Part 4 (1/2)
[Sidenote: Recall of Athanasius, 337.]
One of the first acts of the new Emperors was to restore the exiled bishops. Athanasius was released by the younger Constantine as soon as his father's death was known at Trier, and reached Alexandria in November 337, to the joy of both Greeks and Copts. Marcellus and the rest were restored about the same time, though not without much disturbance at Ancyra, where the intruding bishop Basil was an able man, and had formed a party.
[Sidenote: Character of Constantius.]
Let us now take a glance at the new Emperor of the East. Constantius had something of his father's character. In temperance and chast.i.ty, in love of letters and in dignity of manner, in social charm and pleasantness of private life, he was no unworthy son of Constantine; and if he inherited no splendid genius for war, he had a full measure of soldierly courage and endurance. Nor was the statesmans.h.i.+p entirely bad which kept the East in tolerable peace for four-and-twenty years. But Constantius was essentially a little man, in whom his father's vices took a meaner form.
Constantine committed some great crimes, but the whole spirit of Constantius was corroded with fear and jealousy of every man better than himself. Thus the easy trust in unworthy favourites, which marks even the ablest of his family, became in Constantius a public calamity. It was bad enough when the uprightness of Constantine or Julian was led astray, but it was far worse when the eunuchs found a master too weak to stand alone, too jealous to endure a faithful counsellor, too easy-tempered and too indolent to care what oppressions were committed in his name, and without the sense of duty which would have gone far to make up for all his shortcomings. The peculiar repulsiveness of Constantius is not due to any flagrant personal vice, but to the combination of cold-blooded treachery with the utter want of any inner n.o.bleness of character. Yet he was a pious emperor, too, in his own way.
He loved the ecclesiastical game, and was easily won over to the Eusebian side. The growing despotism of the Empire and the personal vanity of Constantius were equally suited by the episcopal timidity which cried for an arm of flesh to fight its battles. It is not easy to decide how far he acted on his own likings and superst.i.tions, how far he merely let his flatterers lead him, or how far he saw political reasons for following them. In any case, he began with a thorough dislike of the Nicene council, continued for a long time to hold conservative language, and ended after some vacillation by adopting the vague h.o.m.oean compromise of 359.
[Sidenote: Second exile of Athanasius, Lent, 339.]
Eusebian intrigue was soon resumed. Now that Constantine was dead, a schism could be set on foot at Alexandria; so the Arians were encouraged to hold a.s.semblies of their own, and provided with a bishop in the person of Pistus, one of the original heretics deposed by Alexander. No fitter consecrator could be found for him than Secundus of Ptolemais, one of the two bishops who held out to the last against the council. The next move was the formal deposition of Athanasius by a council held at Antioch in the winter of 338. But there was still no charge of heresy--only old and new ones of sedition and intrigue, and a new argument, that after his deposition at Tyre he had forfeited all right to further justice by accepting a restoration from the civil power. This last was quite a new claim on behalf of the church, first used against Athanasius, and next afterwards for the ruin of Chrysostom, though it has since been made a pillar of the faith. Pistus was not appointed to the vacant see. The council chose Gregory of Cappadocia as a better agent for the rough work to be done. Athanasius was expelled by the apostate prefect Philagrius, and Gregory installed by military violence in his place. Scenes of outrage were enacted all over Egypt.
[Sidenote: Athanasius and Marcellus at Rome.]
Athanasius fled to Rome. Thither also came Marcellus of Ancyra, and ejected clerics from all parts of the East. Under the rule of Constans they might meet with justice. Bishop Julius at once took the position of an arbiter of Christendom. He received the fugitives with a decent reserve, and invited the Eusebians to the council they had already asked him to hold. For a long time there came no answer from the East. The old heretic Carpones appeared at Rome on Gregory's behalf, but the envoys of Julius were detained at Antioch till January 340, and at last dismissed with an unmannerly reply. After some further delay, a synod of about fifty bishops met at Rome the following autumn. The cases were examined, Marcellus and Athanasius acquitted, and it remained for Julius to report their decision to the Easterns.
[Sidenote: The letter of Julius.]
His letter is one of the ablest doc.u.ments of the entire controversy.
Nothing can be better than the calm and high judicial tone in which he lays open every excuse of the Eusebians. He was surprised, he says, to receive so discourteous an answer to his letter. But what was their grievance? If it was his invitation to a synod, they could not have much confidence in their cause. Even the great council of Nicaea had decided (and not without the will of G.o.d) that the acts of one synod might be revised by another. Their own envoys had asked him to hold a council, and the men who set aside the decisions of Nicaea by using the services of heretics like Secundus, Pistus and Carpones could hardly claim finality for their own doings at Tyre. Their complaint that he had given them too short a notice would have been reasonable if the appointed day had found them on the road to Rome. 'But this also, beloved, is only an excuse.' They had detained his envoys for months at Antioch, and plainly did not mean to come. As for the reception of Athanasius, it was neither lightly nor unjustly done. The Eusebian letters against him were inconsistent, for no two of them ever told the same story; and they were, moreover, contradicted by letters in his favour from Egypt and elsewhere. The accused had come to Rome when summoned, and waited for them eighteen months in vain, whereas the Eusebians had uncanonically appointed an utter stranger in his place at Alexandria, and sent him with a guard of soldiers all the way from Antioch to disturb the peace of Egypt with horrible outrages. With regard to Marcellus, he had denied the charge of heresy and presented a very sound confession of his faith.
