Arius the Libyan: A Romance of the Primitive Church Chapter 6

>During the progress of these affairs, Constantine had thoroughly satisfied himself, by the reports of his secret political agents in Nicomedia and elsewhere, that the assurances which the Eusebii had given to him that Licinius would not in any event move his fleet away from the coasts of Asia were entirely trustworthy. The overthrow of the Gothic church, which had been founded and edified by Ulfilas, had been followed by a treaty of peace with that splendid people, whereby they had bound themselves to furnish, whenever the service of the emperor required it, forty thousand young men for the imperial army; these legions had long ago been supplied, armed, and thoroughly exercised, and constituted in themselves a magnificent army. The emperor had been triumphant everywhere. "Confiding in the superiority of his genius and military power," saith the historian Gibbon, "he determined, without any previous injury, to exert them for the destruction of Licinius, whose advanced age and unpopular vices seemed to promise an easy conquest. But the old emperor, awakened by the approaching danger, deceived the expectations of his friends as well as enemies. Calling forth that spirit and those abilities by which he had deserved the friendship of Galerius and the imperial purple, he prepared himself for the contest, collected the forces of the East, and soon filled the plains of Hadrianople with his troops, and the straits of the Hellespont with his fleet. The army consisted of one hundred and fifty thousand foot and fifteen thousand horse. The fleet was composed of three hundred and fifty galleys of three ranks of oars.... The troops of Constantine were ordered to rendezvous at Thessalonica. They numbered above one hundred and twenty thousand horse and foot. Their emperor was satisfied with their martial appearance, and his army contained more soldiers, though fewer men, than that of his eastern competitor. The legions of Constantine were levied in the warlike provinces of Europe; action had confirmed their discipline; victory had elevated their hopes, and there were among them a great number of veterans, who, after seventeen glorious campaigns under the same leader, prepared themselves to deserve honorable dismissal by a last effort of their valor. But the naval preparations of Constantine were in every respect much inferior to those of Licinius. The maritime cities of Greece sent their respective quotas of men and ships to the celebrated harbor of Piræus, and their united forces consisted of no more than two hundred small vessels.... It is only surprising that the Eastern emperor, who possessed so great a superiority at sea, should have neglected this opportunity of carrying an offensive war into the center of his rival's dominions. Instead of embracing such an active resolution, which might have changed the whole face of the war, the prudent Licinius expected the approach of his rival in a camp near Hadrianople, which he fortified with an anxious care that betrayed his apprehensions of the event. Constantine directed his march from Thessalonica toward that part of Thrace, till he found himself stopped by the broad and rapid stream of the Hebrus, and discovered the numerous army of Licinius, which filled the steep ascent of the hill, from the river to the city of Hadrianople. Many days were spent in doubtful skirmishes; but at length the obstacles of the passage and of the attack were removed by the intrepid conduct of Constantine.... The valor and danger of Constantine are attested by a slight wound which he received in the thigh; but ... the victory was obtained no less by the conduct of the general than by the courage of the hero; for a body of five thousand archers marched round to occupy a thick wood in the rear of the enemy, whose attention was distracted by the building of the bridge; and Licinius, perplexed by so many artful evolutions, was reluctantly drawn from his advantageous post to combat on equal terms in the plain. The contest was no longer equal. His confused multitude of new levies was easily vanquished by the veterans of the West. Thirty-four thousand men are reported to have been slain. The fortified camp of Licinius was taken by assault