abettors, and among them men of distinguished talents and rank, both in
Egypt and the neighboring provinces. Alexander, on the other hand,
accused Arius of blasphemy before two councils assembled at Alexandria,
and cast him out of the Church. He was not discouraged by this disgrace;
but retiring to Palestine he wrote various letters to men of
distinction, in which he labored to demonstrate the truth of his
doctrines, and with so much success that he drew over immense numbers to
his side, and in particular Eusebius, bishop of Nicomedia, who was a man
of vast influence. The emperor Constantine, who considered the
discussion as relating to a matter of little importance and remote from
the fundamentals of religion, at first addressed the disputants by
letter, admonishing them to desist from contention. But when he found
that nothing was effected by this measure, and that greater commotion
was daily rising throughout the empire, he in the year 325 summoned that
famous council of the whole Church which met at Nice in Bithynia, to put
an end to this controversy. In this council, after various altercations
and conflicts of the bishops, the doctrine of Arius was condemned,
Christ was pronounced to be of the same essence with the Father, Arius
was sent into exile in Illyricum, and his followers were compelled to
assent to a creed or confession of faith composed by the council.
No part of church history, perhaps, has acquired more celebrity than
this assembly of bishops at Nice to settle the affairs of the Church;
and yet it is very singular that scarcely any part of ecclesiastical
history has been investigated and explained more negligently. The
ancient writers are not agreed as to the time and year, nor the place,
nor the number of the judges, nor the president of this council, nor as
to many other particulars. No written journal of the proceedings of this
venerable tribunal was kept--at least none has reached us. How many and
what canons or ecclesiastical laws were enacted is not agreed on by the
Eastern and Western Christians. The latter tell us they were only twenty
in number, but the orientals make them far more numerous. From the
canons universally received, and from the other monuments of the
council, it appears not only that Arius was condemned, but that other
things were decreed, with a view to settle the affairs of the Church. In
particular, the controversy respecting the time of celebrating Easter,
which had long perplexed Christians, was terminated; the jurisdiction of
the greater bishops was defined, and several other matters of a like
nature were determined.
But the passions of men were more efficient than either the decrees of
the Nicene Council or the authority of the Emperor; for there were those
who, though they did not fall in with the doctrine of Arius, yet were
dissatisfied with some things in the decrees and the creed of the
council, and the Arians left no means untried to free themselves from
the evils inflicted on them by those decrees. And the issue was
favorable to their wishes; for in a few years after the Nicene Council
an Arian presbyter whom Constantia, the Emperor's sister, at her death
had recommended to the care of her brother, succeeded in persuading
Constantine the Great that Arius had been wrongfully condemned from
personal enmity. Accordingly, in the year 330, the Emperor recalled
Arius from exile, rescinded the decrees passed against his associates
and friends, and permitted Eusebius of Nicomedia, the principal
supporter of Arius, and his powerful faction, now thirsting for revenge,
to persecute the defenders of the Nicene Council. They assailed no one
more fiercely than Athanasius, the bishop of Alexandria. When he could
in no way be brought to restore Arius to his former honors and
ecclesiastical standing, Athanasius was first deprived of his office, in
a council held at Tyre, A.D. 335, and then banished to Gaul, while in
the same year, by a numerous council held at Jerusalem, Arius and his
friends were solemnly admitted to the communion of the Church. But by
none of these proceedings could the Alexandrians be induced to receive
Arius among their presbyters. Accordingly the Emperor called him to
Constantinople, in the year 336, and ordered Alexander, the bishop of
that city, to open the doors of his church to him. But before that could
take place Arius died at Constantinople in a tragical manner;[49] and
the Emperor himself closed life shortly after.
After the death of Constantine the Great, one of his sons, Constantius,
the Emperor of the East, with his wife and his court, was very partial
to the Arian cause, but Constantine and Constans supported in the
western parts, where they governed, the decisions of the Nicene Council.
