We have seldom an opportunity of observing, either in active or
speculative life, what effect may be produced, or what obstacles may be
surmounted, by the force of a single mind, when it is inflexibly applied
to the pursuit of a single object. The immortal name of Athanasius will
never be separated from the Catholic doctrine of the Trinity, to whose
defence he consecrated every moment and every faculty of his being.
Educated in the family of Alexander, he had vigorously opposed the early
progress of the Arian heresy: he exercised the important functions of
secretary under the aged prelate; and the fathers of the Nicene council
beheld with surprise and respect the rising virtues of the young deacon.
In a time of public danger, the dull claims of age and of rank are
sometimes superseded; and within five months after his return from Nice,
the deacon Athanasius was seated on the archiepiscopal throne of Egypt. He
filled that eminent station above forty-six years, and his long
administration was spent in a perpetual combat against the powers of
Arianism. Five times was Athanasius expelled from his throne; twenty years
he passed as an exile or a fugitive: and almost every province of the
Roman empire was successively witness to his merit, and his sufferings in
the cause of the Homoousion, which he considered as the sole pleasure and
business, as the duty, and as the glory of his life. Amidst the storms of
persecution, the archbishop of Alexandria was patient of labor, jealous of
fame, careless of safety; and although his mind was tainted by the
contagion of fanaticism, Athanasius displayed a superiority of character
and abilities, which would have qualified him, far better than the
degenerate sons of Constantine, for the government of a great monarchy.
His learning was much less profound and extensive than that of Eusebius of
Cæsarea, and his rude eloquence could not be compared with the
polished oratory of Gregory of Basil; but whenever the primate of Egypt
was called upon to justify his sentiments, or his conduct, his
unpremeditated style, either of speaking or writing, was clear, forcible,
and persuasive. He has always been revered, in the orthodox school, as one
of the most accurate masters of the Christian theology; and he was
supposed to possess two profane sciences, less adapted to the episcopal
character, the knowledge of jurisprudence, and that of divination. Some
fortunate conjectures of future events, which impartial reasoners might
ascribe to the experience and judgment of Athanasius, were attributed by
his friends to heavenly inspiration, and imputed by his enemies to
infernal magic.
But as Athanasius was continually engaged with the prejudices and passions
of every order of men, from the monk to the emperor, the knowledge of
human nature was his first and most important science. He preserved a
distinct and unbroken view of a scene which was incessantly shifting; and
never failed to improve those decisive moments which are irrecoverably
past before they are perceived by a common eye. The archbishop of
Alexandria was capable of distinguishing how far he might boldly command,
and where he must dexterously insinuate; how long he might contend with
power, and when he must withdraw from persecution; and while he directed
the thunders of the church against heresy and rebellion, he could assume,
in the bosom of his own party, the flexible and indulgent temper of a
prudent leader. The election of Athanasius has not escaped the reproach of
irregularity and precipitation; but the propriety of his behavior
conciliated the affections both of the clergy and of the people. The
Alexandrians were impatient to rise in arms for the defence of an eloquent
and liberal pastor. In his distress he always derived support, or at least
consolation, from the faithful attachment of his parochial clergy; and the
hundred bishops of Egypt adhered, with unshaken zeal, to the cause of
Athanasius. In the modest equipage which pride and policy would affect, he
frequently performed the episcopal visitation of his provinces, from the
mouth of the Nile to the confines of Æthiopia; familiarly conversing
with the meanest of the populace, and humbly saluting the saints and
hermits of the desert. Nor was it only in ecclesiastical assemblies, among
men whose education and manners were similar to his own, that Athanasius
displayed the ascendancy of his genius. He appeared with easy and
respectful firmness in the courts of princes; and in the various turns of
his prosperous and adverse fortune he never lost the confidence of his
friends, or the esteem of his enemies.
In his youth, the primate of Egypt resisted the great Constantine, who had
repeatedly signified his will, that Arius should be restored to the
Catholic communion. The emperor respected, and might forgive, this
inflexible resolution; and the faction who considered Athanasius as their
most formidable enemy, was constrained to dissemble their hatred, and
silently to prepare an indirect and distant assault. They scattered rumors
and suspicions, represented the archbishop as a proud and oppressive
tyrant, and boldly accused him of violating the treaty which had been
ratified in the Nicene council, with the schismatic followers of Meletius.
Athanasius had openly disapproved that ignominious peace, and the emperor
was disposed to believe that he had abused his ecclesiastical and civil
power, to prosecute those odious sectaries: that he had sacrilegiously
broken a chalice in one of their churches of Mareotis; that he had whipped
or imprisoned six of their bishops; and that Arsenius, a seventh bishop of
the same party, had been murdered, or at least mutilated, by the cruel
hand of the primate. These charges, which affected his honor and his life,
were referred by Constantine to his brother Dalmatius the censor, who
resided at Antioch; the synods of Cæsarea and Tyre were successively
convened; and the bishops of the East were instructed to judge the cause
of Athanasius, before they proceeded to consecrate the new church of the
Resurrection at Jerusalem. The primate might be conscious of his
innocence; but he was sensible that the same implacable spirit which had
dictated the accusation, would direct the proceeding, and pronounce the
sentence. He prudently declined the tribunal of his enemies; despised the
summons of the synod of Cæsarea; and, after a long and artful delay,
submitted to the peremptory commands of the emperor, who threatened to
punish his criminal disobedience if he refused to appear in the council of
Tyre. Before Athanasius, at the head of fifty Egyptian prelates, sailed
from Alexandria, he had wisely secured the alliance of the Meletians; and
Arsenius himself, his imaginary victim, and his secret friend, was
privately concealed in his train. The synod of Tyre was conducted by
Eusebius of Cæsarea, with more passion, and with less art, than his
learning and experience might promise; his numerous faction repeated the
names of homicide and tyrant; and their clamors were encouraged by the
seeming patience of Athanasius, who expected the decisive moment to
produce Arsenius alive and unhurt in the midst of the assembly. The nature
of the other charges did not admit of such clear and satisfactory replies;
yet the archbishop was able to prove, that in the village, where he was
accused of breaking a consecrated chalice, neither church nor altar nor
chalice could really exist. The Arians, who had secretly determined the
guilt and condemnation of their enemy, attempted, however, to disguise
their injustice by the imitation of judicial forms: the synod appointed an
episcopal commission of six delegates to collect evidence on the spot; and
this measure which was vigorously opposed by the Egyptian bishops, opened
new scenes of violence and perjury. After the return of the deputies from
Alexandria, the majority of the council pronounced the final sentence of
degradation and exile against the primate of Egypt. The decree, expressed
in the fiercest language of malice and revenge, was communicated to the
emperor and the Catholic church; and the bishops immediately resumed a
mild and devout aspect, such as became their holy pilgrimage to the
Sepulchre of Christ.
