The Arian Controversy Part 5

CHAPTER V.

_THE VICTORY OF ARIANISM_.

[Sidenote: The West (337-350).]

Meanwhile new troubles were gathering in the West. While the Eastern churches were distracted with the crimes or wrongs of Marcellus and Athanasius, Europe remained at peace from the Atlantic to the frontier of Thrace. The western frontier of Constantius was also the western limit of the storm. Hitherto its distant echoes had been very faintly heard in Gaul and Spain; but now the time was come for Arianism to invade the tranquil obscurity of the West.

[Sidenote: Magnentian war, 350-353.]

Constans was not ill-disposed, and for some years ruled well and firmly.

Afterwards--it may be that his health was bad--he lived in seclusion with his Frankish guards, and left his subjects to the oppression of unworthy favourites. Few regretted their weak master's fate when the army of Gaul proclaimed Magnentius Augustus (January 350). But the memory of Constantine was still a power which could set up emperors and pull them down. The old general Vetranio at Sirmium received the purple from Constantine's daughter, and Nepotia.n.u.s claimed it at Rome as Constantine's nephew. The Magnentian generals scattered the gladiators of Nepotia.n.u.s, and disgraced their easy victory with slaughter and proscription. The ancient mother of the nations never forgave the intruder who had disturbed her queenly rest with civil war and filled her streets with bloodshed. Meantime Constantius came up from Syria, won over the legions of Illyric.u.m, reduced Vetranio to a peaceful abdication, and pushed on with augmented forces towards the Julian Alps, there to decide the strife between Magnentius and the house of Constantine. Both parties tried the resources of intrigue; but while Constantius won over the Frank Silva.n.u.s from the Western camp, the envoys of Magnentius, who sounded Athanasius, gained nothing from the wary Greek. The decisive battle was fought near Mursa, on the Save (September 28, 351). Both armies well sustained the honour of the Roman name, and it was only after a frightful slaughter that the usurper was thrown back on Aquileia. Next summer he was forced to evacuate Italy, and in 353 his destruction was completed by a defeat in the Cottian Alps. Magnentius fell upon his sword, and Constantius remained the master of the world.

[Sidenote: Renewal of the contest.]

The Eusebians were not slow to take advantage of the confusion. The fires of controversy in the East were smouldering through the years of rest, so that it was no hard task to make them blaze afresh. As the recall of the exiles was only due to Western pressure, the death of Constans cleared the way for further operations. Marcellus and Photinus were again deposed by a council held at Sirmium in 351. Ancyra was restored to Basil, Sirmium given to Germinius of Cyzicus. Other Eastern bishops were also expelled, but there was no thought of disturbing Athanasius for the present. Constantius more than once repeated to him his promise of protection.

[Sidenote: The Western bishops.]

Magnentius had not meddled with the controversy. He was more likely to see in it the chance of an ally at Alexandria than a matter of practical interest in the West. As soon, however, as Constantius was master of Gaul, he set himself to force on the Westerns an indirect condemnation of the Nicene faith in the person of Athanasius. Any direct approval of Arianism was out of the question, for Western feeling was firmly set against it by the council of Nicaea. Liberius of Rome followed the steps of his predecessor Julius. Hosius of Cordova was still the patriarch of Christendom, while Paulinus of Trier, Dionysius of Milan, and Hilary of Poitiers proved their faith in exile. Mere creatures of the palace were no match for men like these. Doctrine was therefore kept in the background. Constantius began by demanding from the Western bishops a summary and lawless condemnation of Athanasius. No evidence was offered; and when an accuser was asked for, the Emperor himself came forward, and this at a time when Athanasius was ruling Alexandria in peace on the faith of his solemn and repeated promises of protection.

[Sidenote: Council of Arles (Oct. 353).]

A synod was held at Arles as soon as Constantius was settled there for the winter. The bishops were not unwilling to take the Emperor's word for the crimes of Athanasius, if only the court party cleared itself from the suspicion of heresy by anathematizing Arianism. Much management and no little violence was needed to get rid of this condition; but in the end the council yielded. Even the Roman legate, Vincent of Capua, gave way with the rest, and Paulinus of Trier alone stood firm, and was sent away to die in exile.

[Sidenote: Council of Milan (Oct. 355).]

There was a sort of armed truce for the next two years. Liberius of Rome disowned the weakness of his legates and besought the Emperor to hold a new council. But Constantius was busy with the barbarians, and had to leave the matter till he came to Milan in the autumn of 355. There Julian was invested with the purple and sent as Caesar to drive the Alemanni out of Gaul, or, as some hoped, to perish in the effort. The council, however, was for a long time quite unmanageable, and only yielded at last to open violence. Dionysius of Milan, Eusebius of Vercellae, and Lucifer of Calaris in Sardinia were the only bishops who had to be exiled.