the evening of the battle; the greater part of the fugitives, who had retired to the mountains, surrendered themselves the next day to the discretion of the conqueror; and his rival, who could no longer keep the field, confined himself within the walls of Byzantium. The siege of Byzantium, which was immediately undertaken by Constantine, was attended with great labor and uncertainty. In the late civil war, the fortifications of that place, so justly considered as the key of Europe and Asia, had been repaired and strengthened; and as long as Licinius remained master of the sea, the garrison was much less exposed to the danger of famine than the army of the besiegers. The naval commanders of Constantine were summoned to his camp, and received his positive orders to force the passage of the Hellespont, as the fleet of Licinius, instead of seeking and destroying their feeble enemy, continued inactive in those narrow straits, where its superiority of numbers was of little use or advantage. Crispus, the emperor's eldest son, was intrusted with the execution of this daring enterprise, which he performed with so much courage and success that he deserved the esteem, and most probably excited the jealousy, of his father. The engagement lasted two days; and in the evening of the first, the contending fleets, after considerable mutual loss, retired to their respective harbors in Europe and Asia. The second day, about noon, a strong south wind sprang up, which carried the vessels of Crispus against the enemy, and as this casual opportunity was improved by his skillful intrepidity, he soon obtained a complete victory. For the current always sets out of the Hellespont, and, when it is assisted by a north wind, no vessel can attempt the passage, but a south wind renders the force thereof almost imperceptible. One hundred and thirty vessels were destroyed, five thousand men were slain, and Amandus, the admiral of the fleet, escaped with the utmost difficulty to the shores of Chalcedon. As soon as the Hellespont was open, a plentiful convoy of provisions flowed into the camp of Constantine, who had already advanced the operations of the siege. He constructed artificial mounds of earth of equal height with the ramparts of Byzantium. The lofty towers which were erected on that foundation galled the besieged with large stones and darts from the military engines, and the battering-rams had shaken the walls in several places. If Licinius persisted much longer in the defense, he exposed himself to be involved in the ruin of the place. Before he was surrounded, he prudently removed his person and his treasures to Chalcedon, in Asia.... Such were the resources and such the abilities of Licinius, that, after so many successive defeats, he collected in Bithynia a new army of fifty or sixty thousand men, while the activity of Constantine was employed in the siege of Byzantium. The vigilant emperor did not, however, neglect the last struggles of his antagonist. A considerable part of his victorious army was transported over the Bosporus in small vessels, and the decisive engagement was fought soon after their landing on the heights of Chrysopolis, now called Scutari. The troops of Licinius, though they were lately raised, ill armed, and worse disciplined, made head against the conquerors with fruitless but desperate valor, till a total defeat, and a slaughter of five-and-twenty thousand men, irretrievably determined the fate of their leader. He retired to Nicomedia, rather with the view of gaining some time for negotiation, than with the hope of any effectual defense. Constantia, his wife, the sister of Constantine, interceded with her brother in favor of her husband, and obtained from his policy, rather than from his compassion, a solemn promise, confirmed by an oath, that, after the resignation of the purple, Licinius should be permitted to pass the remainder of his life in peace and affluence.... By this victory of Constantine the Roman world was again united under one emperor, thirty-seven years after Diocletian had divided his power and provinces with his associate Maximian.... The foundation of Constantinople, and the legal establishment of the Christian religion, were the immediate and memorable consequences of this revolution."