But the injustice of these ecclesiastical judges had not been countenanced
by the submission, or even by the presence, of Athanasius. He resolved to
make a bold and dangerous experiment, whether the throne was inaccessible
to the voice of truth; and before the final sentence could be pronounced
at Tyre, the intrepid primate threw himself into a bark which was ready to
hoist sail for the Imperial city. The request of a formal audience might
have been opposed or eluded; but Athanasius concealed his arrival, watched
the moment of Constantine's return from an adjacent villa, and boldly
encountered his angry sovereign as he passed on horseback through the
principal street of Constantinople. So strange an apparition excited his
surprise and indignation; and the guards were ordered to remove the
importunate suitor; but his resentment was subdued by involuntary respect;
and the haughty spirit of the emperor was awed by the courage and
eloquence of a bishop, who implored his justice and awakened his
conscience. Constantine listened to the complaints of Athanasius with
impartial and even gracious attention; the members of the synod of Tyre
were summoned to justify their proceedings; and the arts of the Eusebian
faction would have been confounded, if they had not aggravated the guilt
of the primate, by the dexterous supposition of an unpardonable offence; a
criminal design to intercept and detain the corn-fleet of Alexandria,
which supplied the subsistence of the new capital. The emperor was
satisfied that the peace of Egypt would be secured by the absence of a
popular leader; but he refused to fill the vacancy of the archiepiscopal
throne; and the sentence, which, after long hesitation, he pronounced, was
that of a jealous ostracism, rather than of an ignominious exile. In the
remote province of Gaul, but in the hospitable court of Treves, Athanasius
passed about twenty eight months. The death of the emperor changed the
face of public affairs and, amidst the general indulgence of a young
reign, the primate was restored to his country by an honorable edict of
the younger Constantine, who expressed a deep sense of the innocence and
merit of his venerable guest.
The death of that prince exposed Athanasius to a second persecution; and
the feeble Constantius, the sovereign of the East, soon became the secret
accomplice of the Eusebians. Ninety bishops of that sect or faction
assembled at Antioch, under the specious pretence of dedicating the
cathedral. They composed an ambiguous creed, which is faintly tinged with
the colors of Semi-Arianism, and twenty-five canons, which still regulate
the discipline of the orthodox Greeks. It was decided, with some
appearance of equity, that a bishop, deprived by a synod, should not
resume his episcopal functions till he had been absolved by the judgment
of an equal synod; the law was immediately applied to the case of
Athanasius; the council of Antioch pronounced, or rather confirmed, his
degradation: a stranger, named Gregory, was seated on his throne; and
Philagrius, the præfect of Egypt, was instructed to support the new
primate with the civil and military powers of the province. Oppressed by
the conspiracy of the Asiatic prelates, Athanasius withdrew from
Alexandria, and passed three years as an exile and a suppliant on the holy
threshold of the Vatican. By the assiduous study of the Latin language, he
soon qualified himself to negotiate with the western clergy; his decent
flattery swayed and directed the haughty Julius; the Roman pontiff was
persuaded to consider his appeal as the peculiar interest of the Apostolic
see: and his innocence was unanimously declared in a council of fifty
bishops of Italy. At the end of three years, the primate was summoned to
the court of Milan by the emperor Constans, who, in the indulgence of
unlawful pleasures, still professed a lively regard for the orthodox
faith. The cause of truth and justice was promoted by the influence of
gold, and the ministers of Constans advised their sovereign to require the
convocation of an ecclesiastical assembly, which might act as the
representatives of the Catholic church. Ninety-four bishops of the West,
seventy-six bishops of the East, encountered each other at Sardica, on the
verge of the two empires, but in the dominions of the protector of
Athanasius. Their debates soon degenerated into hostile altercations; the
Asiatics, apprehensive for their personal safety, retired to Philippopolis
in Thrace; and the rival synods reciprocally hurled their spiritual
thunders against their enemies, whom they piously condemned as the enemies
of the true God. Their decrees were published and ratified in their
respective provinces: and Athanasius, who in the West was revered as a
saint, was exposed as a criminal to the abhorrence of the East. The
council of Sardica reveals the first symptoms of discord and schism
between the Greek and Latin churches which were separated by the
accidental difference of faith, and the permanent distinction of language.
During his second exile in the West, Athanasius was frequently admitted to
the Imperial presence; at Capua, Lodi, Milan, Verona, Padua, Aquileia, and
Treves. The bishop of the diocese usually assisted at these interviews;
the master of the offices stood before the veil or curtain of the sacred
apartment; and the uniform moderation of the primate might be attested by
these respectable witnesses, to whose evidence he solemnly appeals.
Prudence would undoubtedly suggest the mild and respectful tone that
became a subject and a bishop. In these familiar conferences with the
sovereign of the West, Athanasius might lament the error of Constantius,
but he boldly arraigned the guilt of his eunuchs and his Arian prelates;
deplored the distress and danger of the Catholic church; and excited
Constans to emulate the zeal and glory of his father. The emperor declared
his resolution of employing the troops and treasures of Europe in the
orthodox cause; and signified, by a concise and peremptory epistle to his
brother Constantius, that unless he consented to the immediate restoration
of Athanasius, he himself, with a fleet and army, would seat the
archbishop on the throne of Alexandria. But this religious war, so
horrible to nature, was prevented by the timely compliance of Constantius;
and the emperor of the East condescended to solicit a reconciliation with
a subject whom he had injured. Athanasius waited with decent pride, till
he had received three successive epistles full of the strongest assurances
of the protection, the favor, and the esteem of his sovereign; who invited
him to resume his episcopal seat, and who added the humiliating precaution
of engaging his principal ministers to attest the sincerity of his
intentions. They were manifested in a still more public manner, by the
strict orders which were despatched into Egypt to recall the adherents of
Athanasius, to restore their privileges, to proclaim their innocence, and
to erase from the public registers the illegal proceedings which had been
obtained during the prevalence of the Eusebian faction. After every
satisfaction and security had been given, which justice or even delicacy
could require, the primate proceeded, by slow journeys, through the
provinces of Thrace, Asia, and Syria; and his progress was marked by the
abject homage of the Oriental bishops, who excited his contempt without
deceiving his penetration. At Antioch he saw the emperor Constantius;
sustained, with modest firmness, the embraces and protestations of his
master, and eluded the proposal of allowing the Arians a single church at
Alexandria, by claiming, in the other cities of the empire, a similar
toleration for his own party; a reply which might have appeared just and
moderate in the mouth of an independent prince. The entrance of the
archbishop into his capital was a triumphal procession; absence and
persecution had endeared him to the Alexandrians; his authority, which he
exercised with rigor, was more firmly established; and his fame was
diffused from Æthiopia to Britain, over the whole extent of the
Christian world.
But the subject who has reduced his prince to the necessity of
dissembling, can never expect a sincere and lasting forgiveness; and the
tragic fate of Constans soon deprived Athanasius of a powerful and
generous protector. The civil war between the assassin and the only
surviving brother of Constans, which afflicted the empire above three
years, secured an interval of repose to the Catholic church; and the two
contending parties were desirous to conciliate the friendship of a bishop,
who, by the weight of his personal authority, might determine the
fluctuating resolutions of an important province. He gave audience to the
ambassadors of the tyrant, with whom he was afterwards accused of holding
a secret correspondence; and the emperor Constantius repeatedly assured
his dearest father, the most reverend Athanasius, that, notwithstanding
the malicious rumors which were circulated by their common enemies, he had
inherited the sentiments, as well as the throne, of his deceased brother.
