The chief symbol in his worship was the figure of a young hero in Phrygian cap and trousers, mounted on a sinking bull, and stabbing it in sacrifice to the god. In a deserted part of Alexandria, called the Mithrium, his rites were celebrated among ruins and rubbish; and his ignorant followers were as ignorantly accused of there slaying their fellow-citizens on his altars.
It was about the same time that the eastern doctrine of Manicheism was said to have been brought into Egypt by Papus, and Thomas or Hernias. This sect, if sect it may be called, owed its origin to a certain Majus Mani, banished from Persia under the Sassanides; this Mani was a talented man, highly civilised through his studies and voyages in distant lands. In his exile he conceived the idea of putting himself forward as the reformer of the religions of all the peoples he had visited, and of reducing them all to one universal religion. Banished by the Christians, to whom he represented himself as the divinely inspired apostle of Jesus, in whom the Comforter had appeared, he returned to Persia, taking with him a book of the Gospels adorned by extraordinary paintings. Here he obtained at first the favour of the king and the people, till finally, after many changes of fortune, he was pursued by the magi, and convicted in a solemn disputation of falsifying religion; he was condemned to the terrible punishment of being flayed alive, after which his skin was to be stuffed and hung up over the gates of the royal city. His teaching consisted in a mixture of Persian and Christian-Gnostic views; its middle final point was the dualism of good and evil which rules in the world and in the human breast.
According to Mani’s creed, there were originally two principles, God in His kingdom of light, and the demon with his kingdom of darkness, and these two principles existed independently of each other. The powers of evil fell into strife with each other, until, hurled away by their inward confusion, they reached the outermost edge of their own kingdom, and from there beheld the kingdom of light in all its glory. Now they ceased their strife among themselves and united to do battle to the kingdom of light. To meet them, God created the “original man” who, armed with the five pure elements, light, fire, air, water, and earth, advanced to meet the hostile powers. He was defeated, though finally saved; but a part of his light had thus made its way into the realm of darkness. In order gradually to regain this light, God caused the mother of life to create the visible world, in which that light lies hidden as a living power or world-soul awaiting its deliverance from the bonds of matter. In order to accomplish this redemption, two new beings of light proceed from God, viz.: Christ and the Holy Ghost, of whom the former, Christus Mithras, has his abode in the sun and moon, the latter in the ether diffused around the entire world. Both attract the powers of light which have sunk into the material world in order to lead them back, finally, into the everlasting realm of light. To oppose them, however, the demons created a new being, viz.: man, after the example of the “original man,” and united in him the clearest light and the darkness peculiar to themselves, in order that the great strife might be renewed in his breast, and so man became the point of union of all the forces in the universe, the microcosm in which two principles ever strive for the mastery. Through the enticements of the material and the illusions of the demon, the soul of light was held in bondage in spite of its indwelling capacity for freedom, so that in heathenism and Judaism the “son of everlasting light,” as the soul of the universe, was chained to matter. In order to accomplish this work of redemption more quickly, Christ finally leaves his throne at God’s right hand, and appears on earth, truly in human form, but only with an apparent body; his suffering and death on the cross are but illusions for the multitude, although historical facts, and they serve at the same time as a symbol of the light imprisoned in matter, and as a typical expression of the suffering, poured out over the whole of nature (especially in the plant-world), of the great physical weltschmerz. Christ, through his teaching and power of attraction, began the deliverance of the light, so that one can truly say that the salvation of the world proceeds from rays which stream from the Cross; as, however, his teachings were conceived by the apostles in a Jewish sense, and the Gospels were disfigured, Mani appeared as the comforter promised by Christ to accomplish the victory. In his writings only is the pure truth preserved. Finally there will be a complete separation of the light from the darkness, and then the powers of darkness will fall upon each other again.
The ignorant in all ages of Christianity seem to have held nearly the same opinion in one form or other, thinking that sin has arisen either from a wicked being or from the wickedness of the flesh itself. The Jews alone proclaimed that God created good and God created evil. But we know of few writers who have ever owned themselves Manicheans, though many have been reproached as such; their doctrine is now known only in the works written against it. Of all heresies among the Christians this is the one most denounced by the ecclesiastical writers, and most severely threatened by the laws when the law makers became Christian; and of all the accusations of the angry controversialists this was the most reproachful. We might almost think that the numerous fathers who have written against the Manicheans must have had an easy victory when the enemy never appeared in the field, when their writings were scarcely answered, or their arguments denied; but perhaps a juster view would lead us to remark how much the writers, as well as the readers, must have felt the difficulty of accounting for the origin of evil, since men have run into such wild opinions to explain it.
