The Greek and Eastern Churches/Part 1/Division 1/Chapter 4

by Walter Frederic Adeney

 

CHAPTER IV

THE LATER ARIAN PERIOD

 

(a) Authorities mentioned in previous chapters; Basil, Gregory Nazianzen, Gregory of Nyssa (Eng. Trans. in Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers); Ammianus Marcellinus, Roman History (Bohn).

(b) Works named in previous chapters; Rendall, The Emperor Julian, 1879; Gaetano Negri, Julian the Apostate, 2nd edit. 1902, Eng. Trans., 1905.

 

The death of Constantine (a.d. 337), followed by the division of his empire between his three sons, Constantine ii. and Constans in the West, and Constantius in the East, introduces us to a new chapter in the history of Arianism. The first of these rulers died three years later while fighting against his brother Constans, who thus became sole master of the West, and there championed the Athanasian cause without difficulty, since Arianism found all its support in the Eastern provinces. Constantius, on the other hand, had Arian leanings, and he oppressed the orthodoxy that had seemed so triumphant at Nicæa a few years before. In so acting he was largely influenced by his jealousy of Athanasius, whose influence rivalled that of the emperor. This was a very different policy from the persecution of the Nicene party by Constantine, which had always been carried on in the name of toleration, in order to force the Athanasians to fraternise with the Arians. Pompous, vain, mean, cruel, Constantius was quite incapable of inheriting his father's large ideas; he was frankly intolerant, throwing his influence wholly into the scale of the Arian faction. At first, however, he was compelled to proceed warily and his initial actions even favoured the Nicene party, so that for the moment his accession might have been regarded as the end of the oppression of orthodoxy. This was simply due to the influence of the Western emperors. Until he was firmly established in power, Constantius dared not openly flout his brothers' wishes. Thus we have the paradox that the exile of Athanasius, which had lasted to the end of the reign of the liberal-minded Constantine, was terminated by his Arianising son Constantius (a.d. 338). Then the patriarch was welcomed back to Alexandria in a scene of popular rejoicing that was compared to our Lord's triumphal entry into Jerusalem. It was a shortlived triumph. The wily Eusebius of Nicomedia, past master of court intrigue, wormed himself into the favour of Constantius, got promoted to the Constantinople bishopric, and thence swayed the imperial counsels so effectually that the whole influence of the Government went to favour his party. The temper of the Arians against Athanasius was positively spiteful; but the new charge they now brought against him had some show of propriety. It was that he had been reinstated by the civil power without being restored by the ecclesiastical after his deposition at the council of Tyre. What could equal the effrontery of such an accusation on the part of men who were violating the decrees of the most august Church council, ruthlessly setting aside the bishops who adhered to them, and unhesitatingly accepting the emperor's interference to effect that end? Still it succeeded; and Athanasius was again banished and a Cappadocian, Gregory, sent from the court, was forced on the protesting Church at Alexandria amid outrageous scenes of violence (a.d. 339).

Since such unblushing conduct was seen at the headquarters of orthodoxy in the East, it may be surprising to observe how diplomatically the Arians had to work elsewhere. In wearisome succession, several councils—most of them packed meetings—were held in various places with the hope of getting a final settlement, and to that end distinctive Arian phrases were dropped and more neutral expressions substituted. At Sardica—now Sophia (a.d. 343) the Athanasians were actually in a majority, and their opponents could only get their way by removing farther east, to Philippopolis—there to register their decisions comfortably without the inconvenience of opposition. This plainly shows that the mass of the Church was with Athanasius. The powerful Eusebius had died the year before the council of Sardica, and two years after that event Gregory also died—perhaps murdered. Things were not going well for the Arians, and Constans seized the opportunity to force his brother, under threat of war, to let Athanasius return to his see. Constantius actually himself received the patriarch quite graciously. But the death of Constans in 350 put an end to the truce. Now that Constantius was undisputed master of the empire, the Arians sprang into power and became quite overbearing and most truculent. After hairbreadth escapes and romantic adventures Athanasius fled up the Nile and took refuge with the monks in the desert. The venerable Hosius and Liberius the bishop of Rome were detained in captivity till their patience was worn down and they both signed a virtually Arian confession. It was a dark period for the Nicene faith. Still the time was not all lost. Athanasius in his quiet retreat now wrote some of his most important works, including his famous Four Discourses on Arianism and his History of the heresy. So things went on for eleven dreary years, till the death of Constantius (a.d. 361) brought deliverance from an unexpected quarter in the advent of a pagan emperor.