Gratitude and humanity would have disposed the primate of Egypt to deplore
the untimely fate of Constans, and to abhor the guilt of Magnentius; but
as he clearly understood that the apprehensions of Constantius were his
only safeguard, the fervor of his prayers for the success of the righteous
cause might perhaps be somewhat abated. The ruin of Athanasius was no
longer contrived by the obscure malice of a few bigoted or angry bishops,
who abused the authority of a credulous monarch. The monarch himself
avowed the resolution, which he had so long suppressed, of avenging his
private injuries; and the first winter after his victory, which he passed
at Arles, was employed against an enemy more odious to him than the
vanquished tyrant of Gaul.
If the emperor had capriciously decreed the death of the most eminent and
virtuous citizen of the republic, the cruel order would have been executed
without hesitation, by the ministers of open violence or of specious
injustice. The caution, the delay, the difficulty with which he proceeded
in the condemnation and punishment of a popular bishop, discovered to the
world that the privileges of the church had already revived a sense of
order and freedom in the Roman government. The sentence which was
pronounced in the synod of Tyre, and subscribed by a large majority of the
Eastern bishops, had never been expressly repealed; and as Athanasius had
been once degraded from his episcopal dignity by the judgment of his
brethren, every subsequent act might be considered as irregular, and even
criminal. But the memory of the firm and effectual support which the
primate of Egypt had derived from the attachment of the Western church,
engaged Constantius to suspend the execution of the sentence till he had
obtained the concurrence of the Latin bishops. Two years were consumed in
ecclesiastical negotiations; and the important cause between the emperor
and one of his subjects was solemnly debated, first in the synod of Arles,
and afterwards in the great council of Milan, which consisted of above
three hundred bishops. Their integrity was gradually undermined by the
arguments of the Arians, the dexterity of the eunuchs, and the pressing
solicitations of a prince who gratified his revenge at the expense of his
dignity, and exposed his own passions, whilst he influenced those of the
clergy. Corruption, the most infallible symptom of constitutional liberty,
was successfully practised; honors, gifts, and immunities were offered and
accepted as the price of an episcopal vote; and the condemnation of the
Alexandrian primate was artfully represented as the only measure which
could restore the peace and union of the Catholic church. The friends of
Athanasius were not, however, wanting to their leader, or to their cause.
With a manly spirit, which the sanctity of their character rendered less
dangerous, they maintained, in public debate, and in private conference
with the emperor, the eternal obligation of religion and justice. They
declared, that neither the hope of his favor, nor the fear of his
displeasure, should prevail on them to join in the condemnation of an
absent, an innocent, a respectable brother. They affirmed, with apparent
reason, that the illegal and obsolete decrees of the council of Tyre had
long since been tacitly abolished by the Imperial edicts, the honorable
reestablishment of the archbishop of Alexandria, and the silence or
recantation of his most clamorous adversaries. They alleged, that his
innocence had been attested by the unanimous bishops of Egypt, and had
been acknowledged in the councils of Rome and Sardica, by the impartial
judgment of the Latin church. They deplored the hard condition of
Athanasius, who, after enjoying so many years his seat, his reputation,
and the seeming confidence of his sovereign, was again called upon to
confute the most groundless and extravagant accusations. Their language
was specious; their conduct was honorable: but in this long and obstinate
contest, which fixed the eyes of the whole empire on a single bishop, the
ecclesiastical factions were prepared to sacrifice truth and justice to
the more interesting object of defending or removing the intrepid champion
of the Nicene faith. The Arians still thought it prudent to disguise, in
ambiguous language, their real sentiments and designs; but the orthodox
bishops, armed with the favor of the people, and the decrees of a general
council, insisted on every occasion, and particularly at Milan, that their
adversaries should purge themselves from the suspicion of heresy, before
they presumed to arraign the conduct of the great Athanasius.
But the voice of reason (if reason was indeed on the side of Athanasius)
was silenced by the clamors of a factious or venal majority; and the
councils of Arles and Milan were not dissolved, till the archbishop of
Alexandria had been solemnly condemned and deposed by the judgment of the
Western, as well as of the Eastern, church. The bishops who had opposed,
were required to subscribe, the sentence, and to unite in religious
communion with the suspected leaders of the adverse party. A formulary of
consent was transmitted by the messengers of state to the absent bishops:
and all those who refused to submit their private opinion to the public
and inspired wisdom of the councils of Arles and Milan, were immediately
banished by the emperor, who affected to execute the decrees of the
Catholic church. Among those prelates who led the honorable band of
confessors and exiles, Liberius of Rome, Osius of Cordova, Paulinus of
Treves, Dionysius of Milan, Eusebius of Vercellæ, Lucifer of
Cagliari and Hilary of Poitiers, may deserve to be particularly
distinguished. The eminent station of Liberius, who governed the capital
of the empire; the personal merit and long experience of the venerable
Osius, who was revered as the favorite of the great Constantine, and the
father of the Nicene faith, placed those prelates at the head of the Latin
church: and their example, either of submission or resistance, would
probable be imitated by the episcopal crowd. But the repeated attempts of
the emperor to seduce or to intimidate the bishops of Rome and Cordova,
were for some time ineffectual. The Spaniard declared himself ready to
suffer under Constantius, as he had suffered threescore years before under
his grandfather Maximian. The Roman, in the presence of his sovereign,
asserted the innocence of Athanasius and his own freedom. When he was
banished to Beræa in Thrace, he sent back a large sum which had been
offered for the accommodation of his journey; and insulted the court of
Milan by the haughty remark, that the emperor and his eunuchs might want
that gold to pay their soldiers and their bishops. The resolution of
Liberius and Osius was at length subdued by the hardships of exile and
confinement. The Roman pontiff purchased his return by some criminal
compliances; and afterwards expiated his guilt by a seasonable repentance.
Persuasion and violence were employed to extort the reluctant signature of
the decrepit bishop of Cordova, whose strength was broken, and whose
faculties were perhaps impaired by the weight of a hundred years; and the
insolent triumph of the Arians provoked some of the orthodox party to
treat with inhuman severity the character, or rather the memory, of an
unfortunate old man, to whose former services Christianity itself was so
deeply indebted.
The fall of Liberius and Osius reflected a brighter lustre on the firmness
of those bishops who still adhered, with unshaken fidelity, to the cause
of Athanasius and religious truth. The ingenious malice of their enemies
had deprived them of the benefit of mutual comfort and advice, separated
those illustrious exiles into distant provinces, and carefully selected
the most inhospitable spots of a great empire. Yet they soon experienced
that the deserts of Libya, and the most barbarous tracts of Cappadocia,
were less inhospitable than the residence of those cities in which an
Arian bishop could satiate, without restraint, the exquisite rancor of
theological hatred. Their consolation was derived from the consciousness
of rectitude and independence, from the applause, the visits, the letters,
and the liberal alms of their adherents, and from the satisfaction which
they soon enjoyed of observing the intestine divisions of the adversaries
of the Nicene faith. Such was the nice and capricious taste of the emperor
Constantius; and so easily was he offended by the slightest deviation from
his imaginary standard of Christian truth, that he persecuted, with equal
zeal, those who defended the consubstantiality,
those who asserted the similar substance,
and those who denied the likeness of the Son of
God. Three bishops, degraded and banished for those adverse opinions,
might possibly meet in the same place of exile; and, according to the
difference of their temper, might either pity or insult the blind
enthusiasm of their antagonists, whose present sufferings would never be
compensated by future happiness.
