_The Ascendency of the new religion: The Arian controversies: The
Zenith of monasticism: The final struggle of Paganism: The decline of
Alexandria._
Coming under the Roman sway, the Greek world underwent, not only
politically but also intellectually, a complete change. As the
Roman conquest had worn away all political differences and national
divergences, and, by uniting the various races under the rule of the
empire was bringing to its consummation the work begun by the Macedonian
conqueror, it could not fail to influence the train of thought. On the
one hand the political and ideal structure of Greek life was crumbling
and bringing down the support and guiding principle supplied by the
duties of citizenship and the devotion to the commonwealth. Man was
thrown upon himself to find the principles of conduct. The customary
morality and religion had been shaken in their foundations. The
belief in the old gods and the old religion was undermined. Philosophy
endeavoured to occupy the place left vacant by the gradual decay of the
national religion. The individual, seeking for support and spiritual
guidance, found it, or at least imagined he had found it, in philosophy.
The conduct of life became the fundamental problem, and philosophy
assumed a practical aspect. It aimed at finding a complete art of
living. It had a thoroughly ethical stamp, and became more and more a
rival of and opposed to religion. Such were the tendencies of the Stoic
and Epicurean schools. The Roman rule was greatly favourable to such
a development of thought. The Romans were a practical nation, had no
conception of nor appreciation for purely theoretical problems, and
demanded practical lessons and philosophical investigations which would
serve as a guide for life. Thus the political tendency of the time
towards practical wisdom had imparted a new direction to philosophical
thought. Yet, as time went on, a deep feeling of dissatisfaction seized
the ancient world in the midst of all the glories of the Roman rule.
This huge empire could offer to the peoples, which it had welded
into one mighty unit, no compensation for the loss of their national
independence; it offered them no inner worth nor outer fortune. There
was a complete discord running through the entire civilisation of the
Græco-Roman world. The social condition of the empire had brought with
it extreme contrasts in the daily life. The contrasts had become more
pronounced. Abundance and luxury existed side by side with misery
and starvation. Millions were excluded from the very necessaries of
existence. With the sense of injustice and revolt against the
existing inequality of the state of society, the hope for some future
compensation arose. The millions excluded from the worldly possessions
turned longingly to a better world. The thoughts of man were turned
to something beyond terrestrial life, to heaven instead of earth.
Philosophy, too, had failed to give complete satisfaction. Man had
realised his utter inability to find knowledge in himself by his
unaided efforts. He despaired to arrive at it without the help of some
transcendental power and its kind assistance. Salvation was not to be
found in mans own nature, but in a world beyond that of the senses.
Philosophy could not satisfy the cultured man by the presentation of its
ethical ideal of life, could not secure for him the promised happiness.
Philosophy, therefore, turned to religion for help. At Alexandria,
where, in the active work of its museum, all treasures of Grecian
culture were garnered, all religions and forms of worship crowded
together in the great throng of the commercial metropolis to seek a
scientific clarification of the feelings that surged and stormed within
them. The cosmopolitan spirit and broad-mindedness which had brought
nations together under the Egyptian government, which had gathered
scholars from all parts in the library and the museum, was favourable
also to the fusion and reconciliation in the evolution of thought.
If Alexandria was the birthplace of that intellectual movement which has
been described, this was not only the result of the prevailing spirit of
the age, but was due to the influence of ideas; salvation could only be
found in the reconciliation of ideas. The geographical centre of this
movement of fusion and reconciliation was, however, in Alexandria.
After having been the town of the museum and the library, of criticism
and literary erudition, Alexandria became once again the meeting-place
of philosophical schools and religious sects; communication had become
easier, and various fundamentally different inhabitants belonging to
distinct social groups met on the banks of the Nile. Not only goods and
products of the soil were exchanged, but also ideas and thoughts. The
mental horizon was widened, comparisons ensued, and new ideas were
suggested and formed. This mixture of ideas necessarily created a
complex spirit where two currents of thought, of critical scepticism and
superstitious credulity, mixed and mingled. Another powerful factor was
the close contact in which Occidentalism or Greek culture found itself
with Orientalism. Here it was where the Greek and Oriental spirit mixed
and mingled, producing doctrines and religious systems containing germs
of tradition and science, of inspiration and reflection. Images and
formulas, method and ecstasy, were interwoven and intertwined. The
brilliant qualities of the Greek spirit, its sagacity and subtlety of
intelligence, its lucidity and facility of expression, were animated and
vivified by the Oriental spark, and gained new life and vigour. On
the other hand, the contemplative spirit of the Orient, which is
characterised by its aspiration towards the invisible and mysterious,
would never have produced a coherent system or theory had it not been
aided by Greek science. It was the latter that arranged and explained
the Oriental traditions, loosed their tongues, and produced those
religious doctrines and philosophical systems which culminated in
Gnosticism, Neo-Platonism, the Judaism of Philo, and the Polytheism of
Julian the Apostate.
It was the contemplative Oriental mind, with its tendency towards the
supernatural and miraculous, with its mysticism and religion, and Greece
with her subtle scrutinising and investigating spirit, which gave rise
to the peculiar phase of thought prevalent in Alexandria during the
first centuries of our era. It was tinctured with idealistic, mystic,
and yet speculative and scientific colours. Hence the religious spirit
in philosophy and the philosophic tendency in the religious system that
are the characteristic features. East and West, says Baldwin,* met
at Alexandria. The co-operative ideas of civilisations, cultures,
and religions of Rome, Greece, Palestine, and the farther East found
themselves in juxtaposition. Hence arose a new problem, developed partly
by Occidental thought, partly by Oriental aspiration. Religion and
philosophy became inextricably mixed, and the resultant doctrines
consequently belong to neither sphere proper, but are rather witnesses
of an attempt at combining both.
* Baldwin: Dictionary of Philosophy.
These efforts naturally came from two sides. On the one hand, the Jews
tried to accommodate their faith to the results of Western culture, in
which Greek culture predominated. On the other hand, thinkers whose
main impulse came from Greek philosophy attempted to accommodate their
doctrines to the distinctively religious problems which the Eastern
nations had brought with them. From whichever side the consequences be
viewed, they are to be characterised as theosophical rather than purely
philosophical, purely religious, or purely theological.
The reign of Constantine the Great, who became sole ruler of the East
and West in 323, after ten years joint government with Licinius, is
remarkable for the change which was then wrought in the religion and
philosophy of the empire by the emperors embracing the Christian
faith. His conversion occurred in 312, and on his coming to the united
sovereignty the Christians were at once released from every punishment
and disability on account of their religion, which was then more than
tolerated; they were put upon a nearly equal footing with the pagans,
and every minister of the Church was released from the burden of
civil and military duties. Whether the emperors conversion arose from
education, from conviction, or from state policy, we have no means of
knowing; but Christianity did not reach the throne before it was the
religion of a most important class of his subjects, and the Egyptian
Christians soon found themselves numerous enough to call the Greek
Christians heretics, as the Greek Christians had already begun to
designate the Jewish.
The Greeks of Alexandria had formed rather a school of philosophy than
a religious sect. Before Alexanders conquest the Greek settlers
at Naucratis had thought it necessary to have their own temples and
sacrifices; but since the building of Alexandria they had been smitten
with the love of Eastern mysticism, and content to worship in the
temples of Serapis and Mithra, and to receive instruction from the
Egyptian priests. They had supported the religion of the conquered
Egyptians without wholly believing it; and had shaken by their ridicule
the respect for the very ceremonies which they upheld by law. Polytheism
among the Greeks had been further shaken by the platonists; and
Christianity spread in about equal proportions among the Greeks and the
Egyptians. Before the conversion of Constantine the Egyptian church
had already spread into every city of the province, and had a regular
episcopal government. Till the time of Heraclas and Dionysius, the
bishops had been always chosen by the votes of the presbyters, as the
archdeacons were by the deacons. Dionysius in his public epistles joins
with himself his fellow-presbyters as if he were only the first among
equals; but after that time some irregularities had crept into the
elections, and latterly the Church had become more monarchical. There
was a patriarch in Alexandria, with a bishop in every other large city,
each assisted by a body of priests and deacons. They had been clad in
faith, holiness, humility, and charity; but Constantine robed them in
honour, wealth, and power; and to this many of them soon added pride,
avarice, and ambition.
This reign is no less remarkable for the religious quarrel which then
divided the Christians, which set church against church and bishop
against bishop, as soon as they lost that great bond of union, the fear
of the pagans. Jesus of Nazareth was acknowledged by Constantine as
a divine person; and, in the attempt then made by the Alexandrians to
arrive at a more exact definition of his nature, while the emperor was
willing to be guided by the bishops in his theological opinions, he
was able to instruct them all in the more valuable lessons of mutual
toleration and forbearance. The followers of early religions held
different opinions, but distinguished themselves apart only by outward
modes of worship, such as by sacrifices among the Greeks and Romans,
and among the Jews and Egyptians by circumcision, and abstinence from
certain meats. When Jesus of Nazareth introduced his spiritual religion
of repentance and amendment of life, he taught that the test by which
his disciples wrere to be known was their love to one another. After
his death, however, the Christians gave more importance to opinions
in religion, and towards the end of the third century they proposed to
distinguish their fellow-worshippers in a mode hitherto unknown to the
world, namely, by the profession of belief in certain opinions; for as
yet there was no difference in their belief of historic facts. This gave
rise to numerous metaphysical discussions, particularly among the more
speculative and mystical.
At about this time the chief controversy was as to whether Christ was
of the _same_, or of _similar_ substance with God the Father, this being
the dispute which divided Christendom for centuries. This dispute and
others not quite so metaphysical were brought to the ears of the emperor
by Alexander, Bishop of Alexandria, and Arius, the presbyter. The bishop
had been enquiring into the belief of the presbyter, and the latter
had argued against his superior and against the doctrine of the
_consubstantiality_ of the Father and the Son. The emperors letter
to the theologians, in this first ecclesiastical quarrel that was ever
brought before a Christian monarch, is addressed to Alexander and Arius,
and he therein tells them that they are raising useless questions, which
it is not necessary to settle, and which, though a good exercise for the
understanding, only breed ill-will, and should be kept by each man in
his own breast. He regrets the religious madness which has seized all
Egypt; and lastly he orders the bishop not to question the priest as
to his belief, and orders the priest, if questioned, not to return an
answer. But this wise letter had no weight with the Alexandrian divines.
