(1.) THE THINGS THAT WERE DONE BETWEEN THE BISHOPS LIBERIUS AND FELIX. In the times of the emperor Constantius, son of Constantine, a harsher persecution of Christians arose from the impious Arian heretics, with Constantius' support; for he persecuted the bishop Athanasius, who resisted the heretics, and commanded that he be condemned by all the bishops. This too, out of fear of the sovereign, all the pontiffs everywhere attempted to do, condemning an innocent man unheard; but Liberius, bishop of Rome, and Eusebius of Vercelli, and Lucifer of Cagliari, and Hilary of Poitiers refused to pronounce sentence. These, therefore, were sent into exile for keeping the faith. Along with Liberius his deacon Damasus pretends to set out.
whence, fleeing from the journey, he returns to Rome, corrupted by ambition. But on the day on which Liberius set out for exile, all the clergy, that is the presbyters and the archdeacon Felix, and Damasus the deacon himself, and all the officers of the church, together in the presence of the Roman people, confirmed under oath that, while Liberius lived, they would in no way have another pontiff. Yet the clergy, against divine law, which was least fitting, with the utmost crime of perjury, received the archdeacon Felix, ordained in Liberius' place, as bishop. This deed displeased the whole people, and they withdrew from his procession. After two years the emperor Constantius comes to Rome; the people ask him for Liberius.
He at once, assenting, said: 'You have your Liberius, who, in the same condition in which he departed from you, will return the better.' But this he indicated because of the consent by which Liberius had given his hand to faithlessness. In the third year Liberius returns, and the Roman people went out to meet him with joy. Felix, branded by the senate and the people, is driven from the city; and after a little time, at the instigation of the clerics who had perjured themselves, he bursts into the city and presumes to hold a station in the basilica of Julius across the Tiber. Him the whole multitude of the faithful and the nobles cast out of the city again with great disgrace. After eight years, in the consulship of Valentinian and Valens, Felix died on the tenth day before the Kalends of December.
Liberius showed mercy to the clerics who had perjured themselves, and received them into their own places. Likewise, on the eighth day before the Kalends of October, in the consulship of Gratian and Dagalaifus, Liberius was taken from human affairs. Then the presbyters and deacons Ursinus, Amantius, and Lupus, together with the holy people, which had kept faith with Liberius while he was set in exile, began to assemble in the basilica of Julius and demand that Ursinus the deacon be ordained pontiff for themselves in Liberius' place; but the perjurers, in the Lucina quarter, demand Damasus as bishop for themselves in Felix's place. Paul, bishop of Tibur, blesses Ursinus.
When Damasus, who had always coveted the episcopate, learned of this, he stirred up with money all the charioteers and the ignorant multitude, and, armed with clubs, breaks into the basilica of Julius and raged there with great slaughter of the faithful for three days. After seven days, together with all the perjurers and the arena-men, whom he had corrupted with an enormous bribe, he seized the Lateran basilica, and there, ordained bishop, and having bribed the city judge Viventius and the prefect of the grain-supply Julian, he brought it about that Ursinus, a venerable man, who had earlier been ordained pontiff, was sent into exile together with the deacons Amantius and Lupus. When this was done, Damasus began to harass with clubs and manifold slaughter the Roman people, who were unwilling to process with him.
He also tries, through the magistracy, to drive from the city seven presbyters whom he had detained; but the faithful people, running to meet them, rescued those same presbyters and led them without delay to the basilica of Liberius. Then Damasus, with his faithless followers, summons the arena-men, the charioteers, and the gravediggers, and the whole of his clergy with axes, swords, and clubs, and besieged the basilica at the second hour of the day, on the seventh day before the Kalends of November, in the consulship of Gratian and Dagalaifus, and stirred up a grievous battle. For with the doors broken and fire set beneath, he sought an entrance by which to burst in; and some too of his household, tearing down the roof of the basilica, were killing the faithful people with the roof-tiles.
Then all the Damasians, rushing into the basilica, killed one hundred and sixty of the people, both men and women; they also wounded very many, of whom many died. But on Damasus' side no one perished. After three days, however, the holy people, gathering into one, began to recite against him the commands of the Lord who says: 'Do not fear those who kill the body, but cannot kill the soul'; and they also sang in their praises and said: 'They have given the dead bodies of thy servants to be meat for the birds of heaven, the flesh of thy saints for the beasts of the earth; they have poured out their blood like water round about Jerusalem, and there was none to bury them.'