The disgrace and exile of the orthodox bishops of the West were designed
as so many preparatory steps to the ruin of Athanasius himself.
Six-and-twenty months had elapsed, during which the Imperial court
secretly labored, by the most insidious arts, to remove him from
Alexandria, and to withdraw the allowance which supplied his popular
liberality. But when the primate of Egypt, deserted and proscribed by the
Latin church, was left destitute of any foreign support, Constantius
despatched two of his secretaries with a verbal commission to announce and
execute the order of his banishment. As the justice of the sentence was
publicly avowed by the whole party, the only motive which could restrain
Constantius from giving his messengers the sanction of a written mandate,
must be imputed to his doubt of the event; and to a sense of the danger to
which he might expose the second city, and the most fertile province, of
the empire, if the people should persist in the resolution of defending,
by force of arms, the innocence of their spiritual father. Such extreme
caution afforded Athanasius a specious pretence respectfully to dispute
the truth of an order, which he could not reconcile, either with the
equity, or with the former declarations, of his gracious master. The civil
powers of Egypt found themselves inadequate to the task of persuading or
compelling the primate to abdicate his episcopal throne; and they were
obliged to conclude a treaty with the popular leaders of Alexandria, by
which it was stipulated, that all proceedings and all hostilities should
be suspended till the emperor's pleasure had been more distinctly
ascertained. By this seeming moderation, the Catholics were deceived into
a false and fatal security; while the legions of the Upper Egypt, and of
Libya, advanced, by secret orders and hasty marches, to besiege, or rather
to surprise, a capital habituated to sedition, and inflamed by religious
zeal. The position of Alexandria, between the sea and the Lake Mareotis,
facilitated the approach and landing of the troops; who were introduced
into the heart of the city, before any effectual measures could be taken
either to shut the gates or to occupy the important posts of defence. At
the hour of midnight, twenty-three days after the signature of the treaty,
Syrianus, duke of Egypt, at the head of five thousand soldiers, armed and
prepared for an assault, unexpectedly invested the church of St. Theonas,
where the archbishop, with a part of his clergy and people, performed
their nocturnal devotions. The doors of the sacred edifice yielded to the
impetuosity of the attack, which was accompanied with every horrid
circumstance of tumult and bloodshed; but, as the bodies of the slain, and
the fragments of military weapons, remained the next day an
unexceptionable evidence in the possession of the Catholics, the
enterprise of Syrianus may be considered as a successful irruption rather
than as an absolute conquest. The other churches of the city were profaned
by similar outrages; and, during at least four months, Alexandria was
exposed to the insults of a licentious army, stimulated by the
ecclesiastics of a hostile faction. Many of the faithful were killed; who
may deserve the name of martyrs, if their deaths were neither provoked nor
revenged; bishops and presbyters were treated with cruel ignominy;
consecrated virgins were stripped naked, scourged and violated; the houses
of wealthy citizens were plundered; and, under the mask of religious zeal,
lust, avarice, and private resentment were gratified with impunity, and
even with applause. The Pagans of Alexandria, who still formed a numerous
and discontented party, were easily persuaded to desert a bishop whom they
feared and esteemed. The hopes of some peculiar favors, and the
apprehension of being involved in the general penalties of rebellion,
engaged them to promise their support to the destined successor of
Athanasius, the famous George of Cappadocia. The usurper, after receiving
the consecration of an Arian synod, was placed on the episcopal throne by
the arms of Sebastian, who had been appointed Count of Egypt for the
execution of that important design. In the use, as well as in the
acquisition, of power, the tyrant, George disregarded the laws of
religion, of justice, and of humanity; and the same scenes of violence and
scandal which had been exhibited in the capital, were repeated in more
than ninety episcopal cities of Egypt. Encouraged by success, Constantius
ventured to approve the conduct of his minister. By a public and
passionate epistle, the emperor congratulates the deliverance of
Alexandria from a popular tyrant, who deluded his blind votaries by the
magic of his eloquence; expatiates on the virtues and piety of the most
reverend George, the elected bishop; and aspires, as the patron and
benefactor of the city to surpass the fame of Alexander himself. But he
solemnly declares his unalterable resolution to pursue with fire and sword
the seditious adherents of the wicked Athanasius, who, by flying from
justice, has confessed his guilt, and escaped the ignominious death which
he had so often deserved.
Athanasius had indeed escaped from the most imminent dangers; and the
adventures of that extraordinary man deserve and fix our attention. On the
memorable night when the church of St. Theonas was invested by the troops
of Syrianus, the archbishop, seated on his throne, expected, with calm and
intrepid dignity, the approach of death. While the public devotion was
interrupted by shouts of rage and cries of terror, he animated his
trembling congregation to express their religious confidence, by chanting
one of the psalms of David which celebrates the triumph of the God of Isræl
over the haughty and impious tyrant of Egypt. The doors were at length
burst open: a cloud of arrows was discharged among the people; the
soldiers, with drawn swords, rushed forwards into the sanctuary; and the
dreadful gleam of their arms was reflected by the holy luminaries which
burnt round the altar. Athanasius still rejected the pious importunity of
the monks and presbyters, who were attached to his person; and nobly
refused to desert his episcopal station, till he had dismissed in safety
the last of the congregation. The darkness and tumult of the night favored
the retreat of the archbishop; and though he was oppressed by the waves of
an agitated multitude, though he was thrown to the ground, and left
without sense or motion, he still recovered his undaunted courage, and
eluded the eager search of the soldiers, who were instructed by their
Arian guides, that the head of Athanasius would be the most acceptable
present to the emperor. From that moment the primate of Egypt disappeared
from the eyes of his enemies, and remained above six years concealed in
impenetrable obscurity.
The despotic power of his implacable enemy filled the whole extent of the
Roman world; and the exasperated monarch had endeavored, by a very
pressing epistle to the Christian princes of Ethiopia, * to exclude
Athanasius from the most remote and sequestered regions of the earth.