Another heresy, which for a time made even as much noise as the last, was that of Hieracas of Leontopolis. Even in Egypt, where for two thousand years it had been the custom to make the bodies of the dead into mummies, to embalm them against the day of resurrection, a custom which had been usually practised by the Christians, this native Egyptian ventured to teach that nothing but the soul would rise from the dead, and that we must look forward to only a spiritual resurrection. Hieracas was a man of some learning, and, much to the vexation of those who opposed his arguments, he could repeat nearly the whole Bible by heart.
The Bishop Hesychius, the martyr in the late persecution, was one of the learned men of the time. He had published a new edition of the Septuagint Old Testament, and also of the New Testament. This edition was valued and chiefly used in Egypt, while that by Lucianus, who suffered in the same persecution, was read in Asia Minor from Constantinople to Antioch, and the older edition by Origen remained in use in Palestine. But such was the credit of Alexandria, as the chief seat of Christian learning, that distant churches sent there for copies of the Scriptures, foreign translations were mostly made from Alexandrian copies, and the greater number of Christians even now read the Bible according to the edition by Hesychius. We must, however, fear that these editors were by no means judicious in their labours.
From the text itself we can learn that the early copiers of the Bible thought those manuscripts most valuable which were most full. Many a gloss and marginal note got written into the text. Their devotional feelings blinded their critical judgment; and they never ventured to put aside a modern addition as spurious. This mistaken view of their duty had of old guided the Hebrew copiers in Jerusalem; and though in Alexandria a juster criticism had been applied to the copies of Homer, it was not thought proper to use the same good sense when making copies of the Bible. So strong was the habit of grafting the additions into the text that the Greek translation became more copious than the Hebrew original, as the Latin soon afterwards became more copious than the Greek.
It was about this time, at least after Theodotion’s translation of Daniel had received the sanction of the Alexandrian church, and when the teachers of Christianity found willing hearers in every city of Egypt, that the Bible was translated into the language of the country. We have now parts of several Koptic versions. They are translated closely, and nearly word by word from the Greek; and, being meant for a people among whom that language had been spoken for centuries, about one word in five is Greek. The Thebaic and Bashmuric versions may have been translated from the edition by Hesychius; but the Koptic version seems older, and its value to the Biblical critic is very great, as it helps us, with the quotations in Origen and Clemens, to distinguish the edition of the sacred text which was then used in Alexandria, and is shown in the celebrated Vatican manuscript, from the later editions used afterwards in Constantinople and Italy, when Christian literature flourished in those countries.
The Emperor Maximin died at Tarsus in A.D. 313, after being defeated by Licinius, who like himself had been raised to the rank of Augustus by Galerius, and to whom the empire of Egypt and the East then fell, while Constantine, the son of Constantius, governed Italy and the West. Licinius held his empire for ten years against the growing strength of his colleague and rival; but the ambition of Constantine increased with his power, and Licinius was at last forced to gather together his army in Thrace, to defend himself from an attack. His forces consisted of one hundred and fifty thousand foot, fifteen thousand horse, and three hundred and fifty triremes, of which Egypt furnished eighty. He was defeated near Adrianople; and then, upon a promise that his life should be spared, he surrendered to Constantine at Nicomedia. But the promise was forgotten and Licinius hanged, and the Roman world was once more governed by a single emperor. The growing strength of his colleague and rival; but the ambition of Constantine increased with his power, and Licinius was at last forced to gather together his army in Thrace, to defend himself from an attack. His forces consisted of one hundred and fifty thousand foot, fifteen thousand horse, and three hundred and fifty triremes, of which Egypt furnished eighty. He was defeated near Adrianople; and then, upon a promise that his life should be spared, he surrendered to Constantine at Nicomedia. But the promise was forgotten and Licinius hanged, and the Roman world was once more governed by a single emperor.
The Ascendency of the new religion: The Arian controversies: The Zenith of monasticism: The final struggle of Paganism: The decline of Alexandria.
