教會史 第 1 章 第 15/28 段

the Alexandrians, to have shown displeasure,

but he blamed them only by letter and remitted the punishment, out of reverence, he says, for Sarapis their city's guardian deity, and for Alexander the founder, and for Julian his own uncle, who had previously governed Egypt and Alexandria — a man who delighted exceedingly in Hellenism and hated the Christians beyond measure, so that, as far as lay in his power, contrary to the reigning emperor's own judgment, the Christians suffered ill even unto blood.

It is said, at any rate, that while he was then eager to remove and transfer to the imperial treasuries the very numerous and most precious offerings of the church of the Syrians at Antioch, and to close the houses of prayer, all the clergy fled, but only Theodoretus the presbyter did not withdraw from the city;

whom, as the guardian of the treasures who was able to disclose knowledge of them, he seized and cruelly tortured;

and at last he ordered him to be put to death by the sword, since throughout all the torture he had answered courageously and had distinguished himself in his confessions on behalf of the doctrine.

When he had plundered the sacred vessels, he turned them over onto the ground and mocked them, and having blasphemed Christ as much as he pleased, he sat upon them and increased the outrage.

Immediately his private parts, and the necessary passages around them, were destroyed;

and the flesh there, having rotted, turned into worms, and the malady overpowered the physicians' art.

And indeed, out of reverence and fear toward the emperor, they had resorted to every kind of trial of remedies;

sacrificing costly and fat birds, they smeared the corrupted parts with their fat, and drew the worms out to the surface,

for hiding deep within, they crept toward the living flesh, and until they finally killed him, they did not cease their gnawing.

It seemed that he suffered this calamity by divine wrath, since also the keeper of the imperial treasuries and certain others of those entrusted with authority in the palace, who had acted insolently against the Church, ended their lives strangely and pitiably, as though condemned by divine anger.

Since I have been led on to this point in my narrative, and have related the deaths of George and Theodoretus, I think it a fitting time to make mention of the brothers Eusebius, Nestabus, and Zenon;

whom, hating them for being Christians on this account, the populace of Gaza seized while they were hiding at home, and first delivered them to prison and scourged them;

then, having assembled in the theater, they cried out loudly against them, as men who had done mischief to the sacred things and had, in time past, made use of their position for the destruction and outrage of Hellenism.

And while crying out and urging one another on to murder them, they were filled with rage.

And having incited one another, as a rioting mob is wont to do, they rushed down to the prison;

and having dragged them out, they treated them most savagely, dragging them now face down, now face up, and dashing them against the ground, and striking them with whatever came to hand, some with stones, others with sticks, and still others with other random objects;

Women coming out pierced them with weaving-shuttles, and of the cooks in the market some, snatching up cauldrons boiling with hot water from the tripods, poured it over them, while others pierced them through with spits.

And when they had torn them to pieces and crushed their heads, so that even the brain flowed onto the ground, they carried them out before the city, to the place where they were accustomed to throw the carcasses of dead animals;

and having kindled a fire, they burned their bodies;

and the bones that remained, as many as the fire had not consumed, they mixed with the bones of camels and asses lying there, so that it should not be easy to find them.

Yet it did not remain hidden for long;

for a certain Christian woman, who was not a native of Gaza but had her dwelling there, by divine arrangement gathered these remains up by night, and putting them into a jar, gave them to Zenon, their cousin, to keep;

for thus God had revealed in dreams, and disclosed to the woman where the man was living;

and before she had seen him, He showed him to her, since he was unknown to her, and, the persecution having just recently arisen, he was in hiding;

for he himself had at that time nearly been seized and killed by the people of Gaza;

but while the mob was occupied with the murder of his cousins, he found an opportunity and fled to the city of Anthedon, on the sea, about twenty stadia distant from Gaza, a city which at that time likewise delighted in Hellenism and was zealously devoted to the worship of its idol-images;

but having been denounced there as a Christian, he was severely scourged on the back with rods by the people of Anthedon and was driven out of the city;

and coming to the port town of Gaza, he lay hidden there unnoticed.

