In his youth, the primate of Egypt resisted the great Constantine, who

had repeatedly signified his will, that Arius should be restored to

the Catholic communion. The emperor respected, and might forgive, this

inflexible resolution; and the faction who considered Athanasius as

their most formidable enemy, was constrained to dissemble their hatred,

and silently to prepare an indirect and distant assault. They scattered

rumors and suspicions, represented the archbishop as a proud and

oppressive tyrant, and boldly accused him of violating the treaty which

had been ratified in the Nicene council, with the schismatic followers

of Meletius. Athanasius had openly disapproved that ignominious

peace, and the emperor was disposed to believe that he had abused his

ecclesiastical and civil power, to prosecute those odious sectaries:

that he had sacrilegiously broken a chalice in one of their churches of

Mareotis; that he had whipped or imprisoned six of their bishops; and

that Arsenius, a seventh bishop of the same party, had been murdered,

or at least mutilated, by the cruel hand of the primate. These charges,

which affected his honor and his life, were referred by Constantine to

his brother Dalmatius the censor, who resided at Antioch; the synods of

CÊsarea and Tyre were successively convened; and the bishops of the East

were instructed to judge the cause of Athanasius, before they proceeded

to consecrate the new church of the Resurrection at Jerusalem. The

primate might be conscious of his innocence; but he was sensible that

the same implacable spirit which had dictated the accusation, would

direct the proceeding, and pronounce the sentence. He prudently declined

the tribunal of his enemies; despised the summons of the synod of

CÊsarea; and, after a long and artful delay, submitted to the peremptory

commands of the emperor, who threatened to punish his criminal

disobedience if he refused to appear in the council of Tyre. Before

Athanasius, at the head of fifty Egyptian prelates, sailed from

Alexandria, he had wisely secured the alliance of the Meletians; and

Arsenius himself, his imaginary victim, and his secret friend, was

privately concealed in his train. The synod of Tyre was conducted by

Eusebius of CÊsarea, with more passion, and with less art, than his

learning and experience might promise; his numerous faction repeated the

names of homicide and tyrant; and their clamors were encouraged by the

seeming patience of Athanasius, who expected the decisive moment to

produce Arsenius alive and unhurt in the midst of the assembly. The

nature of the other charges did not admit of such clear and satisfactory

replies; yet the archbishop was able to prove, that in the village,

where he was accused of breaking a consecrated chalice, neither church

nor altar nor chalice could really exist. The Arians, who had secretly

determined the guilt and condemnation of their enemy, attempted,

however, to disguise their injustice by the imitation of judicial forms:

the synod appointed an episcopal commission of six delegates to collect

evidence on the spot; and this measure which was vigorously opposed by

the Egyptian bishops, opened new scenes of violence and perjury. After

the return of the deputies from Alexandria, the majority of the council

pronounced the final sentence of degradation and exile against the

primate of Egypt. The decree, expressed in the fiercest language of

malice and revenge, was communicated to the emperor and the Catholic

church; and the bishops immediately resumed a mild and devout aspect,

such as became their holy pilgrimage to the Sepulchre of Christ.

Chapter XXI: Persecution Of Heresy, State Of The Church.--Part V.

But the injustice of these ecclesiastical judges had not been

countenanced by the submission, or even by the presence, of Athanasius.

He resolved to make a bold and dangerous experiment, whether the throne

was inaccessible to the voice of truth; and before the final sentence

could be pronounced at Tyre, the intrepid primate threw himself into a

bark which was ready to hoist sail for the Imperial city. The request

of a formal audience might have been opposed or eluded; but Athanasius

concealed his arrival, watched the moment of Constantine's return from

an adjacent villa, and boldly encountered his angry sovereign as he

passed on horseback through the principal street of Constantinople.

So strange an apparition excited his surprise and indignation; and the

guards were ordered to remove the importunate suitor; but his resentment

was subdued by involuntary respect; and the haughty spirit of the

emperor was awed by the courage and eloquence of a bishop, who implored

his justice and awakened his conscience. Constantine listened to the

complaints of Athanasius with impartial and even gracious attention; the

members of the synod of Tyre were summoned to justify their proceedings;

and the arts of the Eusebian faction would have been confounded, if

they had not aggravated the guilt of the primate, by the dexterous

supposition of an unpardonable offence; a criminal design to intercept

and detain the corn-fleet of Alexandria, which supplied the subsistence

of the new capital. The emperor was satisfied that the peace of Egypt

would be secured by the absence of a popular leader; but he refused to

fill the vacancy of the archiepiscopal throne; and the sentence, which,

after long hesitation, he pronounced, was that of a jealous ostracism,

rather than of an ignominious exile. In the remote province of Gaul, but

in the hospitable court of Treves, Athanasius passed about twenty eight

months. The death of the emperor changed the face of public affairs and,

amidst the general indulgence of a young reign, the primate was restored

to his country by an honorable edict of the younger Constantine, who

expressed a deep sense of the innocence and merit of his venerable

guest.

The death of that prince exposed Athanasius to a second persecution;

and the feeble Constantius, the sovereign of the East, soon became

the secret accomplice of the Eusebians. Ninety bishops of that sect or

faction assembled at Antioch, under the specious pretence of dedicating

the cathedral. They composed an ambiguous creed, which is faintly tinged

with the colors of Semi-Arianism, and twenty-five canons, which still

regulate the discipline of the orthodox Greeks. It was decided, with

some appearance of equity, that a bishop, deprived by a synod, should

not resume his episcopal functions till he had been absolved by the

judgment of an equal synod; the law was immediately applied to the case

of Athanasius; the council of Antioch pronounced, or rather confirmed,

his degradation: a stranger, named Gregory, was seated on his throne;

and Philagrius, the prÊfect of Egypt, was instructed to support the new

primate with the civil and military powers of the province. Oppressed

by the conspiracy of the Asiatic prelates, Athanasius withdrew from

Alexandria, and passed three years as an exile and a suppliant on the

holy threshold of the Vatican. By the assiduous study of the Latin

language, he soon qualified himself to negotiate with the western

clergy; his decent flattery swayed and directed the haughty Julius;

the Roman pontiff was persuaded to consider his appeal as the peculiar

interest of the Apostolic see: and his innocence was unanimously

declared in a council of fifty bishops of Italy. At the end of three

years, the primate was summoned to the court of Milan by the emperor

Constans, who, in the indulgence of unlawful pleasures, still professed

a lively regard for the orthodox faith. The cause of truth and justice

was promoted by the influence of gold, and the ministers of Constans

advised their sovereign to require the convocation of an ecclesiastical

assembly, which might act as the representatives of the Catholic church.

Ninety-four bishops of the West, seventy-six bishops of the East,

encountered each other at Sardica, on the verge of the two empires,

but in the dominions of the protector of Athanasius. Their debates soon

degenerated into hostile altercations; the Asiatics, apprehensive for

their personal safety, retired to Philippopolis in Thrace; and the

rival synods reciprocally hurled their spiritual thunders against their

enemies, whom they piously condemned as the enemies of the true God.

Their decrees were published and ratified in their respective provinces:

and Athanasius, who in the West was revered as a saint, was exposed as

a criminal to the abhorrence of the East. The council of Sardica reveals

the first symptoms of discord and schism between the Greek and Latin

churches which were separated by the accidental difference of faith, and

the permanent distinction of language.

During his second exile in the West, Athanasius was frequently admitted

to the Imperial presence; at Capua, Lodi, Milan, Verona, Padua,

Aquileia, and Treves. The bishop of the diocese usually assisted at

these interviews; the master of the offices stood before the veil or

curtain of the sacred apartment; and the uniform moderation of the

primate might be attested by these respectable witnesses, to whose

evidence he solemnly appeals. Prudence would undoubtedly suggest the

mild and respectful tone that became a subject and a bishop. In these

familiar conferences with the sovereign of the West, Athanasius might

lament the error of Constantius, but he boldly arraigned the guilt of

his eunuchs and his Arian prelates; deplored the distress and danger of

the Catholic church; and excited Constans to emulate the zeal and glory

of his father. The emperor declared his resolution of employing the

troops and treasures of Europe in the orthodox cause; and signified, by

a concise and peremptory epistle to his brother Constantius, that unless

he consented to the immediate restoration of Athanasius, he himself,

with a fleet and army, would seat the archbishop on the throne of

Alexandria. But this religious war, so horrible to nature, was prevented

by the timely compliance of Constantius; and the emperor of the East

condescended to solicit a reconciliation with a subject whom he had

injured. Athanasius waited with decent pride, till he had received three

successive epistles full of the strongest assurances of the protection,

the favor, and the esteem of his sovereign; who invited him to resume

his episcopal seat, and who added the humiliating precaution of engaging

his principal ministers to attest the sincerity of his intentions. They

were manifested in a still more public manner, by the strict orders

which were despatched into Egypt to recall the adherents of Athanasius,

to restore their privileges, to proclaim their innocence, and to

erase from the public registers the illegal proceedings which had been

obtained during the prevalence of the Eusebian faction. After every

satisfaction and security had been given, which justice or even delicacy

could require, the primate proceeded, by slow journeys, through the

provinces of Thrace, Asia, and Syria; and his progress was marked by the

abject homage of the Oriental bishops, who excited his contempt without

deceiving his penetration. At Antioch he saw the emperor Constantius;

sustained, with modest firmness, the embraces and protestations of his

master, and eluded the proposal of allowing the Arians a single church

at Alexandria, by claiming, in the other cities of the empire, a similar

toleration for his own party; a reply which might have appeared just

and moderate in the mouth of an independent prince. The entrance of

the archbishop into his capital was a triumphal procession; absence and

persecution had endeared him to the Alexandrians; his authority, which

he exercised with rigor, was more firmly established; and his fame

was diffused from ∆thiopia to Britain, over the whole extent of the

Christian world.

But the subject who has reduced his prince to the necessity of

dissembling, can never expect a sincere and lasting forgiveness; and

the tragic fate of Constans soon deprived Athanasius of a powerful and

generous protector. The civil war between the assassin and the only

surviving brother of Constans, which afflicted the empire above three

years, secured an interval of repose to the Catholic church; and the

two contending parties were desirous to conciliate the friendship of a

bishop, who, by the weight of his personal authority, might determine

the fluctuating resolutions of an important province. He gave audience

to the ambassadors of the tyrant, with whom he was afterwards accused of

holding a secret correspondence; and the emperor Constantius repeatedly

assured his dearest father, the most reverend Athanasius, that,

notwithstanding the malicious rumors which were circulated by their

common enemies, he had inherited the sentiments, as well as the throne,

of his deceased brother. Gratitude and humanity would have disposed the

primate of Egypt to deplore the untimely fate of Constans, and to

abhor the guilt of Magnentius; but as he clearly understood that the

apprehensions of Constantius were his only safeguard, the fervor of his

prayers for the success of the righteous cause might perhaps be somewhat

abated. The ruin of Athanasius was no longer contrived by the obscure

malice of a few bigoted or angry bishops, who abused the authority of a

credulous monarch. The monarch himself avowed the resolution, which he

had so long suppressed, of avenging his private injuries; and the first

winter after his victory, which he passed at Arles, was employed against

an enemy more odious to him than the vanquished tyrant of Gaul.

