Church History, Books Ten and Eleven

Rufinus to the Reader.

Thus far Eusebius has handed down to us the record of the things done in the Church. But the rest, which have followed in order down to the present time, which I have found either in the writings of our elders or which my own memory has touched, I shall add, as briefly as I am able, at the command of the devout Father (Chromatius), and in this too obeying him.

When at Alexandria, after Achillas, who had succeeded Peter the Martyr, Alexander had undertaken the priesthood, because there was peace and quiet for our people from the persecutions, and the glory of the Churches rejoiced in the merits of the Confessors: the prosperity of our affairs was disturbed by domestic strife. For a certain presbyter at Alexandria, Arius by name, a man religious more in appearance and outward form than in virtue, but shamelessly desirous of glory, praise, and novelty, began to put forward certain depraved notions concerning the faith of Christ, matters which had never before come into question: he attempted to cut off and separate the Son from that eternal and ineffable substance or nature of God the Father. This matter troubled very many in the Church.

But when Alexander the Bishop, gentle and quiet by nature, wished by repeated admonitions to call Arius back from his depraved undertaking and impious assertions, and yet the matter did not proceed according to his wish, because the contagion of the pestiferous assertion had already infected very many, spread not only at Alexandria, but also through other cities and provinces: believing it would be dangerous to dissemble in such matters, he made the affair known to very many of his fellow-priests. The question became more widely known. The report reached even the ears of the devout prince, since indeed he took care with all zeal and diligence for the things that concern us. Then he, on the advice of the priests, summoned an episcopal Council at the city of Nicaea, and there ordered Arius to appear before three hundred and eighteen Bishops sitting in session, and that judgment be given concerning his propositions and questions.

But in that Council also I think an admirable deed of the Prince should not be passed over in silence. For when Bishops had assembled from almost all places, and (as is wont to happen) had brought forward against one another certain quarrels for various causes, he was frequently interrupted by individuals: petitions were offered, faults were brought forward, and men gave their minds more to these matters than to that for which they had come. But he, seeing that the cause of the chief business was being frustrated by quarrels of this kind, set a fixed day on which each of the Bishops, if he seemed to have any complaint, should bring it forward. And when he had taken his seat, he received petitions from each: and holding them all together in his lap, without opening to see what was contained in them, he said to the Bishops: God has appointed you priests, and has given you power to judge us also, and therefore we are rightly judged by you. But you cannot be judged by men.

Therefore await among yourselves the judgment of God alone, and let whatever quarrels you have be reserved for that divine examination. For you have been given to us by God as gods, and it is not fitting that man should judge gods, but only He of whom it is written: "God stood in the assembly of the gods, and in the midst he discerns the gods". And therefore, setting these aside, decide without any contention of spirit those things which pertain to the faith of God. When he had said this, he ordered all the petitions of complaint to be burned together, lest the dissimulation of any priests should become known to any man. But when for many days the question concerning the faith was being turned over in the Council of Bishops, and some held different views, and vigorously favored the undertakings of Arius, yet there were more who abhorred the impious undertaking. And since in that same Council there was a great number of Confessor-priests, all were opposed to the novelties of Arius.

But there also favored him men skilled in disputations, and for that reason opposed to the simplicity of the faith.

How great a power simplicity of faith possesses, we recognize also from what is reported to have happened there. For when, on account of the zeal of the devout Emperor, priests of God had come together from every land, philosophers too and dialecticians, moved by report, very noble and highly esteemed, assembled. Among these a certain man distinguished in the dialectical art stirred up, day after day, contests of the greatest struggle with our Bishops, men not unskilled in dialectic themselves: and a great spectacle arose, learned and literary men gathering to listen. Yet the philosopher could by no means be refuted or constrained by anyone. For with such skill of speech did he meet the questions objected to him, that where he seemed most tightly bound, he would slip away like a slippery serpent.

But that God might show that the kingdom of God consists not in speech but in power, a certain one of the Confessors, a man of most simple nature, and knowing nothing else but Jesus Christ, and Him crucified, was present among the other Bishops who were listening. When he saw the philosopher insulting our people and boasting of his cunning art of disputation, he asked room of all: he wished to speak briefly with the philosopher. Then indeed our people, who knew the man's simplicity and lack of skill in speech, began to fear, and to suffer a kind of shame, lest perhaps holy simplicity should be made a laughingstock among clever men. Yet the old man persisted, and began his discourse thus. "In the name," said he, "of Jesus Christ, philosopher, hear what is true.

There is one God, who made heaven and earth, and who gave spirit to man, whom He had formed from the clay of the earth; He created all things that are seen and that are not seen by the power of His Word, and confirmed them by the sanctification of His Spirit. This Word and Wisdom, whom we call the Son, taking pity on human errors, was born of a Virgin, through the suffering of death freed us from perpetual death, and by His resurrection conferred upon us eternal life. Him we also expect to come as judge of all things that we do: do you believe this to be so, philosopher?" But he, as if he had never learned any speech of contradiction, was so stupefied by the power of the words, mute at everything, that he could answer only this, that it seemed so to him, and that nothing else was true than what had been said.

Then the old man said: "If you believe these things to be so, rise and follow me to the church, and receive the seal of this faith." And the philosopher, turning to his disciples, or to those who had gathered to listen, said: "Hear, O learned men, as long as the matter was conducted with me by words, I opposed words with words, and what was said I overturned by skill in speaking; but when instead of words power came forth from the mouth of the speaker, words could not resist power, nor could man resist God. And therefore if any of you was able to feel in these things that were said what I felt, let him believe Christ, and follow this old man, in whom God has spoken." Thus the philosopher, made a Christian, at last rejoiced that he had been conquered.

There was moreover at that Council also Paphnutius, a man of God, a bishop from the regions of Egypt, a confessor from among those whom Maximian had condemned to the mines, after having gouged out their right eyes and cut through the sinew of the left knee. But in him there was so great a grace of virtues that signs no less than those formerly done through the Apostles were done through him. For he put demons to flight by word alone, and healed the sick by prayer alone; he is even said to have restored sight to the blind, and to have recalled paralytics to soundness of body. Constantine held him in such veneration and affection that he would often summon him within the palace and embrace him, and would fondly kiss with eager kisses that very eye which had been gouged out in the confession of the faith.

Among their number, and even more eminent still, is said to have been Spiridion, bishop of Cyprus, a man from the very order of the prophets, so far as we too have learned from the narration of those who had seen him. This man, though set in the episcopate, remained a shepherd of sheep. One night, when thieves had come to the sheepfold, and had stretched out their wicked hands to make an opening for leading out the sheep, they were bound fast by certain invisible bonds, and remained until daylight as though handed over to torturers.

But when the elder, rising in the morning to lead his sheep to pasture, saw the young men hanging bound in the folds without human bonds, and had learned the cause of their offense, he released by his word those whom their deserts had bound; and lest their nocturnal labor should go for nothing, he said, "Take, O young men, one ram for yourselves, lest you seem to have come without cause—though it would have been better to have sought it by prayer than by theft." They also relate of him this other wondrous deed: he had a daughter named Irene, who, after serving him well, died a virgin. After her death a certain man came saying that he had entrusted a deposit to her. The father knew nothing of the matter. The whole house was searched, but what was sought was nowhere found. Yet the man who had made the deposit persisted, pressing his case with weeping and tears, and testified that he would bring about his own death unless he recovered what had been entrusted.

The old man, moved by his tears, hastened to his daughter's tomb, and called her by name. Then she answered from the tomb, "What do you wish, father?" "The deposit," he said, "where did you put it?" And she, indicating the place, said, "You will find it buried there." He returned home, and delivered to the claimant the thing found just as his daughter had answered from the tomb. But many other wondrous deeds of his are also told, which even now are celebrated on everyone's lips. Such men, then, still very numerous in those times, shone forth in the churches of the Lord, and most of them were present at that Council. But Athanasius also, at that same time deacon of Alexander, bishop of Alexandria, was present, aiding the old man greatly with his counsels. Meanwhile the assembly was held day by day, nor did they dare to decide easily or rashly on so great a matter.

Arius was frequently summoned into the Council, and by continual discussion his assertions were examined, and what ought to be held or determined against them was sought with the utmost deliberation. But after long and much discussion, it was agreed by all, and decreed as with one mouth and heart of all, that "homoousion" ought to be written—that is, that the Son should be confessed to be of the same substance with the Father—and this was pronounced as the firmest judgment of all. Only seventeen are said to have been at that time more inclined to favor the faith of Arius, affirming that the Son of God was created from outside, out of things not subsisting, and not begotten out of the very deity of the Father. The sentence of the priestly Council was reported to Constantine. He venerated it as though pronounced by God. He declared that if anyone should try to resist it, as coming against divine decrees, he would send him into exile.

Only six therefore, along with Arius, suffered themselves to be expelled; but the remaining eleven, having taken counsel among themselves, agreed to subscribe with hand alone, not with mind. The chief author of this pretense was Eusebius, bishop of Nicomedia. Meanwhile, with some subscribing in truth and others in pretense (as the outcome afterward showed), and with fixed decisions established on each and every ecclesiastical observance, the Council was dispersed. Below is written a copy of the exposition of faith of those who had assembled.

We believe in one God, the Father Almighty, maker of all things visible and invisible. And in one Lord our Jesus Christ, the Son of God, born of the Father, Only-begotten, that is, of the substance of the Father, God from God, light from light, true God from true God, born, not made, homoousios with the Father, that is, of the same substance with the Father: through whom all things were made, both in heaven and on earth. Who for us and for our salvation came down, and was incarnate, made man, suffered, and rose again on the third day, and ascended into the heavens: thence to come to judge the living and the dead. And in the Holy Spirit. But those who say, "There was a time when he was not," and "before he was born he was not," and that he was made out of things not subsisting, or out of another hypostasis or substance, and who declare the Son of God to be tropton, that is, convertible or mutable—these the catholic and apostolic Church anathematizes.

They decree furthermore that it be observed in the churches: That none of those who have mutilated themselves through impatience of lust should come into the clergy. II. And that no one recently taken from a Gentile life or manner of living, having received baptism, should be made a cleric before being more carefully examined. III. And that no bishop or other cleric should dwell with women who are strangers to him, except a mother, or sister, or aunt, or such persons as are of like necessary relation. IV. And that a bishop (if it can be done) be ordained by the bishops of the whole province. If this is difficult, certainly by not fewer than three; so, however, that the presence or authority of the metropolitan bishop especially be had. Without this they willed the ordination to be void. V. And that whomever another bishop has expelled from the church, whether cleric or layman, another should not receive him.

But lest this remedy, being sometimes done unjustly out of anger or contention (as is wont to happen), should be without recourse, they decree that in each province councils be held twice yearly by all the provincial bishops, and that judgment be made concerning such matters, so that if by chance something has been done unjustly by one, it may be corrected by the rest; if rightly, that it be confirmed by all. VI. And that at Alexandria and in the city of Rome the ancient custom be kept, that the one have charge of Egypt, the other of the suburbicarian churches. VII. And that if by chance, in the ordaining of a bishop, two or three dissent out of some contention, the authority of the rest, and especially of the metropolitan together with the others, should be held the stronger. VIII. And that the prerogative of honor anciently handed down to the bishop of Jerusalem be preserved, the dignity nonetheless of the metropolitan of that same province remaining. IX.

And that the Cathari (who among us are the Novatians), if by chance they be converted penitent to the Church, having confessed the ecclesiastical doctrines, ought to be received as clerics in their own order, but on the ordination given being confirmed. But if their bishop comes to our bishop, he ought to sit in the place of presbyters. But the name of bishop is to remain only with him who has always held the catholic faith, unless of his own will he should wish to honor him with such a title; or if it should please him, that he seek for him a vacant place of a bishop, this be in his own power. X. And that there be not two bishops in one city. XI. And if any have been indiscreetly advanced to the priesthood, and afterward have either confessed something criminal about themselves, or have been convicted by others, that they be cast out; and likewise if any of those who have lapsed, and were perhaps ordained through ignorance, are recognized, that they be cast out. XII.

And if any have lapsed in persecutions without torments, and do penance from the heart, let them be among the catechumens for five years, and for two years after this be joined with the faithful only in prayer; and thus afterward let them be received. XIII. But those who because of their confession had cast aside military service, and afterward returned to it, let these do penance for thirteen years, and afterward be received, provided they do penance from the heart. Yet it is within the power of the bishop to moderate this, if he sees their penance to be fruitful and earnest. XIV. Concerning those, however, who depart this life while doing penance, they decree that none be left without provision. If anyone, having received communion, should survive, he ought to complete the appointed times, or as the bishop shall see fit to moderate. XV. Concerning catechumens who have lapsed, they decreed that, being separated for three years from the prayer of the catechumens, they should afterward be received. XVI.

And that no one, whether bishop or other cleric, should aspire to pass from a lesser city to a greater church.

XVII. And that no cleric who, having abandoned his own church without any probable cause, wanders and roams about through other churches, be received into communion.

XVIII. And that no one, stealing away one who belongs to another, ordain him a cleric in his own church without the consent of him to whom he belongs.

XIX. And that no cleric receive either interest, or an increase of grain or wine—which is customary when given as new, whether sixfold or even double received: and if he should do so, he is to be cast out as guilty of shameful gain.

XX. And that deacons not be preferred to presbyters, nor sit in the assembly of presbyters, nor, in their presence, distribute the Eucharist, but only minister while they act. But if no presbyter is present, then at last it is lawful even for them to distribute; otherwise, if they act, they order them to be cast out.

XXI. And that the Paulianists, who are the Photinians, be rebaptized.

XXII. But also that deaconesses, since indeed they do not receive the laying on of hands, ought themselves also to be reckoned among the laity.

Therefore, when they had decreed concerning these matters, as the reverence of the divine laws had required, and had also handed down to the churches the ancient canon concerning the observance of Easter, by which no further variation should arise, all things being duly arranged, the peace and faith of the churches in the parts of the East and West were kept one and the same.

About the same time Helena, mother of Constantine, a woman incomparable in faith and religion of soul and singular magnificence, by right of whom Constantine both was and was believed to be her son, admonished by divine visions, went to Jerusalem, and there sought from the inhabitants the place in which the most sacred body of Christ had hung, fixed to the gibbet. This was difficult to find, because the ancient persecutors had set up in that place a statue of Venus, so that if any Christian wished to worship Christ in that spot, he might seem to be worshiping Venus. And on this account the place had become little frequented and almost given over to oblivion. But when (as we said above) the religious woman had hastened to the place pointed out to her by heavenly indication, casting out from it all that was profane and defiled, and clearing away the rubbish down to a great depth, she found three crosses in confused order.

