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BOOK II.

1. ON the departure of Eustathius, great was the fer- A.D. 331. ment at Antioch. The Catholics resolved to hold no communion with an intruded bishop, and accordingly convened their assemblies apart; the larger portion of the inhabitants wished for Eusebius of Cæsarea, and requested the Emperor's interference. That crafty person, who had sufficient opportunities of becoming acquainted with the internal state of the capital of the East, had no mind to exchange his present comfortable position for greater splendour accompanied by a seat of thorns. GOD forbid, he wrote to Constantine, that he should violate the canons which forbade translation ! Many a priest must exist worthy of the dignity to which their kindness, rather than the good judgment of the citizens, had invited himself. He obtained his reward :—a fulsome1 letter from the weak Constantine, which he has taken care to preserve, and great reputation as, in degenerate times, a staunch upholder of the canons. Constantine addressed another epistle to the Antiochenes, in which, while applauding their wish to possess Eusebius, he exhorted them not to rob another church in order to advantage their own. Another letter is addressed to Theodotus, Theodorus, Narcissus, Aetius, Alphæus, and the other bishops at Antioch;-the relics, apparently, of the council which had condemned S. Eustathius. Alphæus was of Apameia2; he had been at Nicæa, and we shall meet him again at the great Council of Antioch, Theo

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Eulalius,

Patr. of Ant.
XXV.

3

dorus1 seems to have been of Sidon. Narcissus2 was of Irenopolis, and a man of some note among the Arians; S. Athanasius tells us that he was thrice deposed by Catholic Synods. Theodotus was of Laodicea, and a determined Arian; of Aetius I know nothing. These prelates are informed by the emperor that he is acquainted (partly by them, partly through Acacius, Count of the East, and Strategius, the imperial commissioner for the suppression of the tumults excited by the deposition of Eustathius) with the state of affairs at Antioch. It recommends two priests, Euphronius of Cæsarea in Cappadocia, and George of Arethusa, both ordained by S. Alexander of Alexandria, as well qualified for the vacant see. Euphronius did eventually succeed to it.

Euphronius, 4

XXVI.

Placillus,

Patr. Ant.

2. But the election seems to have been entirely free, for notwithstanding the recommendation of the Cæsar, one EulaPatr. Ant. lius was elected. All that is known of him is, that he was an Arian, and that he survived only three months. He was followed by Euphronius, the Emperor's candidate, who held the see a year and a quarter. These two poor shadows passing, Placillus, an Arian of greater name, appears on the stage.

XXVII.
A.D. 333.

3. Having triumphed at Antioch, and to a certain extent established their party there, the Arians next resolved to carry Alexandria. For this purpose the Council of Tyre with its sixty prelates was convoked, and those proceedings, which terminated in the deposition of Antioch, and the tem

1 Le Quien. II. 812.

2 Le Quien. 11. 897. Nicetas Choniates, v. 7. He signed at Ancyra and Neocæsarea, and was at Philippopolis.

3 Le Quien. II. 792. This man has had a singular fate. Deceived by the eulogy pronounced on him by Eusebius (VII. 32), V. Bede and Adon inserted him in their Martyrologies, and Baronius thence placed his name in the Roman Martyrology. But Saint Theodotus was a vigorous Arian; claimed by Arius himself at

once as his chief partizan, and sufficiently exposed by Theodoret, H. E. v. 7.

4 My numbers of the patriarchs of Antioch henceforth differ from those of Le Quien by one; as he, following S. Jerome, counts Eusebius as bishop of that see, merely because a strong party wished to have him.

5 Euseb. Vit. Const. III. 62. Theodoret, 1. 22.

6 So S. Jerome calls him. Sozomen names him Placetus: but in another place (H. E. 11. 5.) Plautus.

DEDICATION OF S. SEPULCHRE'S CHURCH.

97

are sum

Jerusalem.

porary triumph of Arianism, I have related at large in the history of Alexandria. Athanasius took refuge at Cæsarea Philippi; the bishops, summoned by Constantine to Jerusalem, in order to dedicate the basilica of the Holy Sepulchre, now complete, obeyed the command, and were conveyed to the city in carriages belonging to the State. Arrived there, The bishops they found a considerable number of prelates awaiting them; moned to a vast assembly of all ranks had come up to the festival; and the gorgeous character of the building, united to the splendour of the office itself, must have made this an epoch in the æsthetical history of the Church. Pity only that here, as on other occasions, her truth was trampled under foot when her external beauty was at the highest! The greater part of the prelates present at the solemnity seem to have been men disposed to go with the wind; the few leading spirits were those of the Arianising party: Eusebius of Cæsarea, Ursacius and Valens from Thrace, Eusebius of Nicomedia and Theognius. There were, however, men of a different stamp; as for example, S. Alexander of Thessalonica,—a determined opponent of heresy; and S. Milles' of Persia, whose glorious martyrdom I shall ere long have occasion to record.

