碑銘詩 第 5 章 第 1/8 段

On the deeds of Liberius in exile. § I. Contemporary writers on the deeds of Liberius in exile are brought forward, whom alone the author proposed to himself as future judges in this celebrated controversy. I had resolved with myself, although an occasion had offered itself, not to enter upon any discourse concerning these matters, because they seemed to lie outside my plan, and lest it be said that a wheel so often turned was being turned again by me with useless labour.

But afterward I changed my plan, because I had seen, first, that the heresy of Liberius was being chanted over again ad nauseam by the Jansenists in years past against the Catholics; then, that there had lately been a writer of history of our party who held it as a thing beyond doubt; and finally, because by reading and reflecting I had observed that this question, owing to the lack of monuments, is treated by men otherwise most learned—while each one serves his preconceived opinion—not so much as to be explained, but rather to be made more tangled and more obscure. I therefore let myself be carried along with those many who have handled this controversy; but, lest I weary my readers too much, I have undertaken to throw light on it from contemporary writers only, whose works survive:

whether, however, this has succeeded according to my wish, let those men judge. To begin with, that Pope Liberius, placed in exile, accepted the Sirmian faith, no one will doubt who reads his letter to the Orientals: for I am not the man who would dare, against the resistance of so many ages, to demand it false and reject it utterly among the fabrications of the Arians. But whether Liberius in that passage expresses a will put forth merely in words, or rather one already confirmed by some subscription of his own; and likewise what that Sirmian faith is of which he speaks, I shall say afterward. For now let it suffice to have briefly noted that the Sirmian faith is threefold, as threefold is the formula or exposition which was hammered out and promulgated in that city;

the first, namely, when Photinus was condemned by the Orientals and driven from the Sirmian episcopate and from the city itself; the second, which was drawn up by Ursacius, Valens, and Germinius at a later time, and was called also—though undeservedly—the blasphemy of Hosius and of Potamius; the third, finally, which was dictated by Marcus of Arethusa on the 21st of July in the consulship of Hypatius and Eusebius, that is, in the year 359, and which for that very reason—namely on account of the day and the consuls appended—is received with laughter by Athanasius in his book On the Synods.

When therefore we inquire which of those three expositions of the faith he accepted, and to which of them the pontiff Liberius afterward subscribed, if we consult the Fathers of this age who treat of this matter—Athanasius, Hilary, Jerome—since these clearly designate none of those formulas, they leave us uncertain. For Athanasius, in his History of the Arians addressed to the Monks, or the Letter to the Solitaries, writes thus: Moreover Liberius, having been made an exile, was at last after two years broken; and, terrified by threats of death, he subscribed. Then, to clear him, he straightway adds these words:

But by that very fact there is proved both the violence of those men and the hatred of Liberius for that heresy, and his vote in favour of Athanasius, so long, that is, as he was permitted to act freely and by his own judgment: for the things that are extorted by the force of torments are the decisions not of those who do not shrink back, but of those who are being harassed. Jerome touched on the deed in two places, namely in the Chronicle and in the book On Ecclesiastical Writers; and first he says this: When Liberius had been thrust into exile for the faith, all the Roman clergy swore that they would receive no other;

but when Felix had been substituted into the priesthood by the Arians, very many broke their oath, and after a year were cast out together with Felix, because Liberius, overcome by the tedium of exile and subscribing to the heretical depravity, entered Rome as though a victor. In the latter place: He asserts that Fortunatianus of Aquileia is held detestable, because he was the first to solicit Liberius, bishop of the city of Rome, as he was going into exile for the faith, and broke him, and compelled him to the subscription of heresy. Hilary too records the lapse of Liberius twice: first against Constantius, where he says this: You then turned your war as far as Rome, you snatched the bishop from there; and—O wretched you!

who I know not whether you sent into banishment with greater impiety than you recalled him. Then afterward in the Fragments, in the passage where he calls this Roman pontiff—who wrote that he had accepted the Sirmian faith—an apostate, and consigns him to anathema, I do not now bring forward the words, which are to be recited by me below in a more fitting place. If, therefore, Liberius is said to have subscribed to heresy, he can seem to have subscribed only to the second Sirmian formula; for the former, which had been promulgated in the council convened against Photinus, seemed to Hilary himself catholic and holy in his book On the Synods: and this is the one reason on account of which—to pass over the heterodox—some of our own people have gone over into this opinion.

