Church History Books 1–9 (trans.) 6 part 3/4

John too, who reclined upon the Lord's breast, afterward wrote the Gospel and the Apocalypse, in which nevertheless he was ordered to keep certain things silent, and epistles, among which two are very brief, and concerning these there is doubt among some. Meanwhile it was the tenth year of the aforesaid emperor of the Romans, in which Origen, a fugitive from Alexandria, had come to Caesarea, having entrusted the school of catechesis to Heraclas, one of his most approved disciples, of whom I spoke above, after administering the episcopate of that church for forty-three years. About the same time there was among the bishops the illustrious Firmilian, of the Cappadocian people, of the city of Caesarea.

So great was his veneration toward Origen that not only did Firmilian linger with him, but he himself, leaving his own church, would hasten to him and employ a certain devout alternation: at one time summoning Origen to instruct his church, at another going himself for the sake of his own progress and sitting beside him as he taught day and night. Theoctistus too, who governed the church at Caesarea, devoted almost the whole time of his life to hearing him, and they alone gave themselves to the divine Scriptures and to ecclesiastical doctrine as the highest mastery. When he had died, Maximinus Caesar succeeded.

He, carried by hatred against the house of his predecessor Alexander, stirred up persecutions against the churches, yet in such a way that he punished only those who presided over the peoples and over doctrine. Then Origen wrote a book on martyrdom addressed to Ambrose. When it had reached very many, being strengthened as by certain most powerful sinews, they of their own accord offered themselves to the confession of the name of Christ, and from this a very great number of confessors arose during the three years of persecution under Maximinus. After him Gordian took up the empire.

After Pontianus had held the episcopate of the city of Rome for six years, Antherus succeeds him, who held it but one month. When Antherus had died, it happened concerning Fabian that, as he was returning from the country together with friends and each, as usually happens in such matters, cried out one name after another, yet the crowd's opinion obtained nothing certain, he too stood among the rest desiring to know what the outcome would be; and suddenly, by God's providence, a dove fallen from heaven, bearing the figure of that dove which had descended in the image of the Holy Spirit upon Jesus at the Jordan, stood above the head of Fabian.

At which spectacle the faces and eyes of all were turned to him, and all, moved as by one spirit, decreed by God's judgment that this man was worthy of the episcopate, and immediately set him upon the chair. They hand down that this was done in the manner reported of Zephyrinus. Then also at Antioch there were events; but at Alexandria, when Heraclas had succeeded Demetrius, he handed over to Dionysius the school of catechesis which he held, taken up from Origen. And Origen himself, while he stayed at Caesarea, had innumerable men come together to him, not only men of that region but also from far-off provinces, who left their homeland and parents and followed him as he taught the way of God.

Among these was also the most famous man Theodore himself, apostolic in every way in faith, virtues, and knowledge, and his brother Athenodorus. Origen, drawing them back as young men from the school of a rhetorician, persuaded them to change the studies of secular letters into divine philosophy; and they attained to the word of knowledge with him over the space of five years, and shone forth so greatly by the merit of their life and cultivation of morals that from his schools, at an age still immature, they were promoted to the episcopates of Pontus. It was he who objected that the history of Susanna, which is written in Daniel, seemed fictitious and foreign to prophetic Scripture.

To him Origen, replying most magnificently, asserts that one must by no means listen to the fabrications and frauds of the Jews, but that this alone is to be held for true in the divine Scriptures which the Seventy translators rendered, since that was confirmed by apostolic authority. There have come to us also other little works of the aforesaid writer Africanus, and especially his Chronicle, very diligently composed. He was moved by the most celebrated reputation of Heraclas, whom fame declared to be most thoroughly instructed both in divine and in philosophical studies and in all Greek learning, and who, as we mentioned above, had there undertaken the office of the episcopate.

The same Africanus also writes to a certain Aristides concerning the differing accounts reported about the generation of Christ, where he shows the most evident harmony of both, as we did already in the first book of this work. About the same time Origen records that he completed thirty books of commentaries on part of Scripture as he set out for Athens, where he also wrote the first five books on the Song of Songs; the other five he completed on returning to Caesarea. But there is now no need to enumerate his little works, which are almost innumerable, since we did so in that work; and the volumes of the ancient writers, and especially of Origen, were consecrated to the library of Caesarea, which he himself assembled with singular and noble zeal.