There the good woman, meeting him, gave him the remains;

and for the time being he kept them at home;

but when it fell to his lot to become bishop of the church there (this happened in the reign of Theodosius), he built a house of prayer before the city, and set up an altar in it, and deposited the bones of the martyrs near the tomb of Nestor the confessor, who, while his cousins were still alive, had lived with them, and, having been seized together with them by the populace, had shared in their bonds and scourgings.

But while he was being dragged, those who were dragging him, seeing that he had a comely body, took pity on him;

and before the gates they threw him down, still breathing, but expected to die;

and some people picked him up and carried him to Zenon, at whose house, while still being treated for his sores and wounds, he died.

But the people of Gaza, considering the magnitude of their own crime, were greatly afraid lest the emperor would not endure to leave them unpunished;

for already a rumor was circulating that he took it grievously and was eager to decimate the populace;

but this was false, and only a rumor circulated among the common people, as is likely, owing to their cowardice and their awareness of what they had done — since he did not even, as in the case that had happened concerning George with respect to the Alexandrians, so much as rebuke the people of Gaza by letter.

But indeed he even removed from office the governor who then presided over the province, and held him under suspicion;

and having brought him to trial, he reckoned it an act of clemency that he did not condemn him to death;

and he accused him because he had seized certain of the Gazans who were said to have instigated the riot and the murders, and kept them in chains, as men who would face trial according to the laws;

"For why," he said, "ought they to have been led away to punishment, if they merely avenged themselves on a few Galileans, in return for the many wrongs which these had done against them and against the gods?" Such, then, is what is said about this matter.

At this time also Hilarion the monk, being sought after by the people of Gaza, fled to Sicily;

there, gathering wood from the desert mountains and carrying it on his shoulders, he used to sell it in the city;

and, so as to survive, he provided his daily food in this manner.

Having there too accomplished, by divine power, the greatest and most extraordinary deeds — such as, by prayer, halting the sea when it was rushing forth from its retreat and flooding over the dry land — he departed thence again;

by continually changing his places of residence, he sought to remain unknown, and to dissolve the prevailing report about himself by his frequent removals.

At length, sailing along the coast of Cyprus, he put in at Paphos;

and, being urged by the bishop of the Cypriots at that time, he came to love his stay there, and pursued the ascetic life around a place called Charybris.

Now the cause of this man's not being martyred was his flight;

but he fled because it is a sacred commandment not to wait for one's persecutors, but, if overtaken while fleeing, to be courageous and to prove stronger than the compulsion of the persecutors.

Now it was not only among the Gazans and the Alexandrians that the aforesaid deeds were dared against the Christians;

but even these, it appears, were surpassed in excess of cruelty by the inhabitants of Heliopolis, near Lebanon, and of Arethusa in Syria.

For the former (it would be incredible even to relate, had it not been reported by some who lived at that very time) forced sacred virgins, unaccustomed to be seen by the crowd, to stand publicly stripped of their clothing, as a common spectacle and outrage for whoever wished to look;

and having first abused them wantonly as they pleased, in the end they put them to death;

and having cut them in two, they called the pigs to devour their entrails, covering the innards on the surface with the pigs' customary food, so that the swine might not easily distinguish what they were eating, but, reaching out of necessity for their accustomed food, might also tear at the human flesh.

As I conjecture, what led the people of Heliopolis to such cruelty against the sacred virgins was the fact that they had been prevented from doing what had formerly been their ancestral custom — namely, that the virgins there should be prostituted to any chance comer, before coming together with their betrothed in marriage.

for Constantine, having pulled down the temple of Aphrodite at Heliopolis, then for the first time built a church among them, and by law prohibited them from carrying out their customary fornications.