Hence the broils, the commotions, the plots, the injuries had neither
measure nor bounds, and on both sides councils were assembled to oppose
councils. Constans died in the year 350, and two years afterward a great
part of the West, particularly Italy and Rome, came under the dominion
of his brother Constantius. This revolution was most disastrous to the
friends of the Nicene Council; for this Emperor, being devoted to the
Arians, involved the others in numerous evils and calamities, and by
threats and punishments compelled many of them to apostatize to that
sect to which he was himself attached. The Nicene party made no
hesitation to return the same treatment as soon as time, place, and
opportunity were afforded them, and the history of Christianity under
Constantius presents the picture of a most stormy period, and of a war
among brethren which was carried on without religion or justice or
humanity.
On the death of Constantius, in the year 362, the prosperous days of the
Arians were at an end. Julian had no partiality for either, and
therefore patronized neither the Arians nor the orthodox. Jovian
espoused the orthodox sentiments, and therefore all the West, with no
small part of the East, rejecting Arian views, reverted to the doctrines
of the Nicene Council. But the scene was changed under the two brothers
Valentinian and Valens, who were advanced to the government of the
Empire in the year 364. Valentinian adhered to the decisions at Nice,
and therefore in the West the Arian sect, a few churches excepted, was
wholly extirpated. Valens, on the contrary, took sides with the Arians,
and hence in the eastern provinces many calamities befell the orthodox.
But when this Emperor had fallen in a war with the Goths, A.D. 378,
Gratian--who succeeded Valentinian in the West, in the year 376, and
became master of the whole empire in 378--restored peace to the
orthodox. After him Theodosius the Great, by depriving the Arians of all
their churches and enacting severe laws against them, caused the
decisions of the Nicene Council to triumph everywhere, and none could
any longer publicly profess Arian doctrines except among the barbarous
nations, the Goths, the Vandals, and the Burgundians. That there were
great faults on both sides in this long and violent contest no candid
person can deny, but which party was guilty of the greatest wrong it is
difficult to say.
The Arians would have done much more harm to the Church if they had not
become divided among themselves, after the Nicene Council, and split
into sects which could not endure each other. Unhappily the Arian
contests produced, as was very natural, some new sects. Some persons,
while eager to avoid and to confute the opinions of Arius, fell into
opinions equally dangerous. Others, after treading in the footsteps of
Arius, ventured on far beyond him and became still greater errorists.
The human mind, weak and subject to the control of the senses and the
imagination, seldom exerts all its energies to comprehend divine
subjects in such a manner as to be duly guarded against extremes. In the
former class I would reckon Apollinaris the Younger, bishop of Laodicea,
though otherwise a man of great merit, and one who in various ways
rendered important service to the Church. He manfully asserted the
divinity of Christ against the Arians, but by philosophizing too freely
and too eagerly he almost set aside the human nature of the Saviour.
This great man was led astray, not merely by the ardor of debate, but
likewise by his immoderate attachment to the Platonic doctrine
concerning a twofold soul, from which if the divines of the age had been
free they would have formed more wise and more correct judgments on many
points. The doctrine of Apollinaris met the approbation of many in
nearly all the eastern provinces, and, being explained in different
ways, it became a source of new sects. But as it was assailed by the
laws of the emperors, the decrees of councils, and the writings of
learned men, it gradually sunk under these united assaults.
At the head of those whom the contests with Arius led into still greater
errors may undoubtedly be placed Photinus, bishop of Sirmium, who in the
year 343 advanced opinions concerning God equally remote from those of
the orthodox and those of the Arians. The temerity of the man was
chastened not only by the orthodox, in their councils of Antioch in 345,
of Milan in 347, and of Sirmium, but also by the Arians in a council
held at Sirmium in 351. He was deprived of his office, and died in
exile in the year 372. After him Macedonius, bishop of Constantinople, a
distinguished semi-Arian teacher, being deprived of his office by the
Council of Constantinople, in the year 360, in his exile founded the
sect of the Pneumatomachi. He openly professed that the Holy Spirit is a
divine energy diffused throughout the universe, and not a person
distinct from the Father and the Son. This doctrine was embraced by many
in the Asiatic provinces; but the Council of Constantinople, assembled
by Theodosius the Great, in the year 381, and which is commonly
considered as the second ecumenical council, early dissipated by its
authority this young and immature sect. One hundred and fifty bishops
present in this council defined fully and perfectly the doctrine of
three persons and one God, as it is still professed by the great body of
Christians, which the Nicene Council had only in part performed. They
also anathematized all the heresies then known.