Often, therefore, that same people, gathered together in the basilica of Liberius, cried out, saying: 'Christian emperor, nothing is hidden from you. Let all the bishops come to Rome. Let the cause be tried. This is now the fifth war Damasus has made. Away from the See of Peter with the murderers!' And the people of God with many prayers besought the bishops to assemble, that they might strike with a just sentence the man stained with such great impiety; whom the matrons so favored that he was called 'the matrons' ear-scratcher.' The voices of the people, therefore, were carried to the sovereign Valentinian, who, moved by piety, granted the return of the exiles. Then Ursinus, with the deacons Amantius and Lupus, returned to the city on the seventeenth day before the Kalends of October, in the consulship of Lupicinus and Jovinus. The holy people gladly ran to meet him.
But Damasus, conscious to himself of such great crimes and shaken by no slight fear, bribed the whole palace, lest his deeds be disclosed to the sovereign. The emperor, not knowing what Damasus had perpetrated, issues an edict that, Ursinus being sent off into exile, no further wicked strife should henceforth set the people at odds. Then Ursinus the bishop, a holy man and without crime, taking counsel for his people, handed himself over into the hands of the wicked, and on the sixteenth day before the Kalends of December, by the emperor's command, hastened of his own accord into exile. But the people, fearing God and wearied by many persecutions, feared neither the emperor, nor the judges, nor even Damasus himself, the author of the crimes and the murderer, but celebrated their stations without clerics throughout the cemeteries of the martyrs.
Hence, when many of the faithful had assembled at St Agnes', Damasus, armed with his henchmen, rushed in and cast down very many in the ruin of his devastation. This most cruel deed exceedingly displeased the bishops of Italy. And when he had solemnly invited them to his anniversary, and some few of them had assembled, he strives with them by entreaties and by bribe, that they might pronounce sentence against the holy Ursinus. They replied: 'We have gathered for an anniversary, not that we might condemn a man unheard.' Thus his perverse intention lacked the effect for which it strove. THEREUPON THE PRESBYTERS, AFFLICTED IN DIVERS WAYS, WERE SCATTERED THROUGH EXILES AND FOREIGN PLACES.
OF THESE, THE PRESBYTERS MARCELLINUS AND FAUSTINUS, CONCERNING THE CONFESSION OF THE TRUE FAITH AND THE DISPLAY OF THE SACRED COMMUNION AND THE PERSECUTION OF THOSE OPPOSED TO THE TRUTH, OFFERED PETITIONS TO THE SOVEREIGNS VALENTINIAN, THEODOSIUS, AND ARCADIUS THUS: (2.) We beseech your clemency, most pious emperors Valentinian, Theodosius, and Arcadius, that you may deign to read these things tirelessly in the contemplation of Christ the Son of God, who aids your empire. Your sublime reign then ascends to yet loftier things by the help of God the Father Almighty and of Christ his only-begotten Son, when you neither despise the truth in men of little account, nor strengthen falsehood in the many or the powerful.
For this is most just and most salutary in the kingdom of justice: that persons be approved by the merit of the truth, not that truth be presumed from the power of persons; since the law of the world was written for this reason, that neither power nor multitude might prevail against what is true or equitable, even if it be vindicated by men of little account. But if such great care must be preserved by your tranquil providence even in matters of the commonwealth, that against all force and power right may prevail even in the least things, whereby the commonwealth entrusted to your rule may, by the nod of God, flourish—how is it that, in divine affairs, the truth of the holy faith is obscured and oppressed by the throng of the impious and by their most fraudulent circumventions?
especially since you, the sovereigns of the Roman empire, vindicate the pious faith and purity of the Christian religion by so many of your ordinances—wholly indeed, because, as worshipers of Christ the Son of God, you decree on behalf of the catholic faith and with every effort inscribe laws by the authority of your empire against the heretics and the faithless—not as though you were attempting anything new of your own opinion, as certain earlier sovereigns attempted to their own ruin and that of others, but that you may show your judgments and your pious faith to agree with the sacred sentences of the divine Scriptures and with pious confessions.