Coming under the Roman sway, the Greek world underwent, not only politically but also intellectually, a complete change. As the Roman conquest had worn away all political differences and national divergences, and, by uniting the various races under the rule of the empire was bringing to its consummation the work begun by the Macedonian conqueror, it could not fail to influence the train of thought. On the one hand the political and ideal structure of Greek life was crumbling and bringing down the support and guiding principle supplied by the duties of citizenship and the devotion to the commonwealth. Man was thrown upon himself to find the principles of conduct. The customary morality and religion had been shaken in their foundations. The belief in the old gods and the old religion was undermined. Philosophy endeavoured to occupy the place left vacant by the gradual decay of the national religion. The individual, seeking for support and spiritual guidance, found it, or at least imagined he had found it, in philosophy. The conduct of life became the fundamental problem, and philosophy assumed a practical aspect. It aimed at finding a complete art of living. It had a thoroughly ethical stamp, and became more and more a rival of and opposed to religion. Such were the tendencies of the Stoic and Epicurean schools. The Roman rule was greatly favourable to such a development of thought. The Romans were a practical nation, had no conception of nor appreciation for purely theoretical problems, and demanded practical lessons and philosophical investigations which would serve as a guide for life. Thus the political tendency of the time towards practical wisdom had imparted a new direction to philosophical thought. Yet, as time went on, a deep feeling of dissatisfaction seized the ancient world in the midst of all the glories of the Roman rule. This huge empire could offer to the peoples, which it had welded into one mighty unit, no compensation for the loss of their national independence; it offered them no inner worth nor outer fortune. There was a complete discord running through the entire civilisation of the Græco-Roman world. The social condition of the empire had brought with it extreme contrasts in the daily life. The contrasts had become more pronounced. Abundance and luxury existed side by side with misery and starvation. Millions were excluded from the very necessaries of existence. With the sense of injustice and revolt against the existing inequality of the state of society, the hope for some future compensation arose. The millions excluded from the worldly possessions turned longingly to a better world. The thoughts of man were turned to something beyond terrestrial life, to heaven instead of earth. Philosophy, too, had failed to give complete satisfaction. Man had realised his utter inability to find knowledge in himself by his unaided efforts. He despaired to arrive at it without the help of some transcendental power and its kind assistance. Salvation was not to be found in man’s own nature, but in a world beyond that of the senses. Philosophy could not satisfy the cultured man by the presentation of its ethical ideal of life, could not secure for him the promised happiness. Philosophy, therefore, turned to religion for help. At Alexandria, where, in the active work of its museum, all treasures of Grecian culture were garnered, all religions and forms of worship crowded together in the great throng of the commercial metropolis to seek a scientific clarification of the feelings that surged and stormed within them. The cosmopolitan spirit and broad-mindedness which had brought nations together under the Egyptian government, which had gathered scholars from all parts in the library and the museum, was favourable also to the fusion and reconciliation in the evolution of thought.
If Alexandria was the birthplace of that intellectual movement which has been described, this was not only the result of the prevailing spirit of the age, but was due to the influence of ideas; salvation could only be found in the reconciliation of ideas. The geographical centre of this movement of fusion and reconciliation was, however, in Alexandria. After having been the town of the museum and the library, of criticism and literary erudition, Alexandria became once again the meeting-place of philosophical schools and religious sects; communication had become easier, and various fundamentally different inhabitants belonging to distinct social groups met on the banks of the Nile. Not only goods and products of the soil were exchanged, but also ideas and thoughts. The mental horizon was widened, comparisons ensued, and new ideas were suggested and formed. This mixture of ideas necessarily created a complex spirit where two currents of thought, of critical scepticism and superstitious credulity, mixed and mingled. Another powerful factor was the close contact in which Occidentalism or Greek culture found itself with Orientalism. Here it was where the Greek and Oriental spirit mixed and mingled, producing doctrines and religious systems containing germs of tradition and science, of inspiration and reflection. Images and formulas, method and ecstasy, were interwoven and intertwined. The brilliant qualities of the Greek spirit, its sagacity and subtlety of intelligence, its lucidity and facility of expression, were animated and vivified by the Oriental spark, and gained new life and vigour. On the other hand, the contemplative spirit of the Orient, which is characterised by its aspiration towards the invisible and mysterious, would never have produced a coherent system or theory had it not been aided by Greek science. It was the latter that arranged and explained the Oriental traditions, loosed their tongues, and produced those religious doctrines and philosophical systems which culminated in Gnosticism, Neo-Platonism, the Judaism of Philo, and the Polytheism of Julian the Apostate.