Whoever wishes to know what has come down to us, let him take a list from there. Now, however, to return to the order of our history: Beryllus began to teach certain things foreign to the truth, asserting that our Lord and Savior neither existed before the nativity of the flesh nor possessed a substance proper to his own deity, but this alone, that the paternal deity dwelt in him. On account of which very many bishops gathered and held disputations with him, and Origen came into conflict with the man; and he, at first disputing gently with him, searches out more carefully what he thought.

This being discovered, immediately, showing what absurdity lay in notions of this kind and what impiety would follow one who asserted such things, he persuaded him to cast off and reject what had been wrongly conceived. In such cases, in an unheard-of manner, he so drove the error from the church that he corrected, rather than destroyed, the author of the error. Finally, that very disputation of Origen and Beryllus is said to be still extant in writing, which by itself is an indication of his excellent work.

But many other similar things of his, learned by us either from himself or by the report of our elders, we now for the moment pass over for the sake of the brevity of history; these nevertheless can be known from the apology composed on his behalf by the holy martyr Pamphilus together with me, which we wrote with common zeal and labor, helping one another in turn, in order to restrain the querulous. Philip, together with his son Philip, succeeds. Concerning him it is handed down to us that, when he wished to be present and to share in the mysteries, he was not permitted by the bishop of the place until he confessed his sins and stood among the penitents, nor would he have any access to the mysteries unless he first washed away by penance the faults reported about him, which were very many.

They relate, therefore, that he willingly accepted what the priest had commanded, thereby showing that there was within him a divine fear and a most complete faith of religion in his deeds and works. In the third year of his reign Heraclas at Alexandria died in the sixth year of his episcopate, and Dionysius took up his place in the priesthood. At that time Origen, being in the sixtieth year of his age, after he had gained very great confidence in the word of God through practice, perils, and labors, is said to have permitted the discourses he delivered extempore in the churches to be taken down by stenographers; nor had he ever before granted this liberty, except when the gravity of his life, the maturity of his age, and the authority of much experience allowed it.

Then in eight volumes he replied against a certain Celsus, an Epicurean philosopher, who had written books against us. Then also he published twenty-five books of commentaries on the Gospel according to Matthew, and commented very extensively on the twelve prophets, of which only twenty-five volumes have come down to us. There are also his letters to the Emperor Philip and to his wife Severa, written without any coloring of flattery. He writes also to Fabian, bishop of the city of Rome, and to very many other leaders of the churches concerning his catholic faith, about which we have set forth more clearly in the sixth volume of our apology for him.

There are also other letters of his written to various persons, of which we have for the present been able to find a hundred in number, and, having arranged them in books, to hand them down to memory. Theodoret, Compendium of Heretical Fables: At that time in the parts of Arabia there arose certain propounders of perverse dogmas, saying that the souls of men perish together with their bodies through death and are corrupted alike, but then again at the time of the resurrection are raised up anew together with their bodies. For this disease, once more Origen is asked by all to be present and to deliver a discourse.

And when he disputed before the whole council of priests, his oration was so magnificent that he brought back to the faith all those whom the error of the new dogma had entangled. There arose also at that time another heresy, which is called that of the Helcesaites, which he immediately, as soon as it appeared, extinguished. And he makes mention of it when he was preaching in the church on the eighty-second psalm: 'There came in these days a certain man who seemed to himself to know something great and beyond the rest, wishing to assert certain impious and absurd things, defending a certain heresy of the Helcesaites, which has recently arisen. And yet I will make known to you what things this heresy asserts, lest perhaps it be stolen away from any of you who is ignorant.'

'These, then, reject certain things from the holy Scriptures, yet again use testimonies from the New and Old Testament as they please. Nevertheless they utterly reject the apostle Paul, and assert that in persecutions, if anyone denies the faith, he incurs no guilt, on the ground that he who is fixed in his heart, even if he denies with his mouth out of necessity, yet remains in the heart in faith. These things they assert, and they carry about a certain book which they say fell from heaven, whose words, if anyone hears them, let him receive a remission of sins other than that given by Christ.' Then Decius, because he was hostile to Philip, stirs up persecution against the churches, in which Fabian, dying, left the see to Cornelius.