But the joy at the gift found was disturbed by the indistinguishable character proper to each cross. There was present indeed also that title which had been written by Pilate in Greek, Latin, and Hebrew letters; but not even this proved clearly enough the marks of the Lord's gibbet. Hence now, human uncertainty being at a loss, divine testimony was sought. It happened that in that same city a certain leading woman of the place, worn down with grave sickness, lay half-dead. Macarius at that time was bishop of that church. When he saw the queen hesitating, and all who were present likewise, he said: "Bring here all the crosses that have been found, and God will now show us which one bore the Lord." And going in together with the queen and the people to her who lay ill, he poured out to God, on bended knees, a prayer of this kind.

"Thou, Lord, who through Thy only-begotten Son didst deign to bring salvation to mankind through the passion of the cross, and now, in these latest times, hast breathed into the heart of Thy handmaid the desire to seek out the blessed wood on which our salvation hung, show clearly from these three which was the cross unto the Lord's glory, and which stood for a servile punishment, so that this woman, who lies half alive, as soon as the saving wood touches her, may be called back from the gates of death to life."

And when she had said this, she applied the first, and it did nothing. She applied the second, and still nothing was accomplished. But when she applied the third, suddenly with eyes opened the woman rose up, and having recovered stability of strength, much more lively than when she had been well, she began to run through the whole house and to magnify the power of God. Thus by clear evidence the Queen, her vow fulfilled, built a magnificent temple on that spot where she had found the cross, with royal magnificence. She also carries to her son the nails with which the Lord's body had been fastened. From these he fashioned bridle-bits, which he used in war; and from others he is said to have had a helmet armed likewise for the uses of war. But part of the saving wood itself she brought to her son, and part she left in the place enclosed in silver caskets, which even now is kept there with careful veneration in memory.

The venerable Queen also left this token of a religious mind: it is said that she invited to a meal the virgins whom she found there consecrated to God, and cared for them with such devotion that she thought it unworthy that they should be served by servants, but herself, girded in the garb of a maidservant, set out the food with her own hands, offered the cup, poured water on their hands, and the Queen of the world and mother of the empire accounted herself a handmaid of the handmaids of Christ. And these things indeed were done at Jerusalem. Meanwhile Constantine, relying on piety, subdued by arms on his own soil the Sarmatians, Goths, and other barbarian nations, except those who had forestalled peace either by friendship or by surrender. And the more religiously and humbly he had subjected himself to God, the more did God subject all things to him.

He also sent letters suppliantly to Antony, the first inhabitant of the desert, as to one of the prophets, asking him to entreat the Lord on behalf of himself and his children. Thus he was eager to commend himself to God not only by his own merits and by his mother's religion, but also by the intercession of the saints. Since indeed we have made mention of so great a man as Antony, though I wished to set forth something of his virtues and manner of life and sobriety of mind—how, living in solitude, he had only the company of wild beasts, and, waging frequent triumphs over demons, pleased God above all mortals, and left splendid examples of his manner of life to monks even to this day—that little book excluded me from doing so, which was written by Athanasius and has also been published in the Latin tongue.

For this reason, omitting what has already been said by others, I shall record those things which, although they contain the truth of the deeds, a more obscure report has withheld from those who are placed far away.

In that division of the world which was celebrated by lot among the Apostles for preaching the word of God, when different provinces had fallen to different men, Parthia to Thomas, and Ethiopia to Matthew, and nearer India adjoining it is said to have been allotted by lot to Bartholomew. Between this and Parthia, but far more inland in its course, lies further India, inhabited by many and various languages and peoples, which, as being far removed, no ploughshare of Apostolic preaching had touched, yet which in the times of Constantine received the first seeds of the faith by some such occasion as this. A certain philosopher, Metrodorus, is said to have penetrated into further India for the sake of inspecting places and searching out the world. Invited by his example, a certain Meropius, a Tyrian philosopher, wished for a similar reason to visit India, having with him two young boys, whom, being kinsmen, he was instructing in liberal studies. Of these, the one who was younger was called Edesius, the other Frumentius.

Accordingly, when he had inspected and gained knowledge of the things on which his mind was intent, when the philosopher had begun to return, the ship on which he was sailing put in at a certain port for the sake of water or other necessities. It is the custom there among the barbarians, that whenever neighboring nations report that their treaty with the Romans has been disturbed, all who are found among them from the Romans are slain. The philosopher's ship is set upon: all are killed along with him alike. The boys, found under a tree studying and preparing their lessons, are spared by the pity of the barbarians, and are led to the king. Of these, he made the one, that is Edesius, his cupbearer. But Frumentius, whom he had found to be perceptive and prudent, he entrusted with his accounts and records. From this he was held in great honor and love by the king.

But when the king died, he left his wife with a young son as heir to the kingdom; and to the young men he gave free power to do as they wished. Yet the queen entreated them suppliantly, as one who had no one more faithful in the whole kingdom, that until the son grew up they should share with her the care of ruling the kingdom: and especially Frumentius, whose prudence would suffice to govern the kingdom. For the other simply showed pure faith and a sober mind. And while they were doing this, and Frumentius held the reins of the kingdom in his hands, with God stirring his mind and spirit, he began to inquire more anxiously whether there were any Christians among the Roman merchants, and to give them very great authority, and to advise them to hold assemblies in various places, to which they might gather according to Roman rite for the sake of prayer.

But he himself did these same things much more, and thus exhorted the rest, invited them with favor and benefits, provided whatever was needful, gave places for buildings and other necessities, and strove in every way that the seed of Christians might spring up there. But when the royal boy, for whom they administered the kingdom, had grown up, and everything had been completed and handed over faithfully, although the queen and her son detained and asked them much to remain, yet they returned to our world. And while Edesius hastened to Tyre to see again his parents and kinsfolk, Frumentius went to Alexandria, saying that it was not right to hide the Lord's work. Accordingly he set forth to the Bishop the whole matter as it had happened, and urged him to provide some worthy man, whom he might send as bishop, now that very many Christians had been gathered together, and churches built in the barbarian land.

Then indeed Athanasius (for he had recently undertaken the priesthood), considering more attentively and favorably the words and deeds of Frumentius, said in the council of priests: "And what other man shall we find such as this, in whom is the Spirit of God as in you, who could so fulfill these things?" And having conferred the priesthood upon him, he bade him return with the grace of the Lord to the place from which he had come. And when he had gone as Bishop to India, so great is said to have been the grace of powers given to him by God, that Apostolic signs were wrought through him, and an infinite number of barbarians were converted to the faith. From this, in the regions of India both Christian peoples and churches were made, and the priesthood began. We have learned that these things happened thus, not from popular opinion, but from the report of Edesius himself, who later became a presbyter of Tyre, who had earlier been the companion of Frumentius.

At the same time also the nation of the Iberians, which lies under the Pontic sky, received the covenants of the word of God, and faith in the kingdom to come. But a certain captive woman furnished the occasion of so great a good, who, being found among them, since she led a life sufficiently faithful and sober and chaste, and offered wakeful supplications to God all day and night, the very novelty of the thing began to be a matter of wonder to the barbarians, and they inquired more curiously what this meant for her. She, as the matter stood, simply confessed that she worshipped Christ as God by this rite. The barbarians marveled at nothing more from this than the novelty of the name. But (as usually happens) her very perseverance instilled in the women a certain curiosity, whether any benefit might be gained from such devotion.

It is said to be a custom among them, that if a small child, it is carried about by its mother through each house, so that if anyone knows some remedy from experience, he may bring it to the suffering child. And when a certain woman had carried her small child around through all the houses according to custom, and had found no remedy by visiting all the houses, she came also to the captive, so that, if she knew anything, she might show it. She testified that she knew nothing of human remedy, yet affirmed that her God Christ, whom she worshipped, could grant a salvation despaired of by men. And when she had laid the child upon her sackcloth, and had herself poured forth a prayer to the Lord over it, she restored the child healed to its mother. The report was carried to many, and the fame of the marvelous deed reached even the ears of the queen. She, afflicted with a certain very grievous bodily pain, was in the utmost despair.

She asks that the captive be brought to her. The captive refuses to go, lest she seem to presume more than her sex allowed.

The queen orders herself to be carried to the captive's little cell. When she likewise had been laid upon her sackcloth, with the name of Christ invoked, immediately after the prayer she made her rise up healthy and lively. And she teaches that Christ is God, the Son of the most high God, who conferred this salvation; and she counsels that he, whom she knows to be the author of her health and life, should be invoked. For it is he who distributes kingdoms to kings, and life to mortals.

But she, returning home with joy, revealed to her husband, who asked the cause of so sudden a healing, and when he, rejoicing for his wife's health, ordered gifts to be brought to the woman, she said: "Of these, O king, the captive deigns to accept nothing: she despises gold, she rejects silver, she is fed as if by food through fasting; this alone shall we give her as a gift, if we worship as God that Christ who healed me when she invoked him." At this the king was then rather slow, and put it off for a while, though often reminded by his wife, until it happened that one day, while he was hunting in the woods with his companions, the day was darkened with the thickest shadows, and, light being withdrawn through the horror of a foul night, the way was denied to his blind steps.

The companions wandered off, one this way, another that; he himself, alone, surrounded by the thickest darkness, did not know what to do, or which way to turn: when suddenly, anxious in despair of safety, this thought arose in his mind: If truly that Christ is God, whom the captive had foretold to his wife, let him now free him from this darkness, so that, all else being set aside, he might worship him alone from then on. As soon as he had vowed this, not yet in word but only in mind, the day, restored to the world, brought the king safe to the city. And he at once revealed the matter to the queen just as it had happened. He demands that the captive be summoned at once, and that she deliver to him the rite of worship: he affirms that he will worship no other God than Christ from now on.

The captive comes, teaches him God Christ: she reveals the rite of supplication and the manner of worship, so far as it was lawful for a woman to disclose these things. She advises, however, that a church be built, and describes its form. Accordingly the king, having summoned the people of the whole nation, sets forth from the beginning what had happened concerning himself and the queen, and teaches the faith, and, not yet initiated in the sacred rites, becomes the apostle of his own people. The men believe through the king, the women through the queen: and with all willing the same thing, a church is built with urgency: and now the circuit of the walls having been swiftly raised, the time came when the columns should be set in place.

And when the first or second had been erected, and they came to the third, all the machines and the strength of oxen and men being exhausted, when it had already been raised halfway to a slant, and the remaining part could not be raised by any machines, though the effort was repeated a second and third time and often more, it could not even be moved from its place for all the wearing effort. There was wonder among the whole people, the king's boldness grew faint: what should be done, all alike were ignorant.

But when, with the coming of night, all had withdrawn, and all mortals and the work itself ceased, the captive alone remained within, keeping vigil in prayer through the night: when behold, in the morning, the anxious king, entering with all his men, sees the column, which so many machines and so many people had not been able to move, raised up and poised suspended above its base, balanced, yet not set upon it, but hanging in the air to the space of about one foot. Then indeed all the people, beholding and glorifying God, bore witness by the testimony of the present miracle that the king's faith was true, and the captive's religion genuine. And behold, while all were still marveling and astonished, before their eyes the column, gradually, with no one touching it, was let down upon its base, and settled with the utmost balance. After this the remaining number of columns was raised with such ease, that all that remained were set in place that very day.

But after the church had been magnificently built, and the peoples thirsted with greater ardor for faith in God, an embassy of the whole nation is sent to the Emperor Constantine at the captive's counsel: the matter is set forth as it happened: they beg that he send priests, to fulfill the work of God begun among them. And he, having sent them with all joy and honor, rejoiced much more at this than if he had joined unknown nations and unknown kingdoms to the Roman Empire. These things were told to us as having so happened by the most faithful man Bacurius, king of that very nation, and among us Count of the Domestics (whose highest care was for both religion and truth), when he was staying with us, then Duke of the Palestinian frontier, at Jerusalem, living in great harmony. But let us return to what we began.

After the mother of the religious Prince, Helena, invested with the highest honors of the Roman kingdom, departed from this light, Constantia, then the widow of Licinius, was enjoying the consolations of her Augustan brother. It happened to her that a certain presbyter came into her acquaintance, secretly favoring the party of Arius. But at first he disclosed nothing at all of these matters to the sister of the Prince; but when much familiarity gave him opportunity, he gradually began to sprinkle in talk, saying that envy had been begotten against Arius, and that his Bishop had waged the contention out of private grudges, pierced by the goad of jealousy, because Arius was held in sufficient esteem by the people. By suggesting these and other things of this kind more frequently, he won over Constantia's mind to his side.

When she was about to die, and was visited by her brother, and addressed by him kindly and dutifully, she is said to have begged from him as a final favor that he receive the presbyter into familiarity, and hear what should be suggested to him by that man for his hope and salvation: that she herself, indeed, now departing from this light, cared for nothing; but that she was truly anxious for her brother's condition, lest perchance, on account of the punishment of the innocent, he should suffer the ruin of his kingdom. Having received these admonitions from his sister, and believing his sister's concern for him to be faithful, he lent his ear to the presbyter; and meanwhile he orders Arius to be summoned from exile, that he might set forth what he thought concerning the faith. Then that man wrote out a confession of faith, which indeed did not contain our meaning, yet seemed to contain our words and profession.

The Emperor indeed marveled, and thought that one and the same opinion was contained in it as in the exposition of the Council formerly held; yet in nothing did he relax the vigor of his mind, but again sent him back to the examination of a council: since indeed priests were being invited to gather from the whole world for the dedication of Jerusalem, writing these things to them concerning his case, so that, if they should approve his exposition of faith, and should discern either that he had then been circumvented through envy, as he asserted, or that he had now been corrected from his error, they might use a merciful judgment toward him (since indeed such was the moderation of the Council, that the sentence had been passed not against his person, but against the wickedness of the doctrines)—provided, however, that the assent of his Bishop Alexander also be given. And indeed by those who had first favored his undertakings, and had subscribed with dissimulation, he was easily received.