Julian, the cousin and successor of Constantius, has been execrated in the Church as "the Apostate." When at liberty to show his hand he manifested bitter antipathy to Christianity, after apparently having been baptised in his infancy—a fact, if this were the case, for which it would be hard to make him responsible. While in the power of his cousin Constantius, he had conformed, as he was bound to do unless he had developed a very precocious martyr conscience. But as soon as he was free to act for himself he threw off the hateful yoke of his oppressor's religion. Consider in what light Christianity must have appeared to the boy Julian. It was the religion of the man who had murdered his father and every member of his family except one brother, and that merely in accordance with the Oriental monarch's drastic policy of clearing off dangerous rivals. Then Julian never knew true Christianity. The form in which it had been forced on him in his boyhood was Arianism; but that was by no means the worst feature of the case—the great apostle of the Goths was an Arian; Arianism could present an attractive aspect. But the young prince had been drilled in hard monkish ways. When he was out walking he had to keep his eyes fixed on the pavement in order to avoid the sight of vanity. He was allowed no companions of his own age. The specimens of Christian profession he witnessed in the circle of his acquaintance had little of the savour of godliness. They were court chaplains—adroit in political intrigue, fierce partisans of polemical theology, jealous ecclesiastics. Nothing was done to awaken in Julian an appreciation of the genuine graces of the gospel. But he was compelled to attend the heartless services that he inwardly loathed. Who can wonder that his young, ardent nature revolted, that his eager soul was full of bitterness? On the other hand, forbidden to attend the lectures of the Neo-Platonist Libanius, who was the greatest teacher of the day, he obtained copies of them, read them with the more avidity since "stolen waters are sweet," and at length allowed himself to be secretly initiated at the temple of Artemis. When Julian was permitted to go up to the university of Athens, he threw himself with hot enthusiasm into the intellectual life of this centre of pagan learning. He revelled in the classics, charmed with Hellenic culture, both its mythology and its philosophy. Intercourse with the liberalising pagan society at Athens made him look back with disgust on the old prison days, in which his tutors had been his jailers. Here he felt the pulse of a larger life, free and vivacious, sunny and natural.

Julian had no political ambition. Like Marcus Aurelius, a much greater philosophical emperor, he was distressed at the call of duty that compelled him to plunge into practical affairs when he would so much have preferred the contemplative life. The difficulties of the empire having constrained Constantius to recall him from his studies and make a Cæsar of him, Julian is said to have exclaimed, "O Plato, what a task for a philosopher!" Yet he proved a capable general when in charge of the troops in Gaul, who forced him to become emperor in opposition to his cousin,^[1] and a bloody conflict would have been the result if Constantius had not died just in time to prevent it. At first he was welcomed by all classes—Christian and pagan; for the tyranny of Constantius had become odious and unbearable. Julian began his reign with a proclamation of complete religious liberty. "Blows and injuries," he said, "are not things to change a man's religion." The effect of this reversal of policy was twofold. In the first place, it led to the return of the orthodox Catholic bishops from exile. The death of Constantius had been the signal for the people of Alexandria to rise in riot and murder George of Cappadocia, who, like Gregory at an earlier period, had been forced upon them as patriarch in the interests of Arianism. Then once more Athanasius was able to come back to his flock.

In the second place, the oppression of the old pagan religions which Constans and Constantius had carried on was ended for the brief period of the pagan emperor's reign. His predecessors had ordered all "superstition" to cease in the temples, and even threatened persons privately sacrificing with death—for so we must understand the references to earlier legislation in the Theodosian code. The active persecution, however, had not gone beyond the confiscation of temple property and the stern punishment of magic. Now Julian not only granted freedom for the worship of the old gods again; he ordered the confiscated property to be restored without compensation, a hardship on the holders of it for the time being in sharp contrast with Constantine's arrangement for the use of the funds of the State in buying back Church property for the Christians. Julian's whole influence leaned heavily on the pagan side. All the court favour was for men of the old religion; and under an absolute despotism this must have meant much, quite apart from any change of legislation. Knowing which way the wind blew, the enemies of the Christians ventured on many an act of violence in various localities, and always with impunity, and these local outbreaks led to cases of martyrdom, reminding people of the dark days of the Diocletian persecution. Thus, for insulting the sacrifices, Basil of Ancyra was flayed alive, slowly, seven strips of skin being peeled off at a time. Modern psychology will lend some credit to the story of a young man named Theodore who was tortured at Antioch by the reluctant prefect under orders from Julian to punish those people who had been most prominent in the procession that had transported the coffin of the martyr Babylas from Daphne, where its sacred contents were supposed to have silenced the oracle when Julian was consulting it, much to the emperor's annoyance. Rufinus got the story direct from the lips of its hero,^[2] who in reply to a question whether in the process of scourging and racking he had not suffered the most intense pain, said that he felt the pain but a very little while, for a young man stood by him wiping off the sweat and so strengthening him that his time of trial was a season of rapture.