But at Jerusalem the bishop Alexander is once more set before the tribunals for the confession of Christ and delivered to the chains of prison. And when he shone forth with the venerable hoariness of great age, after he had frequently glorified the Lord by his sufferings and torments, at last, worn down by the torments succeeding one another in turn, he died. To him in the priesthood Mazabanes succeeds. But at Antioch, in all respects like him, Babylas, after his confession, obtains the end of a glorious life in chains. After him Fabian took up the office of the episcopate.

But in this persecution Dionysius wrote how the most wicked demon fought with all his army and with how great contention, and how, above all the others who at that time were held for the name of Christ, it devised new crosses and new kinds of punishments for the ages.

And how the martyr endured torments unheard of by all; and how, because the weapons of demoniac fury were stirred up against him and fires were threatened, so that though harassed by a thousand deaths, not even the one he longed for befell him; and what end received him, the persecutor pursuing with the utmost zeal that neither destruction be granted him nor punishment cease; and what letters he afterward wrote about these very things, how full of all compassion and tears—whoever desires to know the whole of these things as they are written, we have most truly learned from his own letters, in which he is made abundantly clear in many frequent confessions, and shown magnificent according to the diversity of his sufferings and torments. Finally he is reported to have answered certain persecutors:

'Why do you labor in persecuting? Take my head, for which you so greatly weary yourselves, torn from my neck, and carry it as a great gift to the tyrant.' But the same man also, writing to Fabian bishop of Antioch about those who under Decius at Alexandria had sweated in the contests of martyrdom, says: 'The persecution among us did not take its beginning from the emperor's command, but a full year before it a minister of demons—who was called a soothsayer in our city—anticipated the imperial edicts, stirring up the superstitious crowd against us. Kindled by him, the multitude thirsted for nothing else than the blood of the pious. First, therefore, seizing a certain religious old man named Metranus, they order him to utter impious words.'

'When he refused to do this, they crushed his whole body limb by limb with clubs, and, boring his face and eyes with sharp reeds, they cast him out of the city with tortures, and there, whatever spirit remained in him, they cast out with stones. After this, leading a certain noble woman named Cointha to an idol, they tried to compel her to worship it; when she refused—nay, rather cursed it—binding chains upon her feet and dragging her through the streets of the whole city, they tore her apart with a foul and horrible kind of punishment.'

'Thereupon all together rushed in through the houses of the servants of God, plundering, overturning, and defiling everything with hostile cruelty, so that, the more precious things having been carried off, whatever cheaper things they found they gathered into one heap and burned with fire in the streets. Our people, however, received this plundering of their goods with joy, as the apostle said of those ancients. But also, when they had seized an admirable virgin of great age named Apollonia, first they knocked out all her teeth; then, having piled up wood, they built a pyre, threatening to burn her alive unless she likewise uttered impious words together with them.'

'But she, when she saw the pyre kindled, deliberated a little within herself, then suddenly tore herself from the hands of the impious and of her own accord leaped into the fire with which they threatened her, so that even the very authors of the cruelty were terrified, because a woman was found more ready for death than the persecutor for inflicting punishment. Serapion also, found in his own house, they afflicted with most cruel torments, so that, first loosening all the joints of his limbs, they cast him down from the upper stories. No road was passable for our people, no passing of any street was permitted; nor did any of ours appear in public but at once a clamor of the crowd and sedition arose, so that he who was seen might be either dragged by the feet or burned with fire.'

'But when these evils increased day by day, suddenly among the persecutors themselves a certain madness of civil war blazed up, and while they contended among themselves with seditions and battles, meanwhile we were permitted to breathe a little. But the respite was not for long. For immediately most cruel edicts of the rulers were sent, by which such great inhumanity was borne against us that, according to what was foretold by the Lord, if it were possible, even the elect would be scandalized. Whereupon, when almost all were terrified, some of these noble ones at once of their own accord thrust themselves into impious acts; others, merely summoned, some betrayed by their own households, hastened to execrable sacrifices and to unclean victims.'

'Some of these, pale and trembling, so that they seemed rather to be themselves sacrificed than to sacrifice to the idols, appeared timorous to those standing round about. But others leaped so shamelessly to the altars that they strove to affirm they had never been Christians. These were those about whom the Lord had foretold that those who have riches shall scarcely be saved. But the rest either followed these headlong—some cast into prison, others at the very first sight of the judge denied the faith, and some, having endured the torments a little, at the last fell away.'