But when he had gone on to Alexandria, there his whole undertaking was frustrated: since indeed there is room for deceits among the ignorant, but for those who know, to attempt deceit is nothing other than to provoke laughter. Meanwhile, while these things were being vainly agitated at Alexandria, the venerable Augustus Constantine, in a suburban villa of Nicomedia, departed this life in the thirty-first year of his reign, having by testament written his children as heirs to the succession of the Roman world. At which time, since Constantius, to whom he had decreed the kingdom of the East, was not present, it is said that he secretly summoned the presbyter whom we mentioned above as commended by his sister, and thenceforth held familiarly, and handed over to him the testament which he had written, and adjured him under oath not to deliver it into any hands but those of Constantius when he should arrive.

To this man also the eunuchs who were in the Palace were favorable, and by artifice the news of the Emperor's death was suppressed until the presence of Constantius, many who attempted novelties being suppressed, and affairs remained safe and intact. But when Constantius had arrived, the presbyter restored the deposit. In gratitude for this service, the Emperor, desirous of the kingdom, became so bound to him that he who aspired to rule over all endured being ruled by him with equanimity. From this point, having bound the Emperor to himself, he began to suggest the restoration of Arius, and to persuade him to compel the priests who were unwilling to acquiesce.

At that time, at Alexandria, Alexander; at Jerusalem, Maximus the confessor; at Constantinople likewise Alexander, as we have learned from the writings of Athanasius, discharged the priesthood. But Eusebius, who was at Nicomedia, of whose dissimulation in subscribing we spoke above, having obtained ample occasion of time, and having been made familiar to the Prince through the presbyter, contrived to revolve all things again, and to render the acts of the Council void. He causes Arius, who was by no means still residing at Alexandria, to come; and by imperial edicts a council is again convoked at Constantinople. To it came chiefly those who followed Arius and Eusebius, who, having often met with Alexander, that he might receive Arius, yet accomplishing nothing, nevertheless refrained from doing him injury. At last, appointing him a day for the contest, they announce to him that either he himself should receive Arius, or, if he should resist, he should know that, once he had been driven out of the Church and thrust into exile, Arius would be received by another.

Then he, on the night before he was to be present at the appointed day, lying beneath the altar, and spending the whole night sleepless in prayer and tears, commended the cause of the Church to the Lord. And when the light had risen, and Alexander still did not cease from prayer, Eusebius, with all his followers, like the standard-bearer of a heretical war, went up to the house of Arius in the morning, and ordered him to follow quickly to the Church, declaring that Alexander, unless he acquiesced in person, would be expelled and yield his place.

Therefore the expectation of all was at its height, as to which side would give way—either the perseverance of Alexander, or the insistence of Eusebius and Arius. And while the minds of all were, as is usual in such a matter, held in suspense of expectation, Arius, proceeding to the Church, thronged by a crowd of bishops and people, turned aside to a public place for the necessity of nature. There, while he sat, his intestines and all his inward parts flowed out into the pit of the latrine: thus in such a place he paid a death worthy of his blasphemous and fetid mind. When this was afterward announced in the Church to Eusebius, and to those who together with him were wearying the holy and innocent man Alexander concerning the reception of Arius, they departed overcome by shame and covered with confusion. Then was fulfilled, to the glory of the Lord, the word which Alexander had proclaimed in his prayer to God, saying: Judge, Lord, between me and the threats of Eusebius and the violence of Arius.

But these things for the present held but a little shame. Yet the heretics, meeting among themselves, fearing lest, if the matter, as it had happened, should come fully to the Emperor Constantius, he might not only withdraw from their perfidy, in which he was craftily entangled and held, but might also decree something more severe by royal authority against the authors of his deception, arranged through the eunuchs, whom they already held ensnared in their perfidy, that the Emperor should learn of the death of Arius as composedly and jointly as possible, and hear nothing that might seem to indicate the vengeance of God. When these things had been so managed, they proceeded, as they had begun, with the cause of the faith.

So then at Alexandria, upon the death of Alexander, Athanasius had received the see. That he was indeed a man of keen intellect, and exceedingly vigilant in ecclesiastical affairs, had already become sufficiently known to the heretics at that time, when he had come to the Council of Nicaea with his bishop, the aged Alexander, by whose suggestions the deceits and frauds of the heretics were vigilantly detected. As soon, therefore, as they learned that he had been made bishop, reckoning, as the matter indicated, that their business would not proceed easily on account of his vigilance, they sought in every way to prepare against him machinations of deception. But it does not seem to me out of order to repeat a few things above concerning the origin of this man, and to recall what his upbringing had been from boyhood, just as we have received it from those who had lived their life together with him.

At the time when, at Alexandria, Bishop Alexander was keeping the day of Peter the martyr, when, after the solemnities were completed, he was awaiting his clergy to come to his banquet, in a place near the sea, he sees at a distance boys imitating, as is usual, a game of "Bishop," and those things which are customarily done in the churches. But when he watched the boys more intently for a longer time, he sees certain things even more secret and mystical being performed by them. Disturbed at once, he orders the clergy to be called to him, and shows them what he himself was seeing from a distance. Then he orders them to go, and to bring back to him, having seized them, all the boys. And when they were present, he asks them what game they had been playing, and what they had done, or how.

They, as is the way of such an age, being frightened, at first deny it, then disclose the matter in order, and confess that certain catechumens had been baptized by them through Athanasius, who in that boyish game had played the part of bishop. Then he, carefully inquiring from those who were said to have been baptized what they had been asked, and what they had answered, and likewise from the one who had asked, when he sees that everything accorded with the rite of our religion, having conferred with a council of clergy, is reported to have decided that, for those to whom, the questions and answers having been complete, water had been poured, baptism ought not to be repeated, but should be completed/supplied. But Athanasius, and those who in that game had seemed to hold the office of presbyters or ministers, having summoned their parents, he hands over, under invocation of God, to be nurtured by his Church.

In a short time, when Athanasius had been fully instructed by the Notary, and sufficiently by the Grammarian, he is immediately restored, as a faithful thing commended by his parents to the Lord, to the priest, and is nurtured like a certain Samuel in the temple of the Lord, and when that priest was going to his fathers in a good old age, he was chosen to bear after him the priestly ephod. But such and so great were this man's struggles in the Church for the integrity of the faith, that even of him that seems to have been said which is written: For I will show him how much he must suffer for my name. For against him the whole world conspired in persecutions, and the princes of the earth were stirred up: nations, kingdoms, armies gathered together against him. But he kept that divine utterance, saying: If camps should stand together against me, my heart will not fear: if war should rise up against me, in this will I hope.

But since his deeds were so many and so great that the greatness of the matters allows nothing to be passed over by me, while the multitude of the deeds compels me to omit very many, my uncertain mind wavers, being unable to deliberate what to keep, what to omit. And therefore we shall record the few things that pertain to the matter; the rest his fame will doubtless narrate, even though the things reported are lesser. For it will find nothing that it can add.

So then, when Constantius alone obtained the kingdom of the East, his brother Constantine having been slain by soldiers not far from Aquileia at the river Alsa, Constans, the brother of both, was governing the West quite diligently. For Constantius, royal by nature and spirit, while he indulged sufficiently in those first favorers of his reign, was cunningly deceived into perfidy through eunuchs by perverse priests: and with sufficiently intent zeal, he indulged their wicked contentions. But they, fearing lest perchance opportunity of approaching the king might sometime be given to Athanasius, and that through him he might be instructed according to the Scriptures concerning the truth of the faith which they were perverting, sought in every way to insinuate him to the prince's disfavor, and undertook to represent him as if he were guilty of all crimes and disgraces, until they showed the Emperor, brought in a box, a human arm, which they affirmed had been cut off from the body of a certain Arsenius by Athanasius for the sake of magical art.

But they also fabricated very many other criminal and disgraceful charges together with this.

For these reasons the Emperor orders that, a council having been convoked, Athanasius be condemned. And he orders it to be gathered at Tyre (having sent one of his Counts from his own side, with the aid also of Archelaus, then Count of the East, and likewise of him who governed the province of Phoenicia). Thither Athanasius is brought: the box with the human arm is carried about: envy and horror pervade not only religious but even base souls.

This Arsenius, whose arm was said to have been cut off, had once been a Reader of Athanasius, and, fearing correction for a fault, had withdrawn himself from public notice. Wicked men, thinking his hiding-place opportune for a scheme of this sort, at the beginning of the fabricated crime kept him hidden away with a certain man whom they had believed most trustworthy in their crimes. Nevertheless there reached him, hidden as he was, news of what crime was being charged against Athanasius in his name. And whether it was consideration of common humanity, or divine providence that impelled him, escaping secretly through the silence of night from his confinement, he sailed to Tyre, and on the day before the last day appointed for the pleading of the case, Arsenius presented himself to Athanasius, and made known to him the whole course of events, that he might have full knowledge of the matter. Athanasius ordered the man to remain at home, and that no one should know of his presence.

Meanwhile the Council is convened, to which almost all who were privy to the concocted calumny assembled with hostile and already prejudiced minds against Athanasius. At that same time Paphnutius the confessor, of whom we made mention above, was present, being aware of Athanasius’ innocence.

When he saw Maximus, Bishop of Jerusalem, who together with him had been a confessor, having had an eye gouged out and the tendon of his knee cut, but who out of excessive simplicity suspected nothing of the wickedness of the priests, sitting among the others whom the stain of the faction had joined together, he did not fear to approach the midst of the assembly, and said: "You, O Maximus, with whom I share one and the same mark of confession, with whom the loss of mortal light has alike procured a clearer vision of the divine light—you, I say, I will not allow to sit in the council of the malicious, and to enter in with those who do iniquity." And laying hold of him with his hand, he raised him up from their midst, and having instructed him concerning each matter, thereafter joined him to Athanasius in perpetual communion. But meanwhile the case is pleaded.

First is brought forward the accusation of a certain woman, who said that she had once received Athanasius into her lodging, and that by him, in the night, while suspecting nothing, she had suffered the force of corruption. Athanasius is ordered to be brought in for this; he enters with Timothy his presbyter, and instructs him that, after the woman had finished speaking, while he himself remained silent, Timothy should respond to what she had said. And when the woman had finished pleading what she had been taught, Timothy, turning to her, said: "Truly, woman, did I ever lodge with you, or did I do you violence, as you claim?" Then she (as the impudence of such women is wont) rebuking Timothy, said: "You, you did violence to me, you in that place defiled my chastity." And at the same time, turning to the judges, she began to call upon the faith of God that she spoke the truth.

Then a ridiculous shame took hold of all, that the conspiracy of the concocted crime had been so easily exposed, while he had remained silent. Yet the judges were not permitted to make inquiry concerning the woman, whence, or by whom, or how this calumny had been contrived, since the freedom of judgment lay with the accusers. From here they pass to another charge. A deed unheard of in all ages is produced. "This," they say, "is a matter in which no one can be deceived by tricks of words, for the thing is done before the eyes, with words set aside: this severed arm accuses you, Athanasius. This is the right hand of Arsenius; declare how, or for what purposes, you cut it off." Then he said: "But who among you knew Arsenius, that you may recognize this as truly his right hand?" Some rose up who said they knew Arsenius very well, among whom some were without knowledge of the conspiracy.

Then Athanasius begged the judges that they order his own man, whom the matter required, to be brought in. And when Arsenius had been brought in, his face uncovered, Athanasius said to the council and the judges: "This is Arsenius." And likewise lifting up his right hand, he said: "This is also his right hand, and this is his left. But as for this hand which they offer, ask them whence it comes." Then, as if a certain night and darkness had been poured over the eyes of the accusers, they did not know what to do, or where to turn. For the very witnesses who a little before had said they knew him confirmed that this indeed was Arsenius.

But because the council was being conducted not for the purpose of judging, but of crushing the man, a sudden uproar arose from all, and it was shouted that Athanasius was a sorcerer and deceived the eyes of onlookers, and that such a man ought by no means to be allowed to live any longer; and, an assault having been made, they prepared to tear him apart with their own hands. But Archelaus, who together with the others presided over the council by the emperor's command, snatched him from the hands of those tearing at him, led him out through hidden exits, and advised him to entrust his safety to flight, by which alone it could be secured. The council, nevertheless, meeting again, as though nothing at all had been discovered, holds Athanasius condemned on the charges brought against him, as though confessed.

And sending forth throughout the world the proceedings thus fabricated, they compelled, with the Emperor forcing it, the other bishops to consent to their crime.

From this point Athanasius is driven a fugitive over the whole world, nor was there any safe place left for him to hide. Tribunes, prefects, counts, and even armies were set in motion by imperial edicts to search him out. Rewards were offered to informers, if anyone should bring in Athanasius alive above all, or if that were not possible, at least his head. Thus with all the might of the realm they contended in vain against him whom God assisted. Meanwhile it is reported that for six continuous years he lay hidden in the pit of a cistern lacking water, so that he never saw the sun. But when he was betrayed by a maidservant, who alone was privy to the duties of her masters who had furnished him hiding, as though warned by the Spirit of God, on that very night on which men came with informers to seize him, after six years he moved to another place.

Thus those who had come were foiled, and, his hosts having fled, they took vengeance on the maidservant as a false informer.

But lest his hiding-places should become burdensome to anyone, and an occasion of calumny be sought against the innocent, considering nothing any longer safe for himself in the kingdom of Constantius, he withdrew as a fugitive to the domains of Constans. By him he was received with sufficient honor and religious respect. And Constans, having diligently examined the case which he had heard of by report, wrote to his brother that he had ascertained for certain that Athanasius, the priest of the most high God, was suffering flight and exile unjustly. He should therefore do well to restore him to his place without any molestation; if he were unwilling to do this, it would be his own concern to see that it be accomplished, by penetrating into the very heart of his kingdom and exacting most fitting punishments upon the authors of the crime.

Terrified by this letter (since he knew his brother capable of doing what he threatened), Constantius, with feigned kindness, orders Athanasius to come to him of his own accord, and, having lightly rebuked him, permits him to go in safety to his church. Yet the Emperor, admonished by his impious counselors, said: "It is no great thing, Athanasius, that the bishops ask of you, that you grant to the people who refuse to communicate with you one out of the many churches which are at Alexandria." Then he, with God suggesting it to him, found a ready plan for the occasion. "And what is there, O Emperor," he said, "that could be denied to you when you ask, since you have the power to command all things?