But the people of Arethusa treated Mark, who had been their bishop — an old man, venerable both in his grey hairs and in his manner of life — most piteously and violently.

and indeed they had held him in anger even before;

for during the reign of Constantius, he had brought back the pagans to Christianity more zealously than by way of persuasion, and their...

he pulled down a most august and most costly temple.

But when the empire passed to Julian, seeing that the populace was stirred up against him, and having at the same time been condemned by imperial decree either to pay the assessed value of the temple or to rebuild it, he reckoned that either course was impossible, and that the second was in any case unlawful for a Christian—much less for a priest—and so at first he fled.

But learning that many were in danger on his account—being dragged off, brought to trial, and made to suffer the terrors involved in these things—he returned from his flight and voluntarily presented himself to the crowd, to do with him whatever they wished.

But they, for the very reasons for which they ought rather to have praised him—for having displayed an act befitting a philosopher—supposing themselves to have been treated with contempt, the whole populace rushed upon him.

And they dragged him through the streets, shoving and plucking at him, and each one striking whatever part of his body happened to be near.

And the affair was carried on eagerly by men and women and every age alike, with zeal and rage, so that they even cut through his ears with thin cords.

And children who attended school made a game of the matter, lifting him up and rolling him toward themselves, tossing him back and forth to one another, and pricking him mercilessly with their writing-styluses.

And when his whole body had become one mass of wounds, yet he still breathed, they smeared him with honey and fish-sauce, and having thrown him into a woven basket (this is a plaited container made entirely of rushes), they raised him aloft.

It is said that at that very moment, when wasps and bees flew upon him and devoured his flesh, he said to the people of Arethusa that he himself was now on high, while he saw them as lowly and crawling upon the ground, and that accordingly their respective lots—his own and theirs—would hereafter be found to correspond to this.

[It is said that they] spoke boldly to the emperor and complained that they were justly incurring shame, having been overcome by a single old man who had bravely stood firm against so many tortures.

and that they were in danger of becoming ridiculous, while those who did such things were becoming the more glorious.

Mark, then, so nobly withstood the fury of the people of Arethusa and their many tortures that he was even praised by the Hellenists themselves.

At that same time also Macedonius, Theodulus, and Tatian, the Phrygians, bore witness bravely.

For when the governor of the province opened the temple there in Meros (this is a city of Phrygia) and cleansed it, since it had grown foul with time, they entered by night and smashed the images.

And when others were arrested as being responsible for this and were about to be punished, they informed against themselves.

Although it was possible for them to suffer nothing, if they consented to sacrifice, since the governor could not persuade them that this alone would serve as their defense for the wrongs committed, he tormented them in many ways.

and finally, having laid them upon gridirons, he kindled fire beneath them.

But as they burned, they said, "If you desire roasted meat, O Amachius" (for this was the governor's name), "turn us also onto our other sides toward the fire, so that, being only half-roasted, we may not seem distasteful to you when you taste us." And thus they, having nobly endured to the end amid their torments, laid down their lives.

They also say that Busiris, at Ancyra in Galatia, endured a splendid and most valiant confession for the sake of religion.

He belonged at that time to the sect called the Encratites; and the governor of the province, having arrested him as one who had acted with youthful insolence against the Hellenists, wished to torture him.

And having brought him forth publicly, he ordered him to be hoisted up on the wooden rack of torture.

But Busiris, raising both his hands above his head, bared his sides.

And he told the governor that the executioners need not toil in vain, hoisting him up onto the rack and taking him down again.

for readily, even without that, he would present his sides to the torturers for as long as the governor wished.

And the governor, marveling at the promise, was struck with even greater astonishment by the actual trial of it.

For while his sides were being torn with iron claws for as long as it seemed good to the governor, he held out steadfastly, keeping his hands raised and eagerly receiving the blows.

After this he was put in chains, but was released not long afterward, when news came that Julian had been killed.

And he survived until the reign of Theodosius, and, having condemned his former heresy, he went over to the catholic Church.