Later in his reign, Julian, annoyed at the failure of his attempts to galvanise the corpse of the old paganism into life again, began a subtle attack on the Christians by forbidding them to teach the classics in the schools, on the theory that the bible of paganism should only be taught by those who believed in it. So he said of them, "If they feel they have gone astray concerning the gods, let them go to the churches of the Galileeans and expound Matthew and Luke." To meet this severe blow at the culture of the Church, the two Apollinarises—father and son—set themselves to the task of turning the Scriptures into verse, adopting the idioms of classic Greek in the work.

Julian might have proceeded to actual violence had he not been arrested in mid career. His early death when fighting the Persians came as a great deliverance to the alarmed Church. It was the end of a strange tragedy. With all his serious aims, the emperor had been made to see that his life was a failure. His own religion was a curious compound of old-fashioned paganism and Neo-Platonic ideas. He restored the worship of the gods at many a neglected shrine, and renewed the sacrifices on long deserted altars; but the misery of it all was that the people would not respond. He paid Christianity the sincere homage of imitation, organising a regular hierarchy with choirs and liturgical services and pulpits for the preaching of pagan sermons. He founded pagan monasteries and hospitals. It was all in vain. Nobody cared. He had all the zeal of a revivalist. Yet he was laughed at by the people of his own religion. It has been suggested that if he had promoted Roman instead of Greek religion he might have met with some success.

A strange figure!—as dirty as a saint, if only Julian had been a Christian, his grimy hands, his tangled beard — at which the people of Antioch laughed outright, his coarse clothing rarely changed,^[3] would have earned him the honour of sanctity. Undoubtedly he was a conscientious religious devotee, as he was also an honest, indefatigable administrator. And yet directly he died the whole fabric of renovated paganism that he had toiled so strenuously but singlehanded to build up fell to the ground like a house of cards. It may be said that he failed because he aimed too high. Perceiving that the old paganism was dying of its own rottenness, he set himself to be its reformer as well as its champion. He would support the pagan priests and supply the altars with sacrifices; but then these priests of his must show Christian sanctity in their conduct. But they had no wish to be screwed up to the new standard of virtue in the name of the hoary old gods who hitherto had let off their worshippers on much easier terms. The dismal failure of this last attempt at the restoration of paganism with which its reformation was to go hand in hand was a plain proof that the whole system was outworn. With all his enthusiasm Julian's desperate efforts had proved to be no better than the galvanising of a corpse. It is true that paganism was not actually extinguished for years to come; indeed it is with us to-day, for it is inherent in human nature. The Church was able to make a place for it by developing her hagiology, which sheltered the ancient superstitions of the dead pantheon. But Julian's failure demonstrated once for all that the old cult of the gods, open and recognised, had gone, and gone for ever.

The simple soldier Jovian whom the army voted into the high position of emperor to rescue it from the Persians was an orthodox Christian, who, as Theodoret states,^[4] hesitated to accept the honour till he was assured of the Christian sympathies, and with his accession to power the brief gleam of sunshine which had broken out so unexpectedly on the fading faith of the old regime died away never to revive. Not only paganism, but its sometime ally Arianism, also suffered by the accession of an emperor who belonged to the Nicene party. Jovian lost no time in reversing the policy of his predecessor, giving an early indication of this change by restoring the Labarum which Julian had laid aside. He issued an edict granting full religious liberty to his subjects. This was a revival of Constantine's large-minded statesmanship; it permitted Arianism and even paganism—which Constantius had persecuted. The immunities of the clergy were restored and the grants of public moneys for widows and consecrated virgins in the Church renewed. Jovian issued a decree condemning to death any who forced these virgins into marriage or even proposed marriage to them. Athanasius was now the greatest figure in the Church. Julian, after permitting him to return to Alexandria, had felt his powerful influence thwarting his plans and had banished him as "the great foe of the gods." We must distinguish this action which was clearly a piece of pagan persecution of Christianity from the many Arian attacks directed against Athanasius. With the accession of Jovian of course the great bishop was free to come back to his post. The emperor addressed him a letter of warm admiration, and obtained from him a reply setting forth the orthodox belief as opposed to Arianism.^[5]