'But these who were made blessed, like the strongest columns of the Lord, confirmed by his very Spirit and having received virtue from the Lord for the merit of their faith: first the venerable Julian, so constrained by gout that he could neither walk nor stand, is offered together with those who carried him in a little chair. Of these one indeed at once denied; but the other, named Eunus, together with him—they were placed upon camels and led about the whole city, and with the people looking on and scourging them here and there, were mangled, until they set the end of their life amid those very stripes. But when a certain soldier, standing by, forbade some who wished even to mock the dead bodies, a clamor was suddenly raised against him by the whole crowd.'

'The most valiant soldier of the Lord is offered to the judge, and, nowhere made inferior, persisting in confession, is condemned to death for his piety. Another certain man of his own name, Macarius, a Libyan by nation, when he was urged by the judge with many words to deny and with all the greater constancy professed his faith, is at last ordered to be burned alive. Epimachus also and Alexander, when for a long time, both in chains and in the torments of prison, often tortured and worn out by various punishments, they had persevered in the faith, are at the last ordered to be consumed by fire.'

'There were also women with them, four in number, among whom Ammonaria, a holy virgin, against whom the judge persisted with the utmost contention, afflicting her with immense and exquisite torments, especially because he desired to overcome her resolve—which she had declared with a praiseworthy voice, that she would do nothing at all of the things commanded her against divine law. Tenacious of her purpose, she is at the last punished by beheading. The second was a virgin named Mercuria, a venerable old woman, most fruitful in children, whom, however, she did not prefer to Christ; and Dionysia and another Ammonaria; who, while they showed excessive constancy before the judge and he blushed to be overcome by women, having endured unheard-of kinds of torments, receive the end of all by the cutting sword.'

'Heron also and Arsinus and Isidore, Egyptians, together with a little boy of fifteen years, Dioscorus, are offered to the judge; and first of all he strives to bend the little boy Dioscorus, as one easy to bend on account of his age, first by words, then to torture him more fiercely. Then afterward, mangling the others with various torments, when he saw them armed with equal constancy of faith, he orders them to be given to the fires; but the boy Dioscorus, because he had answered him constantly and wisely in all things, he admired and ordered to be deferred, hoping to gain him—which was done by the Lord's providence. For now Dioscorus is with us, granted to us by God for the consolation and support of his people.'

'Nemesius also, himself likewise an Egyptian, was first seized through a false accusation—the judge not knowing that by his cruelty he was granting to that excellent martyr a likeness of the Savior's cross. But a certain company of soldiers had gathered together into one, among whom were those who, standing at the tribunals, when a certain Christian was being tortured by the judge and already almost inclining to deny, were rent within themselves, and with countenance, eyes, and nods, as it were, strove to raise up him who, placed in the torments, was wavering. Sometimes too they longed to stretch out their hands and to encourage the souls of all the bystanders.'

'But turning toward them all and recognizing from their movements what they would profess about themselves, almost before the crowd rushed upon them with clamors, they themselves burst into the midst and testify that they are Christians. Then, the situation reversed, from their confidence terror came upon the persecutors, and constancy of mind grew in our people, while these, who were thought to be conquered through torments, of their own accord offer themselves to the tortures, and receive as a kind of pleasure what those inflicted upon them as terrors. Nor is it right to pass over in silence the memorable deed of Ischyrion. For he, when he was managing the affairs of a certain powerful man for wages, is ordered by him to sacrifice to idols. Refusing, he was pressed with injuries; persisting, he was in turn coaxed with blandishments.'

'But when he despised both, he was slain with a sharpened stake. Let me also call to mind how great multitudes, wandering in the deserts and mountains, perished, all of whom, imitating God's elect prophets, were crowned with the glory of martyrdom. Finally the venerable old man Chaeremon, who was bishop of the city, when he had departed with his aged wife, appeared to no one afterward; and although very many of the brothers most frequently went out to search for him, and every place was scoured, no one could afterward find either them or their bodies.'

'But these things I have recalled not in vain, dearest brother. These divine martyrs, therefore, who sit with Christ in the heavenly places and are partakers of his kingdom and of his judgment, who judge together with him concerning the lapsed brothers—these, I say, received the lapsed and did not reject their penance and conversion, knowing that our God, whose martyrs they themselves were, does not at all will the death of the dying, but seeks his conversion and penance. If, then, these received certain ones and established them in the church, and communicated with them also in prayer and in food, what do you wish us to do, brothers? What do you think we ought to do?'