Counts, præfects, tribunes, whole armies, were successively employed
to pursue a bishop and a fugitive; the vigilance of the civil and military
powers was excited by the Imperial edicts; liberal rewards were promised
to the man who should produce Athanasius, either alive or dead; and the
most severe penalties were denounced against those who should dare to
protect the public enemy. But the deserts of Thebais were now peopled by a
race of wild, yet submissive fanatics, who preferred the commands of their
abbot to the laws of their sovereign. The numerous disciples of Antony and
Pachomius received the fugitive primate as their father, admired the
patience and humility with which he conformed to their strictest
institutions, collected every word which dropped from his lips as the
genuine effusions of inspired wisdom; and persuaded themselves that their
prayers, their fasts, and their vigils, were less meritorious than the
zeal which they expressed, and the dangers which they braved, in the
defence of truth and innocence. The monasteries of Egypt were seated in
lonely and desolate places, on the summit of mountains, or in the islands
of the Nile; and the sacred horn or trumpet of Tabenne was the well-known
signal which assembled several thousand robust and determined monks, who,
for the most part, had been the peasants of the adjacent country. When
their dark retreats were invaded by a military force, which it was
impossible to resist, they silently stretched out their necks to the
executioner; and supported their national character, that tortures could
never wrest from an Egyptian the confession of a secret which he was
resolved not to disclose. The archbishop of Alexandria, for whose safety
they eagerly devoted their lives, was lost among a uniform and
well-disciplined multitude; and on the nearer approach of danger, he was
swiftly removed, by their officious hands, from one place of concealment
to another, till he reached the formidable deserts, which the gloomy and
credulous temper of superstition had peopled with dæmons and savage
monsters. The retirement of Athanasius, which ended only with the life of
Constantius, was spent, for the most part, in the society of the monks,
who faithfully served him as guards, as secretaries, and as messengers;
but the importance of maintaining a more intimate connection with the
Catholic party tempted him, whenever the diligence of the pursuit was
abated, to emerge from the desert, to introduce himself into Alexandria,
and to trust his person to the discretion of his friends and adherents.
His various adventures might have furnished the subject of a very
entertaining romance. He was once secreted in a dry cistern, which he had
scarcely left before he was betrayed by the treachery of a female slave;
and he was once concealed in a still more extraordinary asylum, the house
of a virgin, only twenty years of age, and who was celebrated in the whole
city for her exquisite beauty. At the hour of midnight, as she related the
story many years afterwards, she was surprised by the appearance of the
archbishop in a loose undress, who, advancing with hasty steps, conjured
her to afford him the protection which he had been directed by a celestial
vision to seek under her hospitable roof. The pious maid accepted and
preserved the sacred pledge which was intrusted to her prudence and
courage. Without imparting the secret to any one, she instantly conducted
Athanasius into her most secret chamber, and watched over his safety with
the tenderness of a friend and the assiduity of a servant. As long as the
danger continued, she regularly supplied him with books and provisions,
washed his feet, managed his correspondence, and dexterously concealed
from the eye of suspicion this familiar and solitary intercourse between a
saint whose character required the most unblemished chastity, and a female
whose charms might excite the most dangerous emotions. During the six
years of persecution and exile, Athanasius repeated his visits to his fair
and faithful companion; and the formal declaration, that he saw
the councils of Rimini and Seleucia, forces us to believe that he was
secretly present at the time and place of their convocation. The advantage
of personally negotiating with his friends, and of observing and improving
the divisions of his enemies, might justify, in a prudent statesman, so
bold and dangerous an enterprise: and Alexandria was connected by trade
and navigation with every seaport of the Mediterranean. From the depth of
his inaccessible retreat the intrepid primate waged an incessant and
offensive war against the protector of the Arians; and his seasonable
writings, which were diligently circulated and eagerly perused,
contributed to unite and animate the orthodox party. In his public
apologies, which he addressed to the emperor himself, he sometimes
affected the praise of moderation; whilst at the same time, in secret and
vehement invectives, he exposed Constantius as a weak and wicked prince,
the executioner of his family, the tyrant of the republic, and the
Antichrist of the church. In the height of his prosperity, the victorious
monarch, who had chastised the rashness of Gallus, and suppressed the
revolt of Sylvanus, who had taken the diadem from the head of Vetranio,
and vanquished in the field the legions of Magnentius, received from an
invisible hand a wound, which he could neither heal nor revenge; and the
son of Constantine was the first of the Christian princes who experienced
the strength of those principles, which, in the cause of religion, could
resist the most violent exertions of the civil power.
The persecution of Athanasius, and of so many respectable bishops, who
suffered for the truth of their opinions, or at least for the integrity of
their conscience, was a just subject of indignation and discontent to all
Christians, except those who were blindly devoted to the Arian faction.
The people regretted the loss of their faithful pastors, whose banishment
was usually followed by the intrusion of a stranger into the episcopal
chair; and loudly complained, that the right of election was violated, and
that they were condemned to obey a mercenary usurper, whose person was
unknown, and whose principles were suspected. The Catholics might prove to
the world, that they were not involved in the guilt and heresy of their
ecclesiastical governor, by publicly testifying their dissent, or by
totally separating themselves from his communion. The first of these
methods was invented at Antioch, and practised with such success, that it
was soon diffused over the Christian world. The doxology or sacred hymn,
which celebrates the glory of the Trinity, is
susceptible of very nice, but material, inflections; and the substance of
an orthodox, or an heretical, creed, may be expressed by the difference of
a disjunctive, or a copulative, particle. Alternate responses, and a more
regular psalmody, were introduced into the public service by Flavianus and
Diodorus, two devout and active laymen, who were attached to the Nicene
faith. Under their conduct a swarm of monks issued from the adjacent
desert, bands of well-disciplined singers were stationed in the cathedral
of Antioch, the Glory to the Father, And the Son, And the Holy Ghost, was
triumphantly chanted by a full chorus of voices; and the Catholics
insulted, by the purity of their doctrine, the Arian prelate, who had
usurped the throne of the venerable Eustathius. The same zeal which
inspired their songs prompted the more scrupulous members of the orthodox
party to form separate assemblies, which were governed by the presbyters,
till the death of their exiled bishop allowed the election and
consecration of a new episcopal pastor. The revolutions of the court
multiplied the number of pretenders; and the same city was often disputed,
under the reign of Constantius, by two, or three, or even four, bishops,
who exercised their spiritual jurisdiction over their respective
followers, and alternately lost and regained the temporal possessions of
the church. The abuse of Christianity introduced into the Roman government
new causes of tyranny and sedition; the bands of civil society were torn
asunder by the fury of religious factions; and the obscure citizen, who
might calmly have surveyed the elevation and fall of successive emperors,
imagined and experienced, that his own life and fortune were connected
with the interests of a popular ecclesiastic. The example of the two
capitals, Rome and Constantinople, may serve to represent the state of the
empire, and the temper of mankind, under the reign of the sons of
Constantine.