If the emperor had capriciously decreed the death of the most eminent

and virtuous citizen of the republic, the cruel order would have been

executed without hesitation, by the ministers of open violence or of

specious injustice. The caution, the delay, the difficulty with which

he proceeded in the condemnation and punishment of a popular bishop,

discovered to the world that the privileges of the church had already

revived a sense of order and freedom in the Roman government. The

sentence which was pronounced in the synod of Tyre, and subscribed by

a large majority of the Eastern bishops, had never been expressly

repealed; and as Athanasius had been once degraded from his episcopal

dignity by the judgment of his brethren, every subsequent act might be

considered as irregular, and even criminal. But the memory of the firm

and effectual support which the primate of Egypt had derived from the

attachment of the Western church, engaged Constantius to suspend the

execution of the sentence till he had obtained the concurrence of the

Latin bishops. Two years were consumed in ecclesiastical negotiations;

and the important cause between the emperor and one of his subjects was

solemnly debated, first in the synod of Arles, and afterwards in the

great council of Milan, which consisted of above three hundred bishops.

Their integrity was gradually undermined by the arguments of the Arians,

the dexterity of the eunuchs, and the pressing solicitations of a prince

who gratified his revenge at the expense of his dignity, and exposed his

own passions, whilst he influenced those of the clergy. Corruption,

the most infallible symptom of constitutional liberty, was successfully

practised; honors, gifts, and immunities were offered and accepted as

the price of an episcopal vote; and the condemnation of the Alexandrian

primate was artfully represented as the only measure which could restore

the peace and union of the Catholic church. The friends of Athanasius

were not, however, wanting to their leader, or to their cause. With

a manly spirit, which the sanctity of their character rendered less

dangerous, they maintained, in public debate, and in private conference

with the emperor, the eternal obligation of religion and justice.

They declared, that neither the hope of his favor, nor the fear of his

displeasure, should prevail on them to join in the condemnation of an

absent, an innocent, a respectable brother. They affirmed, with apparent

reason, that the illegal and obsolete decrees of the council of Tyre had

long since been tacitly abolished by the Imperial edicts, the honorable

reestablishment of the archbishop of Alexandria, and the silence or

recantation of his most clamorous adversaries. They alleged, that his

innocence had been attested by the unanimous bishops of Egypt, and had

been acknowledged in the councils of Rome and Sardica, by the impartial

judgment of the Latin church. They deplored the hard condition of

Athanasius, who, after enjoying so many years his seat, his reputation,

and the seeming confidence of his sovereign, was again called upon to

confute the most groundless and extravagant accusations. Their language

was specious; their conduct was honorable: but in this long and

obstinate contest, which fixed the eyes of the whole empire on a single

bishop, the ecclesiastical factions were prepared to sacrifice truth

and justice to the more interesting object of defending or removing

the intrepid champion of the Nicene faith. The Arians still thought it

prudent to disguise, in ambiguous language, their real sentiments and

designs; but the orthodox bishops, armed with the favor of the people,

and the decrees of a general council, insisted on every occasion, and

particularly at Milan, that their adversaries should purge themselves

from the suspicion of heresy, before they presumed to arraign the

conduct of the great Athanasius.

But the voice of reason (if reason was indeed on the side of Athanasius)

was silenced by the clamors of a factious or venal majority; and the

councils of Arles and Milan were not dissolved, till the archbishop of

Alexandria had been solemnly condemned and deposed by the judgment of

the Western, as well as of the Eastern, church. The bishops who had

opposed, were required to subscribe, the sentence, and to unite in

religious communion with the suspected leaders of the adverse party. A

formulary of consent was transmitted by the messengers of state to

the absent bishops: and all those who refused to submit their private

opinion to the public and inspired wisdom of the councils of Arles and

Milan, were immediately banished by the emperor, who affected to execute

the decrees of the Catholic church. Among those prelates who led the

honorable band of confessors and exiles, Liberius of Rome, Osius of

Cordova, Paulinus of Treves, Dionysius of Milan, Eusebius of VercellÊ,

Lucifer of Cagliari and Hilary of Poitiers, may deserve to be

particularly distinguished. The eminent station of Liberius, who

governed the capital of the empire; the personal merit and long

experience of the venerable Osius, who was revered as the favorite of

the great Constantine, and the father of the Nicene faith, placed those

prelates at the head of the Latin church: and their example, either of

submission or resistance, would probable be imitated by the episcopal

crowd. But the repeated attempts of the emperor to seduce or to

intimidate the bishops of Rome and Cordova, were for some time

ineffectual. The Spaniard declared himself ready to suffer under

Constantius, as he had suffered threescore years before under his

grandfather Maximian. The Roman, in the presence of his sovereign,

asserted the innocence of Athanasius and his own freedom. When he was

banished to BerÊa in Thrace, he sent back a large sum which had been

offered for the accommodation of his journey; and insulted the court of

Milan by the haughty remark, that the emperor and his eunuchs might want

that gold to pay their soldiers and their bishops. The resolution of

Liberius and Osius was at length subdued by the hardships of exile and

confinement. The Roman pontiff purchased his return by some criminal

compliances; and afterwards expiated his guilt by a seasonable

repentance. Persuasion and violence were employed to extort the

reluctant signature of the decrepit bishop of Cordova, whose strength

was broken, and whose faculties were perhaps impaired by the weight of

a hundred years; and the insolent triumph of the Arians provoked some

of the orthodox party to treat with inhuman severity the character, or

rather the memory, of an unfortunate old man, to whose former services

Christianity itself was so deeply indebted.

The fall of Liberius and Osius reflected a brighter lustre on the

firmness of those bishops who still adhered, with unshaken fidelity,

to the cause of Athanasius and religious truth. The ingenious malice

of their enemies had deprived them of the benefit of mutual comfort and

advice, separated those illustrious exiles into distant provinces, and

carefully selected the most inhospitable spots of a great empire. Yet

they soon experienced that the deserts of Libya, and the most barbarous

tracts of Cappadocia, were less inhospitable than the residence of those

cities in which an Arian bishop could satiate, without restraint, the

exquisite rancor of theological hatred. Their consolation was derived

from the consciousness of rectitude and independence, from the applause,

the visits, the letters, and the liberal alms of their adherents, and

from the satisfaction which they soon enjoyed of observing the intestine

divisions of the adversaries of the Nicene faith. Such was the nice

and capricious taste of the emperor Constantius; and so easily was

he offended by the slightest deviation from his imaginary standard of

Christian truth, that he persecuted, with equal zeal, those who defended

the consubstantiality, those who asserted the similar substance, and

those who denied the likeness of the Son of God. Three bishops, degraded

and banished for those adverse opinions, might possibly meet in the same

place of exile; and, according to the difference of their temper, might

either pity or insult the blind enthusiasm of their antagonists, whose

present sufferings would never be compensated by future happiness.

The disgrace and exile of the orthodox bishops of the West were

designed as so many preparatory steps to the ruin of Athanasius himself.

Six-and-twenty months had elapsed, during which the Imperial court

secretly labored, by the most insidious arts, to remove him from

Alexandria, and to withdraw the allowance which supplied his popular

liberality. But when the primate of Egypt, deserted and proscribed by

the Latin church, was left destitute of any foreign support, Constantius

despatched two of his secretaries with a verbal commission to announce

and execute the order of his banishment. As the justice of the sentence

was publicly avowed by the whole party, the only motive which could

restrain Constantius from giving his messengers the sanction of a

written mandate, must be imputed to his doubt of the event; and to a

sense of the danger to which he might expose the second city, and the

most fertile province, of the empire, if the people should persist in

the resolution of defending, by force of arms, the innocence of their

spiritual father. Such extreme caution afforded Athanasius a specious

pretence respectfully to dispute the truth of an order, which he could

not reconcile, either with the equity, or with the former declarations,

of his gracious master. The civil powers of Egypt found themselves

inadequate to the task of persuading or compelling the primate to

abdicate his episcopal throne; and they were obliged to conclude

a treaty with the popular leaders of Alexandria, by which it was

stipulated, that all proceedings and all hostilities should be suspended

till the emperor's pleasure had been more distinctly ascertained. By

this seeming moderation, the Catholics were deceived into a false and

fatal security; while the legions of the Upper Egypt, and of Libya,

advanced, by secret orders and hasty marches, to besiege, or rather to

surprise, a capital habituated to sedition, and inflamed by religious

zeal. The position of Alexandria, between the sea and the Lake Mareotis,

facilitated the approach and landing of the troops; who were introduced

into the heart of the city, before any effectual measures could be taken

either to shut the gates or to occupy the important posts of defence.

At the hour of midnight, twenty-three days after the signature of the

treaty, Syrianus, duke of Egypt, at the head of five thousand soldiers,

armed and prepared for an assault, unexpectedly invested the church of

St. Theonas, where the archbishop, with a part of his clergy and people,

performed their nocturnal devotions. The doors of the sacred edifice

yielded to the impetuosity of the attack, which was accompanied with

every horrid circumstance of tumult and bloodshed; but, as the bodies of

the slain, and the fragments of military weapons, remained the next

day an unexceptionable evidence in the possession of the Catholics,

the enterprise of Syrianus may be considered as a successful irruption

rather than as an absolute conquest. The other churches of the city

were profaned by similar outrages; and, during at least four months,

Alexandria was exposed to the insults of a licentious army, stimulated

by the ecclesiastics of a hostile faction. Many of the faithful were

killed; who may deserve the name of martyrs, if their deaths were

neither provoked nor revenged; bishops and presbyters were treated with

cruel ignominy; consecrated virgins were stripped naked, scourged and

violated; the houses of wealthy citizens were plundered; and, under

the mask of religious zeal, lust, avarice, and private resentment

were gratified with impunity, and even with applause. The Pagans of

Alexandria, who still formed a numerous and discontented party, were

easily persuaded to desert a bishop whom they feared and esteemed. The

hopes of some peculiar favors, and the apprehension of being involved

in the general penalties of rebellion, engaged them to promise their

support to the destined successor of Athanasius, the famous George of

Cappadocia. The usurper, after receiving the consecration of an Arian

synod, was placed on the episcopal throne by the arms of Sebastian, who

had been appointed Count of Egypt for the execution of that important

design. In the use, as well as in the acquisition, of power, the tyrant,

George disregarded the laws of religion, of justice, and of humanity;

and the same scenes of violence and scandal which had been exhibited

in the capital, were repeated in more than ninety episcopal cities

of Egypt. Encouraged by success, Constantius ventured to approve the

conduct of his minister. By a public and passionate epistle, the emperor

congratulates the deliverance of Alexandria from a popular tyrant, who

deluded his blind votaries by the magic of his eloquence; expatiates on

the virtues and piety of the most reverend George, the elected bishop;

and aspires, as the patron and benefactor of the city to surpass the

fame of Alexander himself. But he solemnly declares his unalterable

resolution to pursue with fire and sword the seditious adherents of the

wicked Athanasius, who, by flying from justice, has confessed his guilt,

and escaped the ignominious death which he had so often deserved.