The quarrel gained in importance from being noticed by the emperor; the
civil government of the country was clogged; and Constantine, after
having once interfered, was persuaded to call a council of bishops to
settle the Christian faith for the future. Nicæa in Bithynia was chosen
as the spot most convenient for Eastern Christendom to meet in; and two
hundred and fifty bishops, followed by crowds of priests, there met
in council from Greece, Thrace, Asia Minor, Syria, Arabia, Egypt, and
Libya, with one or two from Western Europe.
At this synod, held in the year 325, Athanasius, a young deacon in the
Alexandrian church, came for the first time into notice as the champion
of Alexander against Arius, who was then placed upon his trial. All the
authority, eloquence, and charity of the emperor were needed to quell
the tumultuous passions of the assembly. It ended its stormy labours by
voting what was called the Homoousian doctrine, that Jesus was of one
substance with God. They put forth to the world the celebrated creed,
named, from the city in which they met, the Nicene creed, and they
excommunicated Arius and his followers, who were then all banished by
the emperor. The meeting had afterwards less difficulty in coming to
an agreement about the true time of Easter, and in excommunicating the
Jews; and all except the Egyptians returned home with a wish that the
quarrel should be forgotten and forgiven.
This first attempt among the Christians at settling the true faith by
putting fetters on the mind, by drawing up a creed and punishing those
that disbelieved it, was but the beginning of theological difficulties.
These in Egypt arose as much from the difference of blood and language
of the races that inhabited the country as from their religious belief;
and Constantine must soon have seen that if as a theologian he had
decided right, yet as a statesman he had been helping the Egyptians
against the friends of his own Greek government in Alexandria.
After a reasonable delay, Arius addressed to the emperor a letter either
of explanation or apology, asserting his full belief in Christianity,
explaining his faith by using the words of the Apostles Creed, and
begging to be re-admitted into the Church. The emperor, either from a
readiness to forgive, or from a change of policy, or from an ignorance
of the theological controversy, was satisfied with the apology, and
thereupon wrote a mild conciliatory letter to Athanasius, who had in
the meantime been made Bishop of Alexandria, expressing his wish
that forgiveness should at all times be offered to the repentant, and
ordering him to re-admit Arius to his rank in the Church. But the young
Athanasius, who had gained his favour with the Egyptian clergy, and had
been raised to his high seat by his zeal shown against Arius, refused
to obey the commands of the emperor, alleging that it was unlawful
to re-admit into the Church anybody who had once been excommunicated.
Constantine could hardly be expected to listen to this excuse, or
to overlook this direct refusal to obey his orders. The rebellious
Athanasius was ordered into the emperors presence at Constantinople,
and soon afterwards, in 335, called before a council of bishops at Tyre,
where he was deposed and banished. At the same council, in the thirtieth
year of this reign, Arius was re-admitted into communion with the
Church, and after a few months he was allowed to return to Alexandria,
to the indignation of the popular party in that city, while Athanasius
remained in banishment during the rest of the reign, as a punishment for
his disobedience.
This practice of judging and condemning opinions gave power in the
Church to men who would otherwise have been least entitled to weight and
influence. Athanasius rose to his high rank over the heads of the elder
presbyters by his fitness for the harsher duties then required of an
archbishop. Theological opinions became the watchwords of two contending
parties; religion lost much of its empire over the heart; and the
mild spirit of Christianity gave way to angry quarrels and cruel
persecutions.
Another remarkable event of this reign was the foundation of the new
city of Constantinople, to which the emperor removed the seat of his
government. Rome lost much by the building of the new capital, although
the emperors had for some time past ceased to live in Italy; but
Alexandria lost the rank which it had long held as the centre of Greek
learning and Greek thought, and it felt a blow from which Rome was saved
by the difference of language. The patriarch of Alexandria was no longer
the head of Greek Christendom. That rank was granted to the bishop of
the imperial city; many of the philosophers who hung round the palace
at Constantinople would otherwise have studied and taught in the museum;
and the Greeks, by whose superiority Egypt had so long been kept in
subjection, gradually became the weaker party. In the opinion of the
historian, as in the map of the geographer, Alexandria had formerly been
a Greek state on the borders of Egypt; but since the rebellion in the
reign of Diocletian it was becoming more and more an Egyptian city; and
those who in religion and politics thought and felt as Egyptians soon
formed the larger half of the Alexandrians. The climate of Egypt was
hardly fitted for the Greek race. Their numbers never could have been
kept up by births alone, and they now began to lessen as the attraction
to newcomers ceased. The pure Greek names henceforth become less common;
and among the monks and writers we now meet with those named after the
old gods of the country.
[Illustration: 199.jpg THE ISLAND OF RHODHA]
Constantine removed an obelisk from Egypt for the ornament of his new
city, and he brought down another from Heliopolis to Alexandria; but he
died before the second left the country, and it was afterwards taken
by his son to Rome. These obelisks were covered with hieroglyphics,
as usual, and we have a translation said to be made from the latter by
Hermapion, an Egyptian priest. In order to take away its pagan character
from the religious ceremony with which the yearly rise of the Nile wras
celebrated in Alexandria, Constantine removed the sacred cubit from the
temple of Serapis to one of the Christian churches; and nothwithstanding
the gloomy forebodings of the people, the Nile rose as usual, and the
clergy afterwards celebrated the time of its overflow as a Christian
festival.
The pagan philosophers under Constantine had but few pupils and met
with but little encouragement. Alypius of Alexandria and his friend
Iamblichus, however, still taught the philosophy of Ammonius
and Plotinus. The only writings by Alypius now remaining are his
_Introduction to Music_; in which he explains the notation of the
fifteen modes or tones in their respective kinds of diatonic, chromatic,
and enharmonic. His signs are said to be Pythagorean. They are in pairs,
of which one is thought to represent the note struck on the lyre, and
the other the tone of the voice to be sung thereto. They thus imply
accord or harmony. The same signs are found in some manuscripts written
over the syllables of ancient poems; and thereby scholars, learned at
once in the Greek language, in the art of deciphering signs, and in the
science of music, now chant the odes of Pindar in strains not dissimilar
to modern cathedral psalmody.
Sopator succeeded Iamblichus as professor of platonism in Alexandria,
with the proud title of successor to Plato, For some time he enjoyed the
friendship of Constantine; but, when religion made a quarrel between
the friends, the philosopher was put to death by the emperor. The pagan
account of the quarrel was that, when Constantine had killed his son, he
applied to Sopator to be purified from his guilt; and when the platonist
answered that he knew of no ceremony that could absolve a man from such
a crime, the emperor applied to the Christians for baptism. This
story may not be true, and the ecclesiastical historian remarks that
Constantine had professed Christianity several years before the murder
of his son; but then, as after his conversion he had got Sopator to
consecrate his new city with a variety of pagan ceremonies, he may in
the same way have asked him to absolve him from the guilt of murder.
On the death of Constantine, in 337, his three sons, without entirely
dismembering the empire, divided the provinces of the Roman world into
three shares. Constantine II., the eldest son, who succeeded to the
throne of his father in Constantinople, and Constans, the youngest,
who dwelt in Rome, divided Europe between them; while Constantius,
the second son, held Syria, Mesopotamia, Armenia, and Egypt, of which
possessions Antioch on the Orontes was at that time the capital. Thus
Alexandria was doomed to a further fall. When governed by Rome it had
still been the first of Greek cities; afterwards, when the seat of the
empire was fixed at Constantinople, it became the second; but on this
division of the Roman world, when the seat of government came still
nearer to Egypt, and Antioch rose as the capital of the East, Alexandria
fell to be the third among Greek cities. Egypt quietly received its
political orders from Antioch. Its opinions also in some cases followed
those of the capital, and it is curious to remark that the Alexandrian
writers, when dating by the era of the creation, were now willing to
consider the world ten years less old than they used, because it was so
thought at Antioch. But it was not so with their religious opinions,
and as long as Antioch and its emperor undertook to govern the Egyptian
church there was little peace in the province.
The three emperors did not take the same side in the quarrel which under
the name of religion was then unsettling the obedience of the Egyptians,
and even in some degree troubling the rest of the empire. Constantius
held the Arian opinions of Syria; but Constantine II. and Constans
openly gave their countenance to the party of the rebellious Athanasius,
who under their favour ventured to return to Alexandria, where, after
an absence of two years and four months, he was received in the warmest
manner by his admiring flock. But on the death of Constantine II.,
who was shortly afterwards killed in battle by his brother Constans,
Constantius felt himself more master of his own kingdom; he deposed
Athanasius, and summoned a council of bishops at Antioch to elect a new
patriarch of Alexandria. Christian bishops, though they had latterly
owed their ordination to the authority of their equals, had always
received their bishoprics by the choice of their presbyters or of their
flocks; and though they were glad to receive the support of the emperor,
they were not willing to acknowledge him as their head. Hence, when the
council at Antioch first elected Eusebius of Æmisa into the bishopric of
Alexandria, he chose to refuse the honour which they had only a doubtful
right to bestow, rather than to venture into the city in the face of his
popular rival. The council then elected Gregory, whose greater courage
and ambition led him to accept the office.
The council of Antioch then made some changes in the creed. A few years
later, a second council met in the same place, and drew up a creed more
near to what we now call the Athanasian; but it was firmly rejected by
the Egyptian and Roman churches. Gregory was no sooner elected to the
bishopric than he issued his commands as bishop, though, if he had
the courage, he had not at the time the power to enter Alexandria.
