Arianism and the First Nicene Council – 4

But close beside the pope Alexander is a small insignificant young man, of hardly twenty-five years of age, of lively manners and speech and of bright, serene countenance.

Continuing Arianism and the First Nicene Council,
our selection by Arthur P. Stanley.

Previously in Arianism and the First Nicene Council.

Time: 325
Place: Nicaea (now Iznik in Turkey)

But close beside the pope Alexander is a small insignificant young man, of hardly twenty-five years of age, of lively manners and speech and of bright, serene countenance. Though he is but the deacon, the chief deacon or archdeacon, of Alexander, he has closely riveted the attention of the assembly by the vehemence of his arguments. He is already taking the words out of the bishop’s mouth and briefly acting in reality the part he had before, as a child, acted in name and that in a few months he will be called to act both in name and in reality. In some of the conventional pictures of the council his humble rank as a deacon does not allow of his appearance. But his activity and prominence behind the scenes made enemies for him there, who will never leave him through life. Anyone who had read his passionate invectives afterward may form some notion of what he was when in the thick of his youthful battles. That small, insignificant deacon is the great Athanasius.

Next after the pope and deacon of Alexandria we must turn to one of its most important presbyters — the parish priest of its principal church, which bore the name of Baucalis and marked the first beginnings of what we should call a parochial system. In appearance he is the very opposite of Athanasius. He is sixty years of age, very tall and thin and 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 eyesight. 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, which at first sight is startling. His dress and demeanor are those of a rigid ascetic. He wears a long coat with short sleeves and a scarf of only half size, such as was the mark of an austere life; and his hair hangs in a tangled mass over 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 are a sweetness in his voice and a winning, earnest manner which fascinates 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 called him, the madman of Ares or Mars. Close beside him was a group of his countrymen, of whom we know little, except their fidelity to him through good report and evil: Saras, like himself a presbyter, from the Libyan province; Euzoius, a deacon of Egypt; Achillas, a reader; Theonas, bishop of Marmarica in the Cyrenaica; and Secundus, bishop of Ptolemais in the Delta.

These were the most remarkable deputies from the Church of Alexandria. But from the interior of Egypt came characters of quite another stamp; not Greeks, nor Grecized Egyptians but genuine Copts, speaking the Greek language not at all or with great difficulty; living half or the whole of their lives in the desert; their very names taken from the heathen gods of the times of the ancient Pharaohs. One was Potammon, bishop of Heracleopolis, far up the Nile; the other, Paphnutius, bishop of the Upper Thebaid. Both are famous for the austerity of their lives. Potammon — that is, “dedicated to Ammon” — had himself visited the hermit Antony; Paphnutius — that is, “dedicated to his God” — had been brought up in a hermitage. Both, too, had suffered in the persecutions. Each presented the frightful spectacle of the right eye dug out with iron. Paphnutius, besides, came limping on one leg, his left having been hamstrung.

Next in importance must be reckoned the bishop of Syria and of the interior of Asia; or, as they are sometimes called in the later councils, the Eastern bishops, as distinguished from the Church of Egypt. Then, as afterward, there was a rivalry between those branches of oriental Christendom; each, from long neighborhood, knowing each, yet each tending in an opposite direction till, after the Council of Chalcedon, a community of heresy drew them together again. Here, as in Egypt, we find two classes of representatives — scholars from the more civilized cities of Syria; wild ascetics from the remoter East. The first in dignity was the orthodox Eustathius, who either was or was on the point of being made, bishop of the capital of Syria, the metropolis of the Eastern Church, Antioch, then called “the city of God.” He had suffered in heathen persecutions and was destined to suffer in Christian persecutions also. But he was chiefly known for his learning and eloquence, which was distinguished by an antique simplicity of style. One work alone has come down to us on the “Witch of Endor.”

Next in rank and far more illustrious was his chief suffragan, the metropolitan of Palestine, the bishop of Cæsarea, Eusebius. We honor him as the father of ecclesiastical history, as the chief depositary of the traditions which connect the fourth with the first century. But in the bishops of Nicæa his presence awakened feelings of a very different kind. He alone of the eastern prelates could tell what was in the mind of the Emperor; he was the clerk of the imperial closet; he was the interpreter, the chaplain, the confessor of Constantine. And yet he was on the wrong side. Two especially, we may be sure, of the Egyptian Church, were on the watch for any slip that he might make. Athanasius — whatever may have been the opinions of later times respecting the doctrines of Eusebius — was convinced that he was at heart an Arian. Potammon of the one eye had known him formerly in the days of persecution and was ready with that most fatal taunt, which, on a later occasion, he threw out against him, that, while he had thus suffered for the cause of Christ, Eusebius had escaped by sacrificing to an idol.

If Eusebius was suspected of Arianism, he was supported by most of his suffragan bishops in Palestine, of whom Paulinus of Tyre and Patrophilus of Bethshan (Scythopolis) were the most remarkable. One, however, a champion of orthodoxy, was distinguished, not in himself but for the see which he occupied — once the highest in Christendom, in a few years about to claim something of its former grandeur but at the time of the council known only as a second-rate Syro-Roman city — Macarius, bishop of Ælia Capitolina, that is, “Jerusalem.”

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