Chapter XXI: Persecution Of Heresy, State Of The Church.--Part VI.

Athanasius had indeed escaped from the most imminent dangers; and the

adventures of that extraordinary man deserve and fix our attention. On

the memorable night when the church of St. Theonas was invested by the

troops of Syrianus, the archbishop, seated on his throne, expected,

with calm and intrepid dignity, the approach of death. While the public

devotion was interrupted by shouts of rage and cries of terror,

he animated his trembling congregation to express their religious

confidence, by chanting one of the psalms of David which celebrates

the triumph of the God of IsrÊl over the haughty and impious tyrant

of Egypt. The doors were at length burst open: a cloud of arrows was

discharged among the people; the soldiers, with drawn swords, rushed

forwards into the sanctuary; and the dreadful gleam of their arms was

reflected by the holy luminaries which burnt round the altar. Athanasius

still rejected the pious importunity of the monks and presbyters, who

were attached to his person; and nobly refused to desert his episcopal

station, till he had dismissed in safety the last of the congregation.

The darkness and tumult of the night favored the retreat of the

archbishop; and though he was oppressed by the waves of an agitated

multitude, though he was thrown to the ground, and left without sense or

motion, he still recovered his undaunted courage, and eluded the eager

search of the soldiers, who were instructed by their Arian guides,

that the head of Athanasius would be the most acceptable present to the

emperor. From that moment the primate of Egypt disappeared from the eyes

of his enemies, and remained above six years concealed in impenetrable

obscurity.

The despotic power of his implacable enemy filled the whole extent of

the Roman world; and the exasperated monarch had endeavored, by a very

pressing epistle to the Christian princes of Ethiopia, * to exclude

Athanasius from the most remote and sequestered regions of the earth.

Counts, prÊfects, tribunes, whole armies, were successively employed to

pursue a bishop and a fugitive; the vigilance of the civil and military

powers was excited by the Imperial edicts; liberal rewards were promised

to the man who should produce Athanasius, either alive or dead; and the

most severe penalties were denounced against those who should dare to

protect the public enemy. But the deserts of Thebais were now peopled by

a race of wild, yet submissive fanatics, who preferred the commands of

their abbot to the laws of their sovereign. The numerous disciples of

Antony and Pachomius received the fugitive primate as their father,

admired the patience and humility with which he conformed to their

strictest institutions, collected every word which dropped from his lips

as the genuine effusions of inspired wisdom; and persuaded themselves

that their prayers, their fasts, and their vigils, were less meritorious

than the zeal which they expressed, and the dangers which they braved,

in the defence of truth and innocence. The monasteries of Egypt were

seated in lonely and desolate places, on the summit of mountains, or in

the islands of the Nile; and the sacred horn or trumpet of Tabenne

was the well-known signal which assembled several thousand robust and

determined monks, who, for the most part, had been the peasants of the

adjacent country. When their dark retreats were invaded by a military

force, which it was impossible to resist, they silently stretched out

their necks to the executioner; and supported their national character,

that tortures could never wrest from an Egyptian the confession of

a secret which he was resolved not to disclose. The archbishop of

Alexandria, for whose safety they eagerly devoted their lives, was

lost among a uniform and well-disciplined multitude; and on the nearer

approach of danger, he was swiftly removed, by their officious hands,

from one place of concealment to another, till he reached the formidable

deserts, which the gloomy and credulous temper of superstition had

peopled with dÊmons and savage monsters. The retirement of Athanasius,

which ended only with the life of Constantius, was spent, for the most

part, in the society of the monks, who faithfully served him as guards,

as secretaries, and as messengers; but the importance of maintaining a

more intimate connection with the Catholic party tempted him, whenever

the diligence of the pursuit was abated, to emerge from the desert,

to introduce himself into Alexandria, and to trust his person to the

discretion of his friends and adherents. His various adventures might

have furnished the subject of a very entertaining romance. He was once

secreted in a dry cistern, which he had scarcely left before he was

betrayed by the treachery of a female slave; and he was once concealed

in a still more extraordinary asylum, the house of a virgin, only twenty

years of age, and who was celebrated in the whole city for her exquisite

beauty. At the hour of midnight, as she related the story many years

afterwards, she was surprised by the appearance of the archbishop in a

loose undress, who, advancing with hasty steps, conjured her to afford

him the protection which he had been directed by a celestial vision to

seek under her hospitable roof. The pious maid accepted and preserved

the sacred pledge which was intrusted to her prudence and courage.

Without imparting the secret to any one, she instantly conducted

Athanasius into her most secret chamber, and watched over his safety

with the tenderness of a friend and the assiduity of a servant. As

long as the danger continued, she regularly supplied him with books and

provisions, washed his feet, managed his correspondence, and dexterously

concealed from the eye of suspicion this familiar and solitary

intercourse between a saint whose character required the most

unblemished chastity, and a female whose charms might excite the most

dangerous emotions. During the six years of persecution and exile,

Athanasius repeated his visits to his fair and faithful companion; and

the formal declaration, that he saw the councils of Rimini and Seleucia,

forces us to believe that he was secretly present at the time and place

of their convocation. The advantage of personally negotiating with his

friends, and of observing and improving the divisions of his enemies,

might justify, in a prudent statesman, so bold and dangerous an

enterprise: and Alexandria was connected by trade and navigation with

every seaport of the Mediterranean. From the depth of his inaccessible

retreat the intrepid primate waged an incessant and offensive war

against the protector of the Arians; and his seasonable writings, which

were diligently circulated and eagerly perused, contributed to unite and

animate the orthodox party. In his public apologies, which he addressed

to the emperor himself, he sometimes affected the praise of moderation;

whilst at the same time, in secret and vehement invectives, he exposed

Constantius as a weak and wicked prince, the executioner of his family,

the tyrant of the republic, and the Antichrist of the church. In the

height of his prosperity, the victorious monarch, who had chastised the

rashness of Gallus, and suppressed the revolt of Sylvanus, who had taken

the diadem from the head of Vetranio, and vanquished in the field the

legions of Magnentius, received from an invisible hand a wound, which he

could neither heal nor revenge; and the son of Constantine was the

first of the Christian princes who experienced the strength of those

principles, which, in the cause of religion, could resist the most

violent exertions of the civil power.

The persecution of Athanasius, and of so many respectable bishops, who

suffered for the truth of their opinions, or at least for the integrity

of their conscience, was a just subject of indignation and discontent

to all Christians, except those who were blindly devoted to the Arian

faction. The people regretted the loss of their faithful pastors, whose

banishment was usually followed by the intrusion of a stranger into the

episcopal chair; and loudly complained, that the right of election was

violated, and that they were condemned to obey a mercenary usurper,

whose person was unknown, and whose principles were suspected. The

Catholics might prove to the world, that they were not involved in

the guilt and heresy of their ecclesiastical governor, by publicly

testifying their dissent, or by totally separating themselves from

his communion. The first of these methods was invented at Antioch,

and practised with such success, that it was soon diffused over the

Christian world. The doxology or sacred hymn, which celebrates the glory

of the Trinity, is susceptible of very nice, but material, inflections;

and the substance of an orthodox, or an heretical, creed, may be

expressed by the difference of a disjunctive, or a copulative, particle.

Alternate responses, and a more regular psalmody, were introduced into

the public service by Flavianus and Diodorus, two devout and active

laymen, who were attached to the Nicene faith. Under their conduct

a swarm of monks issued from the adjacent desert, bands of

well-disciplined singers were stationed in the cathedral of Antioch, the

Glory to the Father, And the Son, And the Holy Ghost, was triumphantly

chanted by a full chorus of voices; and the Catholics insulted, by the

purity of their doctrine, the Arian prelate, who had usurped the throne

of the venerable Eustathius. The same zeal which inspired their songs

prompted the more scrupulous members of the orthodox party to form

separate assemblies, which were governed by the presbyters, till the

death of their exiled bishop allowed the election and consecration of a

new episcopal pastor. The revolutions of the court multiplied the number

of pretenders; and the same city was often disputed, under the reign

of Constantius, by two, or three, or even four, bishops, who exercised

their spiritual jurisdiction over their respective followers, and

alternately lost and regained the temporal possessions of the church.

The abuse of Christianity introduced into the Roman government new

causes of tyranny and sedition; the bands of civil society were torn

asunder by the fury of religious factions; and the obscure citizen,

who might calmly have surveyed the elevation and fall of successive

emperors, imagined and experienced, that his own life and fortune were

connected with the interests of a popular ecclesiastic. The example of

the two capitals, Rome and Constantinople, may serve to represent the

state of the empire, and the temper of mankind, under the reign of the

sons of Constantine.

I. The Roman pontiff, as long as he maintained his station and his

principles, was guarded by the warm attachment of a great people; and

could reject with scorn the prayers, the menaces, and the oblations of

an heretical prince. When the eunuchs had secretly pronounced the exile

of Liberius, the well-grounded apprehension of a tumult engaged them to

use the utmost precautions in the execution of the sentence. The capital

was invested on every side, and the prÊfect was commanded to seize the

person of the bishop, either by stratagem or by open force. The order

was obeyed, and Liberius, with the greatest difficulty, at the hour of

midnight, was swiftly conveyed beyond the reach of the Roman people,

before their consternation was turned into rage. As soon as they were

informed of his banishment into Thrace, a general assembly was convened,

and the clergy of Rome bound themselves, by a public and solemn oath,

never to desert their bishop, never to acknowledge the usurper FÊlix;

who, by the influence of the eunuchs, had been irregularly chosen and

consecrated within the walls of a profane palace. At the end of two

years, their pious obstinacy subsisted entire and unshaken; and

when Constantius visited Rome, he was assailed by the importunate

solicitations of a people, who had preserved, as the last remnant

of their ancient freedom, the right of treating their sovereign with

familiar insolence. The wives of many of the senators and most honorable

citizens, after pressing their husbands to intercede in favor of

Liberius, were advised to undertake a commission, which in their hands

would be less dangerous, and might prove more successful. The emperor

received with politeness these female deputies, whose wealth and dignity

were displayed in the magnificence of their dress and ornaments: he

admired their inflexible resolution of following their beloved pastor

to the most distant regions of the earth; and consented that the two

bishops, Liberius and FÊlix, should govern in peace their respective

congregations. But the ideas of toleration were so repugnant to the

practice, and even to the sentiments, of those times, that when the

answer of Constantius was publicly read in the Circus of Rome, so

reasonable a project of accommodation was rejected with contempt and

ridicule. The eager vehemence which animated the spectators in the

decisive moment of a horse-race, was now directed towards a different

object; and the Circus resounded with the shout of thousands, who

repeatedly exclaimed, "One God, One Christ, One Bishop!" The zeal of the

Roman people in the cause of Liberius was not confined to words alone;

and the dangerous and bloody sedition which they excited soon after the

departure of Constantius determined that prince to accept the submission

of the exiled prelate, and to restore him to the undivided dominion of

the capital. After some ineffectual resistance, his rival was expelled

from the city by the permission of the emperor and the power of the

opposite faction; the adherents of FÊlix were inhumanly murdered in the

streets, in the public places, in the baths, and even in the churches;

and the face of Rome, upon the return of a Christian bishop, renewed the

horrid image of the massacres of Marius, and the proscriptions of Sylla.

