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But Lucifer, when he was entreated by Eusebius — since both had been banished to the regions neighboring Egypt — that they should proceed to Alexandria to see Athanasius, and by common deliberation with the priests who had survived should decide concerning the state of the Church, refusing his own presence, sends his deacon as legate in his stead; and he himself with intent mind proceeds to Antioch. And there, the parties being still at variance, but hoping that they could nevertheless be recalled into unity if such a bishop were chosen toward whom not one congregation but both would rejoice, being over-hasty, he installed indeed a Catholic and holy man, and in all respects worthy of the priesthood, Paulinus as bishop — but one in whom both congregations could not acquiesce.
Meanwhile Eusebius proceeds to Alexandria; and there, a council of confessors having been gathered — few in number, but sound in faith and great in merits — they discuss with all care and deliberation by what means, after the storms of the heretics and the whirlwinds of perfidy, tranquillity might be recalled to the Church. To those who were fervent with the heat of the faith it seemed that no one ought henceforth to be received into the priesthood who had in any way stained himself with the contagion of heretical communion.
But those who, imitating the Apostle, sought not what was profitable to themselves, but what was profitable to the many (1 Cor. 10:33); or who imitated Christ, who, though he was the life of all, for the salvation of all humbling himself descended into death, that so life might be found even among the dead — these said that it was better to humble oneself a little for the sake of the fallen and to bend down for the sake of the crushed, that they might raise them up again, and not to defend the kingdoms of heaven for themselves alone by the merit of purity, but that it was more glorious to merit to enter thither with the many; and therefore it seemed right to them that, only the authors of the perfidy being cut off, to the remaining priests the option be given, if perchance, forswearing the error of perfidy, they should wish to be converted to the faith of the fathers and its established decrees; and not to deny entrance to those returning, but rather to rejoice over their conversion — because that Gospel younger son too, the squanderer of his father's substance, having returned into himself, is not only received into the faith but is clothed with the robe (Luke 15:22), by which what else is declared than the insignia of the priesthood?
Nor did the elder son show himself approved in the father's sight, in that he envied the one received back, nor had he so much merit by not offending as [the other had by returning]. To Asterius and the rest who were with them the administration of the East is enjoined, while to Eusebius that of the West is decreed. There is added indeed in that decree of the council also a fuller disputation concerning the Holy Spirit, that it be of the same substance [as the Father and the Son], and that nothing at all in the Trinity be called either created or inferior or later. But there was also a certain discourse concerning the difference of substances and subsistences; for some said that substance and subsistence seemed to be one [and the same]...
...but others, to whom substance seemed to signify something far different from subsistence, said that substance designates the very nature and rationale of some thing, by which it consists, whereas subsistence shows this very thing which each person is — that it exists and subsists — and therefore [the word] would seem to signify three subsisting persons, lest we give suspicion as though we were followers of that faith which confesses the Trinity in names only and not in things and subsistences. And concerning the incarnation of the Lord too it was comprehended that the body which the Lord had assumed he had assumed neither without sense nor without soul. All these things being cautiously and moderately settled, each one proceeded on his own journey in peace.
But Eusebius, when he had returned to Antioch and found that a bishop had been ordained by Lucifer contrary to their agreement, compelled by shame together with indignation, withdrew, relaxing his communion to neither party, because on departing thence he had promised that he would act in the council so that a bishop be ordained from whom neither party would dissent. For that people who had long ago followed Meletius, driven from the church as though for the right faith, had not joined itself to the former Catholics — that is, those who had been with bishop Eustathius, of whom Paulinus too was one — but held its own leadership and its own conventicle. Therefore, when Eusebius had wished to recall these into unity, and yet, forestalled by Lucifer, had not been able to, he withdrew.