§ II.—Hilary's testimonies are examined at length, to establish the Sirmian faith accepted by Liberius. That no synod of the Arians could have been held in the city of Sirmium in the year 349, contrary to what some suppose. For the rest, that the Sirmian faith which Liberius accepted is none other than that which had been promulgated by the council against Photinus, Hilary himself manifestly proves—Hilary, whom for that reason I marvel has hitherto been read with too little attention. He treats at greater length of this Sirmian council of the Arians, and of the twofold cause for convening it which the Orientals had set before themselves:

the first, namely, that on that occasion, given the matter of Photinus, they might overturn the decrees of the catholic Synod of Sardica, which had pronounced Marcellus—the teacher of Photinus—and Athanasius innocent; the second, and graver, that under the pretext of the Photinian heresy they might promulgate a new exposition of the faith, by which through secret mines they might destroy the Nicene dogma. He then recites that exposition, and calls it fraudulent, heretical, and pregnant with inner poison under flattering words, and so contrived that by one and the same context it would cast out Photinus, arraign Athanasius as guilty, and overthrow the Nicene faith. He compares it also with the Nicene faith, that by this very thing he may demonstrate the falsity of the other, and says this:

For that which was ordained at Nicaea is full and perfect, and—with all the approaches observed by which heretics are wont to creep in—is bound together by the inviolable solidity of the eternal unity between the Father and the Son; but this one flatters by its simplicity, first asserting that we so believe—which God forbid of anyone: yet the faith of the Westerns, established by the Gospel teachings, confesses the Father in the Son and the Son in the Father, the Father unbegotten, the Son eternal by the substance of eternity—that is, just as the Father is always, so also the Son is always in the Father, and was born of God, and is always in him from whom he is:

but this PERFIDY—not faith—saying God from God, and commending the firstborn, and instituting the name of the Trinity, conceals its venom under the modesty of a religious moderation. After this he comes to Athanasius, and praises him as the author and most vigorous defender of that same Nicene faith, and on that account proves him harassed by the Arians with false accusations, but absolved by the Synod of Sardica, producing the letters of that same synod and several letters written by Liberius before his exile.

But he grieves that this man at last made void, while placed in exile, all those things which before his exile he had either done or promised; and to prove this, he recites that letter to the Orientals, and another written by him to Ursacius and Valens. The words, therefore, of his letter to the Orientals, and the words of Hilary appended to it, are now to be recited by me, which settle the matter. Liberius says, then: that you may know that I speak with true faith—the Lord, and my brother in common Demophilus, who deigned of his benevolence to expound your faith, the catholic faith, which was discussed, expounded, and accepted at Sirmium by very many of our brethren and fellow-bishops. To this Hilary at once notes thus: This is the Arian perfidy.

The Sirmian faith, therefore, which Liberius had accepted, Hilary, as you see, calls a perfidy; but what perfidy is here to Hilary is the one Sirmian faith against Photinus, as we have seen; for this he execrates, this he compares with the Nicene, this very one he reproaches to Liberius; this therefore Liberius had accepted, with Hilary as witness. To this, then, he gave no heed at all who first brought Hilary's fragments into the light, the most learned man Nicolaus Faber, and any others there are who think that by those words of Hilary the second Sirmian formula is expressed: but could he have designated here that one, of which neither when he wrote these things, nor in the whole work of the fragments, did he ever seem either to treat or even to think?

But neither do they, as it seems to me, take the best way of extricating that pontiff from heresy, who hold those interjected annotations of Hilary as adventitious, spurious, and inserted by another hand; since, when those annotations lead us as though by the hand to the Sirmian faith which this pontiff had accepted, they would rather seem to make the case against him. But why the same Hilary here calls the Sirmian faith against Photinus—which in his book On the Synods he judged catholic—an Arian perfidy, I shall say elsewhere; for now I proceed to confirm this matter by other arguments. § III.—Likewise Hilary's testimonies are extended, to establish the faith accepted by Liberius.