* * * * *
In the fifth century the Arians, oppressed and persecuted by the
imperial edicts, took refuge among those barbarous nations who gradually
overturned the Roman Empire in the West; and found among the Goths,
Heruli, Suevi, Vandals, and Burgundians a fixed residence and a quiet
retreat. Being now safe, they treated the orthodox with the same
violence which the orthodox had employed against them and other
heretics, and had no hesitation about persecuting the adherents to the
Nicene doctrines in a variety of ways. The Vandals, who had established
their kingdom in Africa, surpassed all the rest in cruelty and
injustice. At first Genseric, their king, and then Huneric, his son,
demolished the temples of such Christians as maintained the divinity of
the Saviour, sent their bishops into exile, mutilated many of the more
firm and decided, and tortured them in various ways; and they expressly
stated that they were authorized to do so by the example of the
emperors, who had enacted similar laws against the Donatists in Africa,
the Arians, and others who dissented from them in religion.
At the beginning of the sixth century the Arians were triumphant in some
parts of Asia, Africa, and Europe. Not a few of the Asiatic bishops
favored them. The Vandals in Africa, the Goths in Italy, many of the
Gauls, the Suevi, the Burgundians, and the Spaniards openly espoused
their interests. The Greeks indeed, who approved of the Nicene Council,
oppressed and also punished them wherever they were able; but the Arians
returned the like treatment, especially in Africa and Italy. Yet this
prosperity of the Arians wholly terminated when, under the auspices of
Justinian, the Vandals were driven from Africa and the Goths from Italy.
For the other Arian kings, Sigismund, king of the Burgundians,
Theodimir, king of the Suevi in Lusitania, and Receared, king of Spain,
without violence and war, suffered themselves to be led to a
renunciation of the Arian doctrine, and to efforts for its extirpation
among their subjects by means of legal enactments and councils. Whether
reason and arguments or hope and fear had the greater influence in the
conversion of these kings, it is difficult to say; but it is certain
that the Arian sect was from this time dispersed and could never after
recover any strength.
ARTHUR PENRHYN STANLEY
The delegates to the council assembled in the first instance in one of
the chief buildings of Nicæa, apparently for the purpose of a
thanksgiving and a religious reunion. Whether it was an actual church
may be questioned. Christians, no doubt, there had been in Bithynia for
some generations. Already in the second century Pliny had found them in
such numbers that the temples were deserted and the sacrifices
neglected. But it would seem that on this occasion a secular building
was fitted up as a temporary house of prayer. At least the traditional
account of the place where their concluding prayers were held exactly
agrees with Strabo's account of the ancient gymnasium of Nicæa.
It was a large building, shaped like a basilica, with an apsis at one
end, planted in the centre of the town, and thus commanding down each of
the four streets a view of the four gates, and therefore called
_Mesomphalos_, the "Navel" of the city. Whether, however, this edifice
actually was a church or not, its use as such on this occasion served as
a precedent for most of the later councils. From the time of the Council
of Chalcedon, they have usually been held within the walls of churches.
But for this the first council, the church, so far as it was a church,
was only used as the beginning and the end. After these thanksgivings
were over, the members of the assembly must have been collected
according to the divisions which shall now be described.
The group which, above the rest, attracts our attention, is the
deputation from the Church of Egypt. Shrill above all other voices,
vehement above all other disputants, "brandishing their arguments," as
it was described by one who knew them well, "like spears, against those
who sate under the same roof and ate off the same table as themselves,"
were the combatants from Alexandria, who had brought to its present pass
the question which the council was called to decide. Foremost in the
group in dignity, though not in importance or in energy, was the aged
Alexander, whose imprudent sermon had provoked the quarrel, and whose
subsequent vacillation had encouraged it. He was the bishop, not indeed
of the first, but of the most learned, see of Christendom. He was known
by a title which he alone officially bore in that assembly. He was "the
Pope." "The Pope of Rome" was a phrase which had not yet emerged in
history. But "Pope of Alexandria" was a well-known dignity. _Papa_, that
strange and universal mixture of familiar endearment and of reverential
awe, extended in a general sense to all Greek presbyters and all Latin
bishops, was the special address which, long before the name of
patriarch or of archbishop, was given to the head of the Alexandrian
Church.