Then Meletius, having returned from exile, since a more numerous people was with him, held the churches; and from that time he now held his own synod together with the rest of the Eastern bishops, yet he was not joined to Athanasius. Meanwhile Lucifer, grieving at the injury because Eusebius had not received at Antioch the bishop ordained by him, resolves himself not to receive the decrees of the Alexandrian council, but he was bound by the tie of his own legate, who in the council had subscribed by his authority. For he could not repudiate the man who held his authority; and yet, had he received [the decrees], he saw that his whole undertaking would be brought to nothing.
Long and much deliberating on this, since he was hemmed in on both sides, he chose to keep his legate as received, but toward the rest to maintain a divergent opinion, yet one pleasing to himself. Thus, having returned to the regions of Sardinia — whether because, forestalled by a swift death, he had not the time to change his opinion (for things rashly begun are wont to be corrected by an interval of time), or whether he had settled in this mind immovably, I should but weakly affirm. From him meanwhile arose the schism of the Luciferians, which, though it revolves still among but a few, took its beginning [there]; and he continued to discharge the office of a priest.
He [Eusebius] recalled each several church, its faithlessness forsworn, to the soundness of the right faith — especially because he found Hilary (whom we mentioned as having long ago been thrust into exile together with the other bishops), now returned and settled in Italy, laboring at these same tasks toward restoring the churches and repairing the faith of the fathers. Save that Hilary, a man by nature gentle and placid, and at the same time learned and most apt for persuading, managed the matter more diligently and fittingly. He also published books on the faith, nobly written, by which — with the most perfect instruction — he might correct both the wiles of the heretics and the deceptions of our own and the ill-credulous [understanding], [in the case of those] with whom he himself could not dispute by living voice in person.
Thus these two men, like certain magnificent lights of the world, illumined Illyricum, Italy, and the Gauls with their splendor, so that all the darkness of the heretics, even from hidden corners and abstruse recesses, was put to flight. But Julian, after he had come to the East to strike at the Persians in war, and the public madness — which he had earlier concealed — regarding the cult of idols began to be borne along, being a more cunning persecutor than the rest, not by force nor by tortures, but by rewards, honors, flatteries, and persuasions, dashed down almost the greater part of the people more than if he had struck cruelly. Forbidding Christians to approach the studies of the pagan authors, he decrees that the schools of letters lie open only to those who venerate the gods and goddesses. He bids that the belt of military service be given to none but those who sacrifice.
He established that the administration of the provinces and of the dispensing of justice ought not to be entrusted to Christians, seeing that their own law had forbidden them even to use the sword. And he made progress daily in devising laws of this sort, in which, if there was anything crafty or cunning, it nevertheless seemed less [odious]. But he was not able to keep up the image of feigned philosophy toward Athanasius. For when, as it were foul serpents bubbling up from the caverns of the earth, there had come forth to him a profane band of magicians, philosophers, soothsayers, and augurs, all alike allege that nothing would succeed by their arts unless he had first removed Athanasius as the obstacle to all these. Again an army is sent, again commanders, again the church is besieged.
And when the peoples, sorrowful and weeping, stood round about him, he is reported to have used a prophetic saying among them. 'Do not,' he said, 'O sons, be troubled, for it is a little cloud and it quickly passes away.' And when he had departed and was making his journey by ship along the river Nile, the officer who had been sent for this very purpose, learning of his journey, began urgently to pursue him. And when it chanced that Athanasius's little boat had put in at a certain place, he learned from passers-by that his assassin was behind his back and now, unless he took care, was imminent. All who were present with him, terrified, urged that the desert be sought for the protection of flight. Then he [said]:
'Do not,' he said, 'O sons, be terrified; let us rather go to meet our pursuer, that he may know that he who defends us is far greater than he who persecutes us.' And having turned his little boat about, he set out to make his way to meet the very man who was hunting him. That man, who could in no way suspect that the one he sought was coming to meet him, orders certain passers-by, as it were, to be asked where they had heard Athanasius to be. And when they answered that they had seen him going not far off, hastening with all speed he presses on in vain, hurrying to seize the one whom, set before his very eyes, he was not able to see. But Athanasius, fortified by the power of God, [returned to] Alexandria. [Symeon, Life of Athanasius, pp. 152–153, Benedictine ed.]