4. Eusebius, who was present at the Encænia, has left us a gorgeous, though somewhat confused description of the new basilica2. The rock itself, which had been sanctified to all ages by the Three Days' Repose, seems to have been pared down, and encrusted on the exterior with marbles and such substitute for enamel as the art of the age afforded. We read of the great court, cloistered on three sides, the church forming the fourth, or eastern. The height and length were of as yet unrivalled magnitude; the interior, lined with marbles of different colours; the exterior of stone, but so admirably polished, and so marvellously fitted together, that it might well be mistaken for marble. Three gates, turned to the east, gave admission; the long nave had double aisles; the piers were apparently square, the vaulting gilt. The apse was surrounded with twelve piers, after the number, also Willis's Architectural History, p. 116.

1 Sozomen, H. E. II. 13.

2 Vit. Constantin. III. 34-39. See

says the historian, of the apostles; the capitals were of silver, a special gift of the Emperor. The external covering was of lead.

5. Of the act of dedication we have no account; perhaps, strictly speaking, there was none. The days of the festival were employed in sermons and expositions; those of the bishops who laid claims to learning-and Eusebius hints that a certain prelate who afterwards related the proceedings was none of the least distinguished-explained the mystical depth of Holy Scripture; others, whose taste led them to more worldly subjects, panegyrized the Augustus; others, who felt themselves unequal to such tasks, offered the unbloody sacrifice for the stability of the throne, and for the peace of the Church. This dedication took place on or about the 13th of September, then, as still, the festival of the Holy Cross.

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6. Well for all had the solemnities ended here; but Arius presented himself to the assembled fathers, demanding re-admission to their communion. He with Euzoius had memoralized Constantine in the city of Byzantium, then rising under a thousand architects to be the mistress of half the world. The Emperor graciously received a petition which, in effect, constituted him the final judge of doctrines, approved of the protest it contained against useless definitions, the Consubstantial' being one of these;-was pleased with the heretic's declarations-as decided heretics never fail to declare that he believed the teaching of Holy Scripture on the point;—and finally, sent him to Jerusalem, with a civil congé d'élire, reception and Communion being substituted for election to a see. It would be interesting to know how the few Catholics in the assembly behaved. Marcellus of Ancyra was not there-at least not when this business was debated: S. Milles, as coming from so great a distance and speaking another language, might have been unacquainted with the subject-matter of the debate; but what did Maximus do? He had been at Tyre, and had there been saluted by S. Paphnutius with the bitter question: "Did we not

1 Lib. IV. 45, 46.

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each suffer mutilation for our LORD, and is one now in the "seat of the scornful?"-and, better instructed, had remained firm to S. Athanasius: what he did at Jerusalem no records exist to tell. The Council, however, was again broken up by Constantine, who summoned it to Constantinople. The Arians, instead of obeying the order, dispatched six deputies, fiercely bigoted to their own communion, to the imperial city. They there deposed Marcellus of Ancyra, and there also witnessed the awful death of the arch-heretic Arius. But these things are beyond our present scope.

7. The baptism and death of Constantine, the threefold division of his empire between Constantine the younger, Constans and Constantius; the murder of the former by his brothers, and the deep wound which the Church sustained by the death of so zealous a Catholic, the entire absorption of Constantius into the Arian sect, and the death of Eusebius of Cæsarea, remotely connected with our immediate history, bring us to the most celebrated Council which Antioch ever knew.

Antioch,

8. The nominal occasion, as so frequently during that Council of age was the case, was the dedication of the magnificent.D. 341. church commenced by Constantine ten years before. At least ninety bishops were present, of whom we know sixteen to have been Eusebians, or semi-Arians. The Metropolitans on both sides were these: Of the Catholic party, Marcellus of Ancyra, whose orthodoxy remains an open question to this day, and who was bitterly accused by semi-Arians, and by some Catholics, of a modified Sabellianism: Agapius of Seleucia, metropolitan of Isauria; he had been at Nicæa:

1 Every ecclesiastical student is aware that the very learned Belgian, Emanuel à Schelstraate, who was a canon of Antwerp in the 17th century, published a monograph on this Council under the title of "Sacrum Antiochenum Concilium nunc primum auctoritati suæ restitutus." His immediate object was the somewhat quaint one of procuring its confirmation by Innocent XI. It is a book

marvellously full of learning; and
though, I think, failing to shew that
the council was not an Arian, or
rather Eusebian conciliabule, afford-
ing the greatest assistance to the his-
torian of that synod.

2 In some MSS. he is called, in
the Nicene list, Agapetus: but the
same prelate was undoubtedly n
both councils.

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