'Is it not fitting that we follow their opinions and judgment, and toward those on whom they had compassion not show ourselves cruel and harsh? I do not think it expedient for us to render their sentences void, to break down their acts of mercy, to disturb their good deeds, and to undo what was rightly and religiously done.' These things Dionysius said, discoursing about the lapsed. At which time Novatus, a presbyter of the Roman church, swollen with a certain arrogance, took away from them entirely the hope of salvation, even if they had worthily repented. Whence he became also the founder of the heresy of the Novatianists, who, separated from the church, called themselves by a proud name Cathari, that is, the pure.

On account of this a most celebrated sacerdotal council was gathered in the city of Rome, of bishops sixty in number, of presbyters as many, with very many deacons. Moreover, throughout each several province, great deliberation being held about this matter, it was made known by decrees what needed to be done. It was decreed, therefore, that Novatus indeed, together with those who followed him swollen with elation of mind and who inclined to that inhuman opinion, preserving nothing of fraternal charity, was alien from the church; but that those who had lapsed in the contest were to be tended with fraternal compassion and healed with the fomentations of penance.

Cornelius, bishop of the city of Rome, also writes about this matter to the church of Antioch, making known to Fabian its bishop what the council gathered in the city of Rome had decreed, and also what seemed good to the Italians, the Africans, and the rest of the Westerners. But Cyprian published a most magnificently written book about these things, in which he decreed both that the lapsed were to be exhorted to penance and that those who contradicted this were alien from the bowels of Christ. There is extant also another letter of Cornelius written to Fabian, bishop of Antioch, setting forth each particular about Novatus—who and of what sort he was in both life and character, and how he departed from the church.

In it he relates with what desire of the episcopate he was inflated within himself, and how he seduced certain excellent men from among the confessors at the very beginnings of the schism in the Roman church; and Urbanus, who had twice stood forth as a confessor, and also Sidonius and Celerinus, who were held very illustrious among the confessors, because they had overcome every kind of torment.

'But these,' he says, 'when they had more diligently perceived that he did everything by frauds and deceits, by lies and perjuries, and that he feigned goodness for this alone, that he might deceive the ignorant, left him—or rather cursed him—and returned to the church with great satisfaction; and in the presence of the bishops and presbyters, and also of lay men, they confessed first their own error, and then his frauds and deceits.' He adds, moreover, these things also in the letter: that Novatus 'always appeared to the brothers as a bishop like some new fabrication—one, forsooth, who vindicated ecclesiastical discipline and institutions—presuming upon an episcopate which he had not received from God.'

'For, having brought in three bishops, most simple men and ignorant of everything, from a remote part of Italy—nay rather, having deceived them by a subtle circumvention on his part—he extorts from them an imposition of hands more imaginary than lawful. Of these, however, one immediately returns to the church, having confessed his sin, and was received into lay communion, the people also interceding for him on this account. But in the place of the remaining two, who had laid hands on Novatus, other bishops were ordained and sent.'

'This man, therefore, who claimed to vindicate the gospel, did not know that in the catholic church there ought to be one bishop, where he saw that there were forty-six presbyters, seven deacons, seven subdeacons, forty-two acolytes, exorcists and readers with doorkeepers fifty-two.' He adds also this, that this same Novatus in his youth…

he was troubled by an unclean spirit, and after he had spent some time among the exorcists, he fell into a grave illness, so that he was despaired of; and because he was lying in bed, he was, under necessity, sprinkled with water rather than baptized, nor were the other rites which usually follow baptism duly performed in him, nor was he perfected with the seal of the chrism, whence neither did he ever [receive] the Holy Spirit. 'Finally,' he says, 'since he was loved by the bishop with a certain private favour, and the bishop wished to ordain him a presbyter, the whole clergy and very many of the laity forbade it, saying that it was not lawful for one to become a cleric who had received grace lying in bed under necessity; so the bishop begged of all a special favour, that this might be granted him in the case of this one man.' He writes also concerning him that in the time of persecution, when he was asked to come out of his cell, he denied out of fear that he was a presbyter; and that, when distributing the sacraments to the people, he would hold the hands of those receiving and would not permit them to partake before each one swore to him, by what he held in his hands, that he would never abandon him and return to Cornelius.