It was the contemplative Oriental mind, with its tendency towards the supernatural and miraculous, with its mysticism and religion, and Greece with her subtle scrutinising and investigating spirit, which gave rise to the peculiar phase of thought prevalent in Alexandria during the first centuries of our era. It was tinctured with idealistic, mystic, and yet speculative and scientific colours. Hence the religious spirit in philosophy and the philosophic tendency in the religious system that are the characteristic features. “East and West,” says Baldwin,* “met at Alexandria.” The co-operative ideas of civilisations, cultures, and religions of Rome, Greece, Palestine, and the farther East found themselves in juxtaposition. Hence arose a new problem, developed partly by Occidental thought, partly by Oriental aspiration. Religion and philosophy became inextricably mixed, and the resultant doctrines consequently belong to neither sphere proper, but are rather witnesses of an attempt at combining both.
These efforts naturally came from two sides. On the one hand, the Jews tried to accommodate their faith to the results of Western culture, in which Greek culture predominated. On the other hand, thinkers whose main impulse came from Greek philosophy attempted to accommodate their doctrines to the distinctively religious problems which the Eastern nations had brought with them. From whichever side the consequences be viewed, they are to be characterised as theosophical rather than purely philosophical, purely religious, or purely theological.
The reign of Constantine the Great, who became sole ruler of the East and West in 323, after ten years’ joint government with Licinius, is remarkable for the change which was then wrought in the religion and philosophy of the empire by the emperor’s embracing the Christian faith. His conversion occurred in 312, and on his coming to the united sovereignty the Christians were at once released from every punishment and disability on account of their religion, which was then more than tolerated; they were put upon a nearly equal footing with the pagans, and every minister of the Church was released from the burden of civil and military duties. Whether the emperor’s conversion arose from education, from conviction, or from state policy, we have no means of knowing; but Christianity did not reach the throne before it was the religion of a most important class of his subjects, and the Egyptian Christians soon found themselves numerous enough to call the Greek Christians heretics, as the Greek Christians had already begun to designate the Jewish.
The Greeks of Alexandria had formed rather a school of philosophy than a religious sect. Before Alexander’s conquest the Greek settlers at Naucratis had thought it necessary to have their own temples and sacrifices; but since the building of Alexandria they had been smitten with the love of Eastern mysticism, and content to worship in the temples of Serapis and Mithra, and to receive instruction from the Egyptian priests. They had supported the religion of the conquered Egyptians without wholly believing it; and had shaken by their ridicule the respect for the very ceremonies which they upheld by law. Polytheism among the Greeks had been further shaken by the platonists; and Christianity spread in about equal proportions among the Greeks and the Egyptians. Before the conversion of Constantine the Egyptian church had already spread into every city of the province, and had a regular episcopal government. Till the time of Heraclas and Dionysius, the bishops had been always chosen by the votes of the presbyters, as the archdeacons were by the deacons. Dionysius in his public epistles joins with himself his fellow-presbyters as if he were only the first among equals; but after that time some irregularities had crept into the elections, and latterly the Church had become more monarchical. There was a patriarch in Alexandria, with a bishop in every other large city, each assisted by a body of priests and deacons. They had been clad in faith, holiness, humility, and charity; but Constantine robed them in honour, wealth, and power; and to this many of them soon added pride, avarice, and ambition.
This reign is no less remarkable for the religious quarrel which then divided the Christians, which set church against church and bishop against bishop, as soon as they lost that great bond of union, the fear of the pagans. Jesus of Nazareth was acknowledged by Constantine as a divine person; and, in the attempt then made by the Alexandrians to arrive at a more exact definition of his nature, while the emperor was willing to be guided by the bishops in his theological opinions, he was able to instruct them all in the more valuable lessons of mutual toleration and forbearance. The followers of early religions held different opinions, but distinguished themselves apart only by outward modes of worship, such as by sacrifices among the Greeks and Romans, and among the Jews and Egyptians by circumcision, and abstinence from certain meats. When Jesus of Nazareth introduced his spiritual religion of repentance and amendment of life, he taught that the test by which his disciples wrere to be known was their love to one another. After his death, however, the Christians gave more importance to opinions in religion, and towards the end of the third century they proposed to distinguish their fellow-worshippers in a mode hitherto unknown to the world, namely, by the profession of belief in certain opinions; for as yet there was no difference in their belief of historic facts. This gave rise to numerous metaphysical discussions, particularly among the more speculative and mystical.