[Cf. Sozomen.] Julian gave yet another proof of his madness and levity. For when, in Daphne, a suburb of Antioch, beside the Castalian spring he was sacrificing to Apollo and received none of the responses he sought, and inquired of the priests of the demon the causes of the silence, they said: 'The tomb of the martyr Babylas stands near by, and therefore no responses are given.' Then he bids the Galileans — for by this name he was accustomed to call our people — to come and to carry away the martyr's tomb. So the whole church, coming together, mothers and men, virgins and youths, girded with immense exultation, drew along in a long procession the coffin of the martyr, chanting psalms with loud cries and saying with exultation:
'Let all be confounded who worship graven images, and who trust in their idols' (Ps. 96:7). This the whole church chanted with such exultation, for six miles, in the ears of the profane prince, so that heaven resounded with the cries. Whence he [was moved to rage], and ordered Christians everywhere to be [seized] and thrust into prison and afflicted with punishments and tortures. His prefect Salutius, not approving of this — although he was a pagan — nevertheless being ordered, carries it out; and having apprehended a certain young man who was the first to meet him, Theodore by name, he tortured him from the first light of day until the tenth hour with such cruelty, and with so many torturers relieving one another, that no age remembers a like deed.
Yet while that young man, hoisted aloft on the rack and joyful, repeated the psalm which the whole church had sung the day before, and when Salutius perceived that, having expended every cruelty, he had accomplished nothing, the young man being taken back into prison, he is reported to have gone off to the emperor and to have announced what he had done, and to have admonished him not to wish to attempt any such thing henceforth, since otherwise he would win glory for them and ignominy for himself.
This Theodore we ourselves afterwards saw at Antioch; and when we inquired of him whether he had felt the sensation of pain to the full, he said that he had indeed felt the pains but little, and that there had stood by him a certain young man who with a most white cloth both wiped away the sweat from him as he sweated and frequently poured cold water over him; and that he had been so delighted thereby that he was then made sadder when he was ordered to be taken down from the rack. Threatening therefore, the emperor set out, [saying] that after the Persian victory he would war down the Christians more effectively; but none returned. For there, whether pierced through by his own men or by the enemy is uncertain, after a year and eight months of his presumed Augustan reign:
So great was his subtlety and cunning for deceiving that he even mocked the unhappy Jews, allured by vain hopes just as he himself was driven on. Having first of all summoned them to himself, he asks why they did not sacrifice, since their own law commanded them concerning sacrifices. But they, thinking they had found an opportunity of the moment, say: 'We cannot, except in the sole temple of Jerusalem; for so the law has commanded.' And having received from him license to rebuild the temple, they came to such a pitch of insolence that someone might have seemed to them one of the prophets restored. Therefore from all places and provinces the Jews come together and began to approach the site of the temple, once consumed by fire, an overseer for hastening the work being granted by the emperor:
At public and private expense the work was carried on with all insistence. Meanwhile [the Jews began] to insult our people and, as though the times of their kingdom had been restored to them, to threaten more fiercely, and to display their savagery, behaving altogether with monstrous swelling and pride. Cyril, after Maximus the confessor, was held to be bishop at Jerusalem. Therefore [when the foundations had been] opened, the bishop, having carefully considered — whether from what he had read in the prophecy of Daniel concerning the times, or what the Lord had foretold in the Gospels — persisted [in declaring] that it could by no means come to pass that there a stone should be laid upon a stone by the Jews. The matter was in expectation.