It is reported that at this time Basil, presbyter of the church at Ancyra, and Eupsychius of Caesarea, a Cappadocian of noble birth who had recently taken a wife and was, as it were, still a bridegroom, departed this life by martyrdom.

I conjecture that Eupsychius was put to death on account of the temple of Fortune, over whose destruction, as has been said before, all the people of Caesarea alike experienced the emperor's wrath.

And those who had actually carried out the demolition paid the penalty—some with death, others by being forced to flee their homeland.

Basil, having been zealous concerning doctrine, opposed those who held the views of Arius for as long as Constantius ruled.

and on this account he was forbidden, by the vote of the party of Eudoxius, to hold church assemblies.

But when Julian alone governed the empire, Basil went about among the Christians, publicly and openly exhorting them to hold fast to their own doctrines and not to be defiled by the sacrifices and libations of the Greeks, and to count as nothing the honors then being bestowed on them by the emperor, declaring these to be merely temporary, purchased at the price of everlasting ruin.

While earnestly pursuing these things, and being under suspicion and hatred among the Hellenists, he once stood, having seen people sacrificing publicly, and, groaning loudly, prayed that no Christian might ever experience such error.

On account of this he was arrested and handed over to the governor of the province.

and having endured many tortures, he bravely completed his martyrdom throughout the entire contest.

he showed that this had come to pass during his own governorship.

But for the sake of clarity, having gathered them all together, I have related them in one place, even though the time of each one's martyrdom differed.

After the return of Athanasius, Lucifer, bishop of Cagliari in Sardinia, and Eusebius, bishop of Vercelli among the Ligurians in Italy, returned from Upper Thebes.

for they had been ordered, under Constantius, to remain there in perpetual exile.

By common agreement, for the reform of ecclesiastical affairs, Eusebius came to Alexandria, in order to convene a synod together with Athanasius for the confirmation of what had been decreed at Nicaea; while Lucifer, having sent a deacon along with Eusebius to represent him at the synod in his place, himself proceeded to Antioch, where he found the church there in turmoil.

For it was divided by those belonging to the heresy of Arius, whom Euzoius led, and, as has been said before, the partisans of Meletius were also at variance even with those who held the same opinions as themselves.

And since Meletius had not yet returned from exile, he ordained Paulinus as bishop.

Meanwhile, the bishops of many cities, having assembled at Alexandria together with Athanasius and Eusebius, confirmed what had been decreed at Nicaea.

And they confessed the Holy Spirit to be consubstantial with the Father and the Son, and they named the three a Trinity.

They also set forth that the man whom God the Word assumed must be held to be perfect not in body alone, but in soul as well, just as had also seemed right to the ecclesiastical philosophers of old.

But since the inquiry concerning essence and hypostasis was troubling the churches, and there were frequent disputes and debates about these matters, they seem to me to have decreed very wisely indeed that these terms should not be applied to God straightway from the outset, except when one sought to refute the opinion of Sabellius, so that no one, for want of names, might seem to call the same thing by three appellations, but rather that each Person might be understood distinctly, in a threefold manner.

Such, then, were the decisions of those who assembled at Alexandria at that time.

And Athanasius, defending himself in these matters concerning his own flight, set forth in full the discourse which he had written on the subject.

And when the synod had dissolved, Eusebius, having arrived at Antioch, found the people in dissension.

For those who favored Meletius could not bear to assemble together with Paulinus, but held their own church services separately.

And though he took it hard that the ordination had taken place improperly, without the consent of all, he made no open reproach, out of respect for Lucifer; but, communing with neither party, he promised to set right in a synod whatever was troubling each side.

But while he was earnestly striving to bring the people together into concord, Meletius returned from exile, and, finding his own adherents separated from the rest, held church services with them privately outside the city, while Paulinus held services within, with his own followers.

For Euzoius, the leader of the Arian heresy, respecting him as one rendered gentle and venerable both by his manner of life and by his old age, neither expelled him but even assigned him a single church.