I. The Roman pontiff, as long as he maintained his station and his
principles, was guarded by the warm attachment of a great people; and
could reject with scorn the prayers, the menaces, and the oblations of an
heretical prince. When the eunuchs had secretly pronounced the exile of
Liberius, the well-grounded apprehension of a tumult engaged them to use
the utmost precautions in the execution of the sentence. The capital was
invested on every side, and the præfect was commanded to seize the
person of the bishop, either by stratagem or by open force. The order was
obeyed, and Liberius, with the greatest difficulty, at the hour of
midnight, was swiftly conveyed beyond the reach of the Roman people,
before their consternation was turned into rage. As soon as they were
informed of his banishment into Thrace, a general assembly was convened,
and the clergy of Rome bound themselves, by a public and solemn oath,
never to desert their bishop, never to acknowledge the usurper Fælix;
who, by the influence of the eunuchs, had been irregularly chosen and
consecrated within the walls of a profane palace. At the end of two years,
their pious obstinacy subsisted entire and unshaken; and when Constantius
visited Rome, he was assailed by the importunate solicitations of a
people, who had preserved, as the last remnant of their ancient freedom,
the right of treating their sovereign with familiar insolence. The wives
of many of the senators and most honorable citizens, after pressing their
husbands to intercede in favor of Liberius, were advised to undertake a
commission, which in their hands would be less dangerous, and might prove
more successful. The emperor received with politeness these female
deputies, whose wealth and dignity were displayed in the magnificence of
their dress and ornaments: he admired their inflexible resolution of
following their beloved pastor to the most distant regions of the earth;
and consented that the two bishops, Liberius and Fælix, should
govern in peace their respective congregations. But the ideas of
toleration were so repugnant to the practice, and even to the sentiments,
of those times, that when the answer of Constantius was publicly read in
the Circus of Rome, so reasonable a project of accommodation was rejected
with contempt and ridicule. The eager vehemence which animated the
spectators in the decisive moment of a horse-race, was now directed
towards a different object; and the Circus resounded with the shout of
thousands, who repeatedly exclaimed, "One God, One Christ, One Bishop!"
The zeal of the Roman people in the cause of Liberius was not confined to
words alone; and the dangerous and bloody sedition which they excited soon
after the departure of Constantius determined that prince to accept the
submission of the exiled prelate, and to restore him to the undivided
dominion of the capital. After some ineffectual resistance, his rival was
expelled from the city by the permission of the emperor and the power of
the opposite faction; the adherents of Fælix were inhumanly murdered
in the streets, in the public places, in the baths, and even in the
churches; and the face of Rome, upon the return of a Christian bishop,
renewed the horrid image of the massacres of Marius, and the proscriptions
of Sylla.
II. Notwithstanding the rapid increase of Christians under the reign of
the Flavian family, Rome, Alexandria, and the other great cities of the
empire, still contained a strong and powerful faction of Infidels, who
envied the prosperity, and who ridiculed, even in their theatres, the
theological disputes of the church. Constantinople alone enjoyed the
advantage of being born and educated in the bosom of the faith. The
capital of the East had never been polluted by the worship of idols; and
the whole body of the people had deeply imbibed the opinions, the virtues,
and the passions, which distinguished the Christians of that age from the
rest of mankind. After the death of Alexander, the episcopal throne was
disputed by Paul and Macedonius. By their zeal and abilities they both
deserved the eminent station to which they aspired; and if the moral
character of Macedonius was less exceptionable, his competitor had the
advantage of a prior election and a more orthodox doctrine. His firm
attachment to the Nicene creed, which has given Paul a place in the
calendar among saints and martyrs, exposed him to the resentment of the
Arians. In the space of fourteen years he was five times driven from his
throne; to which he was more frequently restored by the violence of the
people, than by the permission of the prince; and the power of Macedonius
could be secured only by the death of his rival. The unfortunate Paul was
dragged in chains from the sandy deserts of Mesopotamia to the most
desolate places of Mount Taurus, confined in a dark and narrow dungeon,
left six days without food, and at length strangled, by the order of
Philip, one of the principal ministers of the emperor Constantius. The
first blood which stained the new capital was spilt in this ecclesiastical
contest; and many persons were slain on both sides, in the furious and
obstinate seditions of the people. The commission of enforcing a sentence
of banishment against Paul had been intrusted to Hermogenes, the
master-general of the cavalry; but the execution of it was fatal to
himself. The Catholics rose in the defence of their bishop; the palace of
Hermogenes was consumed; the first military officer of the empire was
dragged by the heels through the streets of Constantinople, and, after he
expired, his lifeless corpse was exposed to their wanton insults. The fate
of Hermogenes instructed Philip, the Prætorian præfect, to act
with more precaution on a similar occasion. In the most gentle and
honorable terms, he required the attendance of Paul in the baths of
Zeuxippus, which had a private communication with the palace and the sea.
A vessel, which lay ready at the garden stairs, immediately hoisted sail;
and, while the people were still ignorant of the meditated sacrilege,
their bishop was already embarked on his voyage to Thessalonica. They soon
beheld, with surprise and indignation, the gates of the palace thrown
open, and the usurper Macedonius seated by the side of the præfect
on a lofty chariot, which was surrounded by troops of guards with drawn
swords. The military procession advanced towards the cathedral; the Arians
and the Catholics eagerly rushed to occupy that important post; and three
thousand one hundred and fifty persons lost their lives in the confusion
of the tumult. Macedonius, who was supported by a regular force, obtained
a decisive victory; but his reign was disturbed by clamor and sedition;
and the causes which appeared the least connected with the subject of
dispute, were sufficient to nourish and to kindle the flame of civil
discord. As the chapel in which the body of the great Constantine had been
deposited was in a ruinous condition, the bishop transported those
venerable remains into the church of St. Acacius. This prudent and even
pious measure was represented as a wicked profanation by the whole party
which adhered to the Homoousian doctrine. The factions immediately flew to
arms, the consecrated ground was used as their field of battle; and one of
the ecclesiastical historians has observed, as a real fact, not as a
figure of rhetoric, that the well before the church overflowed with a
stream of blood, which filled the porticos and the adjacent courts. The
writer who should impute these tumults solely to a religious principle,
would betray a very imperfect knowledge of human nature; yet it must be
confessed that the motive which misled the sincerity of zeal, and the
pretence which disguised the licentiousness of passion, suppressed the
remorse which, in another cause, would have succeeded to the rage of the
Christians at Constantinople.