From the same letter, therefore, we understand that that faith was, moreover, discussed and expounded by very many brethren and fellow-bishops. This very thing Hilary confirms, enumerating two-and-twenty bishops present at the drawing up of it. But the PERFIDY described at Sirmium, which Liberius calls catholic as expounded to him by Demophilus, these are they who composed it: Narcissus, Theodorus, Basilius, Eudoxius, Demophilus, Cecropius, Silvanus, Ursacius, Valens, Evagrius, Hyrenius, Exuperantius, Terentianus, Bassus, Gaudentius, Macedonius, Marcus, Aetius, Julius, Severinus, Simplicius, and Junior—all heretics. The manuscript

codices recorded by Baronius indicate that others too were present; but the second Sirmian formula, it is established, was composed by three bishops only—namely Ursacius, Valens, and Germinius; and if it please to add Potamius and Hosius, by five at most. Hilary assuredly everywhere expresses those only, and never more; this very thing he indicates besides by that same formula in these words: When some dispute was thought to exist concerning the faith, all things were diligently treated and discussed at Sirmium, in the presence of our most holy brethren and fellow-bishops Valens, Ursacius, and Germinius. This one, therefore, Hilary neither expresses in that passage, nor could he have execrated it as accepted by Liberius, but the other one.

Then, if you observe rightly, Hilary says that neither Hosius, nor Potamius, nor Germinius was present at the drawing up of the faith which Liberius had accepted. But why would he have passed them over in silence, if in that passage he were attacking the second Sirmian formula, which elsewhere he says was composed by them? It must therefore be that he then designated another, namely the Sirmian faith issued against Photinus, at which none of these was present: whereas at the drawing up of the perfidy of that Sirmian faith which Liberius had accepted, the same Hilary asserts that Theodorus, Basilius, and Eudoxius were present; but, if you understand these things of the second Sirmian formula, they are utterly false; since the first had already died, and the other two were far away:

these things stand clearly established from Theodoret, Sozomen, and Epiphanius, whom the reader will himself be able to consult, and besides from Petavius in his dissertations on the Sirmian synod against Photinus. This same thing might perhaps be affirmed of Narcissus and Cecropius: for we read this latter among those whom Georgius of Laodicea, by his letter, was rousing to come maturely to the aid of the faith, perishing by the fraud of Eudoxius and Aetius; the former, however, was leading a tranquil life in his own see, when by the efforts of Basil of Ancyra and by the emperor's command he learned that those heretics had been driven from Antioch.

That faith, finally, which the pontiff had approved and Hilary calls a perfidy, had been composed by the Orientals, who had come to Sirmium under the appearance of casting down Photinus, but in reality that they might again drive Athanasius from his see and overthrow the Nicene faith. But the second Sirmian formula owes its origin to the Westerns alone: hence Eudoxius, as soon as he learned that it had been approved by Hosius, gave thanks to Ursacius and Valens, because by their ministry the Westerns had begun to think rightly. This one, therefore, Hilary neither expresses in those words, nor can he seem to have had in mind.

One thing I see which might perhaps be objected: namely that, besides the one which deposed Photinus and expelled him from his see, there was another Sirmian synod gathered in the year 349, recorded by Petavius and by Constantius—though to Petavius it is of the Western Catholics, while to Constantius and to the recent writer of the History of ecclesiastical authors it is of the Eastern Arians. That this decree concerning the faith, therefore, which Hilary recites expressed in these words, belongs to it: For we profess thus—that there is one unbegotten God the Father, and one only Son of his, God from God, light from light, firstborn of all creation; and adding thirdly the Holy Spirit.

Accordingly [I hold] that the creed which Liberius accepted was drawn up by this synod, and by those bishops whom he names. Indeed, as concerns this Council of Sirmium, Petavius has great adversaries; but whatever may be the case in this dispute—which I do not make my own—what I confidently assert is this: that no council of the Eastern Arians can be seen to have been convened at Sirmium in that year, and before the death of Constans.

But would that emperor, in the city of his own empire and almost before his very eyes, ever have allowed a synod to be convened by which the Nicene faith—of which he had ever been steadfastly tenacious—should be overthrown, and Athanasius, dear to him and rightly taken under his protection, should once more be driven from his see, and that by bishops set under the dominion of Constantius, whose frauds, moreover, and mind alienated from himself he knew? Is this consonant with the polity of those times, whether civil or even ecclesiastical? But indeed those words which Hilary recites you would seek in vain in the Synod of Sirmium, by which Photinus was utterly overthrown and cast down. This, however, I deny:

since, if you attend closely, you will say that Hilary rather copied out the opinions in summary than wished to report the very words, of which nevertheless he retains some part. Furthermore, that there could have been no council of the Eastern Arians at Sirmium, and of that year, Athanasius and Hilary prove most plainly. The former relates, in his History of the Arians addressed to the Monks, of that supreme peace and concord which had received and embraced the whole Church, when he had been restored to his see. But then, as to why that peace was broken, and those most grievous troubles, which thereafter afflicted it, arose again, he brings forward this cause:

When they heard and beheld these things—the successors of the Eusebian opinion and heresy, Leontius, Georgius, Acacius, Theodorus, Narcissus, who in the Synod (of Sardica) had been deposed and stripped of office—they were suffused with great shame. Then, when they saw so great a consensus of minds with Athanasius, and that peace was being fostered, they were anxious with fear and envy, both because so many bishops cherished communion with Athanasius, and because they dreaded lest those whom they themselves had deceived should fall away from them and join themselves to this unanimity and communion, and lest—what seemed about to happen—a triumph should be celebrated everywhere over their notorious heresy.