But Eusebius, having failed in his endeavor, departed from Antioch.

But Lucifer, feeling himself insulted by him, because he had not accepted the ordination of Paulinus, was indignant and refused to be in communion with him.

And, out of contentiousness, he undertook to discredit what had been decreed by the synod at Alexandria.

This, indeed, became the occasion for the heresy of those called after him the Luciferians.

For those who sympathized with him in these matters cut themselves off from the Church.

He himself, however, although overcome by grief, since through the deacon whom he had sent along with Eusebius he had agreed to abide by what had been enacted at Alexandria by the synod, went to Sardinia in agreement with the catholic Church.

But Eusebius, traveling about through the East, set right those who had neglected the faith, and taught them what they ought to believe.

Then, being zealous to do the same, he went also through Illyricum and came into Italy.

There he found that Hilary, who was bishop of Poitiers (a city of Aquitaine), had already accomplished these same things beforehand.

For he had returned from exile earlier, and had taught the Italians and the Gauls which doctrines they ought to accept, and which to avoid.

Indeed, he also became distinguished in the Latin tongue, and composed, as has been said, worthy treatises contending against the doctrines of Arius.

Thus this Hilary and Eusebius, in the West, which was just then beginning to receive it, jointly established the doctrine of the Council of Nicaea.

Meanwhile, the party of Macedonius, among whom were Eleusius, Eustathius, and Sophronius, having already begun to be openly called Macedonians, as having been marked off into a system of their own, and having gained freedom of action by the death of Constantius, called together those who had been of like mind with them at Seleucia, and held certain synods.

And they renounced the party of Acacius and the creed confirmed at Ariminum, but voted in favor of the creed set forth at Antioch, which had later been ratified by them at Seleucia.

But when they were charged as to why they were now at variance with the party of Acacius, having previously been in communion with them as being of the same opinion, they answered, through Sophronius the Paphlagonian, that those in the West held the doctrine of the consubstantial, while Aetius, in the East, held that the Son was unlike the Father in essence.

Some confusedly wove together the distinct hypostases of the Father and the Son into unity under the name of "consubstantial" (homoousios), while another sharply separated the natural affinity of the Son to the Father;

while they themselves, they claimed, held to true piety, affirming that the Son is like the Father in hypostasis, and that they had chosen this middle path between the two extremes, since each of the other parties had gone to the opposite extreme.

And thus they attempted to defend themselves against those who found fault with them.

But the emperor, learning that Athanasius was holding services in the church of the Alexandrians, teaching the multitudes fearlessly, and persuading many of the Greeks to turn to Christianity, ordered him to leave Alexandria.

And he threatened him with the severest penalties should he remain there, on a pretext of charges—namely, that having been condemned to exile by the emperors before him, he had taken possession of the episcopal throne without permission;

for he had not granted those exiled by Constantius the right to return to their churches, but only to their native lands.

On account of this imperial decree, as he was about to depart, seeing the multitude of Christians in tears around him, he said, "Take courage, for it is but a small cloud, and it will soon pass."

And having said this, he took his leave, and, entrusting the church to the most zealous of his friends, departed from the city of the Alexandrians.

Meanwhile, when the Cyzicenes sent an embassy to the emperor concerning their own affairs and the restoration of the pagan temples, he praised them for their forethought regarding sacred matters and granted them everything they had requested.

He also imprisoned Eleusius, the bishop of that city, on the charge that he had ravaged the temples and insulted the sacred precincts, had built shelters for the support of widows, had established convents of sacred virgins, and had persuaded the Greeks to neglect their ancestral customs.

He also forbade the foreign Christians who were with him from setting foot in Cyzicus, alleging as a pretext that they were likely to cause an uprising on account of religion, since the Christians of the city, together with the public wool-workers and the mint-workers, who held similar views concerning the divine, would join with them.

These, being numerous and divided by the decree of former emperors into two populous corporations, dwelt throughout Cyzicus together with their wives and households, paying each year a fixed levy to the treasury—some for military cloaks, others for newly minted coin.