At about this time the chief controversy was as to whether Christ was of the same, or of similar substance with God the Father, this being the dispute which divided Christendom for centuries. This dispute and others not quite so metaphysical were brought to the ears of the emperor by Alexander, Bishop of Alexandria, and Arius, the presbyter. The bishop had been enquiring into the belief of the presbyter, and the latter had argued against his superior and against the doctrine of the consubstantiality of the Father and the Son. The emperor’s letter to the theologians, in this first ecclesiastical quarrel that was ever brought before a Christian monarch, is addressed to Alexander and Arius, and he therein tells them that they are raising useless questions, which it is not necessary to settle, and which, though a good exercise for the understanding, only breed ill-will, and should be kept by each man in his own breast. He regrets the religious madness which has seized all Egypt; and lastly he orders the bishop not to question the priest as to his belief, and orders the priest, if questioned, not to return an answer. But this wise letter had no weight with the Alexandrian divines. The quarrel gained in importance from being noticed by the emperor; the civil government of the country was clogged; and Constantine, after having once interfered, was persuaded to call a council of bishops to settle the Christian faith for the future. Nicæa in Bithynia was chosen as the spot most convenient for Eastern Christendom to meet in; and two hundred and fifty bishops, followed by crowds of priests, there met in council from Greece, Thrace, Asia Minor, Syria, Arabia, Egypt, and Libya, with one or two from Western Europe.
At this synod, held in the year 325, Athanasius, a young deacon in the Alexandrian church, came for the first time into notice as the champion of Alexander against Arius, who was then placed upon his trial. All the authority, eloquence, and charity of the emperor were needed to quell the tumultuous passions of the assembly. It ended its stormy labours by voting what was called the Homoousian doctrine, that Jesus was of one substance with God. They put forth to the world the celebrated creed, named, from the city in which they met, the Nicene creed, and they excommunicated Arius and his followers, who were then all banished by the emperor. The meeting had afterwards less difficulty in coming to an agreement about the true time of Easter, and in excommunicating the Jews; and all except the Egyptians returned home with a wish that the quarrel should be forgotten and forgiven.
This first attempt among the Christians at settling the true faith by putting fetters on the mind, by drawing up a creed and punishing those that disbelieved it, was but the beginning of theological difficulties. These in Egypt arose as much from the difference of blood and language of the races that inhabited the country as from their religious belief; and Constantine must soon have seen that if as a theologian he had decided right, yet as a statesman he had been helping the Egyptians against the friends of his own Greek government in Alexandria.
After a reasonable delay, Arius addressed to the emperor a letter either of explanation or apology, asserting his full belief in Christianity, explaining his faith by using the words of the Apostles’ Creed, and begging to be re-admitted into the Church. The emperor, either from a readiness to forgive, or from a change of policy, or from an ignorance of the theological controversy, was satisfied with the apology, and thereupon wrote a mild conciliatory letter to Athanasius, who had in the meantime been made Bishop of Alexandria, expressing his wish that forgiveness should at all times be offered to the repentant, and ordering him to re-admit Arius to his rank in the Church. But the young Athanasius, who had gained his favour with the Egyptian clergy, and had been raised to his high seat by his zeal shown against Arius, refused to obey the commands of the emperor, alleging that it was unlawful to re-admit into the Church anybody who had once been excommunicated. Constantine could hardly be expected to listen to this excuse, or to overlook this direct refusal to obey his orders. The rebellious Athanasius was ordered into the emperor’s presence at Constantinople, and soon afterwards, in 335, called before a council of bishops at Tyre, where he was deposed and banished. At the same council, in the thirtieth year of this reign, Arius was re-admitted into communion with the Church, and after a few months he was allowed to return to Alexandria, to the indignation of the popular party in that city, while Athanasius remained in banishment during the rest of the reign, as a punishment for his disobedience.
This practice of judging and condemning opinions gave power in the Church to men who would otherwise have been least entitled to weight and influence. Athanasius rose to his high rank over the heads of the elder presbyters by his fitness for the harsher duties then required of an archbishop. Theological opinions became the watchwords of two contending parties; religion lost much of its empire over the heart; and the mild spirit of Christianity gave way to angry quarrels and cruel persecutions.