And behold, on the night which alone now remained before the work was to be begun, [an earthquake occurred; and] the public buildings too, in which the multitude of Jews who seemed to be pressing on the work were dwelling together, all being brought down to the ground, crushed the Jews who were found [there]. But when the light had arisen, since they believed they had escaped the evil, the remaining multitude [came together] to search out those who had been crushed. There was a certain building sunk in the lower parts of the temple, having an entrance between two porticoes which had been leveled, in which iron tools and other things necessary for the work were kept.
Out of it there suddenly burst forth a ball of fire, which, running through the midst of the square, scorched and struck lifeless those who stood by; and throughout all that day it persistently returned again and again, restraining with avenging flames the rashness of that obstinate people, while meanwhile all who were present, terrified by immense dread and trembling, were compelled against their will to confess Jesus Christ the one true God. And lest these things should be thought to have happened by chance, on the following day it fell out in such a way that even one who might have wished to explain it away on the grounds of his own unbelief could by no means make an end of it. Thus the Jews and the Gentiles alike, struck with terror, [abandoned] the place at once and in vain. I. Concerning the origin and the religious disposition of the emperor Jovian, and concerning his end. III. Concerning the falling asleep of Athanasius and the persecutions of the heretic Lucius.
V. Concerning the persecution which took place at Edessa. VI. Concerning Moses, whom the queen of the nation of the Saracens demanded for her own people. VIII. How many of the holy men among the disciples of Antony were even then in the desert. IX. Concerning Gregory and Basil, bishops of Cappadocia. X. Concerning bishop Damasus and the fraudulent usurpation of Ursinus. XII. Concerning the irruption of the Goths through Thrace and the death of the emperor Valens. XIII. How the emperor Gratian made Theodosius a partner in the empire, and after many things done religiously and bravely, [triumphed over] the tyrant Maximus. XV. Concerning the boy Valentinian, and how his mother Justina, defending the Arian heresy, attempted to throw the churches into confusion. XVI. Concerning the faithful constancy of Benivolus, the master of the records. XVII. How Theodosius, avenging the death of Gratian, triumphed over Maximus.
XVIII. Concerning the offence committed by Theodosius against the Thessalonians, and his penance. XIX. Concerning the restorations of the churches which were made through him in the East. XXI. Concerning the successions of bishops throughout the East. XXII. Concerning the disturbances of the pagans at Alexandria. XXIII. Concerning the situation of the temple of Serapis and its overthrow. XXIV. Concerning the frauds which were detected in the temples of the pagans.
XXV. Concerning Tyrannus, the priest of Saturn of almost the whole of Alexandria. XXVII. Concerning the churches and shrines of martyrs which were built in the places of the idols. XXVIII. Concerning the tomb of John that was violated, and the relics at Alexandria. XXIX. Concerning the breastplates of Serapis that were scraped away at Alexandria, and the sign [of the cross]. XXX. How the measure of the water of the river Nile, which they call the pechys (cubit), [was carried] to [the church]. XXXI. Concerning the death of Valentinian the younger and the rise of Eugenius. XXXII. Concerning the preparation for war against Eugenius by Theodosius, and his victory won more by prayers than by valour. XXXIII. Concerning the end of Theodosius after his victory, and Arcadius and Honorius. After the death of Julian, the civil authority of Jovian's imperial rule is at last restored to us:
For at one and the same time he showed himself both an emperor and a confessor, and one who drove away the error that had been wickedly brought in. For when the army was drawn up for battle and the barbarian was pressing hard, our leaders, taking counsel about matters of the utmost gravity, cast their vote for Jovian; and when he had been seized and was being drawn forward to take up the insignia of empire, it is said that he cried out to the army, defiled by the sacrileges of Julian, that he could not rule over them, because he was a Christian. Then they all are reported to have answered with one and the same voice: 「We too are Christians.」 Nor, before he heard this cry, would he consent to accept the empire.