But whereas this, especially after the most atrocious persecutions of former times, ought rather to aid the holy Church, it afflicts her the more, since those very distinguished bishops who before persecuted her under the assertion or assent of heresy, now also persecute her under the authority of the catholic name; and the more fraudulently they now do this under the counterfeit profession of the pious faith, the more perniciously they rage, and the more grievously the truth seethes with pain, because it is not yet permitted to her, even under you emperors who defend the pious faith, to breathe again. But lest we seem to refer this to odium without proof of the matter, we set forth the case as we are able;
and we beseech, as suppliants we beseech, that you may lend us, the most lowly, your royal ears, while we show that we are not heretics and yet are vehemently afflicted as if heretics, since not even those who vehemently afflict us, nor their associates, can now say or prove that we are heretics; nor indeed can they deny concerning themselves that in a former time they either most bitterly vindicated heresy with intolerable torment of the faithful, or at least gave their hand to it, having condemned the catholic faith which they before asserted, while they dread to suffer exile for Christ the Son of God—for whom even a lay believer ought to undergo any most atrocious death, because it has been granted to us, as the Apostle says, on behalf of Christ, not only to believe in him but also to suffer for him;
for such a death or suffering is an occasion of blessed immortality. It is not hidden from your clemency and your religion devoted to God, how impious and how pestilential is the Arian heresy, against which it was set down in writing by our fathers at Nicaea with spiritual vigor, so that both the pious confession of the apostolic faith might be preserved and the perpetual condemnation of the heresy itself might be preserved, that no one among posterity might be deceived. But Arius, like the heart of Pharaoh, not believing that the divine sentence had then been passed upon him, by some means or other filched a hearing before Constantine, hoping that by his support the sentence of the spiritual priests might be rescinded and he might be received back into the Church.
At length that same Constantine had commanded that the holy bishop Alexander, of blessed memory, should hold communion with him—not that Alexander who was bishop of the divine faith at Alexandria (who, both full of wisdom and fervent in the Holy Spirit, first both unmasked and expelled and condemned forever that same Arius), but this Alexander who was in this city of Constantinople, himself also an admirable bishop. And when he saw that Arius was relying on the king of this world, he cried out from the very depth of his heart's grief, standing in the place of the sanctuary, to Christ the true and everlasting king and Lord of all kings, that he might not suffer that plague to enter into the Church.
How constant, how faithful his prayer was, has been proved from this: that the same Arius, before he entered the church, paid new and most grievous penalties, even unto a foul death.
For when, on the day before he thought that he, an impious man, would enter the holy church by the emperor's aid, he suffered no languor, no pain in his body but—what is graver—was incurably sick with a disease of the soul alone, he sought a retiring-place by human custom; and when he sat there, tortured suddenly by a most grievous pain, he poured out all his entrails and his very heart, which was the treasury of impiety, into the ordure; and so (marvelous to relate!), all his inner parts emptied out, he was so wasted, even in a moment, as if dissolved by the corruption of a lurid body, that through the narrowness of the hole and the seat he slipped wholly down.
Worthy was this punishment for the impious, worthy this shameful death for the pestilential heretic, and worthy this burial for the most foul-smelling members of the devil's spirit: for by a new example he deserved both to be tortured and to perish, who had contrived new impieties against the only-begotten Son of God, saying that he was not truly born of the Father, and that there was a time when he was not, and that he was constituted out of nothing, lest he be believed of the same substance and divinity and eternity and omnipotence of which the Father also is. This, therefore, we have related to your august clemency, so that your attentive prudence may take note.
how venerable is the faith set down in writing at Nicaea against Arius—to which God gave testimony not only through the authority of the divine Scriptures but also through the most sacred prayer of holy Alexander—and how execrable is the impious doctrine of Arius, which the divine sentence condemned in Arius himself by a new kind of punishment, not waiting for the day of judgment in his case, so that others, terrified by the example of his punishment, might beware. By which example, indeed, it is not to be doubted that even these are condemned before God, who believed that the impious doctrine of Arius was to be renewed or received. For how can perpetual punishment separate those whom the impious doctrine does not separate?
One prison encloses equal culprits even by your laws, and one sentence strikes them. But this too cannot be doubted: that these are truly catholic who, through exiles, through kinds of tortures, through the atrocity of death, vindicate without guile that faith which at Nicaea was set down in writing by the evangelical and apostolic rule—which God most openly approved by the punishment of Arius who assailed it. But if these things among you are true, which are strengthened as true among the divine Scriptures, take note, most pious and most religious emperors, in what guilt they stand who, under these divine rules and professions, consecrated their faith and devotion to Christ God, setting no fear before the fear of God.
But although Arius was buried in ordure, he nevertheless left heirs of his impiety; and finally there was no lack of worms to be born from his rotten corpse. To pursue what things the devil, the craftsman of error, wrought through them, would be a long task, even if we could pursue it; for they are infinite and incredible, yet not false. But now we set forth that which pertains to the present case: that they made the emperor Constantius a partaker of Arian impiety through fraudulent disputation. These too would have paid their penalties in the present, if it were not fitting, according to the Apostle's sentence, that there also be heresies, so that the approved might be made manifest.