But there is one thing I ask, that you would also graciously grant my own little request." And when the Emperor promised that he would grant whatever he wished, however difficult, if only he would yield in this one matter, Athanasius said: "This is what I ask, that since here too (for the matter was being transacted at Antioch) there are people of ours who refuse to communicate with those others, they be permitted to hold one church." The Emperor, thinking this most fair and well worth granting, gladly promised it. But when he referred the matter to those whose counsel he used, they replied that they were unwilling either to receive a church here, or to give one there, since each one took more thought for himself than for the absent. Thus the Emperor, marveling at his prudence, ordered him to hasten quickly to take possession of his church.

But when the Emperor Constans, through the crime of Magnentius, was deprived at once of his kingdom and his life, again those old instigators began to rouse the hatred of the prince against Athanasius; and, having driven him from his church, they sent in his place a certain George, an associate of their perfidy and cruelty. For before this they had sent a certain Gregory. Again flight, again hiding, and edicts of the prince against Athanasius are set up in every place, promising rewards and honors to informers. He himself also, when he had come to the parts of the West to avenge his brother’s murder and to recover the kingdom, and, the tyrant having been destroyed, held sole possession of the summit of power, set about wearying the Western bishops, and through deceit compelling them to consent to the Arian heresy, the condemnation of Athanasius having first been secured, as though the removal of a most solid barrier.

For this reason a council of bishops is convoked at Milan: most were deceived. But Dionysius, Eusebius, Paulinus, Rhodanius, and Lucifer, proclaiming that there was deceit in the business, and asserting that the subscription against Athanasius was contrived for no other reason than to destroy the faith, were thrust into exile.

Hilarius also is joined with them, the others either being ignorant of, or not believing, the fraud.

But the outcome of the affair showed that it had been carried out by such design. For when these men had been removed from the scene, immediately a synod is gathered at Ariminum. There, following what the Orientals had drawn up at Seleucia, cunning and crafty men easily circumvented the simple and unskilled priests of the West, proposing to them in this manner: which they would rather worship and adore, the homoousion, or Christ? And since they were ignorant of the force of the word, of what "homoousion" meant, the term was brought into a kind of loathing and abhorrence, they affirming that they believed in Christ, not in the "homoousion." Thus the minds of many, except for a few who fell knowingly, were deceived, and going contrary to what the fathers had written at Nicaea, they decreed that the word "homoousion," as unknown and foreign to the Scriptures, be removed from the Exposition of Faith, and defiled their communion by association with heretics. At that time the face of the Church was foul and utterly disfigured.

For she was being laid waste not, as before, by outsiders, but by her own. One drove into exile, another was driven, and both belonged to the Church. Nowhere was there altar, nor sacrifice, nor libation; yet there was transgression and lapse, and the ruin of many. The punishment was alike, but the victory unequal. They suffered torment alike, but were not glorified alike: because the Church grieved even at the fall of him who had driven others to fall.

Liberius, therefore, who at that time held the priesthood in the city of Rome as successor of Julius, whom Marcus had preceded, and whom Silvester had preceded before him, is thrust into exile; and in his place Felix, his own deacon, is set up by the heretics. And he is stained not so much by difference of sect, as by connivance of communion and ordination.

At Jerusalem, indeed, Cyril, succeeding Maximus, having taken up the priesthood by an already disordered ordination, wavered sometimes in faith, more often in communion. At Alexandria, moreover, George quite shamelessly held the episcopate seized by force, so that he reckoned the authority entrusted to him more as that of one who pronounces judgments than of one who administers the priesthood in religious offices.

At Antioch, indeed, at different times many things were done in great confusion. For when Eudoxius had died, and many bishops of various cities were striving with utmost ambition for that see, at last they transferred to it Meletius from Sebastia, a city of Armenia, contrary to the decrees of the council. Yet he himself was again thrust into exile by them, because, contrary to their expectation, he began to preach in the church not the doctrine of Arius, but our faith. A great multitude of the people, following him when he was driven from his see, was thereby separated from the society of the heretics.

Meanwhile, that overrich malice might sometime rage even against itself, the priests and people who, under Arius as leader, had first been torn away from the Church, are now split again into three sects and parties. For those (whom we had said a little above did not acquiesce in the pretenses of Eusebius and the rest, and had endured exile with Arius) afterward, even when Arius himself returned from exile, refused to communicate with him, because he had communicated, with a feigned confession, with those who confessed the Son to be of the very substance of God the Father: since they themselves affirmed, with sufficiently free—or rather impudent—blasphemy, what Arius had first taught: that the Son was created and made out of things not existing, and was not begotten.

This same doctrine a certain Aetius, after their death, asserted, and after Aetius, Eunomius asserted it more strongly and widely—a man leprous in body and soul, corrupted within and without by the disease of jaundice, yet exceedingly powerful in the dialectical art, who wrote very many things against our faith, and gave to his followers the rules of disputation. From him the heresy is even now called Eunomian. There was also another, named Macedonius, whom they had set up as bishop at Constantinople after our men were expelled—or rather slain—because he confessed the Son to be like the Father, though he blasphemed the Holy Spirit just as they did; yet he is expelled by them, because he proclaimed of the Son the same things that were proclaimed of the Father. Nor indeed is he joined to our people, from whom he held different views concerning the Holy Spirit.

Thus that pestilent beast, which had first raised its head through Arius as if from the underworld, suddenly appeared threefold: through the Eunomians, who say that the Son is in every way unlike the Father, since a thing made can in no way be like its maker; through the Arians, who say that the Son can indeed be called like the Father, but by the largess of grace, not by the property of nature, in so far, that is, as a creature can be compared to its creator; through the Macedonians, who say that the Son is indeed like the Father in all things, but that the Holy Spirit has nothing in common with the Father and the Son. These things indeed were so done among them. But as it is written of such men: "They were torn apart, and were not stung with remorse": indeed very many of those who seemed to lead a more attentive life, and the monasteries at Constantinople and in the neighboring provinces, and noble bishops, followed rather the error of Macedonius.

But the Emperor Constantius, while preparing to go with arms to meet Julian (whom he had left as Caesar in Gaul), who of his own accord had presumed upon the dignity of Augustus, died in the town of Mopsucrenae in Cilicia, in the twenty-fourth year after the death of his father's rule.

After him, Julian, presumed upon at first, then held the principate alone as though legitimate. He, at first as though rebuking what had been wrongly done by Constantius, ordered the bishops to be released from exile. But afterward he rose up against our people with the whole art of doing harm. Meanwhile the bishops who had survived were released from their exiles. For Liberius, bishop of the city of Rome, returned while Constantius was still alive. But whether it was because he had acquiesced in his own will so as to sign, or whether Constantius granted it as a favor to the Roman people, by whom, as he set out, he had been entreated, I do not have for certain.

But Lucifer, when he was entreated by Eusebius—since both had been banished to neighboring regions of Egypt—that they should go together to Alexandria to see Athanasius, and by common deliberation with the surviving priests decide on the state of the Church, refusing his own presence, sent his deacon as legate in his place, and himself, with intent purpose, went on to Antioch. And there, while the parties were still at variance, yet hoping that they could still be recalled into one, if such a bishop were chosen for them in whom not one people but both should rejoice, he too hastily set up Paulinus as bishop—a catholic and holy man indeed, and in every way worthy of the priesthood—but one in whom both peoples could not acquiesce.

Meanwhile Eusebius went on to Alexandria, and there, a council of Confessors having been gathered—few in number, but sound in faith and great in merits—they discuss with all care and deliberation by what means, after the storms of heretics and the whirlwinds of perfidy, tranquility might be recalled to the Church. To some, burning with the heat of faith, it seemed that no one should any further be received into the priesthood who had stained himself in any way with the contagion of heretical communion.

But those who, imitating the Apostle, sought not what was useful to themselves but to the many, or who imitated Christ, who, though he was the life of all, humbling himself for the salvation of all, descended into death, so that life might be found even among the dead: these said it was better to humble oneself a little for the sake of the cast down, and to bend for the sake of the crushed, so as to raise them up again, and not to defend the kingdom of heaven by the merit of their own purity alone, but that it was more glorious if they should deserve to enter there together with the many.

And therefore it seemed right to them that, only the authors of perfidy being cut off, the remaining priests should be given the choice, should they so wish, of abjuring the error of perfidy and turning to the faith and statutes of the fathers, and that entry should not be denied to those returning, but rather that one should rejoice at their conversion: since even that younger son of the Gospel, the squanderer of his father's substance, when he returned to himself, deserved not only to be received, but was even judged worthy of his father's embrace, and received the ring of faith, and was clothed with the robe—by which what else is signified but the insignia of the priesthood? Nor was the elder son found approved before the father, in that he envied the one received back; nor did he have as much merit by not sinning as he incurred guilt by not forgiving his brother.

Since, then, that priestly and apostolic order had approved sentences of this kind, brought forth from evangelical authority, by decree of the council the administration of the East was enjoined upon Asterius and the others who were with him, while that of the West was decreed to Eusebius. There was added indeed, in that decree of the Council, a fuller discussion also concerning the Holy Spirit, that the Holy Spirit too should be believed to be of the same substance and deity as the Father and the Son, and that nothing at all in the Trinity should be said to be created, or lesser, or later. And a discourse was raised through Scripture also concerning the difference of substances and subsistences—the Greeks call them οὐσίαι and ὑποστάσεις. For some indeed said that substance and subsistence seemed to be one and the same thing: and since we do not say there are three subsistences in God, neither ought we to say three substances.

But others, to whom substance seemed to signify something far different from subsistence, said that substance designates the very nature and reason of a thing, by which it consists; whereas subsistence shows this very fact, that each person exists and subsists. And therefore, on account of the heresy of Sabellius, three subsistences must be confessed, since this would seem to signify, as it were, three subsisting persons, lest we give the suspicion of being followers of that faith which confesses the Trinity only in names, and not in things and subsistences. And concerning the incarnation of the Lord also it was set down, that the body which the Lord had assumed, he had assumed neither without sense nor without a soul. All these things having been cautiously and moderately arranged, each one went his own way in peace.

But Eusebius, when he had returned to Antioch, and had found there a bishop ordained by Lucifer contrary to his promise, withdrew, compelled both by shame and indignation, granting his communion to neither party, since on departing thence he had promised that he would act in the Council so that a bishop should be ordained for them by whom neither party would be estranged. For that people, who had followed Meletius the Jude when he was cast out of the Church, as though for the right faith, had not joined itself to the former catholics—that is, those who had been with Eustathius and Bishop Eusebius (among whom also was Paulinus)—but kept its own leadership and its own assembly. When, therefore, Eusebius wished to recall these into one, yet could not, being forestalled by Lucifer, he departed. Then Meletius, having returned from exile, since a more numerous people was with him, held the churches; and from that time he already had his own synod with the other Eastern bishops, yet was not joined to Athanasius.

Meanwhile Lucifer, grieving at the injury that Eusebius had not received the bishop ordained by himself at Antioch, himself too refuses to receive the decrees of the Alexandrian council, yet was bound by the tie of his own legate, who had signed at the council by his authority. For he could not reject the one who held his authority. But if he had received it, he saw that his whole undertaking would be frustrated. Long, therefore, and much deliberating on this, since he was hemmed in from both sides, he chose that, having received back his legate, he should keep toward the rest a different judgment, but one pleasing to himself. Thus, having returned to the parts of Sardinia, whether because, overtaken by a swift death, he had no time to change his judgment (for things rashly begun are wont to be corrected in the course of time), or whether he had immovably settled in this mind, I would not affirm for certain.

From him meanwhile the schism of the Luciferians took its beginning, which, though it is still carried on by few, nevertheless continues. But Eusebius, going about the East and Italy, performed the office alike of physician and priest. Each and every church, having abjured its infidelity, he recalled to the health of right faith, especially because he found Hilary—whom we recorded a while ago to have been thrust into exile along with the other bishops—now returned, and settled in Italy, laboring at this same task of restoring the churches and re-establishing the faith of the fathers.

Except that Hilary, a man gentle and mild by nature, and likewise learned, and most fit for persuading, carried on the matter with greater diligence and aptness. He also published books on the faith, nobly written, in which he so carefully set forth both the cunning tricks of the heretics and the deceptions of our own people, and their ill-believing simplicity, that he corrected, with the most perfect instruction, both those who were present, and those placed far away, whom he could not himself address by living voice. Thus these two men, like certain magnificent lights of the world, shone with their splendor over Illyricum, Italy, and the Gauls, so that all the darkness of the heretics was put to flight even from hidden and remote corners.

But Julian, after he came to the East intending to wage war upon the Persians, and began publicly (what before he had concealed) to be carried away by madness toward the worship of idols, a more cunning persecutor than the rest, crushed a greater part of the people almost than if he had assailed them fiercely—not by force, nor by torments, but by rewards, honors, flatteries, and persuasions. Forbidding Christians to attend the studies of the pagan authors, he decreed that the schools of letters should be open only to those who worshipped the gods and goddesses. He ordered that the military belt should not be given except to those who sacrificed. He decreed that the administration of provinces and the giving of judgment should not be entrusted to Christians, since even their own law had forbidden them to use the sword. And he made progress daily in seeking out laws of this kind, by which, even if something were cunning or crafty, still he might decree what would seem less cruel.

But he could not maintain, toward Athanasius, the appearance of his feigned philosophy. For when, like foul serpents boiling up out of the caverns of the earth, a profane band of magicians, philosophers, haruspices, and augurs had come to him, they all alike declared that nothing would succeed by their arts unless Athanasius, as though the obstacle to all of these, were first removed.

Again an army is sent, again commanders, again the Church is assailed. And while sorrowful and weeping people stood around him, he is reported to have used a prophetic saying among them: Do not be troubled, he said, children, for it is a small cloud, and it quickly passes over. And when he had departed, and was making his way by ship along the river Nile: the Count who had been sent for this very purpose, having learned of his route, began urgently to pursue him. And when by chance Athanasius' little boat had put in at a certain place, he learned from passersby that his slayer was close behind, and that unless he took precautions, danger was already imminent. All his companions who were present, terrified, urged that the desert be sought as a refuge for flight. Then he said: Do not be frightened, little sons; let us rather go to meet our slayer, that he may know how much greater is he who defends us than he who pursues.