But Syrianus, the general of the Egyptian troops, was soon afterwards
ordered by the emperor to place him on his episcopal throne; and he led
him into the city, surrounded by the spears of five thousand soldiers,
and followed by the small body of Alexandrians that after this invasion
of their acknowledged rights still called themselves Arians. Gregory
entered Alexandria in the evening, meaning to take his seat in the
church on the next day; but the people in their zeal did not wait
quietly for the dreaded morning. They ran at once to the church, and
passed the night there with Athanasius in the greatest anxiety. In
the morning, when Gregory arrived at the church, accompanied with the
troops, he found the doors barricaded and the building full of men and
women, denouncing the sacrilege, and threatening resistance. But the
general gave orders that the church should be stormed, and the new
bishop carried in by force of arms; and Athanasius, seeing that all
resistance was useless, ordered the deacons to give out a psalm, and
they all marched out at the opposite door singing. After these acts of
violence on the part of the troops, and of resistance on the part of the
people, the whole city was thrown into an uproar, and the prefect was
hardly strong enough to carry on the government; the regular supply of
grain for the poor citizens of Alexandria, and for Constantinople, was
stopped; and the blame of the whole thrown upon Athanasius. He was a
second time obliged to leave Egypt, and he fled to Rome, where he was
warmly received by the Emperor Constans and the Roman bishop. But the
zeal of the Athanasian party would not allow Gregory to keep possession
of the church which he had gained only by force; they soon afterwards
set fire to it and burned it to the ground, choosing that there should
be no church at all rather than that it should be in the hands of the
Arians; and the Arian clergy and bishops, though supported by the favour
of the emperor and the troops of the prefect, were everywhere throughout
Egypt driven from their churches and monasteries. During this quarrel it
seems to have been felt by both parties that the choice of the people,
or at least of the clergy, was necessary to make a bishop, and that
Gregory had very little claim to that rank in Alexandria. Julius, the
Bishop of Rome, warmly espoused the cause of Athanasius, and he wrote a
letter to the Alexandrian church, praising their zeal for their bishop,
and ordering them to re-admit him to his former rank, from which he
had been deposed by the council of Antioch, but to which he had been
restored by the Western bishops. Athanasius was also warmly supported
by Constans, the emperor of the West, who at the same time wrote to his
brother Constantius, begging him to replace the Alexandrian bishop,
and making the additional threat that if he would not reinstate him he
should be made to do so by force of arms.
Constantius, after taking the advice of his own bishops, thought it
wisest to yield to the wishes or rather the commands of his brother
Constans, and he wrote to Athanasius, calling him into his presence
in Constantinople. But the rebellious bishop was not willing to trust
himself within the reach of his offended sovereign; and it was not till
after a second and a third letter, pressing him to come and promising
him his safety, that he ventured within the limits of the Eastern
empire. Strong in his high character for learning, firmness, and
political skill, carrying with him the allegiance of the Egyptian
nation, which was yielded to him much rather than to the emperor, and
backed by the threats of Constans, Athanasius was at least a match
for Constantius. At Constantinople the emperor and his subject, the
Alexandrian bishop, made a formal treaty, by which it was agreed
that, if Constantius would allow the Homoousian clergy throughout his
dominions to return to their churches, Athanasius would in the same
way throughout Egypt restore the Arian clergy; and upon this agreement
Athanasius himself returned to Alexandria.
Among the followers of Athanasius was that important mixed race with
whom the Egyptian civilisation chiefly rested, a race that may be called
Koptic, but half Greek and half Egyptian in their language and religion
as in their forefathers. But in feelings they were wholly opposed to the
Greeks of Alexandria. Never since the last Nectanebo was conquered by
the Persians, eight hundred years earlier, did the Egyptians seem so
near to throwing off the foreign yoke and rising again as an independent
nation. But the Greeks, who had taught them so much, had not taught them
the arts of war; and the nation remained enslaved to those who could
wield the sword. The return of Athanasius, however, was only the signal
for a fresh uproar, and the Arians complained that Egypt was kept in a
constant turmoil by his zealous activity. Nor were the Arians his only
enemies. He had offended many others of his clergy by his overbearing
manners, and more particularly by his following in the steps of
Alexander, the late bishop, in claiming new and higher powers for
the office of patriarch than had ever been yielded to the bishops of
Alexandria before their spiritual rank had been changed into civil rank
by the emperors adoption of their religion. Meletius headed a strong
party of bishops, priests, and deacons in opposing the new claims of the
archiepiscopal see of Alexandria. His followers differed in no point of
doctrine from the Athanasian party, but as they sided with the Arians
they were usually called heretics.
By this time the statesmen and magistrates had gained a clear view of
the change which had come over the political state of the empire, first
by the spread of Christianity, and secondly by the emperors embracing
it. By supporting Christianity the emperors gave rank in the state to
an organised and well-trained body, which immediately found itself in
possession of all the civil power. A bishopric, which a few years before
was a post of danger, was now a place of great profit, and secured to
its possessor every worldly advantage of wealth, honour, and power.
An archbishop in the capital, obeyed by a bishop in every city, with
numerous priests and deacons under them, was usually of more weight than
the prefect. While Athanasius was at the height of his popularity
in Egypt, and was supported by the Emperor of the West, the Emperor
Constantius was very far from being his master. But on the death of
Constans, when Constantius became sovereign of the whole empire, he once
more tried to make Alexandria and the Egyptian church obedient to
his wishes. He was, however, still doubtful how far it was prudent to
measure his strength against that of the bishop, and he chose rather
to begin privately with threats before using his power openly. He first
wrote word to Athanasius, as if in answer to a request from the bishop,
that he was at liberty, if he wished, to visit Italy; but he sent the
letter by the hands of the notary Diogenes, who added, by word of
mouth, that the permission was meant for a command, and that it was the
emperors pleasure that he should immediately quit his bishopric and the
province. But this underhand conduct of the emperor only showed his own
weakness. Athanasius steadily refused to obey any unwritten orders, and
held his bishopric for upwards of two years longer, before Constantius
felt strong enough to enforce his wishes. Towards the end of that time,
Syrianus, the general of the Egyptian army, to whom this delicate task
was entrusted, gathered together from other parts of the province a
body of five thousand chosen men, and with these he marched quietly into
Alexandria, to overawe, if possible, the rebellious bishop. He gave
out no reason for his conduct; but the Arians, who were in the secret,
openly boasted that it would soon be their turn to possess the churches.
Syrianus then sent for Athanasius, and in the presence of Maximus the
prefect again delivered to him the command of Constantius, that he
should quit Egypt and retire into banishment, and he threatened to carry
this command into execution by the help of the troops if he met with any
resistance. Athanasius, without refusing to obey, begged to be shown the
emperors orders in writing; but this reasonable request was refused. He
then entreated them even to give him, in their own handwriting, an order
for his banishment; but this was also refused, and the citizens,
who were made acquainted with the emperors wishes and the bishops
firmness, waited in dreadful anxiety to see whether the prefect and the
general would venture to enforce their orders. The presbytery of the
church and the corporation of the city went up to Syrianus in solemn
procession to beg him either to show a written authority for the
banishment of their bishop, or to write to Constantinople to learn the
emperors pleasure. To this request Syrianus at last yielded, and gave
his word to the friends of Athanasius that he would take no further
steps till the return of the messengers which he then sent to
Constantinople.
But Syrianus had before received his orders, which were, if possible, to
frighten Athanasius into obedience, and, if that could not be done, then
to employ force, but not to expose the emperors written commands to the
danger of being successfully resisted. He therefore only waited for an
opportunity of carrying them into effect; and at midnight, on the ninth
of February, A.D. 356, twenty-three days after the promise had been
given, Syrianus, at the head of his troops, armed for the assault,
surrounded the church where Athanasius and a crowded assembly were at
prayers. The doors were forcibly and suddenly broken open, the armed
soldiers rushed forward to seize the bishop, and numbers of his faithful
friends were slain in their efforts to save him. Athanasius, however,
escaped in the tumult; but though the general was unsuccessful, the
bodies of the slain and the arms of the soldiers found scattered through
the church in the morning were full proofs of his unholy attempt. The
friends of the bishop drew up and signed a public declaration describing
the outrage, and Syrianus sent to Constantinople a counter-protest
declaring that there had been no disturbance in the city.
Athanasius, with nearly the whole of the nation for his friends, easily
escaped the vengeance of the emperor; and, withdrawing for a third time
from public life, he passed the remainder of this reign in concealment.
He did not, however, neglect the interests of his flock. He encouraged
them with his letters, and even privately visited his friends in
Alexandria. As the greater part of the population was eager to befriend
him, he was there able to hide himself for six years. Disregarding
the scandal that might arise from it, he lived in the house of a young
woman, who concealed him in her chamber, and waited on him with untiring
zeal. She was then in the flower of her youth, only twenty years of age;
and fifty years afterwards, in the reign of Theodosius II., when the
name of the archbishop ranked with those of the apostles, this woman
used to boast among the monks of Alexandria that in her youth she had
for six years concealed the great Athanasius.
But though the general was not wholly successful, yet the Athanasian
party was for the time crushed. Sebastianus, the new prefect, was sent
into Egypt with orders to seize Athanasius dead or alive, wherever he
should be found within the province; and under his protection the Arian
party in Alexandria again ventured to meet in public, and proceeded
to choose a bishop. They elected to this high position the celebrated
George of Cappadocia, a man who, while he equalled his more popular
rival in learning and in ambition, fell far behind him in coolness of
judgment, and in that political skill which is as much wanted in the
guidance of a religious party as in the government of an empire.
George was born at Epiphania in Cilicia, and was the son of a clothier,
but his ambition led him into the Church, as being at that time the
fairest field for the display of talent; and he rose from one station
to another till he reached the high post of Bishop of Alexandria. The
fickle, irritable Alexandrians needed no such firebrand to light up the
flames of discontent. George took no pains to conceal the fact that he
held his bishopric by the favour of the emperor and the power of the
army against the wishes of his flock. To support his authority, he
opened his doors to informers of the worst description; anybody who
stood in the way of his grasp at power was accused of being an enemy
to the emperor. He proposed to the emperor to lay a house-tax on
Alexandria, thereby to repay the expense incurred by Alexander the Great
in building the city; and he made the imperial government more unpopular
than it had ever been since Augustus landed in Egypt. He used the army
as the means of terrifying the Homoousians into an acknowledgment of the
Arian opinions. He banished fifteen bishops to the Great Oasis,
besides others of lower rank. He beat, tortured, and put to death; the
persecution was more cruel than any suffered from the pagans, except
perhaps that in the reign of Diocletian; and thirty Egyptian bishops are
said to have lost their lives while George was patriarch of Alexandria.