Having, therefore, the royal power of Arius' worms—these of whom we have spoken—standing by them, first indeed they contend, one by one, for the overthrow of the catholic faith and for the destruction of the sacred religion, on behalf of Arian impiety, so that they either assailed those who resisted with slanders, or tortured and killed them with penalties or exile. When, however, they had raged the more through their frenzy and made everywhere the terror of themselves, no longer content to go one by one, at last they compel the bishops to assemble into one from all quarters; and a place is given for a synod—to the Easterners indeed Seleucia in Isauria, but to the Westerners the city of Ariminum.
And there the bishops, coming for the sake of the holy faith, first confirm that exposition which was set down at Nicaea, so that nothing should be diminished from it, inasmuch as it explained the evangelical faith with unconquerable words and condemned the impious doctrine of Arius by divine authority. Then at last they execrate and condemn the written form of faith offered by Ursacius, Valens, Germinius, and Gaius—a form which both reprobated the catholic faith and absolved Arius, nay, even introduced his pestilential doctrine—and they condemn both their so impious faith and the men themselves, judging it an inexpiable crime, that they violate the venerable faith of the fathers, if the Church should tolerate these so impious men and their impious document.
They also send ten legates to the emperor Constantius, writing what things had been done, and at the same time exhorting him that he too should keep inviolate the decrees of the fathers on behalf of the venerable faith against the heretics. The heretics indeed also send legates; whom Constantius then received most familiarly and as his own.
but those legates who had come on behalf of the catholic faith against the heretics he rejects, and through his men now invites them with favor, now terrifies them with threats, and meanwhile racks them with mere delay, so that at last—when they dread the wrath of the king, when they think it not worthwhile to suffer exile for Christ the Son of God, when they are delighted with their own sees and the most pernicious possessions of their churches—they might rescind what they had piously vindicated, and receive what they had condemned as impious. Let it be permitted, in this matter, before you religious emperors, in the cause of God, to groan the more grievously: the bishops feared the wrath of the earthly king more than Christ the true God and everlasting king;
they believed temporal exile to be graver than perpetual punishment—according to Isaiah, the worm that does not slumber and the fire that is not quenched; they held their own dwellings and possessions to be sweeter than a blessed and perpetual habitation in the kingdom of Christ. But Constantius, not content with the ruin and downfall of the ten legates, sends to Ariminum, that all the bishops there might likewise be turned. And they themselves, by that evil example of their own legates, reprobate the pious faith of the fathers which they had vindicated, subscribing to that faith of the Arians which they had condemned by whole and free judgment. Your wisdom notes that the synod of Ariminum was most piously begun but most impiously ended.
But the same impiety was also committed by the bishops at Seleucia in Isauria. Judge, most pious and most religious emperors, in what guilt they stand and in what they deserve to be afflicted, who are unwilling to assemble with such bishops as these, who, when at first they vindicated the sound faith and reprobated the impious faith, afterward, when they dread exile, when they are delighted with their goods and their sees, turn their sentences, condemning at the nod of a heretic emperor that apostolic faith which they had vindicated, and receiving that impiety of Arius which they had reprobated.
Ought they not to have counted it a welcome thing—if indeed they believed there would be a judgment of God—to suffer all evils rather than to be betrayers of the venerable faith, whose power had been approved both by the prayers of holy Alexander and by the punishment of Arius? Especially since the example of glorious passion had also gone before, albeit of very few bishops, who, that they might not violate the evangelical and apostolic faith, that they might not yield to the impious, refused neither exile, nor punishment, nor any death of atrocity. Finally, before the synod of Ariminum, Paulinus of Trier, a most steadfast bishop, is given into exile, vindicating the pious faith and execrating fellowship with the Arians.
But also the apostolic man Lucifer of Sardinia, bishop of the city of Cagliari, because he was well recognized through contempt of the world, through zeal for the sacred letters, through purity of life, through constancy of faith, through divine grace, was sent by the Roman church as a legate to Constantius; and because he vindicated the venerable faith, because he unmasked and convicted the heretics, he was led into exile with every atrocity of injuries. Likewise also Eusebius of Vercelli, and no less Dionysius of Milan, at first familiar to king Constantius while as yet he did not know him to be a favorer of the heretics;
but afterward, when it became known and proved to him that the king was vindicating the heretics, he spurned the king's impious familiarity, preferring exile, lest he lose the friendship of Christ God, lest he not have the fellowship of the saints. But also Rhodanius is sent into exile, and no less Hilary, who even published writings against the heretics and prevaricators, although afterward indeed he broke off, favoring the prevaricators—not to say, for the present, that he even [made peace] with the heretics, against whom he had pleaded with the powers of his eloquence.