And turning the boat around, he set out to meet the one who was hunting him. That man, who could by no means suspect that the one he sought was coming to meet him, ordered some passersby to be questioned as to where they had heard Athanasius was. And when they answered that they had seen him not far off, going along, he passed by with all speed, hastening in vain, eager to seize the one whom, set before his very eyes, he could not recognize. But Athanasius, warned by the power of God, returned to Alexandria, and there kept safe in hiding until the persecution should cease.

Julian gave also another proof of his folly and levity. For when at Daphne, in the suburb of Antioch beside the Castalian spring, he was offering sacrifice to Apollo, and received none of the responses he sought, and inquired of the demon's priests the cause of the silence, they said that the tomb of the martyr Babylas stood nearby, and that for this reason no responses were given. Then he ordered the Galileans (for so he was accustomed to call our people) to come and remove the martyr's tomb. Accordingly the whole Church assembled, mothers and men, virgins and young men, girded with immense exultation, drew the Martyr's coffin in a long procession, singing psalms with the loudest cries, and saying with exultation: Let all be confounded who worship graven images, and who trust in their idols. This the whole Church sang with such exultation, for six miles, in the ears of the profane Prince, that heaven resounded with the shouting.

Whereby he was driven into such a rage of fury that on the next day he ordered Christians everywhere to be seized and thrust into prison, and afflicted with punishments and torments.

Sallustius, his Prefect, though a Gentile, did not approve of this, yet carried out the order, and having seized a certain young man who happened to be the first to come along, named Theodore, from early dawn until the tenth hour tortured him with such cruelty, and so many executioners taking turns, that no age remembers the like. Yet he, raised aloft upon the rack, with the torturer pressing upon his sides from both directions, did nothing else but repeat, with calm and joyful countenance, the psalm which the whole Church had sung the day before; and when Sallustius, having exhausted every form of cruelty, perceived that he had accomplished nothing, the young man was taken back to prison, and Sallustius is reported to have gone to the Emperor and reported what he had done, and to have warned him not to attempt anything of the kind further, otherwise he would win glory for them and disgrace for himself. This Theodore we ourselves later saw at Antioch.

And when we asked him whether he had felt the sensation of pain in full, he said that he had indeed felt little of the pain, but that a certain young man had stood by him, wiping away his sweat with a most white linen cloth, and pouring cold water on him frequently, and that he was so delighted by this that he became more sorrowful when he was ordered to be taken down from the rack. The Emperor therefore, threatening that after his Persian victory he would deal more thoroughly with the Christians, did indeed set out, but none returned. For there, whether pierced by his own men or by the enemy is uncertain, after one year and eight months of his presumed imperial rule, he ended his life.

So great indeed was his subtlety and craftiness in deceiving that he even mocked the unhappy Jews, enticed by vain hopes, even as he himself was being driven about. These, first of all, being summoned to him, he asked why they did not sacrifice, since their own law commanded sacrifices to them. But they, thinking they had found an occasion suited to the time, said: We cannot, except in the one temple of Jerusalem alone. For so the law prescribes. And having received from him permission to rebuild the temple, they arrived at such a pitch of insolence that some of them seemed to be regarded as prophets. Accordingly Jews assembled from all places and provinces, and began to set upon the site of the temple long ago consumed by fire, a Count having been granted by the Emperor to hasten the work: the business was carried on with all diligence at public and private expense.

Meanwhile they began to insult our people, and as if the times of their kingdom had been restored to them, to threaten more harshly, and to display their savagery, acting altogether with great arrogance and pride. Cyrillus, after Maximus the Confessor, was held as Bishop of Jerusalem. So when the foundations had been opened, and lime and cement applied, nothing at all was lacking, so that on the following day, the old foundations having been cleared away, new ones should be laid: yet the Bishop, having given the matter careful consideration, whether from what he had read in the prophecy of Daniel concerning the times, or from what the Lord had foretold in the Gospels, persisted in maintaining that it could by no means come to pass that there a stone should be laid upon a stone by the Jews. The matter was awaited with expectation.

And behold, on the night which alone remained before the work was to begin, a great earthquake arose, and not only were the stones of the foundations thrown far and wide, but even nearly all the buildings of the whole place were leveled to the ground. The public porticoes too, in which the multitude of Jews who seemed to be pressing on with the work were staying, were brought down to the ground, and crushed all the Jews who were found there. But when day had broken, when they believed they had escaped the disaster, the rest of the multitude ran together to search for those who had been crushed.

There was a certain chamber sunk in the lower parts of the temple, having an entrance between two porticoes, which had been leveled, in which iron tools and other things necessary for the work were kept, from which suddenly a ball of fire flashed out, and running through the middle of the square, burning and killing the Jews who were present, was carried this way and that. This, repeated again and again and very frequently throughout that whole day, restrained with avenging flames the rashness of the stubborn people. Meanwhile all who were present, terrified by immense fear and trembling, were compelled, unwilling as they were, to confess the one true God, Jesus Christ. And lest these things be believed to have happened by chance, on the following night the sign of the Cross appeared so plainly upon the garments of all that even one who wished, out of unbelief, to wash it away could by no means manage to remove it. Thus terrified, Jews and Gentiles alike abandoned the place and their vain undertaking together.

After the death of Julian, at last civil rule was restored to us through the Empire of Jovinian. For he was, at one and the same time, Emperor, and Confessor, and the dispeller of an error wickedly brought in. For when the army was in battle array, and the Barbarian pressed hard, our teachers, taking counsel about the highest matters, cast their vote for Jovinian. And when he was seized and drawn forward to receive the insignia of Empire, over an army profaned by Julian's sacrileges, he is said to have proclaimed: that he could not command them, because he was a Christian. Then all with one and the same voice are reported to have answered: We too are Christians; nor would he consent to accept the Empire before he heard this voice.

Then straightway divine clemency was present to him, and contrary to all hope, when they were shut in on every side by the enemy, and no means of escape was available, he suddenly sees envoys sent by the Barbarians present themselves, and demand peace: also, the army being consumed by hunger, they promised food and other necessities in trade, and by every humane act amended the rashness of our men. But when peace had been established for twenty-nine years, and he had returned to Roman soil, and a brighter light, arisen for our world from the regions of the East, had spread itself, he set about repairing the republic, as it were after excessive storms, with all moderation: and he did not hold the care of the Churches as a secondary matter. Yet not incautiously, as Constantius had acted, but warned by his predecessor's fall, he sought out Athanasius with honorable and most dutiful letters, and received from him the form of the faith and the measure of ordering the Churches.

But an untimely death corrupted these beginnings, so pious and so joyful. For after eight months he ended his days in Cilicia, the place of his birth.

After him Valentinian took up the empire, who for our faith had been expelled from military service by Julian. But the Lord fulfilled in him what he had promised, restoring to him even more than a hundredfold in the present age. For because he had given up military service for Christ, he received the empire. He assumed his brother Valens as partner in the kingdom, and chose for himself the Western parts, but left to him the Eastern. But Valens, by favoring heretics, went in the way of his fathers. For he drove Bishops into exile, and Priests, and Deacons, and Monks (Tatianus presiding at Alexandria) he brought even to torments, and delivered to the flames. And he attempted many wicked and cruel things against the Church of God. But all this after the death of Athanasius. For while he was still living, as though restrained by some divine power, though he raged against the rest, he dared to commit no harm against him.

Accordingly at that time, when in the forty-sixth year of his priesthood Athanasius, after many struggles and many crowns of patience, had rested in peace, and had been asked about a successor, he chose Peter, the partner and companion of his tribulations. But Lucius, a bishop of the Arian party, straightway flew like a wolf upon a sheep. And Peter indeed, immediately boarding a ship, fled to the city of Rome. But Lucius, as though matter for his cruelty had been offered to him, became fiercer against the rest. And he proceeded to bloodshed to such a degree that he did not seem to preserve even any appearance of religion; at whose first entrance such and so shameful deeds were done against the virgins and the continent of the Church, as are not recorded even in the persecutions of the Gentiles. Thence, after the flight and exile of citizens, after slaughters and torments, and flames by which he had destroyed countless numbers, he turned the weapons of his fury against the monasteries.

He lays waste the desert, and declares war upon those at rest. Three thousand men together, or more, scattered throughout the whole desert in secret and solitary dwelling, he sets about attacking all at once. He sends an armed band of horse and foot: Tribunes, Prefects, and leaders of wars, he chose, as though about to fight against Barbarians. And when they came, they saw a new kind of warfare, their enemies offering their necks to the swords, and saying nothing else but: Friend, why have you come?

About this same time, on account of their merit of life and long standing, the fathers of the monks Macarius and Isidore, and another Macarius, and Heraclides, and Pambo, disciples of Antony, were held throughout Egypt, and especially in the parts of the desert of Nitria, as men who were believed to share fellowship of life and deeds not with the rest of mortals, but with the angels above. What I speak I saw myself present, and I relate the deeds of those whose companion in sufferings I deserved to be. These men led the army of the Lord, armed not with mortal weapons but with the faith of religion, an army conquering by dying, and one which, by the shedding of its own blood, followed Christ as victor to heaven. And while, stationed in their tents and praying, they awaited their slayers, there was brought to them a man once withered in all his limbs, and especially in his feet.

But when he had been anointed by them with oil in the name of the Lord, at once the soles of his feet were made firm. And when they said to him, "In the name of Jesus Christ, whom Lucius persecutes, rise, and stand upon your feet, and return to your house," immediately rising up and leaping, he blessed God, showing that God was truly in them. But a short time before, a certain blind man had asked to be led to the cell of Macarius, which was in the desert, a journey of three days. When the blind man, after much labor of those leading him, arrived, he did not find Macarius at home. Greatly saddened, he could in no way soothe his sorrow, lacking the solace of healing.

Then indeed, gaining strength through fervor of faith, he said to those who had led him, "I beg you, bring me to that part of the wall where the elder is accustomed to lie." And when he had been brought near, taking a little of the dry clay with which the wall seemed to be plastered, he placed it upon his palm. He asked also that they draw water from the well from which the elder was accustomed to drink. Dissolving the little clod with that moisture, and anointing his eyes with the same mud, and washing with the water that had been drawn, he suddenly received his sight, so that needing no assistance he returned to his own home. But lest he should act like those lepers whom the Lord in the Gospels notes as ungrateful after being healed by him, returning with his whole household and giving thanks to God, he related the matter just as it had happened. This same Macarius had a lioness's den near his cell.

And one day the beast brought her blind cubs to him, and set them before his feet. But he, when he understood that the beast was pleading on account of the blindness of her cubs, asked the Lord to restore sight to them. When they had received it, following their mother they returned to the den. And a little later, coming back with her cubs, she brought to the elder, as it were a gift for the grace received, a great many woolly sheepskins, carried in her mouth, and having laid them before his door, she departed. But if we wished to pursue the deeds of each marvel, we would be excluded from the brevity we have proposed, especially since these things deserve a narrative of their own proper work.

But amid all these things Lucius did not blush, nor did he show any reverence to these marvels of virtue; rather, he ordered these fathers themselves, taken away from their flock—indeed secretly seized—to be carried off to a certain island of the Egyptian marshes, where he had learned there was absolutely no Christian, so that through this they might live either without any comforts, or without their accustomed practices. The old men, therefore, with only two attendants, were led by night to the island, on which there was a certain temple held in the highest veneration by the inhabitants of the place. And when the old men's little boat first touched the shore of that island, behold, suddenly the virgin daughter of the priest of that temple, seized by a spirit, with a great outcry and shouts raised even to heaven, began to be driven through the midst of the crowds, and, whirling around repeatedly, to gnash and toss her raving mouth this way and that.

And when the crowds had gathered to see so great a monstrous spectacle, especially because she was the priest's daughter (who was held in special honor among them), following her as she was borne through the air, they came all the way to the boat of the elders. There indeed, thrown down at their feet and prostrate, she began to cry out: "Why have you come here, O servants of the most high God, to drive us out of our ancient and time-worn dwellings? In this place, driven out from everywhere else, we were hiding—how could we possibly have hidden from you? We yield our ancient seats; take back your peoples and lands." As she said these things, the spirit of error, rebuked by them, was driven out. And the girl, healed, lay together with her parents at the feet of the Apostles of our time.

They, preaching to them from such beginnings the faith of our Lord Jesus Christ, brought them suddenly to such a conversion that on that very day they destroyed with their own hands that most ancient temple, held in the highest veneration, and forthwith built a church. Nor did they need any span of time for deliberation, since not words but power had produced faith in them concerning these matters. But when this had been reported at Alexandria, Lucius, fearing lest perhaps the just hatred even of his own people should rise up against him—since he was now openly declaring war not on men, but on God—ordered them to be secretly recalled and sent back to the desert. While these things were being done in Egypt, the flame of persecution did not cease in other places either.

For Edessa is a city of Mesopotamia belonging to faithful peoples, adorned with the relics of the Apostle Thomas. When the Emperor himself saw that the people, cast out of the churches, were holding their assembly in the open field, he is said to have been so inflamed with anger that he struck his prefect with his fist, because they had not also been driven off from there, as he had ordered. But the prefect, although a pagan, and though he had been treated with injury by the Emperor, nevertheless, out of consideration for humanity, though about to proceed the next day to lay waste the people, caused this same intention to be made known to the citizens through secret signals, so that they might be able to take precautions for themselves, lest they be found in that place. Proceeding in the morning, he stirred up a terror greater than usual through his officers, and did everything so that as few as possible, or if it could be so, none, would be endangered.

Yet he saw the people, more numerous than usual, heading for the place, running headlong and hastening, as though they feared that someone might be missing from death. Meanwhile he saw a certain poor woman rushing forth from her house in such haste and hurry that she neither closed the door, nor could she cover herself more carefully, as befits the modesty of women, also dragging along with her a little infant, and hastening at a rapid pace, even breaking through the ranks of the officers.

Then he, no longer able to bear it, said, "Seize the woman, and bring her here." And when she had been brought: "Where," he said, "unhappy woman, are you hurrying so quickly?" "To the field," she said, "where the people of the Catholics are gathering." "And have you not heard," he said, "that the Prefect is going there, to kill all whom he finds?" "I have heard," she said, "and that is why I hurry, so that I may be found there." "And where," he said, "are you dragging this little one?" "So that he too," she said, "may deserve to attain martyrdom." When the most moderate man had heard this, he ordered his officers to turn back and the carriage to be turned toward the palace. And going in, he said, "Emperor, I am ready to undergo death if you command it. But the task you order, I cannot carry out." And when he had informed him of everything concerning the woman, he restrained the Emperor's madness.