The cruel and arbitrary disposition of Constantius, which did not always
require the provocations of guilt and resistance, was justly exasperated
by the tumults of his capital, and the criminal behavior of a faction,
which opposed the authority and religion of their sovereign. The ordinary
punishments of death, exile, and confiscation, were inflicted with partial
vigor; and the Greeks still revere the holy memory of two clerks, a
reader, and a sub-deacon, who were accused of the murder of Hermogenes,
and beheaded at the gates of Constantinople. By an edict of Constantius
against the Catholics which has not been judged worthy of a place in the
Theodosian code, those who refused to communicate with the Arian bishops,
and particularly with Macedonius, were deprived of the immunities of
ecclesiastics, and of the rights of Christians; they were compelled to
relinquish the possession of the churches; and were strictly prohibited
from holding their assemblies within the walls of the city. The execution
of this unjust law, in the provinces of Thrace and Asia Minor, was
committed to the zeal of Macedonius; the civil and military powers were
directed to obey his commands; and the cruelties exercised by this
Semi-Arian tyrant in the support of the Homoiousion,
exceeded the commission, and disgraced the reign, of Constantius. The
sacraments of the church were administered to the reluctant victims, who
denied the vocation, and abhorred the principles, of Macedonius. The rites
of baptism were conferred on women and children, who, for that purpose,
had been torn from the arms of their friends and parents; the mouths of
the communicants were held open by a wooden engine, while the consecrated
bread was forced down their throat; the breasts of tender virgins were
either burnt with red-hot egg-shells, or inhumanly compressed between
sharp and heavy boards. The Novatians of Constantinople and the adjacent
country, by their firm attachment to the Homoousian standard, deserved to
be confounded with the Catholics themselves. Macedonius was informed, that
a large district of Paphlagonia was almost entirely inhabited by those
sectaries. He resolved either to convert or to extirpate them; and as he
distrusted, on this occasion, the efficacy of an ecclesiastical mission,
he commanded a body of four thousand legionaries to march against the
rebels, and to reduce the territory of Mantinium under his spiritual
dominion. The Novatian peasants, animated by despair and religious fury,
boldly encountered the invaders of their country; and though many of the
Paphlagonians were slain, the Roman legions were vanquished by an
irregular multitude, armed only with scythes and axes; and, except a few
who escaped by an ignominious flight, four thousand soldiers were left
dead on the field of battle. The successor of Constantius has expressed,
in a concise but lively manner, some of the theological calamities which
afflicted the empire, and more especially the East, in the reign of a
prince who was the slave of his own passions, and of those of his eunuchs:
"Many were imprisoned, and persecuted, and driven into exile. Whole troops
of those who are styled heretics, were massacred, particularly at Cyzicus,
and at Samosata. In Paphlagonia, Bithynia, Galatia, and in many other
provinces, towns and villages were laid waste, and utterly destroyed."
While the flames of the Arian controversy consumed the vitals of the
empire, the African provinces were infested by their peculiar enemies, the
savage fanatics, who, under the name of Circumcellions,
formed the strength and scandal of the Donatist party. The severe
execution of the laws of Constantine had excited a spirit of discontent
and resistance, the strenuous efforts of his son Constans, to restore the
unity of the church, exasperated the sentiments of mutual hatred, which
had first occasioned the separation; and the methods of force and
corruption employed by the two Imperial commissioners, Paul and Macarius,
furnished the schismatics with a specious contrast between the maxims of
the apostles and the conduct of their pretended successors. The peasants
who inhabited the villages of Numidia and Mauritania, were a ferocious
race, who had been imperfectly reduced under the authority of the Roman
laws; who were imperfectly converted to the Christian faith; but who were
actuated by a blind and furious enthusiasm in the cause of their Donatist
teachers. They indignantly supported the exile of their bishops, the
demolition of their churches, and the interruption of their secret
assemblies. The violence of the officers of justice, who were usually
sustained by a military guard, was sometimes repelled with equal violence;
and the blood of some popular ecclesiastics, which had been shed in the
quarrel, inflamed their rude followers with an eager desire of revenging
the death of these holy martyrs. By their own cruelty and rashness, the
ministers of persecution sometimes provoked their fate; and the guilt of
an accidental tumult precipitated the criminals into despair and
rebellion. Driven from their native villages, the Donatist peasants
assembled in formidable gangs on the edge of the Getulian desert; and
readily exchanged the habits of labor for a life of idleness and rapine,
which was consecrated by the name of religion, and faintly condemned by
the doctors of the sect. The leaders of the Circumcellions assumed the
title of captains of the saints; their principal weapon, as they were
indifferently provided with swords and spears, was a huge and weighty
club, which they termed an Israelite; and the
well-known sound of "Praise be to God," which they used as their cry of
war, diffused consternation over the unarmed provinces of Africa. At first
their depredations were colored by the plea of necessity; but they soon
exceeded the measure of subsistence, indulged without control their
intemperance and avarice, burnt the villages which they had pillaged, and
reigned the licentious tyrants of the open country. The occupations of
husbandry, and the administration of justice, were interrupted; and as the
Circumcellions pretended to restore the primitive equality of mankind, and
to reform the abuses of civil society, they opened a secure asylum for the
slaves and debtors, who flocked in crowds to their holy standard. When
they were not resisted, they usually contented themselves with plunder,
but the slightest opposition provoked them to acts of violence and murder;
and some Catholic priests, who had imprudently signalized their zeal, were
tortured by the fanatics with the most refined and wanton barbarity. The
spirit of the Circumcellions was not always exerted against their
defenceless enemies; they engaged, and sometimes defeated, the troops of
the province; and in the bloody action of Bagai, they attacked in the open
field, but with unsuccessful valor, an advanced guard of the Imperial
cavalry. The Donatists who were taken in arms, received, and they soon
deserved, the same treatment which might have been shown to the wild
beasts of the desert. The captives died, without a murmur, either by the
sword, the axe, or the fire; and the measures of retaliation were
multiplied in a rapid proportion, which aggravated the horrors of
rebellion, and excluded the hope of mutual forgiveness. In the beginning
of the present century, the example of the Circumcellions has been renewed
in the persecution, the boldness, the crimes, and the enthusiasm of the
Camisards; and if the fanatics of Languedoc surpassed those of Numidia, by
their military achievements, the Africans maintained their fierce
independence with more resolution and perseverance.
Such disorders are the natural effects of religious tyranny, but the rage
of the Donatists was inflamed by a frenzy of a very extraordinary kind;
and which, if it really prevailed among them in so extravagant a degree,
cannot surely be paralleled in any country or in any age. Many of these
fanatics were possessed with the horror of life, and the desire of
martyrdom; and they deemed it of little moment by what means, or by what
hands, they perished, if their conduct was sanctified by the intention of
devoting themselves to the glory of the true faith, and the hope of
eternal happiness. Sometimes they rudely disturbed the festivals, and
profaned the temples of Paganism, with the design of exciting the most
zealous of the idolaters to revenge the insulted honor of their gods. They
sometimes forced their way into the courts of justice, and compelled the
affrighted judge to give orders for their immediate execution. They
frequently stopped travellers on the public highways, and obliged them to
inflict the stroke of martyrdom, by the promise of a reward, if they
consented, and by the threat of instant death, if they refused to grant so
very singular a favor. When they were disappointed of every other
resource, they announced the day on which, in the presence of their
friends and brethren, they should cast themselves headlong from some lofty
rock; and many precipices were shown, which had acquired fame by the
number of religious suicides. In the actions of these desperate
enthusiasts, who were admired by one party as the martyrs of God, and
abhorred by the other as the victims of Satan, an impartial philosopher
may discover the influence and the last abuse of that inflexible spirit
which was originally derived from the character and principles of the
Jewish nation.
The simple narrative of the intestine divisions, which distracted the
peace, and dishonored the triumph, of the church, will confirm the remark
of a Pagan historian, and justify the complaint of a venerable bishop. The
experience of Ammianus had convinced him, that the enmity of the
Christians towards each other, surpassed the fury of savage beasts against
man; and Gregory Nazianzen most pathetically laments, that the kingdom of
heaven was converted, by discord, into the image of chaos, of a nocturnal
tempest, and of hell itself. The fierce and partial writers of the times,
ascribing all virtue to themselves, and imputing
all guilt to their adversaries, have painted the
battle of the angels and dæmons. Our calmer reason will reject such
pure and perfect monsters of vice or sanctity, and will impute an equal,
or at least an indiscriminate, measure of good and evil to the hostile
sectaries, who assumed and bestowed the appellations of orthodox and
heretics. They had been educated in the same religion and the same civil
society. Their hopes and fears in the present, or in a future life, were
balanced in the same proportion. On either side, the error might be
innocent, the faith sincere, the practice meritorious or corrupt. Their
passions were excited by similar objects; and they might alternately abuse
the favor of the court, or of the people. The metaphysical opinions of the
Athanasians and the Arians could not influence their moral character; and
they were alike actuated by the intolerant spirit which has been extracted
from the pure and simple maxims of the gospel.