II. Notwithstanding the rapid increase of Christians under the reign of

the Flavian family, Rome, Alexandria, and the other great cities of the

empire, still contained a strong and powerful faction of Infidels, who

envied the prosperity, and who ridiculed, even in their theatres, the

theological disputes of the church. Constantinople alone enjoyed the

advantage of being born and educated in the bosom of the faith. The

capital of the East had never been polluted by the worship of idols;

and the whole body of the people had deeply imbibed the opinions, the

virtues, and the passions, which distinguished the Christians of

that age from the rest of mankind. After the death of Alexander, the

episcopal throne was disputed by Paul and Macedonius. By their zeal and

abilities they both deserved the eminent station to which they aspired;

and if the moral character of Macedonius was less exceptionable, his

competitor had the advantage of a prior election and a more orthodox

doctrine. His firm attachment to the Nicene creed, which has given Paul

a place in the calendar among saints and martyrs, exposed him to the

resentment of the Arians. In the space of fourteen years he was five

times driven from his throne; to which he was more frequently restored

by the violence of the people, than by the permission of the prince; and

the power of Macedonius could be secured only by the death of his rival.

The unfortunate Paul was dragged in chains from the sandy deserts of

Mesopotamia to the most desolate places of Mount Taurus, confined in

a dark and narrow dungeon, left six days without food, and at length

strangled, by the order of Philip, one of the principal ministers of the

emperor Constantius. The first blood which stained the new capital was

spilt in this ecclesiastical contest; and many persons were slain on

both sides, in the furious and obstinate seditions of the people. The

commission of enforcing a sentence of banishment against Paul had been

intrusted to Hermogenes, the master-general of the cavalry; but the

execution of it was fatal to himself. The Catholics rose in the defence

of their bishop; the palace of Hermogenes was consumed; the first

military officer of the empire was dragged by the heels through the

streets of Constantinople, and, after he expired, his lifeless corpse

was exposed to their wanton insults. The fate of Hermogenes instructed

Philip, the PrÊtorian prÊfect, to act with more precaution on a similar

occasion. In the most gentle and honorable terms, he required the

attendance of Paul in the baths of Zeuxippus, which had a private

communication with the palace and the sea. A vessel, which lay ready at

the garden stairs, immediately hoisted sail; and, while the people were

still ignorant of the meditated sacrilege, their bishop was already

embarked on his voyage to Thessalonica. They soon beheld, with surprise

and indignation, the gates of the palace thrown open, and the usurper

Macedonius seated by the side of the prÊfect on a lofty chariot, which

was surrounded by troops of guards with drawn swords. The military

procession advanced towards the cathedral; the Arians and the Catholics

eagerly rushed to occupy that important post; and three thousand one

hundred and fifty persons lost their lives in the confusion of the

tumult. Macedonius, who was supported by a regular force, obtained a

decisive victory; but his reign was disturbed by clamor and sedition;

and the causes which appeared the least connected with the subject of

dispute, were sufficient to nourish and to kindle the flame of civil

discord. As the chapel in which the body of the great Constantine had

been deposited was in a ruinous condition, the bishop transported those

venerable remains into the church of St. Acacius. This prudent and even

pious measure was represented as a wicked profanation by the whole party

which adhered to the Homoousian doctrine. The factions immediately flew

to arms, the consecrated ground was used as their field of battle; and

one of the ecclesiastical historians has observed, as a real fact, not

as a figure of rhetoric, that the well before the church overflowed with

a stream of blood, which filled the porticos and the adjacent courts.

The writer who should impute these tumults solely to a religious

principle, would betray a very imperfect knowledge of human nature; yet

it must be confessed that the motive which misled the sincerity of

zeal, and the pretence which disguised the licentiousness of passion,

suppressed the remorse which, in another cause, would have succeeded to

the rage of the Christians at Constantinople.

Chapter XXI: Persecution Of Heresy, State Of The Church.--Part VII.

The cruel and arbitrary disposition of Constantius, which did not always

require the provocations of guilt and resistance, was justly exasperated

by the tumults of his capital, and the criminal behavior of a faction,

which opposed the authority and religion of their sovereign. The

ordinary punishments of death, exile, and confiscation, were inflicted

with partial vigor; and the Greeks still revere the holy memory of two

clerks, a reader, and a sub-deacon, who were accused of the murder of

Hermogenes, and beheaded at the gates of Constantinople. By an edict of

Constantius against the Catholics which has not been judged worthy of a

place in the Theodosian code, those who refused to communicate with the

Arian bishops, and particularly with Macedonius, were deprived of the

immunities of ecclesiastics, and of the rights of Christians; they

were compelled to relinquish the possession of the churches; and were

strictly prohibited from holding their assemblies within the walls of

the city. The execution of this unjust law, in the provinces of Thrace

and Asia Minor, was committed to the zeal of Macedonius; the civil and

military powers were directed to obey his commands; and the cruelties

exercised by this Semi-Arian tyrant in the support of the Homoiousion,

exceeded the commission, and disgraced the reign, of Constantius. The

sacraments of the church were administered to the reluctant victims,

who denied the vocation, and abhorred the principles, of Macedonius.

The rites of baptism were conferred on women and children, who, for that

purpose, had been torn from the arms of their friends and parents; the

mouths of the communicants were held open by a wooden engine, while the

consecrated bread was forced down their throat; the breasts of tender

virgins were either burnt with red-hot egg-shells, or inhumanly

compressed between sharp and heavy boards. The Novatians of

Constantinople and the adjacent country, by their firm attachment to

the Homoousian standard, deserved to be confounded with the Catholics

themselves. Macedonius was informed, that a large district of

Paphlagonia was almost entirely inhabited by those sectaries. He

resolved either to convert or to extirpate them; and as he distrusted,

on this occasion, the efficacy of an ecclesiastical mission, he

commanded a body of four thousand legionaries to march against the

rebels, and to reduce the territory of Mantinium under his spiritual

dominion. The Novatian peasants, animated by despair and religious fury,

boldly encountered the invaders of their country; and though many of

the Paphlagonians were slain, the Roman legions were vanquished by an

irregular multitude, armed only with scythes and axes; and, except a few

who escaped by an ignominious flight, four thousand soldiers were left

dead on the field of battle. The successor of Constantius has expressed,

in a concise but lively manner, some of the theological calamities which

afflicted the empire, and more especially the East, in the reign of

a prince who was the slave of his own passions, and of those of his

eunuchs: "Many were imprisoned, and persecuted, and driven into

exile. Whole troops of those who are styled heretics, were massacred,

particularly at Cyzicus, and at Samosata. In Paphlagonia, Bithynia,

Galatia, and in many other provinces, towns and villages were laid

waste, and utterly destroyed."

While the flames of the Arian controversy consumed the vitals of the

empire, the African provinces were infested by their peculiar enemies,

the savage fanatics, who, under the name of Circumcellions, formed the

strength and scandal of the Donatist party. The severe execution of the

laws of Constantine had excited a spirit of discontent and resistance,

the strenuous efforts of his son Constans, to restore the unity of the

church, exasperated the sentiments of mutual hatred, which had first

occasioned the separation; and the methods of force and corruption

employed by the two Imperial commissioners, Paul and Macarius, furnished

the schismatics with a specious contrast between the maxims of the

apostles and the conduct of their pretended successors. The peasants who

inhabited the villages of Numidia and Mauritania, were a ferocious race,

who had been imperfectly reduced under the authority of the Roman laws;

who were imperfectly converted to the Christian faith; but who were

actuated by a blind and furious enthusiasm in the cause of their

Donatist teachers. They indignantly supported the exile of their

bishops, the demolition of their churches, and the interruption of their

secret assemblies. The violence of the officers of justice, who were

usually sustained by a military guard, was sometimes repelled with equal

violence; and the blood of some popular ecclesiastics, which had been

shed in the quarrel, inflamed their rude followers with an eager desire

of revenging the death of these holy martyrs. By their own cruelty and

rashness, the ministers of persecution sometimes provoked their fate;

and the guilt of an accidental tumult precipitated the criminals into

despair and rebellion. Driven from their native villages, the Donatist

peasants assembled in formidable gangs on the edge of the Getulian

desert; and readily exchanged the habits of labor for a life of idleness

and rapine, which was consecrated by the name of religion, and faintly

condemned by the doctors of the sect. The leaders of the Circumcellions

assumed the title of captains of the saints; their principal weapon, as

they were indifferently provided with swords and spears, was a huge and

weighty club, which they termed an Israelite; and the well-known sound

of "Praise be to God," which they used as their cry of war, diffused

consternation over the unarmed provinces of Africa. At first their

depredations were colored by the plea of necessity; but they soon

exceeded the measure of subsistence, indulged without control their

intemperance and avarice, burnt the villages which they had pillaged,

and reigned the licentious tyrants of the open country. The occupations

of husbandry, and the administration of justice, were interrupted; and

as the Circumcellions pretended to restore the primitive equality of

mankind, and to reform the abuses of civil society, they opened a secure

asylum for the slaves and debtors, who flocked in crowds to their holy

standard. When they were not resisted, they usually contented themselves

with plunder, but the slightest opposition provoked them to acts of

violence and murder; and some Catholic priests, who had imprudently

signalized their zeal, were tortured by the fanatics with the most

refined and wanton barbarity. The spirit of the Circumcellions was not

always exerted against their defenceless enemies; they engaged, and

sometimes defeated, the troops of the province; and in the bloody action

of Bagai, they attacked in the open field, but with unsuccessful valor,

an advanced guard of the Imperial cavalry. The Donatists who were taken

in arms, received, and they soon deserved, the same treatment which

might have been shown to the wild beasts of the desert. The captives

died, without a murmur, either by the sword, the axe, or the fire; and

the measures of retaliation were multiplied in a rapid proportion, which

aggravated the horrors of rebellion, and excluded the hope of mutual

forgiveness. In the beginning of the present century, the example of the

Circumcellions has been renewed in the persecution, the boldness, the

crimes, and the enthusiasm of the Camisards; and if the fanatics of

Languedoc surpassed those of Numidia, by their military achievements,

the Africans maintained their fierce independence with more resolution

and perseverance.

Such disorders are the natural effects of religious tyranny, but the

rage of the Donatists was inflamed by a frenzy of a very extraordinary

kind; and which, if it really prevailed among them in so extravagant a

degree, cannot surely be paralleled in any country or in any age. Many

of these fanatics were possessed with the horror of life, and the desire

of martyrdom; and they deemed it of little moment by what means, or

by what hands, they perished, if their conduct was sanctified by the

intention of devoting themselves to the glory of the true faith, and

the hope of eternal happiness. Sometimes they rudely disturbed the

festivals, and profaned the temples of Paganism, with the design of

exciting the most zealous of the idolaters to revenge the insulted

honor of their gods. They sometimes forced their way into the courts

of justice, and compelled the affrighted judge to give orders for their

immediate execution. They frequently stopped travellers on the public

highways, and obliged them to inflict the stroke of martyrdom, by the

promise of a reward, if they consented, and by the threat of instant

death, if they refused to grant so very singular a favor. When they were

disappointed of every other resource, they announced the day on

which, in the presence of their friends and brethren, they should east

themselves headlong from some lofty rock; and many precipices were

shown, which had acquired fame by the number of religious suicides.