If the victory had been otherwise, the face of history might have been entirely changed: the Christian communities might have been permitted to maintain their original communal organization, at least in the Eastern Church, and Christ might still have had a kingdom upon earth. If Licinius had employed his naval superiority in offensive war, instead of keeping it cooped up under the shores of Asia, "in those narrow straits where its superiority of numbers was of little use or advantage," the probabilities are that he might have maintained his power at least in the East; but the Eusebii had "neutralized" the mighty fleet by that which Constantine denominated "the prophecy of Gaius of Chalcis," and Christianity was subverted everywhere, and the "legal establishment" of Constantine usurped its place.

Almost immediately Constantine proceeded to mark out the boundaries of the city--Constantinople--which prescient John had seen from rocky Patmos; and he traced the boundaries thereof, going on foot with a spear in his hand, and declared that in so doing he was acting in obedience to the directions of God; and when those who were with him remonstrated against his tracing so vast a space for a city, the emperor replied: "I shall advance till He, the invisible guide who marches before me, thinks proper to stop." And so he laid off the boundaries of the city upon seven great hills, which included the ancient site of Byzantium, and soon began to lay the foundations, and to plan and to build the palaces, theatres, circus, amphitheatre, and churches of Constantinople.

About the same time the emperor became greatly interested in the preparation of new copies of the Scriptures, and especially of the epistles of John; and he had learned clerks and skillful writers constantly employed in making copies in the new, running Greek text, which was lately come into use, and was more easy and beautiful than the uncial letters of an earlier age; and he distributed them to the bishops throughout the Roman Empire. And next he sent letters to all of the bishops, requesting them to meet in a solemn council of the whole Christian Church, at the city of Nicea, upon a designated day, in order to discuss and settle the disputed questions by which the world was agitated. And in conformity with this royal request, or order, in the year 325 was assembled the most remarkable body of men that the exigencies of political or religious life hath ever convened together in the history of the world; for it was the first oecumenical council ever called in Christendom, those which had preceded it having been assembled by the Christian bishops, of their own accord, and not by the authority of a prince or emperor, whose power was said to rule the habitable earth ([Greek: Oikouméne]).

The letter which Constantine addressed to the bishops was as follows: "That there is nothing more honorable in my sight than religion is, I believe, manifest to every man. Now, because the Synod of Bishops at Ancyra, of Galatia, consented formerly that it should be so, it hath now seemed unto us, on many accounts, that it would be well for it to be assembled at Nice, a city of Bithynia; because the bishops of Italy, and of the rest of the countries of Europe, are coming, and because of the excellent temperature of the air, and because I shall be at hand as a spectator and participator of what is done. Wherefore I signify to you, my beloved brethren, that ye, all of you, promptly assemble at the city I spoke of, that is Nice. Let every one of you, therefore, diligently inquire into that which is profitable, in order that, as I before said, without any delay, we may speedily come to be a present spectator of those things which are done by the same. God keep you, my beloved brethren!"

The reasons assigned by the emperor for calling the Council of Nicea were first and chiefly that "the Synod of Ancyra" (which had been called by the bishops without the interference of any secular authority) "had formerly consented" to meet in a general council at Nice, and that "the bishops of Italy and of Europe would be there," and that "the air of the place was of an excellent temperature," and that their coming into Bithynia would afford the emperor an opportunity to be "a spectator of their proceedings." There was no intimation given that the emperor desired to preside over their council, or to control its action, or to force its deliberations to assume any political significance whatever, or to compel it to take such action as must inevitably result in the subversion of the Christian polity and the establishment of an entirely different church system. The letter was based first upon the consent given by the Council of Ancyra and then upon matters of expediency, and in no respect did it question the absolute right of the bishops to meet where they might please, and to deliberate without the intermeddling of secular authority. So, at least, it seemed to all the bishops of the Eastern Church, except a small number who had been, to a greater or less degree, leavened by the leaven of ecclesiasticism. On the face of it the letter was as full a recognition of the freedom of the bishops, and as full a recognition of the Christian polity which had for three centuries held all property in common, as was the celebrated Edict of Milan, in which Constantine and Licinius had united in commanding the officers of the Roman world to restore the property of Christians as communal property, the language of that edict being as follows: "All of which will be necessary to be delivered up to the body of the Christians without delay. And since the Christians themselves are known to have had not only those places where they were accustomed to meet, but other places also, belonging not to individuals among them, but to the right of the whole body of Christians, you will also command all these, by virtue of the law before mentioned, without any hesitation, to be restored to the same Christians, that is to their body, and to each conventicle separately."

But already the bishops of the Western Empire, with Hosius and Eusebius at their head, had come to understand that while Constantine cared little about any matter of faith, he had determined to utterly destroy the Christian polity, especially in regard to communism and the refusal of Christians to bear arms. The regulations by which their journeys were governed prescribed that they should come at the emperor's expense, and that "each bishop should be accompanied by a retinue of two presbyters and three slaves."

At and near the appointed time there were bishops and presbyters assembled from the four quarters of the world--from Persia and from Gaul, from Scythia and from Africa. There were many who were the victims of pagan persecutions, and still bore in their own persons the marks of the tortures to which they had been subjected. This one had lost an eye, gouged out by the torturer's sword or pincers; that one had the sinews of his leg seared with hot iron to keep him from escaping from the mines, to which he had been condemned for the crime of being a Christian; and the other had had the flesh scraped off his ribs by the instruments of torture. Of the whole number present, it was believed that only the eleven who came from the remotest East had escaped mutilation in some ghastly form.