Another remarkable event of this reign was the foundation of the new city of Constantinople, to which the emperor removed the seat of his government. Rome lost much by the building of the new capital, although the emperors had for some time past ceased to live in Italy; but Alexandria lost the rank which it had long held as the centre of Greek learning and Greek thought, and it felt a blow from which Rome was saved by the difference of language. The patriarch of Alexandria was no longer the head of Greek Christendom. That rank was granted to the bishop of the imperial city; many of the philosophers who hung round the palace at Constantinople would otherwise have studied and taught in the museum; and the Greeks, by whose superiority Egypt had so long been kept in subjection, gradually became the weaker party. In the opinion of the historian, as in the map of the geographer, Alexandria had formerly been a Greek state on the borders of Egypt; but since the rebellion in the reign of Diocletian it was becoming more and more an Egyptian city; and those who in religion and politics thought and felt as Egyptians soon formed the larger half of the Alexandrians. The climate of Egypt was hardly fitted for the Greek race. Their numbers never could have been kept up by births alone, and they now began to lessen as the attraction to newcomers ceased. The pure Greek names henceforth become less common; and among the monks and writers we now meet with those named after the old gods of the country.
Constantine removed an obelisk from Egypt for the ornament of his new city, and he brought down another from Heliopolis to Alexandria; but he died before the second left the country, and it was afterwards taken by his son to Rome. These obelisks were covered with hieroglyphics, as usual, and we have a translation said to be made from the latter by Hermapion, an Egyptian priest. In order to take away its pagan character from the religious ceremony with which the yearly rise of the Nile wras celebrated in Alexandria, Constantine removed the sacred cubit from the temple of Serapis to one of the Christian churches; and nothwithstanding the gloomy forebodings of the people, the Nile rose as usual, and the clergy afterwards celebrated the time of its overflow as a Christian festival.
The pagan philosophers under Constantine had but few pupils and met with but little encouragement. Alypius of Alexandria and his friend Iamblichus, however, still taught the philosophy of Ammonius and Plotinus. The only writings by Alypius now remaining are his Introduction to Music; in which he explains the notation of the fifteen modes or tones in their respective kinds of diatonic, chromatic, and enharmonic. His signs are said to be Pythagorean. They are in pairs, of which one is thought to represent the note struck on the lyre, and the other the tone of the voice to be sung thereto. They thus imply accord or harmony. The same signs are found in some manuscripts written over the syllables of ancient poems; and thereby scholars, learned at once in the Greek language, in the art of deciphering signs, and in the science of music, now chant the odes of Pindar in strains not dissimilar to modern cathedral psalmody.
Sopator succeeded Iamblichus as professor of platonism in Alexandria, with the proud title of successor to Plato, For some time he enjoyed the friendship of Constantine; but, when religion made a quarrel between the friends, the philosopher was put to death by the emperor. The pagan account of the quarrel was that, when Constantine had killed his son, he applied to Sopator to be purified from his guilt; and when the platonist answered that he knew of no ceremony that could absolve a man from such a crime, the emperor applied to the Christians for baptism. This story may not be true, and the ecclesiastical historian remarks that Constantine had professed Christianity several years before the murder of his son; but then, as after his conversion he had got Sopator to consecrate his new city with a variety of pagan ceremonies, he may in the same way have asked him to absolve him from the guilt of murder.
On the death of Constantine, in 337, his three sons, without entirely dismembering the empire, divided the provinces of the Roman world into three shares. Constantine II., the eldest son, who succeeded to the throne of his father in Constantinople, and Constans, the youngest, who dwelt in Rome, divided Europe between them; while Constantius, the second son, held Syria, Mesopotamia, Armenia, and Egypt, of which possessions Antioch on the Orontes was at that time the capital. Thus Alexandria was doomed to a further fall. When governed by Rome it had still been the first of Greek cities; afterwards, when the seat of the empire was fixed at Constantinople, it became the second; but on this division of the Roman world, when the seat of government came still nearer to Egypt, and Antioch rose as the capital of the East, Alexandria fell to be the third among Greek cities. Egypt quietly received its political orders from Antioch. Its opinions also in some cases followed those of the capital, and it is curious to remark that the Alexandrian writers, when dating by the era of the creation, were now willing to consider the world ten years less old than they used, because it was so thought at Antioch. But it was not so with their religious opinions, and as long as Antioch and its emperor undertook to govern the Egyptian church there was little peace in the province.