About this same time the Church, as though refined by the fire of persecution, shone more purely than the metal of gold. For the faith of each one was not proved in words, but in exiles and prisons: because to be a Catholic brought not honor but punishment—especially at Alexandria, where the faithful did not even have free permission to bury the bodies of the dead. While Lucius was conducting himself in all this with arrogance and savagery, Mauvia, queen of the Saracen nation, began with a fierce war to shake the towns and cities of the Palestinian and Arabian frontier, and at the same time to lay waste the neighboring provinces. And when by frequent battles she had worn down the Roman army, and having slain very many had turned the rest to flight, being asked for peace, she promised she would not embrace it otherwise unless a certain monk named Moses were ordained bishop for her people.

He, leading a solitary life in the desert near their region, had become magnificently known for his merits and virtues and the signs which God worked through him. His request, being made known to the Roman prince, was ordered by our commanders—who had fought there unsuccessfully—to be fulfilled without any delay. Moses was seized to receive the priesthood, and brought to Alexandria according to custom. Lucius was present, to whom the office of ordaining was assigned.

Seeing him, Moses, in the presence of the commanders who were urging him, and of the people, said: "I indeed judge myself unworthy of so great a priesthood; nevertheless, if some divine dispensation is thought to be fulfilled through me, unworthy as I am, I call to witness our God, Lord of heaven and earth, that Lucius shall not lay upon me hands polluted and stained with the blood of the saints." And when Lucius saw himself branded with so grave a mark in the eyes of very many, he said, "Why, Moses, do you so readily condemn one whose faith you do not know? Or if someone has reported something else to you about me, hear my faith, and believe me myself rather than others." Then he said: "Cease, O Lucius, to attack me too with your deceitful pretenses.

Your faith is well known to me, as is testified by the servants of God condemned to the mines, bishops thrust into exile, presbyters and deacons banished outside the dwellings of the Christian name, some handed over to beasts, others even to fires. Can there possibly be a truer faith that is grasped by the ears, than one that is plainly seen by the eyes? To me it is certain that those who rightly believe in Christ do not do such things." And thus, disgraced with greater dishonor (since the necessity of providing for the state pressed upon him), he was compelled to yield, so that he received the priesthood from the bishops whom Lucius had thrust into exile. Having received it, he both maintained peace with that most savage nation, and kept undefiled the fellowship of the Catholic faith.

But when a foul mist of unbelief from a shadowy teacher was spreading over the peoples and city of Alexandria, the Lord kindled Didymus as a lamp shining with divine light. Concerning his life and his practices, since it is believed that he was granted to the Church by the gift of God for her glory, a few things, although in passing, nevertheless seem necessarily to be recalled by us. For he, at a young age, when he was still ignorant even of the first elements of letters, was deprived of his sight, yet was kindled with a greater desire for the knowledge of the true light: nor did he suffer any despair of attaining what he desired, when he had heard it written in the Gospel: "What is impossible with men is possible with God". Trusting, therefore, in this divine promise, he ceaselessly besought the Lord, not that he might receive the sight of bodily eyes, but that he might receive the illumination of the heart.

Yet he mingled with his prayers study and labor, and continuous unbroken vigils, applying them not to reading but to hearing, so that what sight conferred on others, hearing might confer on him. But when, after the labor of nocturnal study, sleep (as usually happens) came upon those who were reading, Didymus, considering that silence to be given not for rest or leisure, like a clean animal chewing the cud, would recall from the beginning the food he had taken in, and those things which he had learned earlier from the reading of books, as others ran through them, he would unfold again in memory and mind, so that he seemed not so much to have heard what had been read, as to have inscribed it upon the pages of his own mind.

Thus in a short time, with God teaching him, he came to such learning and knowledge of things divine and human, that he became a teacher of the school of the Church, greatly approved by Bishop Athanasius and the other wise men of God in the Church: but also in the other disciplines, whether of Dialectic, or Geometry, Astronomy too, or Arithmetic, he was so well equipped, that no philosopher ever, proposing some question from these arts, was able to defeat or refute him, but as soon as they received his answers, they believed him to be even more a master of that discipline concerning which they had proposed the question than themselves. Some of his sayings, whether discussed in common or given as answers to questioners, were written down by employed scribes; these are still held in great admiration even now.

We, however, who were in part hearers of his living voice, and who have read those things which were written down by some as he spoke, recognized far greater grace, and something I know not what of the divine, sounding above human speech, especially in those discourses which were uttered from his own mouth. Him also the blessed Antony, when he had come down from the Thebaid to Alexandria to bear testimony to the faith of Athanasius against the Arians, consoled with magnificent words: "Let nothing trouble you, O Didymus," he said, "that you appear deprived of carnal eyes. For you lack those eyes which mice, and flies, and lizards have. But rejoice, because you have the eyes which the Angels have, and by which God is seen, through which for you a great light of knowledge is kindled."

Egypt therefore flourished at that time, not only with men learned in Christian philosophy, but also with those who, dwelling throughout the vast desert, performed signs and wonders through apostolic simplicity of life and sincerity of heart. Of these, meanwhile, whom we ourselves saw and by whose hands we were deemed worthy to be blessed, are these: Macarius of the upper desert, another Macarius of the lower desert, Isidore in Scete, Pambo in the Cells, Moses and Benjamin in Nitria, Scyrion and Elias and Paul in the region of Apeliotes, another Paul in Phocae, Poemen and Joseph in Pispir, which was called the Mountain of Antony. But we also learned by faithful report that very many other men of this sort dwell in the regions of Egypt, so that the saying of the Apostle was truly fulfilled: "Where sin abounded, grace did more abound". At the same time also Mesopotamia had noble men, distinguished in the same pursuits. Some of these we ourselves saw at Edessa and in the regions of Carrhae, but more we learned of by report.

But neither of these regions was less fruitful than Cappadocia; indeed, it produced for us something more joyful still, Gregory together with Basil. It too bore a very joyful harvest of many saints, brought forth a copious vineyard of pious men, and grew a fresh olive grove of the Lord. But these two especially, like two sons of fatness, standing at the right hand and the left of the lampstand, shone forth like two lights of heaven. Whence I think it worthy to repeat a few things about them above what has already been said. Both were noble, both educated at Athens, both fellow-students, both, on departing from the lecture-hall, were asked to profess Rhetoric. This work Basil indeed fulfilled magnificently, but Gregory more magnificently despised it.

And when he had given himself wholly to the service of God, he presumed so much upon his love for his colleague that he drew Basil, as he sat in the teacher's chair, down from it, and laying hand upon him led him with himself to the monastery, and there for thirteen years (as they say), setting aside all the secular books of the Greeks, they gave their labor to the volumes of divine Scripture alone, and followed the understanding of these not from their own presumption, but from the writings and authority of the elders—men who, it was agreed, had themselves received the rule of understanding by apostolic succession. Examining especially their commentaries on the Prophets, they sought out the treasures of wisdom and knowledge hidden in earthen vessels.

But when they were now sufficiently instructed, and were called by divine dispensation to instruct the peoples, and each, though by a different path, was drawn nonetheless to the same work, Basil, going about the cities and countryside of Pontus, began to rouse with words the slothful minds of that people, little concerned about the hope to come, and to kindle them with preaching, and began to wear away the callus of their long negligence, and compelled them, casting off cares for vain and worldly things, to take notice of themselves, to come together into one, to build monasteries, and taught them to devote themselves to psalms, hymns, and prayers, to care for the poor, and to provide them with decent dwellings and what was necessary for sustenance, to establish virgins, and to make a chaste and modest life desirable to almost everyone. Thus in a short time the face of the whole province was so changed that in a dry and squalid field there seemed to have arisen a fruitful crop and a flourishing vineyard.

Gregory, however, would not allow the good seed either to fall among thorns or be scattered among rocks, but cultivated the good soil of his own heart with continual tillage and unceasing exercises. And he made much more progress in himself than the other did in others. The one took care to receive what those renouncing the world laid at his feet, and to distribute it as each had need. The other, content with the sacrament of having nothing and possessing all things, clung, avaricious and greatly desirous, only to the riches of wisdom.

The one taught many to come together into one and to have solicitude for one another in necessities; the other, by his own example—being free and unencumbered—preached to all with the Apostle's word: "But I would have you without carefulness"; and, "The Lord is at hand: be careful for nothing, but as servants of Christ, be careful only for this, when the Lord shall return from the wedding." The one mercifully sympathized with those who sinned and called them back from their fault; the other, through the grace of divine eloquence, forestalled the incitements to sin, and would not allow one who had fallen to slip further, since he would be raised with difficulty once cast down. The one was pure in faith, the other freer in preaching. The one was humble toward God, the other also toward men. The one conquered the arrogant by contempt, the other by reason. Thus in each of the two, a different grace fulfilled one work of perfection.

Basil, therefore, not long after becoming Bishop of Caesarea in Cappadocia, when he was being compelled by Valens into exile for the faith, was brought before the tribunal of the Prefect, and began to be assailed with threats and the greatest menaces (as is the custom of that power), so that unless he obeyed the emperor's commands, he might expect his own destruction to be imminent at any moment.

Then he, undaunted and without any disturbance of mind, is reported to have answered the Prefect who was threatening him thus: "Would that I had some worthy gift to offer to him who would more speedily free Basil from the knot of this bag of flesh." And when the coming night was granted him as a space for deliberation, he is reported to have answered again: "Tomorrow I shall be the same as I am now; would that you did not change." And that very night the emperor's wife was tormented as if handed over to torturers; and his only son, who was theirs, died, being believed to have paid the penalty for his father's impiety. Thus before daylight men were sent to beg Basil to intercede by his prayers for them, lest they too, and indeed much more justly, should likewise perish. So it happened that, although Valens expelled all the Catholics, Basil persisted in the Church until the end of his life with the sacrament of communion unviolated.

Gregory, however, having been substituted as bishop in his father's place at the town of Nazianzus, bore faithfully the whirlwind of the heretics. But when peace was restored, being entreated to come to Constantinople to teach the Church, he did not refuse. There in a short time he made such progress in correcting the people, infected with the ancient poisons of the heretics, that they seemed then for the first time to become Christians and to behold a new light of truth, since the teacher of religion taught much indeed by words, but more by examples; nor did his disciples see anything commanded of them that he had not first done himself. But when envy followed upon his glory, certain men began to resist and to employ rather unwholesome denunciations, so that, upon his own return to his own affairs, another might be ordained bishop.

When he perceived that this was only being whispered and gnawed upon in secret, he himself said openly what no one dared to say to him: "Far be it," he said, "that on my account any strife should arise among the priests of God. If this storm is on my account, take me and cast me into the sea, and the tossing shall cease from you." Then, having withdrawn, he spent what remained of his life in his own church. And since he was now weary with age and infirm in body, he himself chose a successor, so that, with him governing the Church, he might enjoy the leisure of his weakness and old age. There exist also magnificent monuments of the genius of both, the Discourses which they delivered extempore in the churches. Of these we have translated into Latin about ten short orations of each. Moreover, we hope, if we are able and with God's favor assisting, to translate more of Basil's Institutes of Monks. There were, besides, two brothers of Basil, Gregory and Peter.

Of whom the one in the word of doctrine, the other in works of faith, so equalled their brother that either might be called a Basil or a Gregory. There exist also some brilliant short works of the younger Gregory himself. But enough has been said of these. In the Western parts, meanwhile, we come to Jerome, who at that same time was residing at Constantinople.

Valentinian, unharmed in the faith of religion, governed the state with the ancient discipline of Roman rule.

Damasus had received the priesthood by succession after Liberius in the city of Rome. A certain Ursinus, a deacon of the same church, unable to bear that he had been preferred over himself, broke out into such fury that, having persuaded a certain rather unlearned and rustic bishop, and having gathered a band of turbulent and seditious men, he extorted for himself in the Basilica which is called Sicininum the office of being made bishop, in violation of the laws, order, and tradition. From this deed so great a sedition arose—indeed so great a war—with the peoples defending one side or the other, that the places of prayer were filled with human blood. This affair, through the faction of Maximinus the Prefect, a savage man, was turned to the disgrace of a good and innocent priest, so that the matter was carried even to the torture of clerics. But God, the vindicator of innocence, was present, and the penalty was turned upon the heads of those who had contrived the deceit.

Meanwhile, upon the death at Milan of Auxentius, the bishop of the heretics, the people of each party were carried by differing zeals. A grave dissension and a dangerous sedition was preparing an untimely ruin for the city itself, if either party, each wanting something different, should by no means obtain what it had proposed. Ambrose at that time held the consular fasces of that same province. When he saw destruction impending over the city, in keeping with his position and office, he entered the church at once to calm the sedition of the people.

And when there, in accordance with the laws and public discipline, he had made a long plea for quiet and tranquility, suddenly a single voice and shout arose from the people, who had been fighting and disagreeing among themselves, demanding Ambrose as bishop; they cried out that he should be baptized at once (for he was a catechumen), and that he should be given to them as bishop; nor would the people be one, nor the faith one, unless Ambrose were given to them as priest. Though he struggled and resisted greatly, the desire of the people was reported to the Emperor, and it was ordered to be fulfilled with all speed. For he said it was of God that a sudden conversion should recall the discordant faith and the dissenting minds of the people into one consent and one judgment. And soon, having obtained the grace of God, and having been initiated into the sacred rites, he was made a priest.

Meanwhile, when Valentinian had come from the regions of Gaul to Illyricum for the Sarmatian war, there, with the war scarcely begun, he was overcome by a sudden illness and departed this life, leaving as heirs to the Empire his sons, Gratian Augustus, and Valentinian, still quite a small child, and not yet initiated into the royal insignia. Yet the necessity brought on by those who were attempting to seize the vacant place of empire, as it were, compelled him, even in his brother's absence, to be clothed in the purple, with Probus, then Prefect, faithfully managing affairs.