A modern writer, who, with a just confidence, has prefixed to his own
history the honorable epithets of political and philosophical, accuses the
timid prudence of Montesquieu, for neglecting to enumerate, among the
causes of the decline of the empire, a law of Constantine, by which the
exercise of the Pagan worship was absolutely suppressed, and a
considerable part of his subjects was left destitute of priests, of
temples, and of any public religion. The zeal of the philosophic historian
for the rights of mankind, has induced him to acquiesce in the ambiguous
testimony of those ecclesiastics, who have too lightly ascribed to their
favorite hero the merit of a general
persecution. Instead of alleging this imaginary law, which would have
blazed in the front of the Imperial codes, we may safely appeal to the
original epistle, which Constantine addressed to the followers of the
ancient religion; at a time when he no longer disguised his conversion,
nor dreaded the rivals of his throne. He invites and exhorts, in the most
pressing terms, the subjects of the Roman empire to imitate the example of
their master; but he declares, that those who still refuse to open their
eyes to the celestial light, may freely enjoy their temples and their
fancied gods. A report, that the ceremonies of paganism were suppressed,
is formally contradicted by the emperor himself, who wisely assigns, as
the principle of his moderation, the invincible force of habit, of
prejudice, and of superstition. Without violating the sanctity of his
promise, without alarming the fears of the Pagans, the artful monarch
advanced, by slow and cautious steps, to undermine the irregular and
decayed fabric of polytheism. The partial acts of severity which he
occasionally exercised, though they were secretly promoted by a Christian
zeal, were colored by the fairest pretences of justice and the public
good; and while Constantine designed to ruin the foundations, he seemed to
reform the abuses, of the ancient religion. After the example of the
wisest of his predecessors, he condemned, under the most rigorous
penalties, the occult and impious arts of divination; which excited the
vain hopes, and sometimes the criminal attempts, of those who were
discontented with their present condition. An ignominious silence was
imposed on the oracles, which had been publicly convicted of fraud and
falsehood; the effeminate priests of the Nile were abolished; and
Constantine discharged the duties of a Roman censor, when he gave orders
for the demolition of several temples of Phoenicia; in which every mode of
prostitution was devoutly practised in the face of day, and to the honor
of Venus. The Imperial city of Constantinople was, in some measure, raised
at the expense, and was adorned with the spoils, of the opulent temples of
Greece and Asia; the sacred property was confiscated; the statues of gods
and heroes were transported, with rude familiarity, among a people who
considered them as objects, not of adoration, but of curiosity; the gold
and silver were restored to circulation; and the magistrates, the bishops,
and the eunuchs, improved the fortunate occasion of gratifying, at once,
their zeal, their avarice, and their resentment. But these depredations
were confined to a small part of the Roman world; and the provinces had
been long since accustomed to endure the same sacrilegious rapine, from
the tyranny of princes and proconsuls, who could not be suspected of any
design to subvert the established religion.
The sons of Constantine trod in the footsteps of their father, with more
zeal, and with less discretion. The pretences of rapine and oppression
were insensibly multiplied; every indulgence was shown to the illegal
behavior of the Christians; every doubt was explained to the disadvantage
of Paganism; and the demolition of the temples was celebrated as one of
the auspicious events of the reign of Constans and Constantius. The name
of Constantius is prefixed to a concise law, which might have superseded
the necessity of any future prohibitions. "It is our pleasure, that in all
places, and in all cities, the temples be immediately shut, and carefully
guarded, that none may have the power of offending. It is likewise our
pleasure, that all our subjects should abstain from sacrifices. If any one
should be guilty of such an act, let him feel the sword of vengeance, and
after his execution, let his property be confiscated to the public use. We
denounce the same penalties against the governors of the provinces, if
they neglect to punish the criminals." But there is the strongest reason
to believe, that this formidable edict was either composed without being
published, or was published without being executed. The evidence of facts,
and the monuments which are still extant of brass and marble, continue to
prove the public exercise of the Pagan worship during the whole reign of
the sons of Constantine. In the East, as well as in the West, in cities,
as well as in the country, a great number of temples were respected, or at
least were spared; and the devout multitude still enjoyed the luxury of
sacrifices, of festivals, and of processions, by the permission, or by the
connivance, of the civil government. About four years after the supposed
date of this bloody edict, Constantius visited the temples of Rome; and
the decency of his behavior is recommended by a pagan orator as an example
worthy of the imitation of succeeding princes. "That emperor," says
Symmachus, "suffered the privileges of the vestal virgins to remain
inviolate; he bestowed the sacerdotal dignities on the nobles of Rome,
granted the customary allowance to defray the expenses of the public rites
and sacrifices; and, though he had embraced a different religion, he never
attempted to deprive the empire of the sacred worship of antiquity." The
senate still presumed to consecrate, by solemn decrees, the divine memory
of their sovereigns; and Constantine himself was associated, after his
death, to those gods whom he had renounced and insulted during his life.
The title, the ensigns, the prerogatives, of sovereign pontiff, which had
been instituted by Numa, and assumed by Augustus, were accepted, without
hesitation, by seven Christian emperors; who were invested with a more
absolute authority over the religion which they had deserted, than over
that which they professed.
The divisions of Christianity suspended the ruin of Paganism;
and the holy war against the infidels was less vigorously prosecuted by
princes and bishops, who were more immediately alarmed by the guilt and
danger of domestic rebellion. The extirpation of idolatry
might have been justified by the established principles of intolerance:
but the hostile sects, which alternately reigned in the Imperial court
were mutually apprehensive of alienating, and perhaps exasperating, the
minds of a powerful, though declining faction. Every motive of authority
and fashion, of interest and reason, now militated on the side of
Christianity; but two or three generations elapsed, before their
victorious influence was universally felt. The religion which had so long
and so lately been established in the Roman empire was still revered by a
numerous people, less attached indeed to speculative opinion, than to
ancient custom. The honors of the state and army were indifferently
bestowed on all the subjects of Constantine and Constantius; and a
considerable portion of knowledge and wealth and valor was still engaged
in the service of polytheism. The superstition of the senator and of the
peasant, of the poet and the philosopher, was derived from very different
causes, but they met with equal devotion in the temples of the gods. Their
zeal was insensibly provoked by the insulting triumph of a proscribed
sect; and their hopes were revived by the well-grounded confidence, that
the presumptive heir of the empire, a young and valiant hero, who had
delivered Gaul from the arms of the Barbarians, had secretly embraced the
religion of his ancestors.