Most of these accusations, however, are from the pens of his enemies. At
this time the countries at the southern end of the Red Sea were becoming
a little more known to Alexandria. Meropius, travelling in the reign of
Constantine for curiosity and the sake of knowledge, had visited Auxum,
the capital of the Hexumito, in Abyssinia. His companion Frumentius
undertook to convert the people to Christianity and persuade them
to trade with Egypt; and, as he found them willing to listen to his
arguments, he came home to Alexandria to tell of his success and ask
for support. Athanasius readily entered into a plan for spreading the
blessings of Christianity and the power of the Alexandrian church. To
increase the missionarys weight he consecrated him a bishop, and sent
him back to Auxum to continue his good work. His progress, however, was
somewhat checked by sectarian jealousy; for, when Athanasius was deposed
by Constantius, Frumentius was recalled to receive again his orders and
his opinions from the new patriarch. Constantius also sent an embassy to
the Homeritse on the opposite coast of Arabia, under Theophilus, a monk
and deacon in the Church. The Homerito were of Jewish blood though of
gentile faith, and were readily converted, if not to Christianity, at
least to friendship with the emperor. After consecrating their churches,
Theophilus crossed over to the African coast, to the Hexumito, to carry
on the work which Frumentius had begun. There he was equally successful
in the object of his embassy. Both in trade and in religion the
Hexumito, who were also of Jewish blood, were eager to be connected with
the Europeans, from whom they were cut off by Arabs of a wilder race. He
found also a little to the south of Auxum a settlement of Syrians, who
were said to have been placed there by Alexander the Great. These tribes
spoke the language called Ethiopie, a dialect of Arabic which was not
used in the country which we have hitherto called Ethiopia.
[Illustration: 213.jpg TEMPLE OF ABU SIMBEL IN NUBIA]
The Ethiopie version of the Bible was about this time made for their
use. It was translated out of the Greek from the Alexandrian copies,
as the Greek version was held in such value that it was not thought
necessary to look to the Hebrew original of the Old Testament. But these
well-meant efforts did little at the time towards making the Hexumitæ
Christians. Distance and the Blemmyes checked their intercourse with
Alexandria. It was not till two hundred years later that they could be
said in the slightest sense to be converted to Christianity.
Though the origin of monastic life has sometimes been claimed for the
Essenes on the shores of the Dead Sea, yet it was in Egypt that it was
framed into a system, and became the model for the Christian world. It
took its rise in the serious and gloomy views of religion which always
formed part of the Egyptian polytheism, and which the Greeks remarked as
very unlike their own gay and tasteful modes of worship, and which were
readily engrafted by the Egyptian converts into their own Christian
belief. In the reigns of Constantine and his sons, hundreds of
Christians, both men and women, quitting the pleasures and trials of
the busy world, withdrew one by one into the Egyptian desert, where the
sands are as boundless as the ocean, where the sunshine is less cheerful
than darkness, to spend their lonely days and watchful nights in
religious meditation and in prayer. They were led by a gloomy view
of their duty towards God, and by a want of fellow-feeling for their
neighbour; and they seemed to think that pain and misery in this world
would save them from punishment hereafter. The lives of many of these
Fathers of the Desert were written by the Christians who lived at the
same time; but a full account of the miracles which were said to have
been worked in their favour, or by their means, would now only call
forth a smile of pity, or perhaps even of ridicule.
Prosperity and peace, says Gibbon, introduced the distinction of the
vulgar and the ascetic Christians. The loose and imperfect practice
of religion satisfied the conscience of the multitude. The prince or
magistrate, soldier or merchant, reconciled their fervent zeal, and
implicit faith, with the exercise of their profession, the pursuit of
their interest, and the indulgence of their passions; but the ascetics,
who obeyed and abused the rigid precepts of the gospel, were inspired
by the severe enthusiasm which represents man as a criminal and God as
a tyrant. They seriously renounced the business and the pleasures of the
age; abjured the use of wine, of flesh, and of marriage, chastised their
body, mortified their affections, and embraced a life of misery, as
the price of eternal happiness. The ascetics fled from a profane and
degenerate world to perpetual solitude, or religious society. Like the
first Christians of Jerusalem, they resigned the use, or the property,
of their temporal possessions; established regular communities of the
same sex and a similar disposition, and assumed the names of hermits,
monks, or anchorites, expressive of their lonely retreat in a natural
or artificial desert. They soon acquired the respect of the world, which
they despised, and the loudest applause was bestowed on this divine
philosophy, which surpassed, without the aid of science or reason, the
laborious virtues of the Grecian schools. The monks might indeed contend
with the Stoics in the contempt of fortune, of pain, and of death;
the Pythagorean silence and submission were revived in their servile
discipline; and they disdained, as firmly as the Cynics themselves,
all the forms and decencies of civil society. But the votaries of this
divine philosophy aspired to imitate a purer and more perfect model.
They trod in the footsteps of the prophets, who had retired to the
desert; and they restored the devout and contemplative life, which
had been instituted by the Essenians, in Palestine and Egypt. The
philosophic eye of Pliny had surveyed with astonishment a solitary
people who dwelt among the palm trees near the Dead Sea; who subsisted
without money, who were propagated without women, and who derived from
the disgust and repentance of mankind a perpetual supply of voluntary
associates. Antony, an illiterate youth of the lower part of The-baid,
distributed his patrimony, deserted his family and native home, and
executed his monastic penance with original and intrepid fanaticism.
After a long and painful novitiate among the tombs and in a ruined
tower, he boldly advanced into the desert three days journey to the
eastward of the Nile; discovered a lonely spot, which possessed the
advantages of shade and water, and fixed his last residence on Mount
Colzim near the Red Sea, where an ancient monastery still preserves the
name and memory of the saint. The curious devotion of the Christians
pursued him to the desert; and, when he was obliged to appear at
Alexandria, in the face of mankind, he supported his fame with
discretion and dignity. He enjoyed the friendship of Athanasius, whose
doctrine he approved; and the Egyptian peasant respectfully declined
a respectful invitation from the Emperor Constantine. The venerable
patriarch (for Antony attained the age of 105 years) beheld the numerous
progeny which had been formed by his example and his lessons. The
prolific colonies of monks multiplied on the sands of Libya, upon the
rocks of the Thebaid, and in the cities of the Nile. To the south of
Alexandria, the mountain and adjacent desert of Nitria were peopled by
five thousand anchorites; and the traveller may still investigate the
ruins of fifty monasteries, which were planted in that barren soil by
the disciples of Antony. In the Upper Thebaid, the vacant island of
Tabenna was occupied by Pachomius and fourteen hundred of his brethren.
That holy abbot successively founded nine monasteries of men and one
of women; and the festival of Easter sometimes collected fifty thousand
religious persons, who followed his angelic rules of discipline.
The stately and populous city of Oxyrrhynchos, the seat of Christian
orthodoxy, had devoted the temples, the public edifices, and even the
ramparts, to pious and charitable uses, and the bishop, who might preach
in twelve churches, computed ten thousand females and twenty thousand
males of the monastic profession.
The monks borrowed many of their customs from the old Egyptian priests,
such as shaving the head; and Athanasius in his charge to them orders
them not to adopt the tonsure on the head, nor to shave the beard. He
forbids their employing magic or incantations to assist their prayers.
He endeavours to stop their emulation in fasting, and orders those whose
strength of body enabled them to fast longest not to boast of it. But he
orders them not even to speak to a woman, and wishes them not to bathe,
as being an immodest act. The early Christians, as being a sect of Jews,
had followed many Jewish customs, such as observing the Sabbath as well
as the Lords day; but latterly the line between the two religions had
been growing wider, and Athanasius orders the monks not to keep holy the
Jewish Sabbath. After a few years their religious duties were clearly
laid down for them in several well-drawn codes.
One of the earliest of these ascetics was Amnion, who on the morning of
his marriage is said to have persuaded his young wife of the superior
holiness of a single life, and to have agreed with her that they should
devote themselves apart to the honour of God in the desert. But, in thus
avoiding the pleasures, the duties, and the temptations of the world,
Amnion lost many of the virtues and even the decencies of society; he
never washed himself, or changed his garments, because he thought it
wrong for a religious man even to see himself undressed; and when he had
occasion to cross a canal, his biographer tells us that attendant angels
carried him over the water in their arms, lest, while keeping his vows,
he should be troubled by wet clothes.
In the religious controversies, whether pagan or Christian, Rome had
often looked to Egypt for its opinions; Constans, when wanting copies
of the Greek Scriptures for Rome, had lately sent to Alexandria, and
had received the approved text from Athanasius. The two countries held
nearly the same opinions and had the same dislike of the Greeks; so
when Jerome visited Egypt he found the Church holding, he said, the true
Roman faith as taught by the apostles. Under Didymus, who was then the
head of the catechetical school, Jerome pursued his studies, having
the same religious opinions with the Egyptian, and the same dislike
to Arianism. But no dread of heresy stopped Jerome in his search for
knowledge and for books. He obtained copies of the whole of Origens
works, and read them with the greatest admiration. It is true that he
finds fault with many of his opinions; but no admirer of Origen could
speak in higher terms of praise of his virtues and his learning, of
the qualities of his head and of his heart, than Jerome uses while he
timidly pretends to think that he has done wrong in reading his works.
At this time--the end of the eleventh century after the building of the
city--the emperor himself did not refuse to mark on his Roman coins the
_happy renewal of the years_ by the old Egyptian astrological fable of
the return of the phoenix.
From the treatise of Julius Fermicus against the pagan superstitions, it
would seem that the sacred animals of the Egyptians were no longer kept
in the several cities in which they used to be worshipped, and that many
of the old gods had been gradually dropped from the mythology, which was
then chiefly confined to the worship of Isis and Osiris. The great week
of the year was the feast of Isis, when the priests joined the goddess
in her grief for the loss of the good Osiris, who had been killed
through jealousy by the wicked Typhon. The priests shaved their heads,
beat their breasts, tore the skin off their arms, and opened up the old
wounds of former years, in grief for the death of Osiris, and in honour
of the widowed Isis. The river Nile was also still worshipped for the
blessings which it scatters along its banks, but we hear no more of
Amon-Ra, Chem, Horus, Aroëris, and the other gods of the Thebaid, whose
worship ceased with the fall of that part of the country.
