of the emperor against the Catholics never cooled, but at that very time when the bishops gathered in that city were deliberating, and immediately after the death of the same Eusebius, it blazed up more fiercely — the presbyter Gregory, who had committed him to burial, being put to death, and the rest of the clergy openly butchered with the sword through the squares, streets, churches, and baths.

Thirdly, the causes for which you say that persecution was interrupted by Liberius have been falsely and ineptly devised by you. For as I have said, either the Acts of the presbyter Eusebius must be abandoned by you, or his death must be assigned to the month of August of the year 359. Now indeed you see what follows from this. For if a graver and harsher persecution immediately succeeded the death of Eusebius himself and of the other presbyter Gregory; if the third Sirmian formula had already been drawn up beforehand; if the Eastern bishops had earlier convened at Seleucia and the Western at Rimini — then assuredly nothing of all this detained Liberius from continuing to rage against the Catholics, and you are either deceived, or you wish to deceive us.

But when you say that this pontiff not only subscribed to the first or second Sirmian formula, but even wished it to be subscribed by all, you act according to your accustomed good faith, and according to that kindness which befits a Christian — you who, first and alone, bring into the light, as though it were manifest, a most grievous charge that is not only unexamined but assuredly false. But now I will let the anonymous one go: for if I wished to pursue all his deceits by discussion, I would create weariness for the reader, occupied with weightier matters, joined with a loss of time. For the rest, when I reject the Acts of the presbyter Eusebius — which other most weighty men did before me — lest anyone should think the sanctity and veneration of Eusebius the confessor diminished by me:

I transfer this man indeed to another lying hidden under that name, namely to Eusebius the pope, who died in exile for the sake of asserting the discipline of the Church and keeping its roof in good repair. For since to later ages there was no knowledge of the things pertaining to that pontiff, except the memory of almost a bare name and of his cult, these very things were laid down, as it were in the place of a foundation, upon which was to be constructed the tale, now read concerning the presbyter Eusebius, full of cracks. But why I think thus, receive the reasons. That the title (church) of Eusebius in the City is indeed ancient, he will hardly deny who reads it expressly named in the first council under Symmachus.

But it does not seem right to say that it could have been dedicated to the presbyter Eusebius, since the name of that presbyter is sought in vain in martyrologies older than Bede. The Gregorian Sacramentary indeed honors the recurring memory of this Eusebius on the fourteenth day of August: but the word 'sacerdos,' by which it adorns him, expresses a bishop, according to the usage then received; and besides, all those things which the venerable Cardinal Thomasius collected in the Antiphonary, the Gradual, and the Capitulary of the Gospels, you read assigned to the nineteenth before the Kalends of September as suited to a bishop, a confessor, or a martyr, and which therefore were customarily sung and read in celebrating the birthday (heavenly) of St. Marcellus, pope and martyr, and of other pontiffs.

In addition, the Bucherian index marks the death of Eusebius the pope on the fourteenth before the Kalends of September; but those apocryphal Acts report that Eusebius the presbyter died likewise on the nineteenth before the Kalends of September: yet error is easy in expressing these numbers, and that error so slight, if you mark it well, that one and the same Eusebius might be believed to be the one expressed in both places. Finally, from another Bucherian catalogue it is established that Eusebius the pope was laid in the cemetery of Callistus: in those same fabricated Acts the presbyter Eusebius is said to have been buried in a crypt beside the body of St. Sixtus, martyr and bishop, on the Appian Way, in the cemetery of Callistus.

You see therefore how similar these things are to one another, and hence you understand how easily it could happen that the impostor, who in ruder ages full of darkness wrote those Acts, made out of Eusebius the pope — whose deeds we know lay long in obscurity — a presbyter Eusebius, and foisted him upon us. Indeed Gregory the Ninth, who consecrated the Church of St. Eusebius, by no means informs us whether that man was a bishop or a presbyter; from which it can be conjectured that he held nothing certain or ascertained, and that the matter even then stuck in the ford (remained unsettled), which in this age has seemed to receive light by the benefit of the Damasian poem.