At the same time, in the kingdom of the East, the nation of the Goths, driven from their own homes, poured themselves throughout all Thrace, and began savagely to lay waste cities and fields with arms. Then indeed Valens began to turn the wars which he had been waging against the Churches against the enemy instead, and, with tardy repentance, ordered bishops and presbyters to be released from their exiles, and monks to be freed from the mines. Yet he himself, surrounded by enemies, took refuge in a country estate, fleeing there in terror from the war, and there paid the penalty of his impiety, being burned by fire, having spent fourteen years in the Empire, first with his brother, and afterward with his brother's sons. This battle was then, and thereafter, the beginning of evil for the Roman Empire. Gratian, therefore, together with his very young brother, after the death of his uncle, took up the Empire of the East as well. He surpassed almost all who had been emperors before him in piety and religion.

He was vigorous in the use of arms, swift of body, and of good disposition, but was almost more given to youthful exuberance than was fitting, and more modest than was in the interest of the Republic.

And seeing that it was useful to have as a partner in such great cares of the kingdom a man mature in years, and because, as the divine word admonishes: "Two are better than one", he took Theodosius as his colleague, and having entrusted to him the administration of the East, he reserved for himself and his brother the parts of the West. But after he had conducted himself religiously and bravely in many things, he was slain at Lyons by Andragathius, a commander of the tyrant Maximus who had risen up in Britain, more through the treachery of his own men than by the force of the enemy.

But Valentinian, dwelling in Italy, terrified by the murder of his brother and by fear of the enemy, himself also gladly embraced the peace feignedly offered him by Maximus, feigning likewise. Meanwhile Justina his mother, a nursling of the Arian heresy, having concealed the poisons of her impiety while her husband lived, now confidently disclosed them to her son, whose face was deceived. She therefore, being settled at Milan, began to disturb the state of the churches, to threaten the priests with deposition and exile unless they should revoke the decrees of the council of Rimini, by which the faith of the fathers had been tampered with. In this war she battered, as it were, the wall and strongest tower of the Church, namely Ambrose. And wearying him with threats, terrors, and every kind of assault, she was seeking a first opening by which to storm the Church. But although that Jezebel fought armed with her spirit, yet Ambrose resisted, filled with the virtue and grace of Elijah.

She herself indeed chattered in the churches, made an uproar, roused and inflamed the people to discord: but because the matter turned out less than she wished, she took it as an injury, and complained of it to her son. Whereupon the youth, inflamed by the resentment of the insult which his mother had falsely fabricated, sent a band of armed men to the church; he orders the doors to be broken, the holy places to be assaulted, the bishop to be dragged forth and driven into exile. But so great was the perseverance of the faithful people that they preferred to lose their lives rather than their bishop.

Meanwhile imperial decrees against the faith of the fathers were ordered to be drawn up, and the task was entrusted to Benevolus, who then presided over the record-office of memory. But he, to whom from his cradle the sacred faith had been dear and venerable, refused, saying that he could not utter impious words, nor speak against God. Then, lest the queen's undertaking should seem to be thwarted, a higher honor is promised him if he would fulfil what was commanded. He, who desired to be more noble in faith than in honors, said: "Why do you promise me a higher rank as the wages of impiety? Take away even this rank which I now hold: let only the conscience of my faith remain unharmed for me." So saying, he cast his belt of office before the feet of those who impiously commanded him.

Ambrose, however, against the fury of the queen, did not defend himself with hand or weapon, but, stationed beneath the altar in fastings and continual vigils, prepared for himself and for the Church, through supplication, God as defender. And while wicked Justina was contriving these things at length by various devices and assaults, Maximus, who was eager to strip off from himself the infamy of a tyrant and to show himself a legitimate prince, protests by letters sent that an impious undertaking was afoot, that the faith of God was being attacked and the statutes of the catholic Church subverted; and meanwhile he began to draw near to Italy. When Justina learned this, pressed at once by the enemy and by the consciousness of her own impiety, she turned to flight with her son, and was the first to draw the lot of that exile which she had been preparing for the priests of God.

Theodosius nevertheless came to help, out of loyalty to the throne and remembering the goodness and benefits of Gratian, and rising up with all the strength of the East to take vengeance, avenged that righteous blood. Meanwhile the impious mother of Valentinian died; and he himself restored the catholic faith which she had violated, and the kingdom, driven from its tyranny, was restored. And after he had entered Rome in illustrious triumph, he returned again to his own realms.

About the same time, by a certain stratagem of the demon, a shameful stain was branded upon a religious prince. For when, sedition having arisen at Thessalonica, a certain man of the military had been slain by the onset of a furious mob, he, inflamed by the atrocity of the sudden news, ordered the people to be invited to the Circus games, and that soldiers should suddenly surround them unawares and cut them down everywhere, whomever they met, with the sword—vengeance being given not to the crime but to fury. For this, when he was accused by the priests of Italy, he acknowledged his fault, and confessing his guilt with tears, he demanded public penance in the sight of the whole Church: and this period assigned to him he patiently fulfilled, laying aside his royal dignity.

To all these things he added, wonderfully, this also: he sanctioned by law that thenceforth the sentences of princes concerning capital punishment should be deferred by the executioners for thirty days, so that room might not be lost for mercy, or (if it should return) for repentance.

Therefore, having returned to the East, and there, as from the beginning of his reign, with the utmost care and zeal driving out the heretics, he handed over the churches to the catholics: and this he did with such moderation, that, vengeance being set aside, he took care for the catholics only as to the restoration of the churches, so that the true faith might advance without hindrance to its preaching: he showed himself impartial toward the priests of God: in faith, religion, and munificence he displayed a royal spirit toward all: he was easy of access, and without imperial pride showed himself in conversation to the humble: at his exhortation and by his largess, churches in very many places were adorned and constructed with sufficient magnificence: he granted much to those who asked, but more often offered it of his own accord. The worship of idols, which under Constantine's institution and thereafter had begun to be neglected and destroyed, under his rule collapsed.

For which things he was so dear to God, that divine providence conferred upon him a special gift. For in the region of the Thebaid he filled a certain monk named John with the spirit of prophecy, and by his warnings and answers he used to inquire whether it were better to keep peace or wage war.

Meanwhile, at Laodicea in Syria, before this same time, Apollinaris the bishop—a man indeed well instructed in other matters, but, while driven to excess by the vice of contentiousness, and delighting to go against whatever anyone else had said—by the vainglory of an unfortunately gifted mind, out of contentiousness generated a heresy, asserting that only a body, and not also a soul, had been taken up by the Lord in the Dispensation. In this, when he was pressed by clear testimonies of the Gospel (by which the Lord and Savior himself professes that he has a soul, and that he lays it down when he wills, and takes it up again; and by which he says that his soul was troubled and sorrowful even unto death), he turned about afterward, and, lest he should seem to be wholly turned about or defeated, said that he indeed had a soul, but not with respect to that part which is rational, but only with respect to that by which it gives life to the body.

As for the fulfillment of the rational part, he maintained that the Word of God himself had taken its place. This assertion was first repelled at Rome, in a council gathered by Damasus and Peter, bishop of Alexandria, by a decree of this sort: that whoever should say that the Son of God, who was as truly God, so also truly man, had less of humanity, or less of deity, should be judged alien from the Church. This sentence was also confirmed at Alexandria, and at Constantinople by decree of council. From that time the Apollinarists, departing from the Church, defend for themselves bishops of their own party, and their own dogmas and churches.

Therefore at Rome, after Damasus, Siricius received the priesthood of the Church. At Alexandria, after Peter died, Timothy, and after him Theophilus, restored the apostolic see. At Jerusalem, after Cyril, John. At Antioch, after the death of Meletius, Flavian was appointed. But since Paulinus still survived, who had always remained in the fellowship of the catholics, many quarrels and many controversies were often stirred up there; and yet, though some strove with utmost force and others resisted, and though even the elements of earth and sea were themselves wearied in this, no manner of peace could ever be obtained, although in fact there now seemed to be no discord of faith between them. The same thing happened at Tyre. There, when Diodore—a man indeed of the ancient catholics, and proven by the trials of temptation—had been made bishop by the confessors, on the testimony of Athanasius, his moderation was disregarded, and another was ordained from the party of Meletius. But also in many other cities of the East, contention of this kind among the priests produced such confusions.

At Constantinople, however, Nectarius, formerly the Urban Praetor, a catechumen and but recently having received baptism, undertook the priesthood.

Meanwhile at Alexandria new disturbances, contrary to the good faith of the times, were stirred up against the Church, arising from the following occasion. There was a certain basilica, a public building, ancient and quite neglected, which the Emperor Constantius was said to have given to the bishops who preached his own perfidy. Through long neglect it had nothing sound except its walls. It seemed good to the bishop who at that time governed the Church to ask this from the Emperor, so that, as the number of the faithful increased, the houses of prayer might also increase. And when, having received it, he wished to renovate it, there were found in the place certain hidden caverns dug into the ground, fitter for robberies and crimes than for religious rites.

Therefore the Gentiles, who saw the hiding places of their crimes and the caverns of their misdeeds being uncovered, unable to bear that evils hidden and covered in darkness for so many ages should be laid open, as though having drunk from the cup of dragons, all began to rage and openly run mad. Nor did they now contend, as was their custom, with words and riots, but strove to fight it out with hand and sword. They engaged in frequent conflicts in the streets, and the two peoples came together in open war with one another. But our people, though far more numerous and powerful, were less fierce because of the restraint of religion. From which it happened that, very many of ours being frequently wounded, and some even killed, they took refuge in the temple as though in a kind of fortress.

There, having seized certain Christians and dragged them along with them, they compelled them, altars having been lit, to sacrifice; those who resisted they killed, tortured with novel and elaborate torments—some they fastened to gibbets, others, their legs broken, they cast down into the caves which ancient superstitious diligence had constructed to receive the blood of sacrifices and the other impurities of the shrine. Indeed, they did these things day after day, at first with fear, then with confidence and desperation, and, shut up within the temple, they lived by plunder and pillage. At last, running riot in the blood of the citizens, they chose as the leader of their crime and audacity a certain Olympius, a philosopher by name and by dress, so that under his leadership they might defend their stronghold and maintain their tyranny.

But those to whom was entrusted the guardianship of the Roman laws and the care of administering justice, having learned what had been done, rushed to the temple in confusion and terror, inquired the causes of such audacity, and asked what that gathering meant, in which, with such great crime, the blood of citizens was being poured out before the altars. But they, having barred the entrance, returned, amid confused and discordant voices, no account of the deed, but only clamor. Nonetheless, messengers were sent to them, warning them of the power of the Roman Empire, of the vengeance of the laws, and of the things that were accustomed to follow upon such deeds. And when the fortification of the place allowed nothing to be done against those raging in madness except by greater force, the matter was reported to the Emperor.

He, who by an innate clemency of mind preferred to correct erring men rather than destroy them, wrote back that vengeance indeed ought not to be demanded for those whom the blood shed before the altars had made martyrs, in whom the glory of their merits had overcome the grief of their death. But for the rest, the cause of the evils and the roots of the discord, which had come about in defense of the idols, ought utterly to be cut away; these being removed, the cause of the wars would likewise be quieted. And when this writing arrived, and, as after a truce of a brief time, both peoples had come together to the temple, as soon as the first page of the letter was unsealed, in the opening of which the vain superstition of the Gentiles was blamed, an immense shout rose up among ours, stupor and terror invaded the peoples of the Gentiles.

Each one sought hiding places, searched out narrow paths of flight, or secretly mingled himself among ours: so that it was known by all who were present that, the presence of God granting boldness to the people, the fury of the demon which had raged before among them was put to flight.

The temple of Serapis at Alexandria, I suppose, has been heard of by all, but is indeed known to most. It is a place raised aloft, not by nature but by hand and construction, through a hundred steps or more, spread out on every side with vast squared spaces: all of it, however, up to the highest level of the pavements, was built in vaulted work, which, by means of immense skylights above and hidden inner chambers distinguished from one another, provided facility for various services and secret offices. Now in the upper parts, the outermost spaces of the whole enclosure were occupied by exedrae and pastophoria (chambers), and houses raised on high, in which either the temple-keepers or those whom they called ἁγνεύοντας, that is, those who purify themselves, were accustomed to dwell. Colonnades too, after these, ran all around the interior of the whole enclosure, arranged in square rows. In the middle of the whole space there was a shrine, raised up on precious columns and built without on a broad and magnificent scale of marble stone.

In this the statue of Serapis was so vast that with its right hand it touched one wall, and with its left the other: this monster was said to be composed of every kind of metal and wood. The interior walls of the shrine were first covered with sheets of gold, over these with silver ones, and last of all with bronze, so that these might serve as protection for the more precious metals. There were also certain things contrived by tricks and craft, to the astonishment and wonder of onlookers. A very small window was so fitted toward the rising sun that on the day appointed for bringing in the statue of the Sun to greet Serapis, the times being carefully observed, as the statue entered, a ray of the sun directed through that same window would light up the mouth and lips of Serapis, so that, in the sight of the people, Serapis seemed to be greeted with a kiss by the Sun.

There was also another kind of fraud of this sort: the nature of the magnet stone is said to have this property, that it seizes and draws iron to itself. A statue of the Sun had been fashioned for this very purpose out of the finest iron by the hand of a craftsman, so that the stone—whose nature we said draws iron to itself—being fixed above in the ceiling, when the statue had been carefully placed beneath it directly under the ray, in balance, and by natural force drew the iron to itself, the statue would seem to the people to have risen up and to hang in the air. And lest this be exposed by its falling, the ministers of the deception would say, "The Sun has risen," so that, bidding Serapis farewell, it might depart to its own place. But many other things too had been constructed in the place by the ancients for the purpose of deceiving, which it would now be tedious to enumerate one by one.

But, as we had begun to say, when the rescript had been read, the peoples of our own side were indeed ready to overthrow the author of the error: yet a certain persuasion had been spread abroad by the pagans themselves, that if a human hand should touch that statue, the earth would immediately gape open and dissolve into chaos, and the sky would suddenly collapse headlong. This matter gave the peoples a certain measure of dread. When behold, one of the soldiers, fortified more by faith than by arms, seizing an axe, rising up with all his strength, struck it into the jaw of the old deceiver. A shout was raised from both peoples: yet neither did the sky fall, nor did the earth sink down. Then, striking again and again, he hewed the smoky spirit of rotten wood: and when it was thrown down, fire being applied, it burned as easily as dry wood.