For since he had resolved by every means to establish paganism, he judged it a mark of poor judgment to compel or punish the populace who were unwilling to sacrifice;

for the magistrates in each city could scarcely even have registered the mere number of so many people.

Nor indeed did he prevent them from assembling and praying according to their own conviction;

for he knew that such things could never be brought to success by compulsion, being matters that

require free and voluntary choice for their establishment.

He was eager to drive them out of the cities—to speak the plain truth of it—contriving that, through their absence, he might dissolve the assemblies of the people, so that they should have neither those who conducted services nor those who taught, nor partake of the mysteries, and that in the course of much time they might fall into forgetfulness of their own religion, while pretending that it was the clergy who were leading the multitudes into dissension.

Thus, therefore, although no sedition had occurred nor was expected to occur, he ordered Eleusius and those with him to leave Cyzicus.

He also incited the people of Bostra, by a public edict, to expel from their city Titus, who was then bishop of the church there.

For when he threatened to hold him and the clergy responsible should the populace riot, Titus sent a letter to the emperor and testified that the Christian population was equal in number to the pagan population, but that it remained peaceful and, guided by his own exhortations, entertained no thought of sedition.

But contriving, by means of these very words, to set Titus at enmity with the populace, he wrote to the Bostrenes and slandered him as having accused the people, [claiming] that they had refrained from sedition not by their own inclination but on account of his exhortations;

and he stirred up the populace to drive him out of the city as an enemy.

It is likely that many such things happened elsewhere too, some by the emperor's own command, others from the anger and rashness of the populace;

in respect of which, even so, one might justly lay upon the ruler the blame for what occurred;

for he did not subject those who transgressed the law in this way to the laws, but, though seeming in words to blame them, in fact, out of his hatred toward the [Christian] religion, incited by his deeds those who did such things;

whence, even though he was not himself pursuing them, Christians throughout the cities and villages took flight.

Many of my own ancestors, and my own grandfather, took part in this flight.

For although his father was a Greek, he himself, together with his whole household, and the family of Alaphion, were the first to become Christians in Bethelea, a village of Gaza—a populous place possessing temples venerable to its inhabitants for their antiquity and construction, and above all the Pantheon, situated as upon the acropolis of a certain man-made hill and rising above the whole village on every side.

I conjecture that the place derived its name from this, and that, translated from the Syrian tongue into Greek, it means "dwelling-place of the gods," on account of the temple of the Pantheon.

It is said that Hilarion the monk became the cause of Christianity for these households;

for when this Alaphion was possessed by a demon, and certain Greeks and Jews, having long employed incantations and various magical practices, accomplished nothing, but he, by merely invoking the name of Christ, drove out the demon, they turned to the religion of the Christians.

My grandfather excelled in the exposition and interpretation of the sacred Scriptures, being naturally gifted and able to discern what was needed, and being moderately trained in reasoning, so that he was not without a share even in arithmetic.

Hence he came to be held in the highest esteem among the Christians throughout Ascalon, Gaza, and the surrounding region, as one indispensable to their religion, and one who readily resolved the ambiguous passages of the sacred Scriptures.

But as for those of the other family, one could scarcely fully recount their virtue;

for they were the first in that place to establish churches and monasteries, and adorned it with dignity and with hospitality toward strangers and those in need.

From this lineage there survived good men down even to our own time, whom, when they were already old, I, being still young, came to know personally.

But of these I must make mention later.

The emperor, who had long been eager for paganism to prevail throughout all his dominion, was greatly distressed to see it being surpassed in esteem by Christianity.

For the temples had been reopened, and sacrifices and the ancestral festivals of the Greeks in the cities seemed to be proceeding according to his wish;

yet he was troubled, reckoning that, should these things be stripped of his own zealous support, they would quickly undergo reversal;

and not least was he vexed to hear that the wives, children, and household servants of many priests were living as Christians.