Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers: Series II/Volume II/Socrates/Book II/Chapter 36
Chapter XXXVI.—Of the Synod at Milan.
Now at that time the bishops met in Italy, very few indeed from the East, most of them being hindered from coming either by the firmities of age or by the distance; but of the West there were more than three hundred.[1]
It was a command of the emperor that they should be assembled at Milan. On meeting, the Eastern prelates opened the Synod by calling upon those convened to pass a unanimous sentence of condemnation against Athanasius; with this object in view, that he might thenceforward be utterly shut out from Alexandria. But Paulinus, bishop of Treves in Gaul, and Dionysius, of whom the former was bishop of Alba,[2]
the metropolis of Italy, and Eusebius of Vercellæ, a city of
Liguria in Italy, perceiving that the Eastern bishops, by demanding a
ratification of the sentence against Athanasius, were intent on
subverting the faith, arose and loudly exclaimed that ‘this
proposition indicated a covert plot against the principles of Christian
truth. For they insisted that the charges against Athanasius were
unfounded, and merely invented by his accusers as a means of corrupting
the faith.’ Having made this
protest with much vehemence of manner, the congress of bishops was then
dissolved.
Footnotes
[edit]- ↑ So also Sozomen, IV. 9; but the number appears exorbitant. Valesius conjectures that the texts of Socrates and Sozomen are corrupted, and that we must read thirty instead of three hundred. The smaller number agrees exactly with the list given in the epistle of this council to Eusebius of Vercellæ; in this list thirty bishops are named as agreeing to the condemnation of Athanasius, Marcellus, and Photinus. Cf. Baronius, Annal. year 355.
- ↑ Sozomen (IV. 9) agrees here also with Socrates; but Athanasius, in Epist. ad Solitar., and after him Baronius and Valesius, make Milan and not Alba, the metropolis of Italy, and Dionysius bishop of Milan, and not of Alba.