The three emperors did not take the same side in the quarrel which under the name of religion was then unsettling the obedience of the Egyptians, and even in some degree troubling the rest of the empire. Constantius held the Arian opinions of Syria; but Constantine II. and Constans openly gave their countenance to the party of the rebellious Athanasius, who under their favour ventured to return to Alexandria, where, after an absence of two years and four months, he was received in the warmest manner by his admiring flock. But on the death of Constantine II., who was shortly afterwards killed in battle by his brother Constans, Constantius felt himself more master of his own kingdom; he deposed Athanasius, and summoned a council of bishops at Antioch to elect a new patriarch of Alexandria. Christian bishops, though they had latterly owed their ordination to the authority of their equals, had always received their bishoprics by the choice of their presbyters or of their flocks; and though they were glad to receive the support of the emperor, they were not willing to acknowledge him as their head. Hence, when the council at Antioch first elected Eusebius of Æmisa into the bishopric of Alexandria, he chose to refuse the honour which they had only a doubtful right to bestow, rather than to venture into the city in the face of his popular rival. The council then elected Gregory, whose greater courage and ambition led him to accept the office.
The council of Antioch then made some changes in the creed. A few years later, a second council met in the same place, and drew up a creed more near to what we now call the Athanasian; but it was firmly rejected by the Egyptian and Roman churches. Gregory was no sooner elected to the bishopric than he issued his commands as bishop, though, if he had the courage, he had not at the time the power to enter Alexandria. But Syrianus, the general of the Egyptian troops, was soon afterwards ordered by the emperor to place him on his episcopal throne; and he led him into the city, surrounded by the spears of five thousand soldiers, and followed by the small body of Alexandrians that after this invasion of their acknowledged rights still called themselves Arians. Gregory entered Alexandria in the evening, meaning to take his seat in the church on the next day; but the people in their zeal did not wait quietly for the dreaded morning. They ran at once to the church, and passed the night there with Athanasius in the greatest anxiety. In the morning, when Gregory arrived at the church, accompanied with the troops, he found the doors barricaded and the building full of men and women, denouncing the sacrilege, and threatening resistance. But the general gave orders that the church should be stormed, and the new bishop carried in by force of arms; and Athanasius, seeing that all resistance was useless, ordered the deacons to give out a psalm, and they all marched out at the opposite door singing. After these acts of violence on the part of the troops, and of resistance on the part of the people, the whole city was thrown into an uproar, and the prefect was hardly strong enough to carry on the government; the regular supply of grain for the poor citizens of Alexandria, and for Constantinople, was stopped; and the blame of the whole thrown upon Athanasius. He was a second time obliged to leave Egypt, and he fled to Rome, where he was warmly received by the Emperor Constans and the Roman bishop. But the zeal of the Athanasian party would not allow Gregory to keep possession of the church which he had gained only by force; they soon afterwards set fire to it and burned it to the ground, choosing that there should be no church at all rather than that it should be in the hands of the Arians; and the Arian clergy and bishops, though supported by the favour of the emperor and the troops of the prefect, were everywhere throughout Egypt driven from their churches and monasteries. During this quarrel it seems to have been felt by both parties that the choice of the people, or at least of the clergy, was necessary to make a bishop, and that Gregory had very little claim to that rank in Alexandria. Julius, the Bishop of Rome, warmly espoused the cause of Athanasius, and he wrote a letter to the Alexandrian church, praising their zeal for their bishop, and ordering them to re-admit him to his former rank, from which he had been deposed by the council of Antioch, but to which he had been restored by the Western bishops. Athanasius was also warmly supported by Constans, the emperor of the West, who at the same time wrote to his brother Constantius, begging him to replace the Alexandrian bishop, and making the additional threat that if he would not reinstate him he should be made to do so by force of arms.
Constantius, after taking the advice of his own bishops, thought it wisest to yield to the wishes or rather the commands of his brother Constans, and he wrote to Athanasius, calling him into his presence in Constantinople. But the rebellious bishop was not willing to trust himself within the reach of his offended sovereign; and it was not till after a second and a third letter, pressing him to come and promising him his safety, that he ventured within the limits of the Eastern empire. Strong in his high character for learning, firmness, and political skill, carrying with him the allegiance of the Egyptian nation, which was yielded to him much rather than to the emperor, and backed by the threats of Constans, Athanasius was at least a match for Constantius. At Constantinople the emperor and his subject, the Alexandrian bishop, made a formal treaty, by which it was agreed that, if Constantius would allow the Homoousian clergy throughout his dominions to return to their churches, Athanasius would in the same way throughout Egypt restore the Arian clergy; and upon this agreement Athanasius himself returned to Alexandria.