In the Patriarchal Treasury at Moscow is a very ancient scarf or
_omophorion_, said to have been given by the bishop of Nicæa in the
seventeenth century to the czar Alexis, and to have been left to the
Church of Nicæa by Alexander of Alexandria. It is white, and is rudely
worked with a representation of the Ascension; possibly an allusion to
the first Sunday of their meeting. This relic, true or false, is the
nearest approach we can now make to the bodily presence of the old
theologian. The shadow of death is already upon him; in a few months he
will be beyond the reach of controversy.
But close beside the pope Alexander is a small insignificant young man,
of hardly twenty-five years of age, of lively manners and speech, and of
bright, serene countenance. Though he is but the deacon, the chief
deacon, or archdeacon, of Alexander, he has closely riveted the
attention of the assembly by the vehemence of his arguments. He is
already taking the words out of the bishop's mouth, and briefly acting
in reality the part he had before, as a child, acted in name, and that
in a few months he will be called to act both in name and in reality. In
some of the conventional pictures of the council his humble rank as a
deacon does not allow of his appearance. But his activity and prominence
behind the scenes made enemies for him there, who will never leave him
through life. Anyone who had read his passionate invectives afterward
may form some notion of what he was when in the thick of his youthful
battles. That small, insignificant deacon is the great Athanasius.
Next after the pope and deacon of Alexandria we must turn to one of its
most important presbyters--the parish priest of its principal church,
which bore the name of Baucalis, and marked the first beginnings of what
we should call a parochial system. In appearance he is the very opposite
of Athanasius. He is sixty years of age, very tall and thin, and
apparently unable to support his stature; he has an odd way of
contorting and twisting himself, which his enemies compare to the
wrigglings of a snake. He would be handsome but for the emaciation and
deadly pallor of his face, and a downcast look, imparted by a weakness
of eyesight. At times his veins throb and swell and his limbs tremble,
as if suffering from some violent internal complaint--the same, perhaps,
that will terminate one day in his sudden and frightful death. There is
a wild look about him, which at first sight is startling. His dress and
demeanor are those of a rigid ascetic. He wears a long coat with short
sleeves, and a scarf of only half size, such as was the mark of an
austere life; and his hair hangs in a tangled mass over his head. He is
usually silent, but at times breaks out into fierce excitement, such as
will give the impression of madness. Yet with all this there are a
sweetness in his voice and a winning, earnest manner which fascinates
those who come across him. Among the religious ladies of Alexandria he
is said to have had from the first a following of not less than seven
hundred. This strange, captivating, moon-struck giant is the heretic
Arius, or, as his adversaries called him, the madman of Ares or Mars.
Close beside him was a group of his countrymen, of whom we know little,
except their fidelity to him through good report and evil: Saras, like
himself a presbyter, from the Libyan province; Euzoius, a deacon of
Egypt; Achillas, a reader; Theonas, bishop of Marmarica in the
Cyrenaica; and Secundus, bishop of Ptolemais in the Delta.
These were the most remarkable deputies from the Church of Alexandria.
But from the interior of Egypt came characters of quite another stamp;
not Greeks, nor Grecized Egyptians, but genuine Copts, speaking the
Greek language not at all, or with great difficulty; living half or the
whole of their lives in the desert; their very names taken from the
heathen gods of the times of the ancient Pharaohs. One was Potammon,
bishop of Heracleopolis, far up the Nile; the other, Paphnutius, bishop
of the Upper Thebaid. Both are famous for the austerity of their lives.
Potammon--that is, "dedicated to Ammon"--had himself visited the hermit
Antony; Paphnutius--that is, "dedicated to his God"--had been brought up
in a hermitage. Both, too, had suffered in the persecutions. Each
presented the frightful spectacle of the right eye dug out with iron.
Paphnutius, besides, came limping on one leg, his left having been
hamstrung.