Arius, although not a bishop, was there by the express order of Constantine, who could always sleep upon his vengeance, but never could forget nor forego it. The place of the assembly's sessions was a great hall in the imperial palace of Nicea. The bishops and presbyters, assembled upon the emperor's order, traveling at his expense, to the immediate vicinity of Nicomedia, then the imperial residence, into a royal palace, and fed by his bounty, were from the very first the creatures of Constantine, so far as complete control of the political significancy of religion could make them so.

The emperor had only two great purposes to accomplish in patronizing the Church and engineering the council: one of which was to make the Eastern Church as willingly and thoroughly dependent upon the imperial authority as he had already practically made that of the West, and to render it as much a bulwark of his government; the other was to render this condition of things, in appearance at least, the spontaneous and inspired action of a free conclave of bishops.

As for the theological verity of their doctrines or practice, the royal atheist cared not a denarius. His object was to make the Church as much a part of the imperial power as a legion might be, its bishops as much his agents and servants as the military officers; and to uproot and cast out the only essential features of Christianity which tended to segregate the Christians into a separate and distinct body in the empire, by subverting "the kingdom of heaven" with its communistic organization, that excluded war, slavery, and mammon-worship from the communities of the faithful, so that no man should feel that because he was a Christian he was therefore more free, or less a subject of the empire! This he proposed to do by inducing the council to define the faith and prescribe temporal penalties for heresy, which were to be enforced by the emperor's authority, just as were the judgments of the magistrates against violators of the criminal laws: the action of the council was to make an offense against the Church a crime against the imperial law. Subject to the accomplishment of these purposes, he really desired that they might reach conclusions as nearly unanimous as possible; for he was as anxious to avoid the creating of parties and classes in the Church as he was to avoid sowing discord among his other subjects.

Upon the assembling of the council, Eusebius of Cæsarea, "in metrical prose, if not in actual verses, recited an address to the emperor, and then a hymn of thanksgiving to the Almighty for the victory over Licinius." Thereupon Constantine addressed the council in the Latin language, which his dragoman immediately interpreted into Greek, as follows: "It has, my friends, been the object of my highest wishes to enjoy your sacred company, and, having obtained this, I confess my thankfulness to the King of all that, in addition to all my other blessings, he has granted to me this greatest of all--I mean, to receive you all assembled together, and to see one, common, harmonious opinion of all. Let, then, no envious enemy injure our happiness, and, after the destruction of the impious power of the tyrants by the might of God our Saviour, let not the spirit of evil overwhelm the divine law with blasphemies: for to me far worse than any war or battle is the civil war of the Church of God--yea, far more fearful than the wars which have waged without. As, then, by the assent and co-operation of a higher power, I have gained my victories over my enemies, I thought that nothing remained but to give God thanks, and to rejoice with those who have been delivered by me. But since I learned of your divisions, contrary to all expectation, I gave the report my first consideration; and, praying that this also might be healed through my assistance, I called you all together without delay. I rejoice at the mere sight of your assembly: but the moment that I shall consider the chief fulfillment of my prayers will be when I see you all joined together in heart and soul, and determining on one peaceful harmony for all, which it should well become you, who are consecrated to God, to preach to others. Do not, then, delay, my friends; do not delay, ministers of God, and good servants of our common Lord and Saviour, to remove all grounds of difference, and to wind up, by laws of peace, every link of controversy. Thus will you have done what is most pleasing to the God who is over all, and you will render the greatest boon to me your fellow-servant."