In the actions of these desperate enthusiasts, who were admired by one

party as the martyrs of God, and abhorred by the other as the victims of

Satan, an impartial philosopher may discover the influence and the last

abuse of that inflexible spirit which was originally derived from the

character and principles of the Jewish nation.

The simple narrative of the intestine divisions, which distracted the

peace, and dishonored the triumph, of the church, will confirm the

remark of a Pagan historian, and justify the complaint of a venerable

bishop. The experience of Ammianus had convinced him, that the enmity of

the Christians towards each other, surpassed the fury of savage beasts

against man; and Gregory Nazianzen most pathetically laments, that the

kingdom of heaven was converted, by discord, into the image of chaos, of

a nocturnal tempest, and of hell itself. The fierce and partial writers

of the times, ascribing all virtue to themselves, and imputing all guilt

to their adversaries, have painted the battle of the angels and dÊmons.

Our calmer reason will reject such pure and perfect monsters of vice

or sanctity, and will impute an equal, or at least an indiscriminate,

measure of good and evil to the hostile sectaries, who assumed and

bestowed the appellations of orthodox and heretics. They had been

educated in the same religion and the same civil society. Their hopes

and fears in the present, or in a future life, were balanced in the

same proportion. On either side, the error might be innocent, the

faith sincere, the practice meritorious or corrupt. Their passions were

excited by similar objects; and they might alternately abuse the

favor of the court, or of the people. The metaphysical opinions of the

Athanasians and the Arians could not influence their moral character;

and they were alike actuated by the intolerant spirit which has been

extracted from the pure and simple maxims of the gospel.

A modern writer, who, with a just confidence, has prefixed to his own

history the honorable epithets of political and philosophical, accuses

the timid prudence of Montesquieu, for neglecting to enumerate, among

the causes of the decline of the empire, a law of Constantine, by which

the exercise of the Pagan worship was absolutely suppressed, and a

considerable part of his subjects was left destitute of priests,

of temples, and of any public religion. The zeal of the philosophic

historian for the rights of mankind, has induced him to acquiesce in

the ambiguous testimony of those ecclesiastics, who have too lightly

ascribed to their favorite hero the merit of a general persecution.

Instead of alleging this imaginary law, which would have blazed in

the front of the Imperial codes, we may safely appeal to the original

epistle, which Constantine addressed to the followers of the ancient

religion; at a time when he no longer disguised his conversion, nor

dreaded the rivals of his throne. He invites and exhorts, in the most

pressing terms, the subjects of the Roman empire to imitate the example

of their master; but he declares, that those who still refuse to open

their eyes to the celestial light, may freely enjoy their temples and

their fancied gods. A report, that the ceremonies of paganism were

suppressed, is formally contradicted by the emperor himself, who wisely

assigns, as the principle of his moderation, the invincible force of

habit, of prejudice, and of superstition. Without violating the sanctity

of his promise, without alarming the fears of the Pagans, the artful

monarch advanced, by slow and cautious steps, to undermine the irregular

and decayed fabric of polytheism. The partial acts of severity which

he occasionally exercised, though they were secretly promoted by a

Christian zeal, were colored by the fairest pretences of justice and the

public good; and while Constantine designed to ruin the foundations, he

seemed to reform the abuses, of the ancient religion. After the example

of the wisest of his predecessors, he condemned, under the most rigorous

penalties, the occult and impious arts of divination; which excited

the vain hopes, and sometimes the criminal attempts, of those who were

discontented with their present condition. An ignominious silence was

imposed on the oracles, which had been publicly convicted of fraud

and falsehood; the effeminate priests of the Nile were abolished; and

Constantine discharged the duties of a Roman censor, when he gave orders

for the demolition of several temples of Phnicia; in which every mode of

prostitution was devoutly practised in the face of day, and to the honor

of Venus. The Imperial city of Constantinople was, in some measure,

raised at the expense, and was adorned with the spoils, of the opulent

temples of Greece and Asia; the sacred property was confiscated; the

statues of gods and heroes were transported, with rude familiarity,

among a people who considered them as objects, not of adoration, but

of curiosity; the gold and silver were restored to circulation; and

the magistrates, the bishops, and the eunuchs, improved the fortunate

occasion of gratifying, at once, their zeal, their avarice, and their

resentment. But these depredations were confined to a small part of the

Roman world; and the provinces had been long since accustomed to

endure the same sacrilegious rapine, from the tyranny of princes and

proconsuls, who could not be suspected of any design to subvert the

established religion.

The sons of Constantine trod in the footsteps of their father, with more

zeal, and with less discretion. The pretences of rapine and oppression

were insensibly multiplied; every indulgence was shown to the

illegal behavior of the Christians; every doubt was explained to

the disadvantage of Paganism; and the demolition of the temples was

celebrated as one of the auspicious events of the reign of Constans and

Constantius. The name of Constantius is prefixed to a concise law, which

might have superseded the necessity of any future prohibitions. "It

is our pleasure, that in all places, and in all cities, the temples be

immediately shut, and carefully guarded, that none may have the power

of offending. It is likewise our pleasure, that all our subjects should

abstain from sacrifices. If any one should be guilty of such an act,

let him feel the sword of vengeance, and after his execution, let

his property be confiscated to the public use. We denounce the same

penalties against the governors of the provinces, if they neglect to

punish the criminals." But there is the strongest reason to believe,

that this formidable edict was either composed without being published,

or was published without being executed. The evidence of facts, and the

monuments which are still extant of brass and marble, continue to prove

the public exercise of the Pagan worship during the whole reign of the

sons of Constantine. In the East, as well as in the West, in cities, as

well as in the country, a great number of temples were respected, or at

least were spared; and the devout multitude still enjoyed the luxury of

sacrifices, of festivals, and of processions, by the permission, or

by the connivance, of the civil government. About four years after the

supposed date of this bloody edict, Constantius visited the temples of

Rome; and the decency of his behavior is recommended by a pagan orator

as an example worthy of the imitation of succeeding princes. "That

emperor," says Symmachus, "suffered the privileges of the vestal virgins

to remain inviolate; he bestowed the sacerdotal dignities on the nobles

of Rome, granted the customary allowance to defray the expenses of the

public rites and sacrifices; and, though he had embraced a different

religion, he never attempted to deprive the empire of the sacred worship

of antiquity." The senate still presumed to consecrate, by solemn

decrees, the divine memory of their sovereigns; and Constantine himself

was associated, after his death, to those gods whom he had renounced and

insulted during his life. The title, the ensigns, the prerogatives, of

sovereign pontiff, which had been instituted by Numa, and assumed

by Augustus, were accepted, without hesitation, by seven Christian

emperors; who were invested with a more absolute authority over the

religion which they had deserted, than over that which they professed.

The divisions of Christianity suspended the ruin of Paganism; and the

holy war against the infidels was less vigorously prosecuted by princes

and bishops, who were more immediately alarmed by the guilt and danger

of domestic rebellion. The extirpation of idolatry might have been

justified by the established principles of intolerance: but the hostile

sects, which alternately reigned in the Imperial court were mutually

apprehensive of alienating, and perhaps exasperating, the minds of

a powerful, though declining faction. Every motive of authority

and fashion, of interest and reason, now militated on the side of

Christianity; but two or three generations elapsed, before their

victorious influence was universally felt. The religion which had

so long and so lately been established in the Roman empire was still

revered by a numerous people, less attached indeed to speculative

opinion, than to ancient custom. The honors of the state and army

were indifferently bestowed on all the subjects of Constantine and

Constantius; and a considerable portion of knowledge and wealth and

valor was still engaged in the service of polytheism. The superstition

of the senator and of the peasant, of the poet and the philosopher, was

derived from very different causes, but they met with equal devotion

in the temples of the gods. Their zeal was insensibly provoked by the

insulting triumph of a proscribed sect; and their hopes were revived by

the well-grounded confidence, that the presumptive heir of the empire,

a young and valiant hero, who had delivered Gaul from the arms of the

Barbarians, had secretly embraced the religion of his ancestors.

Chapter XXII: Julian Declared Emperor.--Part I Julian Is Declared

Emperor By The Legions Of Gaul.--His March And Success.--The Death Of

Constantius.--Civil Administration Of Julian.

While the Romans languished under the ignominious tyranny of eunuchs

and bishops, the praises of Julian were repeated with transport in every

part of the empire, except in the palace of Constantius. The barbarians

of Germany had felt, and still dreaded, the arms of the young CÊsar; his

soldiers were the companions of his victory; the grateful provincials

enjoyed the blessings of his reign; but the favorites, who had opposed

his elevation, were offended by his virtues; and they justly considered

the friend of the people as the enemy of the court. As long as the fame

of Julian was doubtful, the buffoons of the palace, who were skilled in

the language of satire, tried the efficacy of those arts which they

had so often practised with success. They easily discovered, that his

simplicity was not exempt from affectation: the ridiculous epithets of

a hairy savage, of an ape invested with the purple, were applied to the

dress and person of the philosophic warrior; and his modest despatches

were stigmatized as the vain and elaborate fictions of a loquacious

Greek, a speculative soldier, who had studied the art of war amidst

the groves of the academy. The voice of malicious folly was at length

silenced by the shouts of victory; the conqueror of the Franks and

Alemanni could no longer be painted as an object of contempt; and the

monarch himself was meanly ambitious of stealing from his lieutenant

the honorable reward of his labors. In the letters crowned with laurel,

which, according to ancient custom, were addressed to the provinces, the

name of Julian was omitted. "Constantius had made his dispositions in

person; he had signalized his valor in the foremost ranks; his military

conduct had secured the victory; and the captive king of the barbarians

was presented to him on the field of battle," from which he was at

that time distant about forty days' journey. So extravagant a fable

was incapable, however, of deceiving the public credulity, or even of

satisfying the pride of the emperor himself. Secretly conscious that

the applause and favor of the Romans accompanied the rising fortunes of

Julian, his discontented mind was prepared to receive the subtle poison

of those artful sycophants, who colored their mischievous designs with

the fairest appearances of truth and candor. Instead of depreciating the

merits of Julian, they acknowledged, and even exaggerated, his popular

fame, superior talents, and important services. But they darkly

insinuated, that the virtues of the CÊsar might instantly be converted

into the most dangerous crimes, if the inconstant multitude should

prefer their inclinations to their duty; or if the general of a

victorious army should be tempted from his allegiance by the hopes of

revenge and independent greatness. The personal fears of Constantius

were interpreted by his council as a laudable anxiety for the public

safety; whilst in private, and perhaps in his own breast, he disguised,

under the less odious appellation of fear, the sentiments of hatred

and envy, which he had secretly conceived for the inimitable virtues of

Julian.