[Sidenote: Lucifer of Calaris.]

The appearance of Lucifer is enough to show that the contest had entered on a new stage. The lawless tyranny of Constantius had roused an aggressive fanaticism which went far beyond the claim of independence for the church. In dauntless courage and determined orthodoxy Lucifer may rival Athanasius himself, but any cause would have been disgraced by his narrow partisanship and outrageous violence. Not a bad name in Scripture but is turned to use. Indignation every now and then supplies the place of eloquence, but more often common sense itself is almost lost in the weary flow of vulgar scolding and interminable abuse. He scarcely condescends to reason, scarcely even to state his own belief, but revels in the more congenial occupation of denouncing the fires of d.a.m.nation against the disobedient Emperor.

[Sidenote: Hilary of Poitiers.]

The victory was not to be won by an arm of flesh like this. Arianism had an enemy more dangerous than Lucifer. From the sunny land of Aquitaine, the firmest conquest of Roman civilization in Atlantic Europe, came Hilary of Poitiers, the n.o.blest representative of Western literature in the Nicene age. Hilary was by birth a heathen, and only turned in ripe manhood from philosophy to Scripture, coming before us in 355 as an old convert and a bishop of some standing. He was by far the deepest thinker of the West, and a match for Athanasius himself in depth of earnestness and ma.s.sive strength of intellect. But Hilary was a student rather than an orator, a thinker rather than a statesman like Athanasius. He had not touched the controversy till it was forced upon him, and would much have preferred to keep out of it. But when once he had studied the Nicene doctrine and found its agreement with his own conclusions from Scripture, a clear sense of duty forbade him to shrink from manfully defending it. Such was the man whom the brutal policy of Constantius forced to take his place at the head of the Nicene opposition. As he was not present at Milan, the courtiers had to silence him some other way.

In the spring of 356 they exiled him to Asia, on some charge of conduct 'unworthy of a bishop, or even of a layman.'

[Sidenote: Hosius and Liberius.]

Meanwhile Hosius of Cordova was ordered to Sirmium and there detained.

Constantius was not ashamed to send to the rack the old man who had been a confessor in his grandfather's days, more than fifty years before. He was brought at last to communicate with the Arianizers, but even in his last illness refused to condemn Athanasius. After this there was but one power in the West which could not be summarily dealt with. The grandeur of Hosius was merely personal, but Liberius claimed the universal reverence due to the apostolic and imperial See of Rome. It was a great and wealthy church, and during the last two hundred years had won a n.o.ble fame for world-wide charity. Its orthodoxy was without a stain; for whatever heresies might flow to the great city, no heresy had ever issued thence. The strangers of every land who found their way to Rome were welcomed from St. Peter's throne with the majestic blessing of a universal father. 'The church of G.o.d which sojourneth in Rome' was the immemorial counsellor of all the churches; and now that the voice of counsel was pa.s.sing into that of command, Bishop Julius had made a worthy use of his authority as a judge of Christendom. Such a bishop was a power of the first importance now that Arianism was dividing the Empire round the hostile camps of Gaul and Asia. If the Roman church had partly ceased to be a Greek colony in the Latin capital, it was still the connecting link of East and West, the representative of Western Christianity to the Easterns, and the interpreter of Eastern to the Latin West. Liberius could therefore treat almost on the footing of an independent sovereign. He would not condemn Athanasius unheard, and after so many acquittals. If Constantius wanted to reopen the case, he must summon a free council, and begin by expelling the Arians. To this demand he firmly adhered. The Emperor's threats he disregarded, the Emperor's gifts he flung out of the church. It was not long before Constantius was obliged to risk the scandal of seizing and carrying off the bishop of Rome.

[Sidenote: Third exile of Athanasius (356).]

Athanasius was still at Alexandria. When the notaries tried to frighten him away, he refused to take their word against the repeated written promises of protection he had received from Constantius himself. Duty as well as policy forbade him to believe that the most pious Emperor could be guilty of any such treachery. So when Syria.n.u.s, the general in Egypt, brought up his troops, it was agreed to refer the whole question to Constantius. Syria.n.u.s broke the agreement. On a night of vigil (Feb. 8, 356) he surrounded the church of Theonas with a force of more than five thousand men. The whole congregation was caught as in a net. The doors were broken open, and the troops pressed up the church. Athanasius fainted in the tumult; yet before they reached the bishop's throne its occupant had somehow been safely conveyed away.