Among the followers of Athanasius was that important mixed race with whom the Egyptian civilisation chiefly rested, a race that may be called Koptic, but half Greek and half Egyptian in their language and religion as in their forefathers. But in feelings they were wholly opposed to the Greeks of Alexandria. Never since the last Nectanebo was conquered by the Persians, eight hundred years earlier, did the Egyptians seem so near to throwing off the foreign yoke and rising again as an independent nation. But the Greeks, who had taught them so much, had not taught them the arts of war; and the nation remained enslaved to those who could wield the sword. The return of Athanasius, however, was only the signal for a fresh uproar, and the Arians complained that Egypt was kept in a constant turmoil by his zealous activity. Nor were the Arians his only enemies. He had offended many others of his clergy by his overbearing manners, and more particularly by his following in the steps of Alexander, the late bishop, in claiming new and higher powers for the office of patriarch than had ever been yielded to the bishops of Alexandria before their spiritual rank had been changed into civil rank by the emperor’s adoption of their religion. Meletius headed a strong party of bishops, priests, and deacons in opposing the new claims of the archiepiscopal see of Alexandria. His followers differed in no point of doctrine from the Athanasian party, but as they sided with the Arians they were usually called heretics.
By this time the statesmen and magistrates had gained a clear view of the change which had come over the political state of the empire, first by the spread of Christianity, and secondly by the emperor’s embracing it. By supporting Christianity the emperors gave rank in the state to an organised and well-trained body, which immediately found itself in possession of all the civil power. A bishopric, which a few years before was a post of danger, was now a place of great profit, and secured to its possessor every worldly advantage of wealth, honour, and power. An archbishop in the capital, obeyed by a bishop in every city, with numerous priests and deacons under them, was usually of more weight than the prefect. While Athanasius was at the height of his popularity in Egypt, and was supported by the Emperor of the West, the Emperor Constantius was very far from being his master. But on the death of Constans, when Constantius became sovereign of the whole empire, he once more tried to make Alexandria and the Egyptian church obedient to his wishes. He was, however, still doubtful how far it was prudent to measure his strength against that of the bishop, and he chose rather to begin privately with threats before using his power openly. He first wrote word to Athanasius, as if in answer to a request from the bishop, that he was at liberty, if he wished, to visit Italy; but he sent the letter by the hands of the notary Diogenes, who added, by word of mouth, that the permission was meant for a command, and that it was the emperor’s pleasure that he should immediately quit his bishopric and the province. But this underhand conduct of the emperor only showed his own weakness. Athanasius steadily refused to obey any unwritten orders, and held his bishopric for upwards of two years longer, before Constantius felt strong enough to enforce his wishes. Towards the end of that time, Syrianus, the general of the Egyptian army, to whom this delicate task was entrusted, gathered together from other parts of the province a body of five thousand chosen men, and with these he marched quietly into Alexandria, to overawe, if possible, the rebellious bishop. He gave out no reason for his conduct; but the Arians, who were in the secret, openly boasted that it would soon be their turn to possess the churches. Syrianus then sent for Athanasius, and in the presence of Maximus the prefect again delivered to him the command of Constantius, that he should quit Egypt and retire into banishment, and he threatened to carry this command into execution by the help of the troops if he met with any resistance. Athanasius, without refusing to obey, begged to be shown the emperor’s orders in writing; but this reasonable request was refused. He then entreated them even to give him, in their own handwriting, an order for his banishment; but this was also refused, and the citizens, who were made acquainted with the emperor’s wishes and the bishop’s firmness, waited in dreadful anxiety to see whether the prefect and the general would venture to enforce their orders. The presbytery of the church and the corporation of the city went up to Syrianus in solemn procession to beg him either to show a written authority for the banishment of their bishop, or to write to Constantinople to learn the emperor’s pleasure. To this request Syrianus at last yielded, and gave his word to the friends of Athanasius that he would take no further steps till the return of the messengers which he then sent to Constantinople.