The apparent tranquillity of Gaul, and the imminent danger of the

eastern provinces, offered a specious pretence for the design which was

artfully concerted by the Imperial ministers. They resolved to disarm

the CÊsar; to recall those faithful troops who guarded his person and

dignity; and to employ, in a distant war against the Persian monarch,

the hardy veterans who had vanquished, on the banks of the Rhine, the

fiercest nations of Germany. While Julian used the laborious hours of

his winter quarters at Paris in the administration of power, which, in

his hands, was the exercise of virtue, he was surprised by the hasty

arrival of a tribune and a notary, with positive orders, from the

emperor, which they were directed to execute, and he was commanded not

to oppose. Constantius signified his pleasure, that four entire legions,

the CeltÊ, and Petulants, the Heruli, and the Batavians, should be

separated from the standard of Julian, under which they had acquired

their fame and discipline; that in each of the remaining bands three

hundred of the bravest youths should be selected; and that this numerous

detachment, the strength of the Gallic army, should instantly begin

their march, and exert their utmost diligence to arrive, before the

opening of the campaign, on the frontiers of Persia. The CÊsar foresaw

and lamented the consequences of this fatal mandate. Most of the

auxiliaries, who engaged their voluntary service, had stipulated, that

they should never be obliged to pass the Alps. The public faith of Rome,

and the personal honor of Julian, had been pledged for the observance

of this condition. Such an act of treachery and oppression would destroy

the confidence, and excite the resentment, of the independent warriors

of Germany, who considered truth as the noblest of their virtues, and

freedom as the most valuable of their possessions. The legionaries,

who enjoyed the title and privileges of Romans, were enlisted for the

general defence of the republic; but those mercenary troops heard with

cold indifference the antiquated names of the republic and of Rome.

Attached, either from birth or long habit, to the climate and manners of

Gaul, they loved and admired Julian; they despised, and perhaps hated,

the emperor; they dreaded the laborious march, the Persian arrows, and

the burning deserts of Asia. They claimed as their own the country which

they had saved; and excused their want of spirit, by pleading the sacred

and more immediate duty of protecting their families and friends.

The apprehensions of the Gauls were derived from the knowledge of the

impending and inevitable danger. As soon as the provinces were exhausted

of their military strength, the Germans would violate a treaty which had

been imposed on their fears; and notwithstanding the abilities and valor

of Julian, the general of a nominal army, to whom the public calamities

would be imputed, must find himself, after a vain resistance, either a

prisoner in the camp of the barbarians, or a criminal in the palace of

Constantius. If Julian complied with the orders which he had received,

he subscribed his own destruction, and that of a people who deserved

his affection. But a positive refusal was an act of rebellion, and

a declaration of war. The inexorable jealousy of the emperor, the

peremptory, and perhaps insidious, nature of his commands, left not any

room for a fair apology, or candid interpretation; and the dependent

station of the CÊsar scarcely allowed him to pause or to deliberate.

Solitude increased the perplexity of Julian; he could no longer apply to

the faithful counsels of Sallust, who had been removed from his office

by the judicious malice of the eunuchs: he could not even enforce his

representations by the concurrence of the ministers, who would have

been afraid or ashamed to approve the ruin of Gaul. The moment had been

chosen, when Lupicinus, the general of the cavalry, was despatched into

Britain, to repulse the inroads of the Scots and Picts; and Florentius

was occupied at Vienna by the assessment of the tribute. The latter, a

crafty and corrupt statesman, declining to assume a responsible part on

this dangerous occasion, eluded the pressing and repeated invitations

of Julian, who represented to him, that in every important measure, the

presence of the prÊfect was indispensable in the council of the prince.

In the mean while the CÊsar was oppressed by the rude and importunate

solicitations of the Imperial messengers, who presumed to suggest, that

if he expected the return of his ministers, he would charge himself with

the guilt of the delay, and reserve for them the merit of the execution.

Unable to resist, unwilling to comply, Julian expressed, in the most

serious terms, his wish, and even his intention, of resigning the

purple, which he could not preserve with honor, but which he could not

abdicate with safety.

After a painful conflict, Julian was compelled to acknowledge, that

obedience was the virtue of the most eminent subject, and that the

sovereign alone was entitled to judge of the public welfare. He issued

the necessary orders for carrying into execution the commands of

Constantius; a part of the troops began their march for the Alps;

and the detachments from the several garrisons moved towards their

respective places of assembly. They advanced with difficulty through the

trembling and affrighted crowds of provincials, who attempted to excite

their pity by silent despair, or loud lamentations, while the wives of

the soldiers, holding their infants in their arms, accused the desertion

of their husbands, in the mixed language of grief, of tenderness, and

of indignation. This scene of general distress afflicted the humanity

of the CÊsar; he granted a sufficient number of post-wagons to transport

the wives and families of the soldiers, endeavored to alleviate the

hardships which he was constrained to inflict, and increased, by the

most laudable arts, his own popularity, and the discontent of the exiled

troops. The grief of an armed multitude is soon converted into rage;

their licentious murmurs, which every hour were communicated from tent

to tent with more boldness and effect, prepared their minds for the

most daring acts of sedition; and by the connivance of their tribunes, a

seasonable libel was secretly dispersed, which painted in lively colors

the disgrace of the CÊsar, the oppression of the Gallic army, and the

feeble vices of the tyrant of Asia. The servants of Constantius were

astonished and alarmed by the progress of this dangerous spirit. They

pressed the CÊsar to hasten the departure of the troops; but they

imprudently rejected the honest and judicious advice of Julian; who

proposed that they should not march through Paris, and suggested the

danger and temptation of a last interview.

As soon as the approach of the troops was announced, the CÊsar went out

to meet them, and ascended his tribunal, which had been erected in a

plain before the gates of the city. After distinguishing the officers

and soldiers, who by their rank or merit deserved a peculiar attention,

Julian addressed himself in a studied oration to the surrounding

multitude: he celebrated their exploits with grateful applause;

encouraged them to accept, with alacrity, the honor of serving under

the eye of a powerful and liberal monarch; and admonished them, that

the commands of Augustus required an instant and cheerful obedience.

The soldiers, who were apprehensive of offending their general by an

indecent clamor, or of belying their sentiments by false and venal

acclamations, maintained an obstinate silence; and after a short

pause, were dismissed to their quarters. The principal officers were

entertained by the CÊsar, who professed, in the warmest language of

friendship, his desire and his inability to reward, according to their

deserts, the brave companions of his victories. They retired from the

feast, full of grief and perplexity; and lamented the hardship of

their fate, which tore them from their beloved general and their native

country. The only expedient which could prevent their separation was

boldly agitated and approved the popular resentment was insensibly

moulded into a regular conspiracy; their just reasons of complaint were

heightened by passion, and their passions were inflamed by wine; as,

on the eve of their departure, the troops were indulged in licentious

festivity. At the hour of midnight, the impetuous multitude, with

swords, and bows, and torches in their hands, rushed into the suburbs;

encompassed the palace; and, careless of future dangers, pronounced the

fatal and irrevocable words, Julian Augustus! The prince, whose anxious

suspense was interrupted by their disorderly acclamations, secured

the doors against their intrusion; and as long as it was in his power,

secluded his person and dignity from the accidents of a nocturnal

tumult. At the dawn of day, the soldiers, whose zeal was irritated

by opposition, forcibly entered the palace, seized, with respectful

violence, the object of their choice, guarded Julian with drawn swords

through the streets of Paris, placed him on the tribunal, and with

repeated shouts saluted him as their emperor. Prudence, as well as

loyalty, inculcated the propriety of resisting their treasonable

designs; and of preparing, for his oppressed virtue, the excuse

of violence. Addressing himself by turns to the multitude and to

individuals, he sometimes implored their mercy, and sometimes expressed

his indignation; conjured them not to sully the fame of their immortal

victories; and ventured to promise, that if they would immediately

return to their allegiance, he would undertake to obtain from the

emperor not only a free and gracious pardon, but even the revocation

of the orders which had excited their resentment. But the soldiers, who

were conscious of their guilt, chose rather to depend on the gratitude

of Julian, than on the clemency of the emperor. Their zeal was

insensibly turned into impatience, and their impatience into rage.

The inflexible CÊsar sustained, till the third hour of the day, their

prayers, their reproaches, and their menaces; nor did he yield, till he

had been repeatedly assured, that if he wished to live, he must consent

to reign. He was exalted on a shield in the presence, and amidst the

unanimous acclamations, of the troops; a rich military collar, which

was offered by chance, supplied the want of a diadem; the ceremony was

concluded by the promise of a moderate donative; and the new emperor,

overwhelmed with real or affected grief retired into the most secret

recesses of his apartment.

The grief of Julian could proceed only from his innocence; out his

innocence must appear extremely doubtful in the eyes of those who have

learned to suspect the motives and the professions of princes. His

lively and active mind was susceptible of the various impressions of

hope and fear, of gratitude and revenge, of duty and of ambition, of the

love of fame, and of the fear of reproach. But it is impossible for us

to calculate the respective weight and operation of these sentiments;

or to ascertain the principles of action which might escape the

observation, while they guided, or rather impelled, the steps of Julian

himself. The discontent of the troops was produced by the malice of his

enemies; their tumult was the natural effect of interest and of passion;

and if Julian had tried to conceal a deep design under the appearances

of chance, he must have employed the most consummate artifice without

necessity, and probably without success. He solemnly declares, in the

presence of Jupiter, of the Sun, of Mars, of Minerva, and of all the

other deities, that till the close of the evening which preceded his

elevation, he was utterly ignorant of the designs of the soldiers; and

it may seem ungenerous to distrust the honor of a hero and the truth of

a philosopher. Yet the superstitious confidence that Constantius was the

enemy, and that he himself was the favorite, of the gods, might prompt

him to desire, to solicit, and even to hasten the auspicious moment

of his reign, which was predestined to restore the ancient religion of

mankind. When Julian had received the intelligence of the conspiracy,

he resigned himself to a short slumber; and afterwards related to his

friends that he had seen the genius of the empire waiting with some

impatience at his door, pressing for admittance, and reproaching his

want of spirit and ambition. Astonished and perplexed, he addressed his

prayers to the great Jupiter, who immediately signified, by a clear and

manifest omen, that he should submit to the will of heaven and of the

army. The conduct which disclaims the ordinary maxims of reason, excites

our suspicion and eludes our inquiry. Whenever the spirit of fanaticism,

at once so credulous and so crafty, has insinuated itself into a

noble mind, it insensibly corrodes the vital principles of virtue and

veracity.