Unfortunately this state of things lasted but a very short time. Jovian was accidentally killed after only reigning eight months, being suffocated when sleeping in a room heated with a charcoal brazier.^[6] He was succeeded by a military officer, Valentinian (a.d. 364), who was both orthodox and tolerant. But Valentinian assigned the eastern provinces of his empire to Valens his brother, who proved to be a bitter Arian, influenced, as Theodoret^[7] says, by his wife. In spite of this fact, Valentinian was able to induce Valens to join him in signing an edict ordering that "those who labour in the field of Christ are not to be persecuted nor oppressed, and that the stewards of the Great Ruler are not to be driven away."^[8] After this it may strike us as surpising that Valens should have been allowed to persecute the Nicene party, and Gibbon endeavours to discredit the idea that he did so before the death of Valentinian, which occurred in the year a.d. 375.^[9] But he ventures on this doubt in the teeth of the unanimous testimony of the Church historians, who agree in describing acts of cruelty, including one almost incredibly barbarous crime, as committed during the lifetime of the elder brother. The story of this outrageous deed is that eighty men—Theodoret says "presbyters"—who had come as a deputation to Constantinople were sent out to sea in an unballasted ship and there burnt to death by men who had accompanied them in another vessel with orders to execute them in this horrible way (a.d. 370).^[10]

Although we may hesitate to believe so amazing a story—and it is not easy to accept it even on the positive testimony of our authorities—there can be no question as to the outrages which were witnessed at Alexandria after the death of Valentinian had left the Arians in Valens' half of the empire free from all restraint. The pagans were glad of an opportunity for uniting forces with any opponents of the orthodox Church, and of course the men of the baser sort would be only too ready to seize their chance of a share in any commotion that was going on. Common decency compels us to ascribe to these lower elements of the population, the dregs of a dissolute city, doings with which no Christian however "heretical" he might be would disgrace himself. Thus the mob invaded the church of St. Thomas; a young man in woman's clothing danced on the altar; another young man sat naked in the bishop's chair, from which he openly preached immorality to a crowd that roared with laughter at what they took to be a fine joke; virgins of the Church were stripped, scourged, violated. In fact, the recent Bulgarian and Armenian horrors were anticipated by the Alexandrian atrocities committed in the name of Christian theology. During these troubles an attempt was made to seize Athanasius, but once again the old man escaped as though by miracle, and this time he hid himself in his father's tomb. The best testimony to the weight of the great bishop's influence may be seen in the fact that even after all this Valens was induced to let Athanasius return to his beloved flock. That was the end of his wanderings. Although the Arian persecution still raged in other places, henceforth the venerated patriarch of Alexandria was able to hold his own without further molestation till his death in the year a.d. 373. No hero of romance ever passed through more strange adventures and hairbreadth escapes. Singled out by four emperors — Constantine, Constantius, Julian, and Valens—as a peculiarly dangerous person, hated with murderous passion by the Arian faction, no less than five times driven into exile, Athanasius always maintained the affection of his flock, and throughout the long oppression was known to all the world as the sure champion of the Nicene faith. He may not have been so profound a theologian as his contemporary Hilary in the West, nor as the Cappadocians of the succeeding generation in the East; but undoubtedly he was a very great man indeed, of proved integrity, loyal faith, unflinching courage, wise statesmanship, large-hearted charity; the supreme hero of his period, and one of the best, truest, strongest Christians the world has ever seen.

Athanasius had lived to see remarkable changes in the Arian contention and some modification of the orthodox position, although his own position remained firm on the ground of the Nicene confession of his youth. Arianism split up into several parties each with its own watchword. The most important novelty was that of the Semi-Arians, who endeavoured to formulate definitely the mediating ideas which had appeared at the time of the council of Nicsea in the explanations of the creed which Eusebius of Caesarea had given his Church. It is not fair to call the great historian a Semi-Arian. No party which could bear that name was known in his day: he accepted the creed, which at a later time the Semi-Arians wished to alter, although he explained its test word homoousious in his own way, and he lived and died in communion with the orthodox Church. The watchword of the Semi-Arians was Homoiousios—"like in essence." Gibbon's sarcasm on the division of the Church on a diphthong is as shallow as it is bitter. The faintest difference in spelling may involve a world-wide difference of meaning. There can be no question that with Athanasius homoousious meant identity of essence or substance, so that He who came "from the essence"^[11] of the Father not only resembles the Father but is inseparable from the essential being of the Father. Thus he says, "We must not imagine three divided substances in God, as among men, lest we like the heathen invent a multiplicity of gods, but as the stream is born of the fountain and not separate from it although there are two forms and names," and asserts the Son's "identity with His own Father."^[12]