[Sidenote: George of Cappadocia.]

If the soldiers connived at the escape of Athanasius, they were all the less disposed to spare his flock. The outrages of Philagrius and Gregory were repeated by Syria.n.u.s and his successor, Sebastian the Manichee; and the evil work went on apace after the arrival of the new bishop in Lent 357. George of Cappadocia is said to have been before this a pork-contractor for the army, and is certainly no credit to Arianism.

Though Athanasius does injustice to his learning, there can be no doubt that he was a thoroughly bad bishop. Indiscriminate oppression of Nicenes and heathens provoked resistance from the fierce populace of Alexandria. George escaped with difficulty from one riot in August 358, and was fairly driven from the city by another in October.

[Sidenote: Athanasius in exile (356-362).]

Meanwhile Athanasius had disappeared from the eyes of men. A full year after the raid of Syria.n.u.s, he was still unconvinced of the Emperor's treachery. Outrage after outrage might turn out to be the work of underlings. Constantine himself had not despised his cry for justice, and if he could but stand before the son of Constantine, his presence might even yet confound the gang of eunuchs. Even the weakness of Athanasius is full of n.o.bleness. Not till the work of outrage had gone on for many months was he convinced. But then he threw off all restraint. Even George the pork-contractor is not a.s.sailed with such a storm of merciless invective as his holiness Constantius Augustus.

George might sin 'like the beasts who know no better,' but no wickedness of common mortals could attain to that of the new Belshazzar, of the Lord's anointed 'self-abandoned to eternal fire.'

[Sidenote: Political meaning of his exile.]

The exile governed Egypt from his hiding in the desert. Alexandria was searched in vain; in vain the malice of Constantius pursued him to the court of Ethiopia. Letter after letter issued from his inaccessible retreat to keep alive the indignation of the faithful, and invisible hands conveyed them to the farthest corners of the land. Constantius had his revenge, but it shook the Empire to its base. It was the first time since the fall of Israel that a nation had defied the Empire in the name of G.o.d. It was a national rising, none the less real for not breaking out in formal war. This time Greeks and Copts were united in defence of the Nicene faith, so that the contest was at an end when the Empire gave up Arianism. But the next breach was never healed. Monophysite Egypt was a dead limb of the Empire, and the Roman power beyond Mount Taurus fell before the Saracens because the provincials would not lift a hand to fight for the heretics of Chalcedon.

[Sidenote: The Sirmian manifesto (357).]

The victory seemed won when the last great enemy was driven into the desert, and the intriguers hasted to the spoil. They forgot that the West was only overawed for the moment, that Egypt was devoted to its patriarch, that there was a strong opposition in the East, and that the conservatives, who had won the battle for them, were not likely to take up Arianism at the bidding of their unworthy leaders. Amongst the few prominent Eusebians of the West were two disciples of Arius who held the neighbouring bishoprics of Mursa and Singidunum, the modern Belgrade.

Valens and Ursacius were young men in 335, but old enough to take a part in the infamous Egyptian commission of the council of Tyre. Since that time they had been well to the front in the Eusebian plots. In 347, however, they had found it prudent to make their peace with Julius of Rome by confessing the falsehood of their charges against Athanasius. Of late they had been active on the winning side, and enjoyed much influence with Constantius. Thinking it now safe to declare more openly for Arianism, they called a few bishops to Sirmium in the summer of 357, and issued a manifesto of their belief for the time being, to the following general effect. 'We acknowledge one G.o.d the Father, also His only Son, Jesus Christ our Lord. But two G.o.ds must not be preached. The Father is without beginning, invisible, and in every respect greater than the Son, who is subject to Him together with the creatures. The Son is born of the Father, G.o.d of G.o.d, by an inscrutable generation, and took flesh or body, that is, man, through which he suffered. The words _essence_, _of the same essence_, _of like essence_, ought not to be used, because they are not found in Scripture, and because the divine generation is beyond our understanding.' Here is something to notice besides the repeated hints that the Son is no better than a creature. It was a new policy to make the mystery in the manner of the divine generation an excuse for ignoring the fact. In this case the plea of ignorance is simply impertinent.

[Sidenote: Its results in general.]

The Sirmian manifesto is the turning-point of the whole contest.

Arianism had been so utterly crushed at Nicaea that it had never again till now appeared in a public doc.u.ment. Henceforth the conservatives were obliged in self-defence to look for a Nicene alliance against the Anomoeans. Suspicions and misunderstandings, and at last mere force, delayed its consolidation till the reign of Theodosius, but the Eusebian coalition fell to pieces the moment Arianism ventured to have a policy of its own.