[Illustration: 220.jpg COIN OF CONSTANTIUS]
But great changes often take place with very little improvement; the
fall of idolatry only made way for the rise of magic and astrology.
Abydos in Upper Egypt had latterly gained great renown for the temple of
Bîsû, whose oracle was much consulted, not only by the Egyptians but by
Greek strangers, and by others who sent their questions in writing.
Some of these letters on parchment had been taken from the temple by
informers, and carried to the emperor, whose ears were never deaf to a
charge against the pagans. On this accusation numbers of all ranks were
dragged out of Egypt, to be tried and punished in Syria, with torture
and forfeiture of goods. Such indeed was the nations belief in these
oracles and prophecies that it gave to the priests a greater power than
it was safe to trust them with. By prophesying that a man was to be an
emperor, they could make him a traitor, and perhaps raise a village in
rebellion. As the devotedness of their followers made it dangerous for
the magistrates to punish the mischief-makers, they had no choice but to
punish those who consulted them. Without forbidding the divine oracle to
answer, they forbade anybody to question it. Parnasius, who had been
a prefect of Egypt, a man of spotless character, was banished for thus
illegally seeking a knowledge of the future; and Demetrius Cythras, an
aged philosopher, was put to the rack on a charge of having sacrificed
to the god, and only released because he persisted through his tortures
in asserting that he sacrificed in gratitude and not from a wish thus to
learn his future fate.
In the falling state of the empire the towns and villages of Egypt found
their rulers too weak either to guard them or to tyrannise over them,
and they sometimes formed themselves into small societies, and took
means for their own defence. The law had so far allowed this as in some
cases to grant a corporate constitution to a city. But in other cases a
city kept in its pay a courtier or government servant powerful enough to
guard it against the extortions of the provincial tax-gatherer, or would
put itself under the patronage of a neighbour rich enough and strong
enough to guard it. This, however, could not be allowed, even if not
used as the means of throwing off the authority of the provincial
government; and accordingly at this time we begin to find laws against
the new crime of _patronage_. These associations gave a place of refuge
to criminals, they stopped the worshipper in his way to the temple, and
the tax-gatherer in collecting the tribute. But new laws have little
weight when there is no power to enforce them, and the orders from
Constantinople were little heeded in Upper Egypt.
But this _patronage_ which the emperor wished to put down was weak
compared to that of the bishops and clergy, which the law allowed and
even upheld, and which was the great check to the tyranny of the civil
governor. While the emperor at a distance gave orders through his
prefect, the people looked up to the bishop as their head; and hence the
power of each was checked by the other. The emperors had not yet made
the terrors of religion a tool in the hands of the magistrate; nor had
they yet learned from the pontifex and augurs of pagan Rome the secret
that civil power is never so strong as when based on that of the
Church.
On the death of Constantius, in 361, Julian was at once acknowledged as
emperor, and the Roman world was again, but for the last time, governed
by a pagan. The Christians had been in power for fifty-five years under
Constantine and his sons, during which time the pagans had been made
to feel that their enemies had got the upper hand of them. But on the
accession of Julian their places were again changed; and the Egyptians
among others crowded to Constantinople to complain of injustice done by
the Christian prefect and bishop, and to pray for a redress of wrongs.
They were, however, sadly disappointed in their emperor; he put them off
with an unfeeling joke; he ordered them to meet him at Chalcedon on the
other side of the straits of Constantinople, and, instead of following
them according to his promise, he gave orders that no vessel should
bring an Egyptian from Chalcedon to the capital; and the Egyptians,
after wasting their time and money, returned home in despair. But though
their complaints were laughed at, they were not overlooked, and the
author of their grievances was punished; Artemius, the prefect of Egypt,
was summoned to Chalcedon, and not being able to disprove the crimes
laid to his charge by the Alexandrians, he paid his life as the forfeit
for his mis-government during the last reign.
While Artemius was on his trial the pagans of Alexandria remained quiet,
and in daily fear of his return to power, for after their treatment
at Chalcedon they by no means felt sure of what would be the emperors
policy in matters of religion; but they no sooner heard of the death of
Artemius than they took it as a sign that they had full leave to revenge
themselves on the Christians. The mob rose first against the Bishop
George, who had lately been careless or wanton enough publicly to
declare his regret that any of their temples should be allowed to stand;
and they seized him in the streets and trampled him to death. They next
slew Dracontius, the prefect of the Alexandrian mint, whom they accused
of overturning a pagan altar within that building. Their anger was then
turned against Diodorus, who was employed in building a church on a
waste spot of ground that had once been sacred to the worship of Mithra,
but had since been given by the Emperor Constantius to the Christians.
In clearing the ground, the workmen had turned up a number of human
bones that had been buried there in former ages, and these had been
brought forward by the Christians in reproach against the pagans as so
many proofs of human sacrifices. In his Christian zeal, Diodorus also
had wounded at the same time their pride and superstition by cutting off
the single lock from the heads of the young Egyptians. This lock had
in the time of Ramses been the mark of youthful royalty; under the
Ptolemies the mark of high rank; but was now common to all. Diodorus
treated it as an offence against his religion. For this he was attacked
and killed, with George and Dracontius. The mob carried the bodies of
the three murdered men upon camels to the side of the lake, and there
burned them, and threw the ashes into the water, for fear, as they said,
that a church should be built over their remains, as had been sometimes
done, even at that early date, over the bodies of martyrs.
[Illustration: 225.jpg A YOUNG EGYPTIAN WEARING THE ROYAL LOCK]
When the news of this outrage against the laws was brought to the
philosophical emperor, he contented himself with threatening by an
imperial edict that if the offence were repeated, he would visit it with
severe punishment. But in every act of Julian we trace the scholar
and the lover of learning. George had employed his wealth in getting
together a large library, rich in historians, rhetoricians, and
philosophers of all sects; and, on the murder of the bishop, Julian
wrote letter after letter to Alexandria, to beg the prefect and
his friend Porphyrius to save these books, and send them to him in
Cappadocia. He promised freedom to the librarian if he gave them up, and
torture if he hid them; and further begged that no books in favour of
Christianity should be destroyed, lest other and better books should be
lost with them.
There is too much reason to believe that the friends of Athanasius
were not displeased at the murder of the Bishop George and their Arian
fellow-Christians; at any rate they made no effort to save them, and the
same mob that had put to death George as an enemy to paganism now joined
his rival, Athanasius, in a triumphal entry into the city, when, with
the other Egyptian bishops, he was allowed to return from banishment.
Athanasius could brook no rival to his power; the civil force of the
city was completely overpowered by his party, and the Arian clergy were
forced to hide themselves, as the only means of saving their lives. But,
while thus in danger from their enemies, the Arians pro-hooded to elect
a successor to their murdered bishop, and they chose Lucius to that post
of honour, but of danger. Athanasius, however, in reality and openly
filled the office of bishop; and he summoned a synod at Alexandria, at
which he re-admitted into the church Lucifer and Eusebius, two bishops
who had been banished to the Thebaid, and he again decreed that the
three persons in the Trinity were of one substance.
Though the Emperor Julian thought that George, the late bishop, had
deserved all that he suffered, as having been zealous in favour of
Christianity, and forward in putting down paganism and in closing
the temples, yet he was still more opposed to Athanasius. That able
churchman held his power as a rebel by the help of the Egyptian mob,
against the wishes of the Greeks of Alexandria and against the orders of
the late emperor; and Julian made an edict, ordering that he should be
driven out of the city within twenty-four hours of the command reaching
Alexandria. The prefect of Egypt was at first unable, or unwilling, to
enforce these orders against the wish of the inhabitants; and Athanasius
was not driven into banishment till Julian wrote word that, if the
rebellious bishop were to be found in any part of Egypt after a day then
named, he would fine the prefect and the officers under him one hundred
pounds weight of gold. Thus Athanasius was for the fourth time banished
from Alexandria.
Though the Christians were out of favour with the emperor, and never
were employed in any office of trust, yet they were too numerous for him
to venture on a persecution. But Julian allowed them to be ill-treated
by his prefects, and took no notice of their complaints. He made a law,
forbidding any Christians being educated in pagan literature, believing
that ignorance would stop the spread of their religion. In the churches
of Greece, Asia Minor, and Syria, this was felt as a heavy grievance;
but it was less thought of in Egypt. Science and learning were less
cultivated by the Christians in Alexandria since the overthrow of the
Arian party; and a little later, to charge a writer with Grascizing was
the same as saying that he wanted orthodoxy.
Julian was a warm friend to learning and philosophy among the pagans.
He recalled to Alexandria the physician Zeno, who in the last reign had
fled from the Georgian faction, as the Christians were then called. He
founded in the same city a college for music, and ordered the Prefect
Ecdicius to look out for some young men of skill in that science,
particularly from among the pupils of Dioscorus; and he allotted them
a maintenance from the treasury, with rewards for the most skilful. At
Canopus, a pagan philosopher, Antoninus, the son of Eustathius, taking
advantage of the turn in public opinion, and copying the Christian monks
of the The-baid, drew round him a crowd of followers by his self-denial
and painful torture of the body. The Alexandrians flocked in crowds to
his dwelling; and such was his character for holiness that his death, in
the beginning of the reign of Theodosius, was thought by the Egyptians
to be the cause of the overthrow of paganism.
But Egyptian paganism, which had slumbered for fifty years under the
Christian emperors, was not again to be awaked to its former life.