A conviction thus deliberately stated is not to be set aside by appealing to the unquestionable fact that there are instances in which Athanasius uses the word homoousios of separate existences in the sense of identity in nature.^[13] It has been asserted that he gave up insisting on his earlier rigorous use of the word and would allow any one as orthodox who would adopt it even in the sense in which it is employed of man and man. But even if that be admitted—and Athanasius had no sympathy with verbal pedantry and was really anxious for the cause of charity and peace—he must not be supposed to have agreed to the Semi-Arian position, since he no more accepted the Semi-Arians themselves than the full-fledged Arians.

Subsequently two other parties emerged. First, the extreme Arians stiffened their position and sharpened their antitheses against the mediating Semi-Arians. Thus they changed their tactics entirely. In the earlier period Athanasius had accused them of shiftiness and a vagueness of language deliberately chosen in order to throw dust into their opponents' eyes. This was their policy at the council of Nicæa when they saw themselves in a hopeless minority, and the insincerity of it was one of the heaviest accusations brought against them by Athanasius in his Orations.^[14] But during the Arian ascendancy under Valens the situation was very different, and now the extreme Arians, seeing no further need of compromise, went so far as to declare that the Son was "unlike" the Father, and thus came to he designated "Anomœan."^[15] They were also called "Aëtian," after Aëtius a deacon at Antioch, said to have been very disputatious in pushing the dry Aristotelian logic that characterised Arianism generally to its ultimate issues, and therefore maintaining that since the Son was a creature He must be unlike the Father, not only in essence, but also in will. Another name given to these ultra-Arian Arians was "Eunomian," after Eunomius the bishop of Cyzicum, who went even farther, discarding all mystery in religion and holding that man can know as much of God's nature as God Himself can know.

Such extravagance led to a revolt of sober minds. The court party took a more politic line. Sometimes named "Acacians" after Acacius the successor of Eusebius of Cæsarea, they maintained a vague and moderate view nearer to that of the great historian, coming between the Semi-Arians and the Anomœans, though in a very different temper. They were content to say that the Son was like the Father,—and therefore were called "Homœan,"^[16]—and to dispense with further definitions, affecting to fall back on Scripture language and condemning the Semi-Arians equally with the Nicene bishops for employing an unscriptural term. But it was now too late for the plea of conservatism with which Arius had tried to win over the simpler country pastors at Nicæa. These Homœans were regarded as unscrupulous, crafty politicians, who really agreed with the extreme Arians, but disavowed them whenever it suited their convenience. The existence of such a party in influence at court even under Valens is a plain proof that the Nicene belief had strong hold of the people as a whole; and the breaking up of Arianism into mutually antagonistic factions was a sure sign of its approaching downfall, as it was also an evidence that the shot and shell poured in by the great orthodox theologians was doing deadly work against the Arian positions. These three parties—the Homoiousian, the Anomœan, and Homœan—by their mutual antagonisms were preparing for the triumph of the Homoousian.

 

1. Amm. Marc. xx. iv. 14.
2. Rufinus, Hist. Eccl. i. 36, who is appealed to by Socrates as the authority for the story. See Socrates, iii. 19.
3. See Anim. Marc. xxii. xiv. 3.
4. Hist. Eccl. iv. 1.
5. Theodoret, iv. 3.
6. Amm. Marc. xxv. x. 12, 13.
7. Hist. Eccl. iv. 12.
8. Op. cit. iv. 8.
9. Decline and Fall, chap. xxv.
10. Socrates, iv. 16; Sozomen, vi. 14; Theodoret, iv. 24. None of these writers charge Valens with the diabolical device by which the obnoxious deputation was got out of the way—evidently from fear of interference from the people of Constantinople if the victims were not put beyond the reach of rescue. Theodoret ascribes the crime to "the Arians of Constantinople." But he is an untrustworthy writer. Both Socrates and Sozomen state that the emperor secretly ordered the prefect to put the men to death, and that it was this prefect who carried out his master's command in the manner described on his own account.
11. ἐκ τῆς οὐσίας.
12. Nicene Def. 9; cf. Orat. i. 20, 22.
13. e.g. de Sent. Dionys. 10; de Synodis, 51.
14. e.g. Orat. i. 8, 31.
15. ἀνόμοιος.
16. ὁμοίος.