[Sidenote: (1.) In the West.]

Ursacius and Valens had blown a trumpet which was heard from one end of the Empire to the other. Its avowal of Arianism caused a stir even in the West. Unlike the creeds of Antioch, it was a Western doc.u.ment, drawn up in Latin by Western bishops. The spirit of the West was fairly roused, now that the battle was clearly for the faith. The bishops of Rome, Cordova, Trier, Poitiers, Toulouse, Calaris, Milan, and Vercellae were in exile, but Gaul was now partly shielded from persecution by the varying fortunes of Julian's Alemannic war. Thus everything increased the ferment. Phoebadius of Agen took the lead, and a Gaulish synod at once condemned the 'blasphemy.'

[Sidenote: (2.) In the East.]

If the Sirmian manifesto disturbed the West, it spread dismay through the ranks of the Eastern conservatives. Plain men were weary of the strife, and only the fishers in troubled waters wanted more of it. Now that Marcellus and Photinus had been expelled, the Easterns looked for rest. But the Sirmian manifesto opened an abyss at their feet. The fruits of their hard-won victories over Sabellianism were falling to the Anomoeans. They must even defend themselves, for Ursacius and Valens had the Emperor's ear. As if to bring the danger nearer home to them, Eudoxius the new bishop of Antioch, and Acacius of Caesarea convened a Syrian synod, and sent a letter of thanks to the authors of the manifesto.

[Sidenote: Synod of Ancyra (Lent, 358).]

Next spring came the conservative reply from a knot of twelve bishops who had met to consecrate a new church for Basil of Ancyra. But its weight was far beyond its numbers. Basil's name stood high for learning, and he more than any man could sway the vacillating Emperor. Eustathius of Sebastia was another man of mark. His ascetic eccentricities, long ago condemned by the council of Gangra, were by this time forgotten or considered harmless. Above all, the synod represented most of the Eastern bishops. Pontus indeed was devoted to conservatism, and the decided Arianizers were hardly more than a busy clique even in Asia and Syria. Its decisions show the awkwardness to be expected from men who have had to make a sudden change of front, and exhibit well the transition from Eusebian to Semiarian conservatism. They seem to start from the declaration of the Lucianic creed, that the Lord's sonship is not an idle name. Now if we reject materialising views of the Divine Sonship, its primary meaning will be found to lie in similarity of essence. On this ground the Sirmian manifesto is condemned. Then follow eighteen anathemas, alternately aimed at Aetius and Marcellus. The last of these condemns the Nicene _of one essence_--clearly as Sabellian, though no reason is given.

[Sidenote: Victory of the Semiarians.]

The synod broke up. Basil and Eustathius went to lay its decisions before the court at Sirmium. To conciliate the Nicenes, they left out the last six anathemas of Ancyra. They were just in time to prevent Constantius from declaring for Eudoxius and the Anomoeans. Peace was made before long on Semiarian terms. A collection was made of the decisions against Photinus and Paul of Samosata, together with the Lucianic creed, and signed by Liberius of Rome, by Ursacius and Valens, and by all the Easterns present. Liberius had not borne exile well. He had already signed some still more compromising doc.u.ment, and is denounced for it as an apostate by Hilary and others. However, he was now allowed to return to his see.

[Sidenote: The Semiarian failure.]

The Semiarians had won a complete victory. Their next step was to throw it away. The Anomoean leaders were sent into exile. After all, these Easterns only wanted to replace one tyranny by another. The exiles were soon recalled, and the strife began again with more bitterness than ever.

[Sidenote: Rise of the h.o.m.oeans.]

Here was an opening for a new party. Semiarians, Nicenes, and Anomoeans were equally unable to settle this interminable controversy.

The Anomoeans indeed almost deserved success for their boldness and activity, but pure Arianism was hopelessly discredited throughout the Empire. The Nicenes had Egypt and the West, but they could not at present overcome the court and Asia. The Semiarians might have mediated, but men who began with persecutions and wholesale exiles were not likely to end with peace. In this deadlock better men than Ursacius and Valens might have been tempted to try some scheme of compromise. But existing parties left no room for anything but vague and s.p.a.cious charity. If we may say neither _of one essence_ nor _of like essence_, nor yet _unlike_, the only course open is to say _like_, and forbid nearer definition. This was the plan of the new h.o.m.oean party formed by Acacius in the East, Ursacius and Valens in the West.

[Sidenote: New relations of parties.]