Then at once the divine mercy came to his aid, and beyond all hope: for when they were held hemmed in on every side by their enemies, and no means of escape whatever remained, suddenly they saw envoys sent from the barbarians arriving to sue for peace, and promising to supply to the army, worn out by famine, food and other necessities in the way of trade, and by every kindness to make amends for the rashness [shown] against our men. But when, peace having been settled for twenty-nine years, he returned to Roman soil alone, and a brighter light, risen from the regions of the East, spread itself over our world, he set about restoring the commonwealth, as it were after excessive storms, with all moderation, and to hold the care of the churches not in the second place.
Yet he did not act incautiously, as Constantius had done, but, warned by his predecessor's fall, he sought out Athanasius with honourable and most courteous letters. From him he received the pattern of the faith and the manner of ordering the churches. But an untimely death corrupted these beginnings, so pious and so joyful. For eight months after his rise he met his end in Cilicia. After him Valentinian took up the empire, who for our faith had been expelled from military service by Julian. But the Lord fulfilled in him what he had promised, restoring to him even more than a hundredfold in the present age: for because he had left the army for Christ's sake, he received the empire.
He took his brother Valens into partnership of the empire, and chose for himself the western parts, while he left the eastern to the other. But Valens, by favouring the heretics, went off into the way of his fathers. For he drove bishops into exile, and presbyters and deacons and monks—Tatianus presiding at Alexandria—he brought even to tortures and handed over to the flames, and he devised many wicked and cruel things against the church of God; but all these things after the death of Athanasius. For while Athanasius survived, restrained as it were by a certain divine power, though he raged against the rest, against him he dared to commit nothing grievous.
Therefore at that season, when in the forty-sixth year of his priesthood Athanasius, after many struggles and many crowns of patience, had rested in peace, being consulted about a successor he chose Peter, the sharer and companion of his tribulations. But Lucius, a bishop of the Arian party, straightway flew upon the flock like a wolf. And Peter indeed, at once boarding a ship, fled to the city of Rome. But Lucius, as though the material of his cruelty had been taken from him, grew the more savage toward the rest, and so went on into bloodshed that he seemed not to preserve even any appearance of religion. At his very first entry such and so shameful things were done against the virgins and continent members of the church as are not recorded even in the persecutions of the heathen.
Thereupon, after the flights of citizens and their exiles, after slaughters and tortures and flames, by which he had destroyed countless numbers, he turned the arms of his fury against the monasteries; he laid waste the desert and declared war upon men at rest. Three thousand men at once, or even more, scattered throughout the whole desert in secret and solitary dwellings, he set about to assail all alike; he sent an armed band of horse and foot, and chose tribunes, captains, and commanders of war, as though he were about to fight against barbarians. When these had come, they beheld a new kind of warfare: their foes offered their necks to the swords, and said nothing else but: 「Friend, for what have you come?」
At that same time the fathers of the monks, by the merit of their life and their antiquity, Macarius and Isidore and another Macarius, and Heraclides and Pambo, disciples of Antony, were reckoned throughout Egypt and especially in the parts of the desert of Nitria—men who were believed to share their life and deeds not with the rest of mortals, but with the angels above. What I saw in person, I tell, and I report the deeds of those in whose sufferings I was found worthy to be a companion. These led the army of the Lord, armed not with mortal weapons but with the faith of religion—an army conquering by dying, and following Christ to heaven as a victor by the shedding of its own blood.
And while these men, placed in their tents and praying, were awaiting their slayers, there was brought to them a man long since withered in all his limbs and especially in his feet; but when he had been anointed by them with oil in the name of the Lord, at once the soles of his feet were made firm. And when they said: 「In the name of Jesus Christ, whom Lucius persecutes, rise and stand upon your feet and return to your house,」 he straightway leaping up and springing forth blessed God, showing that God was truly in them. And a little while before, a certain blind man had asked to be led to the cell of Macarius, which was in the desert at a journey of three days. When the blind man, after much toil of those who led him, had arrived there, he did not find Macarius at home.