After this, the head, torn from the neck, and the bushel-basket cast down, was dragged away: then the feet and other members, hacked off with axes and seized with ropes, were pulled apart, and in every quarter, limb by limb, in the sight of Alexandria its worshipper, the decrepit old man was burned up. At the last, the trunk that remained was burned in the amphitheater: and this was the end of vain superstition and ancient error, of Serapis. Concerning whose origin a varied opinion is reported among the pagans. Some think him Jupiter: on whose head a bushel-measure is placed, either because with measure and moderation he governs all things, or because life is provided to mortals by the bounty of crops. Others think him the power of the river Nile, by whose wealth and fertility Egypt is fed. Some maintain that the statue was fashioned in honor of our Joseph, on account of his measuring out of grain, by which he relieved the Egyptians in time of famine.

Others report, as found in the old histories of the Greeks, that a certain Apis, a householder or king set over Memphis in Egypt, when in time of famine grain had run short at Alexandria, supplied food abundantly to the citizens out of his own store. When he died, they instituted in his honor a temple at Memphis, in which an ox is fed as a sign of the best farmer, having certain markings of color, which from his name is called Apis: and they say that they brought his σορός, that is, his tomb, in which his body lay, to Alexandria, and named it Soros Apis, first by combination Sorapin, but afterward, by corruption, Serapis. Whether this is true, or nothing at all, God shall see to these matters. But let us return to what we had begun.

After this, when the very head of idolatry had been overthrown, by the efforts of a most vigilant priest, whatever monstrosities—rather than statues—there were throughout all Alexandria were exposed to public view with an equal end and a like disgrace. The mind shudders to tell what snares had been prepared by demons for wretched mortals, what deaths, what crimes were concealed in those places which they called ἄδυτα (inner sanctuaries): how many severed heads of infants were found there with gilded lips: how many tortured deaths of wretched people were depicted. When these things were brought to light and carried forth into the open air, although the pagans themselves fled in confusion and shame, yet whoever could be present marveled that for so many ages he had been ensnared by such abominable and shameful frauds. Whence very many of these, condemning the error and having discovered the crime, embraced the faith of Christ and the worship of the true religion.

For, to pass over other outrages, which in other places were committed by the violent killing of infants and by the despicable inspection of entrails of virgins, I will recount only one thing which was done in the temple of Saturn, which has come to the knowledge of all; from which the rest, which I have omitted, may also be judged.

There was among them a priest of Saturn, named Tyrannus. This man, as if by response of the deity, when any of the noble and leading men who worshipped in the temple had wives who pleased him for his lust, would say that Saturn had commanded him that his wife should spend the night in the temple. Then he who had heard this, rejoicing that his wife was being called by the favor of the deity, would send his wife to the temple, adorned rather more elaborately and laden besides with offerings, lest she be dismissed empty-handed. In the sight of all, the matron, shut up within, and Tyrannus, having closed the doors and handed over the keys, would depart. Then, silence having been made, he crept through hidden and subterranean passages into the very statue of Saturn, through gaping hollows. Now that statue was hollowed out at the back, and carefully fitted to the wall.

And with lamps burning within the shrine, to the woman intent and supplicating, he suddenly produced a voice through the hollow bronze statue, so that the unhappy woman trembled with fear and joy, thinking herself worthy of address by so great a deity. But after the impure deity had said whatever he pleased, either for greater terror or for the incitement of lust, by a certain contrivance of linen cloths drawn over, suddenly all the lights were extinguished. Then, descending, he brought upon the stupefied and dismayed little woman the deceit of adultery under profane pretenses. When these things had been carried on for a long time now among all the wretched matrons, it happened that a certain woman of chaste mind was horrified at the crime, and, paying closer attention, recognized the voice of Tyrannus, and, having returned home, disclosed to her husband the deceit of the crime. He, inflamed more ardently over the injury to his wife—or rather to himself—had Tyrannus, once denounced, led to torture.

When he was convicted and had confessed, and the blind frauds had been revealed, shame and disgrace pervaded all the houses of the pagans, as adulterous mothers, incestuous fathers, and spurious children were exposed. When these things were made known and disclosed, the crimes together with the statues and buildings were swiftly cut down.

Now who could recount the superstitious outrages of Canopus? Where, under the pretext of priestly letters (for so they call the ancient letters of the Egyptians), there was almost a public school of magic art. This place the pagans venerated as a kind of source and origin of demons to such a degree that a much greater celebrity was held there than at Alexandria. But concerning the origin of this monstrosity too, of what sort they hand it down, it will not be absurd to set forth briefly in a few words. They say that once the Chaldeans, carrying about Fire, their god, engaged in a contest with the gods of all the provinces, so that whichever prevailed should be believed by all to be god. The gods of the other provinces consisted of bronze, or gold, or silver, or wood, or stone, or of whatever material, which without doubt would be destroyed by fire. From this it came about that Fire prevailed in every place. When the priest of Canopus heard this, he devised a cunning scheme.

Earthenware jars are commonly made in parts of Egypt, open on every side with numerous and quite minute holes, through which turbid water, oozing out, is rendered clearer and purer. Of these he set up one, its holes stopped up with wax, and painted besides on the outside with various colors, filled with water, as a god. And having cut off the head of an old statue, said to be that of Menelaus the helmsman, he carefully fitted it on top. After this the Chaldeans arrive: the contest begins: fire is kindled around the jar: the wax with which the holes had been stopped melts: as the jar oozes, the fire is extinguished. By the priest's fraud, Canopus is shown as victor over the Chaldeans. Whence the very statue of Canopus is formed with quite small feet, a drawn-in neck, and, as it were, a swollen, puffed-out belly, evenly rounded like the back of a jar. From this persuasion he was worshipped as a god, victor over all. But perhaps these things once profited the Chaldeans.

Now, however, with the priest of God, Theophilus, drawing near, no sweating availed, nor did the fraud concealed by wax come to the rescue. All was laid waste, and brought down to the ground.

But nothing was done that turned the place into squalor. The caverns of outrages, the moldering tombs were cast down, and lofty churches, temples of the true God, were built. For even at the tomb of Serapis, once the profane buildings had been leveled, a Martyrium rises on one side, and a Church on the other. And I think it worthwhile to relate the occasion from which the building of the Martyrium arose.

In the times of Julian, as if the reins had been loosened, the savagery of the pagans boiled up into every kind of cruelty. From which it happened that, at Sebaste, a city of Palestine, with mad minds and deadly hands they assailed the tomb of John the Baptist, scattered his bones, and, having gathered them again, burned them with fire, and scattered the holy ashes, mixed with dust, over the fields and countryside. But by the providence of God it came about that certain men from Jerusalem, from the monastery of Philip, a man of God, had come there for the purpose of prayer at that same time.

These, when they saw so great a crime being done—by human hands indeed, but with a bestial mind—counting it more pleasing to die than to be defiled by such a sacrilege, mingled themselves closely among those who were gathering the bones for burning, and, gathering them as far as the matter allowed, more reverently, stole away secretly from those who were either stupefied or raving, and brought the venerable relics to the devout father Philip. He, judging himself unequal to guarding so great a treasure by his own vigilance alone, sent the relics of the immaculate victim to the chief pontiff, then Athanasius, by means of Julian his deacon, afterward also bishop of a city of Palestine. Athanasius, having received them, with few witnesses, enclosed them within a hollowed-out space in the wall of the sacristy, and preserved them by a prophetic spirit as destined to profit a later generation: by which now, when the footprints of idolatry had been cast down and overthrown, golden roofs might rise up in buildings once profane.

But after the fall of Serapis, who had never lived, what shrines of any other demon could still stand? I would say too little, if I said only that all the little shrines of whatever demon at almost every column throughout Alexandria fell in ruin. But throughout all the cities of Egypt, through the fortresses, through the villages, through every countryside, along the banks of the river, and even through the desert, wherever any profane places, or rather charnel-houses, could be found, were, at the insistence of each bishop, overthrown and brought down to the ground, so that the countryside might again be restored to cultivation, which had been unjustly given over to demons.

But this also was done at Alexandria, that even the Breastplates of Serapis, which were in each house upon the walls, in the entrances, on the doorposts also and windows, were all so cut away and scraped off, that not even a trace remained anywhere, nor the appellation of the deity, either of him or of any other demon; but in their place each man painted the sign of the Lord's Cross on the doorposts, on the entrances, on the windows, on the walls and columns. When those of the Pagans who survived saw that this had been done, they are said to have come into the recollection of a great matter handed down to them of old from tradition: that this sign of ours of the Lord's Cross, among those letters which they call ἱερατικὰς, that is, sacerdotal letters, the Egyptians are said to have as one among the other elements of the letters which exist among them. Of which letter or word they assert this to be the interpretation: Life to come.

Those therefore who at that time, in admiration of the events that had occurred, were being converted to the faith, said that it had thus been handed down to them by the ancients, that these things which are now worshipped would stand only so long as they did not see that sign come, in which was life. Whence it came about that those especially who were of the priests or ministers of the temples were converted to the faith, more than those whom the delusions of errors and the machinery of deceptions delighted.

Indeed, since it was the custom in Egypt that the measure of the rising Nile river should be brought to the temple of Serapis, as to the author of the increase of waters and the inundation, when his statue was overthrown and consumed by fire, all at once began to say that Serapis, mindful of the injury, would no longer grant the waters and their accustomed abundance. But that God might show that it was not Serapis, who was much later than the Nile, but Himself, who bade the waters of the river to rise in their seasons, so great was the inundation from that time onward, as no age remembered to have been before. And therefore that very cubit, that is, the measure of water, which they call πῆχυν, began to be brought to the Lord of the waters in the Church.

But when these things were reported to the religious Prince, with hands stretched out to heaven, he is said to have exclaimed with great exultation: I give thanks to Thee, O Christ, that without the destruction of that great city so ancient an error has been extinguished.

Meanwhile Valentinian in the Western regions, ruling the Republic with a spirit ardent (as much as his age allowed), ended his life by a noose, the causes of which are even now hidden. But some affirmed that this was done through the treachery of his general Arbogastes: and this opinion was held most strongly by the public. Others indeed said that the general was innocent of the crime committed, but that he had furnished the causes by which the young man was driven, in indignation of spirit, to this act, because he indulged him less in free commands over all matters, as being not yet strong enough by reason of his age. There were, however, some of the priests who, having undertaken an embassy of peace from him who was afterward made emperor, testified before Theodosius that the general was innocent of the crime of that death.

But he, inflamed nonetheless to vengeance, took up arms against Eugenius, who had been substituted in the place of the deceased, having first inquired the will of God through John the monk. Then he who had foretold to him his first bloodless victory over Maximus, promised also this one, though not without a great deal of bloodshed on both sides.

Therefore he prepared for war not so much by the resources of arms and weapons, as by the aid of fastings and prayers; nor was he fortified so much by the watches of sentinels, as by the vigil of supplications; he went about, with the priests and the people, to all the places of prayer, before the shrines of the Martyrs and Apostles he lay prostrate in sackcloth, and sought for himself faithful aid through the intercession of the saints. But the Pagans, who always animate their errors with new errors, renewed their sacrifices, and stained Rome with baleful victims, inspected the entrails of the beasts, and from the foreknowledge given by the fibers announced sure victory to Eugenius. This was done more superstitiously and with the utmost animosity by Flavianus, then Prefect, on whose assertions (for great was his prerogative in wisdom) it had been presumed for certain that Eugenius would be the victor.

But when Theodosius, relying on the aid of true religion, began to press upon the passes of the Alps, those first, for whom so many victims had been sacrificed in vain, being demons trembling from the consciousness of their falsehood, were turned to flight. Afterward also the masters and teachers of these errors, especially Flavianus, guilty rather of shame than of crime, though he might have escaped, being a man of great learning, judged it more just to merit death for his error than for a crime. But the rest drew up the battle line, and having placed an ambush on the higher ridge, they themselves awaited battle on the descent of the mountain. But when it came to the first men, they immediately surrendered themselves to the lawful Prince: while with the rest, caught in the lowest valleys, a most bitter conflict was waged. For a while the victory hung in doubt: the auxiliaries of the Barbarians were being routed, and were already turning their backs to the enemy.

But he wept at this, not because Theodosius should be defeated, but lest he should seem to conquer through the Barbarians. Then, when he saw the ranks of his own men turned back, standing on a high rock, whence he could both see and be seen by both armies, he cast away his arms, turned himself to solid support, and prostrate in the sight of God said: Thou, almighty God, knowest that in the name of Christ Thy Son I have undertaken these battles of just vengeance, as I suppose: if it is otherwise, take vengeance upon me.

But if with probable cause, and trusting in Thee, I have come hither, stretch forth Thy right hand to Thine own, lest perchance the Nations say, Where is their God? At this supplication of the pious Prince, the leaders who were present, certain that it had been received by God, were roused to slaughter: and especially Bacurius, a man distinguished in faith, piety, and virtue both of mind and of body, and worthy to be the companion and associate of Theodosius, laid low on every side with pike, javelin, and sword all who were nearest, and burst through the dense and packed ranks of the enemy. He made his way for miles through those rushing to the very Tyrant, the ranks broken, and the slaughtered heaped in piles. Scarcely, perhaps, would these things be believed by the impious. For it was discovered that, after that prayer which the Emperor had poured out to God, so vehement a wind arose, that it turned back the weapons of the enemy upon those who had cast them.

And when, with the great force of the wind persisting, every javelin thrown by the enemy was frustrated, the spirit of the adversaries broken, or rather divinely repelled, with Arbogastes their leader striving in vain, God being against him, Eugenius was brought before the feet of Theodosius, his hands bound behind his back. And there was the end of his life and of the contest. Then indeed for the religious Prince the victory over the frustrated opinions of the Pagans was more glorious than that over the death of the Tyrant: for whom vain hope and false divination brought less punishment in their death than it preserved shame in their life.

And when after these things, the Emperor, as one foreknowing of the future, was pressed by anxious care for arranging the Republic, he sent forthwith to the East, where, when about to come to war, he had entrusted his sons to safe keeping. And there he bade Arcadius Augustus keep the kingdom which had long since been handed over to him. But Honorius, endowed with equal dignity, he bade come with all speed to the empire of the West. Whom, having received and clasped with paternal kisses and embraces, and having handed over to him the reins of the Western kingdom, he himself, having governed the Roman empire happily for seventeen years, passed on to better things, to receive with the most pious Princes the rewards of his merits.