"The council was now formally opened, and the emperor gave permission to the presidents of the assembly to commence their proceedings"; and the Bishops of Alexandria, Cordova, Antioch, and Cæsarea, were chosen to preside over their deliberations: of whom Hosius, Alexander, and Eusebius, were politicians thoroughly imbued with the ecclesiastical spirit and purposes of the emperor, although the last-named bishop was the warm personal friend of Arius, and a follower of his theological tenets. Constantine himself assumed the functions of a bishop, and participated in all their debates, "directing all his energies to that one point which he himself described as his aim--a unanimity of decision" as to all merely theological disputes. For, even before the council had met, innumerable complaints of one bishop against another had been placed in his hands; so that he was satisfied that one great design he had in view was already accomplished: for this fact showed that already they regarded him as the ultimate judge--the real source of all authority in the Church (instead of Christ), as truly as he was in the state. All of these complaints, therefore, he publicly burned in their presence, with a solemn oath that he had not read any of them, and he said, "It is the command of Christ that he who desires to be himself forgiven, must first forgive his brother."

But the very strongest proof that the emperor was lying, was the fact that he made oath to his statement; and perhaps there was not a thing named in any of the complaints, that could give him a hold upon any bishop, that was not carefully preserved.

The first matter which came before this august assembly was the question whether the Christian passover ("Easter") should be celebrated on the same day with the Jewish (the fourteenth day of the month Nisan), or on the following Sunday. And the bitter feeling of many of the Christians that "the celebration of it on the same day that was kept by the wicked race that put the Saviour to death was an impious absurdity," on one side, and the reverence on the other side for a custom which had come down from the apostles, gave rise to a long controversy on the subject; but it was finally "determined by common consent" that the ancient custom should be set aside, and the more recent Christian practice established.

During these proceedings, Arius the Libyan took no part whatever in the discussions or business of the council, but sat as a quiet and attentive spectator of their deliberations. Many of them, knowing his great erudition and holy character, consulted him privately, and he fully gave them the benefit of his learning and opinions. Arius was now sixty years of age, and was greatly changed from the bright and happy youth whom we knew at Baucalis; greatly changed even from the broken-hearted but ever-diligent, earnest, and eloquent presbyter of the earlier years of his ministry at Alexandria. "He is tall and thin, apparently unable to support his stature; he has an odd way of contorting and twisting himself, which his enemies compare to the wrigglings of a snake. He would be handsome, but for the emaciation and deadly pallor of his face, and a downcast look imparted by a weakness of eye-sight. At times his veins throb and swell, and his limbs tremble, as if suffering from some violent internal complaint, the same, perhaps, that will terminate one day in his sudden and frightful death. There is a wild look about him, that is at first sight startling. His dress and demeanor are those of a rigid ascetic. He wears a long coat with short sleeves, such as the monks wore to indicate that their hands were not made for injury, and a scarf of only half size, such as was the mark of an austere life; and his hair hangs in tangled masses about his head. He is usually silent, but at times breaks out into fierce excitement, such as will give the impression of madness. Yet with all this there is a sweetness in his voice, and a winning, earnest manner, which fascinate those who come across him. Among the religious ladies of Alexandria he is said to have had from the first a following of not less than seven hundred. This strange, captivating, moon-struck giant is the heretic Arius, or, as his adversaries call him, the madman of Ares, or Mars": and the description given here of him is not that of a partisan of his own, but of a Trinitarian ecclesiastic.

Many sittings of the council passed, day after day, in which the paschal controversy, the Melitian schism, and other matters of a theological character, were discussed and determined, but the heretic remained utterly silent. He was ever ready to give aid, advice, counsel, and furnish references to authorities, to those who applied to him, but not once did he open his lips to speak to the assembly. But the purpose of Constantine to crush him wavered not, and the emperor had one rare quality--he knew how to wait.

One evening, after the close of the council's daily session, the ancient Bishop Alexander, accompanied by his young Archdeacon Athanasius, was proceeding toward his lodgings, when Marcellus, the Bishop of Ancyra, accosted him: "Hail, bishop! From what thou didst tell me of his fierce, aggressive nature, I am astonished to find that the Libyan madman continueth so quiet. How is it that thou hast called him vehement, fierce, eloquent, and controversial?"

"He hath some secret end in view," replied the bishop, "and I can not fathom his purposes. But on to-morrow, Athanasius, who speaketh for me in the council, shall provoke him to some reply, and thou mayst then judge of his quiet disposition for thyself."

"Good enough," said Marcellus. "No man can pick a quarrel with an oyster that keepeth its shell closed."