Greatly saddened, he could in no way soften his grief, being deprived of the consolation of his cure. But then, growing warm with fervour of faith, he said to those who had led him: 「I beseech you, set me against that part of the wall where the old man is wont to lie.」 And when he had been brought to it, taking a little dry clay from where the wall seemed to be plastered, he placed it upon the palm of his hand; he asked also that they draw water from the well from which the old man was accustomed to drink. Dissolving the little clod with this moisture, and anointing his eyes with the same clay and washing them with the water that had been drawn, he suddenly recovered his sight, so that, needing no support, he returned to his own home.
But lest he should act like those lepers whom the Lord in the Gospels marks out as ungrateful for being healed by him, he returned with his whole household, and giving thanks to God, made known the matter as it had happened. This same Macarius had a hyena's den near his cell. And when she understood [the case], she came to entreat the old man on account of the blindness of her cubs; he asked the Lord to restore their sight to them. When this had been received, following their mother they returned to the den. And a little after, she herself, coming out with her cubs, brought as it were a gift for the grace received to the old man very many fleeces of sheep with the wool, carried in the bite of her mouth, and laying them down before the doors, departed.
But if we should wish to pursue the deeds of each of these marvels, we should be shut out from the brevity we have proposed, especially since these things deserve to have a narration of their own. Yet in all this Lucius did not blush, nor did he show any reverence for the wonders of their virtues. Nay rather, he ordered these very fathers to be taken away from their flock—indeed secretly seized—and deported to a certain island of the Egyptian marshes, in which he had learned that there was absolutely no Christian, so that through these means they might live either without comfort or without their accustomed practices. So the old men, with only two attendants, are led by night to the island, in which there was a certain temple observed with the highest veneration by the inhabitants of the place.
And when the little boat of the old men had touched the edge of that shore, behold, suddenly the virgin daughter of the priest of that temple, seized by a spirit, began to be driven through the midst of the people with immense shrieking and cries raised as far as heaven, and, making frequent whirlings, gnashing, to dart her raging mouth this way and that. And when the people had assembled to the spectacle of so great a monster—especially because she was the daughter of the priest, who was held in the highest honour among them—following her as she was snatched through the air, they came all the way to the little boat of the old men. There, cast down at their feet and prostrate, she began to cry out: 「Why have you come here, O servants of the most high God? Take back your ancient and decrepit [selves] and your lands.」
When she said these things, the spirit of error, rebuked by them, was put to flight, and the girl lay healed at the feet of the apostles of our time, together with her parents. They, preaching to them the faith of the Lord Jesus Christ with such beginnings, suddenly led them to so great a conversion that at once with their own hands they destroyed the most ancient temple, held in the highest veneration, and immediately built a church, nor did they need any space of time for deliberation, since it was not words but power that had wrought in them the assurance of these things.
But when this had been reported at Alexandria, Lucius, fearing lest perchance even the just hatred of his own men should rise up against him—who now was openly declaring war not against men but against God—ordered them to be secretly recalled and sent back into the desert. While these things were being done in Egypt, not even in other places did the flame of persecution cease. For Edessa, a city of Mesopotamia belonging to faithful peoples, is adorned with the relics of the apostle Thomas. When the emperor himself had seen there that the peoples cast out of their churches were holding their assembly in the open field, he is said to have been kindled with such wrath that he struck his own prefect with his fist, [demanding] why they had not been driven out from there also, as he had ordered.
But he, although he was a pagan and had been treated with insults by the emperor, nevertheless, out of consideration of humanity, [caused] certain secret hints to become clear by which they might indeed take heed to guard themselves, lest they be found in the place. About to go forth in the morning, he stirred up a terror greater than usual by his office and set everything in motion, so that the fewest possible, or, if it could be, none at all, might be endangered. Yet he sees a crowd greater than usual making for the place, running headlong and hastening, as though they feared lest any should be lacking for death.