To moderate the zeal of his party, to protect the persons of his

enemies, to defeat and to despise the secret enterprises which were

formed against his life and dignity, were the cares which employed

the first days of the reign of the new emperor. Although he was firmly

resolved to maintain the station which he had assumed, he was still

desirous of saving his country from the calamities of civil war, of

declining a contest with the superior forces of Constantius, and

of preserving his own character from the reproach of perfidy and

ingratitude. Adorned with the ensigns of military and imperial pomp,

Julian showed himself in the field of Mars to the soldiers, who glowed

with ardent enthusiasm in the cause of their pupil, their leader,

and their friend. He recapitulated their victories, lamented their

sufferings, applauded their resolution, animated their hopes, and

checked their impetuosity; nor did he dismiss the assembly, till he had

obtained a solemn promise from the troops, that if the emperor of the

East would subscribe an equitable treaty, they would renounce any views

of conquest, and satisfy themselves with the tranquil possession of the

Gallic provinces. On this foundation he composed, in his own name,

and in that of the army, a specious and moderate epistle, which

was delivered to Pentadius, his master of the offices, and to his

chamberlain Eutherius; two ambassadors whom he appointed to receive the

answer, and observe the dispositions of Constantius. This epistle is

inscribed with the modest appellation of CÊsar; but Julian solicits in a

peremptory, though respectful, manner, the confirmation of the title of

Augustus. He acknowledges the irregularity of his own election, while

he justifies, in some measure, the resentment and violence of the troops

which had extorted his reluctant consent. He allows the supremacy of

his brother Constantius; and engages to send him an annual present of

Spanish horses, to recruit his army with a select number of barbarian

youths, and to accept from his choice a PrÊtorian prÊfect of approved

discretion and fidelity. But he reserves for himself the nomination of

his other civil and military officers, with the troops, the revenue,

and the sovereignty of the provinces beyond the Alps. He admonishes

the emperor to consult the dictates of justice; to distrust the arts of

those venal flatterers, who subsist only by the discord of princes;

and to embrace the offer of a fair and honorable treaty, equally

advantageous to the republic and to the house of Constantine. In this

negotiation Julian claimed no more than he already possessed. The

delegated authority which he had long exercised over the provinces of

Gaul, Spain, and Britain, was still obeyed under a name more independent

and august. The soldiers and the people rejoiced in a revolution which

was not stained even with the blood of the guilty. Florentius was a

fugitive; Lupicinus a prisoner. The persons who were disaffected to the

new government were disarmed and secured; and the vacant offices were

distributed, according to the recommendation of merit, by a prince who

despised the intrigues of the palace, and the clamors of the soldiers.

The negotiations of peace were accompanied and supported by the most

vigorous preparations for war. The army, which Julian held in readiness

for immediate action, was recruited and augmented by the disorders

of the times. The cruel persecutions of the faction of Magnentius had

filled Gaul with numerous bands of outlaws and robbers. They cheerfully

accepted the offer of a general pardon from a prince whom they could

trust, submitted to the restraints of military discipline, and

retained only their implacable hatred to the person and government of

Constantius. As soon as the season of the year permitted Julian to take

the field, he appeared at the head of his legions; threw a bridge over

the Rhine in the neighborhood of Cleves; and prepared to chastise the

perfidy of the Attuarii, a tribe of Franks, who presumed that they

might ravage, with impunity, the frontiers of a divided empire. The

difficulty, as well as glory, of this enterprise, consisted in a

laborious march; and Julian had conquered, as soon as he could penetrate

into a country, which former princes had considered as inaccessible.

After he had given peace to the Barbarians, the emperor carefully

visited the fortifications along the Rhine from Cleves to Basil;

surveyed, with peculiar attention, the territories which he had

recovered from the hands of the Alemanni, passed through BesanÁon, which

had severely suffered from their fury, and fixed his headquarters at

Vienna for the ensuing winter. The barrier of Gaul was improved and

strengthened with additional fortifications; and Julian entertained some

hopes that the Germans, whom he had so often vanquished, might, in his

absence, be restrained by the terror of his name. Vadomair was the only

prince of the Alemanni whom he esteemed or feared and while the subtle

Barbarian affected to observe the faith of treaties, the progress of his

arms threatened the state with an unseasonable and dangerous war. The

policy of Julian condescended to surprise the prince of the Alemanni

by his own arts: and Vadomair, who, in the character of a friend, had

incautiously accepted an invitation from the Roman governors, was seized

in the midst of the entertainment, and sent away prisoner into the heart

of Spain. Before the Barbarians were recovered from their amazement,

the emperor appeared in arms on the banks of the Rhine, and, once more

crossing the river, renewed the deep impressions of terror and respect

which had been already made by four preceding expeditions.

Chapter XXII: Julian Declared Emperor.--Part II.

The ambassadors of Julian had been instructed to execute, with the

utmost diligence, their important commission. But, in their passage

through Italy and Illyricum, they were detained by the tedious and

affected delays of the provincial governors; they were conducted by

slow journeys from Constantinople to CÊsarea in Cappadocia; and when

at length they were admitted to the presence of Constantius, they found

that he had already conceived, from the despatches of his own officers,

the most unfavorable opinion of the conduct of Julian, and of the Gallic

army. The letters were heard with impatience; the trembling messengers

were dismissed with indignation and contempt; and the looks, gestures,

the furious language of the monarch, expressed the disorder of his soul.

The domestic connection, which might have reconciled the brother and the

husband of Helena, was recently dissolved by the death of that princess,

whose pregnancy had been several times fruitless, and was at last fatal

to herself. The empress Eusebia had preserved, to the last moment of her

life, the warm, and even jealous, affection which she had conceived for

Julian; and her mild influence might have moderated the resentment of a

prince, who, since her death, was abandoned to his own passions, and to

the arts of his eunuchs. But the terror of a foreign invasion obliged

him to suspend the punishment of a private enemy: he continued his march

towards the confines of Persia, and thought it sufficient to signify the

conditions which might entitle Julian and his guilty followers to the

clemency of their offended sovereign. He required, that the presumptuous

CÊsar should expressly renounce the appellation and rank of Augustus,

which he had accepted from the rebels; that he should descend to his

former station of a limited and dependent minister; that he should vest

the powers of the state and army in the hands of those officers who were

appointed by the Imperial court; and that he should trust his safety to

the assurances of pardon, which were announced by Epictetus, a Gallic

bishop, and one of the Arian favorites of Constantius. Several months

were ineffectually consumed in a treaty which was negotiated at the

distance of three thousand miles between Paris and Antioch; and, as soon

as Julian perceived that his modest and respectful behavior served only

to irritate the pride of an implacable adversary, he boldly resolved

to commit his life and fortune to the chance of a civil war. He gave a

public and military audience to the quÊstor Leonas: the haughty

epistle of Constantius was read to the attentive multitude; and Julian

protested, with the most flattering deference, that he was ready to

resign the title of Augustus, if he could obtain the consent of those

whom he acknowledged as the authors of his elevation. The faint proposal

was impetuously silenced; and the acclamations of "Julian Augustus,

continue to reign, by the authority of the army, of the people, of the

republic which you have saved," thundered at once from every part of the

field, and terrified the pale ambassador of Constantius. A part of

the letter was afterwards read, in which the emperor arraigned the

ingratitude of Julian, whom he had invested with the honors of the

purple; whom he had educated with so much care and tenderness; whom he

had preserved in his infancy, when he was left a helpless orphan. "An

orphan!" interrupted Julian, who justified his cause by indulging his

passions: "does the assassin of my family reproach me that I was left an

orphan? He urges me to revenge those injuries which I have long studied

to forget." The assembly was dismissed; and Leonas, who, with some

difficulty, had been protected from the popular fury, was sent back to

his master with an epistle, in which Julian expressed, in a strain of

the most vehement eloquence, the sentiments of contempt, of hatred,

and of resentment, which had been suppressed and imbittered by the

dissimulation of twenty years. After this message, which might be

considered as a signal of irreconcilable war, Julian, who, some weeks

before, had celebrated the Christian festival of the Epiphany, made

a public declaration that he committed the care of his safety to the

Immortal Gods; and thus publicly renounced the religion as well as the

friendship of Constantius.

The situation of Julian required a vigorous and immediate resolution.

He had discovered, from intercepted letters, that his adversary,

sacrificing the interest of the state to that of the monarch, had again

excited the Barbarians to invade the provinces of the West. The position

of two magazines, one of them collected on the banks of the Lake of

Constance, the other formed at the foot of the Cottian Alps, seemed to

indicate the march of two armies; and the size of those magazines, each

of which consisted of six hundred thousand quarters of wheat, or rather

flour, was a threatening evidence of the strength and numbers of the

enemy who prepared to surround him. But the Imperial legions were still

in their distant quarters of Asia; the Danube was feebly guarded; and if

Julian could occupy, by a sudden incursion, the important provinces of

Illyricum, he might expect that a people of soldiers would resort to his

standard, and that the rich mines of gold and silver would contribute to

the expenses of the civil war. He proposed this bold enterprise to the

assembly of the soldiers; inspired them with a just confidence in

their general, and in themselves; and exhorted them to maintain

their reputation of being terrible to the enemy, moderate to their

fellow-citizens, and obedient to their officers. His spirited discourse

was received with the loudest acclamations, and the same troops which

had taken up arms against Constantius, when he summoned them to leave

Gaul, now declared with alacrity, that they would follow Julian to

the farthest extremities of Europe or Asia. The oath of fidelity was

administered; and the soldiers, clashing their shields, and pointing

their drawn swords to their throats, devoted themselves, with horrid

imprecations, to the service of a leader whom they celebrated as

the deliverer of Gaul and the conqueror of the Germans. This solemn

engagement, which seemed to be dictated by affection rather than by

duty, was singly opposed by Nebridius, who had been admitted to

the office of PrÊtorian prÊfect. That faithful minister, alone and

unassisted, asserted the rights of Constantius, in the midst of an armed

and angry multitude, to whose fury he had almost fallen an honorable,

but useless sacrifice. After losing one of his hands by the stroke of a

sword, he embraced the knees of the prince whom he had offended. Julian

covered the prÊfect with his Imperial mantle, and, protecting him from

the zeal of his followers, dismissed him to his own house, with less

respect than was perhaps due to the virtue of an enemy. The high office

of Nebridius was bestowed on Sallust; and the provinces of Gaul, which

were now delivered from the intolerable oppression of taxes, enjoyed

the mild and equitable administration of the friend of Julian, who was

permitted to practise those virtues which he had instilled into the mind

of his pupil.

The hopes of Julian depended much less on the number of his troops, than

on the celerity of his motions. In the execution of a daring enterprise,

he availed himself of every precaution, as far as prudence could

suggest; and where prudence could no longer accompany his steps, he

trusted the event to valor and to fortune. In the neighborhood of Basil

he assembled and divided his army. One body, which consisted of ten

thousand men, was directed under the command of Nevitta, general of the

cavalry, to advance through the midland parts of RhÊtia and Noricum.

A similar division of troops, under the orders of Jovius and Jovinus,

prepared to follow the oblique course of the highways, through the Alps,

and the northern confines of Italy. The instructions to the generals

were conceived with energy and precision: to hasten their march in close

and compact columns, which, according to the disposition of the ground,

might readily be changed into any order of battle; to secure themselves

against the surprises of the night by strong posts and vigilant guards;

to prevent resistance by their unexpected arrival; to elude examination

by their sudden departure; to spread the opinion of their strength, and

the terror of his name; and to join their sovereign under the walls

of Sirmium. For himself Julian had reserved a more difficult and

extraordinary part. He selected three thousand brave and active

volunteers, resolved, like their leader, to cast behind them every hope

of a retreat; at the head of this faithful band, he fearlessly plunged

into the recesses of the Marcian, or Black Forest, which conceals

the sources of the Danube; and, for many days, the fate of Julian was

unknown to the world. The secrecy of his march, his diligence, and

vigor, surmounted every obstacle; he forced his way over mountains and

morasses, occupied the bridges or swam the rivers, pursued his direct

course, without reflecting whether he traversed the territory of the

Romans or of the Barbarians, and at length emerged, between Ratisbon

and Vienna, at the place where he designed to embark his troops on

the Danube. By a well-concerted stratagem, he seized a fleet of light

brigantines, as it lay at anchor; secured a apply of coarse provisions

sufficient to satisfy the indelicate, and voracious, appetite of a

Gallic army; and boldly committed himself to the stream of the Danube.