Though the wars between the several cities for the honour of their gods,
the bull, the crocodile, or the fish, had never ceased, all reverence
for those gods was dead. The sacred animals, in particular the bulls
Apis and Mnevis, were again waited upon by their priests as of old; but
it was a vain attempt. Not only was the Egyptian religion overthrown,
but the Thebaid, the country of that religion, was fallen too low to
be raised again. The people of Upper Egypt had lost all heart, not more
from the tyranny of the Roman government in the north than from the
attacks and settlement of the Arabs in the south. All changes in the
country, whether for the better or the worse, were laid to the charge
of these latter unwelcome neighbours; and when the inquiring traveller
asked to be shown the crocodile, the river-horse, and the other animals
for which Egypt had once been noted, he was told with a sigh that they
were seldom to be seen in the Delta since the Thebaid had been peopled
with the Blemmyes. Falsehood, the usual vice of slaves, had taken a deep
hold on the Egyptian character. A denial of their wealth was the means
by which they usually tried to save it from the Roman tax-gatherer; and
an Egyptian was ashamed of himself as a coward if he could not show
a back covered with stripes gained in the attempt to save his money.
Peculiarities of character often descend unchanged in a nation for many
centuries; and, after fourteen hundred years of the same slavery, the
same stripes from the lash of the tax-gatherer still used to be the
boast of the Egyptian peasant. Cyrene was already a desert; the only
cities of note in Upper Egypt were Koptos, Hermopolis, and Antinoopolis;
but Alexandria was still the queen of cities, though the large quarter
called the Bruchium had not been rebuilt; and the Serapeum, with its
library of seven hundred thousand volumes, was, after the capitol of
Rome, the chief building in the world.
This temple of Serapis was situated on a rising ground at the west end
of the city, and, though not built like a fortification, was sometimes
called the citadel of Alexandria. It was entered by two roads; that on
one side was a slope for carriages, and on the other a grand flight of a
hundred steps from the street, with each step wider than that below
it. At the top of this flight of steps was a portico, in the form of a
circular roof, upheld by four columns.
[Illustration: 231.jpg AN EGYPTIAN WATER-CARRIER]
Through this was the entrance into the great courtyard, in the middle
of which stood the roofless hall or temple, surrounded by columns and
porticoes, inside and out. In some of the inner porticoes were the
bookcases for the library which made Alexandria the very temple of
science and learning, while other porticoes were dedicated to the
service of the ancient religion. The roofs were ornamented with gilding,
the capitals of the columns were of copper gilt, and the walls were
covered with paintings. In the middle of the inner area stood one lofty
column, which could be seen by all the country round, and even from
ships some distance out at sea. The great statue of Serapis, which had
been made under the Ptolemies, having perhaps marble feet, but for the
rest built of wood, clothed with drapery, and glittering with gold and
silver, stood in one of the covered chambers, which had a small window
so contrived as to let the suns rays kiss the lips of the statue on the
appointed occasions. This was one of the tricks employed in the sacred
mysteries, to dazzle the worshipper by the sudden blaze of light which
on the proper occasions was let into the dark room. The temple itself,
with its fountain, its two obelisks, and its gilt ornaments, has long
since been destroyed; and the column in the centre, under the name of
Pompeys Pillar, alone remains to mark the spot where it stood, and is
one of the few works of Greek art which in size and strength vie with
the old Egyptian monuments.
The reign of Julian, instead of raising paganism to its former strength,
had only shown that its life was spent; and under Jovian (A.D. 363--364)
the Christians were again brought into power. A Christian emperor,
however, would have been but little welcome to the Egyptians if, like
Constantius, and even Constantine in his latter years, he had leaned
to the Arian party; but Jovian soon showed his attachment to the Nicene
creed, and he re-appointed Athanasius to the bishopric of Alexandria.
But though Athanasius regained his rank, yet the Arian bishop Lucius
was not deposed. Each party in Alexandria had its own bishop; those who
thought that the Son was of the same substance with the Father looked up
to Athanasius, while those who gave to Jesus the lower rank of being of
a similar substance to the Creator obeyed Lucius.
This curious metaphysical proposition was not, however, the only cause
of the quarrel which divided Egypt into such angry parties. The creeds
were made use of as the watchwords in a political struggle. Blood,
language, and geographical boundaries divided the parties; and religious
opinions seldom cross these unchanging and inflexible lines.
Every Egyptian believed in the Nicene creed and the incorruptibility
of the body of Jesus, and hated the Alexandrian Greeks; while the more
refined Greeks were as united in explaining away the Nicene creed by
the doctrine of the two natures of Christ, and in despising the ignorant
Egyptians. Christianity, which speaks so forcibly to the poor, the
unlearned, and the slave, had educated the Egyptian population,
had raised them in their own eyes; and, as the popular party gained
strength, the Arians lost ground in Alexandria. At the same time the
Greeks were falling off: in learning and in science, and in all those
arts of civilisation which had given them the superiority. Like other
great political changes, this may not have been understood at the time;
but in less than a hundred years it was found that the Egyptians were no
longer the slaves, nor the Greeks the masters.
On the death of Jovian, when Valentinian divided the Roman empire with
his brother, he took Italy and the West for his own kingdom, and gave to
Valens Egypt and the Eastern provinces, in which Greek was the language
of the government. Each emperor adopted the religion of his capital;
Valentinian held the Nicene faith, and Valens the Arian faith; and
unhappy Egypt was the only part of the empire whose religion differed
from that of its rulers. Had the creeds marked the limits of the
two empires, Egypt would have belonged to Rome; but, as geographical
boundaries and language form yet stronger ties, Egypt was given to
Constantinople, or rather to Antioch, the nearer of the two Eastern
capitals.
By Valens, Athanasius was forced for the fifth time to fly from
Alexandria, to avoid the displeasure which his disobedience again drew
down upon him. But his flock again rose in rebellion in favour of their
popular bishop; and the emperor was either persuaded or frightened
into allowing him to return to his bishopric, where he spent the few
remaining years of his life in peace. Athanasius died at an advanced
age, leaving a name more famous than that of any one of the emperors
under whom he lived. He taught the Christian world that there was a
power greater than that of kings, namely the Church. He was often beaten
in the struggle, but every victory over him was followed by the defeat
of the civil power; he was five times banished, but five times he
returned in triumph. The temporal power of the Church was in its
infancy; it only rose upon the conversion of Constantine, and it was
weak compared to what it became in after ages; but, when the Emperor
of Germany did penance barefoot before Pope Hildebrand, and a king of
England was whipped at Beckets tomb, we only witness the full-grown
strength of the infant power that was being reared by the Bishop of
Alexandria. His writings are numerous and wholly controversial, chiefly
against the Arians. The Athanasian creed seems to have been so named
only because it was thought to contain his opinions, as it is known to
be by a later author.
On the death of Athanasius, the Homoousian party chose Peter as his
successor in the bishopric, overlooking Lucius, the Arian bishop, whose
election had been approved by the emperors Julian, Jovian, and Valens.
But as the Egyptian church had lost its great champion, the emperor
ventured to re-assert his authority. He sent Peter to prison, and
ordered all the churches to be given up to the Arians, threatening with
banishment from Egypt whoever disobeyed his edict. The persecution
which the Homoousian party throughout Upper Egypt then suffered from the
Arians equalled, says the ecclesiastical historian, anything that they
had before suffered from the pagans. Every monastery in Egypt was broken
open by Lucius at the head of an armed force, and the cruelty of
the bishop surpassed that of the soldiers. The breaking open of the
monasteries seems to have been for the purpose of making the inmates
bear their share in the military service of the state, rather than
for any religious reasons. When Constantine embraced Christianity, he
immediately recognised all the religious scruples of its professors;
and not only bishops and presbyters but all laymen who had entered the
monastic orders were freed from the duty of serving in the army. But
under the growing dislike of military service, and the difficulty of
finding soldiers, when to escape from the army many called themselves
Christian monks, this excuse could no longer be listened to, and Valens
made a law that monastic vows should not save a man from enlistment.
But this law was not easily carried into force in the monasteries on
the borders of the desert, which were often well-built and well-guarded
fortresses; and on Mount Nitria, in particular, many monks lost
their lives in their resistance to the troops that were sent to fetch
recruits.
[Illustration: 237.jpg REMAINS OF A CHRISTIAN CHURCH IN THE TEMPLE OF
LUXOR]
The monastic institutions of Egypt had already reached their
full growth. They were acknowledged by the laws of the empire as
ecclesiastical corporations, and allowed to hold property; and by a new
law of this reign, if a monk or nun died without a will or any known
kindred, the property went to the monastery as heir at law. One of the
most celebrated of these monasteries was on Tabenna, where Pachomius
had gathered round him thirteen hundred followers, who owned him as the
founder of their order, and gave him credit for the gift of prophecy.
His disciples in the other monasteries of Upper Egypt amounted to six
thousand more. Anuph was at the head of another order of monks, and he
boasted that he could by prayer obtain from heaven whatever he wished.
Hor was at the head of another monastery, where, though wholly unable
to read or write, he spent his life in singing psalms, and, as his
followers and perhaps he himself believed, in working miracles.