§ X. — It is inquired what manner of man Liberius truly showed himself to be after he returned to his see, and thereafter, namely at the time of the Council of Rimini. Whether he ever truly withdrew himself from communion with Athanasius, or how long that interruption lasted. Concerning the time of the letter written by the same Athanasius to the bishops of Egypt, which is illustrated. The passage of Hilary from the fragments on behalf of Liberius is explained. Concerning Liberius's second withdrawal from the City through fear of Constantius: a passage of Lucifer is adduced and illustrated. The Amsterdam anonymous is noted.

Having therefore dismissed these little fables to those whom they delight, let us now see what Liberius did, and what was the opinion about him, after Felix was cast out and seemed to lay down of his own accord the pontificate which he had perhaps for some time lawfully administered. Two periods of time are to be considered: the one which runs from his return to the Synod of Rimini; the other which followed it thereafter. In the first place, then, it can be observed that nowhere is anything read written or done by him whereby he might seem to beg pardon from the Church, as would have been fitting. In the second place, it is not clear that he was ever held for a heretic, either by his own people or by the bishops of Italy:

and indeed from this silence a great argument is drawn that the Catholic faith was never laid aside by him. Thirdly, Damasus writes that, when the Council of Rimini was being held, it was necessary that the opinion of the Roman bishop be sought; and what follows from this I have already said. Fourthly, finally, when the bishops at Rimini wrote to the emperor that they had rejected the formula which Valens and Ursacius had proposed — because they had seen that, if it were received, disturbance and contention would arise both in the other cities and especially in the Roman Church — we understand that both the Roman citizens and the clergy with their bishop, and those who write, all the Catholic bishops, were already before this joined together with him in peaceful communion and faith.

Meanwhile the Synod of Rimini was assembled: but we know that Liberius was present at it neither in person nor through his legates. He who recently translated from Latin into French the defense once published under the celebrated name of Bossuet, bishop of Meaux, thinks this was done by the fraud of Ursacius and Valens, whose interest it namely was, in the absence of the Roman bishop, to undertake the crime, lest they should be hindered by him from more easily managing their affairs and bringing them where they wished. This I do not deny could have happened: but if this is the true reason, let that man see by what way thereafter, or by what design, he will be able afterward to defend with his own author the apocryphal Acts of the presbyter Eusebius.

For if Liberius had been a persecutor of Catholics, as those Acts assert, why would those two ringleaders of the Arians have wished the Roman bishop, who agreed with them, to be absent from that council? It seems therefore more probable the opinion of those who think he was absent lest he should seem to confer any force by his consent upon this council, which Constantius had convoked under conditions so unjust, and to which he had prescribed fixed limits of acting and decreeing: and you understand this to be the reason why the assembled bishops fell — namely because, the Roman pontiff being absent, who is the head of the Church, there was lacking to them that divine gift of inerrancy which we know will never fail the whole body of the Church. But what meanwhile concerning Athanasius?

Had Liberius retained communion with him? So indeed I think: for it is established that the Arians, before he was driven into exile, wished this one thing alone, that the pontiff should condemn Athanasius; but concerning Liberius changing the faith and omitting the homoousion there is not even a word. Let the letters then written by him to the emperor be read, and the colloquy held at Milan. He went therefore as an exile to Beroea in Thrace on account of the one communion retained with Athanasius: at last, broken, he wrote to the Easterns that he had taken up the Sirmian faith and had removed Athanasius from his communion, and wished to have peace with them: this he also signified to Valens and Ursacius — although that letter is not free from suspicion.

He came therefore to Sirmium, by the working of Basil of Ancyra, who then administered all things according to his own will: what was done and dealt with then we have already seen. There is one faith which held occupied the minds of the emperor Constantius, and besides of Basil and of all; to this all the care of all was brought together: concerning Athanasius, nothing. But why? Because, the face of affairs being changed, the pursuits had to be wholly different. For the heresy and faction of Eudoxius had recently burst into the open field; against which it was Basil's care either to retain or to attach to himself all those who professed the Usia (substance): hence concerning Athanasius — whom he well knew to be joined in communion with nearly the whole Church — he seemed not even to think:

so likewise Constantius, who was governed by Basil's mind, for a while laid aside his old hatred toward him. Hence again it came about that, when Liberius saw that matter then wholly neglected and consigned to oblivion, and understood that nothing further was demanded of him, he is by no means to be reckoned to have in fact laid aside his former communion with Athanasius, whatever he had previously written; and this is the reason, as I suspect, why Athanasius himself says that Liberius subscribed not indeed openly against him, but rather into heresy.