The labors of the mariners, who plied their oars with incessant

diligence, and the steady continuance of a favorable wind, carried

his fleet above seven hundred miles in eleven days; and he had already

disembarked his troops at Bononia, * only nineteen miles from Sirmium,

before his enemies could receive any certain intelligence that he

had left the banks of the Rhine. In the course of this long and

rapid navigation, the mind of Julian was fixed on the object of his

enterprise; and though he accepted the deputations of some cities, which

hastened to claim the merit of an early submission, he passed before the

hostile stations, which were placed along the river, without indulging

the temptation of signalizing a useless and ill-timed valor. The banks

of the Danube were crowded on either side with spectators, who gazed on

the military pomp, anticipated the importance of the event, and diffused

through the adjacent country the fame of a young hero, who advanced

with more than mortal speed at the head of the innumerable forces of the

West. Lucilian, who, with the rank of general of the cavalry, commanded

the military powers of Illyricum, was alarmed and perplexed by the

doubtful reports, which he could neither reject nor believe. He had

taken some slow and irresolute measures for the purpose of collecting

his troops, when he was surprised by Dagalaiphus, an active officer,

whom Julian, as soon as he landed at Bononia, had pushed forwards with

some light infantry. The captive general, uncertain of his life or

death, was hastily thrown upon a horse, and conducted to the presence of

Julian; who kindly raised him from the ground, and dispelled the terror

and amazement which seemed to stupefy his faculties. But Lucilian had no

sooner recovered his spirits, than he betrayed his want of discretion,

by presuming to admonish his conqueror that he had rashly ventured,

with a handful of men, to expose his person in the midst of his enemies.

"Reserve for your master Constantius these timid remonstrances," replied

Julian, with a smile of contempt: "when I gave you my purple to kiss,

I received you not as a counsellor, but as a suppliant." Conscious that

success alone could justify his attempt, and that boldness only could

command success, he instantly advanced, at the head of three thousand

soldiers, to attack the strongest and most populous city of the Illyrian

provinces. As he entered the long suburb of Sirmium, he was received

by the joyful acclamations of the army and people; who, crowned with

flowers, and holding lighted tapers in their hands, conducted their

acknowledged sovereign to his Imperial residence. Two days were devoted

to the public joy, which was celebrated by the games of the circus;

but, early on the morning of the third day, Julian marched to occupy the

narrow pass of Succi, in the defiles of Mount HÊmus; which, almost in

the midway between Sirmium and Constantinople, separates the provinces

of Thrace and Dacia, by an abrupt descent towards the former, and

a gentle declivity on the side of the latter. The defence of this

important post was intrusted to the brave Nevitta; who, as well as the

generals of the Italian division, successfully executed the plan of the

march and junction which their master had so ably conceived.

The homage which Julian obtained, from the fears or the inclination of

the people, extended far beyond the immediate effect of his arms. The

prÊfectures of Italy and Illyricum were administered by Taurus and

Florentius, who united that important office with the vain honors of the

consulship; and as those magistrates had retired with precipitation to

the court of Asia, Julian, who could not always restrain the levity of

his temper, stigmatized their flight by adding, in all the Acts of

the Year, the epithet of fugitive to the names of the two consuls.

The provinces which had been deserted by their first magistrates

acknowledged the authority of an emperor, who, conciliating the

qualities of a soldier with those of a philosopher, was equally admired

in the camps of the Danube and in the cities of Greece. From his palace,

or, more properly, from his head-quarters of Sirmium and Naissus, he

distributed to the principal cities of the empire, a labored apology

for his own conduct; published the secret despatches of Constantius; and

solicited the judgment of mankind between two competitors, the one of

whom had expelled, and the other had invited, the Barbarians. Julian,

whose mind was deeply wounded by the reproach of ingratitude, aspired

to maintain, by argument as well as by arms, the superior merits of

his cause; and to excel, not only in the arts of war, but in those of

composition. His epistle to the senate and people of Athens seems to

have been dictated by an elegant enthusiasm; which prompted him to

submit his actions and his motives to the degenerate Athenians of his

own times, with the same humble deference as if he had been pleading,

in the days of Aristides, before the tribunal of the Areopagus. His

application to the senate of Rome, which was still permitted to bestow

the titles of Imperial power, was agreeable to the forms of the expiring

republic. An assembly was summoned by Tertullus, prÊfect of the city;

the epistle of Julian was read; and, as he appeared to be master of

Italy his claims were admitted without a dissenting voice. His oblique

censure of the innovations of Constantine, and his passionate invective

against the vices of Constantius, were heard with less satisfaction;

and the senate, as if Julian had been present, unanimously exclaimed,

"Respect, we beseech you, the author of your own fortune." An artful

expression, which, according to the chance of war, might be differently

explained; as a manly reproof of the ingratitude of the usurper, or as

a flattering confession, that a single act of such benefit to the state

ought to atone for all the failings of Constantius.

The intelligence of the march and rapid progress of Julian was speedily

transmitted to his rival, who, by the retreat of Sapor, had obtained

some respite from the Persian war. Disguising the anguish of his soul

under the semblance of contempt, Constantius professed his intention of

returning into Europe, and of giving chase to Julian; for he never spoke

of his military expedition in any other light than that of a hunting

party. In the camp of Hierapolis, in Syria, he communicated this design

to his army; slightly mentioned the guilt and rashness of the CÊsar; and

ventured to assure them, that if the mutineers of Gaul presumed to meet

them in the field, they would be unable to sustain the fire of their

eyes, and the irresistible weight of their shout of onset. The speech

of the emperor was received with military applause, and Theodotus,

the president of the council of Hierapolis, requested, with tears

of adulation, that his city might be adorned with the head of

the vanquished rebel. A chosen detachment was despatched away in

post-wagons, to secure, if it were yet possible, the pass of Succi;

the recruits, the horses, the arms, and the magazines, which had been

prepared against Sapor, were appropriated to the service of the civil

war; and the domestic victories of Constantius inspired his partisans

with the most sanguine assurances of success. The notary Gaudentius had

occupied in his name the provinces of Africa; the subsistence of

Rome was intercepted; and the distress of Julian was increased by

an unexpected event, which might have been productive of fatal

consequences. Julian had received the submission of two legions and a

cohort of archers, who were stationed at Sirmium; but he suspected, with

reason, the fidelity of those troops which had been distinguished by the

emperor; and it was thought expedient, under the pretence of the exposed

state of the Gallic frontier, to dismiss them from the most important

scene of action. They advanced, with reluctance, as far as the confines

of Italy; but as they dreaded the length of the way, and the savage

fierceness of the Germans, they resolved, by the instigation of one

of their tribunes, to halt at Aquileia, and to erect the banners of

Constantius on the walls of that impregnable city. The vigilance of

Julian perceived at once the extent of the mischief, and the necessity

of applying an immediate remedy. By his order, Jovinus led back a

part of the army into Italy; and the siege of Aquileia was formed with

diligence, and prosecuted with vigor. But the legionaries, who seemed to

have rejected the yoke of discipline, conducted the defence of the place

with skill and perseverance; invited the rest of Italy to imitate the

example of their courage and loyalty; and threatened the retreat of

Julian, if he should be forced to yield to the superior numbers of the

armies of the East.

But the humanity of Julian was preserved from the cruel alternative

which he pathetically laments, of destroying or of being himself

destroyed: and the seasonable death of Constantius delivered the Roman

empire from the calamities of civil war. The approach of winter could

not detain the monarch at Antioch; and his favorites durst not oppose

his impatient desire of revenge. A slight fever, which was perhaps

occasioned by the agitation of his spirits, was increased by the

fatigues of the journey; and Constantius was obliged to halt at the

little town of Mopsucrene, twelve miles beyond Tarsus, where he expired,

after a short illness, in the forty-fifth year of his age, and the

twenty-fourth of his reign. His genuine character, which was composed

of pride and weakness, of superstition and cruelty, has been fully

displayed in the preceding narrative of civil and ecclesiastical events.

The long abuse of power rendered him a considerable object in the eyes

of his contemporaries; but as personal merit can alone deserve the

notice of posterity, the last of the sons of Constantine may be

dismissed from the world, with the remark, that he inherited the

defects, without the abilities, of his father. Before Constantius

expired, he is said to have named Julian for his successor; nor does it

seem improbable, that his anxious concern for the fate of a young and

tender wife, whom he left with child, may have prevailed, in his last

moments, over the harsher passions of hatred and revenge. Eusebius, and

his guilty associates, made a faint attempt to prolong the reign of the

eunuchs, by the election of another emperor; but their intrigues were

rejected with disdain, by an army which now abhorred the thought of

civil discord; and two officers of rank were instantly despatched, to

assure Julian, that every sword in the empire would be drawn for his

service. The military designs of that prince, who had formed three

different attacks against Thrace, were prevented by this fortunate

event. Without shedding the blood of his fellow-citizens, he escaped

the dangers of a doubtful conflict, and acquired the advantages of a

complete victory. Impatient to visit the place of his birth, and the new

capital of the empire, he advanced from Naissus through the mountains

of HÊmus, and the cities of Thrace. When he reached Heraclea, at the

distance of sixty miles, all Constantinople was poured forth to receive

him; and he made his triumphal entry amidst the dutiful acclamations

of the soldiers, the people, and the senate. At innumerable multitude

pressed around him with eager respect and were perhaps disappointed

when they beheld the small stature and simple garb of a hero, whose

unexperienced youth had vanquished the Barbarians of Germany, and

who had now traversed, in a successful career, the whole continent of

Europe, from the shores of the Atlantic to those of the Bosphorus. A few

days afterwards, when the remains of the deceased emperor were landed

in the harbor, the subjects of Julian applauded the real or affected

humanity of their sovereign. On foot, without his diadem, and clothed in

a mourning habit, he accompanied the funeral as far as the church of

the Holy Apostles, where the body was deposited: and if these marks of

respect may be interpreted as a selfish tribute to the birth and dignity

of his Imperial kinsman, the tears of Julian professed to the world that

he had forgot the injuries, and remembered only the obligations, which

he had received from Constantius. As soon as the legions of Aquileia

were assured of the death of the emperor, they opened the gates of the

city, and, by the sacrifice of their guilty leaders, obtained an easy

pardon from the prudence or lenity of Julian; who, in the thirty-second

year of his age, acquired the undisputed possession of the Roman empire.

Chapter XXII: Julian Declared Emperor.--Part III.