The Roman legates at Nicaea had also borne witness to the honourable part he had taken in the council. Thus the Eusebians could not say that Athanasius and Marcellus had been too hastily received at Rome. Rather their own doings were the cause of all the troubles, for complaints of their violence came in from all parts of the East. The authors of these outrages were no lovers of peace, but of confusion. Whatever grievance they might have against Athanasius, they should not have neglected the old custom of writing first to Rome, that a legitimate decision might issue from the apostolic see. It was time to put an end to these scandals, as they would have to answer for them in the day of judgment.
[Sidenote: Criticism of it.]
Severe as the letter is, it contrasts well with the disingenuous querulousness of the Eusebians. Nor is Julius unmindful to press as far as possible the claims of the Roman see. His one serious mistake was in supporting Marcellus. No doubt old services at Nicaea counted heavily in the West. His confession too was innocent enough, being very nearly our so-called Apostles' Creed, here met for the first time in history.[12]
Knowing, however, what his doctrine was, we must admit that the Easterns were right in resenting its deliberate approval at Rome.
[Footnote 12: It has even been ascribed to Marcellus; but it seems a little older. Its apostolic origin is of course absurd. The legend cannot be traced beyond the last quarter of the fourth century.]
[Sidenote: Council of the dedication at Antioch (341).]
The Eusebians replied in the summer of 341, when ninety bishops met at Antioch to consecrate the Golden Church, begun by Constantine. The character of the council is an old question of dispute. Hilary calls it a meeting of saints, and its canons have found their way into the authoritative collections; yet its chief work was to confirm the deposition of Athanasius and to draw up creeds in opposition to the Nicene. Was it Nicene or Arian? Probably neither, but conservative. The Eusebians seem to have imitated Athanasius in pressing a creed (this time an Arianizing one) on unwilling conservatives, but only to have succeeded in making great confusion. This was a new turn of their policy, and not a hopeful one. Constantine's death indeed left them free to try if they could replace the Nicene creed by something else; but the friends of Athanasius could accept no subst.i.tute, and even the conservatives could hardly agree to make the Lord's divinity an open question. The result was twenty years of busy creed-making, and twenty more of confusion, before it was finally seen that there was no escape from the dilemma which had been decisive at Nicaea.
[Sidenote: The Lucianic creed (second of Antioch).]
The Eusebians began by offering a meagre and evasive creed, much like the confession of Arius and Euzoius, prefacing it with a declaration that they were not followers of Arius, but his independent adherents.
They overshot their mark, for the conservatives were not willing to go so far as this, and, moreover, had older standards of their own.
Instead, therefore, of drawing up a new creed, they put forward a work of the venerated martyr Lucian of Antioch. Such it was said to be, and such in the main it probably was, though the anathemas must have been added now. This Lucianic formula then is essentially conservative, but leans much more to the Nicene than to the Arian side. Its central clause declares the Son of G.o.d 'not subject to moral change or alteration, but the unvarying image of the deity and essence and power and counsel and glory of the Father,' while its anathemas condemn 'those who say that there was once _a time_ when the Son of G.o.d was not, or that he is a creature _as one of the creatures_.' These are strong words, but they do not in the least shut out Arianism. No doubt the phrase 'unvarying image of the essence' means that there is no change of essence in pa.s.sing from the Father to the Son, and is therefore logically equivalent to 'of one essence' (_h.o.m.oousion_); but the conservatives meant nothing more than 'of like essence' (_h.o.m.oiousion_), which is consistent with great unlikeness in attributes. The anathemas also are the Nicene with insertions which might have been made for the very purpose of letting the Arians escape. However, the conservatives were well satisfied with the Lucianic creed, and frequently refer to it with a veneration akin to that of Athanasius for the Nicene. But the wire-pullers were determined to upset it. The confession next presented by Theophronius of Tyana was more to their mind, for it contained a direct anathema against ”Marcellus and those who communicated with him.” It secured a momentary approval, but the meeting broke up without adopting it. The Lucianic formula remained the creed of the council.
[Sidenote: The fourth creed.]
Defeated in a free council, the wire-pullers a few months later a.s.sembled a cabal of their own, and drew up a fourth creed, which a deputation of notorious Arianizers presented to Constans in Gaul as the genuine work of the council. It seems to have suited them better than the Lucianic, for they repeated it with increasing series of anathemas at Philippopolis in 343, at Antioch the next year, and at Sirmium in 351. We can see why it suited them. While in substance it is less opposed to Arianism than the Lucianic, its wording follows the Nicene, even to the adoption of the anathemas in a weakened form. Upon the whole, it is a colourless doc.u.ment, which left all questions open.
[Sidenote: Constans demands a council.]
The wording of the creed of Tyana was a direct blow at Julius of Rome, and is of itself enough to show that its authors were no lovers of peace. But Western suspicion was already roused by the issue of the Lucianic creed. There could no longer be any doubt that the Nicene faith was the real object of attack. Before the Eastern envoys reached Constans in Gaul, he had already written to his brother (Constantine II.