Next in importance must be reckoned the bishop of Syria and of the
interior of Asia; or, as they are sometimes called in the later
councils, the _Eastern_ bishops, as distinguished from the Church of
Egypt. Then, as afterward, there was a rivalry between those branches of
oriental Christendom; each, from long neighborhood, knowing each, yet
each tending in an opposite direction till, after the Council of
Chalcedon, a community of heresy drew them together again. Here, as in
Egypt, we find two classes of representatives--scholars from the more
civilized cities of Syria; wild ascetics from the remoter East. The
first in dignity was the orthodox Eustathius, who either was, or was on
the point of being made, bishop of the capital of Syria, the metropolis
of the Eastern Church, Antioch, then called "the city of God." He had
suffered in heathen persecutions, and was destined to suffer in
Christian persecutions also. But he was chiefly known for his learning
and eloquence, which was distinguished by an antique simplicity of
style. One work alone has come down to us on the "Witch of Endor."
Next in rank and far more illustrious was his chief suffragan, the
metropolitan of Palestine, the bishop of Cæsarea, Eusebius. We honor him
as the father of ecclesiastical history, as the chief depositary of the
traditions which connect the fourth with the first century. But in the
bishops of Nicæa his presence awakened feelings of a very different
kind. He alone of the eastern prelates could tell what was in the mind
of the Emperor; he was the clerk of the imperial closet; he was the
interpreter, the chaplain, the confessor of Constantine. And yet he was
on the wrong side. Two especially, we may be sure, of the Egyptian
Church, were on the watch for any slip that he might make.
Athanasius--whatever may have been the opinions of later times
respecting the doctrines of Eusebius--was convinced that he was at heart
an Arian. Potammon of the one eye had known him formerly in the days of
persecution, and was ready with that most fatal taunt, which, on a later
occasion, he threw out against him, that, while he had thus suffered for
the cause of Christ, Eusebius had escaped by sacrificing to an idol.
If Eusebius was suspected of Arianism, he was supported by most of his
suffragan bishops in Palestine, of whom Paulinus of Tyre, and
Patrophilus of Bethshan (Scythopolis) were the most remarkable. One,
however, a champion of orthodoxy, was distinguished, not in himself, but
for the see which he occupied--once the highest in Christendom, in a few
years about to claim something of its former grandeur, but at the time
of the council known only as a second-rate Syro-Roman city--Macarius,
bishop of Ælia Capitolina, that is, "Jerusalem."
From Neocæsarea, a border fortress on the Euphrates, came its confessor
bishop, Paul, who, like Paphnutius and Potammon, had suffered in the
persecutions, but more recently under Licinius. His hands were paralyzed
by the scorching of the muscles of all the fingers with red-hot iron.
Along with him were the orthodox representatives of four famous
churches, who, according to the Armenian tradition, travelled in
company. Their leader was the marvel, "the Moses" as he was termed, of
Mesopotamia, James, or Jacob, bishop of Nisibis. He had lived for years
as a hermit on the mountains--in the forests during the summer, in
caverns during the winter--browsing on roots and leaves like a wild
beast, and like a wild beast clothed in a rough goat-hair cloak. This
dress and manner of life, even after he became bishop, he never laid
aside; and the mysterious awe which his presence inspired was increased
by the stories of miraculous powers which, we are told, he exercised in
a manner as humane and playful as it was grotesque; as when he turned
the washerwoman's hair white, detected the impostor who pretended to be
dead, and raised an army of gnats against the Persians. His fame as a
theologian rests on disputed writings.
The second was Ait-allaha--"the brought of God," like the Greek
"Theophorus"--who had just occupied the see of Edessa, and finished the
building of the cemetery of his cathedral.
The third was Aristaces, said to be the cousin of Jacob of Bisibis and
son of Gregory the Illuminator, founder of the Armenian Church. He
represented both his father and the bishop and Tiridates, the king of
Armenia; the bishop and King having received a special invitation from
Constantine, and sent their written professions of faith by the hands of
Aristaces.
The fourth came from beyond the frontier, the sole representative
of the more distant East, "John the Persian," who added to his
name the more sounding title--here appearing for the first time,
but revived in our own days as the designation of our own bishops
of Calcutta--"Metropolitan of India."
A curious tradition related that this band, including eleven other names
from the remote East, were the only members of the Nicene Council who
had not sustained some bodily mutilation or injury.