Sera-pion was at the head of a thousand monks in the Ar-sinoïte nome,
who raised their food by their own labour, and shared it with their
poorer neighbours. Near Nitria, a place in the Mareotic nome which gave
its name to the nitre springs, there were as many as fifty cells; but
those who aimed at greater solitude and severer mortification withdrew
farther into the desert, to Scetis in the same nome, a spot already
sanctified by the trials and triumphs of St. Anthony. Here, in a
monastery surrounded by the sands, by the side of a lake whose waters
are Salter than the brine of the ocean, with no grass or trees to rest
the aching eye, where the dazzling sky is seldom relieved with a
cloud, where the breezes are too often laden with dry dust, these monks
cultivated a gloomy religion, with hearts painfully attuned to the
scenery around them. Here dwelt Moses, who in his youth had been a
remarkable sinner, and in his old age became even more remarkable as a
saint. It was said that for six years he spent every night in prayer,
without once closing his eyes in sleep; and that one night, when his
cell was attacked by four robbers, he carried them all off at once on
his back to the neighbouring monastery to be punished, because he would
himself hurt no man. Benjamin also dwelt at Scetis; he consecrated oil
to heal the diseases of those who washed with it, and during the eight
months that he was himself dying of a dropsy, he touched for their
diseases all who came to the door of his cell to be healed. Hellas
carried fire in his bosom without burning his clothes. Elias spent
seventy years in solitude on the borders of the Arabian desert near
Antinoopolis. Apelles was a blacksmith near Achoris; he was tempted
by the devil in the form of a beautiful woman, but he scorched the
tempters face with a red-hot iron. Dorotheus, who though a Theban had
settled near Alexandria, mortified his flesh by trying to live without
sleep. He never willingly lay down to rest, nor indeed ever slept till
the weakness of the body sunk under the efforts of the spirit. Paul,
who dwelt at Pherma, repeated three hundred prayers every day, and kept
three hundred pebbles in a bag to help him in his reckoning. He was the
friend of Anthony, and when dying begged to be wrapt in the cloak given
him by that holy monk, who had himself received it as a present from
Athanasius. His friends and admirers claimed for Paul the honour of
being the first Christian hermit, and they maintained their improbable
opinion by asserting that he had been a monk for ninety-seven years, and
that he had retired to the desert at the age of sixteen, when the Church
was persecuted in the reign of Valerian. All Egypt believed that the
monks were the especial favourites of Heaven, that they worked miracles,
and that divine wisdom flowed from their lips without the help or
hindrance of human learning. They were all Homoousians, believing
that the Son was of one substance with the Father; some as trinitarians
holding the opinions of Athanasius; some as Sabellians believing that
Jesus was the creator of the world, and that his body therefore was not
liable to corruption; some as anthropomorphites believing God was of
human form like Jesus; but all warmly attached to the Mcene creed,
denying the two natures of Christ, and hating the Arian Greeks of
Alexandria and the other cities. Gregory of Nazianzum remarks that Egypt
was the most Christ-loving of countries, and adds with true simplicity
that, wonderful to say, after having so lately worshipped bulls, goats,
and crocodiles, it was now teaching the world the worship of the Trinity
in the truest form.
The pagans, who were now no longer able to worship publicly as they
chose, took care to proclaim their opinions indirectly in such ways as
the law could not reach. In the hippodrome, which was the noisiest of
the places where the people met in public, they made a profession of
their faith by the choice of which horses they bet on; and Christians
and pagans alike showed their zeal for religion by hooting and clapping
of hands. Prayers and superstitious ceremonies were used on both
sides to add to the horses speed; and the monk Hilarion, the pupil of
Anthony, gained no little credit for sprinkling holy water on the horses
of his party, and thus enabling Christianity to outrun paganism in the
hippodrome at Gaza.
During these reigns of weakness and misgovernment, it was no doubt a
cruel policy rather than humanity that led the tax-gatherers to collect
the tribute in kind. More could be squeezed out of a ruined people by
taking what they had to give than by requiring it to be paid in copper
coin. Hence Valons made a law that no tribute throughout the empire
should be taken in money; and he laid a new land-tax upon Egypt, to the
amount of a soldiers clothing for every thirty acres.
The Saracens* had for some time past been encroaching on the Eastern
frontiers of the empire, and had only been kept back by treaties which
proved the weakness of the Romans, as the armies of Constantinople were
still called, and which encouraged the barbarians in their attacks.
* The name _Saraceni_ was given by the Greeks and Romans to
the nomadic Arabs who lived on the borders of the desert.
During the Middle Ages, the Muhammedans, coming from
apparently the same localities, were also called Saracens.
On the death of their king, the command over the Saracens fell to
their Queen Masvia, who broke the last treaty, laid waste Palestine and
Phoenicia with her armies, conquered or gained over the Arabs of Petra,
and pressed upon the Egyptians at the head of the Red Sea. On this,
Valens renewed the truce, but on terms still more favourable to the
invaders. Many of the Saracens were Christians, and by an article of the
treaty they were to have a bishop granted them for their church, and
for this purpose they sent Moses to Alexandria to be ordained. But
the Saracens sided with the Egyptians, in religion as well as policy,
against the Arian Greeks. Hence Moses refused to be ordained by Lucius,
the patriarch of Alexandria, and chose rather to receive his appointment
from some of the Homoousian bishops who were living in banishment in the
Thebaid. After this advance of the barbarians the interesting city
of Petra, which since the time of Trajan had been in the power or the
friendship of Rome or Constantinople, was lost to the civilised world.
This rocky fastness, which was ornamented with temples, a triumphal
arch, and a theatre, and had been a bishops see, was henceforth
closed against all travellers; it had no place in the map till it was
discovered by Burckhardt in our own days without a human being dwelling
in it, with oleanders and tamarisks choking up its entrance through
the cliff, and with brambles trailing their branches over the rock-hewn
temples.
[Illustration: 243.jpg TEMPLE COURTYARD, MEDINET ABU]
The reign of Theodosius, which extended from 379 to 395, is remarkable
for the blow then given to paganism. The old religion had been sinking
even before Christianity had become the religion of the emperors; it had
been discouraged by Constantine, who had closed many of the temples; but
Theodosius made a law in the first year of his reign that the whole
of the empire should be Christian, and should receive the trinitarian
faith. He soon afterwards ordered that Sunday should be kept holy, and
forbade all work and law-proceedings on that day; and he sent Cynegius,
the prefect of the palace, into Egypt, to see these laws carried into
effect in that province.
The wishes of the emperor were ably followed up by Theophilus, Bishop of
Alexandria. He cleansed the temple of Mithra, and overthrew the statues
in the celebrated temple of Serapis, which seemed the very citadel of
paganism. He also exposed to public ridicule the mystic ornaments and
statues which a large part of his fellow-citizens still regarded as
sacred. It was not, however, to be supposed that this could be peaceably
borne by a people so irritable as the Alexandrians. The students in the
schools of philosophy put themselves at the head of the mob to stop the
work of destruction, and to revenge themselves upon their assailants,
and several battles were fought in the streets between the pagans
and the Christians, in which both parties lost many lives; but as the
Christians were supported by the power of the prefect, the pagans were
routed, and many whose rank would have made them objects of punishment
were forced to fly from Alexandria.
No sooner had the troops under the command of the prefect put down the
pagan opposition than the work of destruction was again carried forward
by the zeal of the bishop. The temples were broken open, their ornaments
destroyed, and the statues of the gods melted for the use of the
Alexandrian church. One statue of an Egyptian god was alone saved from
the wreck, and was set up in mockery of those who had worshipped it;
and this ridicule of their religion was a cause of greater anger to the
pagans than even the destruction of the other statues. The great statue
of Serapis, which was made of wood covered with plates of metal, was
knocked to pieces by the axes of the soldiers. The head and limbs were
broken off, and the wooden trunk was burnt in the amphitheatre amid
the shouts and jeers of the bystanders. A conjectured fragment of this
statue is now in the British Museum.
In the plunder of the temple of Serapis, the great library of more
than seven hundred thousand volumes was wholly broken up and scattered.
Orosius, the Spaniard, who visited Alexandria in the next reign, may be
trusted when he says that he saw in the temple the empty shelves, which,
within the memory of men then living, had been plundered of the books
that had formerly been got together after the library of the Bruchium
was burnt by Julius Cæsar. In a work of such lawless plunder, carried
on by ignorant zealots, many of these monuments of pagan genius and
learning must have been wilfully or accidentally destroyed, though the
larger number may have been carried off by the Christians for the other
public and private libraries of the city. How many other libraries this
city of science may have possessed we are not told, but there were no
doubt many. Had Alexandria during the next two centuries given birth to
poets and orators, their works, the offspring of native genius, might
perhaps have been written without the help of libraries; but the labours
of the mathematicians and grammarians prove that the city was still well
furnished with books, beside those on the Christian controversies.
When the Christians were persecuted by the pagans, none but men of
unblemished lives and unusual strength of mind stood to their religion
in the day of trial, and suffered the penalties of the law; the weak,
the ignorant, and the vicious readily joined in the superstitions
required of them, and, embracing the religion of the stronger party,
easily escaped punishment. So it was when the pagans of Alexandria were
persecuted by Theophilus; the chief sufferers were the men of learning,
in whose minds paganism was a pure deism, and who saw nothing but
ignorance and superstition on the side of their oppressors; who thought
their worship of the Trinity only a new form of polytheism, and jokingly
declared that they were not arithmeticians enough to understand it.
Olympius, who was the priest of Serapis when the temple was sacked, and
as such the head of the pagans of Alexandria, was a man in every
respect the opposite of the Bishop Theophilus. He was of a frank, open
countenance and agreeable manners; and though his age might have allowed
him to speak among his followers in the tone of command, he chose rather
in his moral lessons to use the mild persuasion of an equal; and few
hearts were so hardened as not to be led into the paths of duty by his
exhortations. Whereas the furious monks, says the indignant pagan, were
men only in form, but swine in manners. Whoever put on a black coat, and
was not ashamed to be seen with dirty linen, gained a tyrannical power
over the minds of the mob, from their belief in his holiness; and these
men attacked the temples of the gods as a propitiation for their own
enormous sins. Thus each party reproached the other, and often unjustly.
Among other religious frauds and pretended miracles of which the pagan
priests were accused, was that of having an iron statue of Serapis
hanging in the air in a chamber of the temple, by means of a loadstone
fixed in the ceiling. The natural difficulties shield them from this
charge, but other accusations are not so easily rebutted.
After this attack upon the pagans, their religion was no longer openly
taught in Alexandria. Some of the more zealous professors withdrew
from the capital to Canopus, about ten miles distant, where the ancient
priestly learning was still taught, unpersecuted because unnoticed; and
there, under the pretence of studying hieroglyphics, a school was opened
for teaching magic and other forbidden rites. When the pagan worship
ceased throughout Egypt, the temples were very much used as churches,
and in some cases received in their ample courtyard a smaller church of
Greek architecture, as in that of Medinet Abu. In other cases Christian
ornaments were added to the old walls, as in the rock temple of Kneph,
opposite to Abu Simbel, where the figure of the Saviour with a glory
round his head has been painted on the ceiling. The Christians, in order
to remove from before their eyes the memorials of the old superstition,
covered up the sculpture on the walls with mud from the Nile and white
plaster. This coating we now take away, at a time when the idolatrous
figures are no longer dangerous to religion, and we find the sculpture
and painting fresh as when covered up fourteen hundred years ago.