Maximus too of Naples in Campania, because he was of a delicate stomach and rather frail of body, at first indeed, that he might yield, was long afflicted with injuries; then, when for the constancy of his mind and the virtue of his faith he is not overcome by the weakness of the flesh, he was led into exile, and there a martyr rested in the peace of the Lord. But also Rufinianus, of wondrous simplicity indeed yet more admirable in guarding the faith, forestalled exile by the shedding of his own blood. Finally, when he persists for the integrity of the faith, Epictetus, that atrocious and dire bishop of Centumcellae, forced him to run before his carriage; and when he had run a long while, thus on the road, his vitals burst, pouring out his blood, he expired.
The Neapolitans in Campania know this, where the relics of his gore in possessed bodies afflict the demons, surely on account of the grace of that faith for which he also shed his blood. There were also other bishops from Egypt, though very few, of whom some were turned to flight, others indeed given into exile, because they were unwilling to assemble with the impious and cruel bishops. How salutary indeed it would have been, how fair and how glorious, if all those bishops, with equal virtue and like conspiracy, had preserved to the very end the faith which they had always rightly vindicated, fearing neither exiles nor tortures, so as surely to obtain the perpetual beatitude to come in the kingdom of God's Christ!
And we are silent about this: that perhaps the united constancy of so many bishops would have confuted and broken that very Constantius himself, terrible though he was in the power of his reign; perhaps it would even have made him understand that of great price is this faith, for which no one of the bishops would refuse exile, proscriptions, torments, and death. But that so great a number of bishops, a little frightened, gave themselves in droves to impiety, and impiety hardened into yet greater madness at so easy a slaughter of the multitude.
This is no less a sacrilege, this no lesser impiety, than if under a pagan persecutor sacrifice had been offered to an idol; for to subscribe when terrified in heresy is also to sacrifice to demons, since, as the divine Scriptures teach, the doctrine of demons is heresy, just as is idolatry. Meanwhile, because among some the multitude is preferred to the truth, on the ground that it has very few followers, and because we are afflicted for this reason—that among the few we follow the inviolable faith and shun the many because of impious heresies and the sacrilegious subscriptions of prevaricators—what do you judge in this cause, O most just emperors and vindicators of the catholic faith? To which of these two parties do you give your vote? One party is that in which the bishops are many;
but where the many are, there through prevarication the sacred faith of Christ, always before defended, has been violated; there, out of fear of the king, the impiety of Arius, always before condemned, has been received. But where the very fewest are, there through exiles, through tortures, through the shedding of blood, through death itself, the faith of Christ is vindicated, and the impiety of Arius and every heresy are held execrable as the highest evil.
But even if it is not to be doubted that few bishops are precious by the merit of confession and inviolable faith, while many are nullified by the merit of heresy or prevarication—since in the cause of truth, and most of all in the cause of religion and the sacred faith, number is not to be compared with number, but that pure apostolic faith, proved by exiles, proved by tortures, though of one man, is to be preferred to the faithlessnesses of many:
Nevertheless it is necessary to set forth a present divine proof of the condemnation of prevarication, so that, just as in the case of Arius his impious sect, punished by divine retribution, gives sentence in advance concerning his followers as well—namely, that the same penalty awaits them by which Arius too is tormented—so also concerning those who betray the holy faith nothing else is to be judged than what has been determined by divine judgment through present penalties upon one or two prevaricators. Potamius, bishop of the city of Lisbon, at first indeed defended the catholic faith, but afterward, for the reward of a fiscal estate which he had coveted to possess, he betrayed the faith. Him Hosius of Cordova, before the churches of the Spains, both exposed and cast out as an impious heretic.
But Hosius himself, being summoned upon the complaint of Potamius before King Constantius, and terrified by threats, and fearing lest, old and rich as he was, he should suffer exile or proscription, gave his hand to impiety, and after so many years betrayed the faith; and he returned to the Spains with greater authority, holding a fearsome command from the king, that if any bishop should refuse to communicate with the man now made a prevaricator, he should be sent into exile. But to Saint Gregory, the most steadfast bishop of the city of Elvira, a faithful messenger reported the impious prevarication of Hosius; whereupon, mindful of the holy faith and of the divine judgment, he would not consent to his wicked communion.