He writes therefore that they all together approached Constantius, and—as he was hastening against Magnentius—once more inflamed him with wrath against Athanasius, and this was the beginning of all the evils that followed thereafter. But Hilary asserts that, in order to carry into effect the plans they had then been agitating, those men—hot of mind, subtle of wit, stubborn in soldiery—met at Sirmium and sought an occasion of reopening the judgment which had been dissolved by the acquittal of Athanasius, writing that, by a new case against Photinus, the question concerning Athanasius himself—now dead through lapse of time and buried together with the verdict of truth—might be stirred up into public remembrance.

Moreover he says that they then composed that creed, of which I have cited a few words, which he calls heretical, fraudulent, suffused with inner poison beneath flattering words, and finally PERFIDY, so that, when the unwariness of readers and the simplicity of the unlearned had been caught off guard by such soft beginnings, by one and the same assent of an elicited subscription there might be a passage to the censure of Photinus, to the indictment of Athanasius, and to the condemnation of the catholic faith. This, then, was the aim of this Council of Sirmium against Photinus. And this matter was transacted when Athanasius had already been restored to his see, and Constans had been destroyed by the treachery of Magnentius:

If therefore Athanasius could scarcely return to Alexandria at the end of the year 349, as eminent men reckon, and as the illustrious Father Thomas Mamachi, theologian of the Casanata, recently demonstrated most fully in his On the Reckoning of the Athanasian Chronology, Letters 1 and 3; if the emperor Constans perished at the beginning of January, in the consulship of Sergius and Nigrinianus; if by one and the same Council of Sirmium this was effected, that by a single subscription all might proceed to the censure of Photinus, to the indictment of Athanasius (then peaceably governing in his own Church), and to the condemnation of the Nicene faith—then it is necessary that you seek another time and year, one truly suited to those proceedings, than the one which has seemed right to those learned men.

§ IV.—It treats of the heresy of Demophilus, bishop of Beroea in Thrace, and it is proved that he was perpetually a Semi-Arian, and a most bitter adversary of the Arians: was he present at the Council of Ariminum? Lastly Liberius asserts that the Sirmian creed which he had accepted had previously been set forth to him by Demophilus; that this may not seem strange, Hilary explains, who writes that the Westerners, except for the one Nicene creed, by God's great favor were ignorant of all the other written creeds. It must therefore now be inquired whether Demophilus was an Arian or a Semi-Arian, when Liberius was in exile at Beroea, and which heresy he professed both at that time and also thereafter.

We read therefore that he, together with Eudoxius, Martyrius, and Macedonius, brought the Macrostich formula to the Westerners, and went out from the Council of Milan with angry minds together with his associates, because they had refused to condemn the heretical opinion of Arius. But if those who brought that formula sincerely professed it, they could at least seem orthodox in appearance; since they held those who say that the Son is from that which was not, or from another substance, and not from God, or that there was a time or an age when He did not exist, as strangers to the holy and catholic Church.

Philostorgius writes that Eudoxius at least passed over from the opinion of the Arians to those who asserted the homoeousion ('like in substance'), after reading the books of Asterius, and was finally recalled to the Anomoeans. Moreover, they all were present at the Council of Sirmium against Photinus, and they all therefore professed one faith—if they did not assert one thing with their voice while retaining another opinion in their mind. From the time of that same council down to the second Sirmian formula, we know that no other opinion at least was openly introduced among the heretics: that blasphemy came forth, as I think, in the first months of the year 358, through Ursacius, Valens, and Germinius;

but that Demophilus himself ever joined himself to them we nowhere read, whether when it was composed, or when it was afterwards augmented by the number and consent of some other bishops. On account of the troubles that then arose, in the following year the Synod of Ariminum was convened; at this, if we believe Socrates and Sozomen, Demophilus was present with Ursacius, Valens, Germinius, and Caius, and when they proposed in the assembly of the Fathers the third Sirmian formula he both lent them support and on that account was condemned with his associates by anathema.

Socrates and Sozomen drew these things from Athanasius, that great and most holy prelate—whom, however, I fear his memory may have failed in his book On the Synods, as it failed him in his Letter to the Africans, where he reckons Eudoxius too among those who had been present at the Synod of Ariminum and were deposed; for the bishop of Beroea, who was counted among the Easterners, could neither have been present at that council nor moreover have been deposed, since Constantius had haughtily forbidden the Westerners assembled at Ariminum to decree anything at all against the Eastern bishops;

and this is the reason why the surviving acts of that council, and the synodical letters—whose authority is to be held in higher esteem—mention only Ursacius, Valens, Germinius, Caius, and Auxentius as the Arians then present at the synod, and list them among the deposed, but nowhere name Demophilus; for how could they have mentioned one absent and placed far from that place? To these same acts authority accrues from the testimony of Hilary, who in his treatise against Auxentius numbers them all among the heirs of the spirit of Arius, but passes over this man in silence; and him too the presbyters Marcellinus and Faustinus omit, when they enumerate the other Arians who were present at that same Council of Ariminum.

And what, moreover, of the fact that those ten bishops who had been sent as legates to the Emperor when the synod was finished, and afterwards prevaricated at Nicaea in Thrace—when they rescinded the earlier acts of the council and by name restored communion to Ursacius, Valens, Germinius, and Caius—passed over this same Demophilus in deep silence? Had he indeed sinned more gravely, so that he was deemed unworthy of any pardon at all in the eyes of those ignorant bishops? Let it therefore be certain and settled that Demophilus was not present at the Council of Ariminum. Yet one might ask here why there is no mention of him even in the Synod of Seleucia, at which the emperor had ordered all the Easterners to be present. Or did he perhaps prefer to stay away from those troubles?

Or was he rather among those one hundred and five Homoeousians mentioned by Hilary, but shunning quarrels? Either could easily have been the case, since Basil the Great writes that he was so disposed in mind: 'Constantinople has long had Demophilus, and concerning him indeed a certain semblance of right faith and piety is proclaimed by all who come, with the highest consensus; so much so that even the dissenting parties of the city have coalesced into one, and some of the neighboring bishops have embraced union with him.' But why do we use arguments not necessary in a matter that is manifest?

For what the opinion of Demophilus was, we understand from a certain fragment which Philostorgius took from his commentaries, and which Suidas preserved and transmitted to us. He says therefore: 'The Son was begotten by the will of the Father alone, without time and without intermediary, so that He may be the minister and servant of the Father's commands'—namely, in the ministry of the dispensation and of redemption, as he seems to explain by the words that follow:

for if you compare these with the lengthy Antiochene formula, or with the Synod of Sirmium against Photinus, you will see one and the same opinion expressed in both: namely that the Son was begotten by the will of the Father alone, without time, without intermediary, so that He might obey the Father and be His minister, while the Father is Father not by substance only but also by authority—which authority, moreover, Hilary so explained that he detracted nothing from equality, because the subjection of piety is not a diminution of essence, nor did the duty of religion make the nature degenerate.

Hence the same Philostorgius carps at Demophilus himself—as he is wont to do at all who are foreign to his own sect—because he flowed muddily, because he confounded and mixed up all dogmas, and especially the ecclesiastical ones, and finally because, being most gravely hostile to the Eunomians, he afflicted them with the gravest evils. But this testimony, since it is most plain and decisive, no one would justly doubt that Demophilus was perpetually a Semi-Arian, and that moreover he set forth to Liberius in exile that faith which he sincerely professed. § V.—In what year and month may the Sirmian blasphemy seem to have been composed and sent into Gaul? Various opinions on this matter: Hilary is adduced and explained, and by his testimony the controversy is settled.

This too I have set before myself, to investigate more diligently in what year and time this Sirmian blasphemy may seem to have been written, and what afterward was its outcome and fruit; for by these things it will also come about that some light may be added to the history of those times. Most therefore hold that it was thrust into the light in the year 357 by evil arts; but there is hardly anyone who offers any reason for his opinion, except Peter Coustant, who uses the authority of Hilary, who writes thus to the Gallican bishops who had condemned it: 'For you have conquered, Brethren, with immense rejoicing of faith, and the honor of your unharmed conscience held a twofold glory—namely, of the integrity of conscience and of the authority of example.'