[Illustration: 248.jpg CHRISTIAN PICTURE AT ABU SIMBE]
It would be unreasonable to suppose that the Egyptians, upon embracing
Christianity, at once threw off all of their pagan rites. Among other
customs that they still clung to, was that of making mummies of the
bodies of the dead. St. Anthony had tried to dissuade the Christian
converts from that practice; not because the mummy-cases were covered
with pagan inscriptions, but he boldly asserted, what a very little
reading would have disproved, that every mode of treating a dead body,
beside burial, was forbidden in the Bible. St. Augustine, on the other
hand, well understanding that the immortality of the soul without the
body was little likely to be understood or valued by the ignorant,
praises the Egyptians for that very practice, and says that they were
the only Christians who really believed in the resurrection from the
dead. The tapers burnt before the altars were from the earliest times
used to light up the splendours of the Egyptian altars, in the darkness
of their temples, and had been burnt in still greater numbers in the
yearly festival of the candles. The playful custom of giving away
sugared cakes and sweetmeats on the twenty-fifth day of Tybi, our
twentieth of January, was then changed to be kept fourteen days earlier,
and it still marks the Feast of Epiphany or Twelfth-night. The division
of the people into clergy and laity, which was unknown to Greeks and
Romans, was introduced into Christianity in the fourth century by the
Egyptians. While the rest of Christendom were clothed in woollen, linen,
the common dress of the Egyptians, was universally adopted by the clergy
as more becoming to the purity of their manners. At the same time the
clergy copied the Egyptian priests in the custom of shaving the crown of
the head bald.
The new law in favour of trinitarian Christianity was enforced with as
great strictness against the Arians as against the pagans. The bishops
and priests of that party wrere everywhere turned out of their churches,
which were then given up to the Homoousians. Theodosius summoned a
council of one hundred and fifty bishops at Constantinople, to re-enact
the Nicene creed; and in the future religious rebellions of the
Egyptians they always quoted against the Greeks this council of
Constantinople, with that of Nicasa, as the foundation of their faith.
By this religious policy, Theodosius did much to delay the fall of the
empire. He won the friendship of his Egyptian subjects, as well as of
their Saracen neighbours, all of whom, as far as they were Christian,
held to the Nicene creed. Egypt became the safest of his provinces; and,
when his armies had been recruited with so many barbarians that they
could no longer be trusted, these new levies wrere marched into Egypt
under the command of Hormisdas, and an equal number of Egyptians were
drafted out of the army of Egypt, and led into Thessaly.
When the season came for the overflow of the Nile, in the first summer
after the destruction of the temples, the waters happened to rise more
slowly than usual; and the Egyptians laid the blame upon the Christian
emperor, who had forbidden their sacrificing the usual offerings in
honour of the river-god.
[Illustration: 250.jpg MANFALOOT, SHOWING THE HEIGHT OF THE NILE IN
SUMMER]
The alarm for the loss of their crops carried more weight in the
religious controversy than any arguments that could be brought against
pagan sacrifices; and the anger of the people soon threatened a serious
rebellion. Evagrius the prefect, being disturbed for the peace of the
country, sent to Constantinople for orders; but the emperor remained
firm; he would make no change in the law against paganism, and the fears
of the Egyptians and Alexandrians were soon put an end to by a most
plenteous overflow.
Since the time of Athanasius, and the overthrow of the Arian party in
Alexandria, the learning of that city was wholly in the hands of the
pagans, and was chiefly mathematical. Diophantus of Alexandria is the
earliest writer on algebra whose works are now remaining to us, and has
given his name to the Diophantine problems. Pappus wrote a description
of the world, and a commentary on Ptolemys _Almagest_, beside a work
on geometry, published under the name of his _Mathematical Collections_.
Theon, a professor in the museum, wrote on the smaller astrolabe--the
instrument then used to measure the star orbits--and on the rise of the
Nile, a subject always of interest to the mathematicians of Egypt, from
its importance to the husbandman. From Theons astronomical observations
we learn that the Alexandrian astronomers still made use of the old
Egyptian movable year of three hundred and sixty-five days only, and
without a leap-year. Paul the Alexandrian astrologer, on the other hand,
uses the Julian year of three hundred and sixty-five days and a quarter,
and he dates from the era of Diocletian. His rules for telling the day
of the week from the day of the month, and for telling on what day of
the week each year began, teach us that our present mode of dividing
time was used in Egypt. Horapollo, the grammarian, was also then a
teacher in the schools of Alexandria. He wrote in the Koptic language a
work in explanation of the old hieroglyphics, which has gained a notice
far beyond its deserts, because it is the only work on the subject that
has come down to us.
The only Christian writings of this time, that we know of, are the
paschal letters of Theophilus, Bishop of Alexandria, which were much
praised by Jerome, and by him translated into Latin. They are full of
bitter reproaches against Origen and his writings, and they charge him
with having treated Jesus more cruelly than Pilate or the Jews had done.
John, the famous monk of the Thebaid, was no writer, though believed to
have the gift of prophecy. He was said to have foretold the victory
of Theodosius over the rebel Maximus; and, when the emperor had got
together his troops to march against Eugenius, another rebel who
had seized the passes of the Julian Alps, he sent his trusty eunuch
Eutropius to fetch the holy Egyptian, or at least to learn from him what
would be the event of the war. John refused to go to Europe, but he
told the messenger that Theodosius would conquer the rebel, and soon
afterwards die; both of which came to pass as might easily have been
guessed.
On the death of Theodosius, in 395, the Roman empire was again divided.
Arcadius, his elder son, ruled Egypt and the East, while Honorius, the
younger, held the West; and the reins of government at once passed
from the ablest to the weakest hands. But the change was little felt
in Egypt, which continued to be governed by the patriarch Theophilus,
without the name but with very nearly the power of a prefect. He was
a bold and wicked man, but as his religious opinions were for the
Homoousians as against the Arians, and his political feelings were for
the Egyptians as against the Greeks, he rallied to his government the
chief strength of the province. As the pagans and Arians of Alexandria
were no longer worthy of his enmity, he fanned into a flame a new
quarrel which was then breaking out in the Egyptian church. The monks
of Upper Egypt, who were mostly ignorant and unlettered men, were
anthropomorphites, or believers that God was in outward shape like a
man. They quoted from the Jewish Scriptures that he made man in his own
image, in support of their opinion. They held that he was of a strictly
human form, like Jesus, which to them seemed fully asserted in the
Nicene creed. In this opinion they were opposed by those who were better
educated, and it suited the policy of Theophilus to side with the more
ignorant and larger party. He branded with the name of Origenists those
who argued that God was without form, and who quoted the writings of
Origen in support of their opinion. This naturally led to a dispute
about Origens orthodoxy; and that admirable writer, who had been
praised by all parties for two hundred years, and who had been quoted as
authority as much by Athanasius as by the Arians, was declared to be a
heretic by a council of bishops. The writings of Origen were accordingly
forbidden to be read, because they contradicted the anthropomorphite
opinions.
The quarrel between the Origenists and the anthropomorphites did not end
in words. A proposition in theology, or a doubt in metaphysics, was no
better cause of civil war than the old quarrels about the bull Apis or
the crocodile; but a change of religion had not changed the national
character. The patriarch, finding his party the stronger, attacked the
enemy in their own monasteries; he marched to Mount Nitria at the head
of a strong body of soldiers, and, enrolling under his banners the
anthropomorphite monks, attacked Dioscorus and the Origenists, set fire
to their monasteries, and laid waste the place.
Theophilus next quarrelled with Peter, the chief of the Alexandrian
presbyters, whom he accused of admitting to the sacraments of the
church a woman who had not renounced the Manichean heresy; and he then
quarrelled with Isidorus, who had the charge of the poor of the church,
because he bore witness that Peter had the orders of Theophilus himself
for what he did.
In this century there was a general digging up of the bodies of the
most celebrated Christians of former ages, to heal the diseases and
strengthen the faith of the living; and Constantinople, which as the
capital of the empire had been ornamented by the spoils of its subject
provinces, had latterly been enriching its churches with the remains of
numerous Christian saints. The tombs of Egypt, crowded with mummies that
had lain there for centuries, could of course furnish relics more easily
than most countries, and in this reign Constantinople received from
Alexandria a quantity of bones which were supposed to be those of the
martyrs slain in the pagan persecutions. The archbishop John Chrysostom
received them gratefully, and, though himself smarting under the
reproach that he was not orthodox enough for the superstitious
Egyptians, he thanks God that Egypt, which sent forth its grain to feed
its hungry neighbours, could also send the bodies of so many martyrs to
sanctify their churches.
We have traced the fall of the Greek party in Alexandria, in the
victories over the Arians during the religious quarrels of the last
hundred years; and in the laws we now read the citys loss of wealth
and power. The corporation of Alexandria was no longer able to bear the
expense of cleansing the river and keeping open the canals; and four
hundred _solidi_--about twelve hundred dollars--were each year set apart
from the custom-house duties of the city for that useful work.
The arrival of new settlers in Alexandria had been very much checked by
the less prosperous state of the country since the reign of Diocletian.
We still find, however, that many of the men of note were not born in
Egypt. Paulus, the physician, was a native of Ægina. He has left a work
on diseases and their remedies. The chief man of learning was Synesius,
a platonic philosopher whom the patriarch Theophilus persuaded to join
the Christians. As a platonist he naturally leaned towards many of
the doctrines of the popular religion, but he could not believe in a
resurrection; and it was not till after Theophilus had ordained him
Bishop of Ptolemais near Cyrene that he acknowledged the truth of that
doctrine. Nor would he then put away or disown his wife, as the
custom of the Church required; indeed, he accepted the bishopric very
unwillingly. He was as fond of playful sport as he was of books, and
very much disliked business. He has left a volume of writings, which has
saved the names of two prefects of Cyrene; the one Anysius, under
whose good discipline even the barbarians of Hungary behaved like Roman
legionaries, and the other Poonius, who cultivated science in this
barren spot. To encourage Pasonius in his praiseworthy studies he made
him a present of an astrolabe, to measure the distances of the stars
and planets, an instrument which